In 1868 Dumas was appointed Master of the Mint of France; but he retained the office only during a short time, for with the fall of the Second Empire, in 1870, his political career came to an abrupt termination. The Senate had ceased to exist, and in the stormy days which followed, the Municipal Council had naturally changed its complexion; and even at the Mint, the man who had held such a conspicuous position under the Imperial government was obliged to vacate his place. Some years previously he had resigned his professorships because his official positions were incompatible with his relations as teacher, and now, at the age of seventy, he found himself for the first time relieved from the daily routine of official duties, and free to devote his leisure to the noble work of encouraging research, and thus promoting the advancement of science. He had reached an age when active investigation was almost an impossibility, but his commanding position gave him the opportunity of exerting a most powerful influence, and this he used with great effect. In early life he had been elected, in 1832, a member of the Academy of Sciences in succession to Serullas; in 1868 he had succeeded Flourens as its Permanent Secretary; and in 1875 he was elected a member of the French Academy as successor to Guizot, a distinction rarely attained by a man of science. It was, however, as Permanent Secretary of the Academy of Sciences that Dumas exerted during the last years of his life his greatest influence. He was the central figure and the ruling spirit of this distinguished body. No important commission was complete without him, and on all public occasions he was the orator of the body, always graceful, always eloquent. In announcing Dumas's death to the Academy, M. Rolland, the presiding officer, said: "Vous savez la part considerable que Dumas prenait a vos travaux et vous avez bien souvent admire, comme moi, la haute intelligence et la tact infini avec lesquels il savait imprimer a nos discussions les formes moderees et courtoises inherentes a sa nature et a son caractere. Sous ce rapport aussi la perte de Dumas est irreparable et cree dans l'Academie un vide bien difficile a combler. Aussi, longtemps encore nous chercherons, a la place qu'il occupait au Bureau avec tant d'autorite, la figure sympathique et veneree de notre bienaime Secretaire perpetuel." And while Dumas was still occupying his conspicuous position in the Academy, one of the most distinguished of his German contemporaries[L] wrote of him: "An ever-ready interpreter of the researches of others, he always heightens the value of what he communicates by adding from the rich stores of his own experience, thus often conveying lights not noticed even by the authors of those researches." [L] A. W. Hofmann, in "Nature," February 6, 1880, to whose admirable and extended biography the writer is indebted for much of the material with which this notice has been prepared.