254 Lavoisier. [lect. ix 



though in different proportions, that the theory of respiration 

 assumed the form in which we now hold it. 



Lavoisier made no reply to Lagrange ; and there were 

 reasons why he did not. 



While quite a young man, he had, against the advice of 

 many of his scientific friends, become connected with the 

 Ferme General, as adjoint to the Fermier Baudon; and in 

 the midst of his glorious scientific activity he had developed 

 remarkable administrative powers. He did notable work of 

 this kind in connection with the Government manufacture 

 of gunpowder. His last memoir on matters connected with 

 respiration, the one just mentioned as written with Sequin, 

 was read before the Academy of Sciences in April, 1790. This 

 and other of his work had been done in the midst of the 

 earlier storm and whirlwind of the Revolution. 



The storm was now thickening, the whirlwind was growing 

 wilder, the days of the great terror were coming on, and 

 Lavoisier, and indeed the Academy, began to have enemies 

 among the sons of the people. In 1792 Fourcroy proposed to 

 purge the Academy of those suspected of leanings towards the 

 old order of things. In 1793, the Convention suppressed it. In 

 those dark days Lavoisier laboured hard to help others in the 

 work of science, but in the tumult he found no opportunity for 

 quiet research. And soon all opportunity was to be taken 

 away from him for ever. 



The Convention arrested Lavoisier and his colleagues, 

 and on May 8, 1794, these were put on their trial and 

 condemned. Execution was swift. On the morning of May 

 the 9th there passed in carts from the Conciergerie to the 

 Place de la Revolution a procession of men to meet their 

 death. As the sharp stroke of the guillotine severed in turn 

 the neck of the fourth of these, there passed away from this 

 world, in his fifty-first year, this master mind of science, who 

 had done so much to draw aside from truth the veil of man's 

 ignorance and wrong thought, and there passed away too the 

 hope of his drawing aside yet other folds of that veil, folds 

 which perhaps wrap us round even to-day. 



