Mrs. Seward wept; Miss Seward, 'notwithstanding some imaginary dissatisfaction about a bridesmaid,' was really glad of the marriage, we are told; and the young couple immediately went over to Ireland.

IV.

Though her life was so short, Honora Edgeworth seems to have made the deepest impression on all those she came across. Over little Maria she had the greatest influence. There is a pretty description of the child standing lost in wondering admiration of her stepmother's beauty, as she watched her soon after her marriage dressing at her toilet-table. Little Maria's feeling for her stepmother was very deep and real, and the influence of those few years lasted for a lifetime. Her own exquisite carefulness she always ascribed to it, and to this example may also be attributed her habits of order and self-government, her life of reason and deliberate judgment.

The seven years of Honora's married life seem to have been very peaceful and happy. She shared her husband's pursuits, and wished for nothing outside her own home. She began with him to write those little books which were afterwards published. It is just a century ago since she and Mr. Edgeworth planned the early histories of Harry and Lucy and Frank; while Mr. Day began his 'Sandford and Merton,' which at first was intended to appear at the same time, though eventually the third part was not published till 1789.

As a girl of seventeen Honora Sneyd had once been threatened with consumption. After seven years of married life the cruel malady again declared itself; and though Dr. Darwin did all that human resource could do, and though every tender care surrounded her, the poor young lady rapidly sank. There is a sad, prim, most affecting letter, addressed to little Maria by the dying woman shortly before the end; and then comes that one written by the father, which is to tell her that all is over.

If Mr. Edgeworth was certainly unfortunate in losing again and again the happiness of his home, he was more fortunate than most people in being able to rally from his grief. He does not appear to have been unfaithful in feeling. Years after, Edgeworth, writing to console Mrs. Day upon her husband's death, speaks in the most touching way of all he had suffered when Honora died, and of the struggle he had made to regain his hold of life. This letter is in curious contrast to that one written at the time, as he sits by poor Honora's deathbed; it reads strangely cold and irrelevant in these days when people are not ashamed of feeling or of describing what they feel. 'Continue, my dear daughter'—he writes to Maria, who was then thirteen years old—'the desire which you feel of becoming amiable, prudent, and of use. The ornamental parts of a character, with such an understanding as yours, necessarily ensue; but true judgment and sagacity in the choice of friends, and the regulation of your behaviour, can be only had from reflection, and from being thoroughly convinced of what experience in general teaches too late, that to be happy we must be good.'

'Such a letter, written at such a time,' says the kind biographer, 'made the impression it was intended to convey; and the wish to act up to the high opinion her father had formed of her character became an exciting and controlling power over the whole of Maria's future life.' On her deathbed, Honora urged her husband to marry again, and assured him that the woman to suit him was her sister Elizabeth. Her influence was so great upon them both that, although Elizabeth was attached to some one else, and Mr. Edgeworth believed her to be little suited to himself, they were presently engaged and married, not without many difficulties. The result proved how rightly Honora had judged.

It was to her father that Maria owed the suggestion of her first start in literature. Immediately after Honora's death he tells her to write a tale about the length of a 'Spectator,' on the subject of generosity. 'It must be taken from history or romance, must be sent the day se'nnight after you receive this; and I beg you will take some pains about it.' A young gentleman from Oxford was also set to work to try his powers on the same subject, and Mr. William Sneyd, at Lichfield, was to be judge between the two performances. He gave his verdict for Maria: 'An excellent story and very well written: but where's the generosity?' This, we are told, became a sort of proverb in the Edgeworth family.

The little girl meanwhile had been sent to school to a certain Mrs. Lataffiere, where she was taught to use her fingers, to write a lovely delicate hand, to work white satin waistcoats for her papa. She was then removed to a fashionable establishment in Upper Wimpole Street, where, says her stepmother, 'she underwent all the usual tortures of backboards, iron collars, and dumb-bells, with the unusual one of being hung by the neck to draw out the muscles and increase the growth,—a signal failure in her case.' (Miss Edgeworth was always a very tiny person.) There is a description given of Maria at this school of hers of the little maiden absorbed in her book with all the other children at play, while she sits in her favourite place in front of a carved oak cabinet, quite unconscious of the presence of the romping girls all about her.

Hers was a very interesting character as it appears in the Memoirs—sincere, intelligent, self-contained, and yet dependent; methodical, observant. Sometimes as one reads of her in early life one is reminded of some of the personal characteristics of the writer who perhaps of all writers least resembles Miss Edgeworth in her art—of Charlotte Bronte, whose books are essentially of the modern and passionate school, but whose strangely mixed character seemed rather to belong to the orderly and neatly ruled existence of Queen Charlotte's reign. People's lives as they really are don't perhaps vary very much, but people's lives as they seem to be assuredly change with the fashions. Miss Edgeworth and Miss Bronte were both Irishwomen, who have often, with all their outcome, the timidity which arises from quick and sensitive feeling. But the likeness does not go very deep. Maria, whose diffidence and timidity were personal, but who had a firm and unalterable belief in family traditions, may have been saved from some danger of prejudice and limitation by a most fortunate though trying illness which affected her eyesight, and which caused her to be removed from her school with its monstrous elegancies to the care of Mr. Day, that kindest and sternest of friends.

This philosopher in love had been bitterly mortified when the lively Elizabeth Sneyd, instead of welcoming his return, could not conceal her laughter at his uncouth elegancies, and confessed that, on the whole, she had liked him better as he was before. He forswore Lichfield and marriage, and went abroad to forget. He turned his thoughts to politics; he wrote pamphlets on public subjects and letters upon slavery. His poem of the 'Dying Negro' had been very much admired. Miss Hannah More speaks of it in her Memoirs. The subject of slavery was much before people's minds, and Day's influence had not a little to do with the rising indignation.

Among Day's readers and admirers was one person who was destined to have a most important influence upon his life. By a strange chance his extraordinary ideal was destined to be realised; and a young lady, good, accomplished, rich, devoted, who had read his books, and sympathised with his generous dreams, was ready not only to consent to his strange conditions, but to give him her whole heart and find her best happiness in his society and in carrying out his experiments and fancies. She was Miss Esther Milnes, of Yorkshire, an heiress; and though at first Day hesitated and could not believe in the reality of her feeling, her constancy and singleness of mind were not to be resisted, and they were married at Bath in 1778. We hear of Mr. and Mrs. Day spending the first winter of their married life at Hampstead, and of Mrs. Day, thickly shodden, walking with him in a snowstorm on the common, and ascribing her renewed vigour to her husband's Spartan advice.

Day and his wife eventually established themselves at Anningsley, near Chobham. He had insisted upon settling her fortune upon herself, but Mrs. Day assisted him in every way, and sympathised in his many schemes and benevolent ventures. When he neglected to make a window to the dressing-room he built for her, we hear of her uncomplainingly lighting her candles; to please him she worked as a servant in the house, and all their large means were bestowed in philanthropic and charitable schemes. Mr. Edgeworth quotes his friend's reproof to Mrs. Day, who was fond of music: 'Shall we beguile the time with the strains of a lute while our fellow-creatures are starving?' 'I am out of pocket every year about 300l. by the farm I keep,' Day writes his to his friend Edgeworth. 'The soil I have taken in hand, I am convinced, is one of the most completely barren in England.' He then goes on to explain his reasons for what he is about. 'It enables me to employ the poor, and the result of all my speculations about humanity is that the only way of benefiting mankind is to give them employment and make them earn their money.' There is a pretty description of the worthy couple in their home dispensing help and benefits all round about, draining, planting, teaching, doctoring—nothing came amiss to them. Their chief friend and neighbour was Samuel Cobbett, who understood their plans, and sympathised in their efforts, which, naturally enough, were viewed with doubt and mistrust by most of the people round about. It was at Anningsley that Mr. Day finished 'Sandford and Merton,' begun many years before. His death was very sudden, and was brought about by one of his own benevolent theories. He used to maintain that kindness alone could tame animals; and he was killed by a fall from a favourite colt which he was breaking in. Mrs. Day never recovered the shock. She lived two years hidden in her home, absolutely inconsolable, and then died and was laid by her husband's side in the churchyard at Wargrave by the river.

It was to the care of these worthy people that little Maria was sent when she was ill, and she was doctored by them both physically and morally. 'Bishop Berkeley's tar-water was still considered a specific for all complaints,' says Mrs. Edgeworth. 'Mr. Day thought it would be of use to Maria's inflamed eyes, and he used to bring a large tumbler full of it to her every morning. She dreaded his "Now, Miss Maria, drink this." But there was, in spite of his stern voice, something of pity and sympathy in his countenance. His excellent library was open to her, and he directed her studies. His severe reasoning and uncompromising truth of mind awakened all her powers, and the questions he put to her and the working out of the answers, the necessity of perfect accuracy in all her words, suited the natural truth of her mind; and though such strictness was not agreeable, she even then perceived its advantage, and in after life was grateful for it.'

