Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/26

 never could be taught to understand how two and two make four. If he was asked, he would say, four and four make three, or ten, or something: he was shown with money, and with beans, and in every possible way, but all to no purpose. The fact was, that that particular faculty was not yet developed: but now, there is no better calculator anywhere. The most difficult sums he will do on his fingers; and he is besides a very great mathematician. There was a son of Lord Darnley's, a little boy, who was only big enough to lie under the table, or play on the sofa, and yet he could make calculations with I don't know how many figuresthings that they have to do in the Treasury. Now, if that boy had gone on in the same way, he would by this time have been Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I hear nothing of him, and I don't know what has become of him; so I suppose he has not turned out anything extraordinary.

"But nature was entirely out of the question with us: we were left to the governesses. Lady Stanhope got up at ten o'clock, went out, and then returned to be dressed, if in London, by the hair-dresser; and there were only two in London, both of them Frenchmen, who could dress her. Then she went out to dinner, and from dinner to the Opera, and from the Opera to parties, seldom returning until just before daylight. Lord Stanhope was engaged in his philoso-