T the head of the list of scientific ladies stands Gabrielle Emilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, the French translator of Newton's "Principia." She was the daughter of the Baron de Breteuil, was born in 1706, and was married to the Marquis de Chastelet, or Châtelet, when very young. Voltaire became acquainted with her in 1733, and he has described what he found her to be in the memoir which he has left us of a part of her life. Her father, he says, had caused her to be taught Latin, and she knew that language as well as Madame Dacier. She had by heart the finest passages of Horace, Virgil, and Lucretius; all the philosophical writings of Cicero were familiar to her. But her predominating taste was for the mathematics and metaphysics. There had rarely been united in any one more correctness of judgment, with more taste and ardour for the acquisition of knowledge; nor was she for all this the less attached to the world, and to all the amusements proper to her age and sex.
Yet she had given up everything to go and bury herself in an old dilapidated château, situated in a barren and wretched country, on the borders of Champagne and Lorraine. She had, however, made this country house at Cirey an agreeable retreat for study and philosophical intercourse. Pleasant gardens, with which the marchioness had embellished it, a good collection of philosophical instruments which Voltaire formed, and an extensive library, enabled Maupertius, John Bernouilli, and other distinguished literary and scientific visitors, who sometimes came to spend a few weeks or months, both to enjoy themselves and to pass their time not unprofitably. Voltaire resided here for about six years. He taught the marchioness English, and, he says, at the end of three months she knew the language as well as himself, and was equally able to read Locke, Newton, and Pope. Italian she acquired with the same facility; Voltaire and she read several of the Italian poets together; and when Francesco Algarotti came to Cirey to finish his work, entitled "Newtonianismo par le Dame"—"Newtonianism for the Ladies"—she was able to converse with him in his own tongue, and to give him many valuable suggestions.
"We sought for nothing," continues Voltaire, "in this delicious retreat, except to cultivate our understandings, without taking any trouble to inform ourselves about what was passing in the rest of the world. Our chief attention for a long time was given to Leibnitz and Newton. Madame du Châtelet at first attached herself to Leibnitz, and gave an explanation of a part of his system in a work written with great ability, which she called 'Institutions de Physique.' She did not seek to decorate this philosophy with ornaments foreign to its nature; no such affectation belonged to the character of her mind, which was masculine and true. Clearness, precision, and elegance were the constituents of her style. If it has ever been found possible to give any plausibility to the notions of Leibnitz, it is in that book that it has been done." The "Institutions de Physique" has received high commendation from the most competent authorities as well as from Voltaire. It is described as "a series of letters, in which the systems of Leibnitz and Newton are explained in a familiar style, and with a degree of knowledge of the history of the several opinions, and of sound language and ideas in their discussion, which we read with surprise, remembering that they were the production of a Frenchwoman, thirty years of age, written very few years after the introduction of the Newtonian philosophy into France. She takes that intermediate view between the refusal to admit the hypothesis of attraction and the assertion of it as a primary quality of matter, from which very few who consider the subject would now dissent. At the end of the work is an epistolary discussion with M. de Mairan, on the principle of vis viva—the vital energy, the metaphysical part of which then created much controversy." Her translation of Newton's "Principia" was published at Paris in 1759. It stands so high that it has been used by Delambre in his "History of Astronomy," whenever he has to make a quotation from Newton. Madame du Châtelet had been dead for ten years when the work appeared. Her life is supposed to have been shortened by her close application in preparing it, and she died at the age of forty-three.
LADY HUNTINGDON.
[BORN 1707. DIED 1791.]
ISAAC TAYLOR.
HE broad facts of this noble lady's history afford ground enough for the repute she has enjoyed as a woman of much tact and ability, of great energy, and of a munificent temper; while the use she made of her influence and fortune for the promotion of the Methodistic movement, that is to say, of Christianity itself, sufficiently attests her piety and zeal. It must also be inferred, from the circumstance of her having retained the friendship and regard of many among the leading persons of her time through a long period of years, that she possessed qualities of mind and attractions of manner that were of no ordinary sort; for it is certain that those who ridiculed, or even hated her Methodism, still yielded themselves, in frequent instances, to her personal influence. So far, an idea of Lady Huntingdon may be gathered from facts that are beyond doubt. There is, however, so little that is discriminative in the extant eulogies of her friends and correspondents, or of her biographers, and there is so little that bears a clearly-marked individuality in her own letters, that a distinct image of her mind and temper is not easy to obtain.