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+Project Gutenberg's Richard Lovell Edgeworth, by Richard Lovell Edgeworth
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Richard Lovell Edgeworth
+       A Selection From His Memoir
+
+Author: Richard Lovell Edgeworth
+
+Editor: Beatrix L. Tollemache
+
+Release Date: October 27, 2005 [EBook #16951]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marjorie Fulton
+
+
+
+
+Richard Lovell Edgeworth
+A SELECTION FROM HIS MEMOIRS
+
+EDITED BY
+BEATRIX L. TOLLEMACHE
+(HON. MRS. LIONEL TOLLEMACHE)
+
+RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL & CO.
+KING STREET, COVENT GARDEN
+
+LONDON
+
+1896
+
+By THE SAME AUTHOR
+
+Engelberg, and Other Verses. With Frontispiece. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
+Jonquille, or, The Swiss Smuggler. Translated from the French of
+MADAME COMBE. Crown 8vo. 6s.
+
+Grisons Incidents in Olden Times. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
+
+LONDON RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL & CO.
+
+LIFE IS AN INN
+
+THERE is an inn where many a guest
+ May enter, tarry, take his rest.
+ When he departs there's nought to pay,
+ Only he carries nought away.
+
+'Not so,' I cried, 'for raiment fine,
+ Sweet thoughts, heart-joys, and hopes that shine,
+ May clothe anew his flitting form,
+ As wings that change the creeping worm.
+
+His toil-worn garb he casts aside,
+ And journeys onward glorified.'
+
+B. L. T.
+
+
+
+RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH
+
+CHAPTER 1
+
+Some years ago, I came across the Memoirs of Richard Lovell
+Edgeworth in a second-hand bookshop, and found it so full of
+interest and amusement, that I am tempted to draw the attention of
+other readers to it. As the volumes are out of print, I have not
+hesitated to make long extracts from them. The first volume is
+autobiographical, and the narrative is continued in the second
+volume by Edgeworth's daughter Maria, who was her father's constant
+companion, and was well fitted to carry out his wish that she should
+complete the Memoirs.
+
+Richard Lovell Edgeworth was born at Bath in
+1744. He was a shining example of what a good landlord can do for
+his tenants, and how an active mind will always find objects of
+interest without constantly requiring what are called amusements;
+for the leisure class should be like Sundays in a week, and as the
+ideal Sunday should be a day when we can store up good and beautiful
+thoughts to refresh us during the week, a day when there is no
+hurry, no urgent business to trouble us, a day when we have time to
+rise above the sordid details of life and enjoy its beauties; so it
+seems to me that those who are not obliged to work for their living
+should do their part in the world by adding to its store of good and
+wise thoughts, by cultivating the arts and raising the standard of
+excellence in them, and by bringing to light truths which had been
+forgotten, or which had been hidden from our forefathers.
+
+Richard Edgeworth was eminently a practical man, impulsive, as we
+learn from his imprudent marriage at nineteen, but with a strong
+sense of duty. His mother, who was Welsh, brought him up in habits
+of thrift and industry very unlike those of his ancestors, which he
+records in the early pages of his Memoirs. His great-grandmother
+seems to have been a woman of strong character and courage in spite
+of her belief in fairies and her dread of them, for he writes that
+'while she was living at Liscard, she was, on some sudden alarm,
+obliged to go at night to a garret at the top of the house for some
+gunpowder, which was kept there in a barrel. She was followed
+upstairs by an ignorant servant girl, who carried a bit of candle
+without a candlestick between her fingers. When Lady Edgeworth had
+taken what gunpowder she wanted, had locked the door, and was
+halfway downstairs again, she observed that the girl had not her
+candle, and asked what she had done with it; the girl recollected,
+and answered that she had left it "stuck in the barrel of black
+salt." Lady Edgeworth bid her stand still, and instantly returned by
+herself to the room where the gunpowder was, found the candle as the
+girl had described, put her hand carefully underneath it, carried it
+safely out, and when she got to the bottom of the stairs dropped on
+her knees, and thanked God for their deliverance'
+
+When we remember that it was Richard Edgeworth, the father of Maria,
+who trained and encouraged her first efforts in literature, we feel
+that we owe him a debt of gratitude; but our interest is increased
+when we read his Memoirs, for we then find ourselves brought into
+close contact with a very intelligent and vigorous mind, keen to
+take part in the scientific experiments of the day, while his
+upright moral character and earnest and well-directed efforts to
+improve his Irish property win our admiration; and when we remember
+that he married in succession four wives, and preserved harmony
+among the numerous members of his household, our admiration becomes
+wonder, and we would fain learn the secret of his success. One
+element in his success doubtless was that he kept every one around
+him usefully employed, and in the manner most suited to each. He
+knew how to develop innate talent, and did not crush or overpower
+those around him. He owed much to the early training of a sensible
+mother, and he gives an anecdote of his early childhood, which I
+will quote:--
+
+'My mother was not blind to my faults. She saw the danger of my
+passionate temper. It was a difficult task to correct it; though
+perfectly submissive to her, I was with others rebellious and
+outrageous in my anger. My mother heard continual complaints of me;
+yet she wisely forbore to lecture or punish me for every trifling
+misdemeanour; she seized proper occasions to make a strong
+impression upon my mind.
+
+'One day my elder brother Tom, who, as I have said, was almost a man
+when I was a little child, came into the nursery where I was
+playing, and where the maids were ironing. Upon some slight
+provocation or contradiction from him, I flew into a violent
+passion; and, snatching up one of the boxirons which the maid had
+just laid down, I flung it across the table at my brother. He
+stooped instantly; and, thank God! it missed him. There was a redhot
+heater in it, of which I knew nothing until I saw it thrown out, and
+until I heard the scream from the maids. They seized me, and dragged
+me downstairs to my mother. Knowing that she was extremely fond of
+my brother, and that she was of a warm indignant temper, they
+expected that signal vengeance would burst upon me. They all spoke
+at once. When my mother heard what I had done, I saw she was struck
+with horror, but she said not one word in anger to me. She ordered
+everybody out of the room except myself, and then drawing me near
+her, she spoke to me in a mild voice, but in a most serious manner.
+First, she explained to me the nature of the crime which I had run
+the hazard of committing; she told me she was sure that I had no
+intention seriously to hurt my brother, and did not know that if the
+iron had hit my brother, it must have killed him. While I felt this
+first shock, and whilst the horror of murder was upon me, my mother
+seized the moment to conjure me to try in future to command my
+passions. I remember her telling me that I had an uncle by the
+mother's side who had such a violent temper, that in a fit of
+passion one of his eyes actually started out of its socket. "You,"
+said my mother to me, "have naturally a violent temper; if you grow
+up to be a man without learning to govern it, it will be impossible
+for you then to command yourself; and there is no knowing what crime
+you may in a fit of passion commit, and how miserable you may, in
+consequence of it, become. You are but a very young child, yet I
+think you can understand me. Instead of speaking to you as I do at
+this moment, I might punish you severely; but I think it better to
+treat you like a reasonable creature. My wish is to teach you to
+command your temper--nobody can do that for you so well as you can
+do it for yourself."
+
+'As nearly as I can recollect, these were my mother's words; I am
+certain this was the sense of what she then said to me. The
+impression made by the earnest solemnity with which she spoke never,
+during the whole course of my life, was effaced from my mind. From
+that moment I determined to govern my temper.'
+
+Acting upon the old adage that example is better than precept, his
+mother taught him at an early age to observe the good and bad
+qualities of the persons he met. The study of character she justly
+felt to be most important, and yet it is not one of the subjects
+taught in schools except by personal collision with other boys, and
+incidentally in reading history. When sent to school at Warwick, he
+learned not only the first rudiments of grammar, but 'also the
+rudiments of that knowledge which leads us to observe the difference
+of tempers and characters in our fellow-creatures. The marking how
+widely they differ, and by what minute varieties they are
+distinguished, continues, to the end of life, an inexhaustible
+subject of discrimination.'
+
+May not Maria have gained much valuable training in the art of
+novel-writing from a father who was so impressed with the value of
+the study of character?
+
+The Gospel precept which we read as 'Judge not,' should surely be
+translated 'Condemn not,' and does not forbid a mental exercise
+which is necessary in our intercourse with others.
+
+Among the circumstances which had considerable influence on his
+character, he mentions: 'My mother was reading to me some passages
+from Shakespeare's plays, marking the characters of Coriolanus and
+of Julius Caesar, which she admired. The contempt which Coriolanus
+expresses for the opinion and applause of the vulgar, for "the
+voices of the greasyheaded multitude," suited well with that disdain
+for low company with which I had been first inspired by the fable of
+the Lion and the Cub.* It is probable that I understood the speeches
+of Coriolanus but imperfectly; yet I know that I sympathised with my
+mother's admiration, my young spirit was touched by his noble
+character, by his generosity, and, above all, by his filial piety
+and his gratitude to his mother.' He mentions also that 'some traits
+in the history of Cyrus, which was read to me, seized my
+imagination, and, next to Joseph in the Old Testament, Cyrus became
+the favourite of my childhood. My sister and I used to amuse
+ourselves with playing Cyrus at the court of his grandfather
+Astyages. At the great Persian feasts, I was, like young Cyrus, to
+set an example of temperance, to eat nothing but watercresses, to
+drink nothing but water, and to reprove the cupbearer for making the
+king, my grandfather, drunk. To this day I remember the taste of
+those water-cresses; and for those who love to trace the characters
+of men in the sports of children, I may mention that my character
+for sobriety, if not for water-drinking, has continued through
+life.'
+
+* In Gay's Fables.
+
+When Richard Edgeworth encouraged his daughter Maria's literary
+tastes, he was doubtless mindful how much pleasure and support his
+own mother had derived from studying the best authors; and when we
+read later of the affectionate terms on which Maria stood with her
+various stepmothers and their families, we cannot help thinking that
+she must have inherited at least one of the beautiful traits in her
+grandmother's character which Richard Edgeworth especially dwells
+on: 'She had the most generous disposition that I ever met with; not
+only that common generosity, which parts with money, or money's
+worth, freely, and almost without the right hand knowing what the
+left hand doeth; but she had also an entire absence of selfish
+consideration. Her own wishes or opinions were never pursued merely
+because they were her own; the ease and comfort of everybody about
+her were necessary for her well-being. Every distress, as far as her
+fortune, or her knowledge, or her wit or eloquence could reach, was
+alleviated or removed; and, above all, she could forgive, and
+sometimes even forget injuries.'
+
+Richard's taste for science early showed itself, when at seven years
+old his curiosity was excited by an electric battery which was
+applied to his mother's paralysed side. He says:--
+
+'At this time electricity was but little known in Ireland, and its
+fame as a cure for palsy had been considerably magnified. It, as
+usual, excited some sensation in the paralytic limbs on the first
+trials. One of the experiments on my mother failed of producing a
+shock, and Mr. Deane seemed at a loss to account for it. I had
+observed that the wire which was used to conduct the electric fluid,
+had, as it hung in a curve from the instrument to my mother's arm,
+touched the hinge of a table which was in the way, and I had the
+courage to mention this circumstance, which was the real cause of
+failure.'
+
+It was when he was eight years old, and while travelling with his
+father, that his attention was caught by 'a man carrying a machine
+five or six feet in diameter, of an oval form, and composed of
+slender ribs of steel. I begged my father to inquire what it was. We
+were told that it was the skeleton of a lady's hoop. It was
+furnished with hinges, which permitted it to fold together in a
+small compass, so that more than two persons might sit on one seat
+of a coach--a feat not easily performed, when ladies were
+encompassed with whalebone hoops of six feet extent. My curiosity
+was excited by the first sight of this machine, probably more than
+another child's might have been, because previous agreeable
+associations had given me some taste for mechanics, which was still
+a little further increased by the pleasure I took in examining this
+glittering contrivance. Thus even the most trivial incidents in
+childhood act reciprocally as cause and effect in forming our
+tastes.'
+
+It was in 1754 that Mrs. Edgeworth, continuing much out of health,
+resolved to consult a certain Lord Trimblestone, who had been very
+successful in curing various complaints. Lord Trimblestone received
+Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth most cordially and hospitably, and though he
+could not hope to cure her, recommended some palliatives. He had
+more success with another lady whose disorder was purely nervous.
+His treatment of her was so original that I must quote it at
+length:
+
+'Instead of a grave and forbidding physician, her host, she found,
+was a man of most agreeable manners. Lady Trimblestone did
+everything in her power to entertain her guest, and for two or three
+days the demon of ennui was banished. At length the lady's vapours
+returned; everything appeared changed. Melancholy brought on a
+return of alarming nervous complaints--convulsions of the limbs
+--perversion of the understanding--a horror of society; in short,
+all the complaints that are to be met with in an advertisement
+enumerating the miseries of a nervous patient. In the midst of one
+of her most violent fits, four mutes, dressed in white, entered her
+apartment; slowly approaching her, they took her without violence in
+their arms, and without giving her time to recollect herself,
+conveyed her into a distant chamber hung with black and lighted with
+green tapers. From the ceiling, which was of a considerable height,
+a swing was suspended, in which she was placed by the mutes, so as
+to be seated at some distance from the ground. One of the mutes set
+the swing in motion; and as it approached one end of the room, she
+was opposed by a grim menacing figure armed with a huge rod of
+birch. When she looked behind her, she saw a similar figure at the
+other end of the room, armed in the same manner. The terror,
+notwithstanding the strange circumstances which surrounded her, was
+not of that sort which threatens life; but every instant there was
+an immediate hazard of bodily pain. After some time, the mutes
+appeared again, with great composure took the lady out of the swing,
+and conducted her to her apartment. When she had reposed some time,
+a servant came to inform her that tea was ready. Fear of what might
+be the consequence of a refusal prevented her from declining to
+appear. No notice was taken of what had happened, and the evening
+and the next day passed without any attack of her disorder. On the
+third day the vapours returned--the mutes reappeared--the menacing
+flagellants again affrighted her, and again she enjoyed a remission
+of her complaints. By degrees the fits of her disorder became less
+frequent, the ministration of her tormentors less necessary, and in
+time the habits of hypochondriacism were so often interrupted, and
+such a new series of ideas was introduced into her mind, that she
+recovered perfect health, and preserved to the end of her life
+sincere gratitude for her adventurous physician.'
+
+Three years were spent by Richard at Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
+while his vacations were often passed at Bath by the wish of his
+father, who was anxious that his son should be introduced to good
+society at an early age. It was there that Richard saw Beau Nash,'
+the popular monarch of Bath,' and also 'the remains of the
+celebrated Lord Chesterfield. I looked in vain for that fire, which
+we expect to see in the eye of a man of wit and genius. He was
+obviously unhappy, and a melancholy spectacle.' Of the young ladies
+he says: 'I soon perceived that those who made the best figure in
+the ballroom were not always qualified to please in conversation; I
+saw that beauty and grace were sometimes accompanied by a frivolous
+character, by disgusting envy, or despicable vanity. All this I had
+read of in poetry and prose, but there is a wide difference,
+especially among young people, between what is read and related, and
+what is actually seen. Books and advice make much more impression in
+proportion as we grow older. We find by degrees that those who lived
+before us have recorded as the result of their experience the very
+things that we observe to be true.'
+
+It was while still at college that he married Miss Elers without
+waiting for his father's consent; he soon found that his young wife
+did not sympathise with his pursuits; but he adds, 'Though I
+heartily repented my folly, I determined to bear with firmness and
+temper the evil, which I had brought upon myself. Perhaps pride had
+some share in my resolution.'
+
+He had a son before he was twenty, and soon afterwards took his wife
+to Edgeworth Town to introduce her to his parents; but a few days
+after his arrival his mother, who had long been an invalid, felt
+that her end was approaching, and calling him to her bedside, told
+him, with a sort of pleasure, that she felt she should die before
+night. She added: 'If there is a state of just retribution in
+another world, I must be happy, for I have suffered during the
+greatest part of my life, and I know that I did not deserve it by my
+thoughts or actions.'
+
+Her dying advice to him was,'"My son, learn how to say No." She
+warned me further of an error into which, from the vivacity of my
+temper, I was most likely to fall. "Your inventive faculty," said
+she, "will lead you eagerly into new plans; and you may be dazzled
+by some new scheme before you have finished, or fairly tried what
+you had begun. Resolve to finish; never procrastinate."'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 2
+
+It was in 1765, while stopping at Chester and examining a mechanical
+exhibition there, that Edgeworth first heard of Dr. Darwin, who had
+lately invented a carriage which could turn in a small compass
+without danger of upsetting. Richard on hearing this determined to
+try his hand on coach building, and had a handsome phaeton
+constructed upon the same principle; this he showed in London to the
+Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and mentioned that he owed
+the original idea to Dr. Darwin. He then wrote to the latter
+describing the reception of his invention, and was invited to his
+house. The doctor was out when he arrived at Lichfield, but Mrs.
+Darwin received him, and after some conversation on books and prints
+asked him to drink tea. He discovered later that Dr. Darwin had
+imagined him to be a coachmaker, but that Mrs. Darwin had found out
+the mistake. 'When supper was nearly finished, a loud rapping at the
+door announced the doctor. There was a bustle in the hall, which
+made Mrs. Darwin get up and go to the door. Upon her exclaiming that
+they were bringing in a dead man, I went to the hall: I saw some
+persons, directed by one whom I guessed to be Dr. Darwin, carrying a
+man, who appeared motionless. "He is not dead," said Dr. Darwin. "He
+is only dead drunk. I found him," continued the doctor, "nearly
+suffocated in a ditch; I had him lifted into my carriage, and
+brought hither, that we might take care of him to-night." Candles
+came, and what was the surprise of the doctor and of Mrs. Darwin to
+find that the person whom he had saved was Mrs. Darwin's brother!
+who, for the first time in his life, as I was assured, had been
+intoxicated in this manner, and who would undoubtedly have perished
+had it not been for Dr. Darwin's humanity.
+
+'During this scene I had time to survey my new friend, Dr. Darwin.
+He was a large man, fat, and rather clumsy; but intelligence and
+benevolence were painted in his countenance. He had a considerable
+impediment in his speech, a defect which is in general painful to
+others; but the doctor repaid his auditors so well for making them
+wait for his wit or his knowledge, that he seldom found them
+impatient.'
+
+At Lichfield he met Mr. Bolton of Snow Hill, Birmingham, who asked
+him to his house, and showed him over the principal manufactories of
+Birmingham, where he further improved his knowledge of practical
+mechanics. His time was now principally devoted to inventions; he
+received a silver medal in 1768 from the Society of Arts for a
+perambulator, as he calls it, an instrument for measuring land. This
+is a curious instance of the changed use of a word, as we now
+associate perambulators with babies. In 1769 he received the
+Society's gold medal for various machines, and about this time
+produced what might have been the forerunner of the bicycle, 'a huge
+hollow wheel made very light, withinside of which, in a barrel of
+six feet diameter, a man should walk. Whilst he stepped thirty
+inches, the circumference of the large wheel, or rather wheels,
+would revolve five feet on the ground; and as the machine was to
+roll on planks, and on a plane somewhat inclined, when once the vis
+inertia of the machine should be overcome, it would carry on the man
+within it as fast as he could possibly walk. ... It was not
+finished; I had not yet furnished it with the means of stopping or
+moderating its motion. A young lad got into it, his companions
+launched it on a path which led gently down hill towards a very
+steep chalk-pit. This pit was at such a distance as to be out of
+their thoughts when they set the wheel in motion. On it ran. The lad
+withinside plied his legs with all his might. The spectators who at
+first stood still to behold the operation were soon alarmed by the
+shouts of their companion, who perceived his danger. The vehicle
+became quite ungovernable; the velocity increased as it ran down
+hill. Fortunately, the boy contrived to jump from his rolling prison
+before it reached the chalk-pit; but the wheel went on with such
+velocity as to outstrip its pursuers, and, rolling over the edge of
+the precipice, it was dashed to pieces.
+
+'The next day, when I came to look for my machine, intending to try
+it upon some planks, which had been laid for it, I found, to my no
+small disappointment, that the object of all my labours and my hopes
+was lying at the bottom of a chalk-pit, broken into a thousand
+pieces. I could not at that time afford to construct another wheel
+of that sort, and I cannot therefore determine what might have been
+the success of my scheme.'
+
+He goes on to say: 'I shall mention a sailing carriage that I tried
+on this common. The carriage was light, steady, and ran with amazing
+velocity. One day, when I was preparing for a sail in it with my
+friend and schoolfellow, Mr. William Foster, my wheel-boat escaped
+from its moorings just as we were going to step on board. With the
+utmost difficulty we overtook it; and as I saw three or four
+stage-coaches on the road, and feared that this sailing chariot
+might frighten their horses, I, at the hazard of my life, got into
+my carriage while it was under full sail, and then, at a favourable
+part of the road, I used the means I had of guiding it easily out of
+the way. But the sense of the mischief which must have ensued if I
+had not succeeded in getting into the machine at the proper place,
+and stopping it at the right moment, was so strong, as to deter me
+from trying any more experiments on this carriage in such a
+dangerous place.'
+
+I have already given the changed use of the word perambulator. As an
+example of the different use of a word in the last century, I may
+mention telegraph, by which he means signalling either by moving
+wooden arms or by showing lights. This mode of conveying a message
+he first applied in order to win a wager: 'A famous match was at
+that time pending at Newmarket between two horses that were in every
+respect as nearly equal as possible. Lord March, one evening at
+Ranelagh, expressed his regret to Sir Francis Delaval that he was
+not able to attend Newmarket at the next meeting. "I am obliged,"
+said he, "to stay in London; I shall, however, be at the Turf
+Coffee-house; I shall station fleet horses on the road to bring me
+the earliest intelligence of the event of the race, and I shall
+manage my bets accordingly."
