THE POST OF PERPETUAL SECRETARY. 113 



have been obliged to reside constantly at Paris. But 

 Bailly, as member of the Astronomical Section, might 

 retire to the country, and thus escape those thieves of 

 time, as Byron called them, who especially abound in 

 the metropolis. Bailly settled at Chaillot. It was at 

 Chaillot that our fellow-academician composed his best 

 works, those that will sail down the stream of time. 



Nature had endowed Bailly with the most happy 

 memory. He did not write his discourses till he had 

 completed them in his head. His first copy was always 

 a clean copy. Every morning Bailly started early from 

 his humble residence at Chaillot ; he went to the Bois 

 de Boulogne, and there, walking for many hours at a 

 time, his powerful mind elaborated, coordinated, and 

 robed in all the pomps of language, those high concep- 

 tions destined to charm successive generations. Biog- 

 raphers inform us that Crebillon composed in a similar 

 way. And this was, according to several critics, the 

 cause of the incorrectness, of the asperity of style, which 

 disfigure several pieces by that tragic poet. The works 

 of Bailly, and especially the discourses that complete the 

 History of Astronomy, invalidate this explanation. I 

 could also appeal to the elegant and pure productions 

 of that poet whom France has just lost and weeps for. 

 No one indeed can be ignorant of his works ; Casimir 

 Delavigne, like Bailly, never committed his verses to 

 paper until he had worked them up in his mind to that 

 harmonious perfection which procured for them the unan- 

 imous suffrages of all people of taste. Gentlemen, par- 

 don this reminiscence. The heart loves to connect such 

 names as those of Bailly and of Delavigne ; those rare 

 and glorious symbols, in whom we find united talent, vir- 

 tue, and an invariable patriotism. 



