... ... together in delightful communion until supper was announced. Talleyrand ordinarily did not sup, while I ate some rice cooked with milk on the stove in my store. I had some excellent Madeira which Talleyrand liked very much. . . . How many times, after the late hour had dispersed the rest of the company, did Talleyrand go with them across the little court-yard and then steal back to prolong the evening with me. He yielded finally when my wife came and said to him: 'Tomorrow you will stay lazily in your bed until noon, whereas your friend must be up and open his shop at seven.' . . . Thus we passed every evening together without missing a single one, in talking of the past, of the present and of the future of our country. In connection with the future we talked of Louisiana and of plans to colonize it for ourselves. Sometimes we talked seriously of the matter and Talleyrand concluded that we must become the governors. "In this plan, as well as in others which we made to remain together, Talleyrand and I closed our talks together, our hands clasped in a pledge that for the rest of our lives we would share with one another our failures and our successes even in money matters. . . . In a word never did the common expression, 'united as two fingers of the same hand,' describe so accurately the liaison between two persons as that between Talleyrand and myself." At his departure for Europe on June 11, 1796, Talleyrand took with him some two hundred copies of Moreau's "La description de la partie espagnole de St. Domingue" to find sale for them at Hamburg and in France. He offered to take Moreau's son with him back to Paris and to provide for his education. After his return to Europe Talleyrand did not forget the friend of his days of exile, for the diary contains letters written in affectionate terms from Hamburg and Paris. It was in fact through Talleyrand that Moreau was permitted to return to France and by Talleyrand's pecuniary aid that he was able to take his family from Bordeaux to the capital. It was due to Talleyrand's influence that Moreau obtained shortly afterwards the position of historiographer at the Ministry of the Marine. The diary closes at a date shortly after Moreau's return to Paris and we are left to conjecture as to what were the relations of the two friends in later life. It seems, however, perfectly plausible to suppose that the appointment of Moreau as ambassodar at Parma in 1801 (later to become and remain its regent until his disgrace by Napoleon in 1806) was the result of Talleyrand's influence exerted in his behalf. It is pleasant to dwell upon these pages of the diary, because they throw a pleasing light upon Talleyrand's character. He is generally thought of as the prince of diplomats, employing human speech to conceal his own thoughts, but here we have him unveiling his very soul to a kind and sympathetic friend. The diary shows, however, that Moreau de Saint-Méry's shop became something more than the rendezvous for such notable émigrés. From his printing press went forth many notable works published in French, such as de Liancourt's study on the prisons of Philadelphia, and three of his own notable works, "La Danse," "La déscription de la partie espagnole de St. Domingue" and "La déscription de la parte française de St. Domingue."s At his press also was published from October 15, 1795, to March 14, 1796, a daily newspaper in French entitled Courrier de la France et des Colonies, edited by Gaterau, an émigré from St. Domingo. In its pages were printed the latest news of the great revolution in France and of the most recent developments in the French West Indies. How eagerly the numerous émigrés then at Philadelphia and in other cities must have read it! It must have come as a messenger to them in their exile. It served also as a social organ for them, for it contained notices of balls and concerts and meetings of French societies. Moreau's press, therefore, in publishing such a paper must have occupied an important place in the lives of the wider circle of French exiles in Philadelphia. The diary contains passages which throw light upon the life of this wider circle and reveal something of its numbers and of its importance. There is to be found in the diary, therefore, a wide range of material, varying from passing comments upon public men and upon the customs of the people to serious studies upon the history and life of some of the chief American cities, and including some new and most interesting material upon the life of many exiles who fled from persecutions in France and revolts in the West Indies to find refuge in our fair land of liberty and freedom. These three works appeared at Philadelphia during the years 1795-1798. A complete file of this unique publication is to be found in the library of the Athenæum at Boston. It appeared in a single sheet, 4 pages, each page measuring 241 c.c. by 20 c.c. In closing, I should like to express my thanks for this opportunity of calling the attention of the American Philosophical Society to this unpublished diary of one of its