1832.] Scientific Intelligence. 207 



professors full liberty to consult only the wants of science, in the tenor and 

 depth of their lectures. 



" The lectures delivered at the College de France, the Jardin des Plantes, and 

 at the Bibliotheque Royale, have thus no need of a large audience ; and with most 

 of them, if a crowd were attracted, it would be the best proof that their object 

 was not attained. It is far otherwise in England, even in the most recent and 

 liberal institutions. Take as an example the London University : its buildings 

 are superb ; its scale of studies is drawn out on the most elevated views ; the chairs 

 are occupied by very able men ; the auditory is numerous ; but the emoluments 

 of the professors depend chiefly on the fees of the scholars, whom it becomes 

 necessary to please by suiting the grade of lectures to the capacity of the 

 majority. This system may be very well for the elementary courses, but it 

 interdicts all attempts at the more refined branches. A professor must be 

 warmed by super-natural zeal, or nobleness of mind, to work at once against his 

 popularity and his interest ! and experience in fact shews that even the most dis- 

 tinguished men will rather condescend to lower their powers and become intelligible 

 to the multitude. This general want of elevated courses, accessible to the talented few, 

 and consecrated exclusively to the highest branches of abstract science, forms a 

 void in England, a sort of precipice which arrests the progress of the master 

 spirits by whom otherwise the sciences would be cultivated most successfully. 



" The second cause which in our opinion gave a stimulus to sciences among us, was 

 the political and moral state of the public mind at the renovation of order in 1794. 



"A mad and atrocious revolution had destroyed our universities, academies, and 

 other establishments of instruction. When the reign of terror subsided, some men 

 devoted to science, and who had continued to cherish her in secret, Monge, Berthol- 

 let, Fourcroy, and Guyton, undertook to restore her temples, and they did it with a 

 grandeur of conception which some may think gigantic, but which was admirably 

 fitted to produce a great excitation in men's minds. A. normal school was designed, 

 to which pupils should be sent from all parts of France ; the professors named 

 were LaGrange and Laplace, who never would have been heard delivering their 

 thoughts in public, had it not been for this revolution ; with them were associated 

 Berthollet, Haiiy, and Monge himself, whose zeal had kindled general enthusiasm. 

 In these unusual comitia of the sciences, philosophical discussions were opened on 

 certain days, and such pupils as Fourrier then started individual doubts to men 

 whose genius had hitherto but spoken in general terms to Europe at large : at the 

 same time Monge, the indefatigable Monge, set up a Polytechnic School, on an 

 extensive and liberal plan, where, animated by his presence and impulse, the 

 youth of France heard with an indescribableenthusiasm, lectures delivered on all parts 

 of the Physical, Mathematical, and Military Sciences, by the first men of those days. 



" Moreover these fundamental institutions were followed up by a general sys- 

 tem of open public schools through the departments ; where professors, occupied 

 solely with such objects, spread around them the knowledge required by the ge- 

 nerality of the population. These appointments, paid but poorly, brought never- 

 theless a feeling of independence and consideration : — they were then honora- 

 ble ; and this sentiment, joined to the complete liberty they enjoyed, fired the pro- 

 fessors with the ambition of distinguishing themselves by works of instruction 

 or research in the line of study they had embraced. Hence arose the multitude 

 of first-rate elementary books we now possess, to which is mainly owing the 

 renovation of scientific education among us. 



