Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas. 291 
before the age of forty he had filled successively, and for some 
time simultaneously, all the important professorships of chem- 
istry in Paris except one. This exception was that of the Col- 
lege of France, with which he was never permanently connected, 
although it was there that he delivered his famous course on 
the History of Chemical Philosophy, when temporarily supply - 
ing the place of Thenard. Z 
s early recognized the importance of laboratory in- 
struction in chemistry, for which there were no facilities at 
Paris when he first came to what was then the center of the 
world’s science; and in 1832 founded a laboratory for research 
at his own expense. This laboratory, first established at the 
ofan active mind with wide sympathies, which recognizes in 
the pressing demands of society its highest duties. The politi- 
cal and social upheaval of 1848 seemed at the time to endan- 
ger the stability in France of everything which a cultivated 
and learned man holds most dear; and Dumas was not one to 
Consider his own preferences when he felt he could aid in avert- 
ing the calamities which threatened his country. Immediately 
alter the Revolution of February, he accepted a seat in the 
gislative Assembly offered him by the electors of the 
Trondissement of Valenciennes. Shortly afterwards the Presi- 
dent of the Republic called him to fill the office of Minister of 
Agriculture and Commerce. During the Second Empire he 
Was elevated to the rank of Senator, and shortly after his 
entrance into the Senate he became Vice-President of the High 
Council of Edueation. In order to reform the abuses into 
Which many of the higher educational institutions of Paris had 
fallen, he accepted a place in the Municipal Council of Paris, 
over which he subsequently presided from 1859 to 1870. 
Tn 1868 Dumas was appointed Master of the Mint of France, 
but he retained the office only during a short time, for with the 
fall of the Second Empire, in 1870, his political career came to 
an abrupt termination. The Senate had ceased to exist, and 
'n the stormy days which followed, the Municipal Council had 
naturally changed its complexion ; and even at the Mint, the 
- JOUR, iene Series, Vou. XXVIII, No. 166.—Ocr., 1884. 
