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founded by Fellenberg, who was an intimate friend of his father 
Charles Pictet de Rochamont. He afterwards studied at Paris; 
and from that he went to Germany, where he made the acquaint- 
ance of Schlegel, Schelling, Hegel, and Goethe, as he had at Paris 
that of Victor Cousin and other men of eminence. A vast mass 
of letters remain to testify to the intimacy of his relations with 
these and other distinguished men among his contemporaries. 
He began to write in the “ Bibliotheque Universelle,” a journal 
founded by members of his own family, and of which he became 
the proprietor in 1825. In 1838 or 1839 he commenced to lecture 
on aesthetics in the Academy at Geneva, and three years after- 
wards he was appointed professor there of aesthetics, modern litera- 
ture and linguistic. This appointment he did not hold long; 
circumstances led to his engaging in other pursuits, and for a time 
he left Geneva and fixed his abode at Turin. Obliged, as every 
Swiss citizen is, to serve as a soldier, he for some time was in the 
army, where he rose to the rank of colonel of artillery. Directing 
his attention to the implements of artillery warfare, he introduced 
such improvements in these that the Austrian Government pur- 
chased for 25,000 francs the secret of bombs of his invention. 
Returning to Geneva, he devoted himself to his favourite studies, 
and from time to time issued works in various branches of philo- 
sophy, and especially in comparative philology, which brought him 
reputation much more in other countries than his own. In Geneva, 
indeed, he was very little known, the abstruse character of his 
writings rendering them acceptable only to the few, and the deaf- 
ness with which he was afflicted preventing him from mingling in 
general society. In 1839 the Institute of France adjudged to him 
the Volney prize for an essay on the affinity of the Celtic language 
with the Sanscrit ; and twenty years afterwards the same prize was 
assigned to him for a work in which he developed at length his 
views as to the primary relations of the Indo-European tongues 
generally. This work, which is entitled “ Les Origines Indo- 
Europeennes, ou Les Aryas primitifs ; Essai de Paleontologie lin- 
guistique,” is one of great learning and acuteness, and has com- 
manded the applause of philologists and ethnologists in all parts 
of the learned world. In 1856 he published a work scarcely less 
remarkable in its kind, entitled “ Du Beau dans la Nature, Part, et 
