4SS 



BAILLY, JEAN SYLVAIN. 



BAILY, FRANCIS. 



488 



but he prudently took counsel of La Noue, the actor, who advised 

 him to devote himself to science. Bailly followed his advice, and to 

 good purpose, as his rapid progress showed. In 1762 he was able to 

 present to the Academy some lunar observations ; he was admitted to 

 the Academy in 1763, and in the same year reduced Lacaille's observa- 

 tions of zodiacal stars, and began to turn his attention to the theory 

 of the satellites of Jupiter. This was the subject of the prize offered 

 by the Academy for 1764 ; and Bailly, by applying the forumlse which 

 Clairaut had employed in his lunar theory, was enabled to deduce 

 from the hypothesis of gravitation several of the inequalities observed 

 by Bradley and Wargentin. The prize was gained by Lagrange, who, 

 by a new and more powerful analysis of his own, carried the theory 

 much farther; but the attempt of Bailly immediately placed him 

 among the successors of Newton. Hig essay ' Sur la Theorie des Satel- 

 lites de Jupiter' was published in 1766. In 1771 he wrote a curious 

 and original paper on the light of the satellites of Jupiter, which he 

 had measured by finding how much the object-glass of a telescope 

 must be diminished in order to make these bodies disappear. In 1775 

 he published the first part of his ' History of Astronomy.' This work 

 was c >mpleted in 1787 by the publication of his ' Indian Astronomy ; ' 

 and the works which subsequently came from his pen were ' Lettres 

 Mir I'Atlantide,' 1779; 'Lettres sur 1'Origine des Sciences,' 1777; 

 jur les Fables et sur leur Histoire,' written in 1781-82, published 

 posthumously in 1799. Their author was a candidate for the secretary- 

 ship of the Academy in 1781, at which time Condorcet was preferred 

 by the exertions of D'Alembert; but Bailly was elected to the 

 Acaddmi^ Francaise in 1784, and to the Acaddmie dea Inscriptions, 

 &c., in 1785 he and Fontenelle being the only two instances of 

 Frenchmen who belonged at once to all the three academies, and him- 

 self the only academician whose bust adorned their library during 

 the life of the original. Bailly furnished reports to the Academy of 

 Sciences on animal magnetism (1784), and on the plan of a new Hotel- 

 Dieu (1786), as well as his 'Eloges' of Charles V., Moliere, Corneille, 

 Lacaille, Leibnitz, Cook, and Gresset, which were collected and 

 published in 3 vola., 8vo, 1770. 



At the election of the States-General in 1789, Bailly was the first 

 chosen for Paris. He was chosen president of the Tiers-Etat 

 (June 17, 1789), the day after that body declared itself a National 

 Assembly. He held this office during the memorable sittings at the 

 Jeu-de-Paume on the 20th, and at the church of St.-Louison the 23rd, 

 during the personal attempt of the king to disperse the Assembly; 

 at the consolidation of the three orders on the 27th, and till July 2nd. 

 His conduct pleased the people of Paris, who elected him mayor of 

 their city on the 15th of July, being the time when the king visited 

 Paris after the fall of the Bastille (July 1 4th). At this period Mirabeau, 

 Lafayette, and Bailly were the three most marked men of the revolu- 

 tion ; and Mignet calls the first the tribune of the people of Paris, the 

 second the general, and the third the magistrate. 



During tho period of his mayoralty, Bailly did not completely 

 satisfy either extreme, being charged with devotion to and contempt 

 of the royal cause by the two parties. The most remarkable incident 

 in his political career was that of the 17th of July, 1791. The attempt 

 at escape on the part of the king had irritated the republican party, 

 and the gathering of foreign troops on the frontier had lent colour to 

 their violence. A tumultuous assembly, headed by all the chiefs of 

 the Jacobins (as they were afterwards called), assembled in the 

 Champ-d-;-Mars to petition for the dethronement of the king. These 

 were, after remonstrance, fired on by the National Guard under 

 Lafayette and Bailly. The account of Bailly himself is, that the 

 firing took place against his consent. 



The measure of the 17th wag approved by the Assembly, but 

 Bailly offered his resignation on the 19th of September, and finally 

 relinquished his mayoralty on the 16th of November. He either 

 travelled abroad or retired to Nantes, according to different accounts, 

 till towards the middle of 1793. During this time he compiled 

 memoirs of the revolution and its causes, which were published iu 

 1804. The execution of Louis XVI., on the 21st of January 1793, 

 made Bailly apprehensive as to his own safety. He wrote to Laplace, 

 who had retired to Melun, wishing to know whether he might safely 

 come there. Laplace answered that he might ; but, in the meanwhile, 

 the insurrection of the 31st of May established the armed power of 

 the Jacobins, and Laplace wrote again to Bailly, warning him not to 

 come, as a detachment of the revolutionary army was at Melun. Iu 

 spite of this warning he had the imprudence to venture. He was 

 recognised by a soldier in the streets, seized, and conducted after some 

 delay to Paris. He was charged, as well with the affair of the 17th 

 of July, already alluded to, as with conspiring in favour of the late 

 royal family. Being produced as a witness on the trial of Marie 

 Antoinette, he denied all accession to any scheme of the Utter nature, 

 and declared his conviction of the falsehood of all the charges brought 

 against the queen. His own trial took place on the 10th of November. 

 The day preceding he published his justification, which is to be found 

 in the 'Proccs Fameux,' vol. it The next day, or the next but one, 

 he underwent the common fate, attended by circumstances of unusual 

 cruelty and insult. His demeanour is represented as having been 

 perfectly calm ; and he is said to have answered the remark, " Bailly, 

 you tremble," addressed to him by one of hig persecutors, with, " My 

 friend, 'tig with cold." 