V.

We have seen how Miss Elizabeth Sneyd, who could not make up her mind to marry Mr. Day notwithstanding all he had gone through for her sake, had eventually consented to become Mr. Edgeworth's third wife. With this stepmother for many years to come Maria lived in an affectionate intimacy, only to be exceeded by that most faithful companionship which existed for fifty years between her and the lady from whose memoirs I quote.

It was about 1782 that Maria went home to live at Edgeworthtown with her father and his wife, with the many young brothers and sisters. The family was a large one, and already consisted of her own sisters, of Honora the daughter of Mrs. Honora, and Lovell her son. To these succeeded many others of the third generation; and two sisters of Mrs. Edgeworth's, who also made their home at Edgeworthtown.

Maria had once before been there, "very young, but she was now old enough to be struck with the difference then so striking between Ireland and England." The tones and looks, the melancholy and the gaiety of the people, were so new and extraordinary to her that the delineations she long afterwards made of Irish character probably owe their life and truth to the impression made on her mind at this time as a stranger. Though it was June when they landed, there was snow on the roses she ran out to gather, and she felt altogether in a new and unfamiliar country.

She herself describes the feelings of the master of a family returning to an Irish home:—

Wherever he turned his eyes, in or out of his home, damp dilapidation, waste appeared. Painting, glazing, roofing, fencing, finishing—all were wanting. The backyard and even the front lawn round the windows of the house were filled with loungers, followers, and petitioners; tenants, undertenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent were to have audience; and they all had grievances and secret informations, accusations, reciprocations, and quarrels each under each interminable.

Her account of her father's dealings with them is admirable:—

I was with him constantly, and I was amused and interested in seeing how he made his way through their complaints, petitions, and grievances with decision and despatch, he all the time in good humour with the people and they delighted with him, though he often rated them roundly when they stood before him perverse in litigation, helpless in procrastination, detected in cunning or convicted of falsehood. They saw into his character almost as soon as he understood theirs.

Mr. Edgeworth had in a very remarkable degree that power of ruling and administering which is one of the rarest of gifts. He seems to have shown great firmness and good sense in his conduct in the troubled times in which he lived. He saw to his own affairs, administered justice, put down middlemen as far as possible, reorganised the letting out of the estate. Unlike many of his neighbours, he was careful not to sacrifice the future to present ease of mind and of pocket. He put down rack-rents and bribes of every sort, and did his best to establish things upon a firm and lasting basis.

But if it was not possible even for Mr. Edgeworth to make such things all they should have been outside the house, the sketch given of the family life at home is very pleasant. The father lives in perfect confidence with his children, admitting them to his confidence, interesting them in his experiments, spending his days with them, consulting them. There are no reservations; he does his business in the great sitting-room, surrounded by his family. I have heard it described as a large ground-floor room, with windows to the garden and with two columns supporting the further end, by one of which Maria's writing-desk used to be placed—a desk which her father had devised for her, which used to be drawn out to the fireside when she worked. Does not Mr. Edgeworth also mention in one of his letters a picture of Thomas Day hanging over a sofa against the wall? Books in plenty there were, we may be sure, and perhaps models of ingenious machines and different appliances for scientific work. Sir Henry Holland and Mr. Ticknor give a curious description of Mr. Edgeworth's many ingenious inventions. There were strange locks to the rooms and telegraphic despatches to the kitchen; clocks at the one side of the house were wound up by simply opening certain doors at the other end. It has been remarked that all Miss Edgeworth's heroes had a smattering of science. Several of her brothers inherited her father's turn for it. We hear of them raising steeples and establishing telegraphs in partnership with him. Maria shared of the family labours and used to help her father in the business connected with the estate, to assist him, also, to keep the accounts. She had a special turn for accounts, and she was pleased with her exquisitely neat columns and by the accuracy with which her figures fell into their proper places. Long after her father's death this knowledge and experience enabled her to manage the estate for her eldest stepbrother, Mr. Lovell Edgeworth. She was able, at a time of great national difficulty and anxious crisis, to meet a storm in which many a larger fortune was wrecked.

But in 1782 she was a young girl only beginning life. Storms were not yet, and she was putting out her wings in the sunshine. Her father set her to translate 'Adele et Theodore,' by Madame de Genlis (she had a great facility for languages, and her French was really remarkable). Holcroft's version of the book, however, appeared, and the Edgeworth translation was never completed. Mr. Day wrote a letter to congratulate Mr. Edgeworth on the occasion. It seemed horrible to Mr. Day that a woman should appear in print.

It is possible that the Edgeworth family was no exception to the rule by which large and clever and animated families are apt to live in a certain atmosphere of their own. But, notwithstanding this strong family bias, few people can have seen more of the world, felt its temper more justly, or appreciated more fully the interesting varieties of people to be found in it than Maria Edgeworth. Within easy reach of Edgeworthtown were different agreeable and cultivated houses. There was Pakenham Hall with Lord Longford for its master; one of its daughters was the future Duchess of Wellington, 'who was always Kitty Pakenham for her old friends.' There at Castle Forbes also lived, I take it, more than one of the well-bred and delightful persons, out of 'Patronage,' and the 'Absentee,' who may, in real life, have borne the names of Lady Moira and Lady Granard. Besides, there were cousins and relations without number—Foxes, Ruxtons, marriages and intermarriages; and when the time came for occasional absences and expeditions from home, the circles seem to have spread incalculably in every direction. The Edgeworths appear to have been a genuinely sociable clan, interested in others and certainly interesting to them.

VI.

The first letter given in the Memoirs from Maria to her favourite aunt Ruxton is a very sad one, which tells of the early death of her sister Honora, a beautiful girl of fifteen, the only daughter of Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, who died of consumption, as her mother had died. This letter, written in the dry phraseology of the time, is nevertheless full of feeling, above all for her father who was, as Maria says elsewhere, ever since she could think or feel, the first object and motive of her mind.

Mrs. Edgeworth describes her sister-in-law as follows:—

Mrs. Ruxton resembled her brother in the wit and vivacity of her mind and strong affections; her grace and charm of manner were such that a gentleman once said of her; 'If I were to see Mrs. Ruxton in rags as a beggar woman sitting on the doorstep, I should say "Madam" to her.' 'To write to her Aunt Ruxton was, as long as she lived, Maria's greatest pleasure while away from her,' says Mrs. Edgeworth, 'and to be with her was a happiness she enjoyed with never flagging and supreme delight. Blackcastle was within a few hours' drive of Edgeworthtown, and to go to Blackcastle was the holiday of her life.'

Mrs. Edgeworth tells a story of Maria once staying at Blackcastle and tearing out the title page of 'Belinda,' so that her aunt, Mrs. Ruxton, read the book without any suspicion of the author. She was so delighted with it that she insisted on Maria listening to page after page, exclaiming 'Is not that admirably written?' 'Admirably read, I think,' said Maria; until her aunt, quite provoked by her faint acquiescence, says, 'I am sorry to see my little Maria unable to bear the praises of a rival author;' at which poor Maria burst into tears, and Mrs. Ruxton could never bear the book mentioned afterwards.

It was with Mrs. Ruxton that a little boy, born just after the death of the author of 'Sandford and Merton,' was left on the occasion of the departure of the Edgeworth family for Clifton, in 1792, where Mr. Edgeworth spent a couple of years for the health of one of his sons. In July the poor little brother dies in Ireland. 'There does not, now that little Thomas is gone, exist even a person of the same name as Mr. Day,' says Mr. Edgeworth, who concludes his letter philosophically, as the father of twenty children may be allowed to do, by expressing a hope that to his nurses, Mrs. Ruxton and her daughter, 'the remembrance of their own goodness will soon obliterate the painful impression of his miserable end.' During their stay at Clifton Richard Edgeworth, the eldest son, who had been brought up upon Rousseau's system, and who seems to have found the Old World too restricted a sphere for his energies, after going to sea and disappearing for some years, suddenly paid them a visit from South Carolina, where he had settled and married. The young man was gladly welcomed by them all. He had been long separated from home, and he eventually died very young in America; but his sister always clung to him with fond affection, and when he left them to return home she seems to have felt his departure very much. 'Last Saturday my poor brother Richard took leave of us to return to America. He has gone up to London with my father and mother, and is to sail from thence. We could not part from him without great pain and regret, for he made us all extremely fond of him.'

Notwithstanding these melancholy events, Maria Edgeworth seems to have led a happy busy life all this time among her friends, her relations, her many interests, her many fancies and facts, making much of the children, of whom she writes pleasant descriptions to her aunt. 'Charlotte is very engaging and promises to be handsome. Sneyd is, and promises everything. Henry will, I think, through life always do more than he promises. Little Honora is a sprightly blue-eyed child at nurse with a woman who is the picture of health and simplicity. Lovell is perfectly well. Doctor Darwin has paid him very handsome compliments on his lines on the Barbarini Vase in the first part of the "Botanic Garden."'

