232 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



measurement of the base line has not been less beautiful during 

 the last few days. At Lieursaint we met with Prony and 

 Bougainville, the celebrated traveller, who at the age of sixty is 

 still eagerly contemplating a second voyage, in which his son, a 

 youth of fifteen, is to accompany him. ... In the course of a 

 fortnight, Delambre will leave with his assistants for Perpignan, 

 where Mechain will by that time have completed the last five 

 or six triangles, and where the southern base will be measured 

 twice in succession before the winter. As I am intending to 

 embark from Marseilles in the autumn, I shall gladly avail 

 myself of Delambre's invitation to stop at Perpignan on my 

 way and assist in some of the observations. I intend to provide 

 myself for this purpose with a repeating circle by Lenoir.' 



Even a hasty glance at the state of science in Paris at this 

 time will show how many events were transpiring which were 

 calculated to excite the interest and stimulate the zeal of 

 Humboldt. 



Notwithstanding the violent overthrow of every moral prin- 

 ciple and the bloody scenes of the reign of terror, when even the 

 Academy was powerless to protect the lives of some of its most 

 noted members, and Bochart von Saron, Lavoisier, La Roche- 

 foucauld, Malesherbes, Bailly, and Condorcet fell victims to the 

 popular fury, notwithstanding the sardonic expression of the 

 frantic judge, 'Nous n'avons pas besoin de savans,' Paris 

 was yet at the close of the century the metropolis of the exact 

 sciences. Lalande, in writing to Von Zach 1 on January 26, 

 1798, remarks: 'The love of mathematics is daily on the 

 increase, not only with us but in the army. The result of this 

 was unmistakably apparent in our last campaigns. Bonaparte 

 himself has a mathematical head, and though all who study 

 this science may not become geometricians like Laplace and 

 Lagrange, or heroes like Bonaparte, there is yet left an 

 influence upon the mind which enables them to accomplish 

 more than they could possibly have achieved without this 

 training. Our mathematical schools are good, and successfully 

 accomplish their main object in the diffusion of mathematical 

 knowledge. Bonaparte attends with great regularity the sit- 



1 ' Allgemeine geographische Ephemeriden/ vol. i. p. 346. 



