MAKING LOVE SCIENTIFICALLY.

"A monstrous spectacle upon the earth,

Beneath the pleasant sun, among the trees,
-A being knowing not what Love is!

A man that dares affect

To spend his life in service to his kind

For no reward of theirs, nor bound to them
By any tle.

There are strange punishments for such."

BROWNING'S Paracelsus.

AMONG the Fabliaux of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is a laughable story of the philosopher Aristotle, who is represented as saddled and bridled for the amusement of a malicious beauty, and cantering about a garden under the weight of her slender form, while Alexander, afterwards the Great, the pupil of Aristotle, enjoys the joke from a window. It seems that the sage, having discovered the devotion of his august disciple to the lady in question, had reproved him very sharply for his weak subjection to the tender passion; representing love as incompatible with the study of philosophy, and ridiculing the idea of a man of sense placing himself in the power of a woman, naturally his inferior in the scale of creation. The pupil was a good deal nettled by the severe remarks of his master, but he concealed his vexation, and humbly promised that the fascina

tions of beauty should no longer seduce his thoughts from the contemplation of wisdom.

But he had devised a subtle, we had almost said a savage method of revenge upon his master, and very soon found an opportunity of putting it in practice. In cold blood and with malice aforethought, he managed to place the stern preacher of prudence and self-command within point-blank range of the lady's eyes, and won her over to use, in the service of his revenge, all the powers of fascination which had proved effectual in enslaving himself. The philosopher was of course very soon charmed into forgetfulness of his grand dogmas, for your philosopher is proverbially weak at all weapons but his own. Beauty, wit, grace, were put in requisition with the fullest success; coquetry added her freaks; and, in a word, in a marvellously short time, the wise man became a fool, as so many wise men have done before him under the same circumstances. And thus we arrive at the explanation of the scene with a sketch of which we began. Among the incredible follies which the malicious beauty devised for the humiliation of her awkward captive, was a requisition on her part that he should suffer himself to be saddled and bridled, and accept, for the reward of his obedience, the honor and delight of carrying his goddess about her garden. He only stipulated for a scene closely shielded from vulgar eyes, lest, by some accidental betrayal, his reputation as a teacher of wisdom should suffer, and above all in the estimation of his royal pupil. An inner court of the palace was therefore chosen, and among its flowery alleys did the delighted sage prance with his fair burden. But, in the very midst of his happiness a dread sound-a sound as of unhallowed laughter-struck his ear, and looking upward, he beheld in a window the face of the future

conqueror of the world, relaxed to its last capability in keen relish of the joke.

History wisely stops here, nor strives to express the inexpressible, in describing the abasement of the great teacher and example of philosophy, thus forced to be his own refuter. But we can easily conjecture that from this time forth the pupil was not troubled with any very severe remarks on the absurdity of being in love; unless, indeed, the teacher drew new unction for his homilies from the bitterness of his own experience.

We see, then, that philosophy began very early to be consid ered as the enemy or antidote of love. What foundation in fact there may be for this notion, it is difficult to say, so few successful experiments are on record. That it ought to be so has always rather been taken for granted than proved.

Sir Isaac Newton, however, was a man of realities, and of him it may truly be said that science was his mistress. She upheld his spirits, consoled his solitude, brought him recreation, and absorbed his affections. He evidently thought with Milton

How charming is divine Philosophy!

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute.

Is it not strange, by the way, that Shakspeare uses the very same comparison in speaking of Love, the antagonist of Philosophy?

For valor, is not Love a Hercules?

Subtle as Sphinx; as sweet and musical
As bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair.

But so extremes meet.

Newton, however, was not always and at all periods wholly invulnerable to the subtle shafts of the most insidious of enemies. We hold that a man must be thoroughly dipped-bathed, indeed-in self-esteem, to render him proof against such arrows; but the youthful susceptibility of the sage weigher of the planets proves that his immersion had not been complete. History deigns, for once, probably in consideration of the eminence of the subject, to record the fact of his having been, at a certain time, deeply smitten with the daughter of the lady with whom he lodged,—an illustration of the well-known principle, that attraction is so much the more potent as the attracting bodies are nearer to each other. Whether he went so far as to enroll her among the celestial phenomena we are not informed, but the attraction seems to have been proved beyond a doubt, and we have reason to suppose it was on the one side gravity, and on the other magnetism or electricity.

One would think that love thus founded on the immutable principles of science must have proved an exception to the vulgar rule, and gone on with the precision and harmony of the spheral ellipses. But our philosopher had discovered that, besides attraction, there is another irresistible force in naturethat of repulsion. Now it was his habit to think out every thing; he said in his later days, that if in any respect he had been more successful than other men, it was only by a habit of thinking. Accordingly, we must suppose that he pondered much and long upon the wonderfully curious attraction to which he found himself subject, and speculated as to its probable results. He speculated on the tremulousness which he observed in himself under certain circumstances, as Le Verrier pursued the chain of reasoning which ended in the discovery of a new

planet. But one of the conclusions to which his researches in other directions had brought him, was, that however close may seem the approach of any two bodies, there is always an actual space between them, produced by this said power of repulsion. How then could he, a philosopher, be satisfied with the idea of a union in which repulsion as well as attraction was to play its part? Was it not natural to refer the many unhappy marriages which had come under his notice to a want of recognition of this fact in science? How should he ascertain whether, in this case, the repulsive power of the young lady might not overcome her attraction?

He had spent the morning in his study, laboring to fix hist attention on the grand problem of the universe, but surprised and vexed to find it wandering towards that insignificant, comet-like nebula, a young woman,-which no telescope that has yet been invented has succeeded in following rapidly enough to ascertain its laws of revolution. Moore has aptly expressed the puzzle into which an astronomer might be thrown :

"Then awake till rise of sun, my dear,

But the sage's glass we'll shun, my dear;

Lest in watching the fight,

Of bodies of light,

He might happen to take thee for one, my dear!"

But our sage was too wise to try a telescopic view. He adhered to his old rule of thinking, but found hosts of difficulties arise in the course of his investigation. He no doubt tried figures, but they probably ran into such sums, as these "Two lips, indifferent red; two gray eyes, with lids to them; one neck; one chin; and so forth." Or perhaps he endeavored to set forth the substance of his thoughts in dia