35 



LAVOISIER. 



ANTOINE LAURENT LAVOISIER, the philosopher who gave 

 the final coup de grace to the wild mysticism of alchemy, and 

 laid the foundation of modern chemistry as we find it, was an 

 extraordinary character. He was also an unfortunate man. 

 He lost his head by a stroke of the guillotine in the stormiest 

 part of the first French republic, and because of a tobacco 

 question ! Yes, it was even so. For this cause, ostensibly, 

 the wise, the generous, the benevolent Antoine Laurent La- 

 voisier died. He was said by his enemies to have watered 

 his tobacco ! 



It was in the year 1794, when the notorious triumvirate 

 of public safety were committing their atrocities when to be 

 good, or well-born, or rich, was each a sufficient cause to be 

 held in suspicion by the triumvirate that Antoine Laurent 

 Lavoisier and his friend Berthollet were engaged in making 

 some of those discoveries which have rendered them both so 

 celebrated. The house of Lavoisier was where they prose- 

 cuted their experiments. That house was in Paris. Men 

 engaged in any deep pursuit usually take little heed of poli- 

 tical strife. They live in a world of abstraction all their 

 own, and are not usually much influenced or affected by what 

 is taking place outside their own sphere. 



Lavoisier was like our own Cavendish in one respect he 

 was a scientific man, and he inherited riohes. His family had 

 for many generations held the post of Fermier-General an 

 office, I need hardly say, abolished before the time of which I 

 write, because the terrible revolution swept all those posts of 

 the old regime away. Would that all the crimes to be laid to 

 the charge of the French revolutionists were so venial as this ! 



The office of Fermier-General was of this kind. A re- 

 sponsible individual agreed, for a consideration, to pay into 



