154 HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. 



genuine nobility of a great discoverer. Lavoisier 

 was thrown into prison on some wretched charge of 

 having, in the discharge of a public office which 

 he held, adulterated certain tobacco ; but in reality, 

 for the purpose of confiscating his property 14 . In 

 his imprisonment, his philosophy was his resource ; 

 and he employed himself in the preparation of his 

 papers for printing. When he was brought before 

 the revolutionary tribunal, he begged for a respite 

 of a few days, in order to complete some researches, 

 the results of which were, he said, important to the 

 good of humanity. The brutish idiot, whom the 

 state of the country at that time had placed in the 

 judgment-seat, told him that the republic wanted 

 no sc^avans. He was dragged to the guillotine, 

 May the 8th, 1794, and beheaded, in the fifty-second 

 year of his age ; a melancholy proof that, in periods 

 of political ferocity, innocence and merit, private 

 virtues and public services, amiable manners and 

 the love of friends, literary fame and exalted genius, 

 are all as nothing, to protect their possessor from 

 the last extremes of violence and wrong, inflicted 

 under judicial forms. 



Sect. 3. Nomenclature of the Oxygen Tfieory. 



As we have already said, a powerful instrument in 

 establishing and diffusing the new chemical theory, 

 was a Systematic Nomenclature founded upon it, 

 and applicable to all chemical compounds, which 



14 Biog. Univ. (Cuvier.) 



