To remedy this, Murat and other general officers as well as minor agents were sent ahead and instructed to travel through South Germany in plain clothes with a view to collecting information and mastering the topography.
Van Helmont (1578-1644) was a man of noble family in Brussels, who, after mastering all other branches of learning as then understood, devoted himself with enthusiasm to medicine and chemistry.
The question of the mastering of this all-important lower waterway in the event of a contest with the Turks had indeed engaged the close attention of British naval and military experts some years earlier.
Chamberlain, the necessity of committing to memory two syllabaries, one of which has many variant forms, and at least two or three thousand Chinese ideographs, in forms standard and cursive ideographs, too, most of which are susceptible of three or four different readings according to circuinstance,add, further, that all these kinds of written symbols are apt to be encountered pell mell on the same page, and the task of mastering Japanese becomes almost Herculean.
During the first three or four years he spoke little, but devoted himself with assiduity to mastering parliamentary forms and the business of the house.