214 Biographical Notice of M. Le Chevalier Delambre. 
of great judgment and erudition, and will maintain their value 
as long as the science of the heavens is cultivated. 
To a profound knowledge of science, Delambre added the 
rare accomplishment in a scientific man, a deep knowledge of 
ancient and modern languages. He was so thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the Greek language, that he could speak it as 
fluently as his native tongue ; and it is impossible to read his 
History of Ancient Astronomy, without admiring the advan- 
tages which this acquirement has given him over all the other 
historians of science. He also read English, Italian and Ger- 
man, with fluency ; and though his erudition was principally 
directed to the purposes of science 9 yet he often relaxed from 
his severer labours in the study of Virgil, Homer, Plutarch and 
Cicero. 
In his scientific character, Delambre was universally admired. 
In private life, he displayed the most amiable dispositions ; and 
as a public man, he was attached to those sacred and social insti- 
tutions which form the bulwark of civil society. In all his 
writings, and especially in his History of Astronomy, he has in- 
variably declared his conviction that the Mosaic history is in no 
respect invalidated by any facts in the ancient astronomy, and 
that the date of those facts does not remount to a remote period. 
Many good and pious men, indeed, have maintained the an- 
tiquity of the Indian Astronomy, and supported geological opi- 
nions which carry back to a remote era the formation of our ex- 
isting globe; and even learned theologians have endeavoured 
to accommodate Revelation to what they supposed to be scien- 
tific truth, by ingenious interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures. 
But there has been another set of men, actuated by quite diffe- 
rent motives. When ridicule had lost its efficacy, and sophis- 
try its force, they embarked in the more daring scheme, of 
arraying against the records of Revelation the eternal truths 
of the natural world. This war of science has been sustained 
during the last thirty years with singular zeal and dexterity ; 
and though its success among the young and the ignorant has 
been considerable, yet its abettors have lately met with a resistance 
by which they have been totally overpowered. The antiquity of 
the Indian Astronomy has been put down by the united decision 
< of Laplace, Ivory, and Delambre; while Werner, Cuvier, Deluc, 
