Vicar Agassiz

“ Incompetent as we are to give him his due rank among the great naturalists of the world, we think he excelled every naturalist who has gone before him in striking at the soul and individuality of all animals below man. It is impossible to convey in words the peculiar feeling which Agassiz had on this matter. Doubtless this large and genial genius is now satisfied. We cannot penetrate beyond the veil. ”

“ Please give a biographical sketch of Professor Agassiz.
R. A. Coats.
Answer.—Louis John Rudolf Agassiz, the son of a Swiss Protestant clergyman, was born near Lake Neuchatel, May 28, 1807. After completing his academical course, he studied medicine at Zurich, Heidelberg, and Munich, preparatory to becoming a physician. Meanwhile Spix and Martins had returned from Brazil with a valuable collection of fossil fishes ”

“ But as I had been among men who had a free swing, and for a year among people who seemed to me to be cold and super-rational, hungry as I doubtless was for human sympathy, Agassiz's welcome went to my heart—I was at once his captive. It has been my good chance to see many men of engaging presence and ways, but I have never known his equal. ”

“ The Trouble of the Barbed Wire.
XXXVIII.
So, ingloriously, ended the Angel's first and last appearance in Society. Vicar and Angel returned to the Vicarage; crestfallen black figures in the bright sunlight, going dejectedly. The Angel, deeply pained that the Vicar was pained. The Vicar, dishevelled and desperate, intercalating spasmodic remorse and apprehension with broken explanations of the Theory of Etiquette. "They do not understand," said the Vicar over and over again. "They will all be so very much aggrieved. ”

“ He is a tall, handsome fellow, whose chief occupation seems to be that of standing about in picturesque attitudes, and watching his rather pretty wife, as she bustles round in her various work of grating or pressing or straining the mandioca, generally with her baby astride on her hip,—the Indian woman’s favorite way of carrying her child. Occasionally, however, Pedro Manuel is aroused to bear some part in the collecting; and the other day, when he brought in some specimens which seemed to him quite valueless, Mr. Agassiz rewarded him with a chicken. ”

“ Attainments will be greater, and discovery and accomplishments will surpass themselves as we go on, but to be, as Emerson was, is absolute and complete existence.
Agassiz was, of all our company, the acknowledged master; loved by all, even to the unlettered woodsmen, who ran to meet his service as to no other of the company; by all the members of it reverenced as not even Emerson was; the largest in personality and in universality of knowledge of all the men I have ever known. No one who did not know him personally can conceive the hold he had on everybody who came into relations with him. ”

“ What parent can read without a shudder the following extract from a Boston paper regarding the recent investigation of a savant who, it is well known, is no friend to Catholicity or the teachings of the church:
“Professor Agassiz has of late given a portion of his valuable time to an investigation of the social evil, its causes and growth, and the result has filled him with dismay, and almost destroyed his faith in the boasted civilization of the nineteenth century. ”

“ He liked merry society, but he himself was in general reserved, and never noisy. He picked out the gifted and highly learned students, and would not waste his time in ordinary conversation. Often, when he saw a number of students going off on some empty pleasure-trip, he said to me, 'There they go with the other fellows.... I will go my own way, Mr. Dinkel,—and not alone. I will be a leader of others.'"
Agassiz writes to his brother Auguste: "It will interest you to know that I am working with a young Dr. Born upon an anatomy and natural history of the fresh-water fishes of Europe. ”

“ Varley’s views the conclusion may be fairly deduced that Agassiz, in middle life, experienced much that is undistinguishable from the sensations and perceptions of modern mediums, and that he was subdued by use of the same force by which they are controlled. As a general rule, though possibly subject to a few exceptions, persons who have once yielded to mesmeric, afterward are very liable [311] to succumb to Spirit force. This rule will have important bearings when we come to view the deportment of Agassiz as a member of the Harvard investigating committee. ”

“ His first studies at home were directed by his mother, who was a woman of high endowments and rare culture. At the age of ten years he and his younger brother were sent to the gymnasium at Biel, in the neighboring canton of Bern; here he acquired the ancient and modern languages, which later became so valuable to him in his biological investigations. Very early in life Agassiz showed a fondness for natural science, and in his boyhood days he began collecting specimens. His leisure time at the gymnasium was similarly occupied, and his first collection of fishes dates from this period. ”

“ And it is to him alone that credit is due for the money that was thus raised, at a cost to science of priceless hours of his own all-too-limited time and energy.
The intellect of Agassiz was gigantic, and yet he combined with his mighty forces an unfailing patience with dull or ignorant people. His craving for knowledge was equaled only by his ability in imparting it to others. Nothing that he achieved was for himself: his all was attained that he might give it to the world. “Good teachers are not commonly original investigators ”

“ He was nearly sure that his own churchwardens would be guided altogether by himself,—and as far as he was concerned the chapel should remain unmolested. Having thus resolved he came back to breakfast and read Mr. Quickenham's letter aloud to his wife and Mary Lowther.
"Glebe!" said the Vicar's wife.
"Do you mean that it is part of your own land?" asked Mary.
"Exactly that," said the Vicar.
"And that old thief of a Marquis has given away what belongs to us?" said Mrs. Fenwick.
"He has given away what did not belong to himself," said the Vicar. "But I can't admit that he's a thief." ”

“ As poor Vincenzio Galileo found it a difficult matter to make a wool merchant or a doctor out of a boy destined to be a man of science, so did the father of Louis Agassiz.
At seventeen, Louis left Lausanne for the medical school at Zurich. Here he became the friend as well as pupil of Professor Schinz, who held the chair of Natural History and Physiology. He gave young Agassiz a key to his private library, and also to his collection of birds; of course, the love for natural history grew stronger. ”

