liated people at first sight. This early prepossession in his favour was strengthened by a further acquaintance, which discovered his patient attention, his caution and prudence, his knowledge and skill, his fruitfulness in resources, his dignified self-command, and that calm and well-grounded confidence in himself which universally excites the confidence of others. Thus the favourable opinion of him, which was at first a prejudice, became afterwards a reasonable ground of attachment and of earnest recommendation. "He distinguished himself as a surgeon and a teacher of anatomy and surgery; but he was a person who would have distinguished himself, whatever had been his situation and calling. His strong intellect, his self-determination, his steady adherence to his purpose, and his consummate prudence, would have ensured him success in any career of honourable ambition." * 6 We have not been able to ascertain that Mr Cline committed anything to the press, except a short essay On the Use of the Tinctura Ferri Muriati, in those Suppressions of Urine which arise from a Spasmodic Affection of the Urethra;' which made its appearance in a miscellany intitled Medical Records and Researches, selected from the papers of a private Medical Association.' London, 1798, 8vo. He did not print even a syllabus of his lectures on anatomy and surgery for the use of his pupils ; though the lecturers on other branches of science, belonging to the same institution, issued synopses of their respective courses. Some communications of cases and remarks from his pen may be found in the publications of Dr Jenner and other writers; exclusive of which there are few memorials of his learning and experience remaining in print. Of his lectures, however, many of his pupils took copies, which will preserve among the members of the profession he adorned, a lasting recollection of the value and importance of his labours as a cultivator of the fields of science. * Id. MARQUIS DE LAPLACE. THE MARQUIS PIERRE SIMON LAPLACE, peer of France, one of the most celebrated mathematicians of the present age, was born at Beaumont en Auge, in the department of Calvados, the 28th of March 1749. He was the son of a husbandman, or gardener, but his genius triumphed over the disadvantages of his birth, and in his youth he displayed an ardent taste for scientific inquiries. After having been for some time professor of mathematics at the military school, in his native place, he went to Paris, where his previous acquirements and anxious endeavours to improve himself procured him powerful protectors. He dedicated the first of his productions to the president Saron, at whose expense the work was printed; and this publication formed an advantageous commencement of the reputation of M. Laplace, which his knowledge of transcendental geometry and analysis soon greatly augmented. He obtained in 1784 the office of examiner of the royal corps of artillery, which had been previously occupied by Bezout; he became a member of the Academy of Sciences; and subsequently of the Institute, and of the Bureau [Board] of Longitude. Having completed his Exposition du Systême du Monde,' he addressed it, in 1796, to the Council of Five Hundred, and he went, at the head of a deputation, September 26th, that year, to present to the Council a report of the labours of the Institute from the time of its creation. In the discourse which he delivered on that occasion, in enumerating the names of those individuals whose knowledge had done honour to France, he paid a just tribute of homage to the memory of his benefactor, the president de Saron. Though M. de Laplace had shown himself, from the commencement of the Revolution, a partizan of the principles on which it was founded, he held no office in the state till after the 18th of Brumaire 1799. At that period, nominated minister of the interior, he rather occupied the place than discharged the functions belonging to it, till the time that Lucien Buonaparte was called to fill it. Napoleon thus characterised the qualifications of M. de Laplace as a statesman [administrateur]:-"With talents the most transcendant as a geometrician, he soon made it evident that he was below mediocrity as a minister. His first labours convinced the consuls that they had been deceived: Laplace regarded no question under its true point of view; he was always seeking after subtleties, he had none but problematical ideas, and in fact he carried the spirit of the arithmetic of infinites into the administration." After having for six weeks retained the title of minister, M. de Laplace (in whose person Napoleon sought to do honour to the sciences), was called to the conservative senate, in December 1799. Having been made vice-president of that body in July 1803, he was appointed chancellor in the month following, and then grand cordon of the Legion of Honour. It was he who, in September 1805, was charged to make a report to the senate of the necessity of abandoning the Republican Calendar, and resuming the Gregorian. He became president of the Maternal Society in 1811; he received in April 1813, the grand cordon of the Order of the Re-union; previously to which he had been created a count of the empire. All these favours did not fetter his independence. In 1814 he voted for the dethronement of Napoleon, and the establishment of a provisional government. His courage did not go unrecompensed. On the 4th of June following, he was admitted into the number of the peers of France, and received the title of Marquis. Faithful to the new obligation he had contracted, he absented himself from the Tuileries during the Hundred Days. In 1816, this great geometer was appointed a member of the French Academy. He was also one of the founders of the Society of Arcueil, to which likewise belonged the modest Bertholet; a society composed of learned men, who consecrated their talents and fortunes to the advancement of the physical sciences.