The Perpetual Secretary Villar, in giving an account of The Essay on the Intonation of the French Language, by Morel, contrives the following sentence-" Morel has retarded the ends of science, and it is almost beyond a doubt that he has made a step towards it." Made a step towards a thing whose end he had retarded. Things were equally bad in the Academy of Inscriptions. Thus de Boze, wishing to eulogise five notices of the abbé Tallement, which formed altogether twelve pages, made use of the following strange expressions: "the ingenious manner," said he, "in which M. L'abbé describes our losses, has often made me wish they were more frequent." We must confess such language was but little flattering to the other academicians "One day a wit from England asked me," writes Voltaire," for the notes (or Journal) of the Academy. They have written no journal, I replied, but they have printed sixty or eighty volumes of compliments. He ran over one or two, but could not comprehend the style though he understood all the good authors very well. All that I can glean, said he to me, from all those fine discourses, is, that the candidate having assumed that his predecessor was a great man, Cardinal Richelieu a very great man, Chancellor Séguier a still greater man-the director replied to him in the same strain, and added that the candidate would be able also to be a great man, and as for him, the director, he would not desist without doing his part. It is easy to see by what fatality almost all the academical discourses were rendered so discreditable to the body: vitium est temporis potius quam hominis. The custom was insensibly established, that all the academicians should repeat these eulogies on their entrance : which imposed on them a species of command to weary the public. The necessity of speaking, the embarrassment of having nothing to say, and the emulation of genius, are three things capable of rendering even the greatest man ridiculous. Not being able to find new thoughts, they only sought to discover subterfuges, and spoke without reflection as some persons will, who think vaguely, or like those who though seeming to eat, yet perish from inanition. Instead of having a law, as was enforced in the French Academy, for the publication of those discourses, by which alone they were transmitted, there should have been a law to prevent their being printed."* The Academy distributed, and continue to distribute annual prizes on subjects sent in for competition, and it is but right to state that their choice is but rarely ratified by the public. "I composed, at eighteen," relates Voltaire, "an ode for the prize of the French Academy; which was borne away by the abbé du Jarri. I do not consider that my ode was very good; but the public were not quite content with the decision of the Academy. I remember among the many rare faults with which this little prize poem abounded, this verse Et des pôles brûlants jusqu'aux pôles glacés.' M. de la Mothe, a very amiable man and a great genius, and who piqued himself on his scientific knowledge, had by his interest awarded this prize to the abbé du Jarri; and when reproached with his decision, and above all the verse of the freezing pole and the burning pole, he replied that it was a philosophical affair, which was under the jurisdiction of the Academy of Science and not of the French Academy. Besides he was not quite sure that they had not burning poles there, and in fact, the abbé du Jarri was his friend."t The Academy having crowned, in 1717, a detestable ode of Gacon's, were afterwards so much ashamed of their award, that they sent the prize secretly to the author, to avoid the disgrace of the public being aware of it. The Academy, often abused by the public, was sometimes ridiculed even by its own members. According to one of its rules, no academician could put in for a prize which he had proposed. In 1779, Laharpe dared to infringe this rule, and sent a dithryambe in honor of Voltaire, which he read himself to • Voltaire, XXX. Lettre Philosophique. One The abbé du Jarri was sixty-five years of age. The subject was an ode on the vow of Louis XIII. The subjects were generally ill chosen. day the Academy, in order to compliment Louis XIV, thought it necessary to propose the following question:-"Which of the king's virtues merit a preference?" Louis XIV, notwithstanding his love of adulation, was disgusted by such flattery, and expressly prohibited that what was proposed should appear in the address. the assembly. Thanks to the eloquence of his delivery, he carried nearly all the votes. However, he was afterwards severely censured for his conduct. Speaking one day to Suard of the mediocrity of the pieces crowned by the Academy: "what we demand from our contributors," said he, " is not poetry itself, but poetical flowers or embellishments." Still it would be necessary for them to have the flowers. The sittings of the Academy, which should have been highly profitable, and of great utility, became most tiresome* if we are to judge them by those of the present day. They had debates there on the most trifling and even silly subjects. For instance, Gombauld delivered there a lecture in 1635 on Je ne sais quoi. Furetière has described, in a very piquant manner, the way in which those places were attained, and probably with much truth. According to him, the man who clamoured the loudest was the person selected by his confreres as the most competent. They had the art of making long discourses on nothing, the second repeated like an echo what the first had said, but usually three or four spoke at a time. When they had an assembly of five or six members, one of them read, another resolved or decided on the matter, two chatted together, a fifth slept, and the last amused himself