XXXV11 



were dismissed he would retire with them. Monge was more than 

 once the protector of the school. The Emperor, when he gained 

 this title, felt strongly that the students were his enemies, and seems 

 to have meditated their dispersion. "We had work enough," said 

 Monge to him, "to make them republicans; give us a little time to 

 form them into monarchists : you yourself must agree that you 

 have turned that corner rather sharply.'* Napoleon did nothing : 

 and he lived to call the school the goose which laid him the golden 

 eggs. 



Biot's next step in life was to a chair of mathematics at Beauvais. 

 At this place he gained the acquaintance and correspondence of 

 Laplace by an offer to correct the sheets of the 'Mecanique Celeste.' 

 He has given, in the Journal des Savans, an anecdote which is very 

 honourable to Laplace. While at Beauvais he married the sister of 

 his friend Brisson, whose family resided there. Neither had any 

 money, either in possession or reversion ; so that all except lawyers 

 will share Biot's wonder when he found that the notary had con- 

 trived a contract of marriage twelve pages long. Madame Biot had 

 been very well educated, and the little stories and dramas which she 

 wrote for her children were celebrated in her circle. She learnt 

 German in order that her husband, at the desire of Berthollet, 

 might publish a French edition of Fischer's work on physics ; but 

 the actual translation, watched of course by her husband, was her 

 own. The first edition was published in 1805. In 1799 Biot was 

 appointed an examiner of the Polytechnic School; in 1800 he was 

 removed to Paris as Professor of Physics at the College de France, 

 and was made an associate of the Institute, of which he became a 

 member in 1803. The other dates which we ought to give are as 

 follows. He was appointed, with Arago, to the continuation of the 

 measure of the meridian, in August 1806; with Mathieu, to de- 

 termine the pendulum at Bordeaux, August 1808. He became 

 editor of the Journal des Savants, May 1816. He went to Scot- 

 land and the Shetland Islands for the measurement of the pendu- 

 lum in 1817; to Dunkirk, with Arago, to act in concert with an 

 English commission for the determination of the latitude, in 1818; 

 to Illyria and the Balearic Islands, for the pendulum, and to 

 Spain for the repetition of measures connected with the great survey, 

 in 1824-25. He was made a Foreign Member of this Society in 



