hat his projects were the sole things really fit to interest
man as man,--that he was absolutely irresistible. He came, in Byron's
words, with victory beaming from his breast, and every one went down
before him, some yielding him money, some time, some specimens, and
some labor, but all contributing their applause and their godspeed.
And so, living among us from month to month and from year to year, with
no relation to prudence except his pertinacious violation of all her
usual laws, he on the whole achieved the compass of his desires,
studied the geology and fauna of a continent, trained a generation of
zoologists, founded one of the chief museums of the world, gave a new
impulse to scientific education in America, and died the idol of the
public, as well as of his circle of immediate pupils and friends.

The secret of it all was, that while his scientific ideals were an
integral part of his being, something that he never forgot or laid
aside, so that wherever he went he came forward as "the Professor," and
talked "shop" to every person, young or old, great or little, learned
or unlearned, with whom he was thrown, he was at the same time so
commanding a presence, so curious and inquiring, so responsive and
expansive, and so generous and reckless of himself and of his own, that
every one said immediately, "Here is no musty savant, but a man, a
great man, a man on the heroic scale, not to serve whom is avarice and
sin." He elevated the popular notion of what a student of Nature could
be. Since Benjamin Franklin, we had never had among us a person of
more popularly impressive type. He did not wait for students to come
to him; he made inquiry for promising youthful collectors, and when he
heard of one, he wrote, inviting and urging him to come. Thus there is
hardly one now of the American naturalists of my generation whom
Agassiz did not train. Nay, more; he said to every one that a year or
two of natural history, studied as he understood it, would give the
best training for any kind of mental work. Sometimes he was amusingly
_naif_ in this regard, as when he offered to put his whole Museum at
the disposition of the Emperor of Brazil if he would but come and labor
there. And I well remember how certain officials of the Brazilian
empire smiled at the cordiality with which he pressed upon them a
similar invitation. But it had a great effect. Natural history must
indeed be a godlike pursuit, if such a man as this can