CHAPTER IV.

We live just the same kind of life that we used to do at Edgeworthstown, and though we move amongst numbers, are not moved by them, but feel independent of them for our daily amusement. All thephantasmasI had conjured up to frighten myself vanished after I had been here a week, for I found that they were but phantoms of my imagination, as you very truly told me. We live very near the Downs, where we have almost every day charming walks, and all the children go bounding about over hill and dale along with us.

In a later letter she says that they are not quite as happy here as at home, but have a great choice of books which they enjoy. While at Clifton the eldest son visited them. His Rousseau education had turned him out an ungovernable child of nature; he neither could nor would learn, so there remained no alternative but to allow him to follow his inclinations, which happily led him towards nothing more mischievous than a sailor's life. At Clifton, too, they became acquainted with Dr. Beddoes, who soon after married Maria's sister Anna, and became the father of Thomas Lovell Beddoes,the poet of Death. A baby child also died within those two years, which thus embraced meetings, partings, courtships, much pleasant social intercourse, and much serious study. For Maria it also included a visit to an old school-fellow in London:—

She was exceeding kind to me, and I spent most of my time with her as I liked. I say most, because a good deal of it was spent in company, where I heard of nothing but chariots and horses, and curricles and tandems. Oh, to what contempt I exposed myself in a luckless hour, by asking what a tandem was! Since I have been away from home I have missed the society and fondness of my father, mother and sisters, more than I can express, and more than beforehand I could have thought possible; I long to see them all again. Even when I am most amused I feel a void, and now I understand what an aching void is perfectly well.

A letter written from Clifton is a charming specimen of Miss Edgeworth's easy, warm-hearted family missives, which, like most family letters, contain little of intrinsic value, and yet throw much light upon the nature of their writer:—

Clifton, Dec. 13, 1792.The day of retribution is at hand, my dear aunt. The month of May will soon come, and then when we meet face to face, and voucher to voucher, it shall be truly seen whose letter-writing account stands fullest and fairest in the world. Till then "we'll leave it all to yourhonor's honor." But why does my dear aunt write, "I can have but little more time to spend with my brother in my life," as if she was an old woman of one hundred and ninety-nine and upwards? I remember the day I left Black Castle you told me, if you recollect, that "you had one foot in the grave;" and though I saw you standing before me in perfect health, sound wind and limb, I had the weakness to feel frightened, and never to think of examining where your feet really were. But in the month of May we hope to find them safe in your shoes, and I hope that the sun will then shine out, and that all the black clouds in the political horizon will be dispersed, and that "freemen" will, by that time, eat their puddings and hold their tongues. Anna and I stayed one week with Mrs. Powys, at Bath, and were very thoroughly occupied all the time with seeing and—I won't say with being seen; for though we were at three balls, I do not believe any one saw us. The upper rooms we thought very splendid and the play-houses pretty, but not so good as the theatre at Bristol. We walked all over Bath with my father, and liked it extremely: he showed us the house where he was born.

Clifton, Dec. 13, 1792.

The day of retribution is at hand, my dear aunt. The month of May will soon come, and then when we meet face to face, and voucher to voucher, it shall be truly seen whose letter-writing account stands fullest and fairest in the world. Till then "we'll leave it all to yourhonor's honor." But why does my dear aunt write, "I can have but little more time to spend with my brother in my life," as if she was an old woman of one hundred and ninety-nine and upwards? I remember the day I left Black Castle you told me, if you recollect, that "you had one foot in the grave;" and though I saw you standing before me in perfect health, sound wind and limb, I had the weakness to feel frightened, and never to think of examining where your feet really were. But in the month of May we hope to find them safe in your shoes, and I hope that the sun will then shine out, and that all the black clouds in the political horizon will be dispersed, and that "freemen" will, by that time, eat their puddings and hold their tongues. Anna and I stayed one week with Mrs. Powys, at Bath, and were very thoroughly occupied all the time with seeing and—I won't say with being seen; for though we were at three balls, I do not believe any one saw us. The upper rooms we thought very splendid and the play-houses pretty, but not so good as the theatre at Bristol. We walked all over Bath with my father, and liked it extremely: he showed us the house where he was born.

The day of retribution was indeed nearer at hand than she anticipated. In the autumn of 1793 the news of Irish disturbances grew so alarming that Mr. Edgeworth thought it his duty to return immediately. The caravan was therefore once more transported to Edgeworthstown.

