Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 84

To MRS. EDGEWORTH.

ROSTREVOR,

Oct. 2, 1831.

Lestock was gratified by my joining him at Armagh. Mr. Allott was most hospitable. We walked to the cathedral, and saw views of great extent and beauty, and heard learned disquisitions about architecture, and a curious anecdote in support of a favourite theory of his, that small stones grouted together, with lime and water put in hot, defies old Time. Great alarm was excited some time ago at Winchester Cathedral: the principal pillars seemed to be giving way, out of the perpendicular, and bulged. They fell to work shoring and propping; but, in spite of all, the pillars still seemed to be giving way more and more, and they feared the whole would come down. Rennie was sent for, but Rennie was ill, and died. At last an architect looked at the pillars, picked at them, took off a facing of stone, and found, what he had suspected, that it was only this facing that had given way and bulged, and that the inside was a solid pillar of masonry,&mdash;small stones grouted together so firmly that the cement was as hard as the stone.

Dr. and Mrs. Robinson came in the evening: his conversation is admirable; such an affluence of ideas, so full of genius and master thoughts. He gave me an excellent disquisition on the effect which transcendental mathematics produces on the mind, and traced up the history of mathematics from Euclid, appealing to diagrams and resting on images, to that higher sort where they are put out of the question, where we reason by symbols as in algebra, and work on in the dark till they get to the light, or till the light comes out of the dark&mdash;sure that it will come out. He went over Newton, and on through the history of modern times&mdash;Brinkley, Lagrange, Hamilton&mdash;just giving to me, ignorant, a notion of what each had done.

Mrs. O'Beirne&mdash;dear, kind soul!&mdash;would accompany me on the jaunting-car all the way from Newry to Rostrevor, and I am very glad she did; and as the day was fine and the tide in, I thought it would be pleasant on that beautiful road; and so it would have been, but for the droves of cows&mdash;Oh, those weary cows with the longest horns!&mdash;and if ever I laughed at you for being afraid of cows, you may have your revenge now. Every quarter of a mile, at least, came a tangled mass of these brutes, and their fright made them more terrible, for they knew no more what they were doing than I did myself; and there I was sitting at their mercy, and the horn of one or t'other continually within an inch of my eye, my mouth, or my breast, and no retreat; and they might any moment stick me on the top of one of these horns, and toss me with one jerk into the sea! Mrs. O'Beirne kept telling me she was used to it, and that nothing ever happened; but by the time I reached Rostrevor I was as poor a worn-out rag as ever you saw.