322 LAVOISIER. 



The Academy, as well as the state at large, benefited 

 amply by his mature and practical genius, formed to 

 direct and further the affairs of life as well as the 

 speculations of the closet. All its plans, and all the 

 subjects referred to it by the government received the 

 inestimable advantage of his assistance and advice ; 

 he was a member of the Board of Consultation, and 

 he was the treasurer of the body, in which capacity he 

 introduced new order and exact economy into the 

 management of its concerns. 



These public cares did not distract him from that 

 due to the administration of his private concerns. 

 Agriculture had early in life engaged his attention ; 

 and he set apart a considerable tract of land on his 

 estate, at Vendome, for experimental farming. Of the 

 peasantry upon his property he always took the most 

 kind and parental care ; and to the poor, in general, 

 his charities knew no bounds but those of his means. 

 His house in Paris is described as having been a vast 

 laboratory, in which experiments were always going 

 on : not merely those contrived by himself and sub- 

 servient to his own speculations, but whatever trials 

 any one connected with science desired to have made, 

 and which required the aid of his costly apparatus to 

 perform. Twice a-week his apartments were thrown 

 open to receive scientific men, foreigners as well as 

 natives ; all were received with the utmost courtesy ; 

 and to young men of merit in straitened circumstances 

 this enlightened and truly liberal person was a generous 

 auxiliary. 



The lustre which his labours had shed over the 

 scientific renown of France, the valuable services 

 which he had rendered to her in so many important 

 departments of her affairs^ the virtues which adorned 

 his character and made his philosophy beloved as well 

 as revered, were all destined to meet the reward with 

 which the tyranny of vulgar faction is sure to recom- 

 pense the good and the wise, as often as the base un- 



