THE POST OF PERPETUAL SECRETARY. 113 
have been obliged to reside constantly at Paris. But 
_ Bailly, as member of the Astronomical Section, might 
retire to the country, and thus escape those thieves of 
time, as Byron called them, who especially abound in 
the metropolis. Bailly settled at Chaillot. It was at 
Chaillot that our fellow-academician composed his best 
works, those that will sail down the stream of time. 
Nature had endowed Bailly with the most happy 
memory. He did not write his discourses till he had 
completed them in his head. His first copy was always 
a clean copy. Every morning Bailly started early from 
his humble residence at Chaillot; he went to the Bois 
de Boulogne, and there, walking for many hours at a 
time, his powerful mind elaborated, codrdinated, and 
robed in all the pomps of language, those high concep- 
tions destined to charm successive generations. Biog- 
raphers inform us that Crébillon composed in a similar 
way. And this was, according to several critics, the 
‘cause of the incorrectness, of the asperity of style, which 
disfigure several pieces by that tragic poet. The works 
of Bailly, and especially the discourses that complete the 
History of Astronomy, invalidate this explanation. I 
could also appeal to the elegant and pure productions 
of that poet whom France has just lost and weeps for. 
No one indeed can be ignorant of his works; Casimir 
Delavigne, like Bailly, never committed his verses to 
paper until he had worked them up in his mind to that 
harmonious perfection which procured for them the unan- 
imous suffrages of all people of taste. Gentlemen, par- 
don this reminiscence. ‘The heart loves to connect such 
names as those of Bailly and of Delavigne; those rare 
and glorious symbols, in whom we find united talent, vir- 
tue, and an invariable patriotism. 