+
+'I asked at what time in the evening he expected to know who was
+winner. He said about nine in the evening. I asserted that I should
+be able to name the winning horse at four o'clock in the afternoon.
+Lord March heard my assertion with so much incredulity, as to urge
+me to defend myself; and at length I offered to lay five hundred
+pounds that I would in London name the winning horse at Newmarket at
+five o'clock in the evening of the day when the great match in
+question was to be run.'
+
+The wager was however given up when Edgeworth told Lord March that
+he did not depend upon the fleetness or strength of horses to carry
+the desired intelligence.
+
+His friend, Sir Francis Delaval, immediately put up under his
+directions an apparatus between his house and part of Piccadilly. He
+adds: 'I also set up a night telegraph between a house which Sir
+Francis Delaval occupied at Hampstead, and one to which I had access
+in Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. This nocturnal telegraph
+answered well, but was too expensive for common use.' Later on he
+writes to Dr. Darwin:
+
+'I have been employed for two months in experiments upon a telegraph
+of my own invention. By day, at eighteen or twenty miles distance, I
+show, by four pointers, isosceles triangles, twenty feet high, on
+four imaginary circles, eight imaginary points, which correspond
+with the figures 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, so that seven thousand
+different combinations are formed, of four figures each, which refer
+to a dictionary of words. By night, white lights are used.'
+
+Dr. Darwin in reply says: 'The telegraph you described, I dare say,
+would answer the purpose. It would be like a giant wielding his long
+arms and talking with his fingers: and those long arms might be
+covered with lamps in the night.'
+
+It is curious now to read Mr. Edgeworth's words: 'I will venture to
+predict that it will at some future period be generally practised,
+not only in these islands, but that it will in time become a means
+of communication between the most distant parts of the world,
+wherever arts and sciences have civilised mankind.'
+
+It was some years later, in 1794, when Ireland was in a disturbed
+state, and threatened by a French invasion, that Edgeworth laid his
+scheme for telegraphs before the Government, and offered to keep
+open communication between Dublin and Cork if the Government would
+pay the expense. He made a trial between two hills fifteen miles
+apart, and a message was sent and an answer received in five
+minutes. The Government paid little attention to his offer, and
+finally refused it. Two months later the French were on the Irish
+coasts, and great confusion and distress was occasioned by the want
+of accurate news. 'The troops were harassed with contradictory
+orders and forced marches for want of intelligence, and from that
+indecision, which must always be the consequence of insufficient
+information. Many days were spent in terror, and in fruitless wishes
+for an English fleet. ... At last Ireland was providentially saved
+by the change of the wind, which prevented the enemy from effecting
+a landing on her coast.'
+
+Another of Edgeworth's inventions was a one-wheeled carriage adapted
+to go over narrow roads; it was made fast by shafts to the horse's
+sides, and was furnished with two weights or counterpoises that hung
+below the shafts. In this carriage he travelled to Birmingham and
+astonished the country folk on the way.
+
+I must now give a sketch of Edgeworth's matrimonial adventures. They
+began after a strange fashion, when, at fifteen, he and some young
+companions had a merry-making at his sister's marriage, and one of
+the party putting on a white cloak as a surplice, proposed to marry
+Richard to a young lady who was his favourite partner. With the door
+key as a ring the mock parson gabbled over a few words of the
+marriage service. When Richard's father heard of this mock marriage
+he was so alarmed that he treated it seriously, and sued and got a
+divorce for his son in the ecclesiastical court.
+
+It was while visiting Dr. Darwin at Lichfield that Edgeworth made
+some friendships which influenced his whole life. At the Bishop's
+Palace, where Canon Seward lived, he first met Miss Honora Sneyd,
+who was brought up as a daughter by Mrs. Seward. He was much struck
+by her beauty and by her mental gifts, and says: 'Now for the first
+time in my life, I saw a woman that equalled the picture of
+perfection which existed in my imagination. I had long suffered much
+from the want of that cheerfulness in a wife, without which marriage
+could not be agreeable to a man with such a temper as mine. I had
+borne this evil, I believe, with patience; but my not being happy at
+home exposed me to the danger of being too happy elsewhere.' He
+describes in another place his first wife as 'prudent, domestic, and
+affectionate; but she was not of a cheerful temper. She lamented
+about trifles; and the lamenting of a female with whom we live does
+not render home delightful.'
+
+His friend, Mr. Day,* was also intimate at the Palace, but did not
+admire Honora at that time (1770) as much as Edgeworth did. Mr. Day
+thought 'she danced too well; she had too much an air of fashion in
+her dress and manners; and her arms were not sufficiently round and
+white to please him.'
+
+* The author of Sandford and Merton.
+
+He was at this time much preoccupied with an orphan, Sabrina Sydney,
+whom he had taken from the Foundling Hospital, and whom he was
+educating with the idea of marrying her ultimately. Honora, on the
+other hand, had received the addresses of Mr. Andre, afterwards
+Major Andre, who was shot as a spy during the American War. But want
+of fortune caused the parents on both sides to discourage this
+attachment, and it was broken off.
+
+It was in 1771 that Mr. Day, having placed Sabrina at a
+boarding-school, became conscious of Honora's attractions, and began
+to think of marrying her. 'He wrote me one of the most eloquent
+letters I ever read,' says Edgeworth, 'to point out to me the folly
+and meanness of indulging a hopeless passion for any woman, let her
+merit be what it might; declaring at the same time that he "never
+would marry so as to divide himself from his chosen friend. Tell
+me," said he, "have you sufficient strength of mind totally to
+subdue love that cannot be indulged with peace, or honour, or
+virtue?"
+
+'I answered that nothing but trial could make me acquainted with the
+influence which reason might have over my feelings; that I would go
+with my family to Lichfield, where I could be in the company of the
+dangerous object; and that I would faithfully acquaint him with all
+my thoughts and feelings. We went to Lichfield, and stayed there for
+some time with Mr. Day. I saw him continually in company with Honora
+Sneyd. I saw that he was received with approbation, and that he
+looked forward to marrying her at no very distant period. When I saw
+this, I can affirm with truth that I felt pleasure, and even
+exultation. I looked to the happiness of two people for whom I had
+the most perfect esteem, without the intervention of a single
+sentiment or feeling that could make me suspect I should ever repent
+having been instrumental to their union.'
+
+Later on Mr. Day wrote a long letter to Honora, describing his
+scheme of life (which was very peculiar), and his admiration for
+her, and asking whether she could return his affections and be
+willing to lead the secluded life which was his ideal. This letter
+he gave to Edgeworth to deliver. 'I took the packet; my friend
+requested that I would go to the Palace and deliver it myself. I
+went, and I delivered it with real satisfaction to Honora. She
+desired me to come next morning for an answer. ... I gave the answer
+to Mr. Day, and left him to peruse it by himself. When I returned, I
+found him actually in a fever. The letter contained an excellent
+answer to his arguments in favour of the rights of men, and a clear,
+dispassionate view of the rights of women.
+
+'Miss Honora Sneyd would not admit the unqualified control of a
+husband over all her actions. She did not feel that seclusion from
+society was indispensably necessary to preserve female virtue, or to
+secure domestic happiness. Upon terms of reasonable equality she
+supposed that mutual confidence might best subsist. She said that,
+as Mr. Day had decidedly declared his determination to live in
+perfect seclusion from what is usually called the world, it was fit
+she should decidedly declare that she would not change her present
+mode of life, with which she had no reason to be dissatisfied, for
+any dark and untried system that could be proposed to her. . . . One
+restraint, which had acted long and steadily upon my feelings, was
+now removed; my friend was no longer attached to Miss Honora Sneyd.
+My former admiration of her returned with unabated ardour. . . .
+This admiration was unknown to everybody but Mr. Day; ... he
+represented to me the danger, the criminality of such an attachment;
+I knew that there is but one certain method of escaping such dangers
+--flight. I resolved to go abroad.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 3
+
+Mr. Day and Edgeworth went to France, and the latter spent nearly
+two years at Lyons, where his wife joined him. Here he found
+interest and occupation in some engineering works by which the
+course of the Rhone was to be diverted and some land gained to
+enlarge the city, which lies hemmed in between the Rhone and the
+Saone. When the works were nearly completed, an old boatman warned
+Edgeworth 'that a tremendous flood might be expected in ten days
+from the mountains of Savoy. I represented this to the company, and
+proposed to employ more men, and to engage, by increased wages,
+those who were already at work, to continue every day till it was
+dark, but I could not persuade them to a sudden increase of their
+expenditure. . . . At five or six o'clock one morning, I was
+awakened by a prodigious noise on the ramparts under my windows. I
+sprang out of bed, and saw numbers of people rushing towards the
+Rhone. I foreboded the disaster! dressed myself, and hastened to the
+river. . . When I reached the Rhone, I beheld a tremendous sight!
+All the work of several weeks, carried on daily by nearly a hundred
+men, had been swept away. Piles, timber, barrows, tools, and large
+parts of expensive machinery were all carried down the torrent, and
+ thrown in broken pieces upon the banks. The principal part of the
+machinery had been erected upon an island opposite the rampart; here
+there still remained some valuable timber and engines, which might,
+probably, be saved by immediate exertion. The old boatman, whom I
+have mentioned before, was at the water-side; I asked him to row me
+over to the island, that I might give orders how to preserve what
+remained belonging to the company. My old friend, the boatman,
+represented to me, with great kindness, the imminent danger to which
+I should expose myself. "Sir," he added, "the best swimmer in Lyons,
+unless he were one of the Rhone-men, could not save himself if the
+boat overset, and you cannot swim at all."
+
+'"Very true," I replied, "but the boat will not overset; and both my
+duty and my honour require that I should run every hazard for those
+who have put so much trust in me." My old boatman took me over
+safely, and left me on the island; but in returning by himself, the
+poor fellow's little boat was caught by a wave, and it skimmed to
+the bottom like a slate or an oyster-shell that is thrown obliquely
+into the water. A general exclamation was uttered from the shore;
+but, in a few minutes, the boatman was seen sitting upon a row of
+piles in the middle of the river, wringing his long hair with great
+composure.
+
+'I have mentioned this boatman repeatedly as an old man, and such
+he was to all appearance; his hair was grey, his face wrinkled, his
+back bent, and all his limbs and features had the appearance of
+those of a man of sixty, yet his real age was but twenty-seven
+years. He told me that he was the oldest boatman on the Rhone; that
+his younger brothers had been worn out before they were twenty-five
+years old.'
+
+The French society at Lyons included many agreeable people; but
+Edgeworth singles out from among them, as his special friend, the
+Marquis de la Poype, who understood English, and was well acquainted
+with English literature. He pressed Edgeworth to pay him a visit at
+his Chateau in Dauphiny, and the latter adds: 'I promised to pass
+with him some of the Christmas holidays. An English gentleman went
+with me. We arrived in the evening at a very antique building,
+surrounded by a moat, and with gardens laid out in the style which
+was common in England in the beginning of the last century. These
+were enclosed by high walls, intersected by canals, and cut into
+parterres by sandy walks. We were ushered into a good drawing-room,
+the walls of which were furnished with ancient tapestry. When dinner
+was served, we crossed a large and lofty hall, that was hung round
+with armour, and with the spoils of the chase; we passed into a
+moderate-sized eating-room, in which there was no visible fireplace,
+but which was sufficiently heated by invisible stoves. The want of
+the cheerful light of a fire cast a gloom over our repast, and the
+howling of the wind did not contribute to lessen this dismal effect.
+But the dinner was good, and the wine, which was produced from the
+vineyard close to the house, was excellent. Madame de la Poype, and
+two or three of her friends, who were on a visit at her house,
+conversed agreeably, and all feeling of winter and seclusion was
+forgotten.
+
+'At night, when I was shown into my chamber, the footman asked if I
+chose to have my bed warmed. I inquired whether it was well aired;
+he assured me, with a tone of integrity, that I had nothing to fear,
+for "that it had not been slept in for half a year." The French are
+not afraid of damp beds, but they have a great dread of catching
+some infectious disease from sleeping in any bed in which a stranger
+may have recently lain.
+
+'My bedchamber at this chateau was hung with tapestry, and as the
+footman assured me of the safety of my bed, he drew aside a piece of
+the tapestry, which discovered a small recess in the wall that held
+a grabat, in which my servant was invited to repose. My servant was
+an Englishman, whose indignation nothing but want of words to
+express it could have concealed; he deplored my unhappy lot; as for
+himself, he declared, with a look of horror, that nothing could
+induce him to go into such a pigeon-hole. I went to visit the
+accommodations of my companion, Mr. Rosenhagen. I found him in a
+spacious apartment hung all round with tapestry, so that there was
+no appearance of any windows. I was far from being indifferent to
+the comfort of a good dry bed; but poor Mr. Rosenhagen, besides
+being delicate, was hypochondriac. With one of the most rueful
+countenances I ever beheld, he informed me that he must certainly
+die of cold. His teeth chattered whilst he pointed to the tapestry
+at one end of the room, which waved to and fro with the wind; and,
+looking behind it, I found a large, stone casement window without a
+single pane of glass, or shutters of any kind. He determined not to
+take off his clothes; but I, gaining courage from despair,
+undressed, went to bed, and never slept better in my life, or ever
+awakened in better health or spirits than at ten o'clock the next
+morning.
+
+'After breakfast the Marquis took us to visit the Grotto de la
+Baume, which was at the distance of not more than two leagues from
+his house. We were most hospitably received at the house of an old
+officer, who was Seigneur of the place. His hall was more amply
+furnished with implements of the chase and spoils of the field than
+any which I have ever seen, or ever heard described. There were nets
+of such dimensions, and of such strength, as were quite new to me;
+bows, cross-bows, of prodigious power; guns of a length and weight
+that could not be wielded by the strength of modern arms; some with
+old matchlocks, and with rests to be stuck into the ground, and
+others with wheel-locks; besides modern fire-arms of all
+descriptions; horns of deer, and tusks of wild boars, were placed in
+compartments in such numbers, that every part of the walls was
+covered either with arms or trophies.
+
+'The master of the mansion, in bulk, dress, and general appearance,
+was suited to the style of life which might be expected from what we
+had seen at our entrance. He was above six feet high, strong, and
+robust, though upwards of sixty years of age; he wore a leather
+jerkin, and instead of having his hair powdered, and tied in a long
+queue, according to the fashion of the day, he wore his own short
+grey locks; his address was plain, frank, and hearty, but by no
+means coarse or vulgar. He was of an ancient family, but of a
+moderate fortune.' Here Edgeworth adds a long description of the
+grotto and its stalactites. They returned to dine with the old
+officer at his castle.
+
+'Our dinner was in its arrangement totally unlike anything I had
+seen in France, or anywhere else. It consisted of a monstrous, but
+excellent, wild boar ham; this, and a large savoury pie of different
+sorts of game, were the principal dishes; which, with some common
+vegetables, amply satisfied our hunger. The blunt hospitality of
+this rural baron was totally different from that which is to be met
+with in remote parts of the country of England. It was more the
+open-heartedness of a soldier than the roughness of a squire.'
+
+During the winter of 1772 Edgeworth was busy making plans for
+flour-mills to be erected on a piece of land gained from the river.
+But his stay in Lyons was cut short as the news reached him in March
+1773 that Mrs. Edgeworth, who had returned to England for her
+confinement, had died after giving birth to a daughter. He travelled
+home with his son through Burgundy and Paris, and on reaching
+England arranged to meet Mr. Day at Woodstock. His friend greeted
+him with the words,' Have you heard anything of Honora Sneyd ?'
+
+Mr. Edgeworth continues: 'I assured him that I had heard nothing but
+what he had told me when he was in France; that she had some disease
+in her eyes, and that it was feared she would lose her sight.' I
+added that I was resolved to offer her my hand, even if she had
+undergone such a dreadful privation.
+
+'"My dear friend," said he, "while virtue and honour forbade you to
+think of her, I did everything in my power to separate you; but now
+that you are both at liberty, I have used the utmost expedition to
+reach you on your arrival in England, that I might be the first to
+tell you that Honora is in perfect health and beauty, improved in
+person and in mind; and, though surrounded by lovers, still her own
+mistress."
+
+'At this moment I enjoyed the invaluable reward of my steady
+adherence to the resolution which I had formed on leaving England,
+never to keep up the slightest intercourse with her by letter,
+message, or inquiry. I enjoyed also the proof my friend gave me of
+his generous affection. Mr. Day had now come several hundred miles
+for the sole purpose of telling me of the fair prospects before me.
+. . .
+
+'A new era in my life was now beginning. ... I went directly to
+Lichfield, to Dr. Darwin's. The doctor was absent, but his sister,
+an elderly maiden lady, who then kept house for him, received me
+kindly.
+
+'"You will excuse me," said the good lady, "for not making tea for
+you this evening, as I am engaged to the Miss Sneyds; but perhaps
+you will accompany me, as I am sure you will be welcome."
+
+'It was summer--We found the drawing-room at Mr. Sneyd's filled by
+all my former acquaintances and friends, who had, without concert
+among themselves, assembled as if to witness the meeting of two
+persons, whose sentiments could scarcely be known even to the
+parties themselves.
+
+'I have been told that the last person whom I addressed or saw, when
+I came into the room, was Honora Sneyd. This I do not remember; but
+I am perfectly sure that, when I did see her, she appeared to me
+most lovely, even more lovely than when we parted. What her
+sentiments might be it was impossible to divine.
+
+'My addresses were, after some time, permitted and approved; and,
+with the consent of her father, Miss Honora Sneyd and I were married
+(1773), by special licence, in the ladies' choir, in the Cathedral
+at Lichfield. Immediately after the marriage ceremony we left
+Lichfield, and went to Ireland.'
+
+Now followed what was perhaps the happiest period of Mr. Edgeworth's
+life, but it was uneventful. The young couple saw little society
+while living at Edgeworth Town; and after a three years' residence
+in Ireland, they visited England to rub off the rust of isolation in
+contact with their intellectual friends. He says: 'We certainly
+found a considerable change for the better as to comfort,
+convenience, and conversation among our English acquaintance. So
+much so, that we were induced to remain in England. . . . My mind
+was kept up to the current of speculation and discovery in the world
+of science, and continual hints for reflection and invention were
+suggested to me. . . . My attention was about this period turned to
+clockwork, and I invented several pieces of mechanism for measuring
+time. These, with the assistance of a good workman, I executed
+successfully. I then (in 1776) finished a clock on a new
+construction. Its accuracy was tried at the Observatory at Oxford
+. . . and it is now (in 1809) going well at my house in Ireland.'
+
+Edgeworth now enjoyed the pleasure of having an intelligent
+companion, and says: 'My wife had an eager desire for knowledge of
+all sorts, and, perhaps to please me, became an excellent theoretic
+mechanic. Mechanical amusements occupied my mornings, and I
+dedicated my evenings to the best books upon various subjects. I
+strenuously endeavoured to improve my own understanding, and to
+communicate whatever I knew to my wife. Indeed, while we read and
+conversed together during the long winter evenings, the clearness of
+her judgment assisted me in every pursuit of literature in which I
+was engaged; as her understanding had arrived at maturity before she
+had acquired any strong prejudices on historical subjects, she
+derived uncommon advantage from books.
+
+'We had frequent visitors from town; and as our acquaintance were
+people of literature and science, conversation with them exercised
+and arranged her thoughts upon whatever subject they were employed.
+Nor did we neglect the education of our children: Honora had under
+her care, at this time, two children of her own, and three of mine
+by my former marriage.'
+
+Edgeworth and his friend Mr. Day were both great admirers of
+Rousseau's Emile and of his scheme of bringing up children to be
+hardy, fearless, and independent. Edgeworth brought up his eldest
+boy after this fashion; but though he succeeded in making him hardy,
+and training him in 'all the virtues of a child bred in the hut of a
+savage, and all the knowledge of things which could well be acquired
+at an early age by a boy bred in civilised society,' yet he adds:
+'He was not disposed to obey; his exertions generally arose from his
+own will; and, though he was what is commonly called good-tempered
+and good-natured, though he generally pleased by his looks,
+demeanour, and conversation, he had too little deference for others,
+and he showed an invincible dislike to control.'
+
+In passing through Paris, Edgeworth and Mr. Day went to see
+Rousseau, who took a good deal of notice of Edgeworth's son; he
+judged him to be a boy of abilities, and he thought from his answers
+that 'history can be advantageously learned by children, if it be
+taught reasonably and not merely by rote.' 'But,' said Rousseau, 'I
+remark in your son a propensity to party prejudice, which will be a
+great blemish in his character.'
+
+'I asked how he could in so short a time form so decided an opinion.
+He told me that, whenever my son saw a handsome horse, or a handsome
+carriage in the street, he always exclaimed, "That is an English
+horse or an English carriage!" And that, even down to a pair of
+shoe-buckles, everything that appeared to be good of its kind was
+always pronounced by him to be English. "his sort of party
+prejudice," said Rousseau, "if suffered to become a ruling motive in
+his mind, will lead to a thousand evils; for not only will his own
+country, his own village or club, or even a knot of his private
+acquaintance, be the object of his exclusive admiration; but he will
+be governed by his companions, whatever they may be, and they will
+become the arbiters of destiny."'
+
+It was while at Lyons that Edgeworth realised thaf Rousseau's system
+of education was not altogether satisfactory. He says: 'I had begun
+his education upon the mistaken principles of Rousseau; and I had
+pursued them with as much steadiness, and, so far as they could be
+advantageous, with as much success as I could desire. Whatever
+regarded the health, strength, and agility of my son had amply
+justified the system of my master; but I found myself entangled in
+difficulties with regard to my child's mind and temper. He was
+generous, brave, good-natured, and what is commonly called
+goodtempered; but he was scarcely to be controlled. It was difficult
+to urge him to anything that did not suit his fancy, and more
+difficult to restrain him from what he wished to follow. In short,
+he was self-willed, from a spirit of independence, which had been
+inculcated by his early education, and which he cherished the more
+from the inexperience of his own powers.
