The Mécanique Céleste.—This stupendous monument of intellectual research consists, as stated by the author, of five quarto volumes. The subject-matter is divided into sixteen books, and each book again is subdivided into several chapters. Vol. I. contains the first and second books of the work; Vol. II. contains the third, fourth, and fifth books; Vol. III. contains the sixth and seventh books; Vol. IV. contains the eighth, ninth, and tenth books; and, finally, Vol. V. contains the remaining six books. In the first book the author treats of the general laws of equilibrium and motion. In the second book he treats of the law of gravitation, and the movements of the centres of gravity of the celestial bodies. In the third book he investigates the subject of the figures of the celestial bodies. In the fourth book he considers the oscillations of the ocean and the atmosphere, arising from the disturbing action of the celestial bodies. The fifth book is devoted to the investigation of the movements of the celestial bodies around their centres of gravity. In this book the author gives a solution of the great problems of the precession of the equinoxes and the libration of the moon, and determines the conditions upon which the stability of Saturn's ring depends. The sixth book is devoted to the theory of the planetary movements; the seventh, to the lunar theory; the eighth, to the theory of the satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus; and the ninth, to the theory of comets. In the tenth book the author investigates various subjects relating to the system of the universe. Among these may be mentioned the theory of astronomical refractions; the determination of heights by the barometer; the investigation of the effects produced on the movements of the planets and comets by a resisting medium; and the determination of the values of the masses of the planets and satellites. In the six books forming the fifth volume of the work, the author, besides presenting his readers with an historical exposition of the labours of Newton and his successors on the theory of gravitation, gives an account of various researches relative to the system of the universe, which had occupied his attention subsequently to the publication of the previous volumes. In the eleventh book he considers the subjects of the figure and rotation of the earth. In the twelfth book he investigates the attraction and repulsion of spheres, and the laws of equilibrium and motion of elastic fluids. The thirteenth book is devoted to researches on the oscillations of the fluids which cover the surfaces of the planets; the fourteenth, to the subject of the movements of the celestial bodies around their centres of gravity; the fifteenth, to the movements of the planets and comets; and the sixteenth, to the movements of the satellites. The author published a supplement to the third volume, containing the results of certain researches on the planetary theory, and a supplement to the tenth book, in which he investigates very fully the theory of capillary attraction. There was also published a posthumous supplement to the fifth volume, the manuscript of which was found among his papers after his death.
JOSEPH FOURIER.
BIOGRAPHY READ AT A PUBLIC ASSEMBLY OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ON THE 18TH OF NOVEMBER, 1833.
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 mould, 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 patern 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 honourable 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 Invalides with ninety flags. During the same time the Chaptals, the Fourcroys, the Monges, the Berthollets rushed also to the defence of French independence, some of them extracting from our soil, by prodigies of industry, the very last atoms of saltpetre 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 defence 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 for ever 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[40] 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 honourable, and that the personal qualities of the man of science will enhance the brilliancy of his discoveries.