EULOGY ON ALEXANDER VOLTA. 137 



boast, ^yere at the mercy of the administrator-general of Loinbardy. I 

 suppose ibat the ruling powers, in selecting this functionary, were led 

 by their fastidiousness to require that a certain knowledge of finance 

 should be superadded to the quarterings of nobility imperiously pre- 

 scribed by etiquette ; and, notwithstanding, here was the man called on 

 to decide, decide, too, without appeal [from his judgment] whether Volta 

 deserved to be transferred to a wider theater, or, indeed, left a martyr 

 at the small school of Como, he should be dei)rived during his whole 

 life of costly accessories that certainly cannot supply the place of genius, 

 but invest it with great power. Let us be quick to acknowledge that 

 so far as Volta was concerned chance remedied the folly incident to such 

 a state of dependence. Comte de Firmian, the administrator, was a 

 friend to literature. The school of Pavia became the object of his 

 assiduous care. He founded there a professorshij) of physics, and in 

 1779 Volta was elected to fill it. For many years crowds of young men 

 from all countries thronged the lectures of the illustrious professor; 

 there they learned, I will not say the details of science, for uearly all 

 works on the subject give these, but the philosophical history of the 

 principal discoveries ; the subtile correlations which escape ordinary in- 

 telligence, and a matter which vei-y few individuals have the privilege 

 of divulging, the progress of discovery. 



Volta's style was lucid, unaffected, and sometimes monotonous, but al- 

 ways characterized by modesty and refinement ; qualities which, when 

 united to talents of the first order, are always attractive to youth. 

 In Italy, where the imagination is so easily excited, they produced a 

 genuine enthusiasm. The desire to boast before the world of the honor 

 of being a disciple of Volta, contributed vastly for more than the third 

 of a century to the wonderful success of the University of the Tessin. 



The proverbial /(/r tiicntc of the Italians is strictly true as to physical 

 exertion. They travel little, and among the very opulent families, 

 some are found so thoroughly lioman that not even the sublime erup- 

 tions of Vesuvius can tempt them from the fresh shades of their villas. 

 There are cultivated Florentines who have never seen Saint Peter's and 

 the Coliseum except in engravings; Milanese who all their lives know 

 only from hearsay that, at some leagues distant, there is an immense 

 city and hundreds of magnificent palaces built in the sea. Volta him- 

 self only left the banks of his native Lario for the purpose of scientific 

 researches. I do not think his travels in Italy extended as far as Na- 

 ples and Kome. If, in 1780, he crossed the Apennines to go from Bo- 

 logna to Florence, it was with the hope of finding an opportunity in the 

 fires of Fictra Mala, en route, of submitting his views on the origin of 

 natural infiammable gas to a decisive proof. If, in 1782, accomi)anied 

 by the celebrated Scarpa, he visited the capitals of (lermany, Holland, 

 England, and France, it w^as to make the acquaintance of Lichtenberg^ 

 Van Marum, Priestley, Laplace, and Lavoisier, and to enrich the labor- 

 atory of Pavia with certain instruments for investigation and demon- 



