“I have this morning received the Quarterly Review and some slips from newspapers. What can I say to express my gratitude to you for the article,—so admirably written; and giving so touching a picture of my Mother,—as you, her best friend (notwithstanding the great difference of age) knew her? Also I received lately the Academy which pleased me much, too. The Memoir has been received far more favourably than I ventured to expect.”
A long time after this, I paid a visit to friends at St. Andrews and stopped from Saturday to Monday, on my way, at Burntisland. Writing from thence to Miss Elliot about her own country, and countrymen, I said:—
“I came here to look up the scene of Mrs. Somerville’s childhood, and I have found everything just as she described it;—the Links; the pretty hills and woods full of wild flowers; the rocky bit of shore with boulders full of fossil shells which excited her childish wonder when she wandered about, a beautiful little girl, as she must have been. If ever there were a case of—
“‘Nourishing a youth sublime,
With the fairy tales of science and the long results of Time,’
it was surely hers. Very naturally I was thinking of her all day and wondering whether she is now studying the flora of Heaven, of which she used to speak, and pursuing Astronomy among the stars; or whether it can be possible these things pass away for ever! I wanted very much to make out where Sir William Fairfax’ house had been, and finally was directed to the schoolmaster who, it was said, knew all about it. I found the good man in a large schoolhouse where he has 600 pupils; and as soon as he learned my name he seized my hand and made great demonstrations; and straightway proceeded to constitute himself my guide to the localities in question. The joke however was this. Hardly were we out of the house before he said, ‘I’ll send you a pamphlet of mine—not about Science, I don’t care for Science, I care for Morals;—and I’ve found out there is only a very little thing to be done, to stop all pauperism and all crime! You are just the person to understand me!’ The idea of this poor schoolmaster in Burntisland compressing that modest programme into a ‘pamphlet’ seems to me deliciously characteristic of Scotland.”
A college for Ladies was opened some years ago at Oxford and named after Mrs. Somerville. I greatly rejoiced at the time at this very fitting tribute to her memory; and induced my brother to send his daughter, my dear niece, Frances Conway Cobbe, to the Hall. I ceased to rejoice, however, when I found that a lady bearing a name identified with Vivisection in England was nominated for election as a member of the Council of the College. I entered, (as a Subscriber,) the most vigorous protest I could make against the proposed choice, but, alas! in vain.
One of our visitors at Villa Brichieri was a very pious French lady, who came up to us one day to dinner straight from her devotions in the Duomo, where a Triduo was going on against Renan; and, as it chanced, she began to praise somewhat excessively a lady of rank whose reputation had suffered more than one serious injury. My English friend remarked, smiling, in mitigation of the eulogy:—
“Elle a eue ses petits délassements!”
the answer was deliciously XVIII. Century—