A line from you or the sight of any friend of yours is always cheering to me. Our friends Enniskillen and Egerton are both well. . .
I remain ever truly yours,
RICHARD OWEN.
As has been seen by a previous letter from Sir Roderick Murchison, Agassiz tried from time to time to give his English friends more just views of our national struggle. The letter to which the following is an answer is missing, but one may easily infer its tenor, and the pleasure it had given him.
TO SIR PHILIP DE GREY EGERTON.
NAHANT, MASSACHUSETTS, August 15, 1862.
. . .I feel so thankful for your words of sympathy, that I lose not an hour in expressing my feeling. It has been agonizing week after week to receive the English papers, and to see there the noble devotion of the men of the North to their country and its government, branded as the service of mercenaries. You know I am not much inclined to meddle with politics; but I can tell you that I have never seen a more generous and prompt response to the call of country than was exhibited last year, and is exhibiting now, in the loyal United States. In the last six weeks nearly 300,000 men have volunteered, and I am satisfied that the additional 300,000 will be forthcoming without a draft in the course of the next month. And believe me, it is not for the sake of the bounty they come forward, for our best young men are the first to enlist; if anything can be objected to these large numbers of soldiers, it is that it takes away the best material that the land possesses. I thank you once more for your warm sympathy. I needed it the more, as it is almost the first friendly word of that kind I have received from England, and I began to question the humanity of your civilization. . .Under present circumstances, you can well imagine that I cannot think of leaving Cambridge, even for a few weeks, much as I wish to take some rest, and especially to meet your kind invitation. But I feel that I have a debt to pay to my adopted country, and all I can now do is to contribute my share toward maintaining the scientific activity which has been awakened during the last few years, and which even at this moment is on the increase.
I am now at Nahant, on the sea-shore, studying embryology chiefly with reference to paleontology, and the results are most satisfactory. I have had an opportunity already of tracing the development of the representatives of three different families, upon the embryology of which we had not a single observation thus far, and of making myself familiar with the growth of many others. With these accessions I propose next winter seriously to return to my first scientific love. . .
I have taken with me to the sea-shore your and Huxley's "Contributions to the Devonian Fishes," and also your notice of Carboniferous fish-fauna; but I have not yet had a chance to study them critically, from want of time, having been too successful with the living specimens to have a moment for the fossils. The season for sea-shore studies is, however, drawing rapidly to an end, and then I shall have more leisure for my old favorites.
I am very sorry to hear such accounts of the sufferings of the manufacturing districts in England. I wish I could foretell the end of our conflict; but I do not believe it can now be ended before slavery is abolished, though I thought differently six months ago. The most conservative men at the North have gradually come to this conviction, and nobody would listen for a moment to a compromise with the southern slave power. Whether we shall get rid of it by war measures or by an emancipation proclamation, I suppose the President himself does not yet know. I do not think that we shall want more money than the people are willing to give. Private contributions for the comfort of the army are really unbounded. I know a gentleman, not among the richest in Boston, who has already contributed over 30,000 dollars; and I heard yesterday of a shop-boy who tendered all his earnings of many years to the relief committee,—2,000 dollars, retaining NOTHING for himself,—and so it goes all round. Of course we have croakers and despondent people, but they no longer dare to raise their voices; from which I infer that there is no stopping the storm until by the natural course of events the atmosphere is clear and pure again.