been praised by Lerminier as grand and original. Grand it is not; new it certainly is not. Toil must always involve hardship and self-denial, but it may not involve drudgery. Hardship and self-denial make toil heroic—exalt it into virtue. The saddest part of our modern civilization is, that toil which should ennoble, and even cheer, exhausts, depresses, degrades from its monotonous and mechanical character. Against this it is right to protest, but not in Fourier's fashion. That labour can be exceedingly attractive, the sportsman knows better than Fourier can tell him. It may be as severe work to hunt all day as to dig all day; yet the former is preferred, and for reasons which need not be stated. Labour is of three kinds—labour which is congenial; labour which, though uncongenial, strengthens us, sustains our manhood, and makes it more godlike; and labour which wears out, wearies, brings despair, and at last kills. There is no absolute idleness on earth—we all delight to be busy in our own way. In our own way, however, it is seldom granted us to be busy. We are for the most part chained to tasks for which we have no sympathy, and for which we conceive ourselves to have no aptitude. To harmonize labour with the sympathies and the aptitudes is right enough so far as it can be done, and so long as no great duties are neglected. But in the prevalent, the offensive materialism of Fourier's system, great duties and consequently great sacrifices are entirely overlooked. Fourier, gifted and discerning despite of his crotchets, saw clearly certain primordial social mischiefs, social sufferings, social wrongs; he saw clearly that politics and political economy were ineffectual to remedy; what he could not see is, that when everything else fails, it is religion which must redeem.—W. M—l.
FOURIER, Jean Baptiste Joseph, born at Auxerre in 1768; died at Paris in 1830. Fourier had early a high reputation for mathematics. He was educated at the military school of Auxerre. From this he passed to St. Benôit-sur-Loire, and two years were spent by him in the studies required for a candidate for holy orders. The church was a profession which Fourier only thought of adopting from the difficulties which his social position—his father was the son of a humble tradesman—interposed to his entering the army. The engineer department was that to which his genius would have incited him. In 1789 he was recalled to Auxerre, and appointed professor of mathematics. At the breaking out of the Revolution he was appointed a member of the committee of public safety at Auxerre, was more than once the object of proscription. In 1794, the opening of the school of public works, afterwards called the école polytechnique, Fourier was attached to it, at the recommendation of Lagrange. In 1798 he accompanied the expedition to Egypt, was appointed secretary of the hospital at Cairo, and presided over the commission employed to collect materials for the great work on Egypt. He is said to have been the first to create in the Champollions their zeal for Egyptian antiquities. When the public obsequies of Kleber and Desaix were celebrated, Fourier was selected to give words to the national grief, and his eloquence was felt to be equal to the occasions. Under the empire he was prefect of the department of the Isère, and held the office till 1815. During the Hundred Days he lived in retirement in Paris. In 1816 he became member of the Institute. On Delambre's death he became joint secretary of the Academy with Cuvier. His principal writings are his investigations on the theory of heat—these are published separately. His other works are in the Paris scientific journals of the day. Since his death Navier has published an early work of his—"Analyse des équations déterminées," Paris, 1831. Cousin, speaking of the theory of heat, describes it as a masterpiece of analysis, and classes Fourier with the greatest mathematicians that have ever lived.—J. A., D.
FOURMONT, Claude Louis, nephew of Etienne and Michel, born at Cormeilles in 1703; studied under his uncles, and after a visit to Greece, became interpreter in the Bibliotheque du Roi. In 1755 he published a description of the plains of Heliopolis and Memphis, the fruit of four years' residence in Egypt.—T. J.