+
+'I must here acknowledge, with deep regret, not only the error of a
+theory, which I had adopted at a very early age, when older and
+wiser persons than myself had been dazzled by the eloquence of
+Rousseau; but I must also reproach myself with not having, after my
+arrival in France, paid as much attention to my boy as I had done
+in England, or as much as was necessary to prevent the formation of
+those habits, which could never afterwards be eradicated.'
+
+Edgeworth, finding that the tutor he had brought from England was
+not able to control his son, resolved to send young Richard to
+school at Lyons. The Jesuits had lately been dismissed, but the
+Peres de L'Oratoire had taken charge of their Seminary, and to them
+Edgeworth resolved to intrust his son, having been first assured by
+the Superior that he would not attempt to convert the boy, and would
+forbid the under-masters to do so. A certain Pere Jerome, however,
+desired to make the boy a good Catholic; and the Superior frankly
+told Edgeworth the circumstance, saying, 'One day he took your boy
+between his knees, and began from the beginning of things to teach
+him what he ought to believe. "My little man," said he, "did you
+ever hear of God?"
+
+'"Yes."
+
+'"You know that, before He made the world, His Spirit brooded over
+the vast deep, which was a great sea without shores, and without
+bottom. Then He made this world out of earth."
+
+'"Where did He find the earth ?" asked the boy.
+
+'"At the bottom of the sea," replied Father Jerome.
+
+'"But," said the boy, "you told me just now that the sea had no bottom!"'
+
+The Superior of the College des Oratoires concluded, 'You may, sir,
+I think, be secure that your son, when capable of making such a
+reply, is in no great danger of becoming a Catholic from the
+lectures of such profound teachers as these.'
+
+This son, having no turn for scholarship, ultimately went to sea, a
+life which his hardihood and fearlessness of danger peculiarly
+fitted him for. Some years afterwards he married an American lady
+and settled in South Carolina.
+
+It was, perhaps, a failure in this first experiment in education
+which made Edgeworth devote so much care to the training of his
+younger children.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 4
+
+After six years of happiness Honora's health gave way, and
+consumption set in; some months of anxious nursing followed
+before  she died, to the great grief of her husband. She left
+several children, and her dying wish was that he should marry
+her sister Elizabeth.
+
+Mr. Edgeworth was, at first, benumbed by grief, and unable to
+take an interest in his former pursuits; but in the society of
+his wife's family he gradually recovered cheerfulness, and
+began to consider his wife's dying advice to marry her sister.
+He remarks: 'Nothing is more erroneous than the common
+belief, that a man who has lived in the greatest happiness
+with one wife will be the most averse to take another. On the
+contrary, the loss of happiness, which he feels when he loses
+her, necessarily urges him to endeavour to be again placed in
+a situation which has constituted his former felicity.
+
+'I felt that Honora had judged wisely, and from a thorough
+knowledge of my character, when she had advised me to marry
+again.'
+
+After these observations it is not surprising to hear that
+Edgeworth became engaged to Elizabeth Sneyd in the autumn of
+1780. They were staying for the marriage at Brereton Hall in
+Cheshire, and their banns were published in the parish church;
+but on the very morning appointed for the marriage, the
+clergyman received a letter which roused so many scruples in
+his mind as to make Edgeworth think it cruel to press him to
+perform the ceremony. The Rector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, was
+less scrupulous, and they were married there on Christmas Day
+1780.
+
+The following summer Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth rented Davenport
+Hall in Cheshire, where they lived a quiet retired life,
+spending a good deal of their time with their friends Sir
+Charles and Lady Holte at Brereton. Edgeworth amused himself
+by making a clock for the steeple at Brereton, and a chronometer of
+a singular construction, which, he says,'I intended to present to
+the King ... to add to His Majesty's collection of uncommon clocks
+and watches which I had seen at St. James's.'
+
+The autobiography from which I have been quoting was begun by
+Edgeworth when he was about sixty-three, and it breaks off
+abruptly at the date of 1781. The illness which interrupted
+his task did not, however, prove fatal, for he lived nearly
+ten years afterwards.
+
+His daughter Maria takes up the narrative, and in her
+introduction she says, 'In continuing these Memoirs, I shall
+endeavour to follow the example that my father has set me of
+simplicity and of truth.'
+
+The following memorandum was found in Edgeworth's handwriting:
+'In the year 1782 I returned to Ireland, with a firm determination
+to dedicate the remainder of my life to the improvement of my
+estate, and to the education of my children; and farther, with the
+sincere hope of contributing to the amelioration of the inhabitants
+of the country from which I drew my subsistence.'
+
+When in the spring of 1768 Edgeworth visited Ireland with his
+friend Mr. Day, the latter was surprised and disgusted by the
+state of Dublin and of the country in general. He found 'the
+streets of Dublin were wretchedly paved, and more dirty than
+can be easily imagined.' Edgeworth adds: 'As we passed through
+the country, the hovels in which the poor were lodged, which
+were then far more wretched than they are at present, or than
+they have been for the last twenty years, the black tracts of
+bog, and the unusual smell of the turf fuel, were to him
+never-ceasing topics of reproach and lamentation. Mr. Day's
+deep-seated prejudice in favour of savage life was somewhat
+shaken by this view of want and misery, which philosophers of
+a certain class in London and Paris chose at that time to
+dignify by the name of simplicity. The modes of living in the
+houses of the gentry were much the same in Ireland as in
+England. This surprised my friend. He observed, that if there
+was any difference, it was that people of similar fortune did
+not restrain themselves equally in both countries to the same
+prudent economy; but that every gentleman in Ireland, of two
+or three thousand pounds a year, lived in a certain degree of
+luxury and show that would be thought presumptuous in persons
+of the same fortune in England.
+
+'On our journey to my father's house, I had occasion to vote
+at a contested election in one of the counties through which
+we passed. Here a scene of noise, riot, confusion, and
+drunkenness was exhibited, not superior indeed in depravity
+and folly, but of a character or manner so different from what
+my friend had even seen in his own country, that he fell into
+a profound melancholy.'
+
+It was to remedy this wretched state of things in Ireland that
+Edgeworth resolved in 1782 to devote his energies.
+
+It is curious to read his account of the relations between landlord
+and tenant in Ireland at this date. He soon learned that firmness
+was required in his dealings with his tenants as well as kindness.
+'He omitted a variety of old feudal remains of fines and penalties;
+but there was one clause, which he continued in every lease with a
+penalty attached to it, called an alienation fine--a fine of so much
+an acre upon the tenant's reletting any part of the devised land.'
+
+He wisely resolved to receive his rents himself, and to avoid the
+intervention of any agent or driver ('a person who drives and
+impounds cattle for rent or arrears'). 'In every case where the
+tenant had improved the land, or even where he had been industrious,
+though unsuccessful, his claim to preference over every new
+proposer, his tenanfs right, as it is called, was admitted. But the
+mere plea of "I have lived under your Honour, or your Honour's
+father or grandfather" or "I have been on your Honour's estate so
+many years" he disregarded. Farms, originally sufficient for the
+comfortable maintenance of a man, his wife, and family, had in many
+cases been subdivided from generation to generation, the father
+giving a bit of the land to each son to settle him. It was an
+absolute impossibility that the land should ever be improved if let
+in these miserable lots. Nor was it necessary that each son should
+hold land, or advantageous that each should live on his "little
+potato garden" without further exertion of mind or body.
+
+'There was a continual struggle between landlord and tenant upon the
+question of long and short leases. . . . The offer of immediate high
+rent, or of fines to be paid down directly, tempted the landlord's
+extravagance, or supplied his present necessities, at the expense of
+his future interests. . . . Many have let for ninety-nine years;
+and others, according to a form common in 'Ireland, for three lives,
+renewable for ever, paying a small fine on the insertion of a new
+life at the failure of each. These leases, in course of years, have
+been found extremely disadvantageous to the landlord, the property
+having risen so much in value that the original rent was absurdly
+disproportioned.
+
+'The longest term my father ever gave,' says his daughter Maria,
+'was thirty-one years, with one or sometimes two lives. He usually
+gave one life, reserving to himself the option of adding another
+--the son, perhaps, of the tenant--if he saw that the tenant
+deserved it by his conduct. This sort of power to encourage and
+reward in the hands of a landlord is advantageous in Ireland. It
+acts as a motive for exertion; it keeps up the connection and
+dependence which there ought to be between the different ranks,
+without creating any servile habits, or leaving the improving tenant
+insecure as to the fair reward of his industry.
+
+'Edgeworth's plan was to take not that which, abstractedly viewed,
+is the best possible course, but that which is the best the
+circumstances will altogether allow.
+
+'When the oppressive duty-work in Ireland was no longer claimed, and
+no longer inserted in Irish leases, there arose  a difficulty to
+gentlemen in getting labourers at certain times of  the year, when
+all are anxious to work for themselves; for instance,  at the
+seasons for cutting turf, setting potatoes, and getting home  the
+harvest.
+
+'To provide against this difficulty, landlords adopted a system of
+taking duty-work, in fact, in a new form. They had cottiers
+(cottagers), day-labourers established in cottages, on their estate,
+usually near their own residence. Many of these cabins were the
+poorest habitations that can be imagined; and these were given rent
+free, that is, the rent was to be worked out on whatever days, or on
+whatever occasions, it was called for. The grazing for the cow, the
+patch of land for flax, and the ridge or ridges of potato land were
+also to be paid for in days' labour in the same manner. The
+uncertainty of this tenure at will, that is, at the pleasure of the
+landlord, with the rent in labour and time, variable also at his
+pleasure or convenience, became rather more injurious to the tenant
+than the former fixed mode of sacrificing so many days' duty-work,
+even at the most hazardous seasons of the year.
+
+'My father wished to have entirely avoided this cottager system; but
+he was obliged to adopt a middle course. To his labourers he gave
+comfortable cottages at a low rent, to be held at will from year to
+year; but he paid them wages exactly the same as what they could
+obtain elsewhere. Thus they were partly free and partly bound. They
+worked as free labourers; but they were obliged to work, that they
+might pay their rent. And their houses being better, and other
+advantages greater, than they could obtain elsewhere, they had a
+motive for industry and punctuality; thus their services and their
+attachment were properly secured. . . . My father's indulgence as to
+the time he allowed his tenantry for the payment of their rent was
+unusually great. He left always a year's rent in their hands: this
+was half a year more time than almost any other gentleman in our
+part of the country allowed. . . . He was always very exact in
+requiring that the rents should not, in their payments, pass beyond
+the half-yearly days--the 25th of March and 29th of September. In
+this point they knew his strictness so well that they seldom
+ventured to go into arrear, and never did so with impunity. . . .
+They would have cheated, loved, and despised a more easy landlord,
+and his property would have gone to ruin, without either permanently
+bettering their interests or their morals. He, therefore, took
+especial care that they should be convinced of his strictness in
+punishing as well as of his desire to reward.
+
+'Where the offender was tenant, and the punisher landlord, it rarely
+happened, even if the law reached the delinquent, that public
+opinion sided with public justice. In Ireland it has been, time
+immemorial, common with tenants, who have had advantageous bargains,
+and who have no hopes of getting their leases renewed, to waste the
+ground as much as possible; to break it up towards the end of the
+term; or to overhold, that is, to keep possession of the land,
+refusing to deliver it up.
+
+'A tenant, who held a farm of considerable value, when his lease
+was out, besought my father to permit him to remain on the farm for
+another year, pleading that he had no other place to which he could,
+at that season, it being winter, remove his large family. The
+permission was granted; but at the end of the year, taking advantage
+of this favour, he refused to give up the land. Proceedings at law
+were immediately commenced against him; and it was in this case that
+the first trial in Ireland was brought, on an act for recovering
+double rent from a tenant for holding forcible possession after
+notice to quit.
+
+'This vexatious and unjust practice of tenants against landlords
+had been too common, and had too long been favoured by the party
+spirit of juries; who, being chiefly composed of tenants, had made
+it a common cause, and a principle, if it could in any way be
+avoided, never to give a verdict, as they said, against themselves.
+But in this case the indulgent character of the landlord, combined
+with the ability and eloquence of his advocate, succeeded in moving
+the jury--a verdict was obtained for the landlord. The double rent
+was paid; and the fraudulent tenant was obliged to quit the country
+unpitied. Real good was done by this example.'
+
+Edgeworth objected strongly to a practice common among the gentry,
+'to protect their tenants when they got into any difficulties by
+disobeying the laws. Smuggling and illicit distilling seemed to be
+privileged cases, where, the justice and expediency of the spirit of
+the law being doubtful, escaping from the letter of it appeared but
+a trial of ingenuity or luck. In cases that admitted of less doubt,
+in the frequent breach of the peace from quarrels at fairs, rescuing
+of cattle drivers for rent, or in other more serious outrages,
+tenants still looked to their landlord for protection; and hoped,
+even to the last, that his Honour's or his Lordship's interest would
+get the fine taken off, the term of imprisonment shortened, or the
+condemned criminal snatched from execution. He [Edgeworth] never
+would, on any occasion, or for the persons he was known to like
+best, interfere to protect, as it is called, that is, to screen, or
+to obtain pardon for any one of his tenants or dependants, if they
+had really infringed the laws, or had deserved punishment. . . . He
+set an example of being scrupulous to the most exact degree as a
+grand juror, both as to the money required for roads or for any
+public works, and as to the manner in which it was laid out.
+
+'To his character as a good landlord was soon added that he was a
+real gentleman. This phrase, pronounced with well-known emphasis,
+comprises a great deal in the opinion of the lower Irish. They seem
+to have an instinct for the real gentleman, whom they distinguish,
+if not at first sight, infallibly at first hearing, from every
+pretender to the character. They observe that the real gentleman
+bears himself most kindly, is always the most civil in speech, and
+ever seems the most tender of the poor. . . .
+
+'They soon began to rely upon his justice as a magistrate. This is
+a point where, their interest being nearly concerned, they are
+wonderfully quick and clearsighted; they soon discovered that Mr.
+Edgeworth leaned neither to Protestant nor Catholic, to Presbyterian
+nor Methodist; that he was not the favourer nor partial protector
+of his own or any other man's followers. They found that the law of
+the land was not in his hands an instrument of oppression, or
+pretence for partiality. They discerned that he did even justice;
+neither inclining to the people, for the sake of popularity; nor to
+the aristocracy, for the sake of power. This was a thing so unusual,
+that they could at first hardly believe that it was really what they
+saw.
+
+'Soon after his return to Ireland he set about improving a
+considerable tract of land, reletting it at an advanced rent, which
+gave the actual monied measure of his skill and success.' He also
+wrote a paper on the draining and planting of bogs, in which he
+gives minute directions for carrying out the work, for he was no
+mere theorist, but experimented on his own property; and he was not
+ashamed to own when he had made a mistake, but was constantly
+learning from experience.
+
+He had for a while to turn from peaceful occupations and take his
+share in patriotic efforts for parliamentary reform; this reform
+was pressed on the parliament sitting in Dublin by a delegation from
+a convention of the Irish volunteers. They were raised in 1778
+during the American War, when England had not enough troops for the
+defence of Ireland. The principal Irish nobility and gentry enrolled
+themselves, and the force at length increased, till it numbered
+50,000 men, under the command of officers of their own choosing. The
+Irish patriots now felt their power, and used it with prudence and
+energy. They obtained the repeal of many noxious laws--one in
+particular was a penal statute passed in the reign of William III.
+against the Catholics ordaining forfeiture of inheritance against
+those Catholics who had been educated abroad.' At the pleasure of
+any informer, it confiscated their estates to the next Protestant
+heir; that statute further deprived Papists of the power of
+obtaining any legal property by purchase; and, simply for
+officiating in the service of his religion, any Catholic priest was
+liable to be imprisoned for life. Some of these penalties had fallen
+into disuse; but, as Mr. Dunning stated to the English House of
+Commons, "many respectable Catholics still lived in fear of them,
+and some actually paid contributions to persons who, on the strength
+of this act, threatened them with prosecutions." Lord Shelburne
+stated in the House of Lords "that even the most odious part of this
+statute had been recently acted upon in the case of one Moloury, an
+Irish priest, who had been informed against, apprehended, convicted,
+and committed to prison, by means of the lowest and most despicable
+of mankind, a common informing constable. The Privy Council used
+efforts in behalf of the prisoner; but, in consequence of the
+written law, the King himself could not give a pardon, and the
+prisoner must have died in jail if Lord Shelburne and his colleagues
+had not released him at their own risk."'
+
+This law was repealed by the English House of Commons without a
+negative, and only one Bishop opposed its repeal in the House of
+Lords.
+
+Having won this victory, the Irish patriots continued their
+campaign, and now sought to win general emancipation from the
+legislative and commercial restrictions of England. It was in 1781
+that the first convention of volunteer delegates met, and some
+months after Mr. Grattan moved an address to the throne asserting
+the legislative independence of Ireland. 'The address passed; the
+repeal of a certain act, empowering England to legislate for
+Ireland, followed; and the legislative independence of this country
+was acknowledged.'
+
+Edgeworth sympathised with the enthusiasm which prevailed throughout
+Ireland at this time; but he was shrewd enough to see that what was
+further required for the real benefit of the country was 'an
+effectual reformation of the Irish House of Commons.'
+
+The counties were insufficiently represented, and the boroughs were
+venal. The Irish parliament was, in fact, an Oligarchy, and
+Edgeworth realised this danger. He, however, wished the reform to be
+carried on 'through the intervention of parliament,' while the more
+extreme party insisted on sending delegates from the volunteers to a
+convention in Dublin. This military convention 'met at the Royal
+Exchange in Dublin, November the 9th, 1783--Parliament was then
+sitting. An armed convention assembled in the capital, and sitting
+at the same time with the Houses of Lords and Commons, deliberating
+on a legislative question, was a new and unprecedented spectacle.
+
+'In this convention, as in all public assemblies, there was a
+violent and a moderate party. Lord Charlemont, the president of the
+assembly, was at the head of the moderate men. Though not convinced
+of the strict legality of the meeting, he thought a reform in
+parliament so important and desirable an object, that to the
+probability or chance of obtaining this great advantage it was the
+wisdom of a true patriot to sacrifice punctilio, and to hazard all,
+but, what he was too wise and good to endanger, the peace of the
+country. Lord Charlemont accepted the office of president, specially
+with the hope that he and his friends might be able to influence the
+convention in favour of proceedings at once temperate and firm. The
+very sincerity of his desire to attain a reform rendered him
+clear-sighted as to the means to be pursued; and while he wished
+that the people should be allowed every degree of liberty consistent
+with safety, no man was less inclined to democracy, or could feel
+more horror at the idea of involving his country in a state of civil
+anarchy.
+
+'The Bishop of Deny (Lord Bristol), wishing well to Ireland, but of
+a far less judicious character than Lord Charlemont, was at the head
+of the opposite party. . . . Lord Charlemont, foreseeing the danger
+of disagreement between the parliament and convention, if at this
+time any communication were opened between them, earnestly
+deprecated the attempts. It was his desire that the convention,
+after declaring their opinion in favour of a parliamentary reform,
+should adjourn without adopting a specific plan; and that they
+should refer it to future meetings of each county, to send to
+parliament, in the regular constitutional manner, their petitions
+and addresses. Mr. Flood, however, whose abilities and eloquence had
+predominant influence over the convention, and who wished to
+distinguish himself in parliament as the proposer of reform,
+prevailed upon the convention, on one of the last nights of their
+meeting, to send him, accompanied by other members of parliament
+from among the volunteer delegates, directly to the House of
+Commons then sitting. There he was to make a motion on the question of
+parliamentary reform, introducing to the House his specific plan
+from the convention. The appearance of Mr. Flood, and of the
+delegates by whom he was accompanied, in their volunteer uniforms,
+in the Irish House of Commons, excited an extraordinary sensation.
+Those who were present, and who have given an account of the scene
+that ensued, describe it as violent and tumultuous in the
+extreme. On both sides the passions were worked up to a dangerous
+height. The debate lasted all night. "The tempest, for, towards
+morning, debate there was none, at last ceased." The question was
+put, and Mr. Flood's motion for reform in parliament was negatived
+by a very large majority. The House of Commons then entered into
+resolutions declaratory of their fixed determination to maintain
+their just rights and privileges against any encroachments whatever,
+adding that it was at that time indispensably necessary to make such
+a declaration. Further, an address was moved, intended to be made
+the joint address of Lords and Commons to the throne, expressing
+their satisfaction with His Majesty's Government, and their
+resolution to support that government, and the constitution, with
+their lives and fortunes. The address was carried up to the Lords,
+and immediately agreed to. This was done with the celerity of
+passion on all sides.
+
+'Meantime an armed convention continued sitting the whole night,
+waiting for the return of their delegates from the House of Commons,
+and impatient to learn the fate of Mr. Flood's motion. One step
+more, and irreparable, fatal imprudence might have been committed.
+Lord Charlemont, the president of the convention, felt the danger;
+and it required all the influence of his character, all the
+assistance of the friends of moderation, to prevail upon the
+assembly to dissolve, without waiting longer to hear the report from
+their delegates in the House of Commons. The convention had, in
+fact, nothing more to do, or nothing that they could attempt without
+peril; but it was difficult to persuade the assembly to dissolve the
+meeting, and to return quietly to their respective counties and
+homes. This point, however, was fortunately accomplished, and early
+in the morning the meeting terminated.'
+
+Miss Edgeworth adds: 'I have heard my father say that he ever
+afterwards rejoiced in the share he had in preserving one of the
+chiefs of this volunteer convention from a desperate resolution, and
+in determining the assembly to a temperate termination.'