Ontheir return the Edgeworths at first inclined to think that the English papers had exaggerated the Irish disturbances. Accustomed to a condition of permanent discontent, they were relieved to find that though there were alarms of outrages committed by "Hearts of Oak Boys" and "Defenders," though there were nightly marauders about Edgeworthstown, though Mr. Edgeworth had been threatened with assassination, still, all things considered, "things in their neighborhood were tolerably quiet." In this matter as in others, of course, the basis of comparison alone constitutes the value of the inference deduced. In any case the family resumed their quiet course of existence; Mr. Edgeworth busy with the invention of a telegraph, Miss Edgeworth writing, helping to educate the little ones, visiting and being visited by her Aunt Ruxton. In the evenings the family gathered round the fireside and the father read aloud. Late in 1793 Miss Edgeworth writes:—

This evening my father has been reading out Gay'sTrivia, to our great entertainment. I wished very much, my dear aunt, that you and Sophy had been sitting round the fire with us. If you haveTrivia, and if you have time, will you humor your niece so far as to look at it? I had much rather make a bargain with any one I loved to read the same book with them at the same hour, than to look at the moon like Rousseau's famous lovers. "Ah! that is because my dear niece has no taste and no eyes." But I assure you I am learning the use of my eyes main fast, and make no doubt, please Heaven I live to be sixty, to see as well as my neighbors. I am scratching away very hard at theFreeman Family.[3]

That Miss Edgeworth was not affected by the current sentimentalism of the period, the above remark shows. Indeed, her earliest letters evince her practical, straightforward common sense. Romance had no place in her nature. In 1794 she was engaged upon herLetters to Literary Ladies. She wrote to her cousin:—

Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries afterLetters to Literary Ladies. I am sorry to say they are not as well as can be expected, nor are they likely to mend at present; when they are fit to be seen—if that happy time ever arrives—their first visit shall be to Black Castle. They are now disfigured by all manner of crooked marks of papa's critical indignation, besides various abusive marginal notes, which I would not have you see for half-a-crown sterling, nor my aunt for a whole crown as pure as King Hiero's.

The arts of peace, as she herself expresses it, were going on prosperously side by side with those of war; the disturbances, of which Miss Edgeworth continues to write quite lightly, having become sufficiently serious to require military intervention.

In 1795 theLetters to Literary Ladieswere published. Considering the time when the work was written it showed much independence and advance of thought, though to-day it would be stigmatized as somewhat retrograde. It is nothing more than a plea in favor of female education, repeating arguments that of late years have been well worn, and of which the world, for some time past convinced of the wisdom of according education to women, no longer stands in need. The book is interesting to-day merely as another proof of how much Mr. Edgeworth and his daughter were advanced in thought. They could not be brought to the common opinion then prevalent that ignorance was a woman's safeguard, that taste for literature was calculated to lead to ill conduct, though even a thinker so enlightened in many respects as Mr. Day indorsed Sir Anthony Absolute's dictum that the extent of a woman's erudition should consist in her knowing her letters, without their mischievous combinations.

Not even the honors of first authorship couldcause Miss Edgeworth's private letters, then any more than afterwards, to be occupied with herself. "I beg, dear Sophy," she writes to her cousin, "that you will not call my little stories by the sublime title of 'my works;' I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth." It is the affairs of others, the things that it will please or amuse her correspondents to hear, that she writes about. The tone is always good-humored and kindly.

Ever and again the noiseless tenor of her way was disturbed by the insurgents. She writes, January, 1796:—

You, my dear aunt, who were so brave when the county of Meath was the seat of war, must know that we emulate your courage; and I assure you, in your own words, "that whilst our terrified neighbors see nightly visions of massacres, we sleep with our doors and windows unbarred." I must observe, though, that it is only those doors and windows that have neither bolts nor bars that we leave unbarred, and these are more at present than we wish even for the reputation of our valor. All that I crave for my own part is that if I am to have my throat cut, it may not be by a man with his face blackened with charcoal. I shall look at every person that comes here very closely, to see if there be any marks of charcoal upon their visages. Old wrinkled offenders, I should suppose, would never be able to wash out their stains, but in others averyclean face will, in my mind, be a strong symptom of guilt—clean hands proof positive, and clean nails ought to hang a man.

In 1796 appeared the first volume of theParent's Assistant. It is agreeable to learn from a letter of hers that she was not responsible for this clumsy title:—

My father had sent theParent's Friend, but Mr. Johnson has degraded it intoParent's Assistant, which I dislike particularly from association with an old book of arithmetic called theTutor's Assistant.

The book was so successful that the publisher expressed a wish for more volumes, to be brought out with illustrations. Miss Beaufort, the daughter of a neighboring clergyman, was entrusted with the artistic commission, which led to an intimacy between the families. Meanwhile Miss Edgeworth, stimulated by success, continued to write new stories, and to correct and revise old ones. TheMoral Taleswere conceived at this time, and the idea of writing on Irish Bulls had occurred to her. She was also busy uponPractical Education. At the same time Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth's health, that had long been precarious, gave way, and in November, 1797, to the sorrow of all the circle, she fell a victim to consumption. As before, Mr. Edgeworth was soon consoled. It was in the direction of Miss Beaufort that he turned his eyes. There must certainly have been something attractive in this man, nowpast fifty, three times a widower, with a numerous family by different wives, that could induce a young girl to regard him as a wooer. Miss Edgeworth frankly owns that when she first knew of this attachment she did not wish for the marriage. But her father, with his persuasive tongue, overcame her objections.

Mr. Edgeworth himself announced his intending nuptials to Dr. Darwin, at the end of a long letter dealing with the upas tree, frogs, agriculture, hot-water pipes, and so forth:—

And now for my piece of news, which I have kept for 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 30) 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?

