MARIA AGNESI. 251 



with the most honorable appointments, was bestowed upon 

 her. She equally excelled in algebra, geometry, physics, 

 Greek, poetry and the belles lettres, and is described by a 

 contemporary as singularly gentle and modest in her deport- 

 ment, serious and unaffected, of a vigorous memory, accom- 

 panied by solid judgment and a lively immagination. She died 

 in 1778. The last learned Italian to whom I shall now allude 

 is the celebrated Milanese lady, Maria Agnesi, who died in 

 the last year of the last century. She understood Latin at 

 nine years old, and soon acquired Greek, Hebrew, French, 

 German and Spanish. At the age of nineteen she supported 

 a hundred and ninety-one theses, and continued so to distin- 

 guish herself that, on her father being ill, she obtained 

 permission of Benedict XIV, to supply his chair of mathe- 

 matics at Bologna. She subsequently retired from the world 

 and devoted the remainder of her life to charity and benevo- 

 lence. 



Thank you, mamma. 



MRS. F. 



I have now finished my catalogue of the ladies of Italy, 

 although there are, perhaps, many others that might be 

 enumerated. But in the nineteenth century, our own country 

 stands pre-eminent in the annals of female science; and were 

 it not in opposition to the retiring feelings of one who is 

 humble as she is learned, a doctor's degree or a professor's 

 chair might now be bestowed with equal justice upon an 

 English lady as it was conferred upon those of Italy; but 

 though eligible for the highest honors that science can offer, 

 she is more content to shine in the path of domestic life, 

 affording to us all a striking evidence that talents and pursuits 

 of the highest order are not incompatible with a strict dis- 

 charge of the relative and social duties.* 



* Her "Connection of the Physical Science's" will, of course, be 

 in the library of the youthful reader. 