FOURMONT, Etienne, a French oriental scholar, born at Herbelay, near St. Denis, 23rd June, 1683. He was the son of Etienne Fourmont, advocate and provost of Herbelay. He acquired the elements of Latin from a clergyman in the place. When eight years old he lost his father, and went to reside at Paris with a maternal uncle, who placed him at Mazarin college, where he made rapid progress. At the age of sixteen he had a competent knowledge of Latin and Greek, and he wrote a treatise on "Latin Roots," published in 1706. He studied logic, rhetoric, and philosophy in different colleges. In 1700 he quitted his uncle's house, and entered the seminary of Trente Trois, where he formed an intimate friendship with the Abbé Sevin, in conjunction with whom he read Greek and Latin authors, especially the poets. These pursuits, which were strictly prohibited by the college authorities, terminated in the expulsion of both Fourmont and the Abbé Sevin. Fourmont then retired to the college of Montaigu, where he occupied the rooms which formerly belonged to Erasmus. Here the Abbé Sevin visited him, and they successfully pursued the study of Latin, Greek, and oriental languages. By a translation of Aben Ezra's Commentary on Ecclesiastes Fourmont acquired great reputation as an oriental scholar, and received the congratulations of several doctors of the Sorbonne. When scarcely twenty-two years old he composed, in 1705, his "Nouvelle critique sacrée" on the Old and New Testaments. He subsequently quitted the college of Montaigu and went to that of Navarre, where he pursued his studies and lived by giving lessons in Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac. Among his pupils were the sons of the duke d'Autin. In the same year, 1705, he was engaged in oriental research for a Bibliotheca projected by the Abbé Bignon, on the plan of that of Photius.. The abbé had brought to Paris a young Chinese, named Hoan-ji, who became attached to the royal library as Chinese interpreter, and Fourmont was appointed to assist him in compiling a Chinese grammar, but in 1716 Hoan-ji died, leaving Fourmont only scanty materials for the completion of the work. Fourmont was elected member of the Académie des Inscriptions et des Belles-lettres in 1713, and in 1714 he read before that body a learned dissertation on the art of poetry among the Hebrews. Although he had had very tempting offers from Count Toledo, the Spanish minister, he declined to remove from Paris; he afterwards obtained a pension from the Spanish court. In 1715 he succeeded the Abbé Galland in the chair of Arabic in the royal college. He distinguished himself in a controversy with Masclef, in regard to the necessity of vowel points in reading Hebrew. In 1738 he was chosen a member of the Royal Society of London, and of that of Berlin in 1741. The duke of Orleans, by whom he was much esteemed, made him one of his secretaries. Fourmont died at Paris, 19th December, 1745, aged sixty-two years. He published "Racines de la langue Latine mises en vers François," Paris, 1706; "Catalogue des Ouvrages," &c., Paris, 1731; "Reflexions Critiques sur l'Origine, &c., des Anciens Peuples," 2 vols., Paris, 1735; "Meditationes Sinicæ"," 1737; "Grammatica Sinica," 1742; "Lingua Sinarum," 1742; and several dissertations in the Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscrip.—W. A. B.
FOURMONT, Michel, born at Herbelay in 1690; died at Paris in 1746. He took holy orders, and in 1720 was appointed professor of Syriac at the royal college. In 1724 he was admitted into the Academy of Inscriptions, and published in the Transactions of that body essays on philology and mythology. Fourmont was sent, in company with M. Savin, to Greece, to look for manuscripts and copy inscriptions. This led to the publication of several dissertations by the academy, and to the author reading several more, which the academy declined to print. Fourmont also wrote verses, which are forgotten.—J. A., D.
FOURNEYRON, Benoît, a French engineer, was born at Saint Etienne, department of the Loire, on the 1st of November, 1802. In 1817 he entered the mining school of that place, and notwithstanding his youth was soon afterwards employed to assist the professor of mathematics. From 1819 he became extensively engaged in various branches of engineering. In 1847 he was made chef-de-bataillon in the national guard of Paris. In 1848 he represented for a time his native department in the constituent assembly. M. Fourneyron's celebrity was the result of his improvements in the "turbine," or whirlpool water-wheel. Turbines of a rude construction have been used from a very remote period, and their first inventor is unknown. They were improved and varied during the last and the present century by Segner, Euler, Parent, Barker, Manoury-Dectot, and other mechanicians and men of science. In 1824 great improvements in them were proposed by M. Burdin; and in consequence of the publication of his memoir on the subject a prize was offered in 1826 by the Society for the Encouragement of the National Industry, for the application of turbines to driving machinery. In 1836 that prize was gained by M. Fourneyron, His turbine
