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Hereditary Genius
207
Cassini, de Thury, Caesar Francois, continued—
S. Jacques Dominique (1747-1845, aet. 98); succeeded his father as director of the
Observatory, and finished the “Carte Topographique de la France.”
P. Alex. Henri Gabriel (1781-1832, aet. 51); passionately fond of natural history;
no taste for astronomy; wrote “Opuscules Philologiques;” was member of the
Academy. He was a lawyer; President of the Cour Royale at Paris; and peer of
France; d. prematurely of cholera.
Cavendish, Hon. Henry (1731-1810, aet. 79); celebrated chemist; founder of
pneumatic chemistry.
gB. William, Lord Russell; patriot; executed 1683. See.
Celsius, Olaus; a Swedish botanist, theologian, and orientalist. He is regarded as the
founder of the study of natural history in Sweden, and was the master and
patron of Linnaeus. He wrote on the plants mentioned in Scripture;
was
professor of theology and of the Eastern languages at Upsala; d. aet. 86.
S. Magnus Nicholas Celsius, mathematician and botanist; professor at Upsala.
P. Andrew Celsius, astronomer. It was he who first employed the centigrade scale
of the thermometer; professor at Upsala; d. aet. 43.
Condorcet, Jean Caritat, Marquis de; secretary of the French Academy; also a
writer on morals and politics. He was precocious in mathematical study, and
had an insatiable and universal curiosity; was very receptive of ideas, but not
equally original; had no outward show of being vain, simply because he had a
superb confidence in his own opinions. He was deficient in brilliancy. His
principal faculty was in combining and organizing. Different people estimate
his character very differently. St. Beuve shows him to have been malign and
bitter, with a provoking exterior of benignity. He poisoned himself aet. 51, to
avoid the guillotine.
[f.] His mother was very devout. She devoted him to the Virgin, when a child, to
dress in white for eight years, like a young girl.
U. A distinguished bishop. (Arago's “Eloge.”)
(2?) He was also nearly connected with both the Archbishop of
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