It is of a namesake of this fair logician that we are now about to speak, Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, as she is called. She was born in the year 940, and was brought up in the convent school, where she studied Greek and Latin, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the other liberal arts. We are often told that expressions like these, however magnificent they look on paper, would dwindle into insignificance could we test their value by the real amount of learning which they represent. With regard to Hroswitha, however, the true nature of her erudition is not left to conjecture. She has left behind her writings which have attracted the favourable notice even of modern critics, who agree in declaring that the Latin poems of this obscure nun of the tenth century are marvels of classical taste and poetic genius. Besides a panegyric on the three Othos, she wrote eight poems on various religious subjects, some of them being taken from the life of our Lord, and some from the legends of the saints; and seven prose dramas in the style of Terence, being tales of holy women, and having for their subject the praise of chastity. While praising the delicacy of the sentiments and the correctness of the style, her critics observe that these dramas afford incidental evidence of her perfect familiarity with the sciences of music, astronomy, and dialectics, as then taught in the schools. In one of them she introduces a sort of apology for her own learning, which has a certain feminine grace about it, more charming than all her logic. It occurs in the drama of “Paphnutius,” where, after a philosophic discussion on the art of music, one of the disciples of the saint is made to ask him: “Whence do you derive all this knowledge?” and he replies, “It is but a little drop that I have gathered from the ever-flowing sources of science; and now I desire to share it with you.” _Dis._ “Thanks to your goodness; nevertheless that admonition of the apostle terrifies me: ‘God hath chosen the foolish of this world to confound the wise.’” _Paph._ “Foolish and wise will alike be confounded before God, if they do what is evil.” _Dis._ “That cannot be denied.” _Paph._ “How, I pray you, can the arts and sciences be better employed than in the praise of Him who has created all things that we can know, and who furnishes us at once both with the matter and the instruments of our knowledge?” _Dis._ “Certainly, that is the best way to use science.” _Paph._ “It is; for the more we know of the admirable laws by which God regulates the weight, number, and proportion of all things, the more our hearts will burn with love of Him.”