Mr. Berbrugger, of Algiers.

— We are written from Sétif, Algeria:

“Decidedly, for some time now death has not ceased to strike at our national glories. Who will replace them? Let us not trouble ourselves about this! the future is in God’s hands, and the new generation will be no more deprived than those that preceded it of elements capable of guaranteeing the ceaselessly progressive march of humanities.

“Today our capital deplores the loss of Mr. A. Berbrugger, curator of the Library of Algiers, a man as remarkable for his profound erudition as for the urbanity and elevation of his character, for his modesty and kindliness as for the remarkable rectitude of his judgment.”

Mr. Berbrugger was, for the last thirteen years, president of the Algerian Historical Society and editor-in-chief of the African Review. [Revue africaine – Google books.] Apart from his erudite articles, published monthly in the African Review, Mr. Berbrugger is the author of several much-sought-after treatises on archaeology; when he succumbed, he had just put a last touch to a small work entitled: Le Tombeau de la Chrétienne, which we recommend to the attention of amateurs. Moreover, he was inspector-general of the historical monuments and archaeological museums of Algeria, member of several scientific societies, etc. His philosophical aspirations had made of him, from the very origin of Spiritism, an enlightened and deeply convinced partisan of our principles. His particular situation, the special functions with which he was invested, obliged him to take part in no movement except with the most extreme reserve. Nevertheless, he maintained a very assiduous correspondence with Mr. Allan Kardec and, as far as possible, participated in the propagation of the Doctrine, by sending to the center documents useful for the development of our studies.

We have no doubt that this eminent Spirit, today reunited with that of our venerated master, will not have entered the spiritual world as into an unknown country, and that he enjoys therein the happiness reserved for men of goodwill.

When he is fully conscious of his new situation, we shall feel happy if he deigns to take part in our works and to communicate to us the result of his studies and observations.

Mr. Berbrugger, curator of the Library of Algiers.

(2nd article.)

In the last issue of the Review we undertook to announce to our readers the departure for a better world of Mr. A. Berbrugger, the erudite curator of the Library of Algiers, and we were happy to honor in his person the memory of an enlightened Spiritist deeply convinced of the truth of our principles. Fuller details have reached us concerning the works that illustrated his life; we are convinced that all adepts will favorably receive the following extracts from the discourse pronounced at his tomb by Mr. Cherbonneau, the new president of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Algeria. (See no. 76 of the African Review, of July 1869, page 321 and following.): “When a personality of this temper is extinguished, one considers it a duty to gather up his last thoughts: so true is it that the gateway of the tomb is the touchstone of souls. As you know, in certain words there are revelations. Yesterday, seated near Berbrugger’s bed, I was listening to him respectfully. Suddenly, his eyes, in which the last gleams of this fine intelligence shone, fixed upon me, and he said to me, with an inflection I shall never forget: ‘See where excess of work leads!… Do not do as I have done!…’ These were the last words he pronounced. Death, against which he struggled as a man, embraced him anew, never again to leave him… “…Gentlemen, the savant whose loss will be keenly felt throughout all Algeria was born in Paris on May 11, 1801. Solid studies, made at the Charlemagne College, prepared him to follow the courses of the School of Chartres. His debut in paleography already assigned him a place in Science. In 1832 he was charged, by the English government, with gathering the original pieces relating to the occupation of France in the fifteenth century. About the middle of the year 1834, as though warned by one of those presentiments that no spirit resists, he abandoned theory for practice and came to Africa in the suite of Marshal Clauzet, of whom he was private secretary. He accompanied him in his excursions and accompanied Marshal Vallée at Constantine. From those military expeditions he brought back a great number of Arabic manuscripts, which formed the nucleus of the Library of Algiers. New horizons were opened before Berbrugger’s sagacity. “Admiring the country that our armies had just conquered, he tried continually to make it known, no doubt in the hope that its conquest would thereby be the better assured. It was then that, now under the tent, beside the soldiers whose wounds were being dressed, now in the calm of the city, he composed this important work, which was published under the title of Historical, Picturesque, and Monumental Algeria.

“Not content with working, he liked to spread around him the sacred fire that animated him. Endowed with easy elocution, exercised more than once in France, in public lectures, he possessed to a high degree the talent of sowing ideas and having them accepted. As soon as he perceived that the first colonists who had seized the soil, with an authority as patriotic as it was vigorous, were beginning to exhume with the spade the remnants of Roman domination, he surrounded himself with researchers and scholars. The Algerian Historical Society was founded. Twelve volumes full of precious documents, of charts and of drawings, constituted the Archaeological Compendium which, in great part, we owe to the president of this Society; for there is not a memoir or a note that does not bear the imprinted mark of that enlightened criticism, whose decisions all authors respected. “Moreover, among Berbrugger’s writings are counted a Course in the Spanish Language, a Spanish-French Dictionary, the Account of the expedition of Mascara, the Military Epochs of Greater Kabylia, a Note on the artesian wells of the Sahara, the History of the martyr Jerome, and the Note on the tomb of the Christian woman, that historical problem whose patient calculations unveiled the enigma after twenty centuries; finally, countless memoirs inserted in the newspapers of Algeria and of France.