Mr. Edgeworth, however, found the time long at Clifton, though, as usual, he at once improved his opportunities, paid visits to his friends in London and elsewhere, and renewed many former intimacies and correspondences.

Maria also paid a visit to London, but the time had not come for her to enjoy society, and the extreme shyness of which Mrs. Edgeworth speaks made it pain to her to be in society in those early days. 'Since I have been away from home,' she writes, 'I have missed the society of my father, mother, and sisters more than I can express, and more than beforehand I could have thought possible. I long to see them all again. Even when I am most amused I feel a void, and now I understand what an aching void is perfectly.' Very soon we hear of her at home again, 'scratching away at the Freeman family.' Mr. Edgeworth is reading aloud Gay's 'Trivia' among other things, which she recommends to her aunt. 'I had much rather make a bargain with any one I loved to read the same books with them at the same hour than to look at the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers.' There is another book, a new book for the children, mentioned about this time, 'Evenings at Home,' which they all admire immensely.

Miss Edgeworth was now about twenty-six, at an age when a woman's powers have fully ripened; a change comes over her style; there is a fulness of description in her letters and a security of expression which show maturity. Her habit of writing was now established, and she describes the constant interest her father took and his share in all she did. Some of the slighter stories she first wrote upon a slate and read out to her brothers and sisters; others she sketched for her father's approval, and arranged and altered as he suggested. The letters for literary ladies were with the publishers by this time, and these were followed by various stories and early lessons, portions of 'Parents' Assistant,' and of popular tales, all of which were sent out in packets and lent from one member of the family to another before finally reaching Mr. Johnson, the publisher's, hands. Maria Edgeworth in some of her letters from Clifton alludes with some indignation to the story of Mrs. Hannah More's ungrateful protegee Lactilla, the literary milkwoman, whose poems Hannah More was at such pains to bring before the world, and for whom, with her kind preface and warm commendations and subscription list, she was able to obtain the large sum of 500l. The ungrateful Lactilla, who had been starving when Mrs. More found her out, seems to have lost her head in this sudden prosperity, and to have accused her benefactress of wishing to steal a portion of the money. Maria Edgeworth must have been also interested in some family marriages which took place about this time. Her own sister Anna became engaged to Dr. Beddoes, of Clifton, whose name appears as prescribing for the authors of various memoirs of that day. He is 'a man of ability, of a great name in the scientific world,' says Mr. Edgeworth, who favoured the Doctor's 'declared passion,' as a proposal was then called, and the marriage accordingly took place on their return to Ireland. Emmeline, another sister, was soon after married to Mr. King, a surgeon, also living at Bristol, and Maria was now left the only remaining daughter of the first marriage, to be good aunt, sister, friend to all the younger members of the party. She was all this, but she herself expressly states that her father would never allow her to be turned into a nursery drudge; her share of the family was limited to one special little boy. Meanwhile her pen-and-ink children are growing up, and starting out in the world on their own merits.

'I beg, dear Sophy,' she writes to her cousin, 'that you will not call my little stories by the sublime name of my works; I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth. The stories are printed and bound the same size as 'Evenings at Home,' but I am afraid you will dislike the title. My father had sent the 'Parents' Friend,' but Mr. Johnson has degraded it into 'Parents' Assistant.'

In 1797, says Miss Beaufort, who was to be so soon more intimately connected with the Edgeworth family, Johnson wished to publish more volumes of the 'Parents' Assistant' on fine paper, with prints, and Mrs. Ruxton asked me to make some designs for them. These designs seem to have given great satisfaction to the Edgeworth party, and especially to a little boy called William, Mrs. Edgeworth's youngest boy, who grew up to be a fine young man, but who died young of the cruel family complaint. Mrs. Edgeworth's health was also failing all this time—'Though she makes epigrams she is far from well,' says Maria; but they, none of them seem seriously alarmed. Mr. Edgeworth, in the intervals of politics, is absorbed in a telegraph, which, with the help of his sons, he is trying to establish. It is one which will act by night as well as by day.

It was a time of change and stir for Ireland, disaffection growing and put down for a time by the soldiers; armed bands going about 'defending' the country and breaking its windows. In 1794 threats of a French invasion had alarmed everybody, and now again in 1796 came rumours of every description, and Mr. Edgeworth was very much disappointed that his proposal for establishing a telegraph across the water to England was rejected by Government. He also writes to Dr. Darwin that he had offered himself as a candidate for the county, and been obliged to relinquish at the last moment; but these minor disappointments were lost in the trouble which fell upon the household in the following year—the death of the mother of the family, who sank rapidly and died of consumption in 1797.

VII.

When Mr. Edgeworth himself died (not, as we may be sure, without many active post-mortem wishes and directions) he left his entertaining Memoirs half finished, and he desired his daughter Maria in the most emphatic way to complete them, and to publish them without changing or altering anything that he had written. People reading them were surprised by the contents; many blamed Miss Edgeworth for making them public, not knowing how solemn and binding these dying commands of her father's had been, says Mrs. Leadbeater, writing at the time to Mrs. Trench. Many severe and wounding reviews appeared, and this may have influenced Miss Edgeworth in her own objection to having her Memoirs published by her family.

Mr. Edgeworth's life was most extraordinary, comprising in fact three or four lives in the place of that one usually allowed to most people, some of us having to be moderately content with a half or three-quarters of existence. But his versatility of mind was no less remarkable than his tenacity of purpose and strength of affection, though some measure of sentiment must have certainly been wanting, and his fourth marriage must have taken most people by surprise. The writer once expressed her surprise at the extraordinary influence that Mr. Edgeworth seems to have had over women and over the many members of his family who continued to reside in his home after all the various changes which had taken place there. Lady S—— to whom she spoke is one who has seen more of life than most of us, who has for years past carried help to the far-away and mysterious East, but whose natural place is at home in the more prosperous and unattainable West End. This lady said, 'You do not in the least understand what my Uncle Edgeworth was. I never knew anything like him. Brilliant, full of energy and charm, he was something quite extraordinary and irresistible. If you had known him you would not have wondered at anything.'

'I had in the spring of that year (1797) paid my first visit to Edgeworthtown with my mother and sister,' writes Miss Beaufort, afterwards Mrs. Edgeworth, the author of the Memoirs. 'My father had long before been there, and had frequently met Mr. Edgeworth at Mrs. Ruxton's. In 1795 my father was presented to the living of Collon, in the county of Louth, where he resided from that time. His vicarage was within five minutes' walk of the residence of Mr. Foster, then Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, the dear friend of Mr. Edgeworth, who came to Collon in the spring of 1798 several times, and at last offered me his hand, which I accepted.'

Maria, who was at first very much opposed to the match, would not have been herself the most devoted and faithful of daughters if she had not eventually agreed to her father's wishes, and, as daughters do, come by degrees to feel with him and to see with his eyes. The influence of a father over a daughter where real sympathy exists is one of the very deepest and strongest that can be imagined. Miss Beaufort herself seems also to have had some special attraction for Maria. She was about her own age. She must have been a person of singularly sweet character and gentle liberality of mind. 'You will come into a new family, but you will not come as a stranger, dear Miss Beaufort,' writes generous Maria. 'You will not lead a new life, but only continue to lead the life you have been used to in your own happy cultivated family.' And her stepmother in a few feeling words describes all that Maria was to her from the very first when she came as a bride to the home where the sisters and the children of the lately lost wife were all assembled to meet her.

It gives an unpleasant thrill to read of the newly-married lady coming along to her home in a postchaise, and seeing something odd on the side of the road. 'Look to the other side; don't look at it,' says Mr. Edgeworth; and when they had passed he tells his bride that it was the body of a man hung by the rebels between the shafts of a car.

The family at Edgeworthtown consisted of two ladies, sisters of the late Mrs. Edgeworth, who made it their home, and of Maria, the last of the first family. Lovell, now the eldest son, was away; but there were also four daughters and three sons at home.

All agreed in making me feel at once at home and part of the family; all received me with the most unaffected cordiality; but from Maria it was something more. She more than fulfilled the promise of her letter; she made me at once her most intimate friend, and in every trifle of the day treated me with the most generous confidence.

Those times were even more serious than they are now; we hear of Mr. Bond, the High Sheriff, paying 'a pale visit' to Edgeworthtown. 'I am going on in the old way, writing stories,' says Maria Edgeworth, writing in 1798. 'I cannot be a captain of dragoons, and sitting with my hands before me would not make any one of us one degree safer.... Simple Susan went to Foxhall a few days ago for Lady Anne to carry her to England.'... 'My father has made our little rooms so nice for us,' she continues; 'they are all fresh painted and papered. Oh! rebels, oh! French spare them. We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see everybody as happy as ourselves.'

