CUVIER, George-Leopold-Ciiristian-Frederick-Dagobert, the most celebrated naturalist of modern times, was a native of Montbéliard, now a French town, but formerly the chief place of a principality in Switzerland, dependent on the Duke of Wurtemberg, where he was born on the 23d of August 1769. His family came originally from a village on the Jura, which still bears the name of Cuvier. His father was a retired officer, who had served forty years in a Swiss regiment in the pay of France, whence he derived a moderate allowance or pension, and latterly he held the command of the artillery at Montbe-hard, [7:7:569]where, under the superintendence of his mother, young Cuvier was initiated in the elements of learning. He was brought up in the Protestant faith, which was that of his family, and early gave indications of those mental qualities for which he afterwards became so greatly distinguished. He was gifted with a memory of extraordinary power, and likewise evinced an aptitude for drawing, his taste for which was formed at the age of twelve, from the works of Buffon. The study of the Latin and Greek languages occasioned him but little difficulty; the German he acquired with equal facility; and he also made himself master of the different other modern languages in succession. He had a passion for every kind of reading, particularly history; and such was the tenacity of his memory, that the driest details of nomenclature, and the most lengthened lists of sovereigns, princes, statesmen, and warriors, were remembered by him without effort, and so forcibly impressed on his mind as never afterwards to be effaced. At the age of fourteen, having acquired nearly all the instruction which the school of Montbéliard could supply, he was sent to Stuttgard, under the patronage of Duke Charles of Wurtemberg, and had a place assigned him, free from all expense, in the Caroline Academy, where he was entered in the month of March 1784. He remained four years at this seminary, and his progress corresponded with the advantages which he enjoyed; and in every department of knowledge which formed the subject of instruction, he evinced that reach of comprehension and soundness of judgment for which he was always remarkable. Lessons were given in five different faculties, one of which was exclusively devoted to the study of government; and, singular as it may appear, it was to this that he attached himself the most. The principal subjects taught were the elementary and practical departments of law, and the more useful details connected with finance, police, agriculture, and technology; and so sensible was he of the advantages of such a branch of instruction, that he always lamented that a corresponding system had not been established in France.^[1. Baron Pasquier states, in his Εlοςc of Cuvier, that the latter had often been heard to express regret at the little assistance afforded in France to those who were employed in acquiring a knowledge of the principles of government. The Baron’s words are, “Quand la science des lois, dont les tribunaux font l’application, est partout, disait-il, l’objet d’études pour lesquelles tous les genres de secours et d’encouragemens sont prodigués, d’où vient qu’on dédaigne, ou au moins qu’on neglige de fournir à la jeunesse les moyens d’acquérir méthodiquement la cohnoissance de cette foule de dispositions, de règlemens qui influent si puissamment sur un nombre infini d’intérêts publics et privés? d’où vient qu’on ne s’occupe pas de lui apprendre de la même manière les principes sur lesquels repose, ou devrait reposer cette législation administrative? Je me plais à rapporter cette vue de Μ. Cuvier, parce qu’elle indique déjà l’attrait que devaient avoir pour lui les travaux auxquels il s’est en effet livré avec tant de zèle, tous les fois que l’occasion lui a été offerte de prêter à l’administration publique le secours de ses talens et de ses lumières.” ] Among the teachers composing the faculty which formed the object of Cuvier’s predilection was Μ. Abel, professor of natural history, who took a lively interest in the progress of the young Frenchman, whose genius he had not failed to discover; contributed to supply him with the means of indulging his inclination for the study of the natural sciences, to which, amidst all his varied occupations, he continually recurred; and engaged him, sometimes in reading and meditating on the standard works in this department of knowledge, and at other times in drawing insects or forming an herbarium. But this favourite occupation did not prevent him from obtaining the most decided success in the other studies prescribed by the rules of the academy; and, at the termination of the course, he received, in addition to the highest prizes, an order of merit conferred only on five or six out of the four hundred pupils belonging to the establishment.

