2 Cuvier’s Historical Eloge of Werner. 
mean Werner. With him, the most remarkable epoch of the 
science of the Earth commences ; and we may even say, that he 
alone has filled that epoch. For he has had the good fortune to 
see those ideas, which were so novel, and those vieAvs, which, be- 
fore his time, were so unknown to naturalists, universally prevalent 
during his own life. He has left as many inheritors of his me- 
thods and his doctrine, as there are observers in the world ; and 
wherever mines are explored, or the history of minerals is taught, 
some distinguished man is to be found, who boasts of having 
been his disciple. Entire academies have been formed, which 
have taken his name, as if they had wished to invoke his genius, 
and to make him, in a manner before unknown, their patron. 
On hearing of such extraordinary success, who would not sup- 
pose, that it had belonged to some of those keen propagators of 
their own doctrines, who have overwhelmed their contemporaries 
by numerous and eloquent works, or who have acquired partizans 
by the ascendancy of great riches, or of an elevated rank in the 
social order.? Nothing of all this was the case with Werner. 
Confined to a small town of Saxony, and destitute of any autho- 
rity in his own country, he had no influence on the fortunes of 
his disciples. He had no connection with persons in power. 
Of a disposition singularly timid, — at all times unwilling to write, 
— he has left behind him but a few sheets of print. Far from 
seeking to make himself of consequence, he was so little sensible 
of his own merit, that the trifling rewards granted him at a 
time when his fame was spread throughout all parts of the world, 
surpassed to a great degree whatever he had hoped for or de- 
sired. 
But this man, so little occupied with himself, — believing him- 
self so little called upon to write, or to instruct others, had in his 
language and in his conversation an indefinable charm. When 
once any person had listened to him,-— when, over some fragments 
of stones or of rocks, arranged almost by accident, he had deve- 
loped, as it were by inspiration, all those general conceptions, all 
those innumerable relations which his genius had discovered, it 
was impossible to detach one’s self from him. The scholars of 
Werner, subdued by his talent, respected him us a great master, 
—allured by the affection which he shewed for them, they often 
dierished him as a father,— wherever they went, they propa- 
