. . .THE time of our meeting is almost at hand. Relieved from all anxiety about the subjects I had wished to present here, I can now be quietly with you and enjoy the rest and freedom I have so long needed. The tension of mind, forced upon me by the effort to reach my goal in time, has crowded out the thoughts which are most present when I am at peace. I will not talk to you of what I have been doing lately, (a short letter from Frankfort will have put you on my track), nor of the relations I have formed at the Heidelberg meeting, nor of the manner in which I have been received, etc. These are matters better told than written. . .I intend to leave here to-morrow or the day after, according to circumstances. I shall stay some days at Carlsruhe to put my affairs in order, and from there make the journey home as quickly as possible. . . The following month we find him once more at home in the parsonage of Orbe. After the first pleasure and excitement of return, his time was chiefly spent in arranging his collections at Cudrefin, where his grandfather had given him house-room for them. In this work he had the help of the family in general, who made a sort of scientific fete of the occasion. But it ended sadly with the illness and death of the kind old grandfather, under whose roof children and grandchildren had been wont to assemble. AGASSIZ TO BRAUN. ORBE, December 3, 1829. . . .I will devote an hour of this last evening I am to pass in Orbe, to talking with you. You will wonder that I am still here, and that I have not written. You already know that I have been arranging my collections at Cudrefin, and spending very happy days with my grandfather. But he is now very ill, and even should we have better news of him to-day, the thought weighs heavily on my heart, that I must take leave of him when he is perhaps on his death-bed. . .I have just tied up my last package of plants, and there lies my whole herbarium in order,--thirty packages in all. For this I have to thank you, dear Alex, and it gives me pleasure to tell you so and to be reminded of it. What a succession of glorious memories came up to me as I turned them over. Free from all disturbing incidents, I enjoyed anew our life together, and even more, if possible, than in actual experience. Every talk, every walk, was present to me again, and in reviewing it all I saw how our minds had been drawn to each other in an ever-strengthening union. In you I see my own intellectual development reflected as in a mirror, for to you, and to my intercourse with you, I owe my entrance upon this path of the noblest and most lasting enjoyment. It is delightful to look back on such a past with the future so bright before us. . .