Sketch of Baron Liebig [pp. 372-374]

372 APPLETONS' JO URNAL OF POPULAR [NOVEMBER 6,
companion that the wife of his partner had conceived a violent passion
for him, and had avowed it to him; that, though consumed with pas sionate admiration of this lovely woman, who was one of the queens
of society, he had been able to repel her advances, and had treated her
with coldness; but, doubting the strength of his resolve, had there and
then decided to leave St. Petersburg, never to return. Such heroism
filled the enthusiastic young German with the profoundest admiration,
and excited his warmest sympathy; for days after they separated, he
could think of nothing but the noble sacrifice of that grand and
fascinating Frenchman, until suddenly called upon to start for Phila delphia, then the principal seaport of the United States, where a new
world and its excitements caused him for a time to forget his travel ling companion of the Russian post-chaise.
Enfantin, upon his arrival in Paris, partly filled perhaps with the
romantic sadness of his position, partly following, no doubt, the nat ural bent of his mystic and dreamy, but ardent and enthusiastic
thoughts, soon joined a body of men, just beginning to emerge into
notoriety under the name of the "Saint-Simonians." Saint Simon, a
Frenchman of most noble birth, a soldier, traveller, statesman, en gineer, philosopher, mathematician, enthusiast, was one of the first to
recognize the now generally-accepted truth, that the progress of mankind is based upon peace and the arts of peace, commerce, and industry.
In 1800, he planned and advocated (strange coincidence in connection
with the Suez Canal!) a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama. In
1814, he planned and advocated an intimate alliance between France
and England, hooted and derided forerunner of that entente cordiale
which has so long been Napoleon's boast, or of the famous Cobden
treaty, negotiated later by one of his most devoted disciples, spending
a fortune upon study and practical and scientific experiment, hovering
between absolute beggary and semi-starvation as a law-copyist, he became the high-priest of a new religion of communistic cooperation,
based upon the universal brotherhood of man as taught by Christ.
Neglected, contemned, famished, imprisoned, a would-be suicide,
he imagined and developed a system of religious faith, created a
social organization that, for twenty years thereafter, held together in
bonds of closest union of intellectual slavery, more men destined
to future greatness than were ever united by any similar tie. You
cannot name the most illustrious French representatives of any sphere
of human activity, during the years from 1830 to 1860, without naming
one or more of the leading members of the Saint-Simonian sect. To
this brotherhood belonged Barrault and Journel, well-known travellers
and writers; Jourdan, long-time editor of the Paris Silcle; Felicien
David, composer of "The Desert;" Ivan, the painter, bosom-friend
and travelling-companion of Prince Napoleon; Carnot, minister of
war during the republic of 1848; Lambert, afterward Lambert Bey,
prime minister and right hand of Mehemet Ali in all his struggles
against the Sultan; Isaac Pereyre, whilom clerk of Rothschilds (who
are said to keep a vacancy for him in their office), later on, founder
and president of the Cr6dit Mobilier, and prince of stock-speculators;
Auguste Chevalier, private secretary of the present emperor during
his presidency; Michel Chevalier, the ablest political economist that
France has produced, negotiator of the celebrated Cobden treaty of
commerce between England and France, leader of the free-trade party;
Augustin Thierry, one of the profoundest of recent historians, who
shed the light of day upon the earliest developments of modern France,
though himself, like our own Prescott, deprived of sight; Auguste
Comte, father of the positive philosophy. Surely this is a remarkable
array of names, a remarkable brotherhood of men, distinguished for
their practical accomplishments, to be united by a bond of the most
fantastic religious enthusiasm that we have knowledge of. That men
such as these, and hundreds of others like them, if less distinguished,
should abandon home, family, society, profession, fortune, to join a
religious society which demanded complete abnegation of self, absolute obedience to superiors, the wearing of a peculiar dress, the performance of the rudest and hardest kind of labor, and even of menial
services, in the hope of thereby rendering labor more dignified and
more beneficial, seems almost incredible. But, in the frenzy of intellectual excitement, which at that time pervaded all classes in France,
every thing was possible. Accident or choice threw Enfantin, on his
return from Russia, into the midst of these impassioned enthusiasts.
