Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/420

 partly to assist her brother in his career (he was a remarkable scholar) partly in zeal of learning; and her abilities presently became universally applauded. She read, spoke and wrote some fourteen languages, with ease and precision, including Greek, Latin, most of the current European tongues and several Oriental ones. She compiled a grammar of the Ethiopic language simply as part of her study of it. She mastered philosophy, theology, and was "a library of scientific knowledge." She wrote forceful treatises; advanced important theories, being one of the; earliest women-writers of Germany to discuss the wider relations of women to intellectual and moral life; like the famous Italian savantes Lucretia Marinelli, Novella d'Andrea and the celebrated Frenchwoman, Marie de Jars-Courtenay. Anna Maria Schurmann also travelled widely, everywhere received by learned and distinguished men of science and literature. She became the object of pilgrimages of respect and curiosity on the part of the wise, the noble and the eminent. Christina of Sweden made her visit to Anna Maria a particular object. With her severer pursuits, Anna had pleasure and facility in the arts. She drew and painted, especially portraits, with superiour skill, carved in wood and stone, and embroidered elegantly. This last was one of her few specially feminine occupations; she was averse to the toilette, to cooking and household cares. In her later life she maintained close friendship with Labadie, the Calvinist theologian. (Its course was wholly intellectual.) With her mental distinction, Anna Maria Schumann possessed high moral qualities, and generously sacrificed herself for others. She never married. No heart-romance appears in her history. She was of strikingly masculine exterior, and had the air, the voice and tastes of men. She had friendships only with men; or—significant trait—with gentle, feminine and unintellectual women. She died in 1678, at an advanced age, with the wide recognition of learned Europe. If we cannot include her among among Uraniads, she is apart from true