+
+Writing of this convention many years afterwards, Edgeworth says:
+'There never was any assembly in the British empire more in earnest
+in the business on which they were convened, or less influenced by
+courtly interference or cabal. But the object was in itself unattainable.
+
+'The idea of admitting Roman Catholics to the right of voting for
+representatives was not urged even by the most liberal and most
+enlightened members of the convention; and the number,  and wealth,
+and knowledge of Protestant voters in Ireland could not decently be
+considered as sufficient to elect an adequate and fair
+representation of the people.'
+
+The reforms were never carried, though fresh efforts, equally
+unsuccessful, were made when Pitt became minister.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 5
+
+It was in 1786 that Edgeworth had a severe fall from a scaffolding,
+the result of which was, as his friend Dr Darwin prophesied, an
+attack of jaundice. When the workmen brought him home, he tried to
+reassure his family by telling them the story of a French Marquis,'
+who fell from a balcony at Versailles, and who, as it was court
+politeness that nothing unfortunate should ever be mentioned in the
+King's presence, replied to His Majesty's inquiry if he wasn't hurt
+by his fall, "Tout au contraire, Sire"' To all our inquiries whether
+he was hurt, my father replied, 'Tout au contraire, mes aimes.'
+
+His friendship for Mr. Day, which had existed for many years, was
+now interrupted by Mr. Day's sudden death from a fall from his horse
+in 1789. Edgeworth thought of writing his life, as he considered him
+to have been a man of such original and noble character as to
+deserve a public eulogium. He goes on to say: 'To preserve a
+portrait to posterity, it must either be the likeness of some
+celebrated individual, or it must represent a face which,
+independently of peculiar associations, corresponds with the
+universal ideas of beauty. So the pen of the biographer should
+portray only those who by their public have interested us in their
+private characters; or who, in a superior degree, have possessed the
+virtues and mental endowments which claim the general love and
+admiration of mankind.' This biography, however, was never finished,
+as Edgeworth found another friend, Mr. Keir, had undertaken it; he
+therefore sent the materials to him, but some of them are
+incorporated in the Memoirs, Sabrina, whom Mr. Day had educated, and
+intended to marry (though he gave up the idea when he doubted her
+docility and power of adaptiveness to his strange theories of life),
+ultimately married his friend, Mr. Bicknel, while Mr. Day married
+Miss Milne, a clever and accomplished lady, who had sufficient tact
+to fall in with his wishes, and a wifely devotion which made up to
+her for their seclusion from general society. In her widowhood she
+found Mr. Edgeworth a most faithful and helpful friend; he offered
+to come over and aid in the search which was made at Mr. Day's death
+for a large sum of money which was not forthcoming, and which it was
+thought he might, after his eccentric fashion, have concealed; as he
+took this measure when, 'at the time of the American War, he had
+apprehended that there would have been a national bankruptcy, and
+under this dread he had sold out of the Stocks. ... A very
+considerable sum had been buried under the floor of the study in his
+mother's house. This he afterwards took up, and placed again in the
+public funds at the return of peace.'
+
+Mr. Day had, before his marriage, promised to leave his library to
+his friend Edgeworth, but no mention was made of this in the will;
+he left almost everything to Mrs. Day. She, however, hearing of Mr.
+Day's promise, offered his library to his friend; but Edgeworth, in
+the same generous spirit, refused it, and Mrs. Day then wrote to him
+as follows:
+
+'MY DEAR MR. EDGEWORTH,--I will ingenuously own, that of all the
+bequests Mr. Day could have made, the leaving his whole library from
+me would have mortified me the most--indeed, more than if he had
+disposed of all his other property, and left me only that. My ideas
+of him are so much associated with his books, that to part with them
+would be, as it were, breaking some of the last ties which still
+connect me with so beloved an object. The being in the midst of
+books he has been accustomed to read, and which contain his marks
+and notes, will still give him a sort of existence with me.
+Unintelligible as such fond chimeras may appear to many people, I am
+persuaded they are not so to you.'
+
+Maria Edgeworth adds: 'Generous people understand each other. Mrs
+Day, of a noble disposition herself, always distinguished in my
+father the same generosity of disposition. She had, she said, ever
+considered him as "the most purely disinterested and proudly
+independent of Mr. Day's friends."'
+
+Edgeworth was a devoted father; and the loss of his daughter Honora,
+a gifted girl of fifteen, was a great blow to him. She was the child
+of his beloved wife Honora, and he had taken great pleasure in
+guiding her studies and watching the development of her character.
+Ever since he had settled in his Irish home one of Edgeworth's chief
+interests had been the education of his large family; Maria records
+with pride that at the age of seven Honora was able to answer the
+following questions:
+
+'If a line move its own length through the air so as to produce a
+surface, what figure will it describe?'
+
+She answered, 'A square!
+
+She was then asked:
+
+'If that square be moved downwards or upwards in the air the space
+of the length of one of its own sides, what figure will it, at the
+end of its motion, have described in the air?'
+
+After a few minutes' silence she answered, 'A cube.'
+
+Edgeworth was careful to train not only the reasoning powers, but
+also the imaginative faculty of his children; he delighted in good
+poetry and fiction, and read aloud well, and his daughter writes:
+'From the Arabian Tales to Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, and the Greek
+tragedians, all were associated in the minds of his children with
+the delight of hearing passages from them first read by their
+father.'
+
+He was an enthusiastic admirer of the ancient classics--Homer and
+the Greek tragedians in particular. From the best translations of
+the ancient tragedies he selected for reading aloud the most
+striking passages, and Pope's 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey' he read
+several times to his family, in certain portions every day.
+
+In his grief for his child, Edgeworth turned to his earliest friend,
+his sister, the favourite companion of his childhood, and from her
+he received all the consolation that affectionate sympathy could
+give; but, as he said, 'for real grief there is no sudden cure; all
+human resource is in time and occupation.'
+
+It was about this time that Darwin published the now forgotten poem,
+'The Botanic Garden,' and Edgeworth wrote to his friend expressing
+his admiration for it; but Maria adds: 'With as much sincerity as he
+gave praise, my father blamed and opposed whatever he thought was
+faulty in his friend's poem. Dr. Darwin had formed a false theory,
+that poetry is painting to the eye; this led him to confine his
+attention to the language of description, or to the representation
+of that which would produce good effect in picture. To this one
+mistaken opinion he sacrificed the more lasting and more extensive
+fame, which he might have ensured by exercising the powers he
+possessed of rousing the passions and pleasing the imagination.
+
+'When my father found that it was in vain to combat a favourite
+false principle, he endeavoured to find a subject which should at
+once suit his friend's theory and his genius. He urged him to write
+a "Cabinet of Gems." The ancient gems would have afforded a subject
+eminently suited to his descriptive powers. . . . The description of
+Medea, and of some of the labours of Hercules, etc., which he has
+introduced into his "Botanic Garden," show how admirably he would
+have succeeded had he pursued this plan; and I cannot help
+regretting that the suggestions of his friend could not prevail upon
+him to quit for nobler objects his vegetable loves.'
+
+Edgeworth's prediction has not yet come true, nor does it seem
+likely that it ever will, 'that in future times some critic will
+arise, who shall re-discover the "Botanic Garden,"' and build his
+fame upon this discovery.
+
+Dr. Darwin did not follow his friend's advice, to choose a better
+subject for his next poem; nor did Edgeworth do what his friend
+wished, which was to publish a decade of inventions with neat maps.
+
+In the education of his children, he had already learned the value
+of the observation of children's ways and mental states. Having
+found that Rousseau's system was imperfect, he was groping after
+some better method. His daughter writes: 'Long before he ever
+thought of writing or publishing, he had kept a register of
+observations and facts relative to his children. This he began in
+the year 1798. He and Mrs. Honora Edgeworth kept notes of every
+circumstance which occurred worth recording. Afterwards Mrs
+Elizabeth Edgeworth and he continued the same practice; and in
+consequence of his earnest exhortations, I began in 1791 or 1792 to
+note down anecdotes of the children whom he was then educating.
+Besides these, I often wrote for my own amusement and instruction
+some of his conversation-lessons, as we may call them, with his
+questions and explanations, and the answers of the children. . . .
+To all who ever reflected upon education it must have occurred that
+facts and experiments were wanting in this department of knowledge,
+while assertions and theories abounded. I claim for my father the
+merit of having been the first to recommend, both by example and
+precept, what Bacon would call the experimental method in education.
+If I were obliged to rest on any single point my father's credit as
+a lover of truth, and his utility as a philanthropist and as a
+philosophical writer, it should be on his having made this first
+record of experiments in education. ... In noting anecdotes of
+children, the greatest care must be taken that the pupils should not
+know that any such register is kept. Want of care in this particular
+would totally defeat the object in view, and would lead to many and
+irremediable bad consequences, and would make the children affected
+and false, or would create a degree of embarrassment and constraint
+which must prevent the natural action of the understanding or the
+feelings. ... In the registry of such observations, considered as
+contributing to a history of the human mind, nothing should be
+neglected as trivial. The circumstances which may seem most trifling
+to vulgar observers may be most valuable to the philosopher; they
+may throw light, for example, on the manner in which ideas and
+language are formed and generalised.'
+
+Edgeworth and his daughter Maria brought out their joint work,
+Practical Education, in 1798. Maria adds: 'So commenced that
+literary partnership, which for so many years was the pride and joy
+of my life.' We who were born in the first half of the nineteenth
+century can remember the delight of reading about Frank and
+Rosamund, and Harry and Lucy, and feel a debt of gratitude to the
+writers who gave us so many pleasant hours.
+
+Edgeworth's patience in teaching was surprising, as Maria remarks,
+in a man of his vivacity. 'He would sit quietly while a child was
+thinking of the answer to a question without interrupting, or
+suffering it to be interrupted, and would let the pupil touch and
+quit the point repeatedly; and without a leading observation or
+exclamation, he would wait till the steps of reasoning and invention
+were gone through, and were converted into certainties. . . . The
+tranquillising effect of this patience was of great advantage. The
+pupil's mind became secure, not only of the point in question, but
+steady in the confidence of its future powers. It was his principle
+to excite the attention fully and strongly for a short time, and
+never to go to the point of fatigue. ... In the education of the
+heart, his warmth of approbation and strength of indignation had
+powerful and salutary influence in touching and developing the
+affections. The scorn in his countenance when he heard of any base
+conduct; the pleasure that lighted up his eyes when he heard of any
+generous action; the eloquence of his language, and vehemence of his
+emphasis, commanded the sympathy of all who could see, hear, feel,
+or understand. Added to the power of every moral or religious
+motive, sympathy with the virtuous enthusiasm of those we love and
+reverence produces a great and salutary effect.
+
+'It often happens that a preceptor appears to have a great influence
+for a time, and that this power suddenly dissolves. This is, and
+must be the case, wherever any sort of deception has been used. My
+father never used any artifice of this kind, and consequently he
+always possessed that confidence, which is the reward of plain
+dealing--a confidence which increases in the pupil's mind with age,
+knowledge, and experience.'
+
+The readers of the second part of 'Harry and Lucy' will remember
+the driving tour through England, which they took with their
+parents, who were careful to point out to them all that was of
+interest, and to rouse their powers of observation. And in the same
+manner Edgeworth, 'at the time when he was building or carrying on
+experiments, or work of any sort, constantly explained to his
+children whatever was done, and by his questions, adapted to their
+several ages and capacities, exercised their powers of observation,
+reasoning, and invention.
+
+'It often happened that trivial circumstances, by which the
+curiosity of the children had been excited, or experiments obvious
+to the senses, by which they had been interested, led afterwards to
+deeper reflection or to philosophical inquiries, suited to others in
+the family of more advanced age and knowledge. The animation spread
+through the house by connecting children with all that is going on,
+and allowing them to join in thought or conversation with the
+grown-up people of the family, was highly useful, and thus both
+sympathy and emulation excited mental exertion in the most agreeable
+manner.'
+
+In 1794 he wrote of his son Lovell: 'He has been employed in
+building and other active pursuits, which seldom fall to the share
+of young men, but which seem as agreeable to him as the occupations
+of a mail-coachman, a groom, or a stable-boy are to some youths. I
+am every day more convinced of the advantages of good education.' He
+adds: 'One of my younger boys is what is called a genius--that is
+to say, he has vivacity, attention, and good organs. I do not think
+one tear per month is shed in the house, nor the voice of reproof
+heard, nor the hand of restraint felt. To educate a second race
+costs no trouble. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute!
+
+The result of this watchful and tender interest in his children's
+education may be judged by a passage in the later part of the
+Memoirs, where his daughter says: 'When I was writing this page
+(July 1818), this brother was with me; and when I stopped to make
+some inquiry from him as to his recollection of that period of his
+life, he reminded me of many circumstances of my father's kindness
+to him, and brought to me letters written on his first entrance into
+the world, highly characteristic of the warmth of my father's
+affections, and of the strength of his mind. . . . The conviction is
+full and strong on my own mind, that a father's confiding kindness,
+and plain sincerity to a young man, when he first sets out in the
+world, make an impression the most salutary and indelible. When his
+sons first quitted the paternal roof, they were all completely at
+liberty; he never took any indirect means to watch over or to
+influence them; he treated them on all occasions with entire
+openness and confidence. In their tastes and pursuits, joys and
+sorrows, they were sure of their father's sympathy; in all
+difficulties or disappointments, they applied to him, as their best
+friend, for counsel, consolation, or support; and the delight that
+he took in any exertion of their talents, or in any instance of
+their honourable conduct, they felt as a constant generous
+excitement.'
+
+Edgeworth had no ambition on his own account to be an author; but
+his wish to supply wholesome literature for the young led him into
+writing, conjointly with his daughter, several books. Besides these
+was one which had a different object, in the Essay on Irish Bulls he
+'wished' (his daughter writes) 'to show the English public the
+eloquence, wit, and talents of the lower classes of people in
+Ireland. . . . He excelled in imitating the Irish, because he never
+overstepped the modesty or the assurance of nature. He marked
+exquisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit of the people,
+without condescending to produce effect by caricature. He knew not
+only their comic talents, but their powers of pathos; and often when
+he had just heard from them some pathetic complaint, he has repeated
+it to me while the impression was fresh. In the chapter on Wit and
+Eloquence in Irish Bulls, there is a speech of a poor freeholder to
+a candidate, who asked for his vote; this speech was made to my
+father when he was canvassing the county of Longford. It was
+repeated to me a few hours afterwards, and I wrote it down
+instantly, without, I believe, the variation of a word.
+
+'In the same chapter there is the complaint of a poor widow against
+her landlord, and the landlord's reply in his own defence. This
+passage was quoted, I am told, by Campbell in one of his celebrated
+lectures on Eloquence. It was supposed by him to have been a
+quotation from a fictitious narrative, but, on the contrary, it is
+an unembellished fact. My father was the magistrate before whom the
+widow and her landlord appeared, and made that complaint and
+defence, which he repeated, and I may say acted, for me. The
+speeches I instantly wrote word for word, and the whole was
+described exactly from the life of his representation.'
+
+Edgeworth was anxious that his children should have no unpleasant
+associations with their first steps in reading; he therefore took
+great pains to find out the easiest way of teaching them to read,
+and wrote for this purpose A Rational Primer. Maria adds: 'Nothing
+but the true desire to be useful could have induced any man of
+talents to choose such inglorious labours; but he thought no labour,
+however humble, beneath him, if it promised improvement in
+education. . . . His principle of always giving distinct marks for
+each different sound of the vowels has been since brought into more
+general use. It forms the foundation of Pestalozzi's plan of
+teaching to read. But one of the most useful of the marks in the
+Rational Primer, the mark of obliteration, designed to show what
+letters are to be omitted in pronouncing words, has not, I believe,
+been adopted by any public instructor.'
+
+Among the calls on Edgeworth's time about 1790 was the management of
+the embarrassed affairs of a relation; he had some difficulties with
+the creditors, but in trying to collect arrears of rent he found
+himself not only in difficulty, but in actual peril.
+
+There existed in Ireland at this time a class of persons calling
+themselves gentlemen tenants--the worst tenants in the world
+--middlemen, who relet the lands, and live upon the produce, not
+only in idleness, but in insolent idleness.
+
+This kind of half gentry, or mock gentry, seemed to consider it as
+the most indisputable privilege of a gentleman not to pay his debts.
+They were ever ready to meet civil law with military brag of war.
+Whenever a swaggering debtor of this species was pressed for
+payment, he began by protesting or confessing that 'he considered
+himself used in an ungentlemanlike manner;' and ended by offering
+to give, instead of the value of his bond or promise, 'the
+satisfaction of a gentleman, at any hour or place. . . . My father,'
+says Maria, 'has often since rejoiced in the recollection of his
+steadiness at this period of his life. As far as the example of an
+individual could go, it was of service in his neighbourhood. It
+showed that such lawless proceedings as he had opposed could be
+effectually resisted; and it discountenanced that braggadocio style
+of doing business which was once in Ireland too much in fashion.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 6
+
+It was in 1792 that Edgeworth left Ireland, and he and his family
+spent nearly two years at Clifton for the health of one of his sons.
+Maria writes: 'This was the first time I had ever been with him in
+what is called the world; where he was not only a useful, but a most
+entertaining guide and companion. His observations upon characters,
+as they revealed themselves by slight circumstances, were amusing
+and just. He was a good judge of manners, and of all that related to
+appearance, both in men and women. Believing, as he did, that young
+people, from sympathy, imitate or catch involuntarily the habits and
+tone of the company they keep, he thought it of essential
+consequence that on their entrance into the world they should see
+the best models. "No company or good company," was his maxim. By
+good he did not mean fine. Airs and conceit he despised, as much as
+he disliked vulgarity. Affectation was under awe before him from an
+instinctive perception of his powers of ridicule. He could not
+endure, in favour of any pretensions of birth, fortune, or fashion,
+the stupidity of a formal circle, or the inanity of commonplace
+conversation. . .. Sometimes, perhaps, he went too far, and at this
+period of his life was too fastidious in his choice of society; or
+when he did go into mixed company, if he happened to be suddenly
+struck with any extravagance or meanness of fashion, he would
+inveigh against these with such vehemence as gave a false idea of
+his disposition. His auditors . . . were provoked to find that one,
+who could please in any company, should disdain theirs; and that he,
+who seemed made for society, should prefer living shut up with his
+own friends and family. An inconvenience arose from this, which is
+of more consequence than the mere loss of popularity, that he was
+not always known or understood by those who were really worthy of
+his acquaintance and regard.' His daughter says later: 'The whole
+style and tone of society (in Ireland) are altered.--The fashion has
+passed away of those desperately long, formal dinners, which were
+given two or three times a year by each family in the country to
+their neighbours, where the company had more than they could eat,
+and twenty times more than they should drink; where the gentlemen
+could talk only of claret, horses, or dogs; and the ladies, only of
+dress or scandal; so that in the long hours, when they were left to
+their own discretion, after having examined and appraised each
+other's finery, many an absent neighbour's character was torn to
+pieces, merely for want of something to say or to do in the stupid
+circle. But now the dreadful circle is no more; the chairs, which
+formerly could only take that form, at which the firmest nerves must
+ever tremble, are allowed to stand, or turn in any way which may
+suit the convenience and pleasure of conversation. The gentlemen and
+ladies are not separated from the time dinner ends till the midnight
+hour, when the carriages come to the door to carry off the bodies
+of the dead (drunk).
+
+'A taste for reading and literary conversation has been universally
+acquired and diffused. Literature has become, as my father long ago
+prophesied that it would become, fashionable; so that it is really
+necessary to all, who would appear to advantage, even in the
+society of their country neighbours.'
+
+Referring to her father's conversational powers, Maria adds: 'His
+style in speaking and writing were as different as it is possible to
+conceive. In writing, cool and careful, as if on his guard against
+his natural liveliness of imagination; he was so cautious to avoid
+exaggeration, that he sometimes repressed enthusiasm. The character
+of his writings, if I mistake not, is good sense; the characteristic
+of his conversation was genius and vivacity--one moment playing on
+the surface, the next diving to the bottom of the subject. When
+anything touched his feelings, exciting either admiration or
+indignation, he poured forth enthusiastic eloquence, and then
+changed quickly to reasoning or wit. His transitions from one
+thought and feeling, or from one subject and tone to another, were
+so frequent and rapid, as to surprise, and sometimes to bewilder
+persons of slow intellect; but always to entertain and delight those
+of quick capacity. . . .
+
+'His openness in conversation went too far, almost to imprudence,
+exposing him not only to be misrepresented, but to be misunderstood.
+ . . . Whenever he perceived in any of his friends, or in one of his
+children, an error of mind, or fault of character, dangerous to
+their happiness; or when he saw good opportunity of doing them
+service, by apposite and strong remark or eloquent appeal in
+conversation, he pursued his object with all the boldness of truth,
+and with all the warmth of affection. . . .
+
+'I will not deny, what I have heard from some whose truth and sense
+I cannot question, that his manner, somewhat unusual, of drawing
+people out, however kindly intended, often abashed the timid, and
+alarmed the cautious; but, in the judgments to be formed of the
+understandings of all with whom he conversed, he was uncommonly
+indulgent. He allowed for the prejudices or for the deficiencies of
+education; and he foresaw, with the prophetic eye of benevolence,
+what the understanding or character might become if certain
+improvements were effected. In discerning genius or abilities of any
+kind, his penetration was so quick and just that it seemed as if he
+possessed some mental divining rod revealing to him hidden veins of
+talent, and giving him the power of discovering mines of
+intellectual wealth, which lay unsuspected even by the possessor.
+
+'To young persons his manner was most kind and encouraging. I have
+been gratified by the assurance that many have owed to the
+instruction and encouragement received from him in casual
+conversation their first hopes of themselves, their resolution to
+improve, and a happy change in the colour and fortune of their
+future lives. . . . Time mellowed but did not impair his vivacity;
+so that seeming less connected with high animal spirits, it acquired
+more the character of intellectual energy. Still in age, as in
+youth, he never needed the stimulus of convivial company, or of new
+auditors; his spirits and conversation were always more delightful
+in his own family and in everyday life than in company, even the
+most literary or distinguished.'
