. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

The northeastern corner of the ancient Pays de Vaud, only part of which
is included in the modern canton, is little known to tourists. It lies
away from the chief lines of travel, and it has neither the magnificent
views that draw the visitor aside to Orbe nor the associations that
induce him to stop at Coppet or Clarens. Yet its breezy upland plains
and its quiet villages--some of them once populous and prosperous
towns--are not devoid of charm, or of the interest connected with
historical epochs and famous names. The "lone wall" and "lonelier
column" at Avenches date from the period when this was the Roman capital
of Helvetia. Morat still shows many a mark and relic of its siege by
Charles the Bold and of the overthrow of his forces by the Swiss.
Payerne was the birthplace, in 1779, of Jomini, the greatest of all
writers on military operations, whose precocious genius, while he was a
mere stripling and before he had witnessed any battles or manoeuvres,
penetrated the secret of Bonaparte's combinations and victorious
campaigns, which veteran commanders were watching with mere wonderment
and dismay. At Motiers, a few miles farther north, was born, in 1807,
Louis Agassiz, who at an equally early age displayed a like intuitive
comprehension of many of the workings of Nature, and who subsequently
became the chief exponent of the glacial theory and the highest
authority on the structure and classification of fishes. Each of these
two men gave his ripest powers and longest labors to a great country far
from their common home,--Jomini to Russia, Agassiz to the United States;
and, dissimilar as were their objects and pursuits, their intellectual
resemblance was fundamental. The pre-eminent quality of each was the
power of rapid generalization, of mastering and subordinating details,
of grasping and applying principles and laws. 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. Switzerland is equally proud
of the great strategist and the great naturalist, but to Americans in
general the former is at the most a mere name, while the career of the
latter is an object of wide-spread and even national interest.

In the volumes before us the story of that career is clearly an