It needs no explanation that Pestalozzi was in some respects weak. The failure of all his establishments and his inability to keep out of debt show this. His faculties of imagination and sympathy overpowered the rest of his mind. He early seized a great truth--that of the claim of every human being to the full development of his faculties, whatever they may be; and the concentration of his strongest powers on this great truth made him a social reformer of a high order. He was not a philosopher; he was not a man of good sense, or temper, or practical ability, generally speaking; though sense, temper, and ability appeared to be all transcendent in the particular direction taken by his genius. Among his inferiors--and particularly friendless children--he was a prophet and apostle; among men he was a child, and sometimes a perverse one. He died at the age of eighty-one, preserving, in the midst of great pain, his enthusiasm for justice, his special love for children and the poor, and his strong religious sentiment. Two days before his death he spoke long and nobly, while taking leave of his family and his enterprises. His country, and we hope the world, has remembered his good offices to society, and forgiven his foibles. GEORGES CUVIER By JOHN STOUGHTON, D.D. (1769-1832) [Illustration: Cuvier. [TN]] Georges Chretien Leopold Dagobert Cuvier was born at Montbeliard, a place of manufacturing industry about forty miles from Besancon, now within the French dominions, then a little principality pertaining to the Duke of Wurtemberg. Young Cuvier was remarkable for his intelligence and precocity; and an incident in his boyish days indicated the bent of his genius, and the sphere of knowledge and discovery in which as a man he was destined to excel. He found one day, among his father's books, Buffon's work on natural history, and it suggested the idea of copying and coloring the plates, after he had carefully studied the text. The contents formed his chief reading for many years. The relatives of Cuvier were poor. His father was a pensioned officer in a Swiss regiment in the service of France. His mother was an affectionate, godly, wise woman. To her early lessons in Latin, geography, and drawing, and to her communications of religion, he always acknowledged himself much indebted. He went to the public gymnasium at the age of ten, and remained there for four years, bearing off prizes for learning and athletics. Through the patronage of a Wurtemberg princess he was sent to the university of Stuttgart, where he pursued a course of scientific study, particularly in the division relating to natural history. There he acquitted himself with distinction, not only in that special department, but also in the most sacred branch of learning. "The young Cuvier," said his examiners, "has shown just notions of Christianity well adapted to his years," and "considerable skill" in reading the Greek Testament.