He was able to say so not only three years after, but to the end of his life. Whatever may be thought of Mr. Edgeworth's many and hasty marriages, it must be admitted that they all turned out to the happiness of himself and his children. Miss Edgeworth wrote a long letter to her future stepmother, characteristic both of her amiable disposition, her filial piety and her method of regarding love. "Miss Edgeworth's Cupid," as Byron observed, "was always somethingof a Presbyterian." In it she assures Miss Beaufort (who was her junior) that she will find her "gratefully exacten belle fille;" a promise she fulfilled beyond the letter.

Within seven months of his late wife's death, just as public affairs were assuming a still stormier aspect, and the nation about to burst into the rebellion of 1798, Mr. Edgeworth was once more a bridegroom. The wedding trip of the couple took them through the disturbed districts; they beheld rebels hidden in the potato furrows, and passed a car between whose shafts the owner had been hanged—a victim to the "Defenders." But in the house of Edgeworthstown there was, as ever, peace and concord; and the trying situation upon which the new wife was called to enter was smoothed for her even by the children of the woman whom she had so quickly displaced in their father's affection.

In an incredibly short time all things and people found themselves in their proper places, and the new Mrs. Edgeworth soon proved herself a fitting person to hold the reins of household government. Only a month after the marriage Miss Edgeworth can tell her cousin:—

We are indeed happy. The more I see of my friend and mother, the more I love and esteem her, and themore I feel the truth of all that I have heard you say in her praise. So little change has been made in the way of living, that you would feel as if you were going on with your usual occupations and conversation amongst us. We laugh and talk and enjoy the good of every day, which is more than sufficient. How long this may last we cannot tell. I am going on in the old way, writing stories. I cannot be a captain of dragoons, and sitting with my hands before me would not make any of us one degree safer. I have finished a volume of wee-wee stories about the size of thePurple Jar, all about Rosamond. My father has made our little rooms so nice for us; they are all fresh painted and papered. Oh, rebels! oh, French! spare them. We have never injured you, and all we wish is to see everybody as happy as ourselves.

The summer passed with immunity from open insurrection in County Longford; but it shortly appeared that the people were secretly leagued with the rest of their countrymen, and only waited the arrival of the French to break into rebellion. Soon the whole district about Edgeworthstown was disturbed, and in September it was needful for the family to beat a precipitate retreat from home, leaving it in the hands of the rebels. Happily it was spared from pillage, thanks to one of the invaders, to whom Mr. Edgeworth had once shown kindness. The family were only away five days. A battle had speedily settled the rebels and dispersed the French, whom their own allieshad deserted at the first volley. But those days, although only five days, seemed a life-time to Miss Edgeworth, from the dangers and anxieties the family underwent in their course.

By November all disturbances had so far subsided around Edgeworthstown as to allow the family to busy themselves with private theatricals, Miss Edgeworth writing the play, the children acting it, the father building the stage. At the end of the year Mr. Edgeworth was returned for the last Irish Parliament, and the family went with him to Dublin. The Union was then the hot theme of debate, the Irish having incontestably shown themselves incapable of home rule. Mr. Edgeworth very characteristically spoke for the Union and voted against it, declaring "that England has not any right to do Ireland good against her will."

In the spring of 1799 Mr., Mrs. and Miss Edgeworth went to England and renewed their acquaintance with Mr. Watt, Dr. Darwin and Mr. William Strutt of Derby. They also came into contact with many literary celebrities, Mr. Edgeworth now posing as an author upon the strength ofPractical Education, written in partnership with his daughter, who was ever not only willing but anxious that he should bear off all the honor and glory. Among theiracquaintance was Mrs. Barbauld, for whom both father and daughter conceived a genuine regard, and whom Mr. Edgeworth liked the more because she was a proof of the soundness of his belief that the cultivation of literary tastes does not necessarily unfit a woman for her domestic duties. In London they also visited their publisher, Mr. Johnson, an intelligent, generous, but most dilatory man, who was then confined in King's Bench Prison on account of some publication held treasonable. Of this English visit there are, unfortunately, only two letters preserved: one announcing the birth of another baby into this already huge family, the other treating of "a young man, Mr. Davy,[4]who has applied himself much to chemistry, has made some discoveries of importance, and enthusiastically expects wonders will be performed by the use of certain gases."

With the dissolution of the last Irish Parliament, Mr. Edgeworth's public duties came to an end, and the quiet, happy life at Edgeworthstown recommenced its even course, marked only by the publication of Miss Edgeworth's works, and by births and deaths in the family circle.

Twocircumstances must never be lost sight of in speaking of Miss Edgeworth's writings: the one, that she did not write from the inner prompting of genius, but rather because it had been suggested by her father; the other, that she wrote throughout with a purpose in view, and by no means only for the sake of affording amusement. To blame her, therefore, as has been so often done, for being utilitarian in her aim, is to blame her for having attained her goal. A minor consideration, but one that often proves of no minor weight, was the fact that Miss Edgeworth never needed to follow authorship as a profession; its pecuniary results were of no moment to her, and hence she was spared all the bitterness and incidental anxieties of an author's life, the working when the brain should rest, the imperative need to go on, no matter whether there be aught to say or not. Her path, in this respect, as in all others, traversed the high-roads of life. Fame at oncesucceeded effort; the heart-sickness of hope deferred was never hers; she was therefore neither soured nor embittered by feeling within herself powers which the world was unwilling or slow to acknowledge.