Even in the time of his greatest popularity, Bailly appears to have had 

 enemies, who propagated the most absurd charges. His friends affirm 

 that he was retired, simple, and rather approaching to severity. But 

 the unusual and solid respect paid him by his countrymen before his 

 political life began the arduous employments which fell thick upon 

 him at the very first moment when a plebeian could be called into 

 public life and the furious anger which he excited among the savages 

 of 1793 are so many strong presumptions that he must have been 

 no common character, even among the distinguished. 



The character of M. Bailly as a writer is that of one of the most 

 interesting and elegant among many. On the history of science no 

 man has treated so as to approach him in the agreeable qualities of 

 style. But his system is baseless, being built only upon surmises or 

 conjectural interpretations of fact. His most remarkable conjecture 

 is, that some nation, whose name is now lost, was the common original 

 of the Egyptian, Chaldean, Hindoo, and Chinese astronony. When 

 his ' History of Astronomy ' appeared, the elegance of the style, and 

 the plausibility of the hypothesis, caught the whole world ; but tho 

 praise which he received from the English and French writers had 

 little justification one reason for it was that there was no work on 

 the subject in existence which could claim tha title of history. The 

 work of Delambre soon dispelled the mist from the eyes of scientific 

 men. Still, were we to collect the sentiments of our most celebrated 

 works of reference on the merits of Bailly's ' History,' and compare 

 them with those expressed iu France at the time of its appearance, as 

 well as at the present day, the rea'ler would smile to see that we have 

 been receiving the light of a star which has long been extinguished, a 

 phenomenon as likely to happen iu morals as iu astronomy. 



* BAILY, EDWARD HODGES, R.A., was born at Bristol, March 10, 

 1773. Having early in life acquired the rudiments of the art of 

 modelling, Mr. Baily commenced his career as an artist by the produc- 

 tion in his native city of small wax portrait busts ; but wishing to 

 extend his knowledge of art, he obtained an introduction to Flaxman 

 in 1807, and that eminent sculptor was so pleased with the specimens 

 of his skill which he submitte d to him, that he incited him to London, 

 and for nearly two years admitted him into his studio as a pupil. At 

 the same time Mr. Baily entered as a student at the Royal Academy, 

 where in 1809 he obtained a silver medal, and in 1811 carried off the 

 gold medal with the stipend of 50. At first he chiefly exhibited 

 classical figures (Apollos, Nymphs, &c.), which were much admired for 

 their grace, simplicity, correct proportions, and careful execution ; but 

 the work which fixed his rank among the first sculptors of the English 

 school, and rendered him generally popular, was the well-known figure 

 of ' Eve at the Fountain ' now in the rooms of the Bristol Literary 

 Institution. This work was exhibited at the Royal Academy Exhi- 

 bition in 1818. The year before it appeared he hail been elected an 

 Associate of the Royal Academy; in 1820 he was elected an Acade- 

 mician. About this time he was employed by George IV. to execute 

 the sculpture in the front of Buckingham Palace, as well as some for 

 the interior of the palace, and on the triumphal arch which stood in 

 front of it, but is now removed to Hyde Park Corner. During his 

 later years Mr. Baily hag devoted the chief share of his -time to the 

 production of busts and portrait statues. Many of tho principal 

 statues which have been erected of late years in London and the pro- 

 vinces have been executed by him. Among these may bo mentioned 

 those of Nelson, Telford, the Earl of Egremont, Earl Grey, and tho 

 seated statue of Lord Mansfield at Chelmsford ; but many others 

 might be named of equal and some perhaps of higher excellence. But 

 Mr. Baily has seldom allowed an Exhibition of the Royal Academy to 

 pass without sending at least one poetic design, and some of them 

 have ranked among the happiest and most original which have been 

 seen there. His ' Eve listening to the Voice ' (the companion to the 

 ' Eve at the Fountain ') was exhibited in 1841 ; hU ' Psyche,' ' Helena,' 

 ' Herculej casting Hylas into the Sea," the ' Sleeping Nymph,' ' Mater- 

 nal Love,' ' Girl preparing for the Bath,' &c., may be named as among 

 the best known of these; but the most remarkable, and iu some 

 respects one of the very finest works of recent English sculpture, is 

 one of his latest works, ' The Graces Seated." 



BAILY, FRANCIS, was born April 23, 1774, at Newtmry in Berk- 

 shire, where his father was a banker. Mr. Baily is a remarkable 

 instance of successful application of talent, for while actively engaged 

 in business, as a stock-broker, in which ho accumulated a large fortune, 

 he gained a first-rate reputation iu one species of mathematical appli- 

 cation, and laid the foundation of another, to bo completed after his 

 retirement from the Stock Exchange at the age of fifty-one. He had 

 a good working knowledge of mathematics, in all the elementary 

 branches, and an extensive acquaintance with English writers on the 

 subject. He first published his 'Tables for the Purchasing and 

 Renewing of Leases.' (1802, 1807, 1812, 8vo); next, the 'Doctrine of 

 Interest and Annuities' (1808, 4to); then the 'Doctrine of Life 

 Annuities ami Assurances' 1810, 8vo); lastly, 'Appendix to the 

 Doctrine of Life Annuities ami Assurances' (1813, 8vo) ; also, 'An 

 Account of the several Life Assurance Companies' (1810, 1811, 8vo), 

 which is an extract from the work on Lifo Assurance. He retired 

 from business in 1825. From this time till his death, he was engaged 

 with all the energy of his character in the promotion of astronomy 

 Between the ages of fifty-one and seventy, when most men in his circum- 

 stances would have been enjoying the leisure to which commercial men 



