“ Somerville has descended to the humbler though not less important subject of natural or physical geography, and we have no doubt, from the popular character of the science, as well as its relation to our sympathies and interests, that she will command a wider circle of readers, and enjoy the gratification so much desired by herself, of making the laws by which the material world is governed more familiar to her country-women. ”

“ The great work of La Place, which he regarded as embodying not only the fruits of his own researches, but also those of his illustrious predecessors and contemporaries, is, as he himself well expressed it to Mrs. Somerville, "a monument to the genius of the age in which it appeared." It is interesting also to find from a letter addressed to our authoress, that the great Frenchman expressed a very ardent admiration of Newton's "Principia," while she, on her part, holds La Place as yielding to Newton only in priority of time. ”

“ Somerville. "Simple as the law of gravitation is, its application to the motions of the bodies of the solar system is a problem of great difficulty; but so important and interesting that the solution of it has engaged the attention and exercised the talents of the most profound mathematicians, among whom La Place holds a distinguished position by the brilliancy of his discoveries, as well as from having been the first to trace the influence of gravitation from the elliptical motions of the planets to its most remote effects on their mutual perturbations. ”

“ We find nothing beyond the name on the title-page, nothing throughout the work, to remind us of its coming from a female hand. Even the tempting opportunity of deprecating criticism, which a preface affords, is neglected; nor does anything apologetic, in the tone of her admirably-written preliminary discourse, betray a latent consciousness of superiority to the less-gifted of her sex, or a claim either on the admiration or forbearance of ours, beyond what the fair merits of the work itself may justly entitle it to. ”

“ Her ardent thirst for knowledge, her assiduous application to study, and her eminent proficiency in literature, and in science and the fine arts, have procured her a celebrity rarely attained by any of her sex; but she never displays any pretensions to superiority, while the affability of her temper and the gentleness of her manners afford constant resources of gratification to her family and intimate friends."
At Edinburgh, on the 28th June, 1804, Miss Fairfax was married to her cousin, Captain Samuel Greig, of the Russian Navy. ”

“ When discharging his official duties as Sheriff of Selkirkshire, at Jedburgh, in the autumn of 1826 —that calamitous year which brought ruin to his fortunes—Sir Walter Scott breakfasted at the manse of Jedburgh with his life-long friend, Dr. Thomas Somerville, the minister of the parish. "This venerable gentleman," writes Sir Walter in his diary of that date, "is one of the oldest of the literary brotherhood; I suppose about eighty-seven, and except a little deafness quite entire. Living all his life in good society as a gentleman born ”

“ The late Professor Wallace, in referring to instances of ladies who have applied their talents to the study and improvement of mathematics with success, and after naming Hypatia, the daughter of the ancient geometer Theon and Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who was professor of mathematics in the University of Bologna in the year 1748, thus speaks of our authoress: "At the present time we have another admirable instance of a lady who has surmounted the difficulties of the calculus. ”

“ The title is now held by Sir William George Herbert Taylor Fairfax, the nephew of Mrs. Somerville, who was engaged in the Crimean war, and who succeeded his father, Sir Henry, in 1860. It is worthy of note that Sir David Brewster, with whom Mrs. Somerville had during his life been on terms of intimate friendship, was born in the town of Jedburgh one year before the birth of that lady. Science has thus shed it lustre on that ancient town. Jedburgh is also associated with names eminent in literature ”

“ Somerville's manner as a scientific writer, less worthy of citation. "Simplicity of character and conduct, and an entire absence of anything like female vanity or affectation, pervade the whole of the present work. In the pursuit of her object, and in the natural and commendable wish to embody her acquired knowledge in a useful and instructive form for others, she seems entirely to have lost sight of herself ”

“ Yet the effect on the imagination is all the greater from this rigid exclusion of inflated language. Instead, however, of any words of our own commendatory of this now classic work, we borrow those of a writer in the "Quarterly Review:"—"Before the student of astronomy enters upon the treatise of Sir John Herschel, he should prepare his thoughts for the tone of elevation which it requires by reading Mrs. ”