EULOGY ON AMPERE. 167 



a differeut nature, but not the less poignant. The portfolios of the 

 universities have hastily stowed away in their recesses minute lists of 

 the barbarisms, solecisms, and errors in calculation, which the inspector- 

 general must examine. Their gaping jaws also demand the accounts, 

 giving the expenditures for the bedding, furniture, and provisions of 

 thirty boarding-schools. It is in vain our friend, who has scarcely the 

 power to reduce his own favorite works to writing, is asked for such 

 accounts. In a letter, after enumerating the numerous and very 

 just causes of annoyance by which he was besieged, he gave the finish- 

 ing touches to this sad picture in these words : " The severest and 

 most painful of duties is to be seated, pen in hand, immoveable before 

 a desk." Ampere would then have to submit to the demands of the 

 clerk, the head of the bureau, the chief of the division, and the minis- 

 ter, all leagued against him ; and during these daily struggles, pro- 

 longed until the time for new inspections, he expended more time, more 

 ingenuity and thought, than were required to produce a chapter of his 

 theories of electro-magnetism. 



So miserable a prostitution of the highest intellectual faculties can 

 have no supporters within these walls nor anywhere else ; but some one 

 asks, Where is the remedy "? The remedy would not be difficult to find. 

 I would suggest that the colossal budget should not forget that France 

 is covetous of all kinds of glory. I would suggest that it should guar- 

 antee an independent support to the limited number of men whose pro- 

 ductions, discoveries, and labors command the admiration and are the 

 characteristic features of all ages. I would suggest that these intellect- 

 ual powers as soon as discovered should be placed under the tutelary 

 protection of the whole country 5 that it should watch over their full 

 and complete development; that it should not permit them to be wasted 

 on common-place subjects. Any objections to which this plan could give 

 rise must be more specious than solid. I had summed them up and re- 

 futed them, but a want of time obliges me to defer this portion of my 

 work to another sitting. I intend to make it the subject of a special 

 proposition on which I shall ask the opinion of the public before sub- 

 mitting it to the decision of a legislative vote. There is, however, one 

 point about which, from this time, there could be uo difference of opin- 

 ion, for every one wiU acknowledge that, under the liberal regime I have 

 just sketched, Ampere would have been one of the first of savants to 

 feel the effects of his country's munificence. Free, then, from all care 

 and anxiety, released from a multitude of laborious occupations, nig- 

 gardly details and petty services, our friend vrould have been able to 

 carry out with ardor, enthusiasm, and perseverance the thousands of 

 ingenious ideas with which his mighty brain was daily teeming. I re- 

 marked not long since that the discoveries and works which he has 

 left behind him, would occupy a distinguished place in the history of 

 science, and be honored by posterity, and I added, too, without the fear 

 of contradiction, that they were but a small portion of what there was 



