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 26 pathetically, "how miserable we were in the little parlor at Thoresby?"

Her own education she always protested was of the worst and flimsiest character, and her girlish scorn at the restraints that cramped and fettered her is expressed vigorously enough in the well-known letter to Bishop Burnet. It was considered almost criminal, she complains, to improve her reason, or even to fancy she had any. To be learned was to be held up to universal ridicule, and the only line of conduct open to her was to play the fool in concert with other women of quality, "whose birth and leisure merely serve to make them the most useless and worthless part of creation." Yet viewed alongside of her contemporaries, Lady Mary's advantages were really quite unusual. She had some little guidance in her studies, with no particular opposition to overcome, and tolerance was as much at any time as a thoughtful girl could hope for. Nearly a century later we find little Mary Fairfax—afterwards Mrs. Somerville, and the most learned woman in England—being taught how to sew, to read her Bible, and to learn the Shorter Catechism; all else being