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This relation continued until Cuvier's death, and Agassiz enjoyed for several months the scientific sympathy and personal friendship of the great master whom he had honored from childhood, and whose name was ever on his lips till his own work in this world was closed. The following letter, written two months later, to his uncle in Lausanne tells the story in detail. PARIS, February 16, 1832.
I could put myself in the place of any one of these heroes, and delight in their delights. But there was one sort of hero I never could understand, and that was the boy whose favorite reading was natural history, who kept an aquarium, collected beetles, and knew all about a man by the name of Agassiz.
Miss Brewster suffered the strange but not wholly unpleasant sensation of feeling herself dwindle. "It's very beautiful," she said, with an effort. "Is it Matthew Arnold?" "Nearer home. You an American, and don't know your Whittier? That passage from his 'Agassiz' comes pretty near to being what life means to me. Have I answered your requirements?" "Fully and finely."
Next to Alexander Braun, Agassiz's most congenial companion at Heidelberg was Karl Schimper, a friend of Braun, and like him a young botanist of brilliant promise. The three soon became inseparable. Agassiz had many friends and companions at the university beside those who, on account of their influence upon his after life, are mentioned here.
Agassiz was evidently encouraged himself by his success, for toward the close of his Lowell Lectures he writes as follows: BOSTON, December 31, 1846.
The impetus it gave was not, and cannot be, lost, since it refreshed and vitalized methods of teaching. Beside the young men who formed his corps of teachers, among whom the resident professors were Dr. Burt G. Wilder, of Cornell University, and Professor Alpheus S. Packard, now of Brown University, Agassiz had with him some of his oldest friends and colleagues.
Agassiz was too direct and literal; he referred to the Infinite Mystery in terms of our own wills and acts. When we think of a Creator and the thing created as two, we are in trouble at once. They are one, as fire and light are one, as soul and body are one.
"That 'fellow Agassiz," he answered in cold mimicry, "was one of the greatest men who ever lived. Where do you stop when you're home that you never heard of Alexander Agassiz? I'd rather have been Alexander Agassiz than the richest man in America than any king. He was a great scientist, a great mining engineer, a successful business man.
Otto Dresel, warmly valued by Agassiz both as friend and musician, and he arranged their midnight programme for them. Always sure of finding their professor awake and at work at that hour, they stationed the musicians before the house, and as the last stroke of twelve sounded, the succeeding stillness was broken by men's voices singing a Bach choral.
Agassiz differed as much from an animal-loving collector like Frank Buckland, whose father was one of his stanchest friends and co-workers, as Jomini differed from a fighting general like Ney, to whom he suggested the movements that resulted in the French victory at Bautzen.
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