+
+The relations between Edgeworth and his daughter Maria were
+peculiarly close, and she gratefully acknowledges how much she owed
+to his suggestions and criticisms. He did not share his friend Mr.
+Day's objections to literary ladies, and was a great admirer of Mrs.
+Barbauld's writings:
+
+'Ever the true friend and champion of female literature, and zealous
+for the honour of the female sex, he rejoiced with all the
+enthusiasm of a warm heart when he found, as he now did, female
+genius guided by feminine discretion. He exulted in every instance
+of literary celebrity, supported by the amiable and respectable
+virtues of private life; proving by example that the cultivation of
+female talents does not unfit women for their domestic duties and
+situation in society.'
+
+When Maria began to write she always told her father her rough plan,
+and he, 'with the instinct of a good critic, used to fix immediately
+upon that which would best answer the purpose.--"Sketch that and
+show it to me!"--These words' (she adds), 'from the experience of
+his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hopes of success. It
+was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part,
+I use to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected
+--"I don't want any of your painting--none of your drapery!--I can
+imagine all that--let me see the bare skeleton." . . .
+
+'After a sketch had his approbation, he would not see the filling it
+up till it had been worked upon for a week or a fortnight, or till
+the first thirty or forty pages were written; then they were read to
+him; and if he thought them going on tolerably well, the pleasure in
+his eyes, the approving sound of his voice, even without the praise
+he so warmly bestowed, were sufficient and delightful excitements to
+"go on and finish." When he thought that there was spirit in what
+was written, but that it required, as it often did, great
+correction, he would say, "Leave that to me; it is my business to
+cut and correct--yours to write on." His skill in cutting, his
+decision in criticism, was peculiarly useful to me. His ready
+invention and infinite resource, when I had run myself into
+difficulties or absurdities, never failed to extricate me at my
+utmost need. . . .
+
+'Independently of all the advantages, which I as an individual
+received from my father's constant course of literary instruction,
+this was of considerable utility in another and less selfish point
+of view. My father called upon all the family to hear and judge of
+all we were writing. The taste for literature, and for judging of
+literary composition, was by this means formed and exercised in a
+large family, including a succession of nine or ten children, who
+grew up during the course of these twenty-five years. Stories of
+children exercised the judgment of children, and so on in proportion
+to their respective ages, all giving their opinions, and trying
+their powers of criticism fearlessly and freely. . . .
+
+'He would sometimes advise me to lay by what was done for several
+months, and turn my mind to something else, that we might look back
+at it afterwards with fresh eyes. . . .
+
+'I may mention, because it leads to a general principle of
+criticism, that, in many cases, the attempt to join truth and
+fiction did not succeed: for instance, Mr. Day's educating Sabrina
+for his wife suggested the story of Virginia and Clarence Hervey in
+"Belinda." But to avoid representing the real character of Mr. Day,
+which I did not think it right to draw, I used the incident with
+fictitious characters, which I made as unlike the real persons as I
+possibly could. My father observed to me afterwards that, in this
+and other instances, the very circumstances that were taken from
+real life are those that have been objected to as improbable or
+impossible; for this, as he showed me, there are good and sufficient
+reasons. In the first place, anxiety to avoid drawing the characters
+that were to be blameable or ridiculous from any individuals in real
+life, led me to apply whatever circumstances were taken from reality
+to characters quite different from those to whom the facts had
+occurred; and consequently, when so applied, they were unsuitable
+and improbable: besides, as my father remarked the circumstances
+which in real life fix the attention, because they are out of the
+common course of events, are for this very reason unfit for the
+moral purposes, as well as for the dramatic effect of fiction. The
+interest we take in hearing an uncommon fact often depends on our
+belief in its truth. Introduce it into fiction, and this interest
+ceases, the reader stops to question the truth or probability of the
+narrative, the illusion and the dramatic effect are destroyed; and
+as to the moral, no safe conclusion for conduct can be drawn from
+any circumstances which have not frequently happened, and which are
+not likely often to recur. In proportion as events are
+extraordinary, they are useless or unsafe as foundations for
+prudential reasoning.
+
+'Besides all this, there are usually some small concurrent
+circumstances connected with extraordinary facts, which we like and
+admit as evidences of the truth, but which the rules of composition
+and taste forbid the introducing into fiction; so that the writer is
+reduced to the difficulty either of omitting the evidence on which
+the belief of reality rests, or of introducing what may be contrary
+to good taste, incongruous, out of proportion to the rest of the
+story, delaying its progress or destructive of its unity. In short,
+it is dangerous to put a patch of truth into a fiction, for the
+truth is too strong for the fiction, and on all sides pulls it
+asunder.'
+
+To live with Edgeworth must have been to enjoy a constant mental
+stimulus; he could not bear his companions to use words without
+attaching ideas to them; he did not want talk to consist of a fluent
+utterance of second-hand thoughts, but always encouraged the
+expression of genuine opinion.
+
+To show how willing Edgeworth was to help a child in understanding a
+word which was new to it, I will quote from one of his letters to
+Maria:
+
+'Give my love to little F, and tell her that I had not time to
+explain a section to her. I therefore beg that, with as little
+explanation as possible, you will bisect a lemon before her, and
+point out the appearance of the rind, of the cavities, and seeds;
+and afterwards, at your leisure, get a small cylinder of wood turned
+for her, and cut it into a transverse section and into a
+longitudinal section.'
+
+It is curious to note the difference in tone which there is between
+the children's books written by him and Maria and those of the
+second half of the nineteenth century. Our duty to our neighbour is
+the Edgeworth watchword, while our duty to God is the watchword of
+Miss Yonge and her school of writers. The swing of the pendulum is
+constantly passing from morality to religion and back again, because
+both are required for the perfect life.
+
+Among the experiments which Edgeworth made in the management of his
+children was that: 'Formerly' (Maria writes) 'from having observed
+how apt children are to dispute and quarrel when they are left much
+together, and from fear of the strong becoming tyrants, and the weak
+slaves, it had been thought prudent to separate them a good deal. It
+was believed that they would consequently grow fonder of each
+other's company, and that they would enjoy it more as they grew more
+reasonable, from not having the recollection of anything
+disagreeable in each other's tempers. But my father became
+thoroughly convinced that the separation of children in a family may
+lead to evils greater than any partial good that can result from it.
+The attempt may induce artifice and disobedience on the part of the
+children; the separation can scarcely be effected; and, if it were
+effected, would tend to make the children miserable. He saw that
+their little quarrels, and the crossings of their tempers and
+fancies, are nothing in comparison with the inestimable blessings of
+that fondness, that family affection which grows up among children,
+who have with each other an early and constant community of
+pleasures and pains. Separation as a punishment, as a just
+consequence of children's quarrelling, and as the best means of
+preventing their disputes, he always found useful. But, except in
+extreme cases, he had rarely recourse to it, and such seldom
+occurred. . . . The greatest change, which twenty years further
+experience made in his practice and opinions in education, was to
+lessen rather than to increase regulations and restrictions. He saw
+that, where there is liberty of action, one thing balances another;
+that nice calculations lead to false results in practice, because we
+cannot command all the necesssary circumstances of the data. . . .
+
+'For many years of his life he had, I think, been under one
+important mistake, in his expectations relative to the conduct of
+his fellow-creatures, and of the effects of cultivating the human
+understanding. He had believed that, if rational creatures could be
+made clearly to see and understand that virtue will render them
+happy, and vice will render them miserable, either in this world or
+in the next, they would afterwards, in consequence of this
+conviction, follow virtue, and avoid vice. . . .
+
+'Hence, both as to national and domestic education, he formerly
+dwelt principally upon the cultivation of the understanding, meaning
+chiefly the reasoning faculty as applied to the conduct. But to see
+the best, and to follow it, are not, alas! necessary consequences of
+each other. Resolution is often wanting where conviction is perfect.
+--Resolution is most necessary to all our active, and habit most
+essential to all our passive virtues. Probably nine times out of ten
+the instances of imprudent or vicious conduct arise, not from want
+of knowledge of good and evil, or from want of conviction that the
+one leads to happiness, and the other to misery; but from actual
+deficiency in the strength of resolution, deficiency arising from
+want of early training in the habit of self control.'
+
+Maria adds: 'The silence which has been observed in Practical
+Education on the subject of religion has been misunderstood by some,
+and misrepresented by others. ... To those who, with upright and
+benevolent intentions, from a sense of public duty, and in a spirit
+of Christian charity, made remonstrances on this subject, he thought
+it due to give all the explanation in his power;' and he writes:
+'The authors continue to preserve the silence upon this subject,
+which they before thought prudent; but they disavow, in explicit
+terms, the design of laying down a system of education founded upon
+morality, exclusive of religion. . . . We most earnestly deprecate
+the imputation of disregarding religion in Education. . . . We are
+convinced that religious obligation is indispensably necessary in
+the education of all descriptions of people in every part of the
+world.
+
+'We dread fanaticism and intolerance, whilst we wish to hold
+religion in a higher point of view than as a subject of seclusive
+possession, or of outward exhibition. To introduce the awful ideas
+of God's superintendence upon puerile occasions, we decline. ... I
+hope I shall obtain the justice due to me on the subject, and that
+it will appear that I consider religion, in the large sense of the
+word, to be the only certain bond of society.
+
+'You have turned back our thoughts to this most important subject
+(education), upon which, next to a universal reverence for religion,
+we believe the happiness of mankind to depend.' Maria adds: 'I have
+often been witness of the care with which he explained the nature
+and enforced the observance of that great bond of civil society,
+which rests upon religion. The solemnity of the manner in which he
+administered an oath can never leave my memory; and I have seen the
+salutary effect this produced on the minds of those of the lower
+Irish, who are supposed to be the least susceptible of such
+impressions. But it was not on the terrors of religion he chiefly
+dwelt. No man could be more sensible than he was of the consolatory,
+fortifying influence of the Christian religion in sustaining the
+mind in adversity, poverty, and age. No man knew better its power to
+carry hope and peace in the hour of death to the penitent criminal.
+When from party bigotry it has happened that a priest has been
+denied admittance to the condemned criminal, my father has gone to
+the county gaol to soothe the sufferer's mind, and to receive that
+confession on which, to the poor Catholic's belief, his salvation
+depended. . . . Nor did he ever weaken in any heart in which it ever
+existed that which he considered as the greatest blessing that a
+human creature can enjoy--firm religious faith and hope.'
+
+The following extract from a letter written to the Roman Catholics
+of the County of Longford will show that Edgeworth was no bigoted
+Protestant, but was in advance of his time in the broad views he
+took of religious liberty: 'Ever since I have taken any part in the
+politics of Ireland, I have uniformly thought that there should be
+no civil distinctions between its inhabitants upon account of their
+religious opinions. I concurred with a great character at the
+national convention, in endeavouring to persuade our Roman Catholic
+brethren to take a decided part in favour of parliamentary reform.
+They declined it; and it then became absurd and dangerous for
+individuals to demand rights in the name of a class of citizens who
+would not avow their claim to them. . . . I wish ... to declare
+myself in favour of a full participation of rights amongst every
+denomination of men in Ireland; and if I can, by my personal
+interference at any public meeting of our county, serve your cause,
+I shall think it my duty to attend.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 7
+
+DURING Edgeworth's stay in England in 1792 and 1793 he paid
+frequent visits to London, and he used to describe to his children a
+curious meeting which he had in a coffee-house with an old
+acquaintance whom he had not seen for thirty years: He observed a
+gentleman eyeing him with much attention, who at last exclaimed, "It
+is he. Certainly, sir, you are Mr. Edgeworth?"
+
+'"I am, sir."
+
+'"Gentlemen," said the stranger, with much importance, addressing
+himself to several people who were near him, "here is the best
+dancer in England, and a man to whom I am under infinite
+obligations, for I owe to him the foundation of my fortune. Mr.
+Edgeworth and I were scholars of the famous Aldridge; and once when
+we practised together, Mr. Edgeworth excelled me so much, that I sat
+down upon the ground, and burst out a-crying; he could actually
+complete an entrechat of ten distinct beats, which I could not
+accomplish! However, I was well consoled by him; for he invented,
+for Aldridge's benefit, The Tambourine Dance, which had uncommon
+success. The dresses were Chinese. Twelve assistants held small
+drums furnished with bells; these were struck in the air by the
+dancer's feet when held as high as their arms could reach. This
+Aldridge performed, and improved upon by stretching his legs
+asunder, so as to strike two drums at the same time. Those not being
+the days of elegant dancing, I afterwards," continued the stranger,
+"exhibited at Paris the tambourine dance, to so much advantage, that
+I made fifteen hundred pounds by it."
+
+'The person who made this singular address and eulogium was the
+celebrated dancer, Mr. Slingsby. His testimony proves that my father
+did not overrate his powers as a dancer; but it was not to boast of
+a frivolous excellence that he told this anecdote to his children;
+it was to express his satisfaction at having, after the first
+effervescence of boyish spirits had subsided, cultivated his
+understanding, turned his inventive powers to useful objects, and
+chosen as the companions of his maturer years men of the first order
+of intellect.'
+
+He also took the opportunity while in England of visiting his
+scientific friends--Watt, Darwin, Keir, and Wedgwood; and it was now
+that his friendship began with Mr. William Strutt of Derby, with
+whom he became acquainted by means of Mr. Darwin.
+
+It was about this time that he lost his old friend Lord Longford.
+Maria says of him: 'His services in the British navy, and his
+character as an Irish senator, have been fully appreciated by the
+public. His value in private life, and as a friend, can be justly
+estimated only by those who have seen and felt how strongly his
+example and opinions have, for a long course of years, continued to
+influence his family, and all who had the honour of his friendship.
+The permanence of this influence after death is a stronger proof of
+the sincerity of the esteem and admiration felt for the character of
+the individual than any which can be given during his lifetime. I
+can bear witness that, in one instance, it never ceased to operate.
+I know that on every important occasion of my father's life, where
+he was called upon to judge or act, long after Lord Longford was no
+more, his example and opinions seemed constantly present to him; he
+delighted in the recollection of instances of his friend's sound
+judgment, honour, and generosity; these he applied in his own
+conduct, and held up to the emulation of his children.'
+
+Doubtless Edgeworth felt, as Charles Lamb expresses it: 'Deaths
+overset one, and put one out long after the recent grief. Two or
+three have died within the last two twelvemonths, and so many parts
+of me have been numbed. One sees a picture, reads an anecdote,
+starts a casual fancy, and thinks to tell of it to this person in
+preference to every other; the person is gone whom it would have
+peculiarly suited. It won't do for another. Every departure destroys
+a class of sympathies. There's Captain Burney gone! What fun has
+whist now? What matters it what you lead if you can no longer fancy
+him looking over you? One never hears anything but the image of the
+particular person occurs with whom alone almost you would care to
+share the intelligence. Thus one distributes oneself about, and now
+for so many parts of me I have lost the market.'
+
+The departure of Edgeworth and his family from Clifton in the autumn
+of 1793 was hastened by the news that disturbances were breaking out
+in Ireland. Dr. Beddoes of Clifton, who was courting Edgeworth's
+daughter Anna, had to console himself with the permission to follow
+her to Ireland in the spring, where they were married at Edgeworth
+Town in April 1794.
+
+It was not till the autumn of 1794 that the disturbances in Ireland
+became alarming; and in a letter to Dr. Darwin, Edgeworth writes:
+'Just recovering from the alarm occasioned by a sudden irruption of
+defenders into this neighbourhood, and from the business of a county
+meeting, and the glory of commanding a squadron of horse, and from
+the exertion requisite to treat with proper indifference an
+anonymous letter sent by persons who have sworn to assassinate me; I
+received the peaceful philosophy of Zoonomia; and though it has been
+in my hands not many minutes, I found much to delight and instruct
+me. . . .
+
+'We were lately in a sad state here--the sans culottes (literally
+so) took a very effectual way of obtaining power; they robbed of
+arms all the houses in the country, thus arming themselves and
+disarming their opponents. By waking the bodies of their friends,
+the human corpse not only becomes familiar to the sans culottes of
+Ireland, but is associated with pleasure in their minds by the
+festivity of these nocturnal orgies. An insurrection of such people,
+who have been much oppressed, must be infinitely more horrid than
+anything that has happened in France; for no hired executioners need
+be sought from the prisons or the galleys. And yet the people here
+are altogether better than in England. . . . The peasants, though
+cruel, are generally docile, and of the strongest powers, both of
+body and mind.
+
+'A good government may make this a great country, because the raw
+material is good and simple. In England, to make a carte-blanche fit
+to receive a proper impression, you must grind down all the old rags
+to purify them.'
+
+His daughter adds: 'The disturbances in the county of Longford were
+quieted for a time by the military; but again in the autumn of the
+ensuing year (September 1796), rumours of an invasion prevailed, and
+spread with redoubled force through Ireland, disturbing commerce,
+and alarming all ranks of well-disposed subjects.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 8
+
+It was in 1797 that sorrow again visited the happy circle at
+Edgeworth Town, and Edgeworth wrote thus of his wife to Dr. Darwin:
+'She declines rapidly. But her mind suffers as little as possible. I
+am convinced from all that I have seen, that good sense diminishes
+all the evils of life, and alleviates even the inevitable pain of
+declining health. By good sense, I mean that habit of the
+understanding which employs itself in forming just estimates of
+every object that lies before it, and in regulating the temper and
+conduct. Mrs. Edgeworth, ever since I knew her, has carefully
+improved and cultivated this faculty; and I do not think I ever saw
+any person extract more good, and suffer less evil, than she has,
+from the events of life. . . .'
+
+Mrs. Edgeworth died in the autumn of the year 1797. Maria adds: 'I
+have heard my father say, that during the seventeen years of his
+marriage with this lady, he never once saw her out of temper, and
+never received from her an unkind word or an angry look,'
+
+Edgeworth paid the same compliment to his third wife which he had
+done to his second--he quickly replaced her. His fourth wife was
+the daughter of Dr. Beaufort, a highly cultivated man, whose family
+were great friends of Mrs. Ruxton, Edgeworth's sister. Edgeworth
+wrote a long letter about scientific matters to Darwin, and kept his
+most important news to the last: 'I am going to be married to a
+young lady of small fortune and large accomplishments,--compared
+with my age, much youth (not quite thirty), and more prudence--some
+beauty, more sense--uncommon talents, more uncommon temper,--liked by
+my family, loved by me. If I can say all this three years hence,
+shall not I have been a fortunate, not to say a wise man?'
+
+Maria adds: 'A few days after the preceding letter was written, we
+heard that a conspiracy had been discovered in Dublin, that the city
+was under arms, and its inhabitants in the greatest terror. Dr.
+Beaufort and his family were there; my father, who was at Edgeworth
+Town, set out immediately to join them.
+
+'On his way he met an intimate friend of his; one stage they
+travelled together, and a singular conversation passed. This friend,
+who as yet knew nothing of my father's intentions, began to speak of
+the marriage of some other person, and to exclaim against the folly
+and imprudence of any man's marrying in such disturbed times. "No
+man of honour, sense or feeling, would incumber himself with a wife
+at such a time!" My father urged that this was just the time when a
+man of honour, sense, or feeling would wish, if he loved a woman, to
+unite his fate with hers, to acquire the right of being her
+protector.
+
+'The conversation dropped there. But presently they talked of public
+affairs--of the important measure expected to be proposed, of a
+union between England and Ireland--of what would probably be said
+and done in the next session of Parliament: my father, foreseeing
+that this important national question would probably come on, had
+just obtained a seat in Parliament. His friend, not knowing or
+recollecting this, began to speak of the imprudence of commencing a
+political career late in life.
+
+'"No man, you know," said he, "but a fool, would venture to make a
+first speech in Parliament, or to marry, after he was fifty."
+
+'My father laughed, and surrendering all title to wisdom, declared
+that, though he was past fifty, he was actually going in a few days,
+as he hoped, to be married, and in a few months would probably make
+his "first speech in Parliament."
+
+'He found Dublin as it had been described to him under arms, in
+dreadful expectation. The timely apprehension of the heads of the
+conspiracy at this crisis prevented a revolution, and saved the
+capital. But the danger for the country seemed by no means over,
+--insurrections, which were to have been general and simultaneous,
+broke out in different parts of the kingdom. The confessions of a
+conspirator, who had turned informer, and the papers seized and
+published, proved that there existed in the country a deep and
+widely spread spirit of rebellion. . . .
+
+'Instead of delaying his marriage, which some would have advised, my
+father urged for an immediate day. On the 31st of May he was
+married to Miss Beaufort, by her brother, the Rev. William Beaufort,
+at St. Anne's Church in Dublin. They came down to Edgeworth Town
+immediately, through a part of the country that was in actual
+insurrection. Late in the evening they arrived safe at home, and my
+father presented his bride to his expecting, anxious family.
+
+'Of her first entrance and appearance that evening I can recollect
+only the general impression, that it was quite natural, without
+effort or pretension. The chief thing remarkable was, that she, of
+whom we were all thinking so much, seemed to think so little of
+herself. . . .
+
+'The sisters of the late Mrs. Edgeworth, those excellent aunts (Mrs.
+Mary and Charlotte Sneyd), instead of returning to their English
+friends and relations, remained at Edgeworth Town. This was an
+auspicious omen to the common people in our neighbourhood, by whom
+they were universally beloved--it spoke well, they said, for the new
+lady. In his own family, the union and happiness she would secure
+were soon felt, but her superior qualities, her accurate knowledge,
+judgment, and abilities, in decision and in action, appeared only as
+occasions arose and called for them. She was found always equal to
+the occasion, and superior to the expectation.'
