cellent constitution, and cry aloud, with all the embittered sons of Edom, Down with it, down with it, even to the ground. Here the clock struck one, and we parted..

Early the next morning I was up, according to my wont, and walked out, to look at the place. Cleator is one of the finest spots that can be seen, in a wild romantic country. The natural views are wonderful; and afford the eye vast pleasure. The charming prospects of different kinds, from the edges of the mountains, are very fine. The winding hills, pretty plains, vast precipices, hanging woods, deep vales, the easy falls of water in some places, and in others cataracts tumbling over rocks, form all together the most beautiful and delightful scenes. All the decorations of art are but foils and shadows to such natural charms.

In the midst of these scenes, and in a theatrical space of about two hundred acres, which the hand of nature cut, or hollowed out, on the side of a mountain, stands Cleator-Lodge, a neat and pretty mansion. Near it were groves of various trees, and the water of a strong spring murmured from the front down to a lake at the bottom of the hill.

This was Miss SPENCE'S country-house. Here the wise and excellent MARIA passed the best part of her time, and never went to any public place but

Harrogate once a year. In reading, riding, fishing, and some visits to and from three or four neighbours now and then, her hours were happily and usefully employed. History and Mathematics she took great delight in, and had a very surprising knowledge in the last. She was another of those ladies I met with in my travels, who understood that method of calculation, beyond which nothing further is to be hoped or expected; I mean the arithmetic of fluxions.

Very few men among the learned can consider magnitudes as generated by motion, or determine their proportions one to another from the celerities of the motion by which they are generated. I question if the Critical Reviewers can do it; I am sure they cannot, though they have made so licentiously free with me. They may however pretend to know something of the matter, and so did Berkeley the late Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland; yet that prelate, in reality, understood no more of the method than a porter does, though he presumed to write against it, and the divine Newton, the inventor of it. But MARIA SPENCE, in the twenty-fourth year of her age, was at this time a master in the fluxionary way. She had not only a clear and adequate notion of fluxions, but was able to penetrate into the depths of this science, and had made sublime discoveries

VOL. IIL

M

ter

in this incomparable method of reasoning. She astonished me. I thought Mrs. BURCOTT and Mrs. FLETCHER, mentioned in my first volume, were very extraordinary women, on account of their knowledge in algebra, and the fine answers they gave to the most difficult problems in universal arithmetic but this sort of reasoning is far inferior to the fluxionary method of calculation; as the latopens and discovers to us the secrets and recesses of nature, which have always before been locked up in obscurity and darkness. By fluxions, such difficulties are resolved, as raise the wonder and surprise of all mankind, and which would in vain be attempted by any other method whatsoever. What then must we think of a young woman well skilled in such work; not only able to find the fluxions of flowing or determinate quantities, that is, the velocities with which they arise or begin to be generated in the first moments of formation, called the velocities of the incremental parts, and the velocities in the last ratio's, as vanishing or ceasing to be; but from given fluxions to find the fluents; and be ready in drawing tangents to curves; in the solution of problems de maximis et minimis, that is, the greatest or least possible quantity attainable in any case; in the invention of points of inflection and retrogression; in finding the evoluta of a given

*

curve; in finding the caustic curves, by reflection and refraction, &c. &c. this was amazing beyond any thing I had seen; or have ever seen since, except Mrs. BENLOW of Richmondshire, with whom I became acquainted in 1739. With astonishment I beheld her. I was but a young beginner, or learner, in respect of her, though I had applied so close to fluxions after I had learned algebra, that my head was often ready to split with pain; nor had I the capacity, at that time, to comprehend thoroughly the process of several operations she performed with beauty, simplicity, and charming elegance. Admirable MARIA! No one have I ever seen that was her superior in this science: one equal only have I known, the lady a little before mentioned. And does not this demonstrate, that the faculties and imagination of women's minds, properly cultivated, may equal those of the greatest men? And since women have the same improvable minds as the male part of the species, why should they nor be cultivated by the same method? Why should reason be left to itself in one of the sexes, and be disciplined with so much care in the other. Learning and knowledge are perfections in us not

*See Memoirs of several Ladies of Great Britain, 1755, 8vo.

as we are men, but as we are rational creatures, in which order of beings the female world is upon the same level with the male. We ought to consider in this particular, not what is the sex, but what is the species they belong to. And if women of fortune were so considered, and educated accordingly, I am sure the world would soon be the better for it. It would be so far from making them those ridiculous mortals Moliere has described under the character of learned ladies; that it would render them more agreeable and useful and enable them by the acquisition of true sense and knowledge, to be superior to gayety and spectacle, dress and dissipation. They would see that the sovereign good can be placed in nothing else but in rectitude of conduct; as that is agreeable to our nature; conducive to well-being; accommodate to all places and times; durable, self-derived, indeprivable; and of consequence, that on rational and masculine religion only they can rest the sole of the foot, and the sooner they turn to it, the happier here and hereafter they shall be. Long before the power of sense, like the setting sun, is gradually forsaking them, that power on which the pleasures of the world depend, they would, by their acquired understanding and knowledge, see the folly of pleasure, and that they were born not only to virtue,