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,
coördinated, and robed in all the pomps of language, those high
conceptions destined to charm successive generations. Biographers inform
us that Crébillon 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 ASTRONOMY.--LETTERS ON THE ATLANTIS OF PLATO AND ON THE