It was in 1798 that were published two large octavo volumes, calledPractical Education, bearing upon the title-page the joint names of Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth. This was the first partnership work of father and daughter, that literary partnership "which for so many years," says Miss Edgeworth, "was the joy and pride of my life." The book was the outcome of a series of observations and facts relative to children, not originally intended for publication, registered first by Mr. Edgeworth and his wife Honora, and afterwards continued by Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth. In consequence of Mr. Edgeworth's exhortations, Miss Edgeworth also began in 1791 to note down anecdotes of the children around her, and to write out some of her father's conversation lessons. The reason for giving all this to the world was that though assertions and theories on education abounded, facts and experiments were wanting. Undaunted by the fear of ridicule or the imputation of egotism, Mr. Edgeworth bade his daughter work the raw materials into shape, blending with anecdotesand lessons the principles of education that were peculiarly his. For this work Miss Edgeworth claims for her father the merit of having been the first to recommend, both by practice and precept, what Bacon called the experimental method in education. Mr. Edgeworth, as we know, was a disciple of the crude, mechanical school of Rousseau; and though, owing to his failure with his eldest son, he had seen the necessity of some modification, he had never wholly abandoned it, and had imbued his daughter with the same ideas. Happily for her, however, her earliest training had been less rigid than that of her brothers and sisters. She thus obtained elbow-room for that development which her father's formal and overloading system might have crushed. But of this she was unconscious, and she was ready to echo his opinions, believe in them blindly and propagate them.

The book, though prolix, dull and prosy in part, containing much repetition, many paltry illustrations, many passages, such as the chapter on servants, that might be omitted with advantage, was, as a whole, of value, and would not even now be quite out of date. But its chief and abiding merit is that it was a step in the right direction; and its worth must on that account be emphasized, although this was exaggeratedby Miss Edgeworth's filial fondness. There were in those days no text-books for the first principles of knowledge for the young; and though education had been a favorite theme with all the philosophers, from Aristotle to Locke, their systems were too remote for practical application. The inevitable but lamentable consequence was, that theories of education were disregarded just by those very persons who had the training of the young in their hands. They were pleased to sneer at them as metaphysics. So much space was given in works of this nature to speculation, so little to practical application of proved and admitted truths, that the mere word metaphysics sounded to the majority of readers as a name denoting something perplexing and profound, but useless as a whole. Yet, as Miss Edgeworth pertinently observed in her preface toHarry and Lucy, after being too much the fashion, metaphysics had been thrown aside too disdainfully, and their use and abuse confounded. Without an attentive examination of the operations of the mind, especially as developed at an early age, every attempt at systematic education is mere working at random. The great merit of Mr. and Miss Edgeworth's works may be stated in her own words:—

Surely it would be doing good service to bring into popular form all that metaphysicians have discoveredwhich can be applied to practice in education. This was early and long my father's object. The art of teaching to invent—I dare not say, but of awakening and assisting the inventive power by daily exercise and excitement, and by the application of philosophic principles to trivial occurrences,—he believed might be pursued with infinite advantage to the rising generation.

The authors ofPractical Educationdid not seek to appeal to grave and learned persons, like the former writers on these themes, but to the bulk of mankind, in whose hands, after all, lies their application. In this series of somewhat rambling essays, of the most miscellaneous description, there are no abstruse or learned disquisitions, there is nothing like a process of reasoning from beginning to end; it is essentially a treatise for the mass. On every page there are remarks for which previous authorities can be found; original ideas are rare; nevertheless the whole is expressed so lucidly and familiarly, the entire work is so crowded with illustrations of the simplest and most obvious kind, that "the unwary reader can easily be entrapped into the belief that he is perusing nothing more serious than a lively and agreeable essay upon the tempers and capacities of children, written by two good-natured persons who are fond of amusing themselves with young people." Mr. Edgeworthbelieved according to the proverb, "that youth and white paper can take all impressions," that everything could be achieved by education; that, given the individual, it was possible to make of him whatever the instructor pleased. Of course our present more scientific mode of thought, our superior scientific knowledge, shows us the untenability of so dogmatic a persuasion; but it was characteristic of the eighteenth century, forms the key-note to many of their educational experiments, and furnishes the reason of their failures. The times when Mr. Edgeworth wrote and devised his doctrines were "the good old days when George the Third was King," when education was at a discount, when to have a taste for literature was to be held a pedant or a prig. If Mr. Edgeworth went too far in his earnest advocacy of careful training for the young of both sexes, in his belief in the result, our modern school has perhaps, in the latter respect, erred on the other side. We know now that it is out of the power of education to change nature. Yet our scientific knowledge has inclined us, perhaps unduly, to under-rate the value of training, and to allow too much play to the doctrine oflaissez-faire. As ever, the truth lies in the middle; and in any case, because we are at present goingthrough a period of reaction, we should refrain from sneering at those perhaps over-earnest men, of whom Mr. Edgeworth was a type, who, in a frivolous age, rebelled against their unthinking contemporaries. It is too much the fashion to stigmatize these men as prigs; pragmatic no doubt they were, conceited and self-confident, and, like all minorities, over-ardent. Still it cannot be enough borne in mind that the people of that period who thought, thought more and read more thoroughly than those of to-day. They came to original conclusions; they did not imbibe so much at second-hand by means of criticism and ready-made opinions. Of this, Miss Edgeworth and her father were notable examples; to this, her letters bear abundant testimony.

