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Louis Agassiz, 



remarkable in a boy of his age and showing that 

 his aims and aspirations were lofty from the very 

 first. His manifesto was addressed to the audi- 

 ence of his imagination and doubtless was never 

 intended to meet other eyes than his own. In it he 

 expresses a wish to advance in the sciences " ; also 

 a desire to serve his apprenticeship at Neuchatel for 

 a year or more, then to enter some university in Ger- 

 many for a four years' course ; and finally to finish 

 his education in Paris. Then,'* said this lad of 

 fourteen, I could begin to write." From this time 

 on all his determination and energies evidently 

 tended in this direction. I am resolved, so far as I 

 am allowed to do so, to become a man of letters," 

 he wrote ; then regrets that he can go no further 

 from a lack of books. He needed d'Anville, 

 Ritter, an Italian dictionary, a Strabo in Greek, 

 Mannert and Thiersch ; and also the works of 

 Malte-Brun and Seyfert," — books which would 

 be considered advanced for boys of much maturer 

 years. 



The future of young Agassiz had been planned by 

 his parents, who had decided that when he attained 

 the age of fifteen, he should enter upon a commer- 

 cial life in the firm of his uncle at Neuchatel. That 

 they also saw the dawning capacity for a totally 

 different field of work is not improbable, as when 

 the time came they readily granted a delay of two 

 years, during which Agassiz was to study at the 

 college of Lausanne, — a movement fatal to their 

 hopes of making him a business man, as during this 

 period he developed rapidly, and despite difficul- 



