that vast universe, and so on an infinitum, and that in that universe there may exist multitudes of other systems on a scale as vast as our galaxy, the analogues of those other nebulous and clustering forms which are not miniatures of our galaxy?"

As an illustration of his power of tracing the chain that binds cause and effect, we may refer to a passage in his Treaties on Astronomy. Tracing the connection between the central luminary of our system and terrestrial phenomena, Sir John remarks that "the sun's rays are the ultimate source of almost every motion that takes place on the surface of the earth. By its heat are produced the winds and those disturbances on the electric equilibrium of the atmosphere which give rise to the phenomena of lightning, and probably also to those of terrestrial magnetism and the aurora. By their vivifying action vegetables are enabled to draw support from inorganic matter, and become in their turn the support of animals and man, and the sources of those great deposits of dynamical efficiency which are laid up for human use in our coal strata. By them the waters of the sea are made to circulate in vapors through the air and irrigate the land, producing springs and rivers. By them are produced all disturbances of the chemical equilibrium of the elements of nature, which by a series of compositions and decompositions give rise to new products and originate transfers of material. Even the slow degradation of the solid constituents of the surface, in which its chief geological changes consist, is almost entirely due, on the one hand to the abrasion of wind and rain, and the alternation of heat and frost, and on the other hand to the continual beating of sea-waves, the result of solar radiation."

He was an admirable expounder of scientific principles. His style of writing is perhaps cumbrous, and his sentences are often long and involved. But the thought he would express, like a thread of silver running through a web of purple, is always clear. The popular taste for astronomical studies is due to his writings more than to those of all other

men.

He, of all others, held mastery over pride of self-opinion. His own errors he admitted instantly they were discovered. Upon theories of others he worked as fairly and patiently as upon his own. He never struggled for a known error nor declined to accept a proven truth. With untiring patience, observing skill, and ingenious device, he sought earnestly to detect falsehood in his own opinions, and to discover truth in the opinions of others. It is said that he had a feeble grasp upon facts; that while his father clung with vise-like grip to the sure and the known, he at times allowed them to slip from his grasp. "If so, it were a grievous fault." But so few are the instances-not above two or three-cited by those who allege this, so unimportant are the facts named, so apparent is the motive, unconscious it may be to themselves, of the theorizers who urge the objection, that it would seem probable that his opinions upon the facts had been misinterpreted or his statements of them misunderstood.

It argues

Even if this blemish exists, it is but as a spot upon the sun. no more than that in one particular the son was second to the father. But without more satisfactory evidence we prefer to range ourselves among the doubters, and to be among the number of those who believe that Sir John Herschel's reasoning was never in a single instance marred by a forgotten fact.

In the contemplation of the work of the two Herschels, let us remark in conclusion, and what that work has revealed to us, the mind stands appalled. Reason shrinks before the specter of boundless creation. If our sun and all his planets, primary and secondary, are in rapid motion round an invisible focus-if from that mysterious center no ray of light has ever reached our globe, then the buried relics of primeval life have taught us less of man's brief tenure on this terrestrial paradise than we learn from the lesson of the stars. The one may date back unnumbered centuries, the other declares that from the origin of the human race to its far distant future the system to which it belongs will have described but an infinitesimal arc of an immeasurable circle in which it is destined to revolve.

He married Margaret Brodie, daughter of Dr. Stewart, in 1829; she and a numerous family survive him. Two of his sons are already very favorably known in the realm of science, and their father lived to see one of them selected by the council for election to the Royal Society. Another son has an important professorship in the north of England. The eldest son, the present Sir William Herschel, occupies, with distinguished merit, a very important post in the civil service of Bengal.

Herschel's whole life, like the lives of Newton and Faraday, confutes the assertion, and ought to remove the suspicion, that a profound study of nature is unfavorable to a sincere acceptance of the Christian faith. Surrounded by an affectionate family, of which he was long spared to be the pride, the guide, and the life, John Herschel died, as he had lived, in the unostentatious exercise of a devout, yet simple, faith.

JOSEPH FOURIER.

BIOGRAPHY READ BEFORE THE FRENCH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, BY M. ARAGO.