The term of his education being thus completed, circumstances rendered it necessary for him to turn his thoughts to the active business of life; and his first resource was to engage himself as tutor to superintend the education of one of the children of a Protestant family in Normandy. This situation, how humble soever it may appear, had at least the recommendation of affording him sufficient leisure for the prosecution of his scientific duties; from being employed in the useful labour of instructing others he derived the means of promoting his own improvement; and he never afterwards shrunk from the recollection of his entrance on a path which in process of time conducted him to so much celebrity. It was in July 1788, when he had scarcely completed his nineteenth year, that Cuvier went to reside in Normandy, at a country-house situated near the sea, in the middle of an almost insulated district. In this remote retreat he found a secure asylum from the fury of the revolutionary tempest which desolated so many other parts of France; and during the days of dismal memory with which the history of that period is darkened, he escaped the danger which threatened all who were conspicuous for virtue and excellence. About this time a fortunate accident procured him the acquaintance of Jessier, whom terror had driven to the neighbourhood where Cuvier then resided; and having quickly discerned the talents of the young naturalist, this accomplished person hastened to put him in communication with many scientific men in Paris, particularly with La-mĕtherie, Olivier, Lacépède, Geoffroy, and Mellin de Grandmaison. When the reign of terror had terminated, these distinguished persons invited him to Paris, where the re-establishment of literary and scientific institutions was now becoming an object of attention. Cuvier accordingly repaired to the capital in the spring of 1795, and, by the interest of Mellin and Jessier, he was almost immediately appointed a member of the Commission of Arts, and shortly afterwards made professor to the Central School of the Pantheon. It was for the use of this school that he prepared his Tableau Elémentaire de l’ Histoire Naturelle des Animaux, the first work which the public knew to be his, and which, notwithstanding its elementary appearance, has served as the basis of all subsequent works on zoological classification. But his principal object had not yet been attained. He desired to enter the Museum of Natural History, which alone could furnish him with the means of prosecuting the scientific investigations which were already matured in his mind; and this satisfaction was not long denied him; for the professor, Mertrud, who had been appointed to the newly-established chair of comparative anatomy, having attained an advanced age, which unfitted him for teaching a science that was new to him, yielded to the entreaties of his colleagues Jussieu, Geoffroy, and Lacépède, and upon their recommendation accepted Cuvier to supply his place.

Cuvier, having thus attained the object of his ambition, laboured indefatigably to prove himself worthy of the confidence which had been placed in him, and formed, for the use of comparative anatomy, that collection which is now known throughout all Europe; whilst the lectures by which he rendered it so useful soon attracted a numerous concourse of students, who spread his fame to a distance as an eminent and successful teacher. These lectures have since been published in five volumes 8vo, and their merit is universally acknowledged. This was the grand epoch [7:7:570]of Cuvier’s life. He had now attained a station which enabled him to give full scope to all his energies, and to reach that height of scientific distinction where he maintained an undisputed pre-eminence for the long period of forty-seven years. Cuvier, in fact, may be regarded as moving in three different spheres; namely, in that of literature, that of public instruction, and that of the administration: yet, in the midst of a multiplicity of occupations, the minutest details, whether these related to public instruction, the deliberations of the council of state, or the committee of the interior, were never neglected by him; and to his unrivalled fame' as a naturalist he was enabled to add the reputation of a most useful as well as a most illustrious citizen.