On August 29 we find from Miss Edgeworth's letter to her cousin that the French have got to Castlebar. 'The Lord-Lieutenant is now at Athlone, and it is supposed it will be their next object of attack. My father's corps of yeomanry are extremely attached to him and seem fully in earnest; but, alas! by some strange negligence, their arms have not yet arrived from Dublin.... We, who are so near the scene of action, cannot by any means discover what number of the French actually landed; some say 800, some 1,800, some 18,000.'

The family had a narrow escape that day, for two officers, who were in charge of some ammunition, offered to take them under their protection as far as Longford. Mr. Edgeworth most fortunately detained them. 'Half an hour afterwards, as we were quietly sitting in the portico, we heard, as we thought close to us, the report of a pistol or a clap of thunder which shook the house. The officer soon after returned almost speechless; he could hardly explain what had happened. The ammunition cart, containing nearly three barrels of gunpowder, took fire, and burnt half-way on the road to Longford. The man who drove the cart was blown to atoms. Nothing of him could be found. Two of the horses were killed; others were blown to pieces, and their limbs scattered to a distance. The head and body of a man were found a hundred and twenty yards from the spot.... If we had gone with this ammunition cart, we must have been killed. An hour or two afterwards we were obliged to fly from Edgeworthtown. The pikemen, 300 in number, were within a mile of the town; my mother and Charlotte and I rode; passed the trunk of the dead man, bloody limbs of horses, and two dead horses, by the help of men who pulled on our steeds—all safely lodged now in Mrs. Fallon's inn.' 'Before we had reached the place where the cart had been blown up,' says Mrs. Edgeworth, 'Mr. Edgeworth suddenly recollected that he had left on the table in his study a list of the yeomanry corps which he feared might endanger the poor fellows and their families if it fell into the hands of the rebels. He galloped back for it. It was at the hazard of his life; but the rebels had not yet appeared. He burned the paper, and rejoined us safely.' The Memoirs give a most interesting and spirited account of the next few days. The rebels spared Mr. Edgeworth's house, although they broke into it. After a time the family were told that all was safe for their return, and the account of their coming home, as it is given in the second volume of Mr. Edgeworth's life by his daughter, is a model of style and admirable description.

In 1799 Mr. Edgeworth came into Parliament for the borough of St. Johnstown. He was a Unionist by conviction, but he did not think the times were yet ripe for the Union, and he therefore voted against it. In some of his letters to Dr. Darwin written at this time, he says that he was offered 3,000 guineas for his seat for the few remaining weeks of the session, which, needless to say, he refused, not thinking it well, as he says, 'to quarrel with myself.' He also adds that Maria continues writing for children under the persuasion that she cannot be more serviceably employed; and he sends (with his usual perspicuity) affectionate messages to the Doctor's 'good amiable lady and his giant brood.' But this long friendly correspondence was coming to an end. The Doctor's letters, so quietly humorous and to the point, Mr. Edgeworth's answers with all their characteristic and lively variety, were nearly at an end.

It was in 1800 that Maria had achieved her great success, and published 'Castle Rackrent,' a book—not for children this time—which made everybody talk who read, and those read who had only talked before. This work was published anonymously, and so great was its reputation that some one was at the pains to copy out the whole of the story with erasures and different signs of authenticity, and assume the authorship.

One very distinctive mark of Maria Edgeworth's mind is the honest candour and genuine critical faculty which is hers. Her appreciation of her own work and that of others is unaffected and really discriminating, whether it is 'Corinne' or a simple story which she is reading, or Scott's new novel the 'Pirate,' or one of her own manuscripts which she estimates justly and reasonably. 'I have read "Corinne" with my father, and I like it better than he does. In one word, I am dazzled by the genius, provoked by the absurdities, and in admiration of the taste and critical judgment of Italian literature displayed throughout the whole work: but I will not dilate upon it in a letter. I could talk for three hours to you and my aunt.'

Elsewhere she speaks with the warmest admiration of a 'Simple Story.' Jane Austen's books were not yet published; but another writer, for whom Mr. Edgeworth and his daughter had a very great regard and admiration, was Mrs. Barbauld, who in all the heavy trials and sorrows of her later life found no little help and comfort in the friendship and constancy of Maria Edgeworth. Mr. and Mrs. Barbauld, upon Mr. Edgeworth's invitation, paid him a visit at Clifton, where he was again staying in 1799, and where the last Mrs. Edgeworth's eldest child was born. There is a little anecdote of domestic life at this time in the Memoirs which gives one a glimpse, not of an authoress, but of a very sympathising and impressionable person. 'Maria took her little sister to bring down to her father, but when she had descended a few steps a panic seized her, and she was afraid to go either backwards or forwards. She sat down on the stairs afraid she should drop the child, afraid that its head would come off, and afraid that her father would find her sitting there and laugh at her, till seeing the footman passing she called "Samuel" in a terrified voice, and made him walk before her backwards down the stairs till she safely reached the sitting-room.' For all these younger children Maria seems to have had a most tender and motherly regard, as indeed for all her young brothers and sisters of the different families. Many of them were the heroines of her various stories, and few heroines are more charming than some of Miss Edgeworth's. Rosamund is said by some to have been Maria herself, impulsive, warm-hearted, timid, and yet full of spirit and animation.

In his last letter to Mr. Edgeworth Dr. Darwin writes kindly of the authoress, and sends her a message. The letter is dated April 17, 1802. 'I am glad to find you still amuse yourself with mechanism in spite of the troubles of Ireland;' and the Doctor goes on to ask his friend to come and pay a visit to the Priory, and describes the pleasant house with the garden, the ponds full of fish, the deep umbrageous valley, with the talkative stream running down it, and Derby tower in the distance. The letter, so kind, so playful in its tone, was never finished. Dr. Darwin was writing as he was seized with what seemed a fainting fit, and he died within an hour. Miss Edgeworth writes of the shock her father felt when the sad news reached him; a shock, she says, which must in some degree be experienced by every person who reads this letter of Dr. Darwin's.

No wonder this generous outspoken man was esteemed in his own time. To us, in ours, it has been given still more to know the noble son of 'that giant brood,' whose name will be loved and held in honour as long as people live to honour nobleness, simplicity, and genius; those things which give life to life itself.

VIII.

'Calais after a rough passage; Brussels, flat country, tiled houses, trees and ditches, the window shutters turned out to the street; fishwives' legs, Dunkirk, and the people looking like wooden toys set in motion; Bruges and its mingled spires, shipping, and windmills.' These notes of travel read as if Miss Edgeworth had been writing down only yesterday a pleasant list of the things which are to be seen two hours off, to-day no less plainly than a century ago. She jots it all down from her corner in the postchaise, where she is propped up with a father, brother, stepmother, and sister for travelling companions, and a new book to beguile the way. She is charmed with her new book. It is the story of 'Mademoiselle de Clermont,' by Madame de Genlis, and only just out. The Edgeworths (with many other English people) rejoiced in the long-looked-for millennium, which had been signed only the previous autumn, and they now came abroad to bask in the sunshine of the Continent, which had been so long denied to our mist-bound islanders. We hear of the enthusiastic and somewhat premature joy with which this peace was received by all ranks of people. Not only did the English rush over to France; foreigners crossed to England, and one of them, an old friend of Mr. Edgeworth's, had already reached Edgeworthtown, and inspired its enterprising master with a desire to see those places and things once more which he heard described. Mr. Edgeworth was anxious also to show his young wife the treasures in the Louvre, and to help her to develop her taste for art. He had had many troubles of late, lost friends and children by death and by marriage. One can imagine that the change must have been welcome to them all. Besides Maria and Lovell, his eldest son, he took with him a lovely young daughter, Charlotte Edgeworth, the daughter of Elizabeth Sneyd. They travelled by Belgium, stopping on their way at Bruges, at Ghent, and visiting pictures and churches along the road, as travellers still like to do. Mrs. Edgeworth was, as we have said, the artistic member of the party. We do not know what modern rhapsodists would say to Miss Edgeworth's very subdued criticisms and descriptions of feeling on this occasion. 'It is extremely agreeable to me,' she writes, 'to see paintings with those who have excellent taste and no affectation.' And this remark might perhaps be thought even more to the point now than in the pre-aesthetic age in which it was innocently made. The travellers are finally landed in Paris in a magnificent hotel in a fine square, 'formerly Place Louis-Quinze, afterwards Place de la Revolution, now Place de la Concorde.' And Place de la Concorde it remains, wars and revolutions notwithstanding, whether lighted by the flames of the desperate Commune or by the peaceful sunsets which stream their evening glory across the blood-stained stones.

