522 Rev. W.V.Harcourt on Lord Brougham's statements 



Black's treatise." And certainly you have no ground to "la- 

 ment," with respect to him, " that the history of science should 

 be written with such remarkable carelessness and such manifest 

 inattention to the facts" — however true it may be, were the 

 censure justly pointed — "that to find mistakes so very gross 

 in the works of ordinary writers might excite little surprise; 

 but when they are embodied in the history of the National 

 Institute, and when they come to us under the name, among 

 the very first in all sciences, of Cuvier, we may at once won- 

 der and mourn*." 



I only trust that the stone which you have so rashly cast 

 at Cuvier will not recoil on any other head. I still trust sin- 

 cerely that so severe a reproof will not permanently rest on 

 the present " Perpetual Secretary" of the Institute of France ; 

 and that conformably to the known manliness of his character, 

 and clearness of his understanding, M. Arago will yet rectify? 

 as he knows how, the inadvertence into which he has fallen. 



It now only remains for me to remark on your last words 

 in reply to one who has supported with far greater ability than 

 myself the same opinions which I have expressed. 



I have known you, my dear Lord, more strenuously and 

 skilfully employed than in deciding these questions for che- 

 mists; and think I remember it to have been one of the aits 

 of a dexterous advocate, with which you were then familiar, 

 to speak somewhat largely in an opening speech, of evidence 

 which yet it might not be discreet to bring into court: and 

 so I suppose it is now ; for in animadverting upon the igno- 

 rance of this enemy in ambush, whom however you seem to 

 suspect of being no ordinary man, I perceive you affirm, that 

 you "have lying before you fifteen pages of statements of che- 

 mical errors in the thirty-four pages of his paper, and as these 

 corrections are the work of a most experienced, learned and 

 practical chemist whom you consulted, you have entire reliance 

 on his report and opinion." It was some disappointment to 

 me, at first, to find that you kept \kiz fifteen pages in your 

 pocket; but I remembered, how it happened not unfrequently 

 of old, that in the torrent of that forensic eloquence which 



an assertion which will scarcely be disputed by any competent judge who 

 compares the brief perspicuity of expression, and the select sequence of 

 most exact experiment, which shines in every page of Cavendish, with the 

 rambling, inconsequent manner of thinking and writing, general in his 

 time, and I fear not infrequent in our own. Lord Brougham also accuses 

 Cuvier of stating, that Cavendish established in his paper of 1764 these 

 propositions — "I'cait n'est pas un element; il existe plusieurs sortes d'air 

 essentiellement differentes." But is not 't'cau', in this paragraph, merely 

 a misprint for ' fair' ? 

 * Brougham's Lives, vol. ii. p. 507. 



