aT 
94 BAILLY. 
The father of the future astronomer had charge of the 
king’s pictures. This post had continued in the obscure 
but honest family of Bailly for upwards of a century. 
Sylvain, while young, never quitted his paternal home. 
His mother would not be separated from him; it was not 
that she could give him the instruction required from 
masters in childhood, but a tenderness, allowed to run to 
the utmost extreme, entirely blinded her. Bailly then 
formed his own mind, under the eye of his parents. 
Nothing could be better, it seemed, than the boyhood of 
our brother academician, to verify the oft-repeated theory, 
touching the influence of imitation on the development of 
our faculties. Here, the result, attentively examined, 
would not by a great deal agree with the old hypothesis. 
I know not but, every thing considered, whether it would 
rather furnish powerful weapons to whoever would wish 
to maintain that, in its early habits, childhood rather seeks 
for contrasts. 
James Bailly had an idle and light character ; whilst 
young Sylvain from the beginning showed strong reason- 
ing powers, and a passion for study. 
The grown man felt in his own element while in noisy 
gayety. 
But the boy loved retirement. 
To the father, solitude would have been fatal; for to 
him life consisted in motion, sallies, witty conversations, 
free and easy parties, the little gay suppers of those days. 
The son, on the contrary, would remain alone and 
quite silent for whole days. His mind sufficed to itself; 
he never sought the fellowship of companions of his own 
age. Extreme steadiness was at once his habit and his 
taste. 
The warder of the king’s pictures drew remarkably 