His wonderful eloquence, his remarkable beauty, his indescribable
magnetism, soon gained him a powerful influence. He rose to the position of supreme pontiff of the college, or, as he was afterward
called, the father of the family. His dim mysticism, his powerful
imagination, his brilliant argument, his fervid prophecy, threw weaker
men into spasms of ecstasy, causing them to fall down exhausted and
insensible, but led in ready chains the most powerful minds of
France.
The reorganization of the society on the basis of the family, with
Enfantin at its head as the supreme father, introduced an element of
danger and discord. It was discovered that the family could not be
complete without a mother. To search for her was immediately decided upon. A brotherhood of the Supreme Mother was formed, consisting of twelve disciples, among whom were Lambert and David, and
they set out in search of the woman who should be found worthy of
mating with the supreme father. To one of them it was revealed, in
a vision, that she would be found in the East; and the brotherhood
immediately started for Marseilles, where they embarked for Constantinople, on board a little Italian brig, of which the first mate was one
Giuseppe Garibaldi, destined himself to a career of great renown. On
the voyage, a second vision revealed to them the fact that they would
recognize the object of their search upon reaching land. Arriving in
Constantinople, they paraded the streets in their quaint, red, black,
and white costumes, until, at sight of some elderly female on her way
to the baths, they threw themselves at her feet, with loud cries of
"Mother!" The only response were screams of fright, which quickly
brought a posse of vigilant menfti to the spot, who hustled the whole
brotherhood off to an ignominious jail. Released by the intercession
of the French consul, but now entirely without means, they procured
passage in a French vessel to Alexandria, in Egypt. Here they were
shortly after joined by Enfantin himself, whose home, and with it the
society, had been broken up by the French police, its communistic
and socialistic tendencies being deemed dangerous to the welfare of
the state. After some feeble attempts to revive the organization in
Egypt, the little band separated, and sought each one his future welfare in his own manner. David travelled on foot overland to Algiers,
storing his memory with the plaintive or warlike Moorish melodies
that still linger among the Bedouin Arabs of the northern coast, and
that gave the stamp of striking originality to his great work, "The
Desert," to which he owed immediate fame. Lambert entered the service of Mehemet Ali, was by him created bey, introduced European
civilization wherever he could, and became the promoter of all measures of progress. Enfantin, after years of adventure, planned, surveyed, and mapped thle canal of the Isthmus of Suez, and, on the election
oft' Louis Napoleon to the presidency of the French Republic, returned
to France, and laid the plans before him. After repeated interviews
with the prince-president, which led to no result beyond Enfantin's remark at the close of one of them (eminently characteristic of both),
"I have no power over this man," he communicated the plan of the
proposed canal to M. de Lesseps, who succeeded in obtaining the concession for himself, and whose indomitable perseverance has carried
this great work to its successful completion.
Among the crowds of crowned heads and heads uncrowned that
will gather in November to the inauguration ceremonies, how many
will remember the Sainit-Simonian sect, which, to complete its fantastic
ideal of a family, sent forth the devoted band in search of an Eastern
mother? How many will remember poor Enfantin, the inspired ruler
over some of the most brilliant minds of modern France, who first designed the Suez Canal, and who died, neglected and forgotten, in 1864,
a subordinate official of the Lyons Railroad!
There seems thus to be a mysterious connection between the insane vagaries of imagination run wild and the solid results of grand
schemes of modern improvement.
SKETCH OF BARON LIEBIG.
USTUS VON LIEBIG, the celebrated German chemist, was
born at Darrnstadt, in 1803. In his boyhood, he was taught
in the gymnasium of his native town, spent ten months in an
apothecary-shop, entered the University of Bonn at sixteen,
graduated in medicine, at Erlangen, at nineteen, and was sent,
the same year, by the Grand-duke of Hlesse-Darmstadt, to study
chemlistry at Paris.
At twenty-one, he read a paper before the French Institute
on the composition of the fulminates (explosive compounds of
fulminic acid), which attracted the attention of Humboldt, who,
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