206 Baron Fourier's Eloge of the Marquis De Laplace, 



The name of Laplace honoured one of our provinces already 

 so fertile in great men, — ancient Normandy. He was born on 

 the 23d March 1749, and he died in the 78th year of his age, 

 on the 5th May 1827, at nine o'clock in the morning. Shall 

 I remind you of that gloomy sadness which brooded over this 

 place like a cloud when the fatal intelligence was announced 

 to you. It was on the day and even at the hour of your 

 usual meetings. Each of you preserved a mournful silence ; 

 each felt the sad blow with which the sciences were struck. 

 All eyes were fixed on that place which he had so long oc- 

 cupied among you. One thought only filled your minds, 

 every other meditation became impossible. You separated 

 under the influence of an unanimous resolution, and for this 

 single time your usual labours were interrupted. 



It is doubtless great — it is glorious — it is worthy of a 

 powerful nation to decree high honours to the memory of its 

 celebrated men. In the country of Newton the ministers of 

 state desired that the mortal remains of this great man should 

 be solemnly deposited among the tombs of its monarchs. 

 France and Europe have offered to the memory of Laplace an 

 expression of their sorrow, less pompous no doubt, but per- 

 haps more touching and more sincere. 



He has received an unusual homage ; — he has received it 

 from his countrymen in the bosom of a learned body, who 

 could alone appreciate all his genius. The voice of science 

 in tears was heard in every part of the world where phi- 

 losophy had penetrated. We have now before us an ex- 

 tensive correspondence from every part of Germany, Eng- 

 land, Italy, and New Holland — from the English possessions 

 in India, and from the two Americas — and we find in it the 

 same expressions of admiration and sorrow. This universal 

 grief of the sciences, so nobly and so freely expressed, has in it 

 no less truth than the funeral pomp of Westminster Abbey. 



Permit me, before closing this discourse, to repeat a reflec- 

 tion which presented itself when I was enumerating in this place 

 the great discoveries of Herschel, but which applies more di- 

 rectly to Laplace. 



Your successors will see accomplished those great phenome- 

 na whose laws he has discovered. They will observe in the 



