nd one of the most brilliant achievements in celestial mechanics. In his
"Exposition du Systeme du Monde" was formulated the theory called the
"nebular hypothesis," the glory of which he must share with Kant. "He would
have completed the science of the skies," says Fourier, "had the science
been capable of completion." As a physicist he made discoveries that were
in themselves sufficient to perpetuate his name, in specific heat,
capillary action and sound. In mathematics he furnished the modern
scientist with the famous Laplace co-efficients and the potential function,
thereby laying the foundation of the mathematical sciences of heat and
electricity. Not satisfied with scientific distinction, Laplace aspired to
political honors and left a public record which is not altogether to his
credit. Of his labors as Minister of the Interior, Napoleon remarked: "He
brought into the administration the spirit of the infinitesimals." Although
he owed his political success, small as it was, to Napoleon--the man whom
he had once heralded as the "pacificator of Europe"--he voted for his
dethronement.

[Sidenote: Death of Beethoven]

Shortly after the death of Laplace, Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna on
March 26. The last years of his life were so clouded by his deafness and by
the distressing vagaries of his nephew that he was often on the verge of
suicide. In December, 1826, he caught a violent cold, which brought on his
ultimate death from pneumonia and dropsy. Beethoven, though he adhered to
the sonata form of the classic school, introduced into his compositions
such daringly original methods that he must be regarded as the first of the
great romantic composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so
very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians,
until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached
such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must
stand as the greatest instrumental composer of the nineteenth century. The
profound subjective note that pervades his best compositions lifts his
music above that of his greatest predecessors: Bach, Haydn and Mozart.

[Sidenote: Beethoven's career]

[Sidenote: Notable compositions]

[Sidenote: "Fidelio"]

[Sidenote: Beethoven's declining years]

Beethoven came of a line of musical ancestors. His grandfather and
namesake was an orchestral leader and composer of operas. His father was a
profession