This cabinet or Museum was formed in 1778 by M. SAGE, who had then spent eighteen years in collecting minerals. When he began to employ himself on that science forty-five years ago, there existed in this country no collection which could facilitate the study of mineralogy. Docimacy vas scarcely known here by name. France was tributary to foreign countries thirty-seven millions of livres (circa £1,541,666 sterling) a year for the mineral and metallic substances which she drew from them, although she possesses them within herself. M. SAGE directed his studies and labours to the research and analysis of minerals. For twenty years he has delivered gratis public courses of chymistry and mineralogy. For the advancement of those sciences, he also availed himself of the favour he enjoyed with some persons at court and in the ministry, and this was certainly making a very meritorious use of it. To his care and interest is wholly due the collection of minerals placed in this building. The apartment containing it has, by some, been thought to deviate from the simple and severe style suitable to its destination, and to resemble too much the drawing-room of a fine lady. But those who have hazarded such a reproach do not consider that, at the period when this cabinet was formed, it was not useless, in order to bring the sciences into fashion, to surround them with the show of luxury and the elegance of accessory decoration. Who knows even whether that very circumstance, trifling as it may appear, has not somewhat contributed to spread a taste for the two sciences in question among the great, and in the fashionable world?
However this may be, the arrangement of this cabinet is excellent, and, in that respect, it is worthy to serve as a model. The productions of nature are so disposed that the glazed closets and cases containing them present, as it were, an open book in which the curious and attentive observer instructs himself with the greater facility and expedition, as he can without effort examine and study perfectly every individual specimen.
The inside of the Museum is about forty-five feet in length, thirty-eight in breadth, and forty in elevation. In the middle is an amphitheatre capable of holding two hundred persons. In the circumference are glazed cabinets or closets, in which are arranged methodically and analytically almost all the substances known in mineralogy. The octagonal gallery, above the elliptical amphitheatre, contains large specimens of different minerals. To each specimen is annexed an explanatory ticket. One of the large lateral galleries presents part of the productions of the mines of France, classed according to the order of the departments where they are found. The new transversal gallery contains models of furnaces and machines employed in the working of mines. The third gallery is also destined to contain the minerals of France, the essays and results of which are deposited in a private cabinet. The galleries are decorated with tables and vases of different species of marble, porphyry, and granite, also from the mines of France, collected by SAGE. The cupola which rises above, is elegantly ornamented from the designs of ANTOINE, the architect of the building.
This Museum is open to the public every day from nine o'clock in the morning till two, and, though it has been so many years an object of curiosity, such is the care exerted in superintending it, that it has all the freshness of novelty.
In a niche, on the first landing-place of the stair-case, is the bust of M. SAGE, a tribute of gratitude paid to him by his pupils. SAGE'S principal object being to naturalize in France mineralogy, docimacy, and metallurgy, he first obtained the establishment of a Special School of Mines, in which pupils were maintained by the State. Here, he directed their studies, and enjoyed the happiness of forming intelligent men, capable of improving the science of metallurgy, and promoting the search of ores, &c.
For a number of years past, as I have already observed, SAGE has delivered gratis, in this Museum; public courses of chymistry and mineralogy. He attracts hither many auditors by the ease of his elocution, and the address, the grace even which he displays in his experiments. If all those who have attended his lectures are to be reckoned his pupils, there will be found in the number names illustrious among the savans of France. Unfortunately, this veteran of science has created for himself a particular system in chymistry, and this system differs from that of LAVOISIER, FOURCROY, GUYTON-MORVEAU, BERTHOLLET, CHAPTAL, &c. The sciences have also their schisms; but the real savans are not persecutors. Although SAGE was not of their opinion on many essential points, his adversaries always respected him as the man who had first drawn the attention of the government towards the art of mines, instigated the establishment of the first school which had existed for this important object, and been the author of several good analyses. On coming out of prison, into which he had been thrown during the reign of terror, he found this cabinet of mineralogy untouched. It would then have been easy, from motives of public utility, to unite it to the new School of Mines. But the heads of this new school had, for the most part, issued from the old one, and SAGE was dear to them from every consideration. It was from a consequence of this sentiment that SAGE, who had been a member of the Academy of Sciences, not having been comprised in the list of the members of the National Institute at the time of its formation, has since been admitted into that learned body, not as a chymist indeed, but as a professor of mineralogy, a science which owes to him much of its improvement.
The new School of Mines is now abolished, and practical ones are established in the mountains, as I have before mentioned. While I am speaking of mineralogy, I shall take you to view the
CABINET DU CONSEIL DES MINES.
This cabinet of mineralogy, formed at the Hôtel des Mines, Rue de l'Université, No. 293, is principally intended to present a complete collection of all the riches of the soil of the French Republic, arranged in local order. A succession of glazed closets, contiguous and similar to each other, that is about six feet and a half in height by sixteen inches in depth, affords every facility of observing them with ease and convenience. On these cases the names of the departments are inscribed in alphabetical order, and the vacancies which still exist in this geographical collection, are daily filled up by specimens sent by the engineers of mines, who, being spread over the different districts they are charged to visit, employ themselves in recognizing carefully the mineral substances peculiar to each country, in order to submit their views to the government respecting the means of rendering them useful to commerce and to the arts.
The departmental collection, being thus arranged on the sides of the gallery, leaves vacant the middle of the apartments, which is furnished with tables covered with large glazed cases, intended for receiving systematic collections, and the most remarkable mineral substances from foreign countries, distributed in geographical order.