Various - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 10, No. 273, September 15, 1827

Sir,—As one of your correspondents has favoured you with a drawing of the gaol I designed for the city and county of Norwich, with which you have embellished a recent number of the MIRROR, I flatter myself that an engraving from the drawing I herewith send you of the mausoleum of Gaspard Monge, which I drew while at Paris, in 1822, will also be interesting to the readers of your valuable little miscellany. Gaspard Monge, whose remains are deposited in the burying ground in Pere la Chaise, at Paris, in a magnificent mausoleum, was professor of geometry in the Polytechnique School at Paris, and with Denon accompanied Napoleon Bonaparte on his memorable expedition to Egypt; one to make drawings of the architectural antiquities and sculpture, and the other the geographical delineations of that ancient country. He returned to Paris, where he assisted Denon in the publication of his antiquities. At his decease the pupils of the Polytechnique School erected this mausoleum to his memory, as a testimony of their esteem, after a design made by his friend, Monsieur Denon. The mausoleum is of Egyptian architecture, with which Denon had become familiarly acquainted.

There is a bust of Monge placed on a terminal pedestal underneath a canopy in the upper compartment, which canopy is open in front and in the back. In the crown cavetto of the cornice is an Egyptian winged globe, entwined with serpents, emblematical of time and eternity; and on the faci below is engraved the following line:—

A. GASPARD MONGE.

On each side of the upper compartment is inscribed the following memento mori :

LES ELEVES

DE L'ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE.

A.G. MONGE.

COMTE DE PELUSE.

Underneath this inscription is carved in sunk work an Egyptian lotus flower in an upright position; on the back of the mausoleum is the date of the year in which Gaspard Monge died. The body is in the cemetery below.

AN. MDCCCXX.

Monge was a man of considerable merit as a geometrician, and, while living, stood preeminent above his contemporaries in the French school of that day. He is the author of several works, but his most popular one is entitled "Gèomètrie Descriptive. par G. Monge, de l'Institut des Sciences, Lettres et Arts, de l'Ecole Polytechnique; Membre du Sénat Conservateur, Grand Officier de la Legion d'Honeur et Cointe de l'Empire."

The programme to this work is interesting, as it urges the necessity of making geometry a branch of the national education, and points out the beneficial results that would arise therefrom. The following is the translation:—

To draw the French nation from the dependence, which, even in the present day it is obliged to place in foreign industry, it is necessary first to direct the national education towards the knowledge of those objects which require a correctness which hitherto has been totally neglected; to accustom the hands of our artists to the management of the various instruments that are necessary to measure the different degrees of work, and to execute them with precision; then the finisher becomes sensible of the accuracy it will require in the different works, and he will be enabled to set the necessary value on it. For our artists to become, from their youth, familiar with geometry, and to be in a condition to attain it, it is necessary in the second place to render popular the knowledge of a great number of natural phenomena that are indispensable to the progress of industry; they will then profit for the advancement of the general instruction of the nation, which by a fortunate circumstance it has at its disposal, the principal resources that are necessary for it. Lastly, it is requisite to extend among our artists the knowledge of the advancement of the arts and that of machines, whose object is either to diminish manual labour or to give to the result of labour more uniformity and precision; and on those heads it must be confessed we have much to draw from foreign nations. 1 1 Monsieur Monge has drawn much from our countryman, Hamilton's work on Stereography but he has not mentioned his work. All these views can only be accomplished by giving a new turn to national education.

This is to be done, in the first place, by making all intelligent young men (who are born with a fortune) familiar with the use of descriptive geometry, so that they may be able to employ their capital more profitably both for themselves and the nation, and also for those who have no other fortune than their education, so that their labour will bring them the greater reward. This art has two principal objects, the first to represent with exactness, from drawings which have only two dimensions, objects which have three, and which are susceptible of a strict definition; under this point of view it is a language necessary to the man of genius when he conceives a project, and to those who are to have the direction of it; and lastly, to the artists who are themselves to execute the different parts.

The second object of descriptive geometry, is to deduce from the exact description of bodies all that necessarily follows of their forms and their respective positions; in this sense it is a means of seeking truth, as it offers perpetual examples of the passage from what is known to what is unknown, and as it is always applied to objects susceptible of the minutest evidence, it is necessary that it should form part of the plan of a national education. It is not only fit to exercise the intellectual faculties of a great people, and to contribute thereby to the perfection of mankind, but it is also indispensable to all workmen, whose end is to give to certain bodies determined forms, and it is principally owing to the methods of this art having been too little extended, or in fact almost entirely neglected, that the progress of our industry has been so slow. We shall contribute then to give an advantageous direction to national education, by making our young artist familiar with the application of descriptive geometry, to the graphic constructions which are necessary in the greater number of the arts, and in making use of this geometry in the representation and determination of the elements of machinery, by means of which, man by the aid of the forces of nature, reserves for himself, in a manner, in his operations no other labour than that of his intellects. It is no less advantageous to extend the knowledge of those phenomena of nature which may be turned to the profit of the arts. The charm which accompanies them will overcome the repugnance that men have in general for manual operations, (which most regard as painful and laborious,) as it will make them find pleasure in the exercise of their intellect; thus there ought to be in the formal school a course of descriptive geometry.

As yet we have no well compiled elementary work on that art, because till this time learned men have taken too little interest in it, or it has only been practised in an obscure manner by persons whose education had not been sufficiently extended, and were unable to communicate the result of their lucubrations. A course simply oral would be absolutely without effect. It is necessary then, for the course of descriptive geometry, that practice and execution be joined to the hearing of methods; thus pupils will be exercised in graphic construction of descriptive geometry. The graphic arts have general methods with which we can only become familiar by the use of the rule and compass. Among the different applications that may be made of descriptive geometry, there are two which are remarkable, both for their universality and their ingenuity; these are the constructions of perspective and the strict determination of the shadows . These two parts may finally be considered as the completion of the art of describing objects.