EULOGY ON AMPERE. 1G5 



Among" the contemporaneous savants whose wonderful talents have 

 been misapplied, no name is more prominent than that of Ampere. 



A statesman, celebrated for his witticisms, said of one of his political 

 adversaries: "His vocation is not to be minister of foreign affairs." 

 And we, in our turn, might say of Ampere: " His vocation was not to 

 be a professor." 



And yet he was forced to devote the best portion of his life to a pro- 

 fessorship, and to supply the deficiencies of his patrimony by paid 

 lectures. 



A severe wound received in his arm in childhood had no little 

 share in impairing his manual dexterity. The first place, nevertheless, 

 that is given him is that of i)rofessor of pliysics, chemistry, and astron- 

 omy, at the central school in the department of Ain. The professor 

 of physics invariably fails in his experiments; the chemist breaks his 

 apparatus, and the astronomer can never succeed in bringing two stars 

 within the field of the telescope of the sextant or circle of retlection. 

 Are such the real difliculties encountered by the modern type of the func- 

 tionary called the administrator ? He derives from his office the right 

 to appoint; a vacancy occurs; he fills it, and there is the end of it. 



Ampere left Bourg to fill the chair of mathematics in Lyons, and 

 afterwards the office of master of analysis in the Polytechnic School at 

 Paris. In this new position he was not obliged to handle retorts, elec- 

 trical machines, and telescopes ; more complete success might now be 

 expected; but he who undertakes the instruction of jrolicsome, rest- 

 less, and petulant youth, quick to seize the slightest occasion of ridicule 

 to minister to their amusement, will find knowledge and genius not all 

 that is necessary for the task. To avoid giving occasion to their mis- 

 chievous acuteness, it is necessary to study, by living for a long time in 

 their midst, their tastes, their manners, their tempers,- and their pecu- 

 liarities. The man whose character has been moulded by himself, who 

 has not been trained in public schools, lacks one of the elements of suc- 

 cess. If your bow is too profound, instead of receiving acknowledge- 

 ments for the deference, you excite peals of laughter. Eccentricities, 

 ignorance of the world, and what is called in our artificial society a 

 want of style, did not interfere with Ampere's right to rank first among 

 the savants for i)erspicuity and ingenuity ; but we must acknowledge 

 his lectures suffered in consequence. But the superior powers of a mau 

 of genius should have easily commanded a more judicious and useful 

 position ; and science itself, with its exquisite sensibilities, must regret 

 that one of the noblest and most glorious of its representatives should 

 have been exposed to the jests of giddy youths and idle minds. 



In the seventeenth chapter of his second book of his celebrated es- 

 says, Montaigne makes this confession: "I can neither calculate in my 

 head nor on paper ; the greater part of oui' coins are unknown to me ; 

 nor do I know one grain from an other, either in the field or in the 

 barn, unless the difference is very apparent; nor can I distinguish cab- 



