same pain in being forced to an abstinence of their regular studies, as
this circle of "agreables" would have at the loss of their meals and their
airings. However, the _persifleur_ declares they were ciphers "en
societe," adding no value to the number, and to which their learned
writings bear no reference.

But if this literary couple would not play, what was worse, Voltaire
poured out a vehement declamation against a fashionable species of
gambling, which appears to have made them all stare. But Madame de
Chatelet is the more frequent victim of our _persifleur_. The learned lady
would change her apartment--for it was too noisy, and it had smoke without
fire--which last was her emblem. "She is reviewing her _Principia_; an
exercise she repeats every year, without which precaution they might
escape from her, and get so far away that she might never find them again.
I believe that her head in respect to them is a house of imprisonment
rather than the place of their birth; so that she is right to watch them
closely; and she prefers the fresh air of this occupation to our
amusements, and persists in her invisibility till night-time. She has six
or seven tables in her apartments, for she wants them of all sizes;
immense ones to spread out her papers, solid ones to hold her instruments,
lighter ones, &c. Yet with all this she could not escape from the accident
which happened to Philip II., after passing the night in writing, when a
bottle of ink fell over the despatches; but the lady did not imitate the
moderation of the prince; indeed, she had not written on State affairs,
and what was spoilt in her room was algebra, much more difficult to
copy out." Here is a pair of portraits of a great poet and a great
mathematician, whose habits were discordant with the fashionable circle in
which they resided--the representation is just, for it is by one of the
coterie itself.

Study, meditation, and enthusiasm,--this is the progress of genius, and
these cannot be the habits of him who lingers till he can only live among
polished crowds; who, if he bear about him the consciousness of genius,
will still be acting under their influences. And perhaps there never was
one of this class of men who had not either first entirely formed himself
in solitude, or who amidst society will not be often breaking out to seek
for himself. WILKES, no longer touched by the fervours of literary and
patriotic glory, suffered life to melt away as a domesti