THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



Historical Eloge of Joseph Fourier. By M. Aeago, Perpe- 

 tual Secretary to the Academy of Sciences of France.* 



Gentlemen, — In former times academicians differed from 

 ieach other merely in the number, the nature, and the brilliancy 

 of their discoveries. Their lives, cast as it were in the same 

 mould, were made up of events little worthy of remark. A child- 

 hood more or less studious ; progress sometimes slow, sometimes 

 rapid ; inclinations thwarted by capricious or ignorant parents I 

 want of fortune and its accompanying privations ; thirty years of 

 a laborious professorship and abstruse studies ; — such were the 

 unpromising elements from which the admirable talent of the 

 former secretaries of the Academy was able to produce those 

 piquant, lively, and varied delineations which form one of the 

 principal ornaments of your learned transactions. 



The biographers of the present day are not confined within 

 so narrow a range. The convulsions which France has expe- 

 rienced in freeing herself from the trammels of custom, super- 

 stition, and privilege, have cast amidst the storms of political 

 life, citizens of every age, rank, and character. Thus the Aca- 

 demy of Sciences has been represented by a glorious quota of 

 combatants and victims in the destructive arena, where, for 

 forty years, might and right were by turns triumphant. 



Carry back your thoughts, for instance, to the immortal Na- 

 tional Assembly. You will find at its head a modest acade- 

 mician, a model of every private virtue, the unfortunate Bailly, 

 who, in the different phases of his political life, could conjoin a 

 passionate love of his country, with a moderation which even 

 his bitterest enemies were forced to admire. 



* Read before the Academy of Sciences. 

 VOL. XXVI. NO. LI. JANUARY 1839. A 



