36 A CHEMICAL TRIAD. 



the exchequer a fixed sum on behalf of certain things to- 

 bacco being one. The Fermier-General then, whoever he 

 might be, held the monopoly of the sale of tobacco for his 

 own district. For many generations the post in question had 

 been held by the family of Lavoisier. They grew wealthy 

 upon it, which may be taken as a proof that they found it 

 a good thing. No flagrant charge of impropriety was ever 

 brought against the Lavoisiers. People shook their heads 

 sometimes, smiled, and remarked that farmer -generalship 

 was a fine trade they wished they had the like ; but if the 

 old Lavoisier had been a little close, young Antoine Laurent, 

 when the office devolved on him, was so generous thought 

 so little of amassing wealth, and did so much good 

 that it would have been difficult to find a rich government 

 official with fewer enemies. Then, finally, when the storm 

 of revolution came, and the lucrative sinecure, with others of 

 its stamp, was swept away, Lavoisier treated the matter so 

 lightly speaking of it as a positive gain, and as giving him 

 more time to cultivate philosophy that the few who had been 

 envious of him were constrained to admit Antoine Laurent 

 Lavoisier to be what his friends and the world knew long 

 before a philosopher. 



At the period to which these remarks apply, Lavoisier was 

 living at Paris, whither he had come some years before, the 

 better to follow out, in the society of congenial minds, some 

 experiments in which he was engaged. Being himself rich, 

 he threw open his house and his laboratory to those who, 

 with similar tastes to his own, had fewer means of gratifying 

 them. One great disadvantage under which a chemist is 

 placed, in comparison with workers in other branches of phi- 

 losophy, is the expense of the instruments with which he has 

 to work. Many a student of pure mathematics has positively 

 no instruments. If he have practically to apply his mathema- 

 tics, a few fixed unchanging instruments are all he requires. 

 Give the botanist a pocket lens, and, if he be luxurious, a 



