Here we have an instance of a man of science who has temporarily disqualified himself for polite society by an experiment in the pursuit of knowledge. What do you think of the vulgarity of Madame Beauregard? To me it appears the perfect type of that preoccupation about appearances which blinds the genteel vulgar to the true nobility of life. Were not Ampère's stained hands nobler than many white ones? It is not necessary for every intellectual worker to blacken his fingers with chemicals, but a kind of rust very frequently comes over him which ought to be as readily forgiven, yet rarely is forgiven. "In his relations with the world," writes the biographer of Ampère, "the authority of superiority disappeared. To this the course of years brought no alternative. Ampère become celebrated, laden with honorable distinctions, the great Ampère! outside the speculations of the intellect, was hesitating and timid again, disquieted and troubled, and more disposed to accord his confidence to others than to himself." Intellectual pursuits did not qualify Ampère, they do not qualify any one, for success in fashionable society. To succeed in the world you ought to be _of_ the world, so as to share the things which interest it without too wide a deviation from the prevalent current of your thoughts. Its passing interests, its temporary customs, its transient phases of sentiment and opinion, ought to be for the moment your own interests, your own feelings and opinions. A mind absorbed as Ampère's was in the contemplation and elucidation of the unchangeable laws of nature, is too much fixed upon the permanent to adapt itself naturally to these ever-varying estimates. He did not easily speak the world's lighter language, he could not move with its mobility. Such men forget even what they eat and what they put on; Ampère's young wife was in constant anxiety, whilst the pair were separated by the severity of their fate, as to the sufficiency of his diet and the decency of his appearance. One day she writes to him to mind not to go out in his shabby old coat, and in the same letter she entreats him to purchase a bottle of wine, so that when he took no milk or broth he would find it, and when it was all drunk she tells him to buy another bottle. Afterwards she asks him whether he makes a good fire, and if he has any chairs in his room. In another letter she inquires if his bed is comfortable, and in another she tells him to mind about his acids, for he has burnt holes in his blue stockings. Again, she begs him to try to have a passably decent appearance, because that will give pleasure to his poor wife. He answers, to tranquillize her, that he does not burn his things now, and that he makes chemical experiments only in his old breeches with his gray coat and his waistcoat of greenish velvet. But one day he is forced to confess that she must send him new trousers if he is to appear before MM. Delambre and Villars. He "does not know what