178 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS DE MORGAN. 



1849. the opposite party, by whom he was denounced as a 

 Gugiielmo monarchist, and as an Austrian traitor to the cause 



Italy. Whether he was right or wrong in his politics is 

 matter of opinion. He had expressed his own very freely, 

 and thus had become an object of suspicion to the Govern- 

 ment of the time. But there was another reason for his 

 unpopularity in France. ' In science he would not be a 

 Frenchman, but remained an Italian. One of his great 

 objects was to place Italian discovery, which the French 

 historians had not treated fairly, in its proper rank. This 

 brought him into perpetual collision with M. Arago at 

 the Institute, and personal enmity was the consequence. 

 Those who know French science, and how little it attends 

 to history and to the learning which aids history, will 

 guess what a nuisance must have been the presence of an 

 able scholar and a profound Mathematician, with every- 

 thing that the French ignore at his fingers' ends, carrying 

 the fire of reason and the sword of reference into their 

 most sacred haunts; and worse still, the small shot of 

 ridicule, against which few Frenchmen have any armour. 

 When they were establishing showers of toads by second- 

 hand citations from old authors, M. Libri went to the 

 originals and got them a shower of oxen upon the same 

 evidence ; maudit Italien. At the same time we must do 

 the French savans the justice to say that M. Libri is a 

 warm nationalist, and that we will by no means guarantee 

 his having been always in the right. Neither can the 

 insinuation about stealing books be traced to the Institute. 

 We suspect that political animosity generated this slander, 

 and a real belief in the minds of bad men that collectors 

 always steal, and that the charge was therefore sure to be 

 true.' 



' Every one who becomes acquainted with M. Libri 

 soon learns that the restoration of Italian fame is always 

 in his thoughts, and, though learned in the history of 

 other sciences, his interest in collecting is that of a propa- 

 gandist, who would gladly, if he could, furnish every 