+
+Maria had not at first been in favour of her father's marrying Miss
+Beaufort, but she soon changed her opinion after becoming intimate
+with her, and writing of her father's choice of a wife says: 'He did
+not late in life marry merely to please his own fancy, but he chose
+a companion suited to himself, and a mother fit for his family.
+This, of all the blessings we owe to him, has proved the greatest.'
+
+The family at Edgeworth Town passed the summer quietly and happily,
+but (Maria continues) 'towards the autumn of the year 1798, this
+country became in such a state that the necessity of resorting to
+the sword seemed imminent. Even in the county of Longford, which had
+so long remained quiet, alarming symptoms appeared, not immediately
+in our neighbourhood, but within six or seven miles of us, near
+Granard. The people were leagued in secret rebellion, and waited
+only for the expected arrival of the French army to break out. In
+the adjacent counties military law had been proclaimed, and our
+village was within a mile of the bounds of the disturbed county of
+Westmeath. Though his own tenantry, and all in whom he put trust,
+were as quiet, and, as far as he could judge, as well-disposed as
+ever, yet my father was aware, from information of too good
+authority to be doubted, that there were disaffected persons in the
+vicinity.
+
+'Numbers held themselves in abeyance, not so much from disloyalty,
+as from fear that they should be ultimately the conquered party.
+Those who were really and actually engaged, and in communication
+with the rebels and with the foreign enemy, were so secret and
+cunning that no proofs could be obtained against them.
+
+'One instance may be given. A Mr. Pallas, who lived at Growse Hall,
+lately received information that a certain offender was to be found
+in a lone house, which was described to him. He took a party of men
+with him in the night, and he got to the house very early in the
+morning. It was scarcely light. The soldiers searched, but no man
+was to be found. Mr. Pallas ordered them to search again, for that
+he was certain the man was in the house; they searched again, but in
+vain; they gave up the point, and were preparing to mount their
+horses, when one man, who had stayed a little behind his companions,
+saw, or thought he saw, something move at the end of the garden
+behind the house. He looked, and beheld a man's arm come out of the
+ground: he ran to the spot and called to his companions; but the arm
+disappeared; they searched, but nothing was to be seen; and though
+the soldier still persisted in his story, he was not believed
+"Come," cries one of the party, "don't waste your time here looking
+for an apparition among these cabbage-stalks--go back once more to
+the house!" They went to the house, and lo! there stood the man they
+were in search of in the middle of the kitchen.
+
+'Upon examination it was found that from his garden to his house
+there had been practiced a secret passage underground: a large
+meal-chest in the kitchen had a false bottom, which lifted up and
+down at pleasure, to let him into his subterraneous dwelling.
+
+'Whenever he expected the house to be searched, down he went; the
+moment the search was over, up he came; and had practised this with
+success, till he grew rash, and returned one moment too soon. . . .
+
+'Previous to this time, the principal gentry in the county had
+raised corps of yeomanry; but my father had delayed doing so,
+because, as long as the civil authority had been sufficient, he was
+unwilling to resort to military interference, or to the ultimate law
+of force, of the abuse of which he had seen too many recent
+examples. However, it now became necessary, even for the sake of
+justice to his own tenantry, that they should be put upon a footing
+with others, have equal security of protection, and an opportunity
+of evincing their loyal dispositions. He raised a corps of infantry,
+into which he admitted Catholics as well as Protestants. This was so
+unusual, and thought to be so hazardous a degree of liberality, that
+by some of an opposite party it was attributed to the worst motives.
+Many who wished him well came privately to let him know of the odium
+to which he exposed himself.
+
+'The corps of Edgeworth Town infantry was raised, but the arms were,
+by some mistake of the ordnance officer, delayed. The anxiety for
+their arrival was extreme, for every day and every hour the French
+were expected to land.
+
+'The alarm was now so general that many sent their families out of
+the country. My father was still in hopes that we might safely
+remain. At the first appearance of disturbance in Ireland he had
+offered to carry his sisters-in-law, the Mrs. Sneyd, to their
+friends in England, but this offer they refused. Of the domestics,
+three men were English and Protestant, two Irish and Catholic; the
+women were all Irish and Catholic excepting the housekeeper, an
+Englishwoman who had lived with us many years. There were no
+dissensions or suspicions between the Catholics and the Protestants
+in the family; and the English servants did not desire to quit us at
+this crisis.
+
+'At last came the dreaded news. The French, who landed at Killala,
+were, as we learned, on their march towards Longford. The touch of
+Ithuriel's spear could not have been more sudden or effectual than
+the arrival of this intelligence in showing people in their real
+forms. In some faces joy struggled for a moment with feigned sorrow,
+and then, encouraged by sympathy, yielded to the natural expression.
+Still my father had no reason to distrust those in whom he had
+placed confidence; his tenants were steady; he saw no change in any
+of the men of his corps, though they were in the most perilous
+situation, having rendered themselves obnoxious to the rebels and
+invaders by becoming yeomen, and yet standing without means of
+resistance or defence, their arms not having arrived.
+
+'The evening of the day when the news of the success and approach of
+the French came to Edgeworth Town all seemed quiet; but early next
+morning, September 4th, a report reached us that the rebels were up
+in arms within a mile of the village, pouring in from the county of
+Westmeath hundreds strong.
+
+'This much being certain, that men armed with pikes were assembled,
+my father sent off an express to the next garrison town (Longford)
+requesting the commanding officer to send him assistance for the
+defence of this place. He desired us to be prepared to set out at a
+moment's warning. We were under this uncertainty, when an escort
+with an ammunition cart passed through the village on its way to
+Longford. It contained several barrels of powder, intended to blow
+up the bridges, and to stop the progress of the enemy. One of the
+officers of the party rode up to our house and offered to let us
+have the advantage of his escort. But, after a few minutes'
+deliberation, this friendly proposal was declined: my father
+determined that he would not stir till he knew whether he could have
+assistance; and as it did not appear as yet absolutely necessary
+that we should go, we stayed--fortunately for us.
+
+'About a quarter of an hour after the officer and the escort had
+departed, we, who were all assembled in the portico of the house,
+heard a report like a loud clap of thunder. The doors and windows
+shook with some violent concussion; a few minutes afterwards the
+officer galloped into the yard, and threw himself off his horse into
+my father's arms almost senseless. The ammunition cart had blown up,
+one of the officers had been severely wounded, and the horses and
+the man leading them killed; the wounded officer was at a farmhouse
+on the Longford road, at about two miles' distance. The fear of the
+rebels was now suspended in concern for this accident; Mrs.
+Edgeworth went immediately to give her assistance; she left her
+carriage for the use of the wounded gentleman, and rode back. At the
+entrance of the village she was stopped by a gentleman in great
+terror, who, taking hold of the bridle of her horse, begged her not
+to attempt to go farther, assuring her that the rebels were coming
+into the town. But she answered that she must and would return to
+her family. She rode on, and found us waiting anxiously for her. No
+assistance could be afforded from Longford; the rebels were
+reassembling, and advancing towards the village; and there was no
+alternative but to leave our house as fast as possible. One of our
+carriages having been left with the wounded officer, we had but one
+at this moment for our whole family, eleven in number. No mode of
+conveyance could be had for some of our female servants; our
+faithful English housekeeper offered to stay till the return of the
+carriage, which had been left with the officer; and as we could not
+carry her, we were obliged, most reluctantly, to leave her behind to
+follow, as we hoped, immediately. As we passed through the village
+we heard nothing but the entreaties, lamentations, and objurations
+of those who could not procure the means of carrying off their goods
+or their families; most painful when we could give no assistance.
+
+'Next to the safety of his own family, my father's greatest anxiety
+was for his defenceless corps. No men could behave better than they
+did at this first moment of trial. Not one absented himself, though
+many, living at a distance, might, if they had been so inclined,
+have found plausible excuses for non-appearance.
+
+'He ordered them to march to Longford. The idea of going to
+Longford could not be agreeable to many of them, who were Catholics.
+There was no reluctance shown, however, by the Catholics of this
+corps to go among those who called themselves Orangemen.
+
+'We expected every instant to hear the shout of the rebels entering
+Edgeworth Town. When we had got about half-a-mile out of the
+village, my father suddenly recollected that he had left on his
+table a paper containing a list of his corps, and that, if this
+should come into the hands of the rebels, it might be of dangerous
+consequence to his men; it would serve to point out their houses for
+pillage, and their families for destruction. He turned his horse
+instantly and galloped back for it. The time of his absence appeared
+immeasurably long, but he returned safely after having destroyed the
+dangerous paper.
+
+'Longford was crowded with yeomanry of various corps, and with the
+inhabitants of the neighbourhood, who had flocked thither for
+protection. With great difficulty the poor Edgeworth Town infantry
+found lodgings. We were cordially received by the landlady of a
+good inn. Though her house was, as she said, fuller than it could
+hold, as she was an old friend of my father's, she did contrive to
+give us two rooms, in which we eleven were thankful to find
+ourselves. All our concern now was for those we had left behind. We
+heard nothing of our housekeeper all night, and were exceedingly
+alarmed; but early the next morning, to our great joy, she
+arrived. She told us that, after we had left her, she waited hour
+after hour for the carriage; she could hear nothing of it, as
+it had gone to Longford with the wounded officer. Towards evening,
+a large body of rebels entered the village; she heard them at the
+gate, and expected that they would have broken in the next instant;
+but one, who seemed to be a leader, with a pike in his hand, set his
+back against the gate, and swore that, if he was to die for it the
+next minute, he would have the life of the first man who should open
+that gate or set enemy's foot withinside of that place. He said the
+housekeeper, who was left in it, was a good gentlewoman, and had
+done him a service, though she did not know him, nor he her. He had
+never seen her face, but she had, the year before, lent his wife,
+when in distress, sixteen shillings, the rent of flax-ground, and he
+would stand her friend now.
+
+'He kept back the mob: they agreed to send him to the house with a
+deputation of six, to know the truth, and to ask for arms. The six
+men went to the back door and summoned the housekeeper; one of them
+pointed his blunderbuss at her, and told her that she must fetch all
+the arms in the house; she said she had none. Her champion asked her
+to say if she remembered him. "No," to her knowledge she had never
+seen his face. He asked if she remembered having lent a woman money
+to pay her rent of flaxground the year before. "Yes," she remembered
+that, and named the woman, the time, and the sum. His companions
+were thus satisfied of the truth of what he had asserted. He bid her
+not to be frighted, for that no harm should happen to her, nor any
+belonging to her; not a soul should get leave to go into her
+master's house; not a twig should be touched, nor a leaf harmed. His
+companions huzzaed and went off. Afterwards, as she was told, he
+mounted guard at the gate during the whole time the rebels were in
+the town.
+
+'When the carriage at last returned, it was stopped by the rebels,
+who filled the street; they held their pikes to the horses and to
+the coachman's breast, accusing him of being an Orangeman, because,
+as they said, he wore the orange colours (our livery being yellow
+and brown). A painter, a friend of ours, who had been that day at
+our house, copying some old family portraits, happened to be in the
+street at that instant, and called out to the mob, "Gentlemen, it
+is yellow! Gentlemen, it is not orange!" In consequence of this
+happy distinction they let go the coachman; and the same man who had
+mounted guard at the gate, came up with his friends, rescued the
+carriage, and surrounding the coachman with their pikes brought him
+safely into the yard. The pole of the carriage having been broken in
+the first onset, the housekeeper could not leave Edgeworth Town till
+morning. She passed the night in walking up and down, listening and
+watching, but the rebels returned no more, and thus our house was
+saved by the gratitude of a single individual.
+
+'We had scarcely time to rejoice in the escape of our housekeeper
+and safety of our house, when we found that new dangers arose even
+from this escape. The house being saved created jealousy and
+suspicion in the minds of many, who at this time saw everything
+through the mist of party prejudice. The dislike to my father's
+corps appeared every hour more strong. He saw the consequences that
+might arise from the slightest breaking out of quarrel. It was not
+possible for him to send his men, unarmed as they still were, to
+their homes, lest they should be destroyed by the rebels; yet the
+officers of the other corps wished to have them sent out of the
+town, and to this effect joined in a memorial to government. Some
+of these officers disliked my father, from differences of
+electioneering interests; others, from his not having kept up an
+acquaintance with them; and others, not knowing him in the least,
+were misled by party reports and misrepresentations.
+
+'These petty dissensions were, however, at one moment suspended and
+forgotten in a general sense of danger. An express arrived late one
+night with the news that the French, who were rapidly advancing,
+were within a few miles of the town of Longford. A panic seized the
+people. There were in the town eighty of the carabineers and two
+corps of yeomanry, but it was proposed to evacuate the garrison. My
+father strongly opposed this measure, and undertook, with fifty men,
+if arms and ammunition were supplied, to defend the gaol of
+Longford, where there was a strong pass, at which the enemy might be
+stopped. He urged that a stand might be made there till the King's
+army should come up. The offer was gladly accepted--men, arms, and
+ammunition, all he could want or desire, were placed at his
+disposal. He slept that night in the gaol, with everything prepared
+for its defence; but the next morning fresh news came, that the
+French had turned off from the Longford Road, and were going towards
+Granard; of this, however, there was no certainty. My father, by the
+desire of the commanding officer, rode out to reconnoitre, and my
+brother went to the top of the courthouse with a telescope for the
+same purpose. We (Mrs. Edgeworth, my aunts, my sisters, and myself)
+were waiting to hear the result in one of the upper sitting-rooms of
+the inn, which fronted the street. We heard a loud shout, and going
+to the window, we saw the people throwing up their hats, and heard
+huzzas. An express had arrived with news that the French and the
+rebels had been beaten; that General Lake had come up with them at a
+place called Ballynamuck, near Granard; that 1500 rebels and French
+were killed, and that the French generals and officers were
+prisoners.
+
+'We were impatient for my father, when we heard this joyful news;
+he had not yet returned, and we looked out of the window in hopes of
+seeing him; but we could see only a great number of people of the
+town shaking hands with each other. This lasted a few minutes, and
+then the crowd gathered in silence round one man, who spoke with
+angry vehemence and gesticulation, stamping, and frequently wiping
+his forehead. We thought he was a mountebank haranguing the
+populace, till we saw that he wore a uniform. Listening with
+curiosity to hear what he was saying, we observed that he looked up
+towards us, and we thought we heard him pronounce the names of my
+father and brother in tones of insult. We could scarcely believe
+what we heard him say. Pointing up to the top of the court-house, he
+exclaimed, "That young Edgeworth ought to be dragged down from the
+top of that house."
+
+'Our housekeeper burst into the room, so much terrified she could
+hardly speak.
+
+'"My master, ma'am!--it is all against my master. The mob say they
+will tear him to pieces, if they catch hold of him. They say he 's
+a traitor, that he illuminated the gaol to deliver it up to the
+French."
+
+'No words can give an idea of our astonishment. "Illuminated!" What
+could be meant by the gaol being illuminated? My father had
+literally but two farthing candles, by the light of which he had
+been reading the newspaper late the preceding night. These, however,
+were said to be signals for the enemy. The absurdity of the whole
+was so glaring that we could scarcely conceive the danger to be
+real, but our pale landlady's fears were urgent; she dreaded that
+her house should be pulled down.
+
+'We wrote immediately to the commanding officer, informing him of
+what we had heard, and requesting his advice and assistance. He came
+to us, and recommended that we should send a messenger to warn Mr.
+Edgeworth of his danger, and to request that he would not return to
+Longford that day. The officer added that, in consequence of the
+rejoicings for the victory, his men would probably be all drunk in a
+few hours, and that he could not answer for them. This officer, a
+captain of yeomanry, was a good-natured but inefficient man, who
+spoke under considerable nervous agitation, and seemed desirous to
+do all he could, but not to be able to do anything. We wrote
+instantly, and with difficulty found a man who undertook to convey
+the note. It was to be carried to meet him on one road, and Mrs.
+Edgeworth and I determined to drive out to meet him on the other. We
+made our way down a back staircase into the inn yard, where the
+carriage was ready. Several gentlemen spoke to us as we got into the
+carriage, begging us not to be alarmed: Mrs. Edgeworth answered that
+she was more surprised than alarmed. The commanding officer and the
+sovereign of Longford walked by the side of the carriage through the
+town; and as the mob believed that we were going away not to return,
+we got through without much molestation. We went a few miles on the
+road toward Edgeworth Town, till at a tenant's house we heard that
+my father had passed half an hour ago; that he was riding in company
+with an officer, supposed to be of Lord Cornwallis's or General
+Lake's army; that they had taken a short cut, which led into
+Longford by another entrance:--most fortunately, not that at which
+an armed mob had assembled, expecting the object of their fury.
+Seeing him return to the inn with an officer of the King's army,
+they imagined, as we were afterwards told, that he was brought back
+a prisoner, and they were satisfied.
+
+'The moment we saw him safe, we laughed at our own fears, and again
+doubted the reality of the danger, more especially as he treated the
+idea with the utmost incredulity and scorn.
+
+'Major (now General) Eustace was the officer who returned with him.
+He dined with us; everything appeared quiet. The persons who had
+taken refuge at the inn were now gone to their homes, and it was
+supposed that, whatever dispositions to riot had existed, the news
+of the approach of some of Lord Cornwallis's suite, or of troops who
+were to bring in the French prisoners, would prevent all probability
+of disturbance. In the evening the prisoners arrived at the inn; a
+crowd followed them, but quietly. A sun-burnt, coarse-looking man,
+in a huge cocked hat, with a quantity of gold lace on his clothes,
+seemed to fix all attention; he was pointed out as the French
+General Homberg, or Sarrazin. As he dismounted from his horse, he
+threw the bridle over its neck, and looked at the animal as being
+his only friend.
+
+'We heard my father in the evening ask Major Eustace to walk with
+him through the town to the barrack-yard to evening parade; and we
+saw them go out together without our feeling the slightest
+apprehension. We remained at the inn. By this time Colonel
+Handfield, Major Cannon, and some other officers, had arrived, and
+they were at the inn at dinner in a parlour on the ground-floor,
+under our room. It being hot weather, the windows were open. Nothing
+now seemed to be thought of but rejoicings for the victory. Candles
+were preparing for the illumination; waiters, chambermaids,
+landlady, were busy scooping turnips and potatoes for candlesticks,
+to stand in every pane of every loyal window.
+
+'In the midst of this preparation, half an hour after my father had
+left us, we heard a great uproar in the street. At first we thought
+the shouts were only rejoicings for victory, but as they came nearer
+we heard screechings and yellings indescribably horrible. A mob had
+gathered at the gates of the barrack-yard, and joined by many
+soldiers of the yeomanry on leaving parade, had followed Major
+Eustace and my father from the barracks. The Major being this
+evening in coloured clothes, the people no longer knew him to be an
+officer, nor conceived, as they had done before, that Mr. Edgeworth
+was his prisoner. The mob had not contented themselves with the
+horrid yells that they heard, but had been pelting them with hard
+turf, stones, and brickbats. From one of these my father received a
+blow on the side of his head, which came with such force as to
+stagger and almost to stun him; but he kept himself from falling,
+knowing that if he once fell he would be trampled under foot. He
+walked on steadily till he came within a few yards of the inn, when
+one of the mob seized hold of Major Eustace by the collar. My father
+seeing the windows of the inn open, called with a loud voice, "Major
+Eustace is in danger!"
+
+'The officers, who were at dinner, and who till that moment had
+supposed the noise in the street to be only drunken rejoicings,
+immediately ran out and rescued Major Eustace and my father. At the
+sight of British officers and drawn swords, the populace gave way,
+and dispersed in different directions.
+
+'The preparation for the illumination then went on as if nothing had
+intervened. All the panes of our windows in the front room were in a
+blaze of light by the time the mob returned through the street. The
+night passed without further disturbance.
+
+'As early as we could the next morning we left Longford, and
+returned homewards, all danger from rebels being now over, and the
+Rebellion having been terminated by the late battle.
+
+'When we came near Edgeworth Town, we saw many well-known faces at
+the cabin doors looking out to welcome us. One man, who was digging
+in his field by the roadside, when he looked up as our horses
+passed, and saw my father, let fall his spade and clasped his hands;
+his face, as the morning sun shone upon it, was the strongest
+picture of joy I ever saw. The village was a melancholy spectacle;
+windows shattered and doors broken. But though the mischief done was
+great, there had been little pillage. Within our gates we found all
+property safe; literally "not a twig touched, nor a leaf harmed."
+Within the house everything was as we had left it--a map that we had
+been consulting was still open upon the library table, with pencils,
+and slips of paper containing the first lessons in arithmetic, in
+which some of the young people had been engaged the morning we had
+driven from home; a pansy, in a glass of water, which one of the
+children had been copying, was still on the chimney-piece. These
+trivial circumstances, marking repose and tranquillity, struck us at
+this moment with an unreasonable sort of surprise, and all that had
+passed seemed like an incoherent dream. The joy of having my father
+in safety remained, and gratitude to Heaven for his preservation.
+These feelings spread inexpressible pleasure over what seemed to be
+a new sense of existence. Even the most common things appeared
+delightful; the green lawn, the still groves, the birds singing, the
+fresh air, all external nature, and all the goods and conveniences
+of life, seemed to have wonderfully increased in value from the fear
+into which we had been put of losing them irrevocably.
+
+'The first thing my father did, the day we came home, was to draw
+up a memorial to the Lord-Lieutenant, desiring to have a
+court-martial held on the sergeant who, by haranguing the populace,
+had raised the mob at Longford; his next care was to walk through
+the village, to examine what damage had been done by the rebels, and
+to order that repairs of all his tenants' houses should be made at
+his expense. A few days after our return, Government ordered that
+the arms of the Edgeworth Town infantry should be forwarded by the
+commanding-officer at Longford. Through the whole of their hard
+week's trial the corps had, without any exception, behaved perfectly
+well. It was perhaps more difficult to honest and brave men
+passively to bear such a trial than any to which they could have
+been exposed in action.
