class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 45]"/> in denying all those privileges of education to my sex which were so lavishly bestowed on men. My liberal opinions, both in religion and politics, have remained unchanged (or, rather, have advanced) throughout my life, but I have never been a republican. I have always considered a highly-educated aristocracy essential, not only for government, but for the refinement of a people.

After her winter in Edinburgh, my mother returned to Burntisland. Strange to say, she found there, in an illustrated Magazine of Fashions, the introduction to the great study of her life.

I was often invited with my mother to the tea-parties given either by widows or maiden ladies who resided at Burntisland. A pool of commerce used to be keenly contested till a late hour at these parties, which bored me exceedingly, but I there became acquainted with a Miss Ogilvie, much younger than the rest, who asked me to go and see fancy works she was doing, and at which she was very clever. I went next day, and after admiring her work, and being told how it was done, she showed me a monthly magazine with coloured plates of ladies' dresses, charades, and puzzles. At the end of a page I read what appeared to me to be simply an arithmetical question; but on turning the page I was surprised to see strange looking lines mixed with letters, chiefly X'es and Y's, and asked; "What is that?" "Oh," said Miss Ogilvie, "it is a kind of arithmetic: they call it Algebra; but I can tell you nothing about it." And we talked about other things; but on going home I thought I would look if any of our books could tell me what was meant by Algebra.