444 , JOSEPH FOURIER. 
recall here the grief which the Institute experienced 
upon losing one of its most important members ; and 
those obsequies, on the occasion of which so many per- 
sons, usually divided by interests and opinions, united 
together, in one common feeling of admiration and regret, 
around the mortal remains of Fourier; and the Poly- 
technic School swelling in a mass the cortége, in order 
to render homage to one of its earliest, of its most cele- 
brated professors; and the words which, on the brink of 
the tomb, depicted so eloquently the profound mathe- 
matician, the elegant writer, the upright administrator, 
the good citizen, the devoted friend. "We shall merely 
state that Fourier belonged to all the great learned socie- 
ties of the world, that they united with the most touch- 
ing unanimity in the mourning of the Academy, in the 
mourning of all France: a striking testimony that the 
republic of letters is no longer, in the present day, merely 
a vain name! What, then, was wanting to the memory 
of our colleague? A more able successor than I have 
been to exhibit in full relief the different phases of a life 
so varied, so laborious, so gloriously interlaced with the 
greatest events of the most memorable epochs of our 
history. Fortunately, the scientific discoveries of the 
illustrious secretary had nothing to dread from the in- 
competency of the panegyrist. My object will have been 
completely attained if, notwithstanding the imperfection 
of my sketches, each of you will have learned that the 
progress of general physics, of terrestrial physics, and of 
geology, will daily multiply the fertile applications of the 
Théorie Analytique de la Ohaleur, and that this work 
will transmit the name of Fourier down to the remotest 
posterity. 
THE END. 
