D'ALEMBERT. 391 



The young D'Alembert, who probably took his 

 name from his nurse, was sent at the age of twelve to 

 the college of the Quatre Nations, where the professors, 

 at that time of warm controversy, belonged to the 

 Jansenist party ; and observing the early appearance 

 of genius in their young pupil, they took pains to im- 

 bue him with a taste for polemical subjects. In the 

 first year of his studies in philosophy he had written 

 an able and learned commentary of St. Paul's Epistle 

 to the Romans, and as he showed a general capacity 

 for science, the worthy enemies of the Jesuits, finding 

 to their great delight that all profound learning was 

 not engrossed by that body, cherished a hope that a 

 new Pascal had been given to them for renewing 

 their victories over their learned and subtle adversaries. 

 It was with this view that they made him betimes 

 study the mathematics, in which Pascal had so greatly 

 and so early excelled ; but they had to deal with a 

 less docile subject than the Port-Royal had formerly 

 found in young Blaise, for they soon perceived that it 

 was in vain to make him quit his figures and his cal- 

 culations and take to the divinity of the schools ; and 

 all their descriptions of the tendency which such 

 studies had to " dry up the heart"* failed to make him 

 abandon what had taken so strong a hold of his whole 

 mind. 



When he left the college he showed the first re- 

 markable instance of that kind and even tender dispo- 

 sition which distinguished him through life, and is 

 another example to rescue the geometrician's pursuits 

 from the reproach of hardening the heart. He found 

 himself solitary in the world, without any kindred that 

 acknowledged him, and he reverted to her whose care 

 had reared and comforted his earlier years ; he took 



* These good fathers did not quite use the language they had employed 

 to turn away Fenelon from " se laisser ensorceler par les attraits diaboli- 

 ques de la geometric." Certainly it is a proof of the evil one's ubiquity 

 that we should find him lurking in this of all places. 



