EULOGY ON AMPERE. 115 



the question of tlie universal language \ritli the same comprehensiveness 

 and the same research as Descartes and Leibnitz, but it can be said, at 

 least, that he did not banish its solution, as the first of these philoso- 

 phers did to the land of romance. Nor did he confine himself as the 

 second did, to dissertations on the marvellous fitness of the future in- 

 strument. This instrument he created! Several of Ampere's friends 

 have had in their hands a grammar and dictionary, the fruits of 

 his indefatigable perseverance, containing the almost finished rules 

 of the new language. Some have heard him recite fragments of a 

 poem comi^osed in this new tongue, and can testify to its harmony, the 

 only thing, to tell the truth, of which they could judge, as the meaning 

 of the words was unintelligible to them. Who, besides, among us does 

 not remember the joy experienced by our associate, when, in glancing 

 over the work of a modern traveler, he discovered in the vocabulary of a 

 certain African tribe several combinations, which he had himself formed. 

 It will be remembered that a similar discovery was the chief cause of 

 Ampere's warm admiration for the Sanscrit. 



A work which has reached such a degree of advancement, should not 

 be condemned to oblivion. The carrying out by Ampere of an idea of 

 Descartes and Leibnitz will always interest philosophers and philologists 

 in the highest degree. The manuscripts of our brother are fortunately 

 in hands eminently qualified to bring out all that could contribute to 

 the advancement of science and letters. 



AMPl^RE'S AFFLICTION DtlEING THE TERRIBLE REVOLUTION — SUSPEN- 

 SION OF HIS INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL FACULTIES — RECOVERY — 

 BOTANICAL STUDIES — HIS MEETING WITH THE LADY WHO AFTER- 

 WARDS BECOMES HIS WIFE. 



The revolutionary tempest in 1793, during one of its most violent con- 

 vulsions, i^enetrated as far as the mountains of Poleymieux, and Jean- 

 Jacques Ampere becoming alarmed, in order to escape a danger which his 

 parental and marital solicitude had, perhaps, greatly magnified was 

 guilty of the fatal steps of leaving the country and taking refuge in 

 the city of Lyons, and of there accepting the office of justice of the 

 peace. 



You will remember, gentlemen, that after the seige of that city, Collot- 

 de Herbois and Fouche perpetrated there, under the unfortunately spe- 

 cious name of reprisals, the most execrable butcheries. Jean-Jacques 

 Ampere was one of the first of their numerous victims, less on account 

 of holding the position of magistrate during the trial of Chalier, than 

 on account of the hackneyed charge of aristocrat with which he was 

 branded, in the writ of arrest, by the very man, who, a few years later, 

 had" engraved on the panels of his carriage, the most brilliant coat of 

 arms, and who signed with the title of duke, the conspiracies he was 

 plotting against his country and his benefactor. 



