IIG EULOGY ON ALEXANDER VOLTA. 



was carried on at the public school of his native place under his lather's 

 watchful care. Great aptitude, steady application, and a well-regulated 

 mind soon placed him at the head of his fellow-students. At eighteen, 

 he was already in correspondence with Xollet on the most recondite 

 questions of physics. At nineteen, he composed a Latin poem never given 

 to the public, in which he described the phenomena discovered by the most 

 celebrated experimentalists of the time. It has been said that at this 

 period, Volta's vocation was undetermined, but I beg to differ from this 

 assertion, for a young man would scarcely hesitate about exchanging 

 the poetic art for a retort, if he had the singular taste to select chemistry 

 as the subject of his literary compositions; and, in fact, with the excep- 

 tion of several of his poems, including that describing Saussure's ascent 

 of Mont Blanc, we shall find the long career of this distinguished phy- 

 sicist devoted solely to the study of nature. 



Volta, at the age of twenty-four, had the temerity to assad, in his 

 first essay, the delicate question of the Leyden jar. This apparatus had 

 been invented in 174G. The singularity of its effects would have amply 

 sufQced to justify the curiosity it excited throughout Europe; but this 

 curiosity was also due, in a great measure, to Musschenbroeck's extrav- 

 agant exaggeration of the unaccountable terror he experienced on re- 

 ceiving a very feeble discharge, in regard to which, the physicist em- 

 phatically exclaimed, he would not again expose himself for the proudest 

 kingdom of the universe. The numerous theories of the jar which were 

 successively offered are scarcely worthy of being enumerated. Frank- 

 lin has the honor of having solved this important problem, and, it must 

 be acknowledged, Volta has added little to the labors of the illustrious 

 American physicist. 



The second essay of the physicist of Como appeared in 1771. In this, 

 observation is the only guide of the author in the researches undertaken 

 to determine the nature of the electricity of bodies covered with differ- 

 ent coatings; to ascertain the circumstances of temperature, color, and 

 elasticity causing the phenomena to vary; to study the electricity pro- 

 duced by rubbing, percussion, or pressure ; or finally, the properties 

 of a new kind of electrical machine in which the movable plate and 

 the insulating supports were of dried wood. 



On this side of the Alps, the first two essays of Volta were scarcely 

 read at all. In Italy, on the contrary, they produced a lively sensation. 

 Public authority, which is usually unfortunately partial, and which in 

 its blind love of absolute power often even refuses the modest request 

 of reference to competent judges, hastened itself to encourage the 

 youthful experimentalist. He was nominated by it as regent of the 

 IJoyal School of Como, and soon after professor of physics. 



The missionaries to Pekiii in 1755 communicated to the savants of 

 Europe an important fact made known to them by accident, resi)ecting 

 electricity by induction, which, in certain bodies, is developed or dissi- 

 pated as these bodies are separated or brought into immediate contact. 



