s of an academician if I refused to attend the
meetings where such phenomena were promised me, provided they granted me
sufficient influence as regards the proofs, for me to feel assured that
I was not become the victim of mere jugglery.

Nor did Franklin, Lavoisier, or Bailly believe in Mesmeric magnetism
before they became members of the Government Commission, and yet we may
have remarked with what minute and scrupulous care they varied the
experiments. True philosophers ought to have constantly before their
eyes those two beautiful lines:--

"To suppose that every thing has been discovered is a profound error:
It is mistaking the horizon for the limits of the world."[12]

FOOTNOTES:

[7]

"Le voila, ce mortel, dont le siecle s'honore,
Par qui sont replonges au sejour infernal
Tous les fleaux vengeurs que dechaina Pandore;
Dans son art bienfaisant il n'a pas de rival,
Et la Grece l'eut pris pour le dieu d'Epidaure."

[8]

"Les sots sont ici-bas pour nos menus plaisirs."

[9]

"Un decrotteur a la royale,
Du talon gauche estropie,
Obtint pour grace speciale
D'etre boiteux de l'autre pie."

[10]

"De par le Roi, defense a Dieu
D'operer miracle en ce lieu!"

[11]

"Il est des noeuds secrets, il est des sympathies,
Dont par les doux rapports les ames assorties
S'attachent l'une a l'autre."

[12]

"Croire tout decouvert est un erreur profonde:
C'est prendre l'horizon pour les bornes du monde."

ELECTION OF BAILLY INTO THE ACADEMY OF INSCRIPTIONS.

In speaking of the pretended identity of the Atlantis, or of the kingdom
of Ophir under Solomon with America, Bailly says, in his fourteenth
letter to Voltaire: "Those ideas belonged to the age of learned men, but
not to the philosophic age." And elsewhere (in the twenty-first letter)
we read these words: "Do not fear that I shall fatigue you by heavy
erudition." To have supposed that erudition could be heavy and be
deficient in philosophy, was for certain people of a secondary order an
unpardonable crime. And thus we saw men, excited by a sentiment of hate,
arm themselves with a critical microscope, and painfully seek out
imperfections in the innumerable quotations with which Bailly had
strengthened himself. The harvest was not abundant; yet, these eager
ferrets succeeded in discovering some weak points, some interpretations
that might be contested. The