Eulogies, said an ancient authority, should be deferred until we have lost the true measure of the dead.  Then we could make giants of them without any one opposing us.  On the contrary, I am of opinion that biographers, especially those of academicians, ought to make all possible haste, so that every one may be represented according to his true measure, and that well-informed people may have the opportunity of rectifying the mistakes which, notwithstanding every care, almost inevitably slip into this sort of composition.  I regret that our former secretaries did not adopt this rule.  By deferring from year to year to analyze the scientific and political life of Bailly with their scruples, and with their usual talents, they allowed time for inconsiderateness, prejudice, and passions of every kind, to impregnate our minds with a multitude of serious errors, which have added considerably to the difficulty of my task.  When I was led to form very different opinions from those that are found spread through some of the most celebrated works, on the events of the great revolution of 1789, in which our fellow-academician took an active part, I could not be so conceited as to expect to be believed on my own word.  To propound my opinions then was insufficient; I had also to combat those of the historians with whom I differed.  This necessity has given to the biography that I am going to read an unusual length.  I solicit the kind sympathy of the assembly on this point.  I hope to obtain it, I acknowledge, when I consider that my task is to analyze before you the scientific and literary claims of an illustrious colleague, to depict the uniformly noble and patriotic conduct of the first President of the National Assembly; to follow the first Mayor of Paris in all the acts of an administration, the difficulties of which appeared to be above human strength; to accompany the virtuous magistrate to the very scaffold, to unroll the mournful phases of the cruel martyrdom that he was made to undergo; to retrace, in a word, some of the greatest, some of the most terrible events of the French Revolution.

INFANCY OF BAILLY.—­HIS YOUTH.—­HIS LITERARY ESSAYS.—­HIS MATHEMATICAL STUDIES.

John Sylvain Bailly was born at Paris in 1736.  His parents were James Bailly and Cecilia Guichon.

The father of the future astronomer had charge of the king’s pictures.  This post had continued in the obscure but honest family of Bailly for upwards of a century.

Sylvain, while young, never quitted his paternal home.  His mother would not be separated from him; it was not that she could give him the instruction required from masters in childhood, but a tenderness, allowed to run to the utmost extreme, entirely blinded her.  Bailly then formed his own mind, under the eye of his parents.  Nothing could be better, it seemed, than the boyhood of our brother academician, to verify the oft-repeated theory, touching the influence of imitation on the development of our faculties.  Here, the result, attentively examined, would not by a great deal agree with the old hypothesis.  I know not but, every thing considered, whether it would rather furnish powerful weapons to whoever would wish to maintain that, in its early habits, childhood rather seeks for contrasts.