+
+'When the arms for the corps arrived, my father, in delivering them
+to the men, thanked them publicly for their conduct, assuring them
+that he would remember it whenever he should have opportunities of
+serving them, collectively or individually. In long-after years, as
+occasions arose, each who continued to deserve it found in him a
+friend, and felt that he more than fulfilled his promise. . . .
+Before we quit this subject, it may be useful to record that the
+French generals who headed this invasion declared they had been
+completely deceived as to the state of Ireland. They had expected to
+find the people in open rebellion, or at least, in their own phrase,
+organised for insurrection; but to their dismay they found only
+ragamuffins, as they called them, who, in joining their standard,
+did them infinitely more harm than good. It is a pity that the lower
+Irish could not hear the contemptuous manner in which the French,
+both officers and soldiers, spoke of them and of their country. The
+generals described the stratagems which had been practised upon them
+by their good allies--the same rebels frequently returning with
+different tones and new stories, to obtain double and treble
+provisions of arms, ammunition, and uniforms--selling the ammunition
+for whisky, and running away at the first fire in the day of battle.
+The French, detesting and despising those by whom they had been thus
+cheated, pillaged, and deserted, called them beggars, rascals, and
+savages. They cursed also without scruple their own Directory for
+sending them, after they had, as they boasted, conquered the world,
+to be at last beaten on an Irish bog. Officers and soldiers joined
+in swearing that they would never return to a country where they
+could find neither bread, wine, nor discipline, and where the people
+lived on roots, whisky, and lying.'
+
+Maria ends this exciting chapter of the Memoirs with these moral
+reflections: 'At all times it is disadvantageous to those who have
+the reputation of being men of superior abilities, to seclude
+themselves from the world. It raises a belief that they despise
+those with whom they do not associate; and this supposed contempt
+creates real aversion. The being accused of pride or singularity may
+not, perhaps, in the estimation of some lofty spirits and
+independent characters, appear too great a price to pay for liberty
+and leisure; they will care little if they be misunderstood or
+misrepresented by the vulgar; they will trust to truth and time to
+do them justice. This may be all well in ordinary life, and in
+peaceable days; but in civil commotions the best and the wisest, if
+he have not made himself publicly known, so as to connect himself
+with the interests and feelings of his neighbours, will find none to
+answer for his character if it be attacked, or to warn him of the
+secret machinations of his enemies; none who on any sudden emergency
+will risk their own safety in his defence: he may fall and be
+trampled upon by numbers, simply because it is nobody's business or
+pleasure to rally to his aid. Time and reason right his character,
+and may bring all who have injured, or all who have mistaken him, to
+repentance and shame, but in the interval he must suffer--he may
+perish.'
+
+
+
+Chapter 9.
+
+The British Government seem to have thought it best at this time to
+pursue a laissez faire policy in Ireland, in order to convince the
+Irish of their weakness, and to show them that, although a bundle
+of sticks when loosened allows each stick to be used for beating,
+and it may therefore be argued that sticks, being meant for
+fighting, should never be bound in a bundle, yet each single stick
+may easily get broken. Of course the Government intended to
+intervene before it was too late, and to suggest to the Irish that
+it was time to think of a union with their stronger neighbours.
+
+On this subject, Maria remarks: 'It is certain that the combinations
+of the disaffected at home and the advance of foreign invaders, were
+not checked till the peril became imminent, and till the purpose of
+creating universal alarm had been fully effected. As soon as the
+Commander-in-Chief and the Lord-Lieutenant (at the time joined in
+the same person) exerted his full military and civil power, the
+invaders were defeated, and the rebellion was extinguished. The
+petty magisterial tyrants, who had been worse than vain of their
+little brief authority, were put down, or rather, being no longer
+upheld, sank to their original and natural insignificance. The laws
+returned to their due course; and, with justice, security and
+tranquillity, were restored.
+
+'My father honestly, not ostentatiously, used his utmost endeavours
+to obliterate all that could tend to perpetuate ill-will in the country.
+Among the lower classes in his neighbourhood he endeavoured to
+discourage that spirit of recrimination and retaliation which the
+lower Irish are too prone to cherish, and of which they are proud.
+"Revenge is sweet, and I'll have it" were words which an old
+beggar-woman was overheard muttering to herself as she tottered
+along the road. . . .
+
+'The lower Irish are such acute observers that there is no deceiving
+them as to the state of the real feelings of their superiors. . . .
+
+'It was soon seen by all of those who had any connection with him,
+that my father was sincere in his disdain of vengeance--of this they
+had convincing proof in his refusing to listen to the tales of
+slander, which so many were ready to pour into his ear, against
+those who had appeared to be his enemies.
+
+'They saw that he determined to have a public trial of the man who
+had instigated the Longford mob, but that, for the sake of justice,
+and to record what his own conduct had been, he did not seek this
+trial from any petty motives of personal resentment.
+
+'During the course of the trial, it appeared that the sergeant was a
+mere ignorant enthusiast, who had been worked up to frenzy by some,
+more designing than himself. Having accomplished his own object of
+publicly proving every fact that concerned his own honour and
+character, my father felt desirous that the poor culprit, who was
+now ashamed and penitent, should not be punished. The evidence was
+not pressed against him, and he was acquitted. As they were leaving
+the courthouse my father saw, and spoke in a playful tone to the
+penitent sergeant, who, among his other weaknesses, happened to be
+much afraid of ghosts. "Sergeant, I congratulate you," said he,
+"upon my being alive here before you--I believe you would rather
+meet me than my ghost!" Then cheering up the man with the assurance
+of his perfect forgiveness, he passed on.
+
+'The malevolent passions' my father always considered as the
+greatest foes to human felicity--they would not stay in his mind--he
+was of too good and too happy a nature. He forgot all, but the moral
+which he drew for his private use from this Longford business. He
+kept ever afterwards the resolution he had made, to mix more with
+general society.
+
+'His thoughts were soon called to that most important question, of
+the Union between England and Ireland, which it was expected would
+be discussed at the meeting of Parliament.
+
+'It was late in life to begin a political career--imprudently so,
+had it been with the common views of family advancement or of
+personal fame; but his chief hope, in going into Parliament, was to
+obtain assistance in forwarding the great object of improving the
+education of the people: he wished also to assist in the discussion
+of the Union. He was not without a natural desire, which he candidly
+avowed, to satisfy himself how far he could succeed as a
+parliamentary speaker, and how far his mind would stand the trial of
+political competition or the temptations of ambition.
+
+'On the subject of the Union he had not yet been able, in
+parliamentary phrase, to make up his mind: and he went to the House
+in that state in which so many profess to find themselves, and so
+few ever really are--anxious to hear the arguments on both sides,
+and open to be decided by whoever could show him that which was best
+for his country.
+
+'The debate on the first proposal of the Union was protracted to an
+unusual length, and when he rose to speak, it was late at night, or
+rather it was early in the morning--two o'clock--the House had been
+so wearied that many of the members were asleep. It was an
+inauspicious moment. No person present, not even the Speaker, who
+was his intimate friend, could tell on which side he would vote.
+Curiosity was excited: some of the outstretched members were roused
+by their neighbours, whose anxiety to know on which side he would
+vote prompted them to encourage him to proceed. This curiosity was
+kept alive as he went on; and when people perceived that it was not
+a set speech, they became interested. He stated his doubts, just as
+they had really occurred, balancing the arguments as he threw them
+by turns into each scale, as they had balanced one another in his
+judgment; so that the doubtful beam nodded from side to side, while
+all watched to see when its vibrations would settle. All the time he
+kept both parties in good humour, because each expected to have him
+their own at last. After stating many arguments in favour of what
+appeared to him to be the advantages of the Union, he gave his vote
+against it, because, he said, he had been convinced by what he had
+heard in that House this night, that the Union was at this time
+decidedly against the wishes of the great majority of men of sense
+and property in the nation. He added that if he should be convinced
+that the opinion of the country changed at the final discussion of
+the question, his vote would be in its favour.
+
+'One of the anti-Unionists, who happened not to know my father
+personally, imagined from his accent, style, and manner of speaking,
+that he was an Englishman, and accused the Government of having
+brought a new member over from England, to impose him upon the
+House, as an impartial country gentleman, who was to make a
+pretence of liberality by giving a vote against the Union, while, by
+arguing in its favour, he was to make converts for the measure. Many
+on the Ministerial bench, who had still hopes that, on a future
+occasion, Mr. Edgeworth might be convinced and brought to vote with
+them, complimented him highly, declaring that they were completely
+surprised when they learned how he voted; for that undoubtedly the
+best arguments on their side of the question had been produced in
+his speech. Lord Castlereagh found the measure so much against the
+sense of the House that he pressed it no further at that time.
+
+'This session my father had the satisfaction of turning the
+attention of the House to a subject which he considered to be of
+greater and more permanent importance than the Union, or than any
+merely political measure could prove to his country, the education
+of the people. By his exertions a select committee was appointed,
+and they adopted the resolutions drawn up by him. When the report of
+this committee was brought up to the House, my father spoke at large
+upon the subject.
+
+'In his speech he said: It was impossible, when moral principles are
+instilled into the human mind, when people are regularly taught
+their duty to God and man, that abominable tenets can prevail to the
+subversion of subordination and society. He would venture to assert,
+though the power of the sword was great, that the force of education
+was greater. It was notorious that the writings of one man, Mr.
+Burke, had changed the opinions of the whole people of England
+against the French Revolution. ... If proper books were circulated
+through the country, and if the public mind was prepared for the
+reception of their doctrines, it would be impossible to make the
+ignorance of the people an instrument of national ruin.
+
+'There is, he contended, a fund of goodness in the Irish as well as
+in the English nature. Did God give different minds to different
+countries? No, the difference of mind arose from education. It
+therefore became the duty of Parliament to improve as much as
+possible the public understanding--for the misfortunes of Ireland
+were owing not to the heart, but the head: the defect was not from
+nature, but from want of culture.
+
+'During this session my father spoke again two or three times, on
+some questions of revenue regulations and excise laws: of little
+consequence separately considered, but of importance in one respect,
+in their effect on the morality of the people. He pointed out that
+nothing could with more certainty tend to increase the crime of
+perjury than the multiplying custom-house oaths, and what are termed
+oaths of office. ... In Ireland the habits of the common people are
+already too lax with regard to truth. The difference of religion,
+and the facilities of absolution, present difficulties so formidable
+to their moral improvement as to require all the counteracting
+powers of education, example, public opinion, and law. . . .
+Multiplying oaths injures the revenue, by increasing incalculably
+the means of evading the very laws and penalties by which it is
+attempted to bind the subject. Experience proves that this is a
+danger of no small account to the revenue; though trifling when
+compared with the importance of the general effect on national
+morality, and on the safety and tranquillity of the State, all which
+must ultimately rest, at all times and in all countries, upon
+religious sanctions. "It was not," my father observed, "by
+increasing pains and penalties, or by any severity of punishment,
+that the observance of laws can be secured; on the contrary, small
+but certain punishments, and few but punctually executed laws, are
+most likely to secure obedience, and to effect public prosperity."'
+
+He writes to Darwin in March 1800: 'The fatigue of the session was
+enormous. I am a Unionist, but I vote and speak against the union
+now proposed to us--as to my reasons, are they not published in the
+reports of our debates? It is intended to force this measure down
+the throats of the Irish, though five-sixths of the nation are
+against it. Now, though I think such union as would identify the
+nations, so as that Ireland should be as Yorkshire to Great Britain,
+would be an excellent thing: yet I also think that the good people
+of Ireland ought to be persuaded of this truth, and not be
+dragooned into the submission.
+
+'The Minister avows that seventy-two boroughs are to be compensated
+--i.e. bought by the people of Ireland with one million and a half
+of their own money; and he makes this legal by a very small
+majority, made up chiefly by these very borough members. When
+thirty-eight country members out of sixty-four are against the
+measure, and twenty-eight counties out of thirty-two have petitioned
+against it, this is such abominable corruption that it makes our
+parliamentary sanction worse than ridiculous.
+
+'I had the honour of offering, for myself, and for a large number of
+other gentlemen, that, if a minister could by any means win the
+nation to the measure, and show us even a small preponderance in his
+favour, we would vote with him.
+
+'So far for politics. I had a charming opportunity of advancing
+myself and my family, but I did not think it wise to quarrel with
+myself, and lose my good opinion at my time of life. What did lie in
+my way for a vote I will not say, but I stated in my place in the
+House, that I had been offered three thousand guineas for my seat
+during the few remaining weeks of the session.'
+
+In 1817 he writes:--'The influence of the Crown was never so
+strongly exerted as upon this occasion. It is but justice, however,
+to Lord Cornwallis and Lord Castlereagh to give it as my opinion,
+that they began this measure with sanguine hopes that they could
+convince the reasonable part of the community that a cordial union
+between the two countries would essentially advance the interests of
+both. When, however, the ministry found themselves in a minority,
+and that a spirit of general opposition was rising in the country, a
+member of the House, who had been long practised in parliamentary
+intrigues, had the audacity to tell Lord Castlereagh from his place,
+that "if he did not employ the usual means of persuasion on the
+members of the House, he would fail in his attempt, and that the
+sooner he set about it the better."
+
+'This advice was followed; and it is well known what benches were
+filled with the proselytes that had been made by the convincing
+arguments which had obtained a majority.
+
+'He went in the spring of 1799 to England, and visited his old
+friends, Mr. Keir, Mr. Watt, Dr. Darwin, and Mr. William Strutt of
+Derby. In passing through different parts of the country he saw, and
+delighted in showing us, everything curious and interesting in art
+and nature. Travelling, he used to say, was from time to time
+necessary, to change the course of ideas, and to prevent the growth
+of local prejudices.
+
+'He went to London, and paid his respects to his friend Sir Joseph
+Banks, attended the meetings of the Royal Society, and met various
+old acquaintances whom he had formerly known abroad.'
+
+Maria writes:--'In his own account of his earlier life he has never
+failed to mark the time and manner of the commencement of valuable
+friendships with the same care and vividness of recollection With
+which some men mark the date of their obtaining promotion, places,
+or titles. I follow the example he has set me.
+
+'My father's and Mrs. Edgeworth's families were both numerous, and
+among such numbers, even granting the dispositions to be excellent
+and the understandings cultivated, the chances were against their
+suiting; but, happily, all the individuals of the two families,
+though of various talents, ages, and characters, did, from their
+first acquaintance, coalesce. . . . After he had lost such a friend
+as Mr. Day . . . who could have dared to hope that he should ever
+have found another equally deserving to possess his whole confidence
+and affection? Yet such a one it pleased God to give him--and to
+give him in the brother of his wife. And never man felt more
+strongly grateful for the double blessing. To Captain Beaufort he
+became as much attached as he had ever been to Lord Longford or to
+Mr. Day.
+
+'His father-in-law, Dr. Beaufort, was also particularly agreeable
+to him as a companion, and helpful as a friend.'
+
+Consumption again carried off one of Edgeworth's family: his
+daughter Elizabeth died at Clifton in August 1800.
+
+The Continent, which had been practically closed for some years to
+travellers, was open in 1802 at the time of the short peace, and
+Edgeworth gladly availed himself of the opportunity of mixing in the
+literary and scientific society in Paris, and of showing his wife
+the treasures of the Louvre--treasures increased by the spoil of
+other countries. The tour was arranged for the autumn, and Edgeworth
+was looking forward to visiting Dr. Darwin on the way, when he
+received a letter begun by the doctor, describing his move from
+Derby to the Priory, a few miles out of the town, and sending a
+playful message to Maria: 'Pray tell the authoress that the water
+nymphs of our valley will be happy to assist her next novel.'
+
+A few lines after, the pen had stopped; another hand added the sad
+news that Dr. Darwin had been taken suddenly ill with fainting fits:
+he revived and spoke, but died that morning. The sudden death of
+such an old and valued friend was a great shock to Edgeworth.
+
+Some months later, his daughter mentions that, 'in passing through
+England, we went to Derby, and to the Priory, to which we had been
+so kindly invited by him who was now no more. The Priory was all
+stillness, melancholy, and mourning. It was a painful visit, yet not
+without satisfaction; for my father's affectionate manner seemed to
+soothe the widow and daughters of his friend, who were deeply
+sensible of the respect and zealous regard he showed for Dr.
+Darwin's memory.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 10
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth, with their daughters Maria and Charlotte,
+travelled through the Low Countries--'a delightful tour,' Maria
+writes--and at length reached Paris, where they spent the winter
+1802-3. They soon got introductions, through the Abbe Morellet, into
+that best circle of society, 'which was composed of all that
+remained of the ancient men of letters, and of the most valuable of
+the nobility; not of those who had accepted of places from
+Buonaparte, nor yet of those emigrants who have been wittily and too
+justly described as returning to France after the Revolution, sans
+avoir rien appris, ou rien oublie.' . . . 'We felt,' Maria writes,
+'the characteristic charms of Parisian conversation, the polish and
+ease which in its best days distinguished it from that of any other
+capital.
+
+'During my father's former residence in France, at the time when he
+was engaged in directing the works of the Rhone and Saone at Lyons,
+as he mentions in his Memoirs, he wrote a treatise on the
+construction of mills. He wished that D'Alembert should read it, to
+verify the mathematical calculations, and for this purpose he had
+put it into the hands of Morellet. D'Alembert approved of the essay;
+and my father became advantageously known to Morellet as a man of
+science, and as one who had gratuitously and honourably conducted a
+useful work in France. His predominating taste thus continued, as in
+former times, its influence, was still a connecting link between him
+and old and new friends. On this and many other occasions he proved
+the truth of what has been asserted, that no effort is ever lost:
+his exertions at Lyons in 1772, after an interval of thirty years,
+now becoming of unexpected advantage to him and to his family at
+Paris. . . .
+
+'In Paris there is an institution resembling our London Society of
+Arts, La Societe d'Encouragement pour l'Industrie Nationale: of this
+my father was made a member, and he presented to it the model of a
+lock of his invention. In getting this executed, he became
+acquainted with some of the working mechanics in Paris, and had an
+opportunity of observing how differently work of this kind is
+carried on there and in Birmingham. Instead of the assemblage of
+artificers in manufactories, such as we see in Birmingham, each
+artisan in Paris, working out his own purposes in his own domicile,
+must in his time "play many parts," and among these many to which
+he is incompetent, either from want of skill or want of practice: so
+that, in fact, even supposing French artisans to be of equal ability
+and industry with English competitors, they are at least a century
+behind, by thus being precluded from all the miraculous advantages
+of the division of labour. . . . 'My father had left England with a
+strong desire to see Buonaparte, and had procured a letter from the
+Lord Chamberlain (Lord Essex), and had applied to Lord Whitworth,
+our Ambassador at Paris, who was to present him. But soon after our
+arrival at Paris, he learned that Buonaparte was preparing the way
+for becoming Emperor, contrary to the wishes and judgment of the
+most enlightened part of the French nation. . . .
+
+'My father could no longer consider Buonaparte as a great man,
+abiding by his principles, and content with the true glory of being
+the first citizen of a free people; but as one meditating
+usurpation, and on the point of overturning, for the selfish love of
+dominion, the liberty of France. With this impression, my father
+declared that he would not go to the court of a usurper. He never
+went to his levees, nor would he be presented to him.
+
+'My father had not the presumption to imagine that in a cursory
+view, during a slight tour, and a residence of four or five months
+at Paris, he could become thoroughly acquainted with France.
+Besides, his living chiefly with the select society which I have
+described precluded the possibility of seeing much of what were
+called les nouveaux riches.
+
+'The few general observations he made on French society at this time
+I shall mention. He observed that, among the families of the old
+nobility, domestic happiness and virtue had much increased since the
+Revolution, in consequence of the marriages which, after they lost
+their wealth and rank, had been formed, not according to the usual
+fashion of old French alliances, but from disinterested motives,
+from the perception of the real suitability of tempers and
+characters. The women of this class in general, withdrawn from
+politics and political intrigue, were more domestic and
+amiable. . . .
+
+'With regard to literature, he observed that it had considerably
+degenerated. For the good taste, wit, and polished style which had
+characterised French literature before the Revolution there was no
+longer any demand, and but few competent judges remained. The
+talents of the nation had been forced by circumstances into
+different directions. At one time, the hurry and necessity of the
+passing moment had produced political pamphlets and slight works of
+amusement, formed to catch the public revolutionary taste. At
+another period, the contending parties, and the real want of freedom
+in the country, had repressed literary efforts. Science, which
+flourished independently of politics, and which was often useful and
+essential to the rulers, had meanwhile been encouraged, and had
+prospered. The discoveries and inventions of men of science showed
+that the same positive quantity of talent existed in France as in
+former times, though appearing in a new form.'
+
+The charms of Paris and its society were rudely broken by Edgeworth
+receiving one morning a visit from a police officer requiring him
+immediately to attend at the Palais de Justice. Edgeworth was in bed
+with a cold when this summons came. He writes to Miss Charlotte
+Sneyd:--'My being ill was not a sufficient excuse; I got up and
+dressed myself slowly, to gain time for thinking--drank one dish of
+chocolate, ordered my carriage, and went with my exempt to the
+Palais de Justice. There I was shown into a parlour, or rather a
+guard-room, where a man like an under-officer was sitting at a desk.
+In a few minutes I was desired to walk upstairs into a long narrow
+room, in different parts of which ten or twelve clerks were sitting
+at different tables. To one of these I was directed--he asked my
+name, wrote it on a printed card, and demanding half a crown,
+presented the card to me, telling me it was a passport. I told him I
+did not want a passport; but he pressed it upon me, assuring me that
+I had urgent necessity for it, as I must quit Paris immediately.
