This event, so full of significance for Agassiz, took place a few days before he sailed for Europe, having determined to devote the few weeks of the college and school vacation to a flying visit in Switzerland. The incidents of this visit were of a wholly domestic nature and hardly belong here. He paused a few days in Ireland and England to see his old friends, the Earl of Enniskillen and Sir Philip Egerton, and review their collections. A day or two in London gave him, in like manner, a few hours at the British Museum, a day with Owen at Richmond, and an opportunity to greet old friends and colleagues called together to meet him at Sir Roderick Murchison's. He allowed himself also a week in Paris, made delightful by the cordiality and hospitality of the professors of the Jardin des Plantes, and by the welcome he received at the Academy, when he made his appearance there. The happiest hours of this brief sojourn in Paris were perhaps spent with his old and dear friend Valenciennes, the associate of earlier days in Paris, when the presence of Cuvier and Humboldt gave a crowning interest to scientific work there. From Paris he hastened on to his mother in Switzerland, devoting to her and to his immediate family all the time which remained to him before returning to his duties in Cambridge. They were very happy weeks, passed, for the most part, in absolute retirement, at Montagny, near the foot of the Jura, where Madame Agassiz was then residing with her daughter. The days were chiefly spent in an old-fashioned garden, where a corner shut in by ivy and shaded by trees made a pleasant out-of-door sitting-room. There he told his mother, as he had never been able to tell her in letters, of his life and home in the United States, and of the Museum to which he was returning, and which was to give him the means of doing for the study of nature all he had ever hoped to accomplish. His quiet stay here was interrupted only by a visit of a few days to his sister at Lausanne, and a trip to the Diablerets, where his brother, then a great invalid, was staying. He also passed a day or two at Geneva, where he was called to a meeting of the Helvetic Society, which gave him an opportunity of renewing old ties of friendship, as well as scientific relations, with the naturalists of his own country, with Pictet de la Rive, de Candolle, Favre, and others. CHAPTER 19. 1860-1863: AGE 53-56. Return to Cambridge. Removal of Collection to New Museum Building. Distribution of Work. Relations with his Students. Breaking out of the War between North and South. Interest of Agassiz in the Preservation of the Union. Commencement of Museum Publications. Reception of Third and Fourth Volumes of "Contributions." Copley Medal. General Correspondence. Lecturing Tour in the West. Circular Letter concerning Anthropological Collections. Letter to Mr. Ticknor concerning Geographical Distribution of Fishes in Spain.