BAILLY, JEAN SYLVAIN, a distinguislut French savant, president of the national assembly of 1789, and mayor of Paris, was b. in that city Sept. 15, 1736. Originally intended by his father for an artist, he first turned aside into literature, until, becoming acquainted with Lacaille, he was fortunately induced to study astronomy, which proved to be the true sphere of his genius. In 1763, B. presented to the academic des sciences his Lunar Obsercations; in 1766 appeared his Essay on the Satellites of Jupiter, with Tables of their Motions; and in 1771, a treatise on the light of these satellites, remarkable for the profundity of its astronomical views, and which classed him at once among- the greatest astronomers of his time. His hiistorieo-scientific works, especially his History of Indian Astronomy, are full of learning and ingenious disquisition, and written with great elegance. In 1777 he published his Letters on the Origin of the Sciences; and in 1799 his Atlantis of Plato. In 1784 he was elected a member of the academie francaise; and in the following year, of the academic des inscriptions. The e/oges which he wrote about this period for the academie des sciences on Charles V., Moliere, Corneile, Lacaille, Leibnitz, Cook, and Gresset, were very highly praised. Fontenelle was the only French man before him who had enjoyed the honor of being a member of the three academies at once. The revolution interrupted his peaceful studies. During the earlier part of
it he occupied a very prominent position. Elected president of the national assembly, June 17, 1789, and mayor of Paris on the 15th of July, he conducted himself in these capacities with great integrity and purity of purpose;• but at last lost his popularity by allowing the national guard to fire on the masses who were assembled in the Champs de Mars, on the 17th of July, 1791, to demand the dethronement of the king. He now threw up his mayoralty, considering it impossible to satisfy either party, withdrew alto gether from public affairs, and went to live first at Nantes, and afterwards with his friend Laplace at Melun. Here he was seized by the Jacobin soldiery and brought to Paris, where he was accused of being a royalist conspirator, condemned and executed with the usual Jacobin preliminary of savage insult. Nov. 11, 1793. Among his papers were found, and afterwards published, an Essay on the Origin of Fables and Ancient Religions (1799), and Memoirs of the Rerolutwn by an Eye-Witness (1804). There cannot be two opinions regarding the rat-it of B.'s style, but his historico-astronomical speculations are now considered fantastic.