lunatics, why it is that musicians are mad. Looking upwards, she speculates still more ambitiously upon the nature of the moon, and if the stars are blazing jellies; looking downwards she wonders if the fishes know that the sea is salt; opines that our heads are full of fairies, “dear to God as we are”; muses whether there are not other worlds than ours, and reflects that the next ship may bring us word of a new one. In short, “we are in utter darkness”. Meanwhile, what a rapture is thought! As the vast books appeared from the stately retreat at Welbeck the usual censors made the usual objections, and had to be answered, despised, or argued with, as her mood varied, in the preface to every work. They said, among other things, that her books were not her own, because she used learned terms, and “wrote of many matters outside her ken”. She flew to her husband for help, and he answered, characteristically, that the Duchess “had never conversed with any professed scholar in learning except her brother and myself”. The Duke’s scholarship, moreover, was of a peculiar nature. “I have lived in the great world a great while, and have thought of what has been brought to me by the senses, more than was put into me by learned discourse; for I do not love to be led by the nose, by authority, and old authors; _ipse dixit_ will not serve my turn.” And then she takes up the pen and proceeds, with the importunity and indiscretion of a child, to assure the world that her ignorance is of the finest quality imaginable. She has only seen Des Cartes and Hobbes, not questioned them; she did indeed ask Mr. Hobbes to dinner, but he could not come; she often does not listen to a word that is said to her; she does not know any French, though she lived abroad for five years; she has only read the old philosophers in Mr. Stanley’s account of them; of Des Cartes she has read but half of his work on Passion; and of Hobbes only “the little book called _De Cive_”, all of which is infinitely to the credit of her native wit, so abundant that outside succour pained it, so honest that it would not accept help from others. It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy. Under the pressure of such vast structures, her natural gift, the fresh and delicate fancy which had led her in her first volume to write charmingly of Queen Mab and fairyland, was crushed out of existence. The palace of the Queen wherein she dwells, Its fabric’s built all of hodmandod shells; The hangings of a Rainbow made that’s thin, Shew wondrous fine, when one first enters in; The chambers made of Amber that is clear, Do give a fine sweet smell, if fire be near; Her bed a cherry stone, is carved throughout, And with a butterfly’s wing hung about; Her sheets are of the skin of Dove’s eyes made Where on a violet bud her pillow’s laid.