The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope — Volume 1
History
The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope — Volume 1
Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century; Spencer-Stanhope, Elizabeth Wilhelmina Coke, Lady, 1795-1873
The apparent good spirits in which you write, even after a
Mathematical Lecture, gives us reason to hope that that favourite
exercise has not quite deprived you of your valuable intellect Long
may it continue thus! Long may you be the glory of CH. CH.
Mathematicians; and when you have left the British Athens, long may
your name stand forward among the lists of those Worthies who
discovered that two parallel, straight lines might run on to all
Eternity without ever meeting!
As a little incitement to you to continue acquiring learning, I will
send you a short account of the manner that two Dukes of Suffolk
(_sic_) spent their time at Cambridge in 1550:
"During dinner, one of them read a Chapter of the Greek Testament, and
did afterwards translate it into English; they then said Grace, in
turns; & did afterwards propound questions, either in Philosophy or
Divinity; & so spent all the time at Meat in Latin disputation.
"When there was any Public disputation, they were always present;
every Morning they did read & afterwards translate some of Plato in
Greek, & at Supper present their Labours. They were of St John's
College, & every day were devoted to private lectures, & the Residue
they did account for."
I ought almost to apologise for sending you so long an extract, but I
thought it would remind you so forcibly of yourself and your
distribution of your time, that I was unwilling to deny you the
pleasure of the comparison.
_Mrs Spencer-Stanhope to John Spencer-Stanhope._
(_Undated._)
Thanks for the account of the distribution of your time. I flatter
myself you are too much attached to home and to the life you have led
here ever to get into the idle way of spending Sunday, which I fear
you will witness too frequently at Oxford, for from your account of
what they are obliged to do on that day, a very small portion only
need be given up to the religious duties of the day.
I was particularly pleased with a passage I met with the other day in
which Bishop Newton on the Prophecies, speaking of Lord Bolingbrook,
who, you know, was an unbeliever and from his talents and eloquence
had too much weight at the time, says, "Raleigh and Clarendon
believed, Lock and Newton believed, where then is the discredit to
Revelation if Lord Bolingbrook was an Infidel. 'A scorner,' saith
Solomon, 'seeketh Wisdom and findeth it not'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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