In the preface toPractical Educationthe respective shares of father and daughter in the work are stated. He wrote all relating to the art of teaching in the chapter on tasks, grammar, classical literature, geography, chronology, arithmetic and mechanics; the rest, considerably more than half, was by her.

"The firm of Edgeworth & Co.," as Sydney Smith named them, had now attained literary notoriety. Their book, on its appearance, was praised and abused enough to render its authors speedily famous. Mr. Edgeworth, with his enormousfamily, had, of course, had good opportunities of observation and experiment in the domain of education. It was conceded that there was much that was wise and useful in his pages, mixed with much that was absurd and dogmatic. But the real life and animation for his tenets was to come from his daughter, who was to carry them further than they would undoubtedly otherwise have gone, and the fact that quite two generations of English men and women were instilled into Edgeworthian doctrines is due entirely and alone to her. She made it the business of her life to illustrate the pedantic maxims of her father, and it has been ably remarked that between these narrow banks her genius flowed through many and diverse volumes of amusing tales. It was with this aim in view thatThe Parent's Assistant,Harry and Lucy,Frank and Rosamond, andEarly Lessons, those companions of the nursery, were penned. Though not all published at this time—the continuation ofHarry and Lucynot, indeed, until many years later—it is convenient to treat of them all together, as they are one in unity of thought and design.

Fully to estimate what Miss Edgeworth did for the children of her time, and that immediately succeeding it, it is needful to point out the wide contrast between those days and ours.To-day the best authors do not think it beneath their dignity to write for children—quite otherwise; while formerly few persons of any literary ability condescended to write children's books. In those days, therefore, nursery libraries were not, as now, richly stocked, and children either did not read at all, or, if they were of a reading disposition, read the works intended for their elders, often, it must be admitted, with the good result that a solid foundation of knowledge of the English classics was laid. Still it was only exceptional children who attempted these tougher tasks; most either did not read at all or read such poor literature as was at hand. In a series of able articles published some years ago, Miss Yonge has traced the history of children's books. For a long time there were no such things; then came some tales translated from the French and judiciously trimmed, besides a few original stories of more or less merit, to which latter category belongedGoody Two-Shoes. This was followed by the reign of didactic works which began with Mrs. Trimmer, whose original impulse came from Rousseau. It was hisEmilethat had aroused the school which produced Madame de Genlis in France, Campe in Germany, and in England the Aikens, Hannah More, the Taylors of Norwich, andMr. Day. It was a famine that had to be met, and much stodgy food was devoured, many long, hard words were laboriously spelt out, the pabulum offered was but too often dull and dreary. Realism had invaded the nursery, strong, high purpose was the first aim in view, and entertainment was held a secondary consideration. As for the poor dear fairies, they had been placed under a ban by the followers of Jean Jacques. Fairy tales were treated as the novels of childhood, and held by this school to cultivate the heart and imagination unduly, and to arouse disgust with the assigned lot in life, which is rarely romantic, but consists rather of common-place pleasure and pain.

The Edgeworths' ambition was to write the history of realities in an entertaining manner; they held that it was better for purposes of education, and more suited to the tastes of children, than improbable fiction. The first proposition may, perhaps, be conceded, the second scarcely. In any case, however, Mr. Edgeworth, who had a special leaning to thejejune, had a particular dislike to this form of fiction. "Why," he asked, "should the mind be filled with fantastic visions? Why should so much valuable time be lost? Why should we vitiate their taste and spoil their appetite by suffering them to feed upon sweetmeats?" Even poetical allusions,he thought, should be avoided in books for children. On the other hand, with the happy intuition he often displayed, he recognized that the current children's books of his time erred in introducing too much that was purely didactic, too many general reflections. He urged his daughter to avoid these errors, to bear action in view, and that whether in morals or in science, the thing to be taught should seem to arise from the circumstances in which the little persons of the drama were placed. He saw that in order to prevent precepts from tiring the eye and mind, it was necessary to make the stories in which they were introduced dramatic, to keep alive hope, fear and curiosity by some degree of intricacy.

Admirably did his daughter carry out the precepts he thus laid down. It was Miss Edgeworth who really inaugurated for England the reign of didactic fiction. Though never losing sight of her aim, she also never lost sight of the amusement of her young readers. She rightly comprehended that only by captivating their senses could she conquer and influence their reason. Her children's tales, written with motion and spirit, were told in the simple language of the young. She went straight to the hearts of her little readers because they could understand her; they needed no grown personto explain to them sesquipedalian words. There is a freshness about her stories that children are quick to respond to, and it arises from the fact that the children she depicts for her readers are real. Miss Edgeworth knew what children were like; she saw them not only from without but from within; she had lived all her life among little people. Their world never became a paradise from which she was shut out. The advantages she thus enjoyed were as rare as they are important for the due comprehension of the needs of childhood, and she utilized them to the utmost. The chief charm of her tales, that which makes themsui generisboth now and then, is that she not only wrote in the language of children, but, what is even rarer, from the child's point of view.