* One of the last public transactions in which the Marquis de Laplace was involved, was the discussion which took place in the French Academy relative to the legislative enactments proposed by the government in the beginning of 1827, for the restriction of the liberty of the press. Justice compels the admission, that the liberality and public spirit which the great body of the academicians exhibited on this occasion throws a shade over the conduct of the Marquis de Laplace, who, as director of the Academy (at the opening discussion concerning the presentation of the address to the king against the projected law), was seated in the chair, which he abandoned, after a vain opposition to the resolutions of his fellow labourers in the fields of science.† He * Biographie Nouvelle des Contemporains, tom. xi, pp. 15, 16.] + See Note B. p. 211. did not long survive this transaction, and was consequently spared the mortification of witnessing the triumph of the friends of freedom, in the rejection of the obnoxious law, which through weakness or error he had at least negatively favoured. He died at Paris, on the 6th of March 1827; after a protracted illness, from which his friends had flattered themselves he would recover, and in the progress of which the tenderest care of an affectionate consort, and the most skilful attentions of the medical faculty, had been ineffectually exerted for his relief.* The remains of Laplace were accompanied to the tomb by a number of his illustrious coadjutors, some of whom, in appropriate terms, eulogized his talents, and lamented the termination of his useful and important labours for the advancement of the exact sciences. The Moniteur for the 20th of March 1827, contains the discourses delivered by MM. Daru, Poisson and Biot, in the name of the Institute, at the funeral of the deceased; and in the number of the same journal for April 12th, 1827, was published the oration in honour of his memory pronounced in the Chamber of Peers by the Marquis de Pastoret. In the session of the Academy of the 9th of April 1827, M. Legendre, on the part of the section of Geometry, announced that it was the unanimous opinion of the committee that they should not immediately proceed to fill up the vacancy caused by the death of M. de Laplace. The Academy thereon adjourned for six months all further deliberation on that subject. In adopting this measure their design was to render new homage to the illustrious philosopher whose loss they lamented. The election of his successor at length took place in the month of November following, when M. Royer-Collard was unanimously chosen. His reception occured on the 13th of November; and in the discourse which he uttered on that occasion, he bestowed a deserved panegyric on his predecessor. He observed that his Exposition du Systême du Monde' is not to be considered merely as a literary work, in which we admire the excellence of the arrangement and the beauty of the style; but as a production in which the skill of the writer perpetually reminds us of the genius of the philosopher. "The system of the world which M. de Laplace has exhibited was not indeed his own discovery, since it had been discovered previous to his inquiries; but yet in some manner it may be said to belong to him, since he raised that which was imperfect to perfection, certitude, and stability." * Dictionnaire Historique, ou Biographie Universelle Classique, par M. le Gen. Beauvais, &c. p. 1636. After having considered M. de Laplace as a geometer, the orator thus spoke of him as a statesman: "He perceived, it has been said, the progress of intellectual light in the sciences, and in that light the guarantee of public happiness; a guarantee, alas! insufficient, and which has too often required the aid of virtuous principle against those passions which are inimical to order and to liberty. (Here some commotion took place in the Assembly). The strong prepossession of M. de Laplace in favour of his profound studies may serve to excuse him, if his conduct demands excuse, for having silently proceeded in his career, through our good and our evil days, without enthusiasm and without anger, as if elevated beyond the hopes and the fears which actuated his contemporaries." * A French journalist subjoins to an announcement of the decease of his illustrious countryman the ensuing observations:— "We abstain from any notice of his political life, for M. de Laplace was not a political character; and but for his previous reputation he would never as such have attracted public attention. We shall therefore consider him merely as a philosopher, and shall give a brief summary of those researches which have intitled him to a place in the foremost rank of those citizens who have done honour to France. "In 1796 appeared the Exposition of the System of the World,' a celebrated work, which even in a literary point of view may be regarded as a master-piece, for the elegant simplicity of its style, and the lucid perspicuity exhibited in the most abstruse demonstrations. Among the new and important results which this treatise presents, we must particularly remark the explanation given of the revolutions of Saturn and Jupiter. These two planets, in fact, display such peculiar irregularity in their motions, that some astronomers founded on it an objection to the theory of attraction, while others, in endeavouring to explain it by that theory, conceived the necessity of admitting the existence of a celestial body, invisible, yet of vast dimensions, whose influence might occasion the irregularity in the motions of the two planets. Certainly, since the period of this conjecture Herschel has discovered the planet which bears his name, but the distance of this body is too great for it to be capable of producing the perturbation in question; and it was reserved for M. de Laplace to shew, by a more rigorous calculation of the mutual effects of the attraction of Jupiter and Saturn than had been previously made, that the remark.able inequality observable in their movements, far from affording any objection to the theory of attraction, presents, on the contrary, a striking corroboration of its truth.+ * Revue Encyclopédique, tom. xxxiv. p. 277; and tom. xxxvi. pp. 518,19. ተ + " M. de Laplace," says Professor Robison," has happily succeeded in accounting for several irregularities in the gradual change of the mean motions of the two planets Jupiter and Saturn, which had considerably perplexed the astronomers in their attempts to ascertain their periods and their maximum by mere observation. These were accompanied by an evident |