THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL 



Biographical Memoir of Henry Cavendish, Esq. F. R. S. ^^c. 

 By Baron Cuvier*, 



xVmong those whom we have been accustomed to celebrate in 

 this assembly, there are but too many who have had to struggle 

 against the obstacles which misfortune opposed to them : He of 

 whom we are now to speak, had the much rarer, and probably 

 much greater merit, of not allowing himself to be overcome by 

 those of prosperity. Neither could his birth, which opened to 

 him an easy path to honours, nor great riches, which came sud- 

 denly to lure him to pleasures of all kinds, turn him aside from 

 his object ; even applause and distinction had no charms for 

 him ; the disinterested love of truth was his only principle of 

 action. But if he made a sacrifice of all that men in general 

 hold dearest, he was recompensed by a magnificence proportion- 

 ate to the pureness of the sacrifice. All that science revealed to 

 him seems to have something of the sublime and marvellous. 

 He weighed the Earth, prepared the means of navigating the 

 air, despoiled the water of its elementary quality ; and these 

 doctrines so new and so much opposed to received opinions, 

 he established by evidence still more astonishing than even their 

 discovery. The tnemoirs in which they are contained, are 

 so many masterpieces of sagacity and method, perfect in 

 whole as in detail, in which no other hand has ever found any 

 thing to improve, and whose lustre time has but increased ; so 



• Read to the Institute of France. 

 JULY SEPTEMBER 1828. ' O 