There are yet among us those who owe their earliest pleasures to Miss Edgeworth, and if of late she has been somewhat jostled out of the nursery and school-room because it is the tendency of the modern child to revolt against all attempts to teach it unawares, we are far from sure that the change is wholly for the better. It was a just perception of this that caused Miss Yonge to say inThe Stokesley Secretthat her heroes "would read any books that made no pretensions to be instructive, but even a fact about a lion or an elephant made themdetect wisdom in disguise, and throw it aside." The modern child finds, it is said, Miss Edgeworth's tales dry; American books of a semi-novelistic character, rattling stories of wild adventure, are preferred.

This may be so, but we cannot help thinking that, just in these days, when the ethical standard held up to children is not too high, a judicious admixture of these works with Miss Edgeworth's high-minded stories, inculcating self-sacrifice, unselfishness, obedience, and other neglected virtues, might be of great advantage. There are sundry of Miss Edgeworth's children's tales that are truly engrossing, veritable masterpieces of style and execution. Who is there, no matter how advanced his age, who cannot read with pleasure the tales ofLazy Lawrence,Tarlton,The Bracelets,Waste Not Want Not,Forgive and Forget,e tutti quanti? Who is there whom it much disturbs that the account of Eton Montem is not accurate, and that perhaps there could have been nothing more unfortunate than to lay the scene of action ofThe Little Merchantsin Naples, the one spot in all the earth where the events therein described could not have happened? Change the name of the locality, the charm of the tale remains and the absurdity is removed. Nor must it be forgotten that children, lesswell read than their elders, are less alive to these blemishes, which are, after all, of no real import. OfSimple Susan, so great a person as Sir Walter Scott said that "when the boy brings back the lamb to the little girl, there is nothing for it but to put down the book and cry." Then as toRosamond, who does not feel a true affection for that impetuous, impulsive little girl, and who is there (so greatly have our ideas of morality changed) that does not think that in the matter of the famousPurple Jar, an unjustifiable trick was played upon her by her mother? It was a part of the Edgeworth system to make misdirected or mistaken desires stultify themselves; but the child should have been informed of the nature of the jar, and if then she still persisted in her choice, she would have been fairly treated, which now she is not.Frankremains a capital book for little people, and if, occasionally, Miss Edgeworth's juvenile tales reflect too much of the stiff wisdom of her age, these are matters which children, not morallyblasé, hardly remark. On the other hand, there is never anything mawkish in her pages, she never fills the mind with yearnings for the impossible, she never works too much upon the susceptibilities, which modern child-literature so often does. Her writings for children are certainlysui generis, not because she has attempted what has never been attempted before, but because she succeeded where others failed. She made even her youngest reader comprehend that virtue is its own reward, while avoiding the error invariably fallen into by writers for the young, of representing virtues as always triumphant, vice as uniformly punished—a fallacy even children are quick to detect. It has been objected to her that she checks enthusiasm, the source of some of the noblest actions of mankind. This is true; she has somewhat erred on the repressive side, but her purpose was right and good. She saw plainly that enthusiasm, generous in its origin, is but too often the source of misfortune, ill-judged effort, and consequent disappointment. Moderation, the duties of contentment and industry, are what she loves to uphold; the lower, humbler, but no less effective virtues of existence.

On the other hand it is clear, from her letters, that she herself was not devoid of enthusiasm, and here, again, it was probably her father's influence that made her exclude it from her writings. In one of her letters she says:—

Vive l'enthousiasme!Without it characters may be very snug and comfortable in the world, but there is a degree of happiness which they will never taste, and of which they have no more idea than an oyster can have.

Harry and Lucyfalls sharply into two parts. The earlier portion was intended to be read beforeRosamond, and afterFrank; the latter was the last of the juvenile series. The work had been begun by Mr. Edgeworth and his wife Honora, from the need of a book to follow Mrs. Barbauld's lessons, and as a story to be inserted in this work Mr. Day had originally writtenSandford and Merton.Harry and Lucywas printed, but not published. It was kept, as originally meant, only for the Edgeworth children; but after more than twenty years Mr. Edgeworth passed the work on to his daughter, and bade her complete it and prepare it for publication. The first portion thus came out early in the century, while the last part did not appear till 1825.

