THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL 



Biographical Memoirs of Charles Bonnet and Horace Be- 

 N EDICT BE Saussure. Read to the Royal Institute of 

 France, by Baron Cuvier. 



Ammediately after the new organization of the Institute, the 

 first Class of Science, by a unanimous resolution, ordained a 

 public eulogium to be pronounced upon the members of the 

 Academy of Science, who had died during that fatal period, 

 when all personal merit, all independent pre-eminence, were odi- 

 ous to authority, and when none were permitted to be praised 

 but the oppressors of the country, and their contemptible satel- 

 lites *. 



At the moment when we were meditating the discharge of this 

 honourable office, a multitude of meritorious individuals present- 

 ed themselves to our view. Among these shone forth with a 

 more intense lustre, not only the happy geniuses, who, in these 

 latter times, have opened up to science paths so new and so ex- 

 tended ; but those, also, whose valuable talents have enabled them 

 to diffuse the light of knowledge, and teach men to appreciate 

 its benefits. The Lavoisiers, the Baillys, the Condorcets, were 

 the men who seemed more imperiously to demand our homage : 

 but they were also men whose agitated life and unhappy end, 

 would have aroused the remembrance of events which even yet 

 excite too much grief. To expiate the crimes of that disas- 

 trous period, it would have been necessary to repeat their history ; 

 and this, we confess, we have not yet acquired sufficient courage 

 to do. 



* The fatal period of the Revolution, 

 JANUARY — MARCH 18S7. P 