The Edgeworths did not come as strangers to Paris; they brought letters and introductions with them, and bygone associations and friendships which had only now to be resumed. The well-known Abbe Morellet, their old acquaintance, 'answered for them,' says Miss Edgeworth, and besides all this Mr Edgeworth's name was well known in scientific circles. Breguet, Montgolfier, and others all made him welcome. Lord Henry Petty, as Maria's friend Lord Lansdowne was then called, was in Paris, and Rogers the poet, and Kosciusko, cured of his wounds. For the first time they now made the acquaintance of M. Dumont, a lifelong friend and correspondent. There were many others—the Delesserts, of the French Protestant faction, Madame Suard, to whom the romantic Thomas Day had paid court some thirty years before, and Madame Campan, and Madame Recamier, and Madame de Remusat, and Madame de Houdetot, now seventy-two years of age, but Rousseau's Julie still, and Camille Jordan, and the Chevalier Edelcrantz, from the Court of the King of Sweden.

The names alone of the Edgeworths' entertainers represent a delightful and interesting section of the history of the time. One can imagine that besides all these pleasant and talkative persons the Faubourg Saint-Germain itself threw open its great swinging doors to the relations of the Abbe Edgeworth who risked his life to stand by his master upon the scaffold and to speak those noble warm-hearted words, the last that Louis ever heard. One can picture the family party as it must have appeared with its pleasant British looks—the agreeable 'ruddy-faced' father, the gentle Mrs. Edgeworth, who is somewhere described by her stepdaughter as so orderly, so clean, so freshly dressed, the child of fifteen, only too beautiful and delicately lovely, and last of all Maria herself, the nice little unassuming, Jeannie-Deans-looking body Lord Byron described, small, homely, perhaps, but with her gift of French, of charming intercourse, her fresh laurels of authorship (for 'Belinda' was lately published), her bright animation, her cultivated mind and power of interesting all those in her company, to say nothing of her own kindling interest in every one and every thing round about her.

Her keen delights and vivid descriptions of all these new things, faces, voices, ideas, are all to be read in some long and most charming letters to Ireland, which also contain the account of a most eventful crisis which this Paris journey brought about. The letter is dated March 1803, and it concludes as follows:—

Here, my dear aunt, I was interrupted in a manner that will surprise you as much as it surprised me—by the coming of M. Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman whom we have mentioned to you, of superior understanding and mild manners. He came to offer me his hand and heart! My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his attachment, for I have seen but very little of him, and have not had time to have formed any judgment except that I think nothing could tempt me to leave my own dear friends and my own country to live in Sweden.

Maria Edgeworth was now about thirty years of age, at a time of life when people are apt to realise perhaps almost more deeply than in early youth the influence of feeling, its importance, and strange power over events. Hitherto there are no records in her memoirs of any sentimental episodes, but it does not follow that a young lady has not had her own phase of experience because she does not write it out at length to her various aunts and correspondents. Miss Edgeworth was not a sentimental person. She was warmly devoted to her own family, and she seems to have had a strong idea of her own want of beauty; perhaps her admiration for her lovely young sisters may have caused this feeling to be exaggerated by her. But no romantic, lovely heroine could have inspired a deeper or more touching admiration than this one which M. Edelcrantz felt for his English friend; the mild and superior Swede seems to have been thoroughly in earnest.

So indeed was Miss Edgeworth, but she was not carried away by the natural impulse of the moment. She realised the many difficulties and dangers of the unknown; she looked to the future; she turned to her own home, and with an affection all the more felt because of the trial to which it was now exposed. The many lessons of self-control and self-restraint which she had learnt returned with instinctive force. Sometimes it happens that people miss what is perhaps the best for the sake of the next best, and we see convenience and old habit and expediency, and a hundred small and insignificant circumstances, gathering like some avalanche to divide hearts that might give and receive very much from each. But sentiment is not the only thing in life. Other duties, ties, and realities there are; and it is difficult to judge for others in such matters. Sincerity of heart and truth to themselves are pretty sure in the end to lead people in the right direction for their own and for other people's happiness. Only, in the experience of many women there is the danger that fixed ideas, and other people's opinion, and the force of custom may limit lives which might have been complete in greater things, though perhaps less perfect in the lesser. People in the abstract are sincere enough in wishing fulness of experience and of happiness to those dearest and nearest to them; but we are only human beings, and when the time comes and the horrible necessity for parting approaches, our courage goes, our hearts fail, and we think we are preaching reason and good sense while it is only a most natural instinct which leads us to cling to that to which we are used and to those we love.

Mr. Edgeworth did not attempt to influence Maria. Mrs. Edgeworth evidently had some misgivings, and certainly much sympathy for the Chevalier and for her friend and stepdaughter. She says:—

Maria was mistaken as to her own feelings. She refused M. Edelcrantz, but she felt much more for him than esteem and admiration; she was extremely in love with him. Mr. Edgeworth left her to decide for herself; but she saw too plainly what it would be to us to lose her and what she would feel at parting with us. She decided rightly for her own future happiness and for that of her family, but she suffered much at the time and long afterwards. While we were at Paris I remember that in a shop, where Charlotte and I were making purchases, Maria sat apart absorbed in thought, and so deep in reverie that when her father came in and stood opposite to her she did not see him till he spoke to her, when she started and burst into tears.... I do not think she repented of her refusal or regretted her decision. She was well aware that she could not have made M. Edelcrantz happy, that she would not have suited his position at the Court of Stockholm, and that her want of beauty might have diminished his attachment. It was perhaps better she should think so, for it calmed her mind; but from what I saw of M. Edelcrantz I think he was a man capable of really valuing her. I believe he was much attached to her, and deeply mortified at her refusal. He continued to reside in Sweden after the abdication of his master, and was always distinguished for his high character and great abilities. He never married. He was, except for his very fine eyes, remarkably plain.

So ends the romance of the romancer. There are, however, many happinesses in life, as there are many troubles.

Mrs. Edgeworth tells us that after her stepdaughter's return to Edgeworthtown she occupied herself with various literary works, correcting some of her former MSS. for the press, and writing 'Madame de Fleury,' 'Emilie de Coulanges,' and 'Leonora.' But the high-flown and romantic style did suit her gift, and she wrote best when her genuine interest and unaffected glances shone with bright understanding sympathy upon her immediate surroundings. When we are told that 'Leonora' was written in the style the Chevalier Edelcrantz preferred, and that the idea of what he would think of it was present to Maria in every page, we begin to realise that for us at all events it was a most fortunate thing that she decided as she did. It would have been a loss indeed to the world if this kindling and delightful spirit of hers had been choked by the polite thorns, fictions, and platitudes of an artificial, courtly life and by the well-ordered narrowness of a limited standard. She never heard what the Chevalier thought of the book; she never knew that he ever read it even. It is a satisfaction to hear that he married no one else, and while she sat writing and not forgetting in the pleasant library at home, one can imagine the romantic Chevalier in his distant Court faithful to the sudden and romantic devotion by which he is now remembered. Romantic and chivalrous friendship seems to belong to his country and to his countrymen.

IX.

There are one or two other episodes less sentimental than this one recorded of this visit to Paris, not the least interesting of these being the account given of a call upon Madame de Genlis. The younger author from her own standpoint having resolutely turned away from the voice of the charmer for the sake of that which she is convinced to be duty and good sense, now somewhat sternly takes the measure of her elder sister, who has failed in the struggle, who is alone and friendless, and who has made her fate.

The story is too long to quote at full length. An isolated page without its setting loses very much; the previous description of the darkness and uncertainty through which Maria and her father go wandering, and asking their way in vain, adds immensely to the sense of the gloom and isolation which are hiding the close of a long and brilliant career. At last, after wandering for a long time seeking for Madame de Genlis, the travellers compel a reluctant porter to show them the staircase in the Arsenal, where she is living, and to point out the door before he goes off with the light.

They wait in darkness. The account of what happens when the door is opened is so interesting that I cannot refrain from quoting it at length:—

After ringing the bell we presently heard doors open and little footsteps approaching nigh. The door was opened by a girl of about Honora's size, holding an ill set-up, wavering candle in her hand, the light of which fell full upon her face and figure. Her face was remarkably intelligent—dark sparkling eyes, dark hair curled in the most fashionable long corkscrew ringlets over her eyes and cheeks. She parted the ringlets to take a full view of us. The dress of her figure by no means suited the head and elegance of her attitude. What her nether weeds might be we could not distinctly see, but they seemed a coarse short petticoat like what Molly Bristow's children would wear. After surveying us and hearing our name was Edgeworth she smiled graciously and bid us follow her, saying, 'Maman est chez elle.' She led the way with the grace of a young lady who has been taught to dance across two ante-chambers, miserable-looking; but, miserable or not, no home in Paris can be without them. The girl, or young lady, for we were still in doubt which to think her, led into a small room in which the candles were so well screened by a green tin screen that we could scarcely distinguish the tall form of a lady in black who rose from her chair by the fireside; as the door opened a great puff of smoke came from the huge fireplace at the same moment. She came forward, and we made our way towards her as well as we could through a confusion of tables, chairs, and work-baskets, china, writing-desks and inkstands, and birdcages, and a harp. She did not speak, and as her back was now turned to both fire and candle I could not see her face or anything but the outline of her form and her attitude. Her form was the remains of a fine form, her attitude that of a woman used to a better drawing-room.

