EULOGY ON GAY-LUSSAC. 163 



alcoholmeter in every-day use, with our colleague, adopted, June 3, 1822, 

 a report, concluding as follows : 



'' It is obvious, in brief, that M. Gay-Lussac has treated the subject 

 of areometry under every aspect, and with his accustomed skill. The 

 tables he has deduced after a tedious toil of more than six months, will 

 be a valuable acquisition to the industries and sciences ; the authorities 

 will find in them also, as he hoped, the means of improving and simpli- 

 fying the collection of taxes, and the safest guide they can follow." 



As fertile in the invention of industrial methods as in the discovery 

 of scientific truths, one after the other, as if by enchantment, Gay-Lus- 

 sac created chlorometry, invented methods for determining the richness 

 of the alkalies of commerce, contrived ingenious means by which the 

 manufacture of sulphuric acid has become less expensive, and has no 

 longer need to be brought from unfrequented places ; and he crowned 

 this series of important works by the discovery of a process which has 

 been substituted in all civilized countries for cupellation, an ancient and 

 defective method for analyzing alloys of silver and copper. Truly, I 

 ask myself, with what theoretical speculations could Gay-Lussac have 

 better filled the second phase of his career, since phase there is, than 

 by producing works which to their scientific merits add the advantage 

 of being susceptible of positive and multiplied applications, which serve 

 as safe guides to the natural industries and to enlighten the public au- 

 thorities ? 



To pretend to confine men of genius to the path of pure abstraction, 

 and to forbid discoveries which may be useful to the human race, would 

 be to yield to the most erroneous ideas, in my opinion. And besides, do 

 you wish to know to what you expose yourself when you decide, ac- 

 cording to preconceived ideas, what a scientist could do, or should have 

 done? 



Gay-Lussac, in your opinion, was in the enjoyment of excellent 

 health, and should have been able, as a septuagenarian, to manifest 

 the ardor, activity, and fertility of intellect of his youth, and a cruel 

 event has proved to you that he bore in his bosom the germ of the dis- 

 ease which carried him off so unexpectedly to scientific Europe. 



You thought him entirely absorbed in conducting his business affairs, 

 and at that very time he was constructing, at great expense, in his 

 country-seat, a laboratory which might serve as a model for those 

 chemists who, for themselves or for the public, may have to direct the 

 construction of establishments of the same kind. 



Our colleague was represented as exclusively preoccupied with the 

 lucrative applications of science, at a period when, concentrating his 

 faculties to meditate upon numerous and different theories, he was 

 writing the first chapters of a work, which unfortunately he did not 

 finish, entitled PJdlosopMe CMmique, (Chemical Philosophy.) 



I hope, after these few words, the biographers whose opinions have 

 rendered this digression necessary, will feel, on such occasions, the ne- 



