Gentlemen, this cruel event is too recent, that I should recall here the grief which the Institute experienced upon losing one of its most important members; and those obsequies, on the occasion of which so many persons, usually divided by interests and opinions, united together, in one common feeling of admiration and regret, around the mortal remains of Fourier; and the Polytechnic School swelling in a mass the cortége, in order to render homage to one of its earliest, of its most celebrated professors; and the words which, on the brink of the tomb, depicted so eloquently the profound mathematician, the elegant writer, the upright administrator, the good citizen, the devoted friend. We shall merely state that Fourier belonged to all the great learned societies of the world, that they united with the most touching unanimity in the mourning of the Academy, in the mourning of all France: a striking testimony that the republic of letters is no longer, in the present day, merely a vain name! What, then, was wanting to the memory of our colleague? A more able successor than I have been to exhibit in full relief the different phases of a life so varied, so laborious, so gloriously interlaced with the greatest events of the most memorable epochs of our history. Fortunately, the scientific discoveries of the illustrious secretary had nothing to dread from the incompetency of the panegyrist. My object will have been completely attained if, notwithstanding the imperfection of my sketches, each of you will have learned that the progress of general physics, of terrestrial physics, and of geology, will daily multiply the fertile applications of the Théorie Analytique de la Chaleur, and that this work will transmit the name of Fourier down to the remotest posterity.
THE END.
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Boston, 135 Washington Street
January, 1859.
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