1814.] ^^- Lagrange. 329 



offered entire to D'Alembert. Th-^ reason is that this prince who 

 at his leisure hours cultivated poetry and the arts, had no idea ot 

 the sciences, though he considered himself obliged to protect them 

 as a king. He had very little respect for the mathematics agamst 

 which he wrote three pa^es in verse, and sent them to D Alembert 

 himself who deferred writing an answer till the termuiation ot the 

 siege of Schweidnitz; because he thought it would be too much to 

 have both Austria and the mathematics on his hands at once. iNot- 

 withstanding the prodigious reputation of Euler, we see, from tlie 

 king's correspondence with Voltaire, tiiat he gave him no otner 

 aopellation than his jiarrow-mirided geometer, whose ears were not 

 capable of feeling the dcUcaaj of poetry. To which Voltaire le- 

 nlies • JVe are a small number of adepts who know one another ; 

 the rest are profane. We see well that Voltaire who had written 

 so well in praise of Newton, endeavours in this place to flatter 

 Frederick. He enters out of complaisance into the ideas ot tms 

 prince, who wished to put at the head of his academy a man who 

 had at least some pretensions to literature. Fearing that a mathe- 

 matician would not take sufficient interest in the direction ot hte- 

 rary labours; and that a man of literature would have been still 

 worse placed at the head of a society composed in part of philoso- 

 phers of whose language he was ignorant; on that account he 

 divided the situation, and put two persons in it, that it might be 

 completely filled. 



* (To be continued.) 



Article II. 



On the Discoveni of the Atomic Theory. By Thomas Thomson, 



M.D. F.R.S. 



In the Philosophical Magazine for January, 1S14, p. 54, pub- 

 lished on the first of February, there is a paper entitled The Dis- 

 covery of the Atomic Theory claimed for Mr. Higgins, by John 

 Nash tsq ; on which I conceive it to be necessary for me to 

 make' some remarks. These 1 should have jiublished in the Num- 

 bcr of the Annals of PhiUmphy for IMarch, but could not find 

 room for them ; and in our last Number 1 thought there was sufli- 

 cient controversial matter without any addition from me. 



Mr. Nash, in the paper alluded to, quotes a note of mme from 

 the Amtals of Philosophy, vol. ii. p. 445, which 1 think it neces- 

 sary to transcribe. . 



" The work of Higgins on Phlogiston is ccrtanily possessed of 

 much merit, and anticipated some of the most striking subsequent 

 discoveries. But when he wrote, metallic oxides were so little 

 known, and so few exact analyses existed, that it was not possible 

 to be ac(iuaiiited with the grand fact, that oxygen, &c. always 



