116 EULOGY ON AMPERE. 



Tlie clay he was to asceud the scaffold, Jean-Jacques wrote to his 

 vdfe a letter full of the most sublime simplicity, resignation and heroic 

 tenderness, in which you willfind these words: "Say nothing to Josephine 

 (the name of his daughter) of the unhax)py fate of her father ; try to 

 keep her ever in ignorance of it. As to my son, I expect everything of 

 h im.'^ Alas ! the victim deluded himself. The blow was too severe, it was 

 beyond the strength of a young man of eighteen ; Ampere was com- 

 pletely paralyzed by it. His intellectual faculties, so active, so ardent 

 and well developed, seemed suddenly to degenerate into a complete 

 idiocy. He would pass whole days mechanically contemplating the 

 skies and the earth, or in heaping up little piles of sand. His anxious 

 friends, fearing his symptoms gave indication of a fatal and rapid de- 

 cline, tried to entice him into the neighboring woods of Poleymieux, to 

 arouse him, if possible, from this lethargy, where "he was," (I use the 

 very words of our associate,) a mute witness, " an observer without eyes 

 or thought." 



This torpor of all feeling, mental and moral, lasted for more than a 

 year, when the botanical letters of J. J. Eousseau falling into his hands, 

 their clear, harmonious language seemed to penetrate into the very soid 

 of the afflicted youth, and in some degree to restore tone to his mind, 

 as the rays of the rising-sun pierce the thick fogs of the morning and 

 bear life into the bosom of the plant that the "numb cold night" had 

 rendered torpid. About the same time a volume, accidentally opened, 

 brought to his notice some lines from the ode of Horace to Lucinius. 

 These lines seemed to convey no meaning to our friend, to him who had 

 merely learned Latin with sufficient accuracy to enable him to read essays 

 on mathematics ; but their cadence charmed" him, and from this time, 

 contrary to the principles of the moralist who declares the human mind 

 incapable of entertaining at the same time more than one ardent pas- 

 sion. Ampere gave himself uj) with unrestrained zeal to the simulta- 

 neous studies of plants and the poets of the Augustan age. A volume 

 of the Corpus Poetarum Latinorum accompanied him in his herboraza- 

 tions, as well as the works of Linnaeus, and the meadows and hills of 

 Poleymieus resounded daily with declamations from Horace, Virgil, 

 Lucretius, and especially from Lucian, in the intervals of his dissections 

 of a corolla or the examination of a petal. The quantity of the Latin 

 words became so familiar to Amx)ere, that forty years after, he com- 

 posed one hundred and fifty eight technical lines in a post-chaise dur- 

 ing a tour of inspection of the universities, without once referring to 

 the Gradus. 



The botanical knowledge he acquired in these solitary studies was as 

 profound as it was lasting. It is my good fortune to be able to cite on 

 this point the unexceptionable and striking testimony of our colleagi^e, 

 M. Auguste de Saint-Hilaire. 



The genus Begonia was among the number of those classed by 

 the illustrious de Jussicu under the head of incertn sedis, because he 



