204 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



service of your Empire. . . . That God may ever have 

 your Majesties in His holy keeping is the constant 

 prayer of your earnest well-wisher and humble friend, 

 M. F. Maury". Thus came to an end Maury's attempt 

 to found a "New Virginia" in Mexico. 



Having declined Maximilian's invitation to continue 

 in his service, Maury began to cast about for some other 

 way of earning money to support his family. The first 

 thing that suggested itself to his mind was to make use 

 of his new discoveries in the electric mine. Though 

 the English engineer Holmes had carefully guarded the 

 secrets embodied in these new ideas which had been 

 intrusted to him by Maury, yet he had done nothing in 

 their exploitation and a clear field was thus left for 

 Maury to attempt to secure their adoption by the 

 various European governments. He accordingly con- 

 ceived the idea of opening a sort of school for instructing 

 any representatives that foreign countries might send 

 to him, for the fee of 500 pounds per country. This 

 offer was made by him through a circular, which he sent 

 out April 25, 1866 to various diplomats in London, 

 recommending three representatives from each country. 

 He was almost immediately invited by the French 

 government to come to Paris to teach its representatives, 

 for which instruction the sum of 25,000 francs was to be 

 paid. Maury accepted this offer, and in the course of 

 his lectures, given on May 21 and 28, 1866, he demon- 

 strated the effectiveness of his electric mines on the River 

 Seine at Saint Cloud in the presence of the Emperor 

 Napoleon. This visit led to his being invited to become 

 a French citizen, and his being offered a position in the 

 Meteorological Observatory in Paris. His family was 

 not willing for him to accept this position but preferred 



