EULOGY ON AMPERE. 



BY M. ARAGO. 



[Translated for the Smithsonian Institution.] 



GENTLE:srEN : It is my duty to-day, in accordance with an article of 

 the academic regulations dating back to 1G66, and which during this 

 long interval of time has always been faitlifully executed, to bring be- 

 fore you the labors of one of our most illustrious associates, and at the 

 same time to cursorily glance at his life. 



These biographical sketches have not always preserved the same 

 characteristics. Before the judges of the eighteenth century, Fonte- 

 nelle himself, the ingenious Fontenelle, ventured to refer so briefly to 

 technical points that his eulogy on Newton occupies only about thirty 

 pages in octavo. If you will open this master-piece of delicacy, elegance, 

 and atticism, you will find the celebrated "Treatise on Optics" confined 

 to a few lines, and the title of the "Universal Arithmetic" not even 

 mentioned. In proportion as the sciences progress the ancient bounda- 

 ries of the academic eulogies should be enlarged, and, in fact, we having 

 at last reached a period when the crowds are largely pressing to expositions 

 of the mathematical and natural sciences with which our vast lecture 

 rooms daily resound, the secretaries of the academy have begun to feel 

 that it is time to rid themselves of the restraints which their illustrious 

 predecessors had imposed upon themselves, that henceforth they might 

 here, at the i)ublic sittings, speak of the labors of their associates in the 

 terms hereafter to be used by the historians of the sciences. This new 

 course has already several times received your kind approbation. The 

 idea of departing from it has never even suggested itself to my mind, as 

 indeed, a little reflection would have reminded me, when IM. Ampere 

 was removed from our midst, of the impossibility of examining his 

 works, and of making the analysis of his complete encyclopedia, with- 

 out departing from theusual limits of our eulogies. I must acknowledge, 

 too, that a close intimacy, an intimacy without a cloud for more than 

 thirty years, has also contributed to extend this biography, and to ena- 

 ble me to give importance to certain details that one indifferent to him 

 would have passed by unnoticed. If an excuse be necessary, gentlemen, 

 I will give it to you in a line in which a great poet has defined friendship 



" The only passion of the soul in wliiv;h excess is tolerated." 



