94 Mr. Colquhoim on the Life and Writi?igs [Feb. 



the inaccuracy of his analysis, and to persuade him to alter its 

 results. Finding that he remained unshaken in his opinion, 

 " How, Sir ! " exclaimed Robespierre, " darest thou affirm that 

 muddy brandy to be free from poison? " Berthollet immediately 

 filtrated a glass of it, and in his presence drank it off. " Thou 

 art daring, Sir, to drink that liquor," said again the ferocious 

 President of the Committee ; " I dared much more," replied 

 Berthollet, *' when I signed my name to that Report." This 

 was indeed to take the hungry lion by the beard, and it is pro- 

 bable that a revolutionary tribunal would soon have rewarded 

 his integrity, were it not that the same shield which defended the 

 physician of Louis XI, protected also the life of our chemist. 

 The knowledge of each was necessary to the existence of the 

 tyrants whom they had the misfortune to serve. 



During the early years of the revolution, we find Berthollet 

 employed by his country in many important public situations. 

 In 1792, he was named one of the Commissioners of the Mint, 

 into the processes of which he introduced considerable improve- 

 ment ; in 1794, he was appointed a member of the Commission 

 of Agriculture and the Arts ; and in the course of the same year 

 lie was chosen Professor of Chemistry at the Polytechnic 

 School, and also in the Normal School. In these situations, 

 however, it must be confessed that his mode of communicating 

 his views was not adapted to the level of a general audience. He 

 was too apt to presuppose a degree of knowledge or talent in 

 those listening to him, which it is vain to expect in any public 

 audience ; and of course the Professor dwelt too little upon 

 elementary explanation and detail. A teacher should suit his 

 discourse at least to the ordinary average of mind which he is 

 called upon to instruct, and if he commence in a strain too high, 

 his hearers are not carried along; with him as he unfolds his 

 views. It is on this account that men of the greatest genius 

 have frequently been the least successful instructors, and it is 

 certain that the faults just mentioned accompanied the lectures 

 of M. Berthollet. 



The same year is remarkable in the life of Berthollet and in 

 the history of science, the intimate connexion between which we 

 have often already had occasion to remark, by the establishment 

 of the celebrated Annales de Chimie, a work to which, from the 

 first, he has been a principal contributor. This is a journal 

 which, ever since its formation, has continued so distinguished 

 for the number of its original and important memoirs, that it has 

 yet no rival amid all the hundred scientific periodicals now pub- 

 lishing in Europe. To supply such memoirs as these was not 

 indeed the ostensible purpose of its institution, but, as the Intro- 

 duction informs us, to communicate to the chemists of France 

 the progress of the science throughout Europe. It is extremely 