“Happy would our president have been if the works of the spirit had sufficed for his desire to be useful! But he would have considered his task incomplete had he not carried the fruit of his experience to the councils where the interests of the country were treated. Indeed, there he found more liberty to do good and, consequently, more duties to fulfill. For in him experience resulted neither from personal interest nor from party spirit, since the progress of the colony was his sole objective. Ah! a convinced devotion led him to other sacrifices, making him accept, in his capacity as an emeritus archaeologist, the command of the militia of Algiers, without which it seemed difficult to him to maintain among his fellow citizens the spirit of benevolent confraternity with which he himself was entirely penetrated. How many torments in this position! But, also, how many services rendered with that simplicity which doubled their value! “It will not be in a few lines, and above all amid the emotion caused by so painful a loss, that his companion in studies will be able to retrace the so useful and so well-characterized existence of Adrien Berbrugger. Besides, certain men have had the good fortune to make themselves known during life, as much by their qualities as by their writings.

“In place of fortune, honors were not lacking to the wise curator of the library. During the journey of His Majesty the Emperor, in the month of June 1865, he received the cross of the Legion of Honor, in the grade of commander, in recompense for his literary works. Previously, he had been named corresponding member of the Institute of France.

“Farewell, Berbrugger! On the edge of this tomb where you are to sleep the eternal sleep, at least we have one consolation: you have left to your beloved daughter a name immaculate and justly honored. The inhabitants of Algiers will tenderly keep the cult of your memory and, when the Algerian Historical Society gathers to resolve a problem of the annals of Africa, it will draw inspiration from your erudition.”

Cherbonneau – President.

— In one of the last sessions of the Society of Paris, we saw fit to give a last testimony of sympathy to the memory of Mr. A. Berbrugger, by requesting his evocation. We hasten to submit to the appreciation of our readers the communication we received from him and which seems to us well to characterize the tireless and conscientious worker so eloquently described by Mr. Cherbonneau. The elevation of his intelligence and his great erudition lead us to hope that he will deign, from time to time, to take part in our works and to enrich our archives with useful and interesting communications and documents. (Society of Paris, July 30, 1869.)

“I am content, gentlemen, with your sympathetic welcome. Although I did not openly belong to the Spiritist phalanx, I was nonetheless no less firmly and intimately convinced of the truth of your principles. I regret having contributed to increasing the number of the timid ones, whom the fear of opinion or the dependence of their situation oblige to keep silence concerning their secret aspirations! But, I must say in my defense, every time I found occasion, I consulted and directed to the center the documents that interested our philosophy and, in private, I tried, sometimes with success, to communicate my beliefs and to share them. Today I am above opinion and my family has expanded. If the ties of blood will always bind me to my relatives on Earth, the eternal ties of souls, the principles of charity, of tolerance, and of union of the Spiritist philosophy unite me to all its members who concur to assure its future, by their works as incarnates and by their inspirations as Spirits. “Everywhere Humanity is stripping off its old philosophical garments and replacing the old habits of routine and prejudice with a rational belief based on logic and experimentation. I know it from experience: guided by acquired knowledge, man, a true sphinx, deciphers the problems reputed insoluble. If we archaeologists reconstruct, with a few scattered phrases, a few truncated words, a few incomplete letters, the half-effaced inscriptions of the great historical book of Humanity, the philosopher and the thinker free, from their train of errors and lies, the truths that presided over the founding of all human beliefs, finding, everywhere, the one God, adored and honored in His multiple works and in the marvelous laws that modern savants have prided themselves on discovering. But we discover nothing, we invent nothing!… We are not inventors, we are researchers… we lose the way and we find it sometimes!… “Courage, gentlemen, I am of yours by the heart and I shall be still with you by the Spirit and by a more active and more personal cooperation than in the past. Make use of me; I shall be happy if I make myself useful and concur to your works to the measure of my knowledge.”

A. Berbrugger. n [1]

Le tombeau de la chrétienne - Google Books. (The Tomb of the Christian Woman), mausoleum of the last kings of Mauritania, by Adrien Berbrugger; 1 vol. in-8, price: 2 fr. Paris, Challamel.

[2]

[Nouveau dictionnaire portatif français-espagnol et espagnol-français … Par Adrien Berbrugger - Google Books.]

[3]

[Les Puits artésiens des oasis méridionales de l’Algérie. Par Adrien Berbrugger - Google Books.]

[4]

[Géronimo, le martyr du Fort des vingt-quatreheures à Alger. Par Adrien Berbrugger - Google Books.]

[5] [v. Louis-Adrien Berbrugger.]