SKETCH OF MARIA AGNESI. 409 



to work for some end — tlie Christian for the glory of God; my 

 studies have had this glory in view, for they were conformed to the 

 desire of my father. Now, finding better means of serving God, so 

 near me, I must use them." 



She began by taking two infirm persons into her rooms; and 

 afterward she withdrew into a remote part of her house, and gave a 

 home there to a considerable number of women, which the sale of 

 the Empress Maria Theresa's valuable gift to a rich Englishman 

 enabled her to increase. In 1759 she hired a house near the church 

 of San Benedetto, at the gate called " Vigentina," in which she lived 

 with one of her brothers after the division of the family estate was 

 made in 1764. When this house was sold in 1771, she moved into 

 another between the churches of Santa Maria de la Yisitatione and 

 Sant Appolinare, where, assisted by the liberality of Prince Antonio 

 Ptolomeo Trioulzi, she took care of four hundred and fifty poor per- 

 sons of both sexes. She still found means, with all these multifarious 

 occupations, to accept invitations to dinner, for she was a foe to even 

 the slightest eccentricity. She won the admiration of her fellow 

 guests by the sweetness of her manners and the easy grace of her 

 conversation. This did not cause her to neglect the reading of the 

 Holy Scriptures, for she composed theological and ascetical writings. 

 But after 1791, having suffered an attack of gout and her sight 

 being weakened, she became a frequent visitor to one of the country 

 houses of her father's estate. She died of dropsy of the breast, after 

 a long illness, January 9, 1799, and was buried in the parochial 

 basilica of Santo Stephano, where she is described in her epitaph as a 

 woman remarkable for her piety, knowledge, and benevolence.* 



Sir Archibald Geikie, in liis memoir of Sir Andrew Crombie Ramsay, 

 describing the misapprehensions to which the geologist is liable while pur- 

 suing his studies in the field, tells a story of one of the English survey staff 

 " who, poking about to see the rocks exposed on the outskirts of a village in 

 Cumberland, was greeted by an old woman as the ' sanitary 'spector.' He 

 modestly disclaimed the honor, but noticing that the place was very filthy 

 ventured to hint that such an official would find something to do there. 

 And he thereupon began to enlarge on the evils of accumulating filth, I'e- 

 sulting, amoiig other things, in an unhealthy and stunted population. His 

 auditor heard him out, and then, calmly surveying him from head to foot, 

 remarked, ' Well, young man, all I have to tell ye is that the men o' this 

 place are a deal bigger and stronger and handsomer nor you.' She bore 

 no malice, for she offered him a cup of tea, but he was too cowed to face 

 her longer." 



* The inscription on her tomb reads : Maria Gaetano Agnesi : Pietate, Doctrina, Bene- 

 ficenlia Insignis. H. S. E. Dec. An. MDCCXCIX, V. I. D. IAN. Aetat. LXXXI. 