I being foremost, and she silent, was compelled to speak to the figure in darkness. 'Madame de Genlis nous a fait l'honneur de nous mander qu'elle voulait bien nous permettre de lui rendre visite,' said I, or words to that effect, to which she replied by taking my hand and saying something in which 'charmee' was the most intelligible word. While she spoke she looked over my shoulder at my father, whose bow, I presume, told her he was a gentleman, for she spoke to him immediately as if she wished to please and seated us in fauteuils near the fire.

I then had a full view of her face—figure very thin and melancholy dark eyes, long sallow cheeks, compressed thin lips, two or three black ringlets on a high forehead, a cap that Mrs. Grier might wear—altogether in appearance of fallen fortunes, worn-out health, and excessive but guarded irritability. To me there was nothing of that engaging, captivating manner which I had been taught to expect. She seemed to me to be alive only to literary quarrels and jealousies. The muscles of her face as she spoke, or as my father spoke to her, quickly and too easily expressed hatred and anger.... She is now, you know, devote acharnee.... Madame de Genlis seems to have been so much used to being attacked that she has defence and apologies ready prepared. She spoke of Madame de Stael's 'Delphine' with detestation.... Forgive me, my dear Aunt Mary; you begged me to see her with favourable eyes, and I went, after seeing her 'Rosiere de Salency,' with the most favourable disposition, but I could not like her.... And from time to time I saw, or thought I saw, through the gloom of her countenance a gleam of coquetry. But my father judges of her much more favourably than I do. She evidently took pains to please him, and he says he is sure she is a person over whose mind he could gain great ascendency.

The 'young and gay philosopher' at fifty is not unchanged since we knew him first. Maria adds a postscript:

I had almost forgotten to tell you that the little girl who showed us in is a girl whom she is educating. 'Elle m'appelle maman, mais elle n'est pas ma fille.' The manner in which this little girl spoke to Madame de Genlis and looked at her appeared to me more in her favour than anything else. I went to look at what the child was writing; she was translating Darwin's Zoonomia.

Every description one reads by Miss Edgeworth of actual things and people makes one wish that she had written more of them. This one is the more interesting from the contrast of the two women, both so remarkable and coming to so different a result in their experience of life.

This eventful visit to Paris is brought to an eventful termination by several gendarmes, who appear early one morning in Mr. Edgeworth's bedroom with orders that he is to get up and to leave Paris immediately. Mr. Edgeworth had been accused of being brother to the Abbe de Fermont. When the mitigated circumstances of his being only a first cousin were put forward by Lord Whitworth, the English Ambassador, the Edgeworths received permission to return from the suburb to which they had retired; but private news hurried their departure, and they were only in time to escape the general blockade and detention of English prisoners. After little more than a year of peace, once more war was declared on May 20, 1803. Lovell, the eldest son, who was absent at the time and travelling from Switzerland, was not able to escape in time; nor for twelve years to come was the young man able to return to his own home and family.

X.

'Belinda,' 'Castle Rackrent,' the 'Parents' Assistant,' the 'Essays on Practical Education,' had all made their mark. The new series of popular tales was also welcomed. There were other books on the way; Miss Edgeworth had several MSS. in hand in various stages, stories to correct for the press. There was also a long novel, first begun by her father and taken up and carried on by her. The 'Essays on Practical Education,' which were first published in 1798, continued to be read. M. Pictet had translated the book into French the year before; a third edition was published some ten years later, in 1811, in the preface of which the authors say, 'It is due to the public to state that twelve years' additional experience in a numerous family, and careful attention to the results of other modes of education, have given the authors no reason to retract what they have advanced in these volumes.'

In Mr. Edgeworth's Memoirs, however, his daughter states that he modified his opinions in one or two particulars; allowing more and more liberty to the children, and at the same time conceding greater importance to the habit of early though mechanical efforts of memory. The essays seem in every way in advance of their time; many of the hints contained in them most certainly apply to the little children of to-day no less than to their small grandparents. A lady whose own name is high in the annals of education was telling me that she had been greatly struck by the resemblance between the Edgeworth system and that of Froebel's Kindergarten method, which is now gaining more and more ground in people's estimation, the object of both being not so much to cram instruction into early youth as to draw out each child's powers of observation and attention.

The first series of tales of fashionable life came out in 1809, and contained among other stories 'Ennui,' one of the most remarkable of Miss Edgeworth's works. The second series included the 'Absentee,' that delightful story of which the lesson should be impressed upon us even more than in the year 1812. The 'Absentee' was at first only an episode in the longer novel of 'Patronage;' but the public was impatient, so were the publishers, and fortunately for every one the 'Absentee' was printed as a separate tale.

'Patronage' had been begun by Mr. Edgeworth to amuse his wife, who was recovering from illness; it was originally called the 'Fortunes of the Freeman Family,' and it is a history with a moral. Morals were more in fashion then than they are now, but this one is obvious without any commentary upon it. It is tolerably certain that clever, industrious, well-conducted people will succeed, where idle, scheming, and untrustworthy persons will eventually fail to get on, even with powerful friends to back them. But the novel has yet to be written that will prove that, where merits are more equal, a little patronage is not of a great deal of use, or that people's positions in life are exactly proportioned to their merit. Mrs. Barbauld's pretty essay on the 'Inconsistency of Human Expectations' contains the best possible answer to the problem of what people's deserts should be. Let us hope that personal advancement is only one of the many things people try for in life, and that there are other prizes as well worth having. Miss Edgeworth herself somewhere speaks with warm admiration of this very essay. Of the novel itself she says (writing to Mrs. Barbauld), 'It is so vast a subject that it flounders about in my hands and quite overpowers me.'

It is in this same letter that Miss Edgeworth mentions another circumstance which interested her at this time, and which was one of those events occurring now and again which do equal credit to all concerned.

I have written a preface and notes [she says]—for I too would be an editor—for a little book which a very worthy countrywoman of mine is going to publish: Mrs. Leadbeater, granddaughter to Burke's first preceptor. She is poor. She has behaved most handsomely about some letters of Burke's to her grandfather and herself. It would have been advantageous to her to publish them; but, as Mrs. Burke[2]—Heaven knows why—objected, she desisted.

Mrs. Leadbeater was an Irish Quaker lady whose simple and spirited annals of Ballitore delighted Carlyle in his later days, and whose 'Cottage Dialogues' greatly struck Mr. Edgeworth at the time; and the kind Edgeworths, finding her quite unused to public transactions, exerted themselves in every way to help her. Mr. Edgeworth took the MSS. out of the hands of an Irish publisher, and, says Maria, 'our excellent friend's worthy successor in St. Paul's Churchyard has, on our recommendation, agreed to publish it for her.' Mr. Edgeworth's own letter to Mrs. Leadbeater gives the history of his good-natured offices and their satisfactory results.

Footnote 2: Mrs. Burke, hearing more of the circumstances, afterwards sent permission; but Mrs. Leadbeater being a Quakeress, and having once promised not to publish, could not take it upon herself to break her covenant.

From R. L. Edgeworth, July 5, 1810.

Miss Edgeworth desires me as a man of business to write to Mrs. Leadbeater relative to the publication of 'Cottage Dialogues.' Miss Edgeworth has written an advertisement, and will, with Mrs. Leadbeater's permission, write notes for an English edition. The scheme which I propose is of two parts—to sell the English copyright to the house of Johnson in London, where we dispose of our own works, and to publish a very large and cheap edition for Ireland for schools.... I can probably introduce the book into many places. Our family takes 300 copies, Lady Longford 50, Dr. Beaufort 20, &c.... I think Johnson & Co. will give 50l. for the English copyright.

After the transaction Mr. Edgeworth wrote to the publishers as follows:—

May 31, 1811: Edgeworthtown. My sixty-eighth birthday.

My dear Gentlemen,—I have just heard your letter to Mrs. Leadbeater read by one who dropped tears of pleasure from a sense of your generous and handsome conduct. I take great pleasure in speaking of you to the rest of the world as you deserve, and I cannot refrain from expressing to yourselves the genuine esteem that I feel for you. I know that this direct praise is scarcely allowable, but my advanced age and my close connection with you must be my excuse.—Yours sincerely, R. L. E.

