CHARLES FRANÇOIS, an eminent French writer, and member of the Institute, was born of poor parents at Tré-Château, between Gisors and Chambont, Oct. 26, 1742. His father, who was a teacher, instructed him in mathematics and land-surveying. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld, who accidently became acquainted with young Dupuis, took him under his protection, and gave him a bursary in the College of Harcourt.

Dupuis made such rapid progress in his studies, that at the age of twenty-four he was appointed professor of rhetoric at the college of Lisieux. In his hours of leisure he applied himself to the study of the law, and in 1770 was admitted an advocate before parliament. He was charged by the rector of the university with the task of delivering the customary discourse at the distribution of prizes; and he was also employed in the name of the university to compose the funeral oration of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. These two works having been printed, they were admired on account of their elegant Latinity, and laid the foundation of the author's fame as a writer.

The mathematics having been the object of his early studies, he now devoted his more serious attention to that science; and for some years he attended the astronomical lectures of Lalande, with whom he formed an intimate friendship. In 1778 he constructed a telegraph on the principle suggested by Amontons; and employed it in keeping up a correspondence with his friend M. Fortin in the neighbouring village of Bagneux, until the Revolution rendered it necessary that he should destroy his machine to avoid the danger of suspicion.

Much about the same time, Dupuis formed his ingenious theory with respect to the origin of the Greek months. In the course of his investigations upon this subject, he composed a long memoir on the constellations, in which he endeavoured to account for the dissimilarity of the groups of stars in the heavens with their representations even on the most ancient planispheres, by supposing that the zodiac was, for the people who invented it, a sort of calendar at once astronomical and rural. It seemed only necessary, therefore, to discover the clime and the period in which the constellation of Capricorn must have arisen with the sun on the day of the summer solstice, and the vernal equinox must have occurred under Libra. It appeared to Dupuis that this clime was Egypt, and that the perfect correspondence between the signs and their significations had existed in that country for a period of between fifteen and sixteen thousand years before the present time; that it had existed only there; and that this harmony had been disturbed by the effect of the precession of the equinoxes. He therefore ascribed the invention of the signs of the zodiac to the people who then inhabited Upper Egypt or Ethiopia. This was the basis on which Dupuis established his mythological system, and endeavoured to explain the curious subject of fabulous history, and the whole system of the theogony and theology of the ancients.

Persuaded of the importance of his discoveries, which, however, were by no means entirely original, Dupuis published several detached parts of his system in the Journal Dupuytren's energy and industry were alike remarkable. He visited the Hôtel Dieu morning and evening, performing at each time several operations, lectured to vast throngs of students, gave advice to his out-door patients, and fulfilled the duties consequent upon one of the largest practices of modern times. By his indefatigable diligence and activity, he amassed a fortune of L300,000, the bulk of which he bequeathed to his daughter, but deducting considerable sums for the endowment of the anatomical chair in the École de Médecine, and the establishment of a benevolent institution for distressed medical men.