Harry and Lucyis unquestionably heavy in parts, especially the latter half, yet first principles are well explained and popularized, and instruction and tale so skillfully blended that the young reader cannot skip the one and read the other. The main idea and the chief merit of these volumes, not at once perhaps obvious, is that of enforcing in a popular form the necessity of exercising the faculties of children, so that they should be, in part, their own instructors, and of adding to those more common incentives to study, which consist ofrewards and punishments, the far surer, nobler and more effective stimulus of curiosity kept alive by variety and the pleasure of successful invention. It was the desire of the authors to show with what ease the faculty of thinking may be cultivated in children, a point on which Miss Edgeworth insists in other of her tales. InHarry and Lucyare explained simply and familiarly, sometimes in conversations between the children and their parents and friends, sometimes in dialogue between the children themselves, the rudiments of science, principally of chemistry and physics, and the application of these to the common purposes of life. And herein we again encounter one of the grand merits of the Edgeworths, which we can to-day better appreciate than their contemporaries. They saw clearly what in their day was apprehended only by very few, the importance that the study of science was to acquire in the future. Miss Edgeworth says:—

My father long ago foresaw that the taste for scientific as well as literary knowledge, which has risen so rapidly and spread so widely, would render it necessary to make some provision for the early instruction of youth in science, in addition to the great and successful attention paid to classical literatures.

And even apart from the immense importance of science in our daily life, science is, of allstudies, that best suited to the growth of a child's mental powers. Novelty and variety are the spells of early life, and to work these well and helpfully is the greatest good that can be done to young people. Miss Edgeworth, inHarry and Lucy, as a whole succeeds in rousing her reader's curiosity without making them suspect design, and avoids all idea of a task. Thus the leading principles of science are unfolded in familiar experiments which give young learners the delight they would have in playing some interesting game, exercising their ingenuity without tiring them. Then, having once felt the pleasures of success, a permanent incentive to knowledge is induced, which it remains with the parents or tutors to improve. The books are obviously not such as are meant to be read at a sitting, and therefore can only be put into the hands of young people with judicious care. But in the Edgeworths' time neither old nor young devoured books after the manner of to-day. The apparently desultory and accidental plan of the book was really designed, purpose and moral being more skillfully disguised than is the case with Miss Edgeworth's tales for her equals. One of its great charms lies in the characters of the principaldramatis personæ, whose temperaments are exquisitely sketched, maintained andcontrasted. Lucy, the lively, playful girl, who often allows her imagination to go rambling far afield from her judgment, a little inclined to be volatile, loving a joke, is cousin german to Rosamond, and, like this little girl, truly lovable. She supplies the lighter element, while the sterner is supplied by Harry, the brother she idolizes, who is partly her companion, partly her teacher. He has a sure and steady rather than a brilliant and rapid intellect, great mental curiosity and great patience in acquiring information. He is more apt to discern differences than to perceive resemblances, and therefore he does not always understand the wit and fun of Lucy, which at times even provoke him. In the conversations between them there is much judicious sprinkling of childish banter and nonsense, "an alloy necessary to make sense work well," to use Miss Edgeworth's own expressive words. A pity that the ever-delightful "Great Panjandrum" therein introduced is not her own, but only a quotation from a little-known nonsense genius.

This sequel toHarry and Lucywas far from finding universal favor. Sir Walter Scott wrote of it to Joanna Baillie:—

I have not the pen of our friend Miss Edgeworth, who writes all the while she laughs, talks, eats and drinks, andI believe, though I do not pretend to be so far in the secret, all the time she sleeps too. She has good luck in having a pen which walks at once so unweariedly and so well. I do not, however, quite like her last book on education (Harry and Lucy), considered as a general work. She should have limited the title toEducation in Natural Philosophy, or some such term, for there is no great use in teaching children in general to roof houses or build bridges, which, after all, a carpenter or a mason does a great deal better at 2s. 6d. a day. Your ordinary Harry should be kept to his grammar, and your Lucy of most common occurrence would be kept employed on her sampler, instead of wasting wood and cutting their fingers, which I am convinced they did, though their historian says nothing of it.

That both she and her father exacted much from their pupils and readers is beyond question, but they regarded this as a wholesome effort, and they were probably right. One thing is certain: that whatever their shortcomings, Miss Edgeworth's children's tales exercised a wide, deep and lasting influence over a long range of time, and nothing of equal or even approximate importance arose coeval with them. It was she who first brought rational morality to the level of the comprehension of childhood, who taught the language of virtue and truth in the alphabet of the young, thus forestalling the teaching of schools by her rare power of combining ethics with entertainment. Miss Edgeworth can still with advantage and pleasurehold her own even upon the present well-stocked nursery book-shelves, and it might be well for the next generation if we saw her there a little oftener. Better Miss Edgeworth any day, with all her arid utilitarianism, her realism, than the sickly sentimental unrealities of a far too popular modern school.

In1800 was published anonymously a small book calledCastle Rackrent. It professed to be a Hibernian tale, taken from facts and from the manners of the Irish squires before the year 1782. It proved to be a most entertaining, witty history of the fortunes of an Irish estate, told professedly by an illiterate, partial old steward, who recounted the story of the Rackrent family in his vernacular with the full confidence that the affairs of Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit and Sir Condy were as interesting to all the world as they were to himself.HonestThaby, as this curious but characteristic specimen of Irish good humor, fidelity and wrong-headedness was pleased to call himself, having no conception of the true application of this epithet, had certainly shown literary perception, or rather his creator for him. For this was no other than Maria Edgeworth, who stood confessed upon the title-page of the second edition that was clamorously demanded within a fewmonths of issue. The confession was wrung from her because some one had not only asserted that he was the author, but had actually taken the trouble to copy out several pages with corrections and erasures, as if it were his original manuscript. It was in this work that Miss Edgeworth first struck her own peculiar vein, and had she never written anything butCastle Rackrenther fame could not have died. It is a page torn from the national history of Ireland, inimitable, perennially delightful, equally humorous and pathetic, holding up with shrewd wit and keen perception, mingled with sympathetic indulgence, the follies and vices that have caused, and in a modified degree still cause, no small proportion of the social miseries that have afflicted and still afflict that unhappy land.

