SCIENCE AND SOPHY.

THERE is a popular French book by Aimé
Martin which, during the last forty-four years,
has gone through thirteen editions, the last
recently, and which on each occasion of
reprinting has been carefully made level with the
knowledge of the day. It is an introduction
to natural history and science, entitled Letters
to Sophie, and the changes that have been
made in it during the forty-four years of its
existence would furnish an odd subject of
speculation. For that we are not now in the
vein. There is no speculation in our eyes at
present. And yet, where is Sophie, we
should like to know. In eighteen hundred
and nine she was a young lady rapturous
over nature, according to Bernardin de St.
Pierre, in whom M. Martin proposed to
infuse equal raptures over Nature according
to Newton, Buffon, and Lavoisier. He would
put, for her benefit and the world's, elementary
and other truths concerning Nature in a
striking and engaging way. For the strikingness
he chose his facts extremely well, and
for the engagingness he kneaded them all up
with verses of gallantry which still remain.
Now there is a plunge into some polite
address to Nature, after the manner of Delillo;
now it is love, now it is gravitation that
inspires the muse. The verses copiously
interspersed to make the volume lighter sing, as
they say:

"Of earth below, of starry heaven above,
Of all wise men, of Sophy and of love."

That is a decidedly French way of making
science popular, and it is amusing to observe
how in prose the temper of the nation also
shows itself, and even facts in botany can
be made to wear a shape of gallantry that
matter-of-fact English Sophies would be
astonished at. If Sophie still exist, she must,
when the last edition of these letters was
addressed to her, have reached the sedate ago
of sixty; and, as she must also by this time
have been made a scientific girl, it may therefore
be doubted whether for her still in the
verses live their wonted fires. Whether she
ever became Mrs. Martin, or whether she
may be after all only one of those put-a-case
ladies who abound in literature, we in our
ignorance are unable to say.

The letters are filled with instructive and
amusing facts, which glitter in the too
luxuriant leafage like the gem fruits in a certain
underground garden which a certain tailor's
son once visited. Having got among them
lately by some chance we filled our pockets
from the store.

That we may not at once quite drop the
connection between Science and Sophy we
will begin with the subject of Sensibility—the
Sensibility of Nature. M. Durand lectured
on Mineralogy in Paris, about fifty years
ago, and he thought he proved that there was
sensibility in stones. His great point was the
love of the stone for the sun. It was quite a
rose and nightingale scandal. Take a solution
of salt, put one half of it in the sun; keep
the rest in darkness. Superb crystals will
form under the kiss of the sun, while in the
shade the salt and water still remain salt
and water. Light, said M. Durand, goes
therefore into the composition of a crystal.
Diamonds are almost wholly composed of
sunlight; they are only found in places where
the sun gives heat and light enough to make
them. Now, said the French philosopher, what
do you call that reception of light to the bosom
of a stone—what can you call that but love?
He went farther, and asserting that all the
highest mountains are placed under the
equator, called them lumps of sunlight. They
are imitations of the salt experiment on a
large scale. Their granite peaks are crystallised
light; but incomplete crystals. Give
them more light and they will be complete—
they will become crystals of the sublimest
order, they will be diamonds—real
Koh-i-noors, or mountains of light. If the sun
were but a little brighter and a little hotter
Chimborazo would be all one diamond, the
Himalayas would be diamond steeps, and all
towns in the East over the sunny side of their
walls would have diamond turrets like
Amberabad. Every sun-baked brick of Egypt
would in that case become a jewel worth
some quarts of Koh-i-noors.

All this is the result of the sensibilities
of stones. The whole earth, many old sages
believed—Kepler among them—was alive.
M. Patrin taught of the earth how metals,
plants, and minerals were formed by the
gas in its body. It was not, to be sure,
sensible like a man, but like a world. It