The National Institute was established in the year 1796. At this time Cuvier was professor of comparative anatomy in the Museum of Natural History; and, in consequence of the reputation which he had acquired by his course of lectures, as well as by the publication of some memoirs, he was soon invited to become a member. At first the secretaries were only temporary, none of them holding the office longer than two years. Cuvier was the third in order; and, in 1800, when Bonaparte, after his return from Egypt, and the revolution of the 18th Brumaire, which made him first consul, had assumed the title of President of the Institute, this great naturalist found himself placed in intimate relationship with that extraordinary man, then aspiring to every kind of glory, and having his views already turned towards the possession of sovereign power. During the same year M. Danbenton died, and the professor of comparative anatomy was appointed to teach in his stead the philosophy of natural history. In 1802, the first consul, wishing to remodel the system of public instruction, nominated six inspectors to establish lyceums in thirty French towns. Cuvier was one of these, and his commission directed him to superintend the establishment of the lyceums of Marseilles and Bordeaux, which are now royal colleges. During his absence from Paris the Institute was re-organized; perpetual secretaries were appointed, and Cuvier was elected to fill that office in the class of the natural sciences. It was in the latter capacity that, in 1808, he drew up his historical report of the progress of the natural sciences. Napoleon had asked merely for a report; but, under this unassuming title, the skilful reporter contrived not merely to show the road which had already been traversed, but to indicate that which ought still to be pursued. This report was read to the emperor in the council of state, and greatly admired. In the course of the same year the Imperial University was established, and Cuvier nominated one of the councillors of that body for his life. In 1809 and 1811 he was occupied in instituting academies in those parts of the Italian provinces which had been annexed to the empire; in 1811 he undertook a similar mission to Holland and the Hans Towns; and in 1813 he was sent to Rome, in order to organize a university. These successive journeys could not fail to be profitable to such an observer, whilst the intimate connection which they afforded him opportunities of forming with distinguished men of all countries, enabled him to accumulate most valuable materials for all the works in which he was then engaged. But his administrative talents had not escaped the penetration of Napoleon, who knew well how to estimate men at their real value, and he was soon called to act in a different sphere.

While at Rome he received the news of his being appointed a master of requests; and, once a member of the council of state, he was not long in raising himself to the first rank. Nor did the events of the year 1814, which overthrew the imperial power, retard his further advancement. He became a councillor of state in the month of

September in that year; and soon afterwards he was repeatedly offered, but as often declined, the situation of superintendent of the Jardin du Roi, an office on which Buffon had conferred so much celebrity. In the month of February 1815 the university having been remodelled, a place was assigned him, under the title of chancellor, in the royal council of public instruction attached to that institution. But the new convulsion occasioned by the return of Napoleon from Elba prevented his continuing a member of the council of state; he was, however, retained in the Imperial University, where the absence of his name would have created too great a blank. About four months afterwards, when it became necessary to re-establish what the hurricane of the hundred days had overthrown, it was found that neither the system of the Imperial University, nor even that of the Royal University as it had been organised in February, could be fully carried into effect. A provisional arrangement was therefore judged necessary, and a commission appointed to exercise the powers which had been previously vested in a grand master, a council, a chancellor, and a treasurer. Of this commission Cuvier was named a member, and from the first the duties of chancellor devolved on him. He took an active part in the labours of the commission, to which he rendered very important services; and he acted as president on two occasions, each time for more than a year, but always provisionally, his religion disqualifying him for being regularly appointed to that office. In 1818 he visited England, and, on his arrival in London, learned that he had been elected a member of the French Academy; an important addition no doubt to the gratification which must then have been afforded him by the flattering reception which he met with in the British metropolis, from men who were certainly very competent judges of the merit which they honoured with their notice and regard. In 1819 he was appointed president of the section of the interior in the council of state, and from the moment when he entered on this office, the duties of which were alike important and laborious, he never quitted it until the period of his death. In 1824, when a minister of ecclesiastical affairs was appointed, and the new porte-feuille passed into the hands of a bishop who had previously been grand master of the university, the duties of the latter office, as far as they regarded Protestant theology, were entrusted to Cuvier, by whom they continued to be performed during the remainder of his life. In 1827 the superintendence of that department of the administration of the interior which related to the forms of worship not Catholic was committed to him; and, lastly, he was raised to the peerage about the end of the year 1831. But the brilliant career of this great naturalist was now fast drawing towards its close; and he expired on the 13th of May 1832, after four days’ suffering, from an attack of paralysis in the throat, which soon reached his lungs, being then only in the sixty-third year of his age. He died surrounded by nearly all that remained of his domestic circle; by his wife, his daughter-in-law, and his brother, who united all their affection in consoling his last moments. In his family he had suffered severe afflictions, having lost three sons in infancy, whilst his daughter, a model of grace and virtue, was carried off on the eve of contracting a marriage which had received her father’s entire approbation, and promised a long course of happiness. Of four children, also, which his wife had had by a former marriage, and which he had adopted, two were arrested by death at an age when all risks appeared to have ceased, and hope seemed to have become reality.