+Then he pointed out to me another table, where another clerk was
+pleased to place me in the most advantageous point of view for
+taking my portrait, and he took my written portrait with great
+solemnity, and this he copied into my passport. I begged to know who
+was the principal person in the room, and to him I applied to learn
+the cause of the whole proceeding. He coolly answered that if I
+wanted to know I must apply to the Grand Juge. To the Grand Juge I
+drove, and having waited till the number ninety-three was called,
+the number of the ticket which had been given to me at the door, I
+was admitted, and the Grand Juge most formally assured me that he
+knew nothing of the affair, but that all I had to do was to obey. I
+returned home, and, on examining my passport, found that I was
+ordered to quit Paris in twenty-four hours. I went directly to our
+Ambassador, Lord Whitworth, who lived at the extremity of the town:
+he was ill--with difficulty I got at his secretary, Mr. Talbot, to
+whom I pointed out that I applied to my Ambassador from a sense of
+duty and politeness, before I would make any application to private
+friends, though I believed that I had many in Paris who were willing
+and able to assist me. The secretary went to the Ambassador, and in
+half an hour wrote an official note to Talleyrand, to ask the why
+and the wherefore. He advised me in the  meantime to quit Paris, and
+to go to some village near it--Passy or Versailles. Passy seemed
+preferable, because it is the nearest to Paris--only a mile and a
+half distant. Before I quitted Paris I made another attempt to
+obtain some explanation from the Grand Juge. I could not see him, or
+even his secretary, for a considerable time; and when at length the
+secretary appeared, it was only to tell me that I could not see the
+Grand Juge. "Cannot I write," said I, "to your Grand Juge?" He
+answered hesitatingly, "Yes." A huissier took in my note, and
+another excellent one from the friend who was with me, F. D. The
+huissier returned presently, holding my papers out to me at arm's
+length--"The Grand Juge knows nothing of this matter."
+
+'I returned home, dined, ordered a carriage to be ready to take me
+to Passy, wrote a letter to Buonaparte, stating my entire ignorance
+of the cause of my deportation, and asserting that I was unconnected
+with any political party. F. D. engaged that the letter should be
+delivered; and Mrs. E. and Charlotte remaining to settle our affairs
+at Paris, I set off for Passy with Maria, where my friend F. D. had
+taken the best lodging he could find for me in the village. Madame
+G. had offered me her country house at Passy; but though she pressed
+that offer most kindly we would not accept of it, lest we should
+compromise our friends. Another friend, Mons. de P, offered his
+country house, but, for the same reason, this offer was declined. We
+arrived at Passy about ten o'clock at night, and though a deporte, I
+slept tolerably well. Before I was up, my friend Mons. de P. was
+with me--breakfasted with us in our little oven of a parlour
+--conversed two hours most agreeably. Our other friend, F. D, came
+also before we had breakfasted, and just as I had mounted on a table
+to paste some paper over certain deficiencies in the window, enter
+M. P. and Le B------h.
+
+'"Mon ami, ce n'est pas la peine!" cried they both at once, their
+faces rayonnant de joie. "You need not give yourself so much
+trouble; you will not stay here long. We have seen the Grand Juge,
+and your detention arises from a mistake. It was supposed that you
+are brother to the Abbe Edgeworth--we are to deliver a petition from
+you, stating what your relationship to the Abbe really is. This
+shall be backed by an address signed by all your friends at Paris,
+and you will be then at liberty to return."
+
+'I objected to writing any petition, and at all events I determined
+to consult my Ambassador, who had conducted himself well towards me.
+I wrote to Lord Whitworth, stating the facts, and declaring that
+nothing could ever make me deny the honour of being related to the
+Abbe Edgeworth. Lord Whitworfh advised me, however, to state the
+fact that I was not the Abbe's brother. . . .
+
+'No direct answer was received from the First Consul; but perhaps
+the revocation of the order of the Grand Juge came from him. We were
+assured that my father's letter had been read by him, and that he
+declared he knew nothing of the affair; and so far from objecting to
+any man for being related to the Abbe Edgeworth, he declared that he
+considered him as a most respectable, faithful subject, and that he
+wished that he had many such.'
+
+Before this unpleasant occurrence Edgeworth had thought of taking a
+house in Paris for two years and sending for his other children; but
+he now, in spite of the entreaties of his French friends, altered
+his plans and resolved to return home. Maria writes:--'He was
+prudent and decided--had he been otherwise, we might all have been
+among the number of our countrymen who were, contrary to the law of
+nations, and to justice and reason, made prisoners in France at the
+breaking out of the war. We were fortunate in getting safe to free
+and happy England a short time before war was declared, and before
+the detention of the English took place.
+
+'My eldest brother had the misfortune to be among those who were
+detained. His exile was rendered as tolerable as circumstances would
+permit by the indefatigable kindness of our friends the D' s. But it
+was an exile of eleven years--from 1803 to 1814--six years of that
+time spent at Verdun!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 11
+
+Instead of returning at once to Ireland, the Edgeworths went to
+Edinburgh to visit Henry Edgeworth, whose declining health caused
+his father much anxiety. Maria writes:--'He mended rapidly while we
+were at Edinburgh; and this improvement in his health added to the
+pleasure his father felt in seeing the interest his son had excited
+among the friends he had made for himself in Edinburgh--men of the
+first abilities and highest characters, both in literature and
+science--whom we knew by their works, as did all the world; with
+some of whom my father had had the honour of corresponding, but to
+whom he was personally unknown. Imagine the pleasure he felt at
+being introduced to them by his son, and in hearing Gregory, Alison,
+Playfair, Dugald Stewart, speak of Henry as if he actually belonged
+to themselves, and with the most affectionate regard. . . .
+
+'On our journey homewards, in passing through Scotland, we met with
+much hospitality and kindness, and much that was interesting in the
+country and in its inhabitants. But the circumstance that remains the
+most fixed in my recollection, and that which afterwards influenced
+my father's life the most, happened to be the books we read during
+our last day's journey. These were the lives of Robertson the
+historian, and of Reid, which had been just given to us by Mr.
+Stewart. In the life of Reid there are some passages which struck my
+father particularly. I recollect at the moment when I was reading to
+him, his stretching eagerly across from his side of the carriage to
+mine, and marking the book with his pencil with strong and
+reiterated marks of approbation. The passages relate to the means
+which Dr. Reid employed to prevent the decay of his faculties as he
+advanced in years; to remedy the errors and deficiencies of one
+failing sense by the increased activity of another, and by the
+resources of reasoning and ingenuity to resist, as far as possible,
+or to render supportable, the infirmities of age . . . My father
+never forgot this passage, and acted on it years afterwards.'
+
+It was not Henry who was taken first, but Charlotte, who was 'fresh
+as a rose' on her first tour abroad. In April 1807 she died of the
+same disease as her sisters, and about two years after her brother
+Henry followed her to the grave.
+
+It needed a brave heart to bear up under such sorrows, but
+Edgeworth, though he felt them keenly, would not sink into the
+lethargy of grief, but roused himself to work for the public good.
+He was on the board appointed to inquire into the education of the
+people of Ireland, and two of his papers on the subject were printed
+in the reports of the Commissioners; he also drew up the plan of a
+school for Edgeworth Town, which was afterwards carried into
+execution by his son, Lovell; and at this time he was writing his
+Memoirs, a task which was interrupted by a severe illness in 1809.
+He had hardly recovered from this before he was engaged in the
+Government survey of bogs, and Maria writes:--'It was late in the
+year, and the weather unfavourable. In laying out and verifying the
+work of the surveyors employed, he was usually out from daybreak to
+sunset, often fifteen hours without food, traversing on foot, with
+great bodily exertion, wastes and deserts of bog, so wet and
+dangerous as to be scarcely passable at that season, even by the
+common Irish best used to them. In these bogs there frequently occur
+great holes, filled with water of the same colour as the bog, or
+sometimes covered over with a slight surface of the peat heath or
+grass, called by the common people a shakingscraw. 'In traversing
+these bogs a man must pick his way carefully, sometimes wading,
+sometimes leaping from one landing place to another, choosing these
+cautiously, lest they should not sustain his weight: avoiding
+certain treacherous green spots on which the unwary might be tempted
+to set foot, and would sink, never to rise again.'
+
+The work was fatiguing, but the open air life seemed to give him new
+vigour, and his health was reestablished.
+
+The work had interested him much, and he believed that an immense
+tract of bog might be reclaimed. The obstacles he foresaw were want
+of capital and the danger of litigation. As long as the bogs were
+unprofitable there was no incitement to a strict definition of
+boundaries, but if the land was reclaimed many lawsuits would
+follow. Maria thus describes the difficulties encountered by her
+father:--'He wished to undertake the improvement of a large tract of
+bog in his neighbourhood, and for this purpose desired to purchase
+it from the proprietor; but the proprietor had not the power or the
+inclination to sell it. My father, anxious to try a decisive
+experiment on a large scale, proposed to rent it from him, and
+offered a rent, till then unheard of, for bogland. The proprietor
+professed himself satisfied to accept the proposal, provided my
+father would undertake to indemnify him for any expense to which he
+might be put by future lawsuits concerning the property or
+boundaries of this bog. He was aware that if he were to give a lease
+for a long term, even for sixty years, this would raise the idea
+that the bog would become profitable; and still further, if ever it
+should be really improved and profitable, it would become an object
+of contention and litigation to many who might fancy they had
+claims, which, as long as the bog was nearly without value, they
+found it not worth while to urge. It was impossible to enter into
+the insurance proposed, and, consequently, he could not obtain
+this tract of bog, or further prosecute his plan. The same sort of
+difficulty must frequently recur. Parts of different estates pass
+through extensive tracts of bog, of which the boundaries are
+uncertain. The right to cut the turf is usually vested in the
+occupiers of adjoining farms; but they are at constant war with each
+other about boundaries, and these disputes, involving the original
+grants of the lands, hundreds of years ago, with all subsequent
+deeds and settlements, appear absolutely interminable. . . .
+
+'It may not be at present a question of much interest to the British
+public, because no such large decisive experiment as was proposed
+has yet been tried as to the value and attainableness of the object;
+but its magnitude and importance are incontestable, the whole extent
+of peat soil in Ireland exceeding, as it is confidently pronounced,
+2,830,000 acres, of which about half might be converted to the
+general purposes of agriculture.'
+
+It was in 1811 that Edgeworth constructed, 'upon a plan of his own
+invention, a spire for the church of Edgeworth Town. This spire was
+formed of a skeleton of iron, covered with slates, painted and
+sanded to resemble Portland stone. It was put together on the ground
+within the tower of the church, and when finished it was drawn up at
+once, with the assistance of counterbalancing weights, to the top of
+the tower, and there to be fixed in its place.
+
+'The novelty of the construction of this spire, even in this its
+first skeleton state, excited attention, and as it drew towards its
+completion, and near the moment when, with its covering of slates,
+altogether amounting to many tons weight, it was to move, or not to
+move, fifty feet from the ground to the top of the tower, everybody
+in the neighbourhood, forming different opinions of the probability
+of its success or failure, became interested in the event.
+
+'Several of my father's friends and acquaintances, in our own and
+from adjoining counties, came to see it drawn up. Fortunately, it
+happened to be a very fine autumn day, and the groups of spectators
+of different ranks and ages, assembled and waiting in silent
+expectation, gave a picturesque effect to the whole. A bugle sounded
+as the signal for ascent. The top of the spire appearing through the
+tower of the church, began to move upwards; its gilt ball and arrow
+glittered in the sun, while with motion that was scarcely
+perceptible it rose majestically. Not one word or interjection was
+uttered by any of the men who worked the windlasses at the top of
+the tower.
+
+'It reached its destined station in eighteen minutes, and then a
+flag streamed from its summit and gave notice that all was safe. Not
+the slightest accident or difficulty occurred.' Maria adds:--'The
+conduct of the whole had been trusted to my brother William (the
+civil engineer), and the first words my father said, when he was
+congratulated upon the success of the work, were that his son's
+steadiness in conducting business and commanding men gave him
+infinitely more satisfaction than he could feel from the success of
+any invention of his own.'
+
+Towards the close of 1811 Edgeworth was requested, as he understood,
+by a committee of the House of Commons on Broad Wheels, to look over
+and report on a mass of evidence on the subject. This he did, but
+then found that it was a private request of the chairman, Sir John
+Sinclair, who begged that the report might be given to the Board of
+Agriculture. This Edgeworth declined, but wrote instead and
+presented An Essay on Springs applied to Carts; and in 1813 he
+published an essay on Roads, and Wheel Carriages. His daughter
+writes:--'In the course of the drudgery which he went through he
+received a great counterbalancing pleasure from the following
+passage, which he chanced to meet with in a letter to the committee,
+written by a gentleman to whom he was personally a stranger:
+
+'"Mr. Edgeworth was the first who pointed out the great benefit of
+springs in aiding the draught of horses. The subject deserves more
+attention than it has hitherto met with. No discovery relative to
+carriages has been made in our time of equal importance; and the
+ingenious author of it deserves highly of some mark of public
+gratitude."'
+
+Maria adds:--'Those ingenious ideas, which had been but the
+amusement of youth, as he advanced in life, he turned to public
+utility: for instance, the mode of conveying secret and swift
+intelligence, which he had suggested at first only to decide a
+trifling wager between him and some young nobleman, he afterwards
+improved into a national telegraph, and through all difficulties and
+disappointments persevered till it was established. In the same
+manner, his juvenile amusements with the sailing chariot led to
+experiments on the resistance of the air, which in more mature years
+he pursued in the patient spirit of philosophical investigation, and
+turned to good account for the real business of life, and for the
+advancement of science.
+
+'On this subject, in the year 1783, he published in the Transactions
+of the Royal Society (vol. 73) "An Essay on the Resistance of the
+Air," of which the object, as he states, is to determine the force
+of the wind upon surfaces of different size and figure, or upon the
+same surface, when placed in different directions, inclined at
+different angles, or curved in different arches. . . . After trying
+several experiments on surfaces of various shapes, he ascertained
+the difference of resistance in different cases, suggested the
+probable cause of these variations, and opened a large field for
+future curious and useful speculation; useful it may be called, as
+well as curious, because such knowledge applies immediately to the
+wants and active business of life, to the construction of wind- and
+water-mills, and to the extensive purposes of navigation. The theory
+of philosophers and the practice of mechanics and seamen were, and
+perhaps are still, at variance as to the manner in which sails of
+wind-mills and of ships should be set. Dr. Hooke, in his day,
+expressed "his surprise at the obstinacy of seamen in continuing,
+after what appeared the clearest demonstration to the contrary, to
+prefer what are called bellying or bunting sails, to such as are
+hauled tight." The doctor said that he would, at some future time,
+add the test of experiment to mathematical investigation in support
+of his theory.
+
+'It is remarkable that this test of experiment, when at length it
+was applied, confirmed the truth of what the philosopher had
+reprobated as an obstinate vulgar error. My father, in his Essay on
+the Resistance of the Air, gives the result of his experiments on a
+flat and curved surface of the same dimensions, and explains the
+cause of the error into which Dr. Hooke, M. Parent, and other
+mathematicians had fallen in their theoretic reasonings. . . .
+
+'It is remarkable that a man of naturally lively imagination and of
+inventive genius should not, in science, have ever followed any
+fanciful theory of his own, but that all he did should have been
+characterised by patient investigation and prudent experiment. . . .
+
+'In science, it is not given to man to finish; to persevere, to
+advance a step or two, is all that can be accomplished, and all that
+will be expected by the real philosopher.
+
+'"We will endeavour" is the humble and becoming motto of our
+philosophical society.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER 12
+
+In his seventy-first year Edgeworth had a dangerous illness, and
+though he seemed to recover from it for a time, he never regained
+his former strength. One great privation was that, from the failure
+of his sight, he became dependent on others to read and write for
+him. But his cheerful fortitude did not fail, though he felt that
+his days were numbered. He had promised to try some private
+experiments for the Dublin Society, and with the help of his son
+William he carried out a set of experiments on wheel carriages in
+April 1815 and in May 1816.
+
+Almost his last literary effort was to dictate some pages which he
+contributed to his daughter Maria's novel Ormond, and he delighted
+in having the proofsheets read to him and in correcting them. Mrs.
+Ritchie has given some touching details of his last days in her
+Introduction to a new edition of Ormond.
+
+Maria writes:--'The whole of Moriaty's history, and his escape from
+prison, were dictated without any alteration, or hesitation of a
+word, to Honora and me. This history Mr. Edgeworth heard from the
+actual hero of it, Michael Dunne, whom he chanced to meet in the
+town of Navan, where he was living respectably. He kept a shop where
+Mr. Edgeworth went to purchase some boards, and observing something
+very remarkable about the man's countenance, he questioned him as
+they were looking at the lumber in his yard, and Dunne readily told
+his tale almost in the very words used by Moriaty. . . . Mr.
+Edgeworth also wrote the meeting between Moriaty and his wife when
+he jumps out of the carriage the moment he hears her voice.'
+
+Edgeworth kept his intellectual faculties to the last. 'To the last
+they continued clear, vigorous, energetic; and to the last were
+exerted in doing good, and in fulfilling every duty, public and
+private. . . .
+
+'In the closing hours of his life his bodily sufferings subsided,
+and in the most serene and happy state, he said, before he sank to
+that sleep from which he never wakened:
+
+'"I die with the soft feeling of gratitude to my friends and
+submission to the God who made me."'
+
+He died the 13th of June 1817.
+
+It may be thought to be an easy task to make an abridgment of a
+biography, but in some ways it is almost as difficult as it is for
+the sketcher to choose what he will put into his picture and yet
+preserve a due proportion and give a faithful idea of the whole
+scene before him. I have tried to give such portions of the Memoirs
+as will present the many-sided character of R. L. Edgeworth in
+relation to his scientific, literary, and educational work, and in
+relation to his position as a landlord, a father, and a friend. He
+was a singular instance of great mental activity with little
+ambition; of a genial nature in his own family circle and among his
+friends, he withdrew from the multitude, and refused to lower his
+standard of cultivated intercourse in order to win favour with
+coarser natures. He is chiefly remembered now as an educational
+reformer and as the guide of Maria Edgeworth in the earlier stages
+of her literary career. What she achieved was in great part due to
+her father's judicious training and encouragement.
+
+A little more ambition and the spur of poverty might have made
+Edgeworth better known as an inventor of useful machines: it is
+curious to remark how nearly he invented the bicycle. He saw the
+advantage that light railways would be to Ireland, but the breath of
+mechanical life, steam, as a power, he did not foresee.
+
+He might have written a book on 'The Domestic Life,' so fully had
+he mastered the secrets of a happy home. He was naturally
+passionate, but had trained himself to be on his guard against his
+temper, and was always anxious to improve and to correct any bad
+habit or fault: even in old age he was constantly on the watch lest
+bodily infirmities should lead to moral deterioration. He was not
+too proud to own when he had made mistakes, but used the experience
+he had gained, and carefully studied his own character and the
+circumstances which had been most beneficial in forming it. He
+controlled his expenses as prudently as his temper, and would not
+allow his inventive faculties to lead him into unjustifiable
+outlays. His daughter mentions that 'when he was a youth of
+nineteen, an old gentleman, who saw him passing by his window, said
+of him, judging by the liveliness of his manner and appearance,
+"There goes a young fellow who will in a few years dissipate all the
+fortune his prudent father has been nursing for him his whole life."
+
+'The prophecy was, by a kind neighbour, repeated to him, and, as I
+have heard him say, it made such an impression as tended
+considerably to prevent its own accomplishment.
+
+'He acquired the habit of calculating and forming estimates most
+accurately. He not only estimated what every object of fancy and
+taste would cost, but he accustomed himself to consider what the
+actual enjoyment of the indulgence would be. ... He upon all
+occasions carefully separated the idea of the pleasure of possession
+from that of contemplating any object of taste.'
+
+She also mentions that 'he observed, that the happiness that people
+derive from the cultivation of their understandings is not in
+proportion to the talents and capacities of the individual, but is
+compounded of the united measure of these, and of the use made of
+them by the possessor; this must include good or ill temper, and
+other moral dispositions. Some with transcendent talents waste these
+in futile projects; others make them a source of misery, by
+indulging that overweening anxiety for fame which ends in
+disappointment, and excites too often the powerful passions of envy
+and jealousy; others, too humble, or too weak, fret away their
+spirits and their life in deploring that they were not born with
+more abilities. But though so many lament the want of talents, few
+actually derive as much happiness as they might from the share of
+understanding which they possess. My father never wasted his time in
+deploring the want of that which he could by exertion acquire. Nor
+did he suffer fame in any pursuit to be his first object.'
+
+We feel that we are in the moral atmosphere of Paley and Butler when
+she adds:--'Far beyond the pleasures of celebrity, or praise in any
+form, he classed self-approbation and benevolence: these he thought
+the most secure sources of satisfaction in this world.' This is the
+spirit of the Eighteenth Century, the clear cold tone of the moral
+philosopher, not the enthusiastic impulse of the fervid theologian,
+of Pusey, Keble, or Newman. One star does indeed differ from another
+in glory, but all give brilliance to our firmament and raise our
+thoughts from earth.
+
+Such a life as Richard Edgeworth's seems to me to be more
+instructive than even that excellent moral guide-book written by Sir
+John Lubbock, The Uses of Life, because abstract maxims take less
+hold of uncultivated or unanalytical minds than the portrait of a
+man of flesh and blood. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress reaches many
+hearts which are unmoved by an ordinary sermon, and Edgeworth's life
+was indeed a progress, a constant striving not only to improve
+himself but to help others onward in the right way. He showed what a
+good landlord could do in Ireland, and what a good father can do in
+binding a family in happy union.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Richard Lovell Edgeworth
+by Richard Lovell Edgeworth
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