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THE LIFE OF

vaft precipices, hanging woods, deep vales, the eafy falls of water in fome places, and in others cataracts tumbling over rocks,---form all together the most beautiful and delightful scenes. All the decorations of art are but foils and fhadows to fuch natural charms.

In the midst of these scenes, and in a theatrical space of about two hundred acres, which the hand of nature cut, or hollowed out, on the fide of a mountain, ftands Cleator-Lodge, a neat and pretty manfion. Near it were groves of various trees, and the water of a strong spring murmured from the front down to a lake at the bottom of the hill.

Character of
Maria Spence.

S. 5. This was Mifs Spence's country-house. Here the wife and excellent Maria pass'd the best part of her time, and never went to any public place but Harrogate once a year. In reading, riding, fishing, and fome vifits to and from three or four neighbours now and then, her hours were happily and usefully employed. Hiftory and Mathematics fhe took great delight in, and had a very furprizing knowledge in the last. She was another of those ladies I met with in my travels, who un

derstood

derstood that method of calculation, beyond which nothing further is to be hoped or expected; I mean the arithmetic of fluxions.

Very few men among the learned can confider magnitudes as generated by motion, or determine their proportions one to another from the celerities of the motion by which they are generated. I question if the Critical Reviewers can do it (I am fure they cannot,) though they have made fo licentioufly free with me. They may however pretend to know fomething of the matter, and fo did Berkley, late Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland: yet that prelate, in reality, understood no more of the method than a porter does, though he presumed to write against it, and the divine Newton, the inventor of it: I fay it. But Maria Spence, in the 24th year of her age (at this time,) was a master in the fluxionary way. She had not only a clear and adequate notion of fluxions, but was able to penetrate into the depths of this fcience, and had made fublime discoveries in this incomparable method of reafoning. She astonished me. I thought Mrs. Burcott and Mrs. Fletcher (mentioned in my first volume, p. 275.) were very extraordinary women, on account of their knowledge in algebra, and the fine

aniwers

;

anfwers they gave to the moft difficult problems in univerfal arithmetic: but this fort of reafoning is far inferior to the fluxionary method of calculation; as the latter opens and discovers to us the fecrets and receffes of nature, which have always before been locked up in obfcurity and darkness. By fluxions, fuch difficulties are refolved, as raife the wonder and furprife of all mankind, and which would in vain be attempted by any other method whatsoever. What then muft we think of a young woman well skilled in fuch work; not only able to find the fluxions of flowing or determinate quantities, that is, the velocities with which they arife or begin to be generated in the firft moments of formation (called the velocities of the incremental parts,) and the velocities in the laft ratio's, as vanishing or ceafing to be; but from given fluxions to find the fluents; and be ready in drawing tangents to curves'; in the folution of problems de maximis & minimis, that is, the greatest or least possible quantity attainable in any cafe; in the invention of points of inflection and retrogreffion; in finding the evoluta of a given curve; in finding the cauftic curves, by reflection and refraction, &c. &c. this was amazing beyond any thing I had feen; or did ever fee fince, except Mrs. Benlow

of

of Richmondshire, with whom I became acquainted in 1739. (See Memoirs of feveral Ladies of Great Britain, Vol. I.) With aftonishment I beheld her. I was but a young beginner, or learner, in respect of her, though I had applied fo close to fluxions (after I had learned algebra), that my head was often ready to fpilt with pain; nor had I the capacity, at that time, to comprehend thoroughly the procefs of several operations fhe performed with beauty, fimplicity, and charming elegance. Admirable Maria! No one have I ever seen that was her fuperior in this science: one equal only have I known, the lady a little beforementioned. And does not this demonstrate, that the faculties and imagination of 'women's minds, properly cultivated, may equal thofe of the greatest men? And fince women have the fame improvable minds as the male part of the fpecies, why fhould they not be cultivated by the fame method? Why fhould reafon be left to itself in one of the fexes, and be difciplined with fo much care in the other. Learning and knowledge are perfections in us not as we are men, but as we are -rational creatures, in which order of beings the female world is upon the fame level with the male. We ought to confider in VOL. IV. C

A reflection on the education of

the women,

this

this particular, not what is the sex, but what is the fpecies they belong to. And if women of fortune were fo confidered, and educated accordingly, I am fure the world would foon be the better for it. It would be fo far from making them those ridiculous mortals Moliere has defcribed under the character of learned ladies; that it would render them more agreeable and useful, and enable them by the acquifition of true fenfe and knowledge, to be fuperior to gayety and Spectacle, drefs and diffipation. They would fee that the fovereign good can be placed in nothing else but in rectitude of conduct; as that is agreeable to our nature; conducive to well-being; accommodate to all places and times; durable, self-derived, indeprivable; and of confequence, that on rational and mafculine religion only they can reft the foal of the foot, and the fooner they turn to it, the happier here and hereafter they fhall be. Long before the power of fenfe, like the fetting fun, is gradually forfaking them, (that power on which the pleafures of the world depend) they would, by their acquired understanding and knowledge, fee the folly of pleafure, and that they were born not only to virtue, friendship, bonefty, and faith, but to religion, piety, adoration, and a generous furrender of their minds to the fupreme caufe. They would

be