ences by a Committee of that Institution.

"The singular nature of the case we are about to narrate and comment upon
will, we feel confident, arrest the attention of those who have learned
the great fact that Nature often throws the strongest light upon her laws
by the apparent exceptions and anomalies which from time to time are
observed. We have done with the lusus naturae of earlier generations.
We pay little attention to the stories of 'miracles,' except so far as we
receive them ready-made at the hands of the churches which still hold to
them. Not the less do we meet with strange and surprising facts, which a
century or two ago would have been handled by the clergy and the courts,
but today are calmly recorded and judged by the best light our knowledge
of the laws of life can throw upon them. It must be owned that there are
stories which we can hardly dispute, so clear and full is the evidence in
their support, which do, notwithstanding, tax our faith and sometimes
leave us sceptical in spite of all the testimony which supports them.

"In this category many will be disposed to place the case we commend to
the candid attention of the Academy. If one were told that a young man,
a gentleman by birth and training, well formed, in apparently perfect
health, of agreeable physiognomy and manners, could not endure the
presence of the most attractive young woman, but was seized with deadly
terror and sudden collapse of all the powers of life, if he came into her
immediate presence; if it were added that this same young man did not
shrink from the presence of an old withered crone; that he had a certain
timid liking for little maidens who had not yet outgrown the company of
their dolls, the listener would be apt to smile, if he did not laugh, at
the absurdity of the fable. Surely, he would say, this must be the
fiction of some fanciful brain, the whim of some romancer, the trick of
some playwright. It would make a capital farce, this idea, carried out.
A young man slighting the lovely heroine of the little comedy and making
love to her grandmother! This would, of course, be overstating the truth
of the story, but to such a misinterpretation the plain facts lend
themselves too easily. We will relate the leading circumstances of the
case, as they were told us with perfect simplicity and frankness by the
subject of an affection which, if classified, would come under the
general head of Antipathy, but to which, if we give it a na