That Madame du Chatelet was a woman of extraordinary talent, and that her progress in abstract sciences was uncommon, and even _unique_ at that time, at least among her own sex, is beyond a doubt; but her learned treatises on Newton, and the nature of fire, are now utterly forgotten. We have since had a Mrs. Marcet; and we have read of Gaetana Agnesi, who was professor of mathematics in the University of Padua; two women who, uniting to the rarest philosophical acquirements, gentleness and virtue, have needed no poet to immortalize them. Of the numerous poems which Voltaire addressed to Madame du Chatelet, the Epistle beginning Tu m'appelles a toi, vaste et puissant genie, Minerve de la France, immortelle Emilie, is a _chef d'oeuvre_, and contains some of the finest lines he ever wrote. The Epistle to her on calumny, written to console her for the abuse and ridicule which her abstractions and indiscretions had provoked, begins with these beautiful lines-- Ecoutez-moi, respectable Emilie: Vous etes belle; ainsi donc la moitie Du genre humain sera votre ennemie: Vous possedez un sublime genie; On vous craindra; votre tendre amitie Est confiante; et vous serez trahie: Votre vertu dans sa demarche unie, Simple et sans fard, n'a point sacrifie A nos devots; craignez la calomnie. With that famous ring, from which he had afterwards the mortification to discover that his own portrait had been banished to make room for that of Saint-Lambert, he sent her this elegant _quatrain_. Barier grava ces traits destines pour vos yeux; Avec quelque plaisir daignez les reconnoitre: Les votres dans mon coeur furent graves bien mieux, Mais ce fut par un plus grand maitre. * * * * * The heroine of the famous Epistle, known as "Les TU et les VOUS," (Madame de Gouverne,) was one of Voltaire's earliest loves; and he was passionately attached to her. They were separated in the world:--she went through the usual _routine_ of a French woman's existence,--I mean, of a French woman _sous l'ancien regime_. Quelques plaisirs dans la jeunesse, Des soins dans la maternite, Tous les malheurs dans la vieillesse, Puis la peur de l'eternite.