LECTURES AT THE NORMAL SCHOOLS. 391 
of too many vanities to have any thing to fear from the 
efforts of logic. 
I have already stated that the brilliant success of 
Fourier at the Normal School assigned to him a dis- 
tinguished place among the persons whom nature has 
endowed in the highest degree with the talent of public 
tuition. Accordingly, he was not forgotten by the foun- 
ders of the Polytechnic School. Attached to that cele- 
brated establishment, first with the title of Superinten- 
dent of Lectures on Fortification, afterwards appointed 
to deliver a course of lectures on Analysis, Fourier has 
left there a venerated name, and the reputation of a pro- 
fessor distinguished by clearness, method, and erudition ; 
I shall add even the reputation of a professor full of grace, 
for our colleague has proved that this kind of merit may 
not be foreign to the teaching of mathematics. 
The lectures of Fourier have not been collected to- 
gether. The Journal of the Polytechnic School contains 
only one paper by him, a memoir upon the “ principle 
of virtual velocities.” This memoir, which probably had 
served for the text of a lecture, shows that the secret of 
our celebrated professor’s great success consisted in the 
combination of abstract truths, of interesting applications, 
and of historical details little known, and derived, a thing 
so rare in our days, from original sources. 
We have now arrived at the epoch when the peace 
of Leoben brought back to the metropolis the principal 
ornaments of our armies. Then the professors and the 
pupils of the Polytechnic School had sometimes the dis- 
tinguished honour of sitting in their amphitheatres beside 
Generals Desaix and Bonaparte. Every thing indicated 
to them then an active participation in the events which 
each foresaw, and which in fact were not long of oceur- 
ring. 