Tears seem equivalent to something more than the estimated value of Mrs. Leadbeater's labours. The charming and well-known Mrs. Trench who was also Mary Leadbeater's friend, writes warmly praising the notes. 'Miss Edgeworth's notes on your Dialogues have as much spirit and originality as if she had never before explored the mine which many thought she had exhausted.'

All these are pleasant specimens of the Edgeworth correspondence, which, however (following the course of most correspondence), does not seem to have been always equally agreeable. There are some letters (among others which I have been allowed to see) written by Maria about this time to an unfortunate young man who seems to have annoyed her greatly by his excited importunities.

I thank you [she says] for your friendly zeal in defence of my powers of pathos and sublimity; but I think it carries you much too far when it leads you to imagine that I refrain, from principle or virtue, from displaying powers that I really do not possess. I assure you that I am not in the least capable of writing a dithyrambic ode, or any other kind of ode.

One is reminded by this suggestion of Jane Austen also declining to write 'an historical novel illustrative of the august House of Coburg.'

The young man himself seems to have had some wild aspirations after authorship, but to have feared criticism.

The advantage of the art of printing [says his friendly Minerva] is that the mistakes of individuals in reasoning and writing will be corrected in time by the public, so that the cause of truth cannot suffer; and I presume you are too much of a philosopher to mind the trifling mortification that the detection of a mistake might occasion. You know that some sensible person has observed that acknowledging a mistake is saying, only in other words, that we are wiser to-day than we were yesterday.

He seems at last to have passed the bounds of reasonable correspondence, and she writes as follows:—

Your last letter, dated in June, was many months before it reached me. In answer to all your reproaches at my silence I can only assure you that it was not caused by any change in my opinions or good wishes; but I do not carry on what is called a regular correspondence with anybody except with one or two of my very nearest relations; and it is best to tell the plain truth that my father particularly dislikes my writing letters, so I write as few as I possibly can.

XI.

While Maria Edgeworth was at work in her Irish home, successfully producing her admirable delineations, another woman, born some eight years later, and living in the quiet Hampshire village where the elm trees spread so greenly, was also at work, also writing books that were destined to influence many a generation, but which were meanwhile waiting unknown, unnoticed. Do we not all know the story of the brown paper parcel lying unopened for years on the publisher's shelf and containing Henry Tilney and all his capes, Catherine Morland and all her romance, and the great John Thorpe himself, uttering those valuable literary criticisms which Lord Macaulay, writing to his little sisters at home, used to quote to them? 'Oh, Lord!' says John Thorpe, 'I never read novels; I have other things to do.'

A friend reminds us of Miss Austen's own indignant outburst. 'Only a novel! only "Cecilia," or "Camilla," or "Belinda;" or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.' If the great historian, who loved novels himself, had not assured us that we owe Miss Austen and Miss Edgeworth to the early influence of the author of 'Evelina,' one might grudge 'Belinda' to such company as that of 'Cecilia' and 'Camilla.'

'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Northanger Abbey' were published about the same time as 'Patronage' and 'Tales of Fashionable Life.' Their two authors illustrate, curiously enough, the difference between the national characteristics of English and Irish—the breadth, the versatility, the innate wit and gaiety of an Irish mind; the comparative narrowness of range of an English nature; where, however, we are more likely to get humour and its never-failing charm. Long afterwards Jane Austen sent one of her novels to Miss Edgeworth, who appreciated it indeed, as such a mind as hers could not fail to do, but it was with no such enthusiasm as that which she felt for other more ambitious works, with more of incident, power, knowledge of the world, in the place of that one subtle quality of humour which for some persons outweighs almost every other. Something, some indefinite sentiment, tells people where they amalgamate and with whom they are intellectually akin; and by some such process of criticism the writer feels that in this little memoir of Miss Edgeworth she has but sketched the outer likeness of this remarkable woman's life and genius; and that she has scarcely done justice to very much in Miss Edgeworth, which so many of the foremost men of her day could appreciate—a power, a versatility, an interest in subjects for their own sakes, not for the sakes of those who are interested in them, which was essentially hers.

It is always characteristic to watch a writer's progress in the estimation of critics and reviewers. In 1809 Miss Edgeworth is moderately and respectfully noticed. 'As a writer of novels and tales she has a marked peculiarity, that of venturing to dispense common sense to her readers and to bring them within the precincts of real life. Without excluding love from her pages she knows how to assign to it its true limits.' In 1812 the reviewer, more used to hear the author's praises on all sides, now starts from a higher key, and, as far as truth to nature and delineation of character are concerned, does not allow a rival except 'Don Quixote' and 'Gil Blas.' The following criticism is just and more to the point:—

To this power of masterly and minute delineation of character Miss Edgeworth adds another which has rarely been combined with the former, that of interweaving the peculiarities of her persons with the conduct of her piece, and making them, without forgetting for a moment their personal consistency, conduce to the general lesson.... Her virtue and vice, though copied exactly from nature, lead with perfect ease to a moral conclusion, and are finally punished or rewarded by means which (rare as a retribution in this world is) appear for the most part neither inconsistent nor unnatural.

Then follows a review of 'Vivian' and of the 'Absentee,' which is perhaps the most admirable of her works. We may all remember how Macaulay once pronounced that the scene in the 'Absentee' where Lord Colambre discovers himself to his tenantry was the best thing of the sort since the opening of the twenty-second book of the 'Odyssey.'

An article by Lord Dudley, which is still to be quoted, appeared in the 'Quarterly Review' in 1814. What he says of her works applies no less to Miss Edgeworth's own life than to the principles which she inculcates.

The old rule was for heroes and heroines to fall suddenly and irretrievably in love. If they fell in love with the right person so much the better; if not, it could not be helped, and the novel ended unhappily. And, above all, it was held quite irregular for the most reasonable people to make any use whatever of their reason on the most important occasion of their lives. Miss Edgeworth has presumed to treat this mighty power with far less reverence. She has analysed it and found it does not consist of one simple element, but that several common ingredients enter into its composition—habit, esteem, a belief of some corresponding sentiment and of suitableness in the character and circumstances of the party. She has pronounced that reason, timely and vigorously applied, is almost a specific, and, following up this bold empirical line of practice, she has actually produced cases of the entire cure of persons who had laboured under its operation. Her favourite qualities are prudence, firmness, temper, and that active, vigilant good sense which, without checking the course of our kind affections, exercises its influence at every moment and surveys deliberately the motives and consequences of every action. Utility is her object, reason and experience her means.

XII.

This review of Lord Dudley's must have come out after a visit from the Edgeworth family to London in 1813, which seems to have been a most brilliant and amusing campaign. 'I know the homage that was paid you,' wrote Mrs. Barbauld, speaking of the event, 'and I exulted in it for your sake and for my sex's sake.' Miss Edgeworth was at the height of her popularity, in good spirits and good health. Mr. Edgeworth was seventy, but he looked years younger, and was still in undiminished health and vigour. The party was welcomed, feted, sought after everywhere. Except that they miss seeing Madame d'Arblay and leave London before the arrival of Madame de Stael, they seem to have come in for everything that was brilliant, fashionable, and entertaining. They breakfast with poets, they sup with marquises, they call upon duchesses and scientific men. Maria's old friend the Duchess of Wellington is not less her friend than she was in County Longford. Every one likes them and comes knocking at their lodging-house door, while Maria upstairs is writing a letter, standing at a chest of drawers. 'Miss Edgeworth is delightful,' says Tom Moore, 'not from display, but from repose and unaffectedness, the least pretending person.' Even Lord Byron writes warmly of the authoress whose company is so grateful, and who goes her simple, pleasant way cheerful and bringing kind cheer, and making friends with the children as well as with the elders. Many of these children in their lives fully justified her interest, children whom we in turn have known and looked up to as distinguished greyheaded men.

Some one asked Miss Edgeworth how she came to understand children as she did, what charm she used to win them. 'I don't know,' she said kindly; 'I lie down and let them crawl over me.' She was greatly pleased on one occasion when at a crowded party a little girl suddenly started forth, looked at her hard, and said, 'I like simple Susan best,' and rushed away overwhelmed at her own audacity. The same lady who was present on this occasion asked her a question which we must all be grateful to have solved for us—how it happened that the respective places of Laura and Rosamond came to be transposed in 'Patronage,' Laura having been the wiser elder sister in the 'Purple Jar,' and appearing suddenly as the younger in the novel. Miss Edgeworth laughed and said that Laura had been so preternaturally wise and thoughtful as a child, she could never have kept her up to the mark, and so she thought it best to change the character altogether.

