once offered to
copy the whole collection in one week, This was done. The drawings,
"filling thirteen folio volumes, and amounting in number to eight
hundred and sixty, were accurately executed by one hundred and fourteen
women-artists in the time specified." In most cases the principal parts
of the plants alone were colored; the rest was only pencilled with great
accuracy. Where is the other city of the same size in which such a
number of amateur lady-artists could be found? One of these very
drawings, having been accidentally dropped in the street, was picked up
by a little girl ten years old, and was returned to De Candolle, copied
by the child; and it is no blemish to the collection.

The son of an artist, Toepffer found his own career ready made, and
stepped into it with all the instincts of his Art-loving nature. His few
early paintings are full of promise. But the young artist was not
destined to distinguish himself in his chosen career. A disease of the
eyes compelled him to give up his favorite pursuit. His brush, still
warm from the passionate ardor with which it had been grasped, was
broken and thrown away. Toepffer lamented all his life long the privation
that was thus forced upon him. Art, as a profession, was closed against
his eager ambition; yet he loved Art, and lived for it. Happily for him,
he was still in the complete possession of all his hopes and illusions.
Happily for him, he was young; and, without being discouraged by his
great disappointment, he turned the bent of his mind study-ward. Toepffer
became a close student of human nature. He took to analyzing it
instinctively, as the bird takes to the air. He was more than a dreamer,
though the charming dreams which we have from him make us half regret,
perhaps, that he did something else besides dreaming. He says, in his
story, "La Bibliotheque de mon Oncle,"--"The man who does not enjoy
dreaming his time away is but an automaton, who travels from life to
death like a locomotive rushing from Manchester to Liverpool. A whole
summer spent in this listless manner does not seem _de trop_ in a
refined education. It is even probable that one such summer would not
prove enough to produce a great man. Socrates dreamed his time away for
years. Rousseau did the same till he was forty years old; La
Fontaine--his whole life. And what a charming mode of working is that
science of losing time!"

But, either dreaming or working, Toepffer knew well what he was c