Chapter III · (continued 3)

About this time he got metallic conductors erected on the house of the Academy at Dijon. On this account he was attacked violently for his presumption in disarming the hand of the Supreme Being. A multitude of fanatics assembled to pull down the conductors, and they would probably have done much mischief, had it not been for the address of M. Maret, the secretary, who assured them that the astonishing virtue of the apparatus resided in the gilded point, which had purposely been sent from Rome by the holy father! Will it excite any surprise, that within less than twenty years after this the mass of the French people not only renounced the Christian religion, and the spiritual dominion of the pope, but declared themselves atheists!

In 1777 Morveau published the first volume of a course of chemistry, which was afterwards followed by three other volumes, and is known by the name of "Elémens de Chimie de l'Académie de Dijon." This book was received with universal approbation, and must have contributed very much to increase the value of his lectures. Indeed, a text-book is essential towards a successful course of lectures: it puts it in the power of the students to understand the lecture if they be at the requisite pains; and gives them a means of clearing up their difficulties, when any such occur. I do not hesitate to say, that a course of chemical lectures is twice as valuable when the students are furnished with a good text-book, as when they are left to interpret the lectures by their own unassisted exertions.

Soon after he undertook the establishment of a manufacture of saltpetre upon a large scale. For this he received the thanks of M. Necker, who was at that time minister of finance, in the name of the King of France. This manufactory he afterwards gave up to M. Courtois, whose son still carries it on, and is advantageously known to the public as the discoverer of iodine.

His next object was to make a collection of minerals, and to make himself acquainted with the science of mineralogy. All this was soon accomplished. In 1777 he was charged to examine the slate-quarries and the coal-mines of Burgundy, for which purpose he performed a mineralogical tour through the province. In 1779 he discovered a lead-mine in that country, and a few years afterwards, when the attention of chemists had been drawn to sulphate of barytes and its base, by the Swedish chemists, he sought for it in Burgundy, and found it in considerable quantity at Thôte. This enabled him to draw up a description of the mineral, and to determine the characters of the base, to which he gave the name of barote; afterwards altered to that of barytes. This paper was published in the third volume of the Memoirs of the Dijon Academy. In this paper he describes his method of decomposing sulphate of barytes, by heating it with charcoal—a method now very frequently followed.

In the year 1779 he was applied to by Pankouke, who meditated the great project of the Encyclopédie Méthodique, to undertake the chemical articles in that immense dictionary, and the demand was supported by a letter from Buffon, whose request he did not think that he could with propriety refuse. The engagement was signed between them in September, 1780. The first half-volume of the chemical part of this Encyclopédie did not appear till 1786, and Morveau must have been employed during the interval in the necessary study and researches. Indeed, it is obvious, from many of the articles, that he had spent a good deal of time in experiments of research.

The state of the chemical nomenclature was at that period peculiarly barbarous and defective. He found himself stopped at every corner for want of words to express his meaning. This state of things he resolved to correct, and accordingly in 1782 published his first essay on a new chemical nomenclature. No sooner did this essay appear than it was attacked by almost all the chemists of Paris, and by none more zealously than by the chemical members of the academy. Undismayed by the violence of his antagonists, and satisfied with the rectitude of his views, and the necessity of the reform, he went directly to Paris to answer the objections in person. He not only succeeded in convincing his antagonists of the necessity of reform; but a few years afterwards prevailed upon the most eminent chemical members of the academy, Lavoisier, Berthollet, and Fourcroy, to unite with him in rendering the reform still more complete and successful. He drew up a memoir, exhibiting a plan of a methodical chemical nomenclature, which was read at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences, in 1787. Morveau, then, was in reality the author of the new chemical nomenclature, if we except a few terms, which had been already employed by Lavoisier. Had he done nothing more for the science than this, it would deservedly have immortalized his name. For every one must be sensible how much the new nomenclature contributed to the subsequent rapid extension of chemical science.

It was during the repeated conferences held with Lavoisier and the other two associates that Morveau became satisfied of the truth of Lavoisier's new doctrine, and that he was induced to abandon the phlogistic theory. We do not know the methods employed to convert him. Doubtless both reasoning and experiment were made use of for the purpose.

It was during this period that Morveau published a French translation of the Opuscula of Bergman. A society of friends, under his encouragement, translated the chemical memoirs of Scheele and many other foreign books of importance, which by their means were made known to the men of science in France.

In 1783, in consequence of a favourable report by Macquer, Morveau obtained permission to establish a manufactory of carbonate of soda, the first of the kind ever attempted in France. It was during the same year that he published his collection of pleadings at the bar, among which we find his Discours sur la Bonhomie, delivered at the opening of the sessions at Dijon, with which he took leave of his fellow-magistrates, surrendering the insignia of office, as he had determined to quit the profession of the law.

On the 25th of April, 1784, Morveau, accompanied by President Virly, ascended from Dijon in a balloon, which he had himself constructed, and repeated the ascent on the 12th of June following, with a view of ascertaining the possibility of directing these aerostatic machines, by an apparatus of his own contrivance. The capacity of the balloon was 10,498,074 French cubic feet. The effect produced by this bold undertaking by two of the most distinguished characters in the town was beyond description. Such ascents were then quite new, and looked upon with a kind of reverential awe. Though Morveau failed in his attempts to direct these aerial vessels, yet his method was ingenious and exceedingly plausible.

