ALEMBERT ALEl'l'O. 



th poet Dcstouches, provincial commissary of artil- 

 lery. The child appeared so weak, that the police 

 officer, instead of carrying it to the foundling hospi- 

 tal, conwnitted it to the care of the wife or a poor 

 glazier. Perhaps he had secret instructions to do 

 so; for, although his parents never publicly ac- 

 knowledged him, they did not withdraw their care 

 from him ; on the contrary, his father afterwards 

 settled upon him an income of 1200 livres, a sum 

 which was then sufficient to procure the necessaries 

 ofJife. -He showed much facility in learning, and 

 at the age of four years, was sent to a boarding- 

 school. He was but ten years old, when the princi- 

 pal, a man of merit, declared that he could teach him 

 no more. He entered the college Mazarin at the 

 age of twelve. His talents surprised his instructors, 

 who thought they had found in him a second Pascal 

 to support the cause of the Jansenists, with whom 

 they were closely connected. He wrote, in the 

 first years of his philosophical studies, a commentary 

 on the epistle of Paul to the Romans. But, when 

 he began to study mathematics, this science capti- 

 vated him so much, that he renounced all theolo- 

 gical disputes. He left college, studied law, be- 

 came an advocate, but did not cease to occupy him- 

 self with mathematics, though he was almost en- 

 tirely destitute of property. A pamphlet on the 

 motion of solid bodies in a fluid, and another on the 

 integral calculus, which he laid before the academy 

 of sciences in 1739 and 1740, showed him in so fa- 

 vourable a light, that the academy received him, in 

 1741, into the number of its members. He soon 

 after published his famous works on dynamics, Traite 

 de dynamique, and on fluids, Traite des fluides. In 

 1746, his Theory of the Winds obtained the prize 

 offered by the academy of Berlin, of which he was 

 chosen a member. Among his communications to 

 this academy, two are highly distinguished that on 

 pure analysis, and the one which treats of the vibra- 

 tions of strings. He also took a part in the investi- 

 gations which completed the discoveries of Newton 

 respecting the motion of the heavenly bodies. Whilst 

 Euler and Clairaut were engaged in these, he deli- 

 vered, in 1747, to the academy of sciences, a solution 

 of the problem proposed to determine what distur- 

 bances are occasioned by the mutual attraction of the 

 planets, in their elliptical revolutions round the sun, 

 and what their motion would be, if they were acted 

 on only by the attractive power of the sun. He 

 continued these labours for several years, and pub- 

 lished, at intervals, various important astronomical 

 treatises, including one on the precession of the equi- 

 noxes ; also his experiment on the resistance of fluid 

 Ixi. lies, and a number of dissertations on other sub- 

 ji cts ; works, of the value of which there is but one 

 opinion among scholars, but which produced a cold- 

 ness on the part of Euler and others. In the first 

 fervour of his fondness for mathematics, he had, for 

 a time, become indifferent to belles lettres ; but his 

 * arly love of them soon revived, after his most im- 

 portant discoveries, when mathematical investigations 

 ceased to afford him so rich a harvest of new truths, 

 or he felt the necessity of relaxation. He entered on 

 this new career, with his introduction to the Ency- 

 clopedic, and it will always be a pattern of style in 

 treating of scientific subjects, uniting, as it does, 

 elegance and precision. D'A. comprised, in his in- 

 troduction, the essence of all his knowledge of 

 mathematics, philosophy, and literature, acquired in 

 a study of twenty years, and this was all that was 

 known at that time, in France, on these subjects. 

 He undertook to prepare the mathematical part of 

 the Encyclopedic, and wrote a great number of ex- 

 cellent articles. His name being prefixed to tnis 

 work he shared its fate, and exposed himself to 



numberless quarrels. D'A. soon after entered the 

 French academy, and continued to cultivate the 

 belles lettres, together with mathematics. His lite- 

 rary works, on account of their profoundness and 

 accuracy, met with the approbation of all sound 

 minds ; they are distinguished by purity of language, 

 clearness of style, and force of thought. Although 

 he experienced much persecution on account of his 

 connexion with the Encyclopedic, and was neglected 

 by the government of his country, he would not 

 accept the invitations of Frederic II. to settle in 

 Berlin, nor the offers of the Russian empress, who 

 desired him to take charge of the education of her 

 son, with a pension of 100,000 livres. His country 

 learned his worth from foreigners ; and the king of 

 Prussia gave him a pension, when the academy of 

 sciences, at Paris, refused him the salary to which he 

 was justly entitled. Though his income was always 

 moderate, his beneficence was great. He lived 

 above thirty years, in the plainest manner, in the 

 house of the woman who had brought him up, and 

 left these lodgings only when his health compelled 

 him. His long attachment to Mile de 1'Espinasse 

 shows that he was not destitute of a feeling heart. 

 Valuing independence more than any thing else, he 

 avoided the society of the great, and sought only 

 that into which he could enter with cheerfulness and 

 frankness. The reputation which he enjoyed, the 

 intimate friendship between him and Voltaire, and 

 his great merits, procured him many enemies. He 

 had a literary contest with J. J. Rousseau, on ac- 

 count of an article on Geneva, intended for the En- 

 cyclopedic. His religious cliaracter seems to have 

 been that of a sober deist. He died of the stone, 

 being unwilling to submit to an operation, in 1783, 

 in the 66th year of his age. Frederic II., who had, 

 in 1763, become personally acquainted with D'A., 

 maintained a correspondence with him, which was 

 published after the death of both, and is very inter- 

 esting. The enemies of D'A., with a view of depre- 

 ciating his merits, called him a good geometrician 

 among the literati, and a good belles lettres scholar 

 among the geometricians. The truth is, that his 

 rank is somewhat higher in geometry than in belles 

 lettres ; but, owing to the influence of style upon the 

 fate of writings, his works in the department of 

 belles lettres will continue to interest longer than his 

 mathematical treatises. The former are collected in 

 the CEuvres phiiosophiques, historiques, et litteraires 

 de D'Alembert, 18 vols. Paris, 1809. Condorcet has 

 drawn his character in his Eloge. 



ALHWJON, capital of the French department of 

 the Onie, on the Sarthe, contains 1528 houses, and 

 13,500 inhabitants, a college, a societe ^emulation, a 

 library, and considerable manufactories of bone-lace, 

 etamine, woollen stockings, leather, &c. The dia- 

 monds of A., so called, are found in the neighbouring 

 quarries. 3000 women are employed here in manu- 

 facturing point-lace. Also a kind of linen, toile 

 d'dlencon, enjoys much reputation. The neighbour- 

 ing country has become richer by the division of the 

 large estates, and the town itself more industrious. 



ALENIO, Julius ; a Jesuit, born at Brescia, in the 

 territory of Venice. He was a missionary in China, 

 arrived, in 1610, at Macao, and left several works 

 in the Chinese language. He died 1649. 



ALEPPO, or HALEP ; capital of the Asiatic pasha- 

 lie of the same name, which is the second in the 

 Turkish empire, and comprises the northern part of 

 Syria, including mount Lebanon. It contains 9,800 

 square miles, and 450,000 inhabitants. The Oron- 

 tes, abounding in fish, is the only river of the pasha- 

 lie ; which, under any other government, would long 

 since have been connected, by a canal runningthrough 

 a le.vel plain, with the Euphrates. The country 



