In the spring of 1776,[[16]] we embarked at Dover for Calais, and arrived at Paris with letters for Lord Stormont (but he was absent), for Colonel St. Paul (secretary of embassy), &c., and for Lalande and Boscovich, two famous scientific men.
The Faubourg St. Germain was at that time the part of the town to which all strangers resorted. I was struck with the contrast between London and Paris. The houses, of which there are so many, particularly in that part of the town, entre cour et jardin, appeared to me to be immense—a Swiss porter with a splendid costume at every door, and carriages sweeping in and out with gold coronets, and coachmen driving with bag-wigs. The ladies full dressed in the morning; gentlemen walking with bags and with swords; and children in dress-coats skipping over the kennels I had seen in the country towns; but in Paris they were not trusted to walk in the bustle of the streets.
We went to see everything during the fortnight of our stay at Paris that could well be seen, and were often accompanied by the astronomer royal, M. de Lalande, for whom Dr. Shepherd, an old friend of my mother, who was Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, had given her a letter.
M. de Lalande was a man of great scientific knowledge, and had also published a “Voyage d’Italie,” of which it is said that when he asked a Venetian senator how he liked it, the answer was, “Monsieur de Lalande nous désirons tous que vous fassiez un second voyage.” It is so long since I read it, and when I did I was very young, and did not know Italy, that I cannot say whether the skilful evasion was or was not a fair criticism; but it is probable that Lalande, like many others of all nations, was not just to a country which is so much visited and so little known—from whom, however, I am happy to except Eustace.[[17]]
To return to Lalande. I must do him the justice to say that I do not recollect his making any remark, or using any expression, which might denote a disrespect for religion, though he had the reputation, unfortunately, of being an atheist. I think it difficult, if not impossible, that an astronomer should be one, but I have heard that, when delivering a lecture on this science, he happened to say, “Providence directed so and so,” and that he corrected himself, adding, “I beg pardon; I mean Nature.” However this may have been, I believe it is certain that, having been brought up at a college of Jesuits, he wished to become one of that order, but was prevented by his father, for which many years after he expressed some regret. “For,” said he, “if I had become a Jesuit, I should have had better health, deeper knowledge, and some religion.”
Boscovich was an ex-Jesuit, a Dalmatian of the city of Ragusa, so famous for its men of learning and science. He was not only a good mathematician and astronomer, but also a good Latin poet; he had the talent, which many others of his countrymen have possessed, of composing with great facility extempore verses in Latin.
Two lines of his epigram on the planets may be thus translated:
’Twixt Mars and Venus as this globe was hurled,
’Tis plain that love and war must rule the world.
In the present time (1835), I should change or correct it thus: