e enthusiasm for brilliant discoveries
which a course of severe study inspired, General Laplace had long since
qualified himself for becoming the editor of the seven volumes which are
destined to immortalize his father.

"There are glorious achievements of a character too elevated, of a
lustre too splendid, that they should continue to exist as objects of
private property. Upon the State devolves the duty of preserving them
from indifference and oblivion: of continually holding them up to
attention, of diffusing a knowledge of them through a thousand channels;
in a word, of rendering them subservient to the public interests.

"Doubtless the Minister of Public Instruction was influenced by these
considerations, when upon the occasion of a new edition of the works of
Laplace having become necessary, he demanded of you to substitute the
great French family for the personal family of the illustrious geometer.
We give our full and unreserved adhesion to this proposition. It springs
from a feeling of patriotism which will not be gainsayed by any one in
this assembly."

In fact, the Chamber of Deputies had only to examine and solve this
single question: "Are the works of Laplace of such transcendent, such
exceptional merit, that their republication ought to form the subject of
deliberation of the great powers of the State?" An opinion prevailed,
that it was not enough merely to appeal to public notoriety, but that it
was necessary to give an exact analysis of the brilliant discoveries of
Laplace in order to exhibit more fully the importance of the resolution
about to be adopted. Who could hereafter propose on any similar occasion
that the Chamber should declare itself without discussion, when a desire
was felt, previous to voting in favour of a resolution so honourable to
the memory of a great man, to fathom, to measure, to examine minutely
and from every point of view monuments such as the _Mecanique Celeste_
and the _Exposition du Systeme du Monde_? It has appeared to me that the
report drawn up in the name of a committee of one of the three great
powers of the State might worthily close this series of biographical
notices of eminent astronomers.[22]

The Marquis de Laplace, peer of France, one of the forty of the French
Academy, member of the Academy of Sciences and of the _Bureau des
Longitudes_, an associate of all the great Academies or Scientific
Societies of Europe, was born at Beaumont-en-Auge of parents belonging