The world saw in Agnesi a worthy accession to that noble band of gifted women who count among their number a Sappho, a Corinna, an Aspasia, a Hypatia, a Paula, a Hroswitha, a Dacier, an Isabella Rosales who, in the sixteenth century, successfully defended the most difficult theological theses in the presence of Paul III and the entire college of cardinals. And so delighted were the women--especially those in Italy--with the signal triumph of their eminent sister that they defied the traducers of their sex--_muliebris sapientiae infensissimis hostibus_--to continue any longer their unreasonable campaign against the rights of women which were based on the intellectual equality of the two sexes. So highly did the French Academy of Science value Agnesi's achievement that she would at once have been made a member of this learned body had it not been against the constitutions to admit a woman to membership. M. Motigny, one of the committee appointed by the Academy to report on the work, in his letter to the author, among other things, writes: "Permit me, Mademoiselle, to unite my personal homage to the plaudits of the entire Academy. I have the pleasure of making known to my country an extremely useful work which has long been desired, and which has hitherto"--both in France and in England--"existed only in outline. I do not know any work of this kind which is clearer, more methodic or more comprehensive than your _Analytical Institutions_. There is none in any language which can guide more surely, lead more quickly, and conduct further those who wish to advance in the mathematical sciences. I admire particularly the art with which you bring under uniform methods the divers conclusions scattered among the works of geometers and reached by methods entirely different." As an indication of the exceptional merit of Agnesi's work, even long after its publication in 1748, it suffices to state that the second volume of the_ Instituzioni Analitiche_ was translated into French in 1775 by Antelmy and annotated by the Abbe Bossuet, a member of the French Academy and a collaborator of D'Alembert on the mathematical part of the famous _Encyclopedie_. A still greater proof of the estimation in which Agnesi's work was held by men of science is the fact that it was translated in its entirety into English by the Rev. John Colton, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and published in 1801, fifty-two years after it had appeared in Italian. His impression of the methods followed by the Milanese _savante_ was so favorable that, in the words of a contemporary writer, it "gave rise to his very spirited resolution of learning a new language at an advanced period of life, that he might make himself perfect master of them."[118]