audiences. The talent for such exposition is
itself a special one. Arago possessed it to the full, and his own
original contributions to astronomy and physics enabled him to speak as
an expert, not merely as an expositor.

The extracts are from his admirable estimate of Laplace, which he
prepared in connection with the proposal, before him and other members
of a State Committee, to publish a new and authoritative edition of the
great astronomer's works. The translation is mainly that of the
'Biographies of Distinguished Men' cited above, and much of the felicity
of style is necessarily lost in translation; but the substance of solid
and lucid exposition from a master's hand remains.

Arago was a Deputy in 1830, and Minister of War in the Provisional
Government of 1848. He died full of honors, October 2d, 1853. Two of his
brothers, Jacques and Etienne, were dramatic authors of note. Another,
Jean, was a distinguished general in the service of Mexico. One of his
sons, Alfred, is favorably known as a painter; another, Emmanuel, as a
lawyer, deputy, and diplomat.

[Illustration: Signature: Edward S. Holden]

LAPLACE

The Marquis de Laplace, peer of France, one of the forty of the French
Academy, member of the Academy of Sciences and of the Bureau of
Longitude, Associate of all the great Academies or Scientific Societies
of Europe, was born at Beaumont-en-Auge, of parents belonging to the
class of small farmers, on the 28th of March, 1749; he died on the 5th
of March, 1827. The first and second volumes of the 'Mecanique Celeste'
[Mechanism of the Heavens] were published in 1799; the third volume
appeared in 1802, the fourth in 1805; part of the fifth volume was
published in 1823, further books in 1824, and the remainder in 1825. The
'Theorie des Probabilites' was published in 1812. We shall now present
the history of the principal astronomical discoveries contained in these
immortal works.

Astronomy is the science of which the human mind may justly feel
proudest. It owes this pre-eminence to the elevated nature of its
object; to the enormous scale of its operations; to the certainty, the
utility, and the stupendousness of its results. From the very beginnings
of civilization the study of the heavenly bodies and their movements has
attracted the attention of governments and peoples. The greatest
captains, statesmen, philosophers, and orators of Greece and Rome found
it a subject of delight. Yet astronomy worthy