Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/424

408 position to declare sincerely that you are incontestably one of the foremost professors of that subject, that your work will be very useful, that it will contribute to the literary reputation of Italy and of our Academy of Sciences at Bologna." In another quarter, two members of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, de Mairan and de Montigny, were commissioned to examine the Instituzioni analitiche, and they observed in their report that order, lucidity, and precision reigned in all parts of the work. They regarded it, in short, as "the most complete and best composed treatise" extant on that difficult subject. De Montigny, too, in the letter accompanying the transmission of the report to Agnesi, informed her that he had desired to see her while traveling in Italy, in 1740, but circumstances had disarranged his plans, and he had been obliged to return by way of Geneva without passing through Milan. He added: "I much regretted thus missing you, but my regrets are much increased now, after having read your book; and I can never console myself for not having had the pleasure of seeing you and talking with you, for Italy has not offered me any object more worthy of my admiration. I admire especially the art with which you have brought together under uniform methods so many facts scattered through the works of the geometricians, most of which have been acquired in very various ways." The work of our learned lady had therefore a very flattering success. Other evidences of its merit are afforded by its having been translated into English by Colson in 1801, and by the translation of the second volume by d'Anthelmy into French, with notes by Bossu, under the name of Traités élémentaires du calcul différentiel et du calcul intégral (1775). Its remarkable character is further indicated by an observation by M. Rebière that the first works on so difficult and new a science as the infinitesimal calculus are of extreme importance.

Besides his gift to Agnesi, Pope Benedict XIV nominated her in 1750 professor of mathematics in the University of Bologna. But notwithstanding the invitation of the Roman pontiff, who reminded her that Bologna had already heard persons of her sex in its public chairs, and that he pressed her to "continue so commendable a tradition," she did not teach. Her delicate health and the education of her brothers, with which she had charged herself after the death of her father (March 19, 1752), confirmed her determination to give up her scientific work. After that, Agnesi no longer existed as a mathematician. Maria Gaetano devoted herself exclusively to the care of the orphans and bade good-by to the world in a profession of faith in which she proclaimed, in substance, that "man ought always