the sages of other lands, and which so well become the student of material nature. Our philosophers are supposed to have fulfilled their highest functions by burrowing geologically in the earth, or floating in ether among nebulæ and double stars. Hence it is that the British sage so frequently vegetates in college halls and professorial chairs; phosphorescent, indeed, with intellectual light, yet resisting the amelioration of our institutions, and denouncing from the bars of his cloister or the gratings of his den the bold and the brave assertors of reform. It is by such men, numerous in England, that the conduct of Arago has been censured, his political labors decried, and his motives misrepresented. They forget that their own Newton, the philosopher of gentleness and peace, girt himself against the encroachment of arbitrary power, and resisted the tyranny of James II. on the very footsteps of the throne. Our readers will be prepared by these observations to view the distinguished subject of this article not only as a man of science, enlarging our knowledge by his inventions and discoveries, but as a member of the great social body which the Almighty has planted on the different oäses of his globe to work out in unity and peace the intellectual regeneration of our race. Reason has her missionaries as well as Revelation, and though they carry on their operations in distant lines, their hallowed influences still converge to one common focus-that goal in the world's destiny, where the race is to the swift, and the battle to the strong.

the Academy of Sciences, whose amiable manners and great acquirements we had an opportunity of witnessing when discharging along with him the duties of a juror in the Tenth Class of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The ambition of being a soldier, an officer of artillery, was the first aspiration of young Arago. His father was anxious that he should study for the law, or for some administrative office, but the military passion prevailed, and an incident occurred which determined his choice. Having one day encountered an officer of engineers, who was drawing plans on the ramparts of the town, he asked him what steps he should take to obtain the right of wearing so fine a uniform. To be received as a pupil of the Polytechnic School, was the reply; and from that moment the career of Arago was marked out for him,—not that to which he then aspired, but one more useful to science and to humanity.

The earliest studies of our young philosopher were exclusively literary, and he had a particular predilection for the classical writers, a taste which he continued to indulge during his life, and which he was anxious to diffuse as a suitable accompaniment to the high scientific education of his countrymen.* With these tastes Arago entered the Poly

*

Our literary readers, who, like ourselves, did not expect from scientific men such a strong testimony in favor of classical instruction, may be gratiself an eminent chemist,) in which he discusses the fied by the passage in the Eloge of M. Barral, (himsubject. "We may here be permitted to remark, (speaking of classical learning,) that no preparation Jean François Arago was born at Estagel, is more suitable for a great destiny. There is a then a village of a few houses, near Perpi- desire in the present day to abandon a system of education which has produced such distinguished gnan, in the Department of the Eastern Pymen. A youth between the ages of thirteen and renees, but now a town of three thousand fourteen is obliged to choose between science and inhabitants, on the 26th February, 1786. literature, and then to receive a course of instrucHis father, who had but a small patrimony, tion which is necessarily incomplete. Almost all was Treasurer to the mint at Perpignan, and of them rush into the department of science, and his mother was an active and intellectual ments. This is a great misfortune to the rising gethus enter upon life without any literary acquirewoman, who made great sacrifices for the neration. Arago felt it acutely; and in now exeducation of her numerous children. Fran- pressing our own opinion, so conformable with that çois was the eldest of a family all of whom of our illustrious friend, we are doing homage to have distinguished themselves in their sepahis memory. We are decidedly of opinion that no man is great even in science, unless he has gone rate careers. His two brothers, John and through a complete course of literature; and we Joseph, were distinguished officers in the implore our age not to allow itself to be carried service of Mexico. John died in 1836, and away by a reaction in which the national glory Joseph is still in that country. James and will be fatally obscured if we do not stop in time Etienne were distinguished in literature. The that we wish to lower the standard of instruction before we plunge into the abyss. It is not true latter is now an exile from his country in con- in order to put it within the reach of men of ordisequence of his political opinions. Aragonary talent. Such men derive more advantage had also two sisters, the elder of whom died several years ago, and the other is married to M. Claude Louis Mathieu, an eminent astronomer at the Observatory, and member of

from that which is above than from that which is below their level. Upon this subject we would wish to be in the wrong, for we love our country better than ourselves,-a sentiment which doubtless was that of Arago."—pp. 8, 9.