The ladies of fashion crowded to the brilliant lectures of Fourcroy.
The princes of pure science, M.de Lagrange, M.de Laplace, M.Monge, did not disdain to wrench themselves from their learned calculations in order to second the useful labors of Lavoisier.

Bold voyagers were scouring the world, pioneers of those enterprises of discovery which had appeared for a while abandoned during the seventeenth century.

M.de Bougainville had just completed the round of the world, and the English captain, Cook, during the war which covered all seas with hostile ships, had been protected by generous sympathy.

On the 19th of March, 1779, M.de Sartines, at that' time minister of marine, wrote by the king's order, at the suggestion of M.Turgot: "Captain Cook, who left Plymouth in the month of July, 1776, on board the frigate Discovery, to make explorations on the coasts, islands, and seas of Japan and California, must be on the point of returning to Europe.

As such enterprises are for the general advantage of all nations, it is the king's will that Captain Cook be treated as the commander of a neutral and allied power, and that all navigators who meet this celebrated sailor do inform him of his Majesty's orders regarding him." Captain Cook was dead, massacred by the savages, but the ardor which had animated him was not extinct; on the 10th of August, 1785, a French sailor, M.de La Peyrouse, left Brest with two frigates for the purpose of completing the discoveries of the English explorer.