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Biographical Memoir of M. HaUt/. 226 



faces by calculation. In this manner, he at length made of mine- 

 ralogy, a science quite as precise and as methodical as astro- 

 nomy. 



It may be said, in a word, that M. Haiiy is to Werner and 

 Rome Delisle, what Newton was to Kepler and Copernicus. 



But what is entirely peculiar to himself is, that his work is not 

 less remarkable for its regularity, and the method which prevails 

 in it, than for the original ideas on which it rests. The purity 

 of the style, the elegance of the demonstrations, the care with 

 which all the facts are collected and discussed, would have made 

 a classical work of it, had it contained nothing but the most or- 

 dinary mineralogy. M. Haiiy displays in it the able writer and 

 the good geometrician, as much as the learned mineralogist. We 

 see all his first studies manifesting themselves in it, we recognise 

 in it even his first amusements in physics. If he has to appre- 

 ciate the electricity of bodies, their magnetism, their action upon 

 light, we find him devising ingenious and simple means, and 

 small portable instruments. The natural philosopher constantly 

 comes, in it, to the aid of the mineralogist and crystallographer. 



There are ranks in the sciences which are marked out as soon 

 as the titles to them are produced ; and such is that in which M. 

 Haiiy indisputably placed himself, the moment when he publish- 

 ed his work. 



On the death of Daubenton, however, it was Dolomieu, and 

 not M. Haiiy, who was named professor of mineralogy to the 

 Museum of Natural History. But Dolomieu was arrested, con- 

 trary to all the rules of the laws of nations, and was left to 

 pine in the dungeons of Sicily. His death was generally ru- 

 moured: the report was contradicted; and his miserable condition 

 made known through a note written by himself, with a splinter 

 of wood and the smoke of his lamp, and which the gold of a hu- 

 mane Englishman induced the goaler to deliver. These Unes 

 spoke in his favour as much as all his works, and one of those 

 whose solicitations were warmest in his favour, was the rival 

 whom he had most to dread ; it was M. Hauy. 



It might have been thought that such testimonials, and ren- 

 dered too by such men, would have softened l>olomieu''s ene- 

 mies ; but how many people in power, when excited by a mo- 

 mentary passion, no more mform themselves of the sentiments of 



