This gentleman patronises Mrs. Somerville's scientific reputation. He told me one morning, in the presence of several persons whom he wished to impress with the highest respect for Mrs. Somerville, the particulars of a call he once made upon her during a visit to England. It was a long story; but the substance of it was, that he found her a most extraordinary person, for that she knew more than he did. He had always thought himself a pretty good mathematician, but she had actually gone further. He had prided himself upon being a tolerable chymist, but he found she could teach him something there. He had reason to think himself a good mineralogist; but, when he saw her cabinet, he found that it was possible to get beyond him. On entering her drawing-room he was struck by some paintings which he ascertained to be done by her hand, while he could not pretend to be able to paint at all. He acknowledged that he had, for once, met his superior. Two days after, among a yet larger party, he told me the whole story over again. I fell into an absent fit in planning how I could escape from the rest of his string of stories, to talk with some one on the opposite side of the room. When he finally declared, "In short, I actually found that Mrs. Somerville knows more than I do," I mechanically answered, "I have no doubt of it." A burst of laughter from the whole party roused me to a sense of what I had done in taking the professor at his word. His look of mortification was pitiable.
It was amusing to see him with the greatest statesman in the country, holding him by the button for an hour together, while lecturing in the style of a master to a hopeful schoolboy. The pompous air of the professor and the patient snufftaking of the statesman under instruction made a capital caricature subject. One of the professor's most serious declarations to me was, that the time had long been past when he believed he might be mistaken. He had once thought that he might be in the wrong like other people, but experience had taught him that he never erred. As, therefore, he and I did not agree on the point we were conversing about, I must be mistaken. I might rely upon him that it was so.
It is not to be expected that women should resist dangers of position which men, with their wider intercourses, cannot withstand. The really learned and able women of the United States are as modest and simple as people of sound learning and ability are; but the pedantry of a few bookish women in retired country situations exceeds anything I ever saw out of novels and farces.
