Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Louis Agassiz: his life and correspondence, third edition

[675] the field of the biographer he felt himself a novice. His preparation for the task was conscientious and laborious. For weeks he shut himself up in a room of the Public Library in Boston and reviewed all the works of the great master, living, as it were, in his presence. The result was a very concise and yet full memoir, a strong and vigorous sketch of Humboldt's researches, and of their influence not only upon higher education at the present day, but on our most elementary instruction, until the very ‘school-boy is familiar with his methods, yet does not know that Humboldt is his teacher.’ Agassiz's picture of this generous intellect, fertilizing whatever it touched, was made the more life-like by the side lights which his affection for Humboldt and his personal intercourse with him in the past enabled him to throw upon it. Emerson, who was present, said of this address, ‘that Agassiz had never delivered a discourse more wise, more happy, or of more varied power.’ George William Curtis writes of it: ‘Your discourse seems to me the very ideal of such an address,—so broad, so simple, so comprehensive, so glowing, so profoundly appreciative, telling the story of Humboldt's life and work as I am sure no other living man can tell it.’