Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/145

122 large, hearty, and most agreeable. His sympathy amounted to enthusiasm. He had polite French manners, and left you with the impression that you had contributed very largely to his stock of information. I have known several great men who had this kind of flattery. One was Judge Story and another was General Dix. You always felt rather an awe of yourself after these supremely celebrated men had humbled themselves before you. It is a characteristic of a great heart and a supreme tact.

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 gave lectures all over the country, and told me that he could invoke sleep when he needed it, even to sleeping when standing up. His health seemed to be perfect. He gave one the idea of an immense and very agreeable boy who somehow had come to know everything, not by the usual hard penance of learning it at a school, but by intuition. He told me that he had once brought a bunch of wild flowers to his mother instead of his appointed task, and asked her to tell him all about them. As she could not do so, he said, " One day, dear mamma, I will tell you all about them." How nobly he kept his promise! Agassiz did not believe in the Darwinian theory, which was a great comfort to me.

But to return to New York for a moment. Imagine the delight of Darley, the artist, when called upon to paint "Washington Irving and his Friends": Prescott, with his handsome face; Longfellow, thoughtfully attentive; Fenimore Cooper, conscious of his own worldwide fame, yet cordially mindful of the higher eminence of Irving; behind Irving the happy, smiling face