Here are portrayed a series of Irish landlords with their odd discrepancies and striking individualities, alternately drunken, litigious, pugilistic, slovenly and densely ignorant; or else easy, extravagant and good-natured to the point of vice; all, however, of one mind in being profoundly indifferent to their own or their tenants' welfare. The sharp contrasts of the magnificent and paltry that characterized their state of living, with the mixed confidence in a special Providence and their own good luck that distinguished their muddle-headed mode ofthought, is forcibly held up to view. No conclusions are drawn; the narrative, which never flags or drags, is rattled off with spirit, the abundant anecdotes are poured forth with true Irish exuberance, while the humor of the story arises in great measure from the sublime unconsciousness of the story-teller to the wit, naïvete or absurdity of his remarks. We are held spell-bound, we laugh and weep in a breath, we are almost over-persuaded by loyal old Thady to pardon the errors of the family, "one of the most ancient in the kingdom, related to the kings of Ireland, but that was before my time."

If there was an ulterior end in view in this story beyond that of recording national characteristics which she had had peculiarly good opportunities for observing, and which she here reproduced from the life with broad, full strokes, Miss Edgeworth has masked it so happily that it does not obtrude itself. The society and manners of the Irish are painted as equally provoking and endearing. The book is an epitome of the Irish character, "fighting like devils for conciliation, and hating one another for the love of God." Never did laughter and tears, sympathy and repugnance, lie more closely together than in this tale. It is curious to read the author's prefatory apology when there are still alive, in every exasperated form, the very conditionsshe thinks belong to a state of things rapidly passing away, "owing to the probable loss of Irish identity after the union with England." The supposed "obsolete prejudices and animosities of race" are unhappily still extant. Perhaps it is partly this fact that makes Miss Edgeworth's Irish tales so fresh to this day. But only in part; on their own account alone they are delightful, andCastle Rackrenteven more than the rest.

We have Mrs. Barbauld's testimony that Miss Edgeworth wroteCastle Rackrentunassisted by her father, and judging how infinitely superior in spontaneity, flexibility, and nervousness of style, force, pith and boldness, it is to those of her writings with which he meddled, it is forcibly impressed upon us that Mr. Edgeworth's literary tinkering of his daughter's works was far from being to their advantage. Her next published book was her first attempt to deal with the novel proper. InBelindashe strove to delineate the follies and hollowness of fashionable life. The heroine is rather a lifeless puppet; but the more truly prominent figure, Lady Delacour, is drawn with power and keen intuition. A woman of gay and frivolous antecedents, striving to rise into a higher atmosphere under the ennobling influences of a pure friendship, and finding the task a difficult one,was no easy character to draw or to sustain. Had Lady Delacour died heroically, as Miss Edgeworth had planned, and as the whole course of the story leads the reader to expect, the book would have been a success. But to allow her to recover, to cause her to evolve a reformed character after a type psychologically impossible to one of her temperament, weakened the force of the foregoing pages and rendered them untrue. Again, it is on Miss Edgeworth's spoken testimony to Mrs. Barbauld that we learn that she meant to make Lady Delacour die, but that it was her father who suggested the alteration; and since it was a part of the Edgeworthian creed to believe in such simple and sudden reformations, she accepted his counsel, to the artistic injury of her tale. It was Mr. Edgeworth, too, who wrote and interpolated the worthless and high-flown Virginia episode, in which Clarence Harvey takes to the freak of wife-training after the pattern of Mr. Day. This incident is quite out of keeping with the character of Clarence, who is depicted a wooden dandy, but not a romantic fool. These changes, willingly submitted to by Miss Edgeworth, who had the most unbounded belief in her father's superior wisdom on all points whatsoever, also mark his idiosyncracy, for Mr. Edgeworth was a most rare and curious compound of utilitarianism and wild romance.

It is almost possible, in Miss Edgeworth's works, to venture to point out the passages that have been tampered with and those where she has been allowed free play. Thus there are portions ofBelindain which she is as much at her best as inCastle Rackrent, or other of her masterpieces. Who but she could have penned the lively description given by Sir Philip Baddeley of the fêtes at Frogmore? How exquisitely is this ill-natured fool made to paint himself, how truthful is the picture, free from any taint of exaggeration! Sir Philip's endeavor to disgust Belinda with Clarence Harvey, his manner of attempting it, and his final proposal, is a very masterpiece of caustic humor.

Belindawas no favorite with Miss Edgeworth. Writing to Mrs. Barbauld some years later, she says:—

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