"Precis" embraces the foregoing results of his discovery, and
considering the short space of time in which all this was accomplished,
it appears marvellous that Francois could thus early determine the most
important elements of the hieroglyphic system in their minute details so
correctly. In 1824 the king sent him to Italy, where he profited
principally by the splendid collection of Egyptian antiquities in Turin.
In 1826 Charles X. appointed him director of the Egyptian Museum in the
Louvre, which Champollion founded by purchasing at Liverno the
celebrated "Salt Collection."

Soon after his return to France the king sent him on a mission to Egypt,
where he remained from August, 1828, till the end of 1829. The Italian
Rosellini joined him on the Nile.

His "Lettres ecrites d'Egypte et de la Nubie" render his observations
and impressions and describe his life and adventures in Egypt, in a most
entertaining and instructive style. The many and various inscriptions,
copied there by him, are all quoted in his great work on monuments,
entitled, "Monuments de l'Egypte et de la Nubie," and in his posthumous
work, "Notices descriptives conformes aux manuscrits autographes rediges
sur les lieux."

Soon after his return to Paris (in March, 1830), by which time his
health had commenced to fail, he was elected a Member of the Academy,
and in March, 1831, was appointed professor at the "College de France."
The solidity and instructiveness of his lectures brought the most
celebrated leaders in science to hear him, but there were destined to be
but few of the lectures, as he all too soon felt himself too weak to
continue them. On March 4, 1832, at his old homestead Figeac, a stroke
of apoplexy ended his active life of achievement.

His great discovery was at first vigorously attacked. Erring minds
declaring the system of the great Frenchman to be wrong, and submitting
others of their own, as the Russian Klaproth and the German Seyffarth,
disturbed Champollion's peace; still more bitterly, however, was he
pursued by the envy and hatred of his political opponents.

Even when the laurel already decorated his brow, they saw to it that the
thorns were not wanting in the wreath. Especially in England various
efforts were made to have, not him, but Thomas Young, recognized as the
discoverer of the science of deciphering hieroglyphics. But though Young
had succeeded previously to Champollion in deciphering some hieroglyphic
names in a mec