Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/127

Rh and received her friends. Gay and cheerful company was a pleasant relaxation after a hard day's work. My mother never introduced scientific or learned subjects into general conversation. When they were brought forward by others, she talked simply and naturally about them, without the slightest pretension to superior knowledge. Finally, to complete the list of her accomplishments, I must add that she was a remarkably neat and skillful needle-woman."

"At Edinburgh," says the English essayist in the "Saturday Review," "she had the opportunity of seeing Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble on the stage, and contracted a passion for Shakespeare. Poetry and works of the imagination had a charm to her from the first; and no girl more enjoyed dancing, or had more numerous partners at balls. At the same time, a degree of diffidence, mainly attributable to the seclusion of her early years, forbade her taking part in conversation, or speaking across the table. Through all her amusements, severe as the winter might be, she rose at daybreak, and, wrapped in a blanket, no fire being allowed, read algebra or the classics till breakfast-time. If tired in mind, as she was often conscious of becoming, in spite of her perseverance, refreshment was sought in poetry, or in stories of ghosts and witchcraft, of which she was constitutionally fond, being what the Scotch call eerie when in the dark or by herself, although having no actual belief in ghosts, and feeling a proper scorn for spirit-rappers." The practice of writing in bed, referred to in the preceding extract, appears to have been habitual with her, and "Chambers's Journal" gives a picture of her making it a rule "not to get up before twelve or one, although she began work at eight; reading, writing, and calculating hard—with her pet sparrow resting upon her arm—four or five hours every day, but these four or five hours were spent abed."

"The restless activity of her intellect," says "Nature," "never slumbered. When she received her first lessons in painting and music, she began at once to try and trace out the scientific principles on which these arts are based, and never rested till she had gained some knowledge of the laws of perspective and of the theory of color, and had learned to tune her own instruments." Another writer depicts the versatility of her life, and the abundance of the scientific friendships she contracted in association with her husband, who, "a traveler, a naturalist, a good classic, and a critical writer of English," was "one to share her studies and to be her support and companion in society and in travel.... Geology and mineralogy are among the first of their joint studies, and the extravagance of their cabinet of specimens is criticised. Acquaintance with the Herschels opens up practical astronomy. In London, Arago and Biot, who had heard of the English lady reading Laplace, express surprise at her youth. At Paris friendship is renewed with these savants, with whom are met Laplace himself, Arago, and Professor Humboldt; Cuvier does the