37 NINETEENTH CENTURY. PT. in 



he had broken his biscuit into little bits and was using them 

 to work with instead of his lost pebbles. As he grew older 

 his father began to teach him Latin, but the boy disliked it 

 so much that it was given up, and he devoted all his time 

 to Algebra and Euclid. 



One day he persuaded his father to take him to his friend, 

 the Abbe Daburon, to borrow the writings of Euler and 

 Bernouilli, two great mathematicians. The Abbe stared 

 at this little boy, only twelve years old, asking for books 

 which very few men could understand. * Do you know, my 

 little fellow,' said he, ' that these works are written in Latin, 

 and that the differential calculus is used in them ?' Andre's 

 countenance fell for a moment, for he knew neither of these 

 things. But he soon brightened up again. ' Never mind,' 

 he replied, ' I can learn them,' and he set to work that very 

 day to learn Latin with his father, and the differential calculus 

 with the Abbe, and in a few months was able to come back 

 for the books he coveted. 



Before he was eighteen he had not only read the whole 

 of Laplace's * Me'canique Celeste,' but had even worked out 

 all the complicated problems in it. He had, however, over- 

 taxed his brain, and when his father was killed in the terrible 

 French Revolution of 1 7 93, the grief broke down his intellect. 

 For a whole year he was almost an idiot, and it was a long 

 time before he could take up his mathematical studies again. 

 When he did, it was with his old love of work, and he be- 

 came a teacher first at Lyons, and afterwards in Paris. 



Ampere's Experiments in Magnetism and Elec- 

 tricity, 1820. This was the man who heard of Oersted's 

 discovery in 1820. You can imagine the delight with 

 which he seized upon the new idea. He worked at it 

 incessantly, as he had done with his pebbles when a boy, 

 and before a week was over he had proved several new 



