JEAN-BAPTISTE-ANDRI^ DUMAS. 555 



to throw a glow of interest around details which by most teachers 

 wouhl have been made dry and profitless. 



Two volumes of Dumas's Lecturts have been published ; one com- 

 prises his course on the Philosophy of Chemistry, delivered at the 

 College of France in 1836; the other contains only a single lecture, 

 accompanied by notes, entitled " The Balance of Organic Life," 

 which was delivered at the Medical School of Paris, August 20, 1841. 

 In both these volumes will be found the beauty of exposition and the 

 elegance of diction of which we have spoken, and they are models of 

 literary style. But of course the sympathetic enthusiasm of the great 

 man's presence cannot be reproduced by written woi'ds. 



Tlie lecture on " The Balance of Organic Life " was probably the 

 most remarkable of Dumas's literary efforts. It dealt simply with the 

 relations which the vegetable sustains to the animal kingdom through 

 the atmosphere, which, though now so familiar, were then not gener- 

 ally understood ; and the late Dr. Jeffries Wyman, who heard the 

 lecture, always spoke of it with the greatest enthusiasm. 



As might be expected, Dumas's oratory found an ample field in the 

 Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate ; and wliether setting forth a pro- 

 ject of recasting the copper coinage or a law of drainage, or ridiculing 

 the absurd theories of homeopathy, he riveted the attention of his col- 

 leagues as completely as he had entranced the students at the Sorbonue. 



In the early part of his life, Dumas was a voluminous writer, and 

 in 1828 published the " Traite de Chimie appliquee aux Arts," in 

 eight large octavo volumes, with an atlas of plates in quarto. But 

 besides this extended treatise, the two volumes of Lectures just referred 

 to are his only important literary works. He published numerous 

 papers in scientific journals, which, as we have seen, produced a most 

 marked effect on the growth of chemical science. But the number of 

 his monographs is not large compared with those of many of his con- 

 temporaries, and his work is to be judged by its importance and influ- 

 ence rather than by the extent of the field which it covers. 



In his capacity of President of the Municipal Council at Paris, of 

 Minister of Agricultural Commerce, of Vice-President of the High 

 Council of Education, and of Perpetual Secretary of the Academy of 

 Sciences, Dumas had abundant ojiportunity for the exercise of his ad- 

 ministrative ability, and no one has questioned his great powers in 

 this direction ; but in regard to his political career we could not ex- 

 pect the same unanimity of opinion. That he was a liberal under 

 Louis Philippe, and a reactionist under Louis Napoleon, may possibly 

 be reconciled with a fixed political faith and an unswerving aim for 



