Alas! that the golden hopes raised by such brilliant beginning should so soon be blasted. Agassiz died during the succeeding December. No man was ever more generally, more tenderly, or more profoundly mourned. By none was his loss felt with more poignant grief than by those who were with him at Penikese. No man, after his death, felt himself capable to complete the liberal plans laid out by Agassiz, and the enterprise was abandoned. Had Agassiz lived, such was his power over men that he would have readily secured, from legislative action, and from the donations of wealthy men, all the money he would have asked, to enable him to carry forward the enterprise. His success in that direction was unparalleled.
It is impossible to conjecture what an impulse would have been given to the study of natural history and higher culture in kindred science, had he been permitted to live until he could have seen the budding promise burst into bloom of realized success. But it was not to be.
Fain would we linger still upon the thoughts which crowd upon the memory now, but we must draw the curtain. Yet his beautiful spirit, genial, loving face, beaming with kindliness and sympathy, his winning grace and charming presence, his sublime self-denial in his devotion to Nature, his grand intellectual expression with voice and pen, his overflowing heart, so tender and so true, and so constant in its blessing, can never fade from our vision, nor from our memory.
[THE COMING OF SUMMER.]
By HARRIET MABEL SPALDING.
We are looking for summer. Far over the hill,
Do you catch the faint sound of her hurrying feet?