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Art. XII . -—Memoir of the life of Martin Henry Kla- 
proth *. By E. G. Fischer. 
jVjLARTiN Henry Klaproth, who was bom at Wernige- 
rode on the 1st of December 1743, and died at Berlin on the 
1st of January 1817, is a remarkable instance of the extent to 
which a powerful mind may deliver itself, by a calm, but con- 
scientious and persevering assiduity, from a fate which seemed 
to have doomed it to mediocrity or insignificance. His father, a 
citizen of Wernigerode, had the misfortune to lose Ins whole 
goods by a great fire, on the 30th of June 1751, so that he was 
able to do little or nothing for the education of his children. 
The subject of this memoir was the second of three brothers, of 
whom the eldest, a respectable clergyman, died many years ago 
at Plauen on the Havel, — the youngest, who was Private Secre- 
tary at War, and Keeper of the Archives of the Cabinet, died a 
few years ago at Berlin. Klaproth, like his two brothers, ob- 
tained such meagre instructions, in the Latin language, as the 
school of Wernigerode afforded, and was obliged, like them, 
also to procure his small school fees, by singing as one of the 
church choir. But the very circumstance which the wisdom of 
Providence made the beginning of his future distinguished course 
in life, seemed likely at the time of its occurrence to have 
placed him in a sphere inferior to that of his brother. It was his 
first intention, as it was also that of his elder brother, to have 
studied theology, but an unmerited hard treatment which he 
met with at school, so disinclined him to study, that he deter- 
mined, in his 16th year, to learn the trade of an Apothecary. 
Five years which he was forced to spend as an apprentice, and 
two which he passed as an assistant, in the public laboratory 
at Quedlinburg, do not seem to have furnished the best educa- 
tion for a great chemist ; for they placed him out of the reach 
of scientific study, and instead of that, secured nothing for 
him but a certain mechanical adroitness in the most common 
pharmaceutical preparations. In a paper which was found 
35 Read at the Public Sitting of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, on 
the 3d of July 1819. 
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