During one of her visits to London Miss Edgeworth went to dine at the house of Mr. Marshall; and his daughter, Lady Monteagle, tells a little story which gives an impression, and a kind one, of the celebrated guest. Everything had been prepared in her honour, the lights lighted, the viands were cooked. Dinner was announced, and some important person was brought forward to hand Miss Edgeworth down, when it was discovered that she had vanished. For a moment the company and the dinner were all at a standstill. She was a small person, but diligent search was made. Miss Edgeworth had last been seen with the children of the house, and she was eventually found in the back kitchen, escorted by the said children, who, having confided their private affairs to her sympathetic ear, had finally invited her to come with them and see some rabbits which they were rearing down below. A lady who used to live at Clifton as a little girl, and to be sometimes prescribed for by Dr. King, was once brought up as a child to Miss Edgeworth, and she told me how very much puzzled she felt when the bright old lady, taking her by the hand, said, 'Well, my dear, how do you do, and how is my excellent brother-in-law?' One can imagine what a vague sort of being an 'excellent brother-in-law' would seem to a very young child.

We read in Miss Edgeworth's memoir of her father that Mr. Edgeworth recovered from his serious illness in 1814 to enjoy a few more years of life among his friends, his children, and his experiments. His good humour and good spirits were undiminished, and he used to quote an old friend's praise of 'the privileges and convenience of old age.' He was past seventy, but he seems to have continued his own education to the end of life. 'Without affecting to be young, he exerted himself to prevent any of his faculties from sinking into the indolent state which portends their decay,' and his daughter says that he went on learning to the last, correcting his faults and practising his memory by various devices, so that it even improved with age.

In one of his last letters to Mrs. Beaufort, his wife's mother, he speaks with no little paternal pleasure of his home and his children: 'Such excellent principles, such just views of human life and manners, such cultivated understandings, such charming tempers make a little Paradise about me;' while with regard to his daughter's works he adds concerning the book which was about to appear, 'If Maria's tales fail with the public, you will hear of my hanging myself.'

Mr. Edgeworth died in the summer of 1817, at home, surrounded by his family, grateful, as he says, to Providence for allowing his body to perish before his mind.

During the melancholy months which succeeded her father's death Maria hardly wrote any letters; her sight was in a most alarming state. The tears, she said, felt in her eyes like the cutting of a knife. She had overworked them all the previous winter, sitting up at night and struggling with her grief as she wrote 'Ormond.' She was now unable to use them without pain.... Edgeworthtown now belonged to Lovell, the eldest surviving brother, but he wished it to continue the home of the family. Maria set to work to complete her father's memoirs and to fulfil his last wish.

It was not without great hesitation and anxiety that she determined to finish writing her father's Life. There is a touching appeal in a letter to her aunt Ruxton. 'I felt the happiness of my life was at stake. Even if all the rest of the world had praised it and you had been dissatisfied, how miserable should I have been!' And there is another sentence written at Bowood, very sad and full of remembrance: 'I feel as if I had lived a hundred years and was left alive after everybody else.' The book came out, and many things were said about it, not all praise. The 'Quarterly' was so spiteful and intolerant that it seemed almost personal in its violence. It certainly would have been a great loss to the world had this curious and interesting memoir never been published, but at the time the absence of certain phrases and expressions of opinions which Mr. Edgeworth had never specially professed seemed greatly to offend the reviewers.

The worst of these attacks Miss Edgeworth never read, and the task finished, the sad months over, the poor eyes recovered, she crossed to England.

XIII.

One is glad to hear of her away and at Bowood reviving in good company, in all senses of the word. Her old friend Lord Henry Petty, now Lord Lansdowne, was still her friend and full of kindness. Outside the house spread a green deer-park to rest her tired eyes, within were pleasant and delightful companions to cheer her soul. Sir Samuel Romilly was there, of whom she speaks with affectionate admiration, as she does of her kind host and hostess. 'I much enjoy the sight of Lady Lansdowne's happiness with her husband and her children. Beauty, fortune, cultivated society all united—in short, everything that the most reasonable or unreasonable could wish. She is so amiable and desirous to make others happy.'

Miss Edgeworth's power of making other people see things as she does is very remarkable in all these letters; with a little imagination one could almost feel as if one might be able to travel back into the pleasant society in which she lived. When she goes abroad soon after with her two younger sisters (Fanny, the baby whose head so nearly came off in her arms, and Harriet, who have both grown up by this time to be pretty and elegant young ladies), the sisters are made welcome everywhere. In Paris, as in London, troops of acquaintance came forward to receive 'Madame Maria et mesdemoiselles ses soeurs,' as they used to be announced. Most of their old friends were there still; only the children had grown up and were now new friends to be greeted. It is a confusion of names in visionary succession, comprising English people no less than French. Miss Edgeworth notes it all with a sure hand and true pen; it is as one of the sketch-books of a great painter, where whole pictures are indicated in a few just lines. Here is a peep at the Abbaye aux Bois in 1820:—

We went to Madame Recamier in her convent, l'Abbaye aux Bois, up seventy-eight steps. All came in with asthma. Elegant room; she as elegant as ever. Matthieu de Montmorenci, the ex-Queen of Sweden, Madame de Boigne, a charming woman, and Madame la Marechale de ——, a battered beauty, smelling of garlic and screeching in vain to pass as a wit.... Madame Recamier has no more taken the veil than I have, and is as little likely to do it. She is quite beautiful; she dresses herself and her little room with elegant simplicity, and lives in a convent only because it is cheap and respectable.

One sees it all, the convent, the company, the last refrain of former triumphs, the faithful romantic Matthieu de Montmorenci, and above all the poor Marechale, who will screech for ever in her garlic. Let us turn the page, we find another picture from these not long past days:—

Breakfast at Camille Jordan's; it was half-past twelve before the company assembled, and we had an hour's delightful conversation with Camille Jordan and his wife in her spotless white muslin and little cap, sitting at her husband's feet as he lay on the sofa; as clean, as nice, as fresh, as thoughtless of herself as my mother. At this breakfast we saw three of the most distinguished of that party who call themselves 'les Doctrinaires' and say they are more attached to measures than to men.

Here is another portrait of a portrait and its painter:—

Princess Potemkin is a Russian, but she has all the grace, softness, winning manner of the Polish ladies. Oval face, pale, with the finest, softest, most expressive chestnut dark eyes. She has a sort of politeness which pleases peculiarly, a mixture of the ease of high rank and early habit with something that is sentimental without affectation. Madame le Brun is painting her picture. Madame le Brun is sixty-six, with great vivacity as well as genius, and better worth seeing than her pictures, for though they are speaking she speaks.

Another visit the sisters paid, which will interest the readers of Madame de la Rochejaquelin's memoirs of the war in the Vendee:—

In a small bedroom, well furnished, with a fire just lighted, we found Madame de la Rochejaquelin on the sofa; her two daughters at work, one spinning with a distaff, the other embroidering muslin. Madame is a fat woman with a broad, round, fair face and a most benevolent expression, her hair cut short and perfectly grey as seen under her cap; the rest of the face much too young for such grey locks; and though her face and bundled form all squashed on to a sofa did not at first promise much of gentility, you could not hear her speak or hear her for three minutes without perceiving that she was well-born and well-bred.

Madame de la Rochejaquelin seems to have confided in Miss Edgeworth.

'I am always sorry when any stranger sees me, parce que je sais que je detruis toute illusion. Je sais que je devrais avoir l'air d'une heroine.' She is much better than a heroine; she is benevolence and truth itself.

We must not forget the scientific world where Madame Maria was no less at home than in fashionable literary cliques. The sisters saw something of Cuvier at Paris; in Switzerland they travelled with the Aragos. They were on their way to the Marcets at Geneva when they stopped at Coppet, where Miss Edgeworth was always specially happy in the society of Madame Auguste de Stael and Madame de Broglie. But Switzerland is not one of the places where human beings only are in the ascendant; other influences there are almost stronger than human ones. 'I did not conceive it possible that I should feel so much pleasure from the beauties of nature as I have done since I came to this country. The first moment when I saw Mont Blanc will remain an era in my life—a new idea, a new feeling standing alone in the mind.' Miss Edgeworth presently comes down from her mountain heights and, full of interest, throws herself into the talk of her friends at Coppet and Geneva, from which she quotes as it occurs to her. Here is Rocca's indignant speech to Lord Byron, who was abusing the stupidity of the Genevese. 'Eh! milord, pourquoi venir vous fourrer parmi ces honnetes gens?' There is Arago's curious anecdote of Napoleon, who sent for him after the battle of Waterloo, offering him a large sum of money to accompany him to America. The Emperor had formed a project for founding a scientific colony in the New World. Arago was so indignant with him for abandoning his troops that he would have nothing to say to the plan. A far more touching story is Dr. Marcet's account of Josephine. 'Poor Josephine! Do you remember Dr. Marcet's telling us that when he breakfasted with her she said, pointing to her flowers, "These are my subjects. I try to make them happy"?'