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I have loved airs, that die
Before their charm is writ
Along a liquid sky
Trembling to welcome it.
Notes that with pulse of fire
Proclaim the spirit's desire,
Then die, and are nowhere:
My song be like an air!

Die, song, die like a breath,
And wither as a bloom:
Fear not a flowery death,
Dread not an empty tomb!
Fly with delight, fly hence!
'Twas thine love's tender sense
To feast, now on thy bier
Beauty shall shed a tear.

ROBERT BRIDGES.

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his fellow-men. This embodiment of a clear, cold, passionless intelligence was "IL été assez heureux ou assez sage, dead to every æsthetic sense, and had no pour que l'on ne sache presqu'autre chose element of anything that was enthusiastic de lui, et qu'il n'y ait dans son histoire or chivalrous in its composition. To Cavd'autres incidens que des decouvertes." endish science was, in truth, measureThese words were spoken by Cuvier, the ment. "His theory of the universe," says perpetual secretary of the French Acad- Wilson, "6 seems to have been that it emy, on the occasion of his éloge on Cav- consisted solely of a multitude of objects endish, the discoverer of the compound which could be weighed, numbered, and nature of water, who, in his old age had measured; and the vocation to which he been elected a member of the Institute. considered himself called was to weigh, At first sight they may seem a mere para- number, and measure as many of these phrase of a saying which has become objects as his allotted three score years almost trite, but to those who heard them and ten would permit. He weighed the for the first time they had a significance earth; he analyzed the air; he discovered which must have been realized with some- the compound nature of water; he noted thing like a pang. For at such a time, with numerical precision the obscure acnot one of Cuvier's hearers could have tions of the ancient element, fire." But been unmindful of 1794, or have been all this work was done primarily for himunmoved by the recollection of a tragedy self, and to satisfy the questionings of his in which the most illustrious of Caven- own intelligence. To give the results of dish's contemporaries, a man whose life it to the world was hardly a part of his had been dedicated to the cause of hu- plan, for he cared not hing for the world, manity, and whose services to science and was absolutely indifferent to the inhave reflected an imperishable lustre upon terests or judgment of his fellows. And France, was sacrificed to the blind fury of yet Cavendish was revered, even if he was his countrymen. Indeed, to the lively not loved, during his long and uneventful and sympathetic intelligence of such an life, and at his death was laid to rest with auditory, quickened as it must have been every mark of honor and respect in the by the singular charm of the speaker's splendid tomb which his ancestress, Elizstyle, his profound sensibility, and rhetor-abeth Hardwicke, had built for herself and ical skill, the strong dramatic element in her descendants. the situation could hardly have remained On the other hand, Lavoisier was a man anperceived. Lavoisier and Cavendish in whom the elements were kindly mixed. were, in a sense, national types; they were, No one could more truly say of himself, too, when at the summit of their intellec-"Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum tual power, the acknowledged representa- puto." He was ardent, enthusiastic, fond tives of two opposing schools of thought. of the society of his fellows, a man of Both were aristocrats, and both, from generous impulses, of Catholic tastes, and being poor, became very rich; Cavendish, of lofty aims. As a philosopher his influindeed, was, as M. Biot has said, "le ence throughout Europe was supreme, plus riche de tous les savans et probable- and the manner in which his renown was ment aussi le plus savant de tous les won was of a kind to strike the national riches." But here the resemblance ends; imagination and to minister to the national in character, temperament, and genius, in pride. At the zenith of his fame he was everything that constitutes individuality, as much a dictator in the world of science the men were as wide asunder as the as Napoleon became in the world of polipoles. Cavendish has been described by tics. But in the very plenitude of this his biographer Wilson as the most pas-power he was struck at by Fouquier-Tinsively selfish of mortals - a sort of scien- ville, and he who had labored unceasingly tific anchorite, who maintained during the four score years of his existence a rigid, undeviating indifference to the affairs of

for the glory and well-being of his country was declared guilty of complicity in a conspiracy "against the French people

tending to favor by all possible means the success of the enemies of France." Lavoisier's crime was that he had been a fermier-général. He was accused, in the words of the indictment, "of adding to tobacco, water and other ingredients detrimental to the health of the citizens." It was a feeble enough weapon to throw even at a fermier-général, but it was thrown with terrible effect. Even to be suspected of tampering with the tobacco of a "citizen" sufficed for the Tribunal before which he was brought, although it taxed the ingenuity of Liendon to show how this alleged sophistication brought the accused within the same section of the penal code that swept the Dantonists to the scaffold. Coffinhal, the vice-president of the Tribunal, pronounced the judgment: "The Republic has no need of men of science," and within twenty-four hours the tumbril was on its way to the Place de la Révolution, and, as the procèsverbal sets forth, "sur un échaffaud dressé sur la dite place, le dit Lavoisier, en notre présence, subi la peine de mort." Well might Lagrange say to Delambre: "It required but a moment to strike off this head and probably a hundred years will not suffice to reproduce such another."*

The main events in the scientific career of the great French chemist are tolerably well known, and his position in the history of the development of chemistry is now fully assured. The story of his scientific life has recently been told by M. Berthelot with all the charm and tact which characterize the éloges which it is the duty of the secretaries of the Academy from time to time to prepare. Although English men of science may think that M. Berthelot occasionally fails to mete out the strict justice to their countrymen that historical accuracy demands, there cannot be a doubt, in spite of all legitimate deductions, that Lavoisier remains the dominant figure in the chemical world of the last century. There is much, however, in his life and

