Just before this he visited England, and was received with the highest honors. Another visit followed in 1830. An amusing circumstance occurred on one of these occasions, indicative of his wide-spread fame amid the lower as well as the upper classes of society. When in London, owing to the absence of his valet, he sent for a barber to shave him. When the operation was finished he offered payment. "I am too much honored," replied the Gascon--for such the operator happened to be, "by having shaved the greatest man of the age, to accept any recompense." M. Cuvier allowed him the honor to the full extent, and engaged him to perform the function repeatedly, for which, at length, he was willing to pocket payment. Cuvier's life must have been most laborious. The same year in which he was made baron, he became president of the Committee of the Interior; and the numerous and various affairs which there passed under his review, and required his examination, were perfectly wonderful; together with his scientific employments, they seem more than any mortal man could accomplish. But by economy of time and distribution of labor, concentration of thought, retentiveness of memory, and a profound knowledge of principles in every department, he acquitted himself in a manner which secured universal admiration. Charles X., of France, and the King of Wurtemberg, vied with each other in the honors they conferred on Cuvier; and on the accession of Louis Philippe to the French throne the new sovereign continued the favors shown by his predecessors, and in 1832 made the baron a French peer. But his end was now drawing nigh. "Gentlemen," he said one day to his hearers, in opening a new course of lectures, "these will be the objects of our future investigations, if time, health, and strength shall be given to me to continue and finish them with you." But an overwrought brain the very next day produced paralysis, and the distinguished statesman and philosopher died at the age of sixty-three, on May 13, 1832.