and the higher kinds of poetry. Take for example a letter handed to me recently, by our learned 
colleague M. Isidore Geoffroy, from Bourg, and read by him, the 26th germinal, year XI, before the 
Emulation Society of Ain, beginning thus: 

Vous voulez, donc, belle Emilie, 
Que de Gresset ou d’Hamilton 
Dérobant le léger crayon, 
J’aille chercher dans ma folie, 
Sur les rosiers de l’Hélicon,
S’il reste encor quelque bouton
De tant de fleurs qu’ils ont cueillies; 
Souvent mes tendres rêveries, etc. 

Then, wouldst thou, fairest Emily,
Have me steal the pencil free 
Of Gresset or of Hamilton; 
And wend my way to Helicon, 
To see if on the rose trees there 
Some buds remain, they well could spare 
From all the flowers they have culled 
To glean some bud they well could spare 
To be for thy soft bosom pulled.

I am not sure that the beautiful Emily was not one of those imaginary beings so lavishly invested 
by poets with perfections of their own creation; but the friends of Ampère will remember that the 
eminently good, beautiful and distinguished woman, who had united her destiny with his, had often 
inspired his muse; many will recall some lines, whose first appearance excited no little sensation; 

Que j’aime à m’égarer dans ces routes fleuries, 
Où je t’ai vue errer sous un dais de lilas; 
Que j’aime à répéter aux nymphes attendries, 
Sur l’herbe où tu t’assis, les vers que tu chantas.
*   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
Les voila ces jasmins dont je t’avais parée,
Ce bouquet de troène a touché tes cheveux, etc. 

’Tis sweet my wandering steps to lose 
Along the path of flowers,
Where lighter feet were wont to choose, 
Their way mid lilac bowers:
And on the turf that thou hast prest, 
To breathe forth once again,
The song that made the wood nymphs blest, 
Thine own enchanting strain.

They lie around, those jasmins fair 
With which I deck’d thy brow;
That privet, it hath touched thy hair, 
To me ’tis sacred now.

A certain mathematician once made the sad mistake of publishing some verses, faultless as to 
measure and rhyme, but without other merit. A witty lady, hearing them read, remarked that the 
author of the lines, after the example of M. Jourdain, wrote prose without knowing it. Many 
writers, called poets, though never having passed through a course of geometry, have fallen into the 
same error. A satirical remark, however, cannot revive the so often silenced question of the 
chilling influences of scientific studies. Such names as those of