ute
to Lacaille, would not be displeased at his having followed him in the
same career ... that he would not be blamed for repeating the praises
due to an illustrious man."

Bailly, in fact, was not blamed aloud; but when the hour for retreat had
sounded in M. de Fouchy's ear, without any fuss, without showing himself
offended in his self-love, remaining apparently modest, this learned
man, in asking for an assistant, selected one who had not undertaken to
repeat his eloges; who had not found his biographies insufficient. This
preference ought not to be, and was not, uninfluential in the result of
the competition.

Bailly, if Perpetual Secretary of the Academy, would have been obliged
to reside constantly at Paris. But Bailly, as member of the Astronomical
Section, might retire to the country, and thus escape those thieves of
time, as Byron called them, who especially abound in the metropolis.
Bailly settled at Chaillot. It was at Chaillot that our
fellow-academician composed his best works, those that will sail down
the stream of time.

Nature had endowed Bailly with the most happy memory. He did not write
his discourses till he had completed them in his head. His first copy
was always a clean copy. Every morning Bailly started early from his
humble residence at Chaillot; he went to the Bois de Boulogne, and
there, walking for many hours at a time, his powerful mind elaborated,
cooerdinated, and robed in all the pomps of language, those high
conceptions destined to charm successive generations. Biographers inform
us that Crebillon composed in a similar way. And this was, according to
several critics, the cause of the incorrectness, of the asperity of
style, which disfigure several pieces by that tragic poet. The works of
Bailly, and especially the discourses that complete the _History of
Astronomy_, invalidate this explanation. I could also appeal to the
elegant and pure productions of that poet whom France has just lost and
weeps for. No one indeed can be ignorant of his works; Casimir
Delavigne, like Bailly, never committed his verses to paper until he had
worked them up in his mind to that harmonious perfection which procured
for them the unanimous suffrages of all people of taste. Gentlemen,
pardon this reminiscence. The heart loves to connect such names as those
of Bailly and of Delavigne; those rare and glorious symbols, in whom we
find united talent, virtue, and an invariable patriotism.

HISTORY OF A