204 Mary Somerville. 



ignorance at least, that they are grateful and humble. 

 You should have my grateful and humble thanks long 

 ago for the favour the honour you did me by sending 

 me that Preliminary Dissertation, in which there is so 

 much knowledge, but that I really wished to read it over 

 and over again at some intervals of time, and to have 

 the pleasure of seeing my sister Harriet read it, before 

 I should write to you. She has come to us, and has 

 just been enjoying it, as I knew she would. For my 

 part, I was long in the state of the boa constrictor after 

 a full meal and I am but just recovering the poAvers of 

 motion. My mind was so distended by the magnitude, 

 the immensity, of what you put into it ! I am afraid 

 that if you had been aware how ignorant I was you would 

 not have sent me this dissertation, because you would 

 have felt that you were throwing away much that I 

 could not understand, and that could be better bestowed 

 on scientific friends capable of judging of what they 

 admire. I can only assure you that you have given me 

 a great deal of pleasure ; that you have enlarged my con- 

 ception of the sublimity of the universe, beyond any ideas 

 I had ever befor been enabled to form. 



The great simplicity of your manner of writing, I may 

 say of your mind, which appears in your writing, parti- 

 cularly suits the scientific sublime which would be 

 destroyed by what is commonly called fine writing. You 

 trust sufficiently to the natural interest of your subject, 

 to the importance of the facts, the beauty of the whole, 

 and the adaptation of the means to the ends, in every 

 part of the immense whole. This reliance upon your 

 reader's feeling along with you, was to me very gratifying. 

 The ornaments of eloquence dressing out a sublime 

 subject are just so many proofs either of bad taste in the 