We have already mentioned the earliest work which procured him distinction in the natural sciences. In 1811 he published his Recherches sur les Ossemens Fossiles [7:7:571] de Quadrupèdes. This work has gone through three editions, and the preliminary discourse has often been reprinted. In 1817 appeared his Mémoires pour servir à l’ Histoire des Mollusques, which effected a total change in one branch of zoological classification; and also Le Regne Animal distribue d’apres son Organization, in four vols. 8vo, which soon became the foundation of all zoological studies, whilst, in most of the schools, the lectures, collections, and works of research, were all more or less elucidated or illustrated by an appeal to this great work. Cuvier was assisted by his friend Latreille in the part of the work connected with the class of insects, a class which is in itself more numerous than all the rest of the animal kingdom, and which would require for its illustration the whole life of a laborious man; but he had persuaded this skilful entomologist to deviate in some points from his usual system, in order that his labours might the better harmonize with the other parts of the work. During the last years of his life he was occupied with a great work on the natural history of fishes, in twenty volumes, of which eight have already appeared, and the materials for five others were prepared previously to his death. The preparation of the Regne Animal having showed Cuvier how much the study of fishes had fallen behind that of the other branches of zoology, and made him sensible of the difficulties of prosecuting it, owing to the obscurity in which the anatomy of these animals was involved, the impossibility of knowing with precision the. laws deducible from the comparison of their organs, the want of good collections, and the somewhat artificial spirit which had hitherto prevailed in the study of ichthyology, he exerted himself to collect skeletons of fishes from all parts of the world, anatomised a great number with unusual care, associated with himself in the study of their details a man of merit, Μ. Valenciennes, to assist him, and, in a period comparatively short, became thus enabled to arrange the elements of that history of fishes, of which, as stated above, eight volumes have already appeared. Several years ago Cuvier also undertook a course of lectures on the history of the natural sciences, which he delivered from notes, and which, according to the testimony of all who heard him, were remarkable for eloquence, precision, and lucid arrangement. He was, besides, occupied with a new edition of his lectures on comparative anatomy, and wished to devote the remainder of his life to a great treatise on the same science, for which, indeed, he had brought together the immense collection of the Jardin du Roi, whilst the greater number of the drawings necessary for the work were already completed, a very considerable portion of them having been executed by his own hand. “This,” said he, “will be a work almost entirely new, because our immense collections, and the works executed by other anatomists, since the first publication, have furnished me with many new facts; but I see with pleasure that the system requires little change, and that it continues preferable, at least in my opinion, to those which have been adopted since by some learned men.” This project, which was always present to his mind, and for which he had in fact laboured nearly forty years, seemed to him necessary for completing as it were the cycle of his works; but the melancholy doubt which he oftener than once expressed, that he would not live to complete his design, was but too soon verified; and he died leaving the work in the state which we have already described. Such indeed was the surprising fertility of genius for which this great naturalist was distinguished, that he left behind him unpublished works which, as De Candolle remarks, might well be supposed to have absorbed the labour of a whole lifetime.