GENTLEMEN: In former times one Academician differed from another only in the number, the nature, and the brilliancy of his discoveries. Their lives, thrown in some respects into the same mold, consisted of events little worthy of remark. A boyhood more or less studious; progress sometimes slow, sometimes rapid; inclinations thwarted by capricious or shortsighted parents; inadequacy of means, the privations which it introduces in its train; thirty years of a laborious professorship and difficult studies-such were the elements from which the admirable talents of the early secretaries of the Academy were enabled to execute those portraits so piquant, so lively, and so varied, which form one of the principal ornaments of your learned collections.

In the present day, biographies are less confined in their object. The convulsions which France has experienced in emancipating herself from the swaddling-clothes of routine, of superstition, and of privilege, have cast into the storms of political life citizens of all ages, of all conditions, and of all characters. Thus has the Academy of Sciences figured during forty years in the devouring arena, wherein might and right have alternately seized the supreme power by a glorious sacrifice of combatants and victims!

Recall to mind, for example, the immortal National Assembly. You will find at its head a modest Academician, a pattern of all the private virtues, the unfortunate Bailly, who, in the different phases of his political life, knew how to reconcile a passionate affection for his country with a moderation which his most cruel enemies themselves have been compelled to admire.

When, at a later period, coalesced Europe launched against France a million of soldiers; when it became necessary to organize for the crisis fourteen armies, it was the ingenious author of the Essai sur les Machines and of the Géométrie des Positions who directed this gigantic operation. It was again Carnot, our honorable colleague, who presided over the incomparable campaign of seventeen months, during which French troops, novices in the profession of arms, gained eight pitched battles, were victorious in one hundred and forty combats, occupied one hundred and sixteen fortified places, and two hundred and thirty forts or redoubts, enriched our arsenals with four thousand cannon and seventy thousand muskets, took a hundred thousand prisoners, and adorned the dome of the Invalids with ninety flags. During the same time

the Chaptals, the Fourcroys, the Monges, the Berthollets, rushed also to the defense of French independence, some of them extracting from our soil, by prodigies of industry, the very last atoms of saltpeter which it contained; others transforming, by the aid of new and rapid methods, the bells of the towns, villages, and smallest hamlets into a formidable artillery, which our enemies supposed, as indeed they had a right to suppose, we were deprived of. At the voice of his country in danger, another Academician, the young and learned Meunier, readily renounced the seductive pursuits of the laboratory; he went to distinguish himself upon the ramparts of Königstein, to contribute as a hero to the long defense of Mayence, and met his death, at the age of forty years only, after having attained the highest position in a garrison wherein shone the Aubert-Dubayets, the Beaupuys, the Haxos, the Klebers.

How could I forget here the last secretary of the original Academy? Follow him into a celebrated assembly, into that convention, the sanguinary delirium of which we might almost be inclined to pardon, when we call to mind how gloriously terrible it was to the enemies of our independence, and you will always see the illustrious Condorcet occupied exclusively with the great interests of reason and humanity. You will hear him denounce the shameful brigandage which for two centuries laid waste the African continent by a system of corruption; demand in a tone of profound conviction that the code be purified of the frightful stain of capital punishment, which renders the error of the judge forever irreparable. He is the official organ of the Assembly on every occasion when it is necessary to address soldiers, citizens, political parties, or foreign nations in language worthy of France; he is not the tactician of any party; he incessantly entreats all of them to occupy their attention less with their own interests and a little more with public matters; he replies, finally, to unjust reproaches of weakness by acts which leave him the only alternative of the poison cup or the scaffold.

The French Revolution thus threw the learned geometer, whose discoveries I am about to celebrate, far away from the route which destiny appeared to have traced out for him. In ordinary times it would be about Dom* Joseph Fourier that the secretary of the Academy would have deemed it his duty to have occupied your attention. It would be the tranquil, the retired life of a Benedictine which he would have unfolded to you. The life of our colleague, on the contrary, will be agitated and full of perils; it will pass into the fierce contentions of the forum and amid the hazards of war; it will be a prey to all the anxieties which accompany a difficult administration. We shall find this life intimately associated with the great events of our age. Let us hasten to add, that it will be always worthy and honorable, and that the personal qualities of the man of science will enhance the brilliancy of his discoveries.

*An abbreviation of Dominus, equivalent to the English prefix Reverend.-Translator.