EULOGY QN GAY-LUSSAC. 151 



for those of the conflagration of his first attempt. Our travelers re- 

 mained but a short time in Bologna, whose university had then singu- 

 larly declined from its ancient reputation. The professor of chemistry 

 of this university, M. Pellegrini Savigny, had left no very favorable 

 impression upon Gay-Lussac's mind ; our colleague accused him of hav- 

 ing degraded the science by inserting in his Traite de Chimie (Treatise 

 upon Chemistry) methods of his own invention for preparing good sher- 

 bets and excellent soups for every day in the year. 



Did not our friend indulge in some exaggeration in classing the sub- 

 jects alluded to in the treatise of M. Pellegrini among those which 

 a scientist, who has any self-respect, should abandon to professional 

 charlatans ? I will venture to say, in spite of my profound deference for 

 Gay-Lussac's opinions, that he who should succeed in reducing to uni- 

 form and precise rules the preparation of our food, especially that of 

 the poorer classes, would solve an important hygienic question. I am 

 persuaded that some day posterity will manifest astonishment on learn- 

 ing that in the middle of the nineteenth century the alimentary regimen 

 of the masses was abandoned to emx)irics, of both sexes, without educa- 

 tion or intelligence. 



Byron relates in his memoirs, that during Sir Humphry Davy's so- 

 journ in Ravenna, a fashionable woman expressed the desire that the 

 illustrious chemist should prepare for her a pomade to darken her eye- 

 brows and make them grow. I would unreservedly share the contemp- 

 tuous disdain with which our young friend would undoubtedly have 

 received such a proposition as this. But there is, it seems to me, a wide 

 difference between the pomade for the fashionable woman and formu- 

 las for improving the food of the people, and even that intended to sat- 

 isfy the sensuality of the rich. 



Messrs. de Humboldt, de Buch, and Gay-Lussac reached Milan Octo- 

 ber 1. Volta was then in that city, but they had great difficulty in 

 finding him. 



The civil and military administration of Milan, which would not have 

 hesitated a moment if asked the address of a simple Hungarian or Cro- 

 atian sublieutenant, of a contractor, or of any titled personage whatso- 

 ever, seemed utterly unmindful of Volta, that great man, the glory of 

 Lombardy ; whose name will be uttered with respect and admiration 

 when the breath of time will have swept away even the slightest recol- 

 lection of generations of his contemporaries. 



Let us turn aside from these several anomalies, a thousand instances 

 of which it would be easy to enumerate, and resume our narrative. 



Our three young travelers learned in Milan that the scientific world 

 was alive with the rumor of a pretended discovery by M. Configliachi. 

 According to the Italian chemist, water was composed of muriatic acid 

 and soda, elements that the battery decomposed without difficulty. 

 Volta, consulted by our three travelers as to the merit of the observa- 

 tion, replied, " I have seen the experiment, but I do not believe in it.'^ 



