weights and measures was planned; what geometers, what astronomers,
what eminent philosophers presided over every department of this noble
undertaking! Alas! frightful revolutions in the interior of the country
soon saddened this magnificent spectacle. The sciences could not prosper
in the midst of the desperate contest of factions. They would have
blushed to owe any obligations to the men of blood, whose blind passions
immolated a Saron, a Bailly, and a Lavoisiere.

A few months after the 9th Thermidor, the Convention being desirous of
diffusing throughout the country ideas of order, civilization, and
internal prosperity, resolved upon organizing a system of public
instruction, but a difficulty arose in finding professors. The members
of the corps of instruction had become officers of artillery, of
engineering, or of the staff, and were combating the enemies of France
at the frontiers. Fortunately at this epoch of intellectual exaltation,
nothing seemed impossible. Professors were wanting; it was resolved
without delay to create some, and the Normal School sprung into
existence. Fifteen hundred citizens of all ages, despatched from the
principal district towns, assembled together, not to study in all their
ramifications the different branches of human knowledge, but in order to
learn the art of teaching under the greatest masters.

Fourier was one of these fifteen hundred pupils. It will, no doubt,
excite some surprise that he was elected at St. Florentine, and that
Auxerre appeared insensible to the honour of being represented at Paris
by the most illustrious of her children. But this indifference will be
readily understood. The elaborate scaffolding of calumny which it has
served to support will fall to the ground as soon as I recall to mind,
that after the 9th Thermidor the capital, and especially the provinces,
became a prey to a blind and disorderly reaction, as all political
reactions invariably are; that crime (the crime of having changed
opinions--it was nothing less hideous) usurped the place of justice;
that excellent citizens, that pure, moderate, and conscientious patriots
were daily massacred by hired bands of assassins in presence of whom the
inhabitants remained mute with fear. Such are, Gentlemen, the formidable
influences which for a moment deprived Fourier of the suffrages of his
countrymen; and caricatured, as a partisan of Robespierre, the
individual whom St. Just, making allusion to his sweet and