letters and the arts. She was at an early age surprised at the inability of masters to answer her questions, which usually turned upon the nature, origin, and object of the subject submitted to her attention. Being checked on one occasion by a deep and shrewd mathematician and physician, who observed that her questions were dangerous, she replied, ‘Can truth be dangerous?’ ‘It is thought so,’ was the answer. She learned on the occasion two things: the one, that truth had still to be found; the other, that men were afraid of it.”
"But the attention of her early years was not altogether confined to the study and speculations of the closet. Her sympathies were powerfully drawn toward the sufferings of humanity, and thus her curiosity was vividly excited to discover their causes. She was, perhaps, fifteen when this question was suggested, to her mind, upon witnessing the painful labor of the aged among the English peasantry, and, again, when she saw that peasantry ejected, under