• The Republic, a few months afterwards, found also

that it had no need of Coffinhal; he fell with Robespierre, and was guillotined on the 18th Thermidor of the year II. Fouquier-Tinville and some half-dozen others who had been concerned in the trial of Lavoisier were also brought to the scaffold at about the same time

work, and especially in the circumstances which led to his untimely death, on which we would gladly have more information. Amongst the crop of literature which the centenary of the Revolution has brought forth in France, the historian of science has welcomed, therefore, with special interest, the admirable monograph on Lavoisier which we owe to the patient industry and patriotic zeal of Professor Grimaux.*

It must have struck many people, as M. Grimaux tells us it has struck him, that, in spite of the glory which surrounds the name of Lavoisier, it is remarkable that the life of the creator of modern chemistry has still to be written. Beyond the short biographical notices by Lalande, Fourcroy, and Cuvier, which deal mainly with Lavoisier as a man of science, we know practically nothing of the story of a life which was wholly devoted to the public good. Even the world of science knows scarcely anything of his private life, of his virtues, of his intelligent philanthropy, and of the services which he rendered to his country as an Academician, an economist, an agriculturist, and a financier. Luckily for his biographer, Lavoisier was a man of perfect method, and he preserved all his manuscripts without exception. After his death these papers were religiously guarded by Madame Lavoisier, from whom they passed to Madame Léon de Chazelles, her grand-niece. This, together with other material preserved at the Chateau de la Canière, where also are kept Lavoisier's books and instruments, has served M. Grimaux as the basis of his book. In addition, he has searched through the public archives, with the result that we have now presented to us, for the first time, the details of Lavoisier's political life and the true story of his trial and condemnation.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was born in Paris on August 26, 1743. His father, Jean-Antoine, was an advocate; his mother, née Punctis, died when he was five years old, and he and a young sister, who only lived a few years, were taken

Lavoisier, 1743-1794. D'après sa correspondance, ses manuscrits, ses papiers de famille, et d'autres documents inédits. Par Edouard Grimaux. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1888.

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charge of by the grandmother and her suffered frequent internal changes, but in
daughter, Mlle. Constance Punctis. The the middle of the eighteenth century it
family was rich, and was able to send the was subject to the constitution of 1699, as
young Antoine to the Collège Mazarin, modified in 1716. It was composed of
where he seems to have acquired that members of very different orders, enjoying
passion for natural science which was the very unequal rights. There were twelve
motive power of his life. He studied honorary members, chosen from among
mathematics with the Abbé La Caille, the great nobles, and from whom were
well known for his measurement of an selected the president and vice-presidents,
arc of the meridian at the Cape of Good eighteen pensionaries, twelve associates,
Hope, and for his determination of the and twelve adjoints distributed among the
length of a seconds pendulum; he learnt geometers, astronomers, mechanicians,
botany from Bernard de Jussieu, and geol- chemists, and botanists; in addition there
ogy and mineralogy from Guettard. But were a number of free associates, superan-
it was principally by Rouelle's teaching nuated associates, and pensionaries. The
that the particular direction of Lavoisier's honorary members and the pensionaries
scientific activity was shaped. Guillaume- had alone a deliberative voice in the elec-
François Rouelle is mainly remembered
by chemists to-day as having just missed
the discovery of the law of combination
by definite proportions. By his contem-
poraries he was considered to have said
more "good things" than any man of his
time. In spite of his oddities he exer-
cised an extraordinary influence as a
teacher; his lecture-room at the Jardin
du Roi was crowded by auditors from all
parts of Europe, and among his pupils
were Macquer, Bucquet, D'Arcet, and
Lavoisier, the men who were destined to
make the end of the eighteenth century
one of the most stirring epochs in the
history of chemistry.

Lavoisier was originally intended for the profession of the law, and actually became a licentiate in 1764, but at the instigation of Guettard, whom he accompanied in his journeys through France, and to whom he was of assistance in the preparation of his great mineralogical atlas, he abandoned that career and gave himself up to science. In 1765 he sent his first paper to the Academy - a modest enough communication on gypsum, but noteworthy as giving for the first time the true explanation of the setting of plaster of Paris, and of the reason that overburnt gypsum will not rehydrate.

tions, and in the business of the Academy. The two associates in the class in which there was a vacancy were, however, called upon, in company with three pensionaries, to draw up the list of candidates. The adjoints had practically no privileges beyond that of sitting next to an associate when there was room; at other times they sat upon the benches placed behind the armchairs of the associates.

The 18th of May, 1768, when the young Lavoisier gained his seat upon the back benches, was a red-letter day in the history of the house of Punctis. It was no less important in the history of the Academy, for the young adjoint was destined to be its champion and do battle for its existence during the dark and terrible time of the Revolution. Lavoisier's extraordinary power of work, his intellectual keenness, and range of knowledge, were quickly recognized, and in spite of his youth he was charged with the preparation of numerous reports. This part of an Academician's duty was as difficult and irksome as it was delicate. During the twenty-five years of his connection with the Academy he con. tributed upwards of two hundred reports on such disconnected matters as the theory of colors, the areometer of Cartier, modes of determining longitudes, armchairs for invalids, prison reform, water supply, the cold of the winter in 1776, the pretensions of Mesmer, the aerostatic inventions of Montgolfier, the imposture of the divining

In the following year he was awarded a
medal by the Academy for an essay on
the lighting of large towns, and in the
same year he was placed upon the list of
candidates for election into that august| rod, etc., etc.
body. The Académie des Sciences has

Almost immediately after Lavoisier had

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