reat _Histoire
Naturelle des Poissons_, of which eight volumes have appeared, with
their appropriate plates, and for the continuation of which we have to
look to his laborious assistant. The recent embarrassment among the
Paris publishers having occasioned a stoppage in the progress of this
work, M. Cuvier availed himself of this (as the part prepared for the
press was already in advance of the printer) to make preparations
for republishing his _Lecons d'Anotomie Comparee_, of which a second
edition had been long anxiously called for. This design, however, he
was not permitted to complete; but it is to be hoped that we shall not
be long deprived of the edition he had contemplated, and that it will
be accompanied with those beautiful and accurate plates on which he
had bestowed so much pains, and in the execution of which he himself
excelled; for he was a skilful draftsman, and seized external forms
with rapidity and accuracy, and possessed the art of representing
in his drawings the forms of organic tissues in a style peculiar to
himself. His last course of lectures, on the History of the Natural
Sciences, and on the Philosophy of Natural History, delivered at the
College of France, is now publishing in livraisons, and will extend
to three or four vols, 8vo. This work, however, we believe, has been
published without his consent or revision. His memory was prodigious,
and he scarcely knew what it was to forget anything. Although his
great powers were more particularly devoted to natural history, no
part of science was a stranger to him, and his taste for literature
and works of imagination was particularly refined and elegant. In his
_Eloges_ of illustrious men, delivered in his capacity of perpetual
secretary of the Academy of Sciences, he always displays the utmost
impartiality and love of truth; he never debased the dignity
of science by any love of intrigue, and displayed the utmost
disinterestedness in his efforts to promote science. The qualities
of his heart were not less estimable than those of his head, and he
possessed the happy art of inspiring his friends with an unalterable
attachment. His conversation was varied and animated, adapted by turns
to every subject, and he may truly be said to have been the grace and
ornament of society. We must not forget the great services he rendered
to public education as head of the University; his Report on the
State of Primary Education in Holland is a lasting monument of h