LECTURES AT THE NORMAL SCHOOLS. 391 



of too many vanities to have any thing to fear from the 

 efforts of logic. 



I have already stated that the brilliant success of 

 Fourier at the Normal School assigned to him a dis- 

 tinguished place among the persons whom nature has 

 endowed in the highest degree with the talent of public 

 tuition. Accordingly, he was not forgotten by the foun- 

 ders of the Polytechnic School. Attached to that cele- 

 brated establishment, first with the title of Superinten- 

 dent of Lectures on Fortification, afterwards appointed 

 to deliver a course of lectures on Analysis, Fourier has 

 left there a venerated name, and the reputation of a pro- 

 fessor distinguished by clearness, method, and erudition ; 

 I shall add even the reputation of a professor full of grace, 

 for our colleague has proved that this kind of merit may 

 not be foreign to the teaching of mathematics. 



The lectures of Fourier have not been collected to- 

 gether. The Journal of the Polytechnic School contains 

 only one paper by him, a memoir upon the "principle 

 of virtual velocities." This memoir, which probably had 

 served for the text of a lecture, shows that the secret of 

 our celebrated professor's great success consisted in the 

 combination of abstract truths, of interesting applications, 

 and of historical details little known, and derived, a thing 

 so rare in our days, from original sources. 



We have now arrived at the epoch when the peace 

 of Leoben brought back to the metropolis the principal 

 ornaments of our armies. Then the professors and the 

 pupils of the Polytechnic School had sometimes the dis- 

 tinguished honour of sitting in their amphitheatres beside 

 Generals Desaix and Bonaparte. Every thing indicated 

 to them then an active participation in the events which 

 each foresaw, and which in fact were not long of occur- 

 ring. 