“ It seems probable that the genial companionship of Agassiz, who united with his scientific genius, learning, and renown, most delightful social qualities, gave him a kinder feeling to men of science and their pursuits than he had entertained before that great master came among us. ”

“ Nicolas seemed depressed.
“There, my dear,” said Agaphia, putting her hands to his face and kissing him, “there, you have asked for that; now take heart; and as sure as one woman’s wit can match another woman’s, we will discover the thief.”
“Do you know such a woman?” asked Nicolas in great confusion.
“Whether I know such a woman or not, makes no difference now,” answered Agaphia. “Be true to my dead mistress, poor dear; and as I once heard a strange man say, ‘A little wit is more than a match—’” but here a summons from the council called Nicolas and his guard before that body. ”

“ Add to this that he was a Tourainian, id est, dark, and had in his eyes flame to light, and water to quench all the domestic furnaces that required lighting or quenching; and never since at Azay has been such vicar seen! A handsome vicar was he, square-shouldered, fresh coloured, always blessing and chuckling, preferred weddings and christenings to funerals, a good joker, pious in Church, and a man in everything. There have been many vicars who have drunk well and eaten well; others who have blessed abundantly and chuckled consumedly ”

“ Agassiz not simply as one among a dozen or twenty living naturalists of the highest rank, but as occupying a solitary position as the greatest of all living naturalists—as a kind of second Cuvier, for example. There is, to the popular eye, a halo about the name of Agassiz which there is not about the name of Gray; though, if there is any man now living in America, of whom America might, justly boast as her chief ornament and pride, so far as science is concerned, that man is unquestionably Prof. ”

“ There are few of us left who can remember the sudden shadow that fell on our community at his unexpected death, and the universal grief that told of the hold he had on the entire nation; and the mourning extended far beyond the circle of personal acquaintance with Agassiz. Even men who had no interest in physical science took it into consideration on account of him, carried away by his enthusiastic advocacy of its advancement. ”

“ One gets but a just idea of the personality of Agassiz when he recalls that the young investigator while in an almost penniless position contrived to travel over a large part of Europe, mingle with the best people of his day, devote almost his entire time to research, employ draughtsmen and lithographers, support his own printing-house, and in the end publish his "Poissons Fossiles" in a fashion which would have done credit to the wealthiest amateur. ”

“ Come now, don’t be too severe.”
“Very well,” replied Agaphia. “Some things I want to recover have been picked up and locked in the strong chest; you can borrow the key from the veiled woman.”
“You impose a hard task,” responded the guard; “she always carries the key by a chain around her neck. If such be your terms I fear I shall lack May bliss.”
“You shall have some anyway,” answered Agaphia, handing him a small portion.
“Well,” he said, “good will is better even than May bliss; and if chance serves me to secure the key for a short moment, you shall have it.” ”

“ Agassiz spent happy days at Cambridge and at Nahant. The nation was listening with hand behind her ear, and Nature threw her sea-urchins and starfish and every fish suspected of any eccentricity at his feet. ”

“ He was the third great man who had thrown his influence as a barrier across the current of evolutionary thought. Linnaeus in the second half of the eighteenth century, Cuvier in the first half, and Agassiz in the second half of the nineteenth—all made the same effort. Each remains great; but not all of them together could arrest the current. Agassiz's strong efforts throughout the United States, and indeed throughout Europe, to check it, really promoted it. ”

“ He would only say then that there could be nothing higher than a man with his spirit.
Whether Agassiz was as broad-minded as he was high-minded may be argued. The story ran that when the foundations of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy were going on in Divinity Avenue, a theological professor encountering the scientist among the shadows the latter was invading, courteously bade him welcome. He hoped the old Divinity Hall would be a good neighbour to the pile rising opposite. ”

“ Neither in his "Travels in the Alps," nor in his "Occasional Papers," does Principal Forbes, to my knowledge, make any reference to this communication of Agassiz. I am far from charging him with conscious wrong, or doubting that he justified this reticence to his own mind. But my duty at present lies with objective facts, and not with subjective judgments. And the fact is that, for eighteen years subsequent to this campaign of 1842, Agassiz, as far as the glaciers are concerned, was practically extinguished in England. ”

“ The citizens of his adopted town expressed their appreciation of his loyalty to them in a warm letter of thanks, begging, at the same time, his acceptance of the sum of six thousand francs, payable by installments during three years.
The summer of 1837 was a sad one to Agassiz and to his whole family; his father died at Concise, carried off by a fever while still a comparatively young man. The pretty parsonage, to which they were so much attached, passed into other hands, and thenceforward the home of Madame Agassiz was with her children, among whom she divided her time. ”

“ The worthy Vicar, deserted by wife and child—beset by an intriguing woman—sinks down before his writing-desk and buries his face in his hands. After a few seconds of silent agony he rises, straightens himself—like a man determined to bear his burden with unbent back—and strides from the room. ”

“ And although we laugh at Moses and his gross of green spectacles, and the manner in which the Vicar's wife and daughter are imposed on by Miss Wilhelmina Skeggs and Lady Blarney, with their lords and ladies and their tributes to virtue, there is no laughter demanded of us when we find the simplicity and moral dignity of the Vicar meeting and beating the jeers and taunts of the abandoned wretches in the prison. ”

“ What is called "Leach Mountain" belongs to the estate.
As the Gordons were leaving the friend who had so entertained them, he invited them to go in the afternoon to the Essex woods to see the Agassiz rock, and the immense boulder near it. This invitation they were happy to accept. Bessie was the only one of the party who had visited the place. She had taken a trip there the summer before with a party of scientific people, and had not wearied in speaking of its peculiar characteristics. No wonder that Agassiz himself had come to see it, and expressed his admiration [Pg 272] for it. ”