THE 



EDINBURGH NEW 

 PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL. 



Biographical Memoirs of M. Halle'* and M. Corvisart. 

 By Baron Cuvier. 



1. Biographical Memoir of M- Hallk'. 



Jean Noel Halle^, born at Paris, on the 6th January 1754, 

 was of a family, several of whom had become distinguished in 

 the artsf . His father, grandfather, and one of his uncles, had 

 been excellent painters, and he had himself applied to drawing 

 with great success. This inclination was naturally favoured by 

 a pretty long residence at Rome with his father, who was di- 

 rector of the French Academy in that city, and, in fact, he 

 studied there, with great assiduity, the monuments of ancient 

 art, and the works of the great artists of the sixteenth century ; 

 but, among his father's acquaintance, he at the same time met 

 with two men of science, the French Franciscans, Jacquier and 

 Lesueur, the commentators of Newton, and their conversation 

 opened to his mind another prospect. He was always characte- 

 rized by a remarkable accuracy of judgment; and the sciences 

 founded on calculation and experiment, offered to this predomi- 

 nant quality of his mind greater attraction than the arts, whose 

 principal source will always be a lively imagination, and a great 



• Read at the Royal Insticute of France on the 11th June 1827. 



+ Claude Guy Halle, his grandfather ; Noel Halle, his father ; the two 

 Restouts, Jouvenet and La Fosse, his kinsmen. In the number was alsio' 

 the poet La Fosse, the author of Manlius. 



OCTOBER DECEMBER 1829- A 



