BAILLY. 
BIOGRAPHY READ AT THE PUBLIC SITTING OF THE ACADEMY OF 
SCIENCES, THE 26TH OF FEBRUARY, 1844. 
INTRODUCTION. 
GENTLEMEN, — The learned man, illustrious in so 
many ways, whose life I am going to relate, was taken 
from France half a century ago. I hasten to make this 
remark, so as thoroughly to show that I have selected 
this subject without being deterred by complaints which 
I look upon as unjust and inapplicable. The glory of 
the members of the early Academy of Sciences is an 
inheritance for the present Academy. We must cherish 
it as we would the glory of later days; we must hallow 
it with the same respect, we must devote to it the same 
worship: the word prescription would here be synony- 
mous with ingratitude. 
If it had happened, Gentlemen, that amongst the acad- 
emicians who preceded us, a man, already illustrious by 
his labours, and, without personal ambition, yet thrown, 
despite himself, into the midst of a terrible revolution, 
exposed to a thousand unrestrained passions, had cruelly 
disappeared in the political effervescence—oh ! then, any 
