SKETCH OF MARY SOMERVILLE, 115 



should I have had courage to ask any of them a question, for I should 

 have been laughed at." She was afterward introduced to Nasmyth, 

 the landscape-painter, under whom she practiced in copying pictures. 

 One day she heard him say, in talking with some ladies about per- 

 spective : " You should study Euclid's * Elements of Geometry ' ; the 

 foundation, not only of perspective, but of astronomy and all mechan- 

 ical science." " Here, in the most unexpected manner," she says, " I 

 got the information I wanted, for I at once saw that it would help me 

 to understand some parts of Robertson's * Navigation ' ; but as to go- 

 ing to a bookseller and asking for Euclid, the thing was impossible." 

 She afterward obtained, through a tutor in the family, a Euclid and a 

 Bonnycastle's " Algebra," and studied — herself being her only teacher 

 — ^her geometry by stealth, reading late in the night after she had gone 

 to bed. The servants reported to her mother that she was consuming 

 candles extravagantly, and orders were given to take away her candle 

 as soon as she was in bed. She had, however, already gone through 

 the first six books of Euclid, and was now thrown on her memory. 

 She continued her geometrical exercises by beginning with the first 

 book of her author and demonstrating a certain number of problems 

 every night, till she could nearly go through the whole. She also 

 studied Latin, reading six books of Caesar's " Commentaries," and Greek 

 enough to read Xenophon and part of Herodotus. While these things 

 were going on, her father came home for a short time, and, learning 

 what she was about, said to her mother: "We must put a stop to this, 

 or we shall have Mary in a strait-jacket one of these days. There was 



X , who went raving mad about the longitude." Her mother, 



though pleased with the acquisitions in music she made, was as unsym- 

 pathetic as her father with her scholastic tastes ; and, believing that 

 women's duties were domestic, took great pains to divert her mind 

 from her chosen " unladylike " pursuits, and keep her busied with house- 

 hold occupations. She received some sympathy from her uncle, the 

 Rev. Dr. Somerville, afterward her father-in-law, who was one of the 

 first to perceive her rare qualities ; and from Professor Wallace, of the 

 University of Edinburgh, who gave her a list of mathematical books, 

 chiefly French. " I was thirty-three years of age," she writes, " when 

 I bought this excellent little library. I could hardly believe that I 

 possessed such a treasure when I looked back on the day that I first 

 saw the mysterious word * algebra,' and the long course of years in 

 which I had persevered, almost without hope. It taught me never to 

 despair. I had now the means, and pursued my studies with increased 

 assiduity; concealment was no longer possible, nor was it attempted. I 

 was considered eccentric and foolish, and my conduct was highly dis- 

 approved of by many, even by some members of my own family." 



The future Mrs. Somerville had also gifts of another kind than 

 her scholastic ones. She was admired for her good looks, and called 

 "the Rose of Jedburgh"; and was conspicuous for her beauty, the 



