trifling, yet of infinite influence on human destiny. There is a
good instance of this in a letter from Ampere to his young wife, that
"Julie" who was lost to him so soon. "I went to dine yesterday at Madame
Beauregard's with hands blackened by a harmless drug which stains the
skin for three or four days. She declared that it looked like manure,
and left the table, saying that she would dine when I was at a distance.
I promised not to return there before my hands were white. Of course I
shall never enter the house again."

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 Ampere'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 Ampere, "the authority of
superiority disappeared. To this the course of years brought no
alternative. Ampere become celebrated, laden with honorable
distinctions, the great Ampere! 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 Ampere, 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 Ampere'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; Ampere's young wife was in
constant anxiety, whilst the pair were separated by the severity of
their fate,