former members,10 who must have spent, as indeed its proceedings show, many delightful evenings in its halls and who with pride placed after his name upon the title pages of his well-known works "Member of the American Philosophical Society." When he sailed upon the voyage which was to take him back to the country and to the people he loved, Moreau de Saint-Méry must have left in this society many friends who thoroughly appreciated his great talents and who had been attracted by his interesting personality. It is fortunate that such a man left for us a record of his sojourn in America and that it is possible to rescue it from the dust of archives.11 10 Moreau was elected to the society on January 16, 1789, before he left France. The records show that he attended its meetings regularly after his arrival in Philadelphia in the fall of 1794. "The diary will be published in the near future at the Yale University Press. THE CLASSIFICATION OF CARBON COMPOUNDS. BY MARSTON TAYLOR BOGERT. (Read April 20, 1912.) The system of classification adopted for a science at any given period registers quite accurately the state of the science at that period, and the changes in the classification therefore record its progress. It is, hence, practically impossible to give any intelligible description of the various methods of classification which have been employed for carbon compounds without at the same time sketching briefly the changing conceptions and theories of which they were to so large an extent the natural reflection, for without such a setting the picture would have no proper background or perspective. The classifications which are considered are particularly those which have been used for textbook instruction in organic chemistry, and no place is given to those which have been devised solely for the patent offices, for reference, or for other special purposes. Man being naturally of an inquiring mind, he has probably speculated upon the composition of this world of ours ever since he first appeared upon it, for in the oldest records we find theories concerning the elements of which it is composed. The doctrine of the four so-called "elements"-earth, air, fire and water-was first enunciated in Greece by Empedocles, about 440 B. C., but generally bears the name of Aristotle. Neither Empedocles nor Aristotle regarded these elements as different forms of matter, but rather as different properties or manifestations of one original matter. Aristotle also added a fifth element, ovo ía, to which he ascribed an ethereal or immaterial character and which he assumed permeated the universe. As the oldest writings of India contain a similar theory of four elementary principles and an ethereal substance, it is possible that both Aristotle and Empedocles familiar with this fact and were only introducing into Greece this ancient Indian theory. The oldest nations were familiar with the metals and refer to them frequently in their writings, but it should not be forgotten that some of the earliest chemical facts on record have to do with carbon compounds. The only acid known to the ancients was acetic (as) vinegar), so that the name of this substance and the idea of acidity were expressed by closely related words; in the Greek, os for vinegar, and oğús for acid; in the Latin, acetus and acidus. The first reagent of any kind mentioned was the extract of gall nuts, which Pliny says the ancients used to detect the presence of green vitriol in verdigris. The first salts artificially prepared were those obtained by the action of vinegar upon alkalies. The first crude. attempts at distillation were with turpentine. The ancients were familiar also with fats, resins, organic coloring matters (like indigo and Tyrian purple), sugar, gums, the preparation of wine from grape juice, of beer from malted grain, of mead from honey, of soap from fats, and many other facts in these and related fields. Organic chemistry, therefore, does not give place in point of age to inorganic. Largely due to the influence of Alchemy, however, the object of which was the transmutation of baser metals into silver and gold, the mineral side of the subject was the first to be extensively developed. According to the pseudo-Geber, all metals consisted of sulfur and mercury, in varying amounts and in different degrees of purity. The old Aristotelian "elements" he appears to have regarded as subsidiary constituents, or perhaps as the ultimate components of the sulfur and mercury. To the pseudo-Geber's two elements, Basil Valentine added a third, "salt," not meaning any particular compound but the properties characteristic of common sodium chloride, and he assumed these three to be the elementary constituents not only of metallic substances but of organic as well; sulfur endowing the substance with combustibility, or the property of changing in the fire, and also explaining color changes, mercury giving metallic properties and volatility, and salt representing the principle of solidification and of resistance to fire. PROC. AMER, PHIL. SOC., LI. 205 N, PRINTED JULY 24, 1912. |