scope of value was in the observatory of a Jesuit convent, in Tuscany, where no woman was allowed to cross the threshold. This indignation in England looks like evidence that the world has advanced in its intellectual and moral liberties.
Whatever the Tuscan Jesuits might think of her case, I believe that Mrs. Somerville and all her many friends would say, if asked, that they never heard of a disrespectful word being spoken of her, in connection with her powers and her pursuits. Her work is over, for she is almost seventy years of age; and it is not a case in which death is required to silence levity or sarcasm; for there is none of either to put to shame. Under such circumstances, we may reasonably hope that these female mathematicians may be, indeed, Representative Women,—leaders of an honoured and increasing class.
FIRST LOVE.
She was the first, the only star
That shone upon my life,
The summer of my days had set
Before I called her wife;
The leaves have fallen twenty times
Beneath our trysting tree,
Since the ringers shook the rafters
In the belfry by the sea.
The pulses of my heart beat slow,
With calm, uuflutter’d stroke,
Till with a party from the Grange
I pic-nic’d at the Oak;
A stranger to our Forest ways,
She came with Alan’s bride,
One glance—I knew my love was come—
The old indifference died.
The park, a summer’s walk across,
Was famous in the shire;
The porter at the crested gates
Grew rich and blessed the Squire;
I show’d the glade where ballads say
The King met Robin Hood,
I took her where, as boys, we cropp’d
Wild strawberries in the wood.
The gardens and the orange-trees,
The swans upon the lake,
The gazing stags among the fern,
The pheasants in the brake:
These sumptuous signs of wealthy state
She saw with sweet surprise,
And I new light was on them all,
Seen with a lover’s eyes.
