ABBE; NOLLET. 517 



tion about the court, which otherwise might prove unat- 

 tainable to the simple student of science, letters or art. 

 Dufay had been his preceptor, guide and friend, and left 

 him stamped with his own charming qualities, to which 

 Nollet added an individual genius for simplifying and ex- 

 pounding physical science, which made his lecture-rooms 

 at Versailles the resort of the gay French court; and this, 

 not because he had become tutor to Monsieur the Dauphin, 

 nor even because his experiments were astonishing, but 

 because his talk was delightful and witty. There is many 

 an old print representing the Abbe in his curled wig and 

 skull cap, with his black gown barely concealing the richly- 

 laced coat and rapier beneath, daintily conducting Madame 

 la Marquise to the electrical machine, where, to the edifi- 

 cation of the other assembled grandes dames, she will re- 

 ceive, with a little grimace, a little shock which will not 

 disarrange a patch on her face, nor disturb a fold of her fur- 

 belows; or, perhaps, inviting Monsieur le Comte to wit- 

 ness the spirits burst into flame beneath his sword point, 

 or to laugh at the overthrow, by the fierce discharge, of 

 some stolid serf wearing the king's uniform. Indeed 

 there was no startling experiment of Hauksbee, Gray, 

 Dufay or Bose which Nollet did not repeat, and in many 

 instances on a scale greater than the originator had ever 

 attempted. 



There was a great contrast between this French philoso- 

 pher of the salon and the Dutch philosopher pedagogue: 

 as different from one another as both were from that Ger- 

 man "wizard" Bose; and yet alike in each being a phil- 

 osopher, which Von Kleist, whose discovery has contrib- 

 uted so much to the immortality of the memories of both 

 of them, certainly was not. 



But, at the time when Van Musschenbroeck wrote his 

 famous letter to Reaumur, which Nollet made public in 

 France, neither writer nor promulgator had ever heard of 

 the Pomeranian Dean and his medicine vial. The Brit- 

 ish Magazine, the Universal Magazine, the London Maga- 



