EULOGY ON AMPERE. 155 



ultimate object of calligraphy. He would uot have received froui a Ibr- 

 eigu scientist, full of wit aud waggery, after Up became a member of 

 the academy, an invitation to dinner written in the first letter of his 

 signature. He would have known that to write a running hand rapidly 

 and easily, a movement of the lingers, and not the arm, is required — 

 a knowledge which would have saved him, during his whole life, much 

 bodily exertion and intolerable annoyance. Ampere's school-fellows, 

 much less forbearing than father or mother, would ha^'e roughly checked 

 his incessant restlessness. He would have learned to control those i)ar- 

 oxysnis of rage which, later in life, rendered him so unhappy — called by 

 his friends lamb-like wrath ; and which to excite was rather a subject of 

 congratulation, so spontaneous, candid, aud unreserved was his repent- 

 ance. He would have known how to confine himself to regular work. 

 The necessity of performing his tasks at fixed hours would have taught 

 him, as an author very clever in such matters said, to make his 

 thoughts flow rapidly from the nib of his pen, aud not to drown them 

 afterwards in an ink-stand. Borrowing the beautiful image of Cleanthe, 

 l^reserved by Seneca, Anipere's thoughts, once repressed, would re- 

 semble the voice, which, confined to the narrow channel of a trumpet, 

 bursts forth at length the more clear aud the more powerful. Compo- 

 sition would then have been of secondary importance to him, and he 

 could have exclaimed triumphantly with Racine, "My work is finished; 

 nothing now remains but to write it out." The success of this mode of 

 investigation would have induced him to give up handling a thousand 

 different subjects at once and yielding to the nervous excitement pro- 

 voked by it. If he had considered the time lost in useless discussions, 

 he would not now sadly exclaim with the poet cited not long since — 



Je ne f ais pas le bien que j'aime, 

 Et je fais le mal que je liais. 



("I do not do the good I love, but the evil that I hate.") 

 Here 1 must stop; for instead of maintaining an even balance between 

 the two contrary systems, as I had intended, I find myself almost plead- 

 ing in favor of public education. 



AMPEEE AN ADEPT IN ANEMAX, MAGNETISM. 



Ampere often lent the aid of his imposing authority to the adepts of 

 animal magnetism. His imperfect vision, his want of bodily dexterity, 

 and his great credulity, rendered him a fitting subject for the tricks and 

 legerdemains which ought to have induced him to consider magnetism 

 a branch of the art of jugglery. At certain reunions, W'here the love of 

 the marvelous, a desire to fathom the mysteries of animal organization, 

 and especially the hope of discovering some new means of alleviating 

 human suffering, brought many estimable people together, Ampere was 

 often fascinated by legerdemains only suitable for the amusement of 

 children, such as the sudden increase of little balls, multipHed almost 



