220 BiograpJiical Memoir ofM. Haiiy. 



dragged out by force. One yet trembles to recollect that the 

 day after was the 2d of September. 



It is very singular that from this period he was no more dis- 

 turbed. On no account whatever would he have lent himself to 

 the extravagances of this period ; but no one ever made to him 

 such a proposal. The simplicity of his manners, and the gentle- 

 ness of his disposition, saved him from the trial. One day only 

 he was made to appear at the review of his battalion, but he 

 was immediately discarded on account of his bad mien. This 

 was almost all that he knew, or at least all that he saw of the re- 

 volution. The Convention at the time when it was acting with 

 most violence, named him a member of the commission of 

 weights and measures *, and conservator of the Cabinet des 

 Minesf ; and vvhen Lavoisier was arrested, when Borda and De- 

 lam bre were turned out of place, M. Haiiy, a priest, who had not 

 taken the oath, performing his ecclesiastical functions daily, was 

 the only person who found himself in a condition to write in 

 their behalf, and who did so without hesitation, and without any 

 thing happening to him in consequence. At such a period his 

 escape from punishment was as astonishing as his courage. 



It was at the cabinet of the Consell des Mines, and at the re- 

 quest, and with the aid, of that enlightened administration, that 

 M. Haiiy prepared his Treatise on Mineralogy, his principal 

 work, and that he published its programme j, and the first edi- 

 tion of it §. 



Having at his disposal a great collection, into which the dif- 

 ferent minerals flowed from all quarters, and employing the aid 

 of young pupils full of ardour and intelligence, which the poly- 

 technic school had prepared for him, and of which several are 

 at the present day eminent mineralogists, he soon redeemed the 

 time which he had consumed in other labours, and in a few 

 years reared that admirable monument of which it may be said 

 that it did for France, what tardy circumstances had done for its 



• On the 22(1 September 1793. 



t On the 2d August 1794. 



X Extrait d'un Traite Elementaire de Mineralogie, published at first in* 

 parts in the Journal des Mines, afterwards in a separate 8vo volume, 1 7.07- 



§ Traite de Mineralogie. 4 vols. 8vo.,. and a quarto volume of plates, Paris 

 1801. 



