and he was for ever chanting over his herbs the melodious verses of Horace, Virgil, and Lucretius. Modern biography could not produce a more seducing representation of pastoral life. An incident occurred in 1796 to complete the picture. He was on one of his customary evening rambles along the banks of a stream, when he caught sight in the distance of two pretty young damsels gathering flowers in a meadow. Hitherto he had never thought of marriage, but on the instant he made up his mind to wed one of the fair strangers whom he beheld for the first time, to whom he had never spoken, and of whose name and family he was entirely ignorant. These matter-of-fact philosophers, to judge from the narratives of M. Arago, are rather given to be romantic in their loves. GayLussac went into a linen-draper's shop, and saw a girl engaged intently with a book behind the counter. "What are you reading, mademoiselle ?" said he. "A work which is, perhaps, beyond me, but which interests me nevertheless: a treatise on chemistry." The heart of the great chemist was reached through this unusual partiality of a linen-draper's shop-girl for his favorite pursuit. He sent her to a school to complete her education and made her his wife. M. Arago testifies that the experiment succeeded, but does not recommend the repetition of it. "Let us love to the last moment," said Gay-Lussac to his helpmate three days before he died, and after forty years of married life; "sincere attachments are the sole happiness." On the other side, we have the singular case of Lagrange. D'Alembert, who kept up a constant correspondence with him, was surprised that he should not have mentioned in his letters that he had ceased to be a Benedict. "I learn," his friend wrote to him in 1767, "that you have taken what we philosophers call the perilous leap. A great mathematician should be able above all things to calculate his happiness. I do not doubt, therefore, that after having made the calculation you found the solution to be marriage." "I do not know," replied Lagrange, "whether I have calculated well or ill, or rather I believe I have not calculated at all, or I should have perhaps done like Leibnitz, who from thinking about it was unable to arrive at a decision.* * I confess that I have never had

*Leibnitz is said on one occasion to have got so far as to make an offer. The lady asked time for

any inclination for marriage, but circumstances have induced me to engage one of my relatives to come and take care of me, and of all which belongs to me. If I have not informed you of it, it was because the thing appeared to me so indifferent in itself that it was not worth while to mention it." Ampère belonged to the opposite school. He was as ardent, it seems, in love as in study; he kept a journal of his daily emotions, and profiting by his perusal of the Augustan poets, addressed odes to his mistress. It is evident that his verses were not better than those of another mathematician, of whom M. Arago reports a lady to have said that, like Molière's M. Jourdain," he had been talking prose without knowing it."

Ampère was without the means of supporting a wife, and the family of the young lady gravely discussed whether he should open a silk-mercer's shop, or give private lessons in mathematics. The decision being for the last, he removed to Lyons for the purpose, and there he was married in 1799. Ever greedy for the acquisition of knowledge, he joined with seven or eight young students in reading aloud before daybreak on a fifth floor the chemistry of Lavoisier, and in after years the people of Paris, who had never known him occupied in the pursuit, were astonished to find how deep he was in the science. In 1801 he removed to Bourg, having been appointed lecturer on Natural Philosophy to the central school, where, fresh from Lavoisier, he composed and printed a work on the future prospects of chemistry. In a moment of hallucination he fancied he had yielded to a Satanic suggestion in attempting to anticipate the secrets reserved for succeeding generations, and he threw his book into the fire. He afterwards regretted this sacrifice to a chimera, but his chemical studies bore little further fruit. In scientific dreams of another kind he indulged with equal uselessness and freedom. "You see," he wrote later to a friend, "the palæotheriums and the anaplotheriums replaced on the earth by men. I hope for my part that men in their turn will be replaced by creatures more perfect, more noble, more sincerely devoted to truth. I would give half my life to be certain that this transformation will happen. Well-would you

consideration. Leibnitz used the interval for the same purpose; and when the lady brought her hand, he refused to have it.

believe it?—there are people so stupid as to ask me what I should gain by that. Have I not a hundred times reason to be indignant?" M. Arago states that the disposition of Ampère led him in mathematics to aim at the solution of problems which were reputed insoluble, and his biographer was astonished not to see among his juvenile undertakings an attempt to square the circle. It was afterwards found to be one of the bootless exercises he had set himself in his thirteenth year. This partiality for the insoluble attended him in all his speculations. It was visible in the determination to discover the primitive language, in the effort to predict the subsequent conquests of chemistry, in the endeavor to settle the future condition of the earth. "Doubt," he exclaimed, "is the greatest torture which man endures on earth :" but it was his very impatience of it which led him to haunt its domain. To throw away time upon theories which are beyond our capacity is as childish as to expend our time upon the trifles which are beneath it. There are innumerable questions which are of the highest moment in themselves, which are yet unworthy a wise man's contemplation, simply because they are out of his sphere. It is a waste of eyesight to stand gazing upon impenetrable darkness, however grand may be the scenes which

it veils.

