Paris 79 



balances, equal at every moment to the gain in the third vessel 

 from the formation or deposition of the water, it not being yet 

 ascertained whether the water be actually made or deposited. 

 If accurate (of which I must confess I have little conception), 

 it is a noble machine. Monsieur Lavoisier, when the structure 

 of it was commended, said, Mais out, monsieur, et meme par un 

 artiste Francois ! with an accent of voice that admitted their 

 general inferiority to ours. It is well known that we have a 

 considerable exportation of mathematical and other curious 

 instruments to every part of Europe, and to France amongst 

 the rest. Nor is this new, for the apparatus with which the 

 French academicians measured a degree in the polar circle 

 was made by Mr. George Graham.^ Another engine Monsieur 

 Lavoisier showed us was an electrical apparatus enclosed in a 

 balloon, for trying electrical experiments in any sort of air. 

 His pond of quicksilver is considerable, containing 250 lb., and 

 his water apparatus very great, but his furnaces did not seem 

 so well calculated for the higher degrees of heat as some others 

 I have seen. I was glad to find this gentleman splendidly 

 lodged, and with every appearance of a man of considerable 

 fortune. This ever gives one pleasure: the employments of a 

 state can never be in better hands than of men who thus apply 

 the superfluity of their wealth. From the use that is generally 

 made of money, one would think it the assistance of all others 

 of the least consequence in affecting any business truly useful 

 to mankind, many of the great discoveries that have enlarged the 

 horizon of science having been in this respect the result of means 

 seemingly inadequate to the end: the energetic exertions of 

 ardent minds bursting from obscurity, and breaking the bands 

 inflicted by poverty, perhaps by distress. To the hotel des 

 Invalids, the major of which establishment had the goodness 

 to show the whole of it. In the evening to Monsieur Lomond, 

 a very ingenious and inventive mechanic who has made an 

 improvement of the jenny for spinning cotton. Common 

 machines are said to make too hard a thread for certain fabrics, 

 but this forms it loose and spong}'. In electricity he has 

 made a remarkable discovery: you write two or three words on 

 a paper; he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine 

 enclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electro- 

 meter, a small fine pith ball; a wire connects v/ilh a similar 

 cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife, 

 by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes 

 > Whitehurst's Formation of the Earth, and ed. p. 6. — Atitkor's note. 



