more, was already as
common in talk about her beyond the circle of her own family as the
affectionate one of "Sister Ranelagh" was within that circle. Partly
it was because she was one of the best-educated women of her time,
with the widest tastes and sympathies in matters literary and
philosophical, and with much of that genius of the Boyles, though in
feminine form, which was represented by Lord Broghill and Robert
Boyle among her brothers. Just before our present date we find her
taking lessons in Hebrew from a Scotch teacher of that language then
in London, who afterwards dedicated his _Gate to the Holy
Tongue_ to her, with much respect for her "proficiency in so short
a time," and "amidst so many abstractions as she was surrounded
with." And so in things of greater grasp. In writing to her brother
Robert her satisfaction with the new Experimental Philosophy which he
and others are trying to institute can express itself as a belief
that it will "help the considering part of mankind to a clearer
prospect into this great frame of the visible world, and therein of
the power and wisdom of its great Maker, than the rough draft wherein
it has hitherto been represented in the ignorant and wholesale
philosophy that has so long, by the power of an implicit faith in the
doctrine of Aristotle and the Schools, gone current in the world has
ever been able to assist them towards." But it was not merely by
variety of intellectual culture that Lady Ranelagh was distinguished.
One cannot read her letters without discerning in them a deep
foundation of piety in the best sense, real wisdom, a serious
determination with herself to make her own life as actively useful as
possible, and a disposition always to relate herself to what was
sterling around her. "Though some particular opinions might shut her
up in a divided communion," said Burnet of her long afterwards, "yet
her soul was never of a party. She divided her charities and
friendships, her esteem as well as her bounty, with the truest regard
to merit and her own obligations, without any difference made upon
the account of opinion." This was true even at our present date, when
she was an Oliverian in politics, like her brother Broghill, though
perhaps more moderately so, and in religious matters what may be
called a very liberal Puritan.[1]

[Footnote 1: Birch's Life of Robert Boyle, prefixed to edition of
Boyle's Works, pp. 27-33; Letters of Boyle to Lady Ranelagh and of
Lady