His immense attainments excepted, he was ill-qualified for his new office. An injury he received in his arm in childhood had deprived him of mechanical dexterity, and he was incapable of performing with ordinary skill the commonest philosophical experiments. Self-educated in retirement, and never subjected to the least constraint in his actions, he had acquired the habit of thinking in movement, and to check the antics of his body was to stop the workings of his mind. Ampère at rest and Ampère walking were different persons. His dress and manners were peculiar. He bowed to his class with the same extravagant flexure of his frame that Dr. Johnson used to adopt when he met an archbishop. His solitary musings for many years of his life had made abstraction habitual to him, and he naturally fell into it without regard to time or place. Hence he was extremely absent, and was guilty of a thousand unconscious eccentricities. He carried away from a party the three-cornered chapeau of an ecclesiastic, and as the owner was a desirable ac

quaintance, it was asserted by the enemies of Ampère that he designedly took the wrong hat (his own was a common round one) that he might have an excuse for calling next day to return it. M. Arago repudiates the paltry construction, and meets the imputation with a counter anecdote, in which Ampère's infirmity was not calculated to recommend him. Invited to the table of a person whom it was of importance to conciliate, he suddenly exclaimed: "Really this dinner is detestable! My sister ought not to engage cooks without having personally satisfied herself of their capabilities." There is no doubt whatever that these oddities were genuine, and we should have expected them from his temperament and previous habits. Those to whom the presence of others is an antidote to abstraction can with difficulty comprehend a condition of mind which is the natural result of days of deep and unbroken thought. A more unhappy combination of qualities for a lecturer on Natural Philosophy could hardly have met together in a very superior man. Youths are sharp-sighted to detect any outward absurdity, unrestrained in displaying the mirth which deviations from established proprieties provoke, and incapable of appreciating the great capacity which would have extorted respect from their elders. The uncouth gesticulations of Dr. Johnson, when, yet unknown to fame, he opened an academy at Edial, made him the laughingstock of his scholars. Ampère did not remain long in this situation at Bourg, which must have been irksome to himself and unprofitable to his pupils, but returned to Lyons, where he was appointed Professor of Pure Mathematics.

He had already addressed to the academy of that city two mathematical memoirs, when in 1802 he published the first work which made his name known beyond the circle of his personal friends-his Considérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu. The science of probabilities which was afterwards applied with such beneficial effect to the calculation of insurances, was originally suggested by the chances of games, which have always been a favorite subject of speculation while a problem of importance could be found to be solved. The proposition which Ampère set himself to demonstrate was, that the regular gambler was certain to lose. His method was to show that if two players were in other respects upon

equal terms, the chances were in favor of him who could go on the longest. The richest must consequently be the ultimate winner, and his advantage increased rapidly with the superiority of wealth. The regular gambler engages with every body; he is one against the world; an individual with limited means, which he stakes against the resources, which in their aggregate may practically be called unlimited, of the whole community of players. "In games where the chances are equal, where skill has no part, the professional player is therefore sure to be ruined; the formulæ of Ampère prove it beyond dispute. The unmeaning words such as good luck, good star, good vein, can neither hinder nor delay the execution of a sentence pronounced in the name of alge

bra."

M. Arago expects that there will be people to ask, "What is the use of the demonstration ?" and admits that a consciousness of the inevitable result would not deter every body from following the trade. He was acquainted at Paris with a wealthy foreigner who passed his time between gambling and the study of science. M. Arago, to win him from his vice, calculated, the number of throws and the stakes being given, what must be his quarterly losses. The theory tallied with the fact, and the gentleman acknowledged that he was convinced. He abstained for a fortnight, and then called upon M. Arago to say that he should never again be the unintelligent tributary of the hells of Paris; that he had ceased to be the dupe of a ridiculous delusion, but that he should continue to play because the 50,000 francs which he knew he must lose every year, would not, if employed in any other manner, excite in his feeble body, wasted with pain, the same keen sensations that he derived from the varied combinations, sometimes fortunate and sometimes fatal, which were developed every evening upon a green cloth. Gambling was with him a recognized expense, just as if he had kept his racehorses or his hounds, and he merely resolved to squander his income upon the fancy most congenial to an ill-regulated mind. But this is not the case of the majority of players. Though there is fascination in the excitement, the object is gain, and we have more faith than M. Arago in the good effects of a demonstration which shows the certainty of loss.

Like every other vice, the present gratification will outweigh with some the future penalty. Yet as many a man has put a check upon his taste for liquor to avert the deplorable consequences of drunkenness, so we may be satisfied not a few would conquer the passion for play if they were once assured that by an irreversible law it was the road to ruin.

Ampère himself, with his encyclopædia cal pursuits, would often dissipate a vast amount of invaluable time, not in gambling, but on a beguiling game. Whoever called upon him, he asked his visitor if he was acquainted with chess, and when the answer was "yes," engaged with him for hours in repeated trials of skill. His intimates soon discovered an infallible method of beating him; when they found they were losing, they would assert what he conceived to be a scientific heresy,—such as that the undulatory theory of light would hereafter be numbered with the phantasies of Cartesianism and the emis sion theory reässume the ascendant; upon which Ampère, too simple to perceive the trick, would launch with his usual enthusi asm into an impetuous refutation, and forgetting all caution in the heat of his ar gument would be quickly checkmated. His frequent outbreaks of temper, the result of an earnest and not of a selfish disposition, were termed by his friends the rages of the lamb.

The Memoir on Probabilities attracted the notice of Lalande and Delambre, and they procured him the appointment of lecturer on mathematical analysis at the Polytechnic School at Paris. The old singularities which in 1805 threw ridicule upon him at Bourg lost none of their sinister influence with the picked students of the capital. His first appearance produced an unfavorable impression, for he presented himself before his military audience in a plain black suit, extremely illmade. He wrote rather by moving his arm than his fingers, and in a hand so immense that a gentleman sent him an invi tation to dinner penned within the outline of the first letter of his signature. His figures, naturally enormous, were carefully magnified by him into ludicrous proportions on the black-board at the school, lest the hinder row of his class should be unable to read them. His pupils, amused at their gigantic size, affected not to be able to distinguish them clearly, in order to entice him into caricaturing