162 Mary Somerville. 



the chance of executing, there is one, which unless Mrs. 

 Somerville will undertake none else can, and it must be 

 left undone, though about the most interesting of the 

 whole, I mean an account of the Mecanique Celeste ; the 

 other is an account of the Principia, which I have some 

 hopes of at Cambridge. The kind of thing wanted is 

 such a description of that divine work as will both explain 

 to the unlearned the sort of thing it is the plan, the 

 vast merit, the wonderful truths unfolded or methodized 

 and the calculus by which all this is accomplished, and 

 will also give a somewhat deeper insight to the un- 

 initiated. Two treatises would do this. No one without 

 trying it can conceive how far we may carry ignorant 

 readers into an understanding of the depths of science, 

 and our treatises have about 100 to 800 pages of space 

 each, so that one might give the more popular view, and 

 another the analytical abstracts and illustrations. In 

 England there are now not twenty people who know this 

 great work, except by name ; and not a hundred who 

 know it even by name. My firm belief is that Mrs. 

 Somerville could add two cyphers to each of those 

 figures. Will you be my counsel in this suit ? Of 

 course our names are concealed, and no one of our 

 council but myself needs to know it. 



Yours ever most truly, 



H. BROUGHAM. 



[My mother in alluding to the above says : 



THIS letter surprised me beyond expression. I 

 thought Lord Brougham must have been mistaken 

 with regard to my acquirements, and naturally con- 



