lutionary spirit on so large a scale, and during so
extended a portion of his public career.

"The lustre," he observes, "which the labours of Lavoisier had shed over
the scientific renown of France, the valuable services which he had
rendered her in so many important departments of her affairs, the
virtues which adorned his character and made his philosophy beloved as
well as revered, were all destined to meet the reward with which the
tyranny of _vulgar faction_ is sure to recompense the good and the wise,
as often as the _base unlettered multitude_ are permitted to bear sway,
and to place in the seat of dominion their idols, who _dupe_ to
_betray_, and finally punish them."

Lord Brougham justly reprobates the suspicious silence of the celebrated
Carnot on this occasion, and the still more scandalous apathy of
Fourcroix, who had been the pupil and panegyrist of the great chemist
during many years. He acquits him of the deadly imputation, that he had
even been instrumental in sending his master to the guillotine. But he
praises, in contradistinction, M. Halle, who had the honest courage to
proclaim Lavoisier's public services before the dreadful tribunal,
while he consigns the pupil to perpetual scorn. He was murdered in his
fifty-first year.

Lord Brougham's French predilections do credit to his sense of
cosmopolitism; but he appears to us somewhat more disposed to conciliate
the jealousy of his very irritable French _confreres_, than to deal
rigorous justice. No man deserves the reputation of science but a
discoverer. To know all that has been hitherto known on a subject,
deserves the character of diligence; to promote the progress of a
science by largeness of expenditure, or steadiness of exertion, deserves
the praise of liberality and labour; but the man who adds to the science
by original invention, who enlarges its boundaries, and detects new
principles, is the man alone to whom the name of genius can be applied.
Lavoisier was, unquestionably, an important minister of science; he
possessed singular assiduity, unwearied zeal, and remarkable sagacity.
What these could do, he did; what knowledge could accomplish, he
performed; but the inventors were of another country, and of a higher
order, and he must be content with the honours due to imitation. Yet he
had considerable happiness in the difficult art of communicating his
knowledge. His _Treatise on Chemistry_, though now superseded by
subsequent arrangements,