Cuvier was a man of an extremely active and enterprising, yet sound and methodical mind. In him strong natural sagacity and almost unerring good sense were united with unwearied industry, an invincible love of labour, a habit of hearing and investigating every thing with patience, admirable correctness and precision in thinking, and singular clearness in the explanation of doctrines and systems, however complicated and refined these might be. Nor was he less remarkable for the variety than for the extent and completeness of his acquirements. In literature, in the sciences, in practical education, and in civil administration, his abilities were displayed, if not with equal brilliancy in all, at least with distinguished success. His Eloges are all masterpieces of their kind, which, while they enable us to form an idea of the extent of his knowlege in the natural sciences, evince, at the same time, great literary skill in the disposition and arrangement of his materials, and consummate address in the selection of those prominent points which are best calculated to convey a distinct general idea of the course or route which it was his object to trace out. Of this kind of composition some beautiful examples had previously appeared in France; and Fontenelle, D’Alembert, Condorcet, and Vicq-d’Azir, were each greatly distinguished, though often for very different qualities. But Cuvier may with justice be considered as having excelled all his predecessors in the art of analysing the principles and describing the origin and progress of a science, with such a degree of precision and perspicuity as to bring it to the level of every capacity. Aiming less at effect than Fontenelle, free from the disdainful and ill-disguised scepticism of D’Alembert and Condorcet, and possessed of more profound and varied knowledge than Vicq-d’Azir, he could intersperse, in the most attractive manner, his instructive and able expositions of the labours and discoveries of those whom he celebrated, with details of their history and private life, which generally attested the humble origin whence they had emerged to usefulness and celebrity. It is no doubt easy to conceive a style more correct and skilfully laboured than Cuvier’s, but it is difficult to imagine one better adapted to his extensive erudition, or more appropriate to the subject of which he is treating, and the thought which, at the time, he requires to express. His varied talents, however, are perhaps best proved by the influence which he exerted on natural history. For, independently altogether of his discoveries, and the benefits which he conferred upon the science by his works, he may be said to have created, so much did he improve, the cabinet of comparative anatomy attached to the Museum of Natural History at Paris; and when placed by the choice of his colleagues at the head of this establishment, he contributed greatly to accelerate its progress, and carried into its general details that activity and that perfection of methodical arrangement for which he was ever distinguished. When called to co-operate in the direction of public instruction, whether in the council of the university, in the provinces, or in countries then dependent upon France, he everywhere made himself remarkable for the same qualities, and evinced a desire not merely to improve the general system of education, but also to render it more easily accessible. His remarks on the primary instruction of Holland sufficiently evince his solicitude for the diffusion of knowledge among the people; and the effects of his arrangements in the higher studies have proved extensively beneficial, not only by the correction of much that was evil, but also by affording greater scope and a fairer field for their advancement. In making the round of the administrative functions (with the exception of censor, which he nobly refused when the government wished to bestow it on him), he displayed the same superiority which distinguished his career in the more congenial pursuits of science, literature, and public instruction. He was in fact [7:7:572]so well acquainted with laws, regulations, and official acts of all kinds, that his colleagues in the administration continually deferred to him, and were every day more and more surprised at the extent and accuracy of his information respecting subjects which seemed the least likely to engage the attention of a man so much devoted to the pursuits of science. In a word, the range of his knowledge was surpassingly great. He had all his life read much; he had been a constant and attentive observer; and he had never forgotten any thing which seemed worth remembering. A powerful and retentive memory, sustained and directed by sound judgment and singular sagacity, formed the principal foundation of his immense works, and of the success which more or less attended him in all his employments. Nor in the midst of a life so occupied did he neglect the graces and accomplishments of society. His conversation, sometimes grave and solemn, sometimes piquant and lively, at all times distinguished for its propriety and correctness, made him the ornament of the saloons, and the delight of all those who had the honour of his acquaintance. He was a warm, sincere, and faithfùl friend; full of gratitude to those who had contributed to his early advancement in life; moderate in all his habits; and wholly unimpeachable in the different relations of social life. He engaged the minds and hearts of those who surrounded him; and whilst he displayed great ability in directing the efforts of others towards the accomplishment of his own views, he was wholly free from that engrossing selfishness which sometimes attends great mental superiority. In a word, Cuvier was a good as well as great man, combining with talents and accomplishments of the first order that high personal worth which conciliates universal esteem, disarms envy, and sheds fresh lustre even on the brightest and noblest mental endowments. (a.)