B AILL Y 



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 