by reading whatever work he found near him; if a second member wished to advance an opinion, they were obliged to read over again the article forming the subject of discussion, in consequence of not having paid attention to the first reading of it, they were so occupied. It was impossible that they could write two lines in succession without entering into long digressions, or without one of them relating a pleasant story, or the news of the day. To give a just estimate of the interior of the Academy, we will relate an account of a visit made to the Institution by Christina of Sweden, May 11th, 1658. We have it from the memoirs of Valentine Conrart, perpetual secretary. • La Condamine, at a supper given by him on the day of his reception to the French Academy, made the following impromptu : La Condamine est aujourd'hui, "M. l'abbé de Bois-Robert had intimated on the morning of this day the intention of Christina of Sweden to honor the company by being present at a meeting which was to be held. after dinner; M. le directeur (de la Chambre) thought it necessary to inform the academicians of the visit that they might not be absent. About three hours after noon, Her Majesty arrived at the residence of the Chancellor who received her in his coach with all the academicians in a body around it, and having conducted her to his ante-chamber at the end of the hall of council, where there was a long table covered with green velvet fringed with gold, where the council of finance was held, the Queen of Sweden being placed in an arm chair at the end of this table on the side near the windows-the Chancellor at her left near the fire-place, on a chair farther back but without arms, leaving rather a wide space between her Majesty and him. M. le directeur was at the other side of the table opposite the Chancellor; a little lower down, and much farther from the table, were all the academicians standing. The Chancellor paid the Queen a compliment, merely comprising an excuse that the Academy, not being aware before that morning of the honor her Majesty intended conferring on them by this visit, were not prepared to testify their joy and gratitude for so glorious a favor, at least as beseemed the duty of the company, when considering the importance of the honor, but if they had had time they would no doubt have entrusted this commission to some person more capable than he was of executing it; but finding himself empowered, owing to the privilege which kind fortune had bestowed on him of being president of the company on so happy an occasion, he was bound to tell her Majesty that the Academy had never received so high an honor as she had been graciously pleased to confer on them. To which the queen replied, that she thought they would pardon the curiosity of one who desired earnestly to find herself in the company of so many men of worth and genius, for whom she had always entertained the very highest esteem and regard. They then made a motion to enquire whether the acade micians should be sitting or standing; this appeared to surprise the queen. But the Chancellor having asked the opinion of some persons on this difficulty, they informed him that King Henry III when holding assemblies of men of letters at the wood of Vincennes, where he frequently held them, made the assistants be seated, which was a precedent for all future occasions, and that the queen of Sweden, even when at Rome, had been at the Academy of Humorists which was never held standing it was therefore resolved that the academicians should be seated; accordingly they all took their places on the back chairs but the Chancellor, and all remained uncovered. They apologized to her Majesty that the assembly was not more numerous, in consequence of not having had time to apprise all the academicians; that the secretary was absent from indisposition, and M.M. Gombauld and Chapelain also, with several others. She asked who was secretary; and being informed that it was M. Conrart, had the kindness to speak of him in the most flattering terms, as she knew him by reputation; she also bestowed great encomiums on the two other gentlemen who were absent. After that, M. le directeur told her that had they been aware of her Majesty's intention to honor them by a visit, they would have prepared a lecture which would have afforded an agreeable entertainment, but owing to the embarrassment in which she had found them, they could only present before her what circumstances would admit of; and that as they had prepared not long since a Treatise on Grief, which they had found in the third volume of Characters of the Passions which was ready to be given in public, he would, if permitted by her Majesty, read it, being a very good subject to portray the grief of the company in not being able to acquit themselves better before so great a queen, and of the privation they would have to undergo by her Majesty's early departure. This lecture being finished, to which the queen gave much attention, the Chancellor asked if any one had verses to recite for her Majesty's entertainment, on which M. Cotin recited several portions of the poet Lucretius, which he had translated into French, which seemed to afford the queen great pleasure. M. l'abbé de Bois-Robert recited also several madrigals, which he had composed not long since on the illness of Madame d'Olonne; and M. l'abbé de Tallemant, a sonnet on the death of a lady. After that, M. de la Chambre demanded something else. M. Pellison read a little ode on love which he had made, an imitation of Catullus, and other verses on a sapphire which he had lost and afterwards found, with which her Majesty was also exceedingly pleased; after this they read a portion of the Dictionary in full containing an explanation of the word jeu, in order to |