In 1786 Dr. Maret, secretary to the Dijon Academy, having fallen a victim to an epidemic disease, which he had in vain attempted to arrest, Morveau was appointed perpetual secretary and chancellor of the institution. Soon after this the first half-volume of the chemical part of the Encyclopédie Méthodique made its appearance, and drew the attention of every person interested in the science of chemistry. No chemical treatise had hitherto appeared worthy of being compared to it. The article Acid, which occupies a considerable part, is truely admirable; and whether we consider the historical details, the completeness of the accounts, the accuracy of the description of the experiments, or the elegance of the style, constitutes a complete model of what such a work should be. I may, perhaps, be partial, as it was from this book that I imbibed my own first notions in chemistry, but I never perused any book with more delight, and when I compared it with the best chemical books of the time, whether German, French, or English, its superiority became still more striking.

In the article Acier, Morveau had come to the very same conclusions, with respect to the nature of steel, as had been come to by Berthollet, Monge, and Vandermonde, in their celebrated paper on the subject, just published in the Memoirs of the Academy. His own article had been printed, though not published, before the appearance of the Memoir of the Academicians. This induced him to send an explanation to Berthollet, which was speedily published in the Journal de Physique.

In September, 1787, he received a visit from Lavoisier, Berthollet, Fourcroy, Monge, and Vandermonde. Dr. Beddoes, who was travelling through France at the time, and happened to be in Dijon, joined the party. The object of the meeting was to discuss several experiments explanatory of the new doctrine. In 1789 an attempt was made to get him admitted as a member of the Academy of Sciences; but it failed, notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of Berthollet and his other chemical friends.

The French revolution had now broken out, occasioned by the wants of the state on the one hand, and the resolute determination of the clergy and the nobility on the other, not to submit to bear any share in the public burdens. During the early part of this revolution Morveau took no part whatever in politics. In 1790, when France was divided into departments, he was named one of a commission by the National Assembly for the formation of the department of the Côte d'Or. On the 25th of August, 1791, he received from the Academy of Sciences the annual prize of 2000 francs, for the most useful work published in the course of the year. This was decreed him for his Dictionary of Chemistry, in the Encyclopédie Méthodique. Aware of the pressing necessities of the state, Morveau seized the opportunity of showing his desire of contributing towards its relief, by making a patriotic offering of the whole amount of his prize.

When the election of the second Constitutional Assembly took place, he was nominated a member by the electoral college of his department. A few months before, his name had appeared among the list of members proposed by the assembly, for the election of a governor to the heir-apparent. All this, together with the dignity of solicitor-general of the department to which he had recently been raised, not permitting him to continue his chemical lectures at Dijon, of which he had already delivered fifteen gratuitous courses, he resigned his chair in favour of Dr. Chaussier, afterwards a distinguished professor at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris; and, bidding adieu to his native city, proceeded to Paris.

On the ever memorable 16th of January, 1793, he voted with the majority of deputies. He was therefore, in consequence of this vote, a regicide. During the same year he resigned, in favour of the republic, his pension of two thousand francs, together with the arrears of that pension.

In 1794 he received from government different commissions to act with the French armies in the Low Countries. Charged with the direction of a great aerostatic machine for warlike purposes, he superintended that one in which the chief of the staff of General Jourdan and himself ascended during the battle of Fleurus, and which so materially contributed to the success of the French arms on that day. On his return from his various missions, he received from the three committees of the executive government an invitation to co-operate with several learned men in the instruction of the central schools, and was named professor of chemistry at the Ecole Centrale des Travaux publiques, since better known under the name of the Polytechnic School.

In 1795 he was re-elected member of the Council of Five Hundred, by the electoral assemblies of Sarthe and Ile et Vilaine. The executive government, at this time, decreed the formation of the National Institute, and named him one of the forty-eight members chosen by government to form the nucleus of that scientific body.

In 1797 he resigned all his public situations, and once more attached himself exclusively to science and to the establishments for public instruction. In 1798 he was appointed a provisional director of the Polytechnic School, to supply the place of Monge, who was then in Egypt. He continued to exercise its duties during eighteen months, to the complete satisfaction of every person connected with that establishment. With much delicacy and disinterestedness, he declined accepting the salary of 2000 francs attached to this situation, which he thought belonged to the proper director, though absent from his duties.

In 1799 Bonaparte appointed him one of the administrators-general of the Mint; and the year following he was made director of the Polytechnic School. In 1803 he received the cross of the Legion of Honour, then recently instituted; and in 1805 was made an officer of the same order. These honours were intended as a reward for the advantage which had accrued from the mineral acid fumigations which he had first suggested. In 1811 he was created a baron of the French empire.

After having taught in the Ecole Polytechnique for sixteen years, he obtained leave, on applying to the proper authorities, to withdraw into the retired station of private life, crowned with years and reputation, and followed with the blessings of the numerous pupils whom he had brought up in the career of science. In this situation he continued about three years, during which he witnessed the downfall of Bonaparte, and the restoration of the Bourbons. On the 21st of December, 1815, he was seized with a total exhaustion of strength; and, after an illness of three days only, expired in the arms of his disconsolate wife, and a few trusty friends, having nearly completed the eightieth year of his age. On the 3d of January, 1816, his remains were followed to the grave by the members of the Institute, and many other distinguished men: and Berthollet, one of his colleagues, pronounced a short but impressive funeral oration on his departed friend.

Morveau had married Madame Picardet, the widow of a Dijon academician, who had distinguished himself by numerous scientific translations from the Swedish, German, and English languages. The marriage took place after they were both advanced in life, and he left no children behind him. His publications on chemical subjects were exceedingly numerous, and he contributed as much as any of his contemporaries to the extension of the science; but as he was not the author of any striking chemical discoveries, it would be tedious to give a catalogue of his numerous productions which were scattered through the Dijon Memoirs, the Journal de Physique, and the Annales de Chimie.