136 EULOGY ON ALEXANDER VOLTA. 



LIFE OF VOLTA — OFFICES FILLED BY IIIM— HIS CHARACTETi— HIS 



DEATH. 



Gentlemen : I Lave just displayed to your view a picture of Volta's 

 brilliant career. I have tried to specify, iu detail, the grand discoveries 

 with which this wonderful genius has enriched the i)hysical sciences. 

 i^Tothing now remains, to carry out the usual form, but to relate briefly 

 the principal events of his i)ublic and private life. 



The painful duties which devolved upon Volta, almost from earliest 

 youth, detained him in his native city till 1777. This year, for the first 

 time, he left the picturesque banks of Lake Como and traveled through 

 Switzerland. His absence lasted several weeks, but was not marked 

 by any important event. At Berne, Volta visited the celebrated 

 nailer, who was fast bringing his life to a close by an immoderate use 

 of opium. Thence he went to Fernay, where every description of talent 

 was secure of a kind welcome. Our immortal countryman, in the long 

 conversation with which he honored the young professor, glanced at the 

 very numerous, rich, and varied departments of Italian literature, passed 

 in review the savants, poets, sculptors, and painters which adorn this 

 literature, with a superiority of views, a delicacy of taste, and a nicety 

 of judgment which left on Volta's mind an indelible imi)ression. 



At Geneva, Volta formed a close friendship with the celebrated his- 

 torian of the Alps, a man most capable of ai)preciatiug his discoveries. 

 That was a great century, gentlemen, in which a traveler, in a day's 

 journey, without losing sight of the Jura, could render homage to a 

 Saussure, a Haller, Jean-Jacques, and Voltaire. 



Volta returned to Italy by way of Aigne-Belle, taking with him to his 

 countrymen that precious root, the potato, which, by proper cultivation, 

 would render a complete famine impossible. In Lombardy, where 

 frightful storms destroy in a few moments cereals distributed over a 

 vast region of country, an article of food, which develops, grows, and 

 matures under the ground, sheltered from the ravages of hail, was an 

 inestimable gift to the whole population. 



Volta had himself written a circumstantial account of his travels in 

 Switzerland ; but it was hidden in the archives of Lombardy. Its recent 

 publication is due to a custom which, in all probability, will not soon 

 be adopted in a certain country, where a writer has dared to designate 

 marriage as the most serious of comic things, without being 'torn to 

 pieces for it. In Italy, where this act of our life is undoubtedly u-garded 

 with more seriousness, each one, in his sphere of life, endeavors to sig- 

 nalize it by some act for the general good of his fellow-citizens. It was 

 the marriage of M. Antoine Eeiua, of JNIilan, in 1827, which brought to 

 light Volta's small work from the otiicial portfolios of the government, 

 veritable catacombs, where, in all countries, heaps of treasures lie buried 

 forever. 



Human institutions arc so strange that the fortunes, the well-being, 

 the whole future of one of tlie greatest geniuses of whom Italy c^\n 



