EARLY MARRIED LIFE. 89 



of our marriage. My husband had long known almost all 1837. 

 my father's circle of acquaintance. One exception a 

 dear and early friend of mine whom he did not know per- 

 sonally till shortly before our marriage was Lady Noel 

 Byron, whose health kept her much at home, and whom 

 he accompanied me to see at her house near Acton. 

 She soon became as truly his friend as she had been 

 mine. Lady Byron was always shy with strangers, es- 

 pecially with those who excited her veneration. This 

 shyness gave her an appearance of coldness, but she and 

 my husband soon knew each other's worth, and she never 

 lost an opportunity of showing her regard for him and 

 trust in his judgment. He was rather surprised to find in 

 one commonly reputed to be hard and austere, qualities 

 of quite an opposite nature. She was impulsive and affec- 

 tionate almost to a fault, but the expression of her 

 feelings was often checked by the habitual state of re- 

 pression in which the circumstances of her life had placed 

 her. I had known her from my childhood. My father, 

 whom she always held in the highest esteem, had taught 

 her Mathematics, as a friend, before her marriage. My 

 husband afterwards gave her daughter, Lady Love- 

 lace, then Lady King, much help in her mathematical 

 studies, which were carried farther than her mother's had 

 been. I well remember accompanying her to see Mr. 

 Babbage's wonderful analytical engine. While other 

 visitors gazed at the working of this beautiful instrument 

 with the sort of expression, and I dare say the sort of 

 feeling, that some savages are said to have shown on first 

 seeing a looking-glass or hearing a gun if, indeed, they 

 had as strong an idea of its niarvellousness Miss Byron, 

 young as she was, understood its working, and saw the 

 great beauty of the invention. She had read the Differen- 

 tial Calculus to some extent, and after her marriage she 

 pursued the study and translated a small work of the 

 Italian Mathematician Menabrea, in which the mathe- 

 matical principles of its construction are explained. 



