i’s, interpolated, expurgated, to his own and Maria’s satisfaction.  She was essentially a modest woman; she gratefully accepted his criticism and emendations.  Mr. Clark Russell quotes Sydney Smith, who declared that Mr. Edgeworth must have written or burst.  ’A discharge of ink was an evacuation absolutely necessary to avoid fatal and plethoric congestion.’  The only wonder is that, considering all they went through, his daughter’s stories survived to tell their tale, and to tell it so well, with directness and conviction, that best of salt in any literary work.  A letter Maria wrote to her cousin will be remembered.  ‘I beg, dear Sophy,’ she says, ’that you will not call my stories by the sublime name of my works; I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth.’

Maria’s correspondence is delightful, and conveys us right away into that bygone age.  The figures rapidly move across her scene, talking and unconsciously describing themselves as they go; you see them all through the eyes of the observant little lady.  She did not go very deep; she seems to me to have made kindly acquaintance with some, to have admired others with artless enthusiasm.  I don’t think she troubled herself much about complication of feeling; she liked people to make repartees, or to invent machines, to pay their bills, and to do their duty in a commonplace and cheerfully stoical fashion.  But then Maria Edgeworth certainly did not belong to our modern schools, sipping the emetic goblet to give flavour to daily events, nor to that still more alarming and spreading clique of Degeneres who insist upon administering such doses to others to relieve the tedium of the road of life.

Perhaps we in our time scarcely do justice to Miss Edgeworth’s extraordinary cleverness and brightness of apprehension.  There is more fun than humour in her work, and those were the days of good rollicking jokes and laughter.  Details change so quickly that it is almost impossible to grasp entirely the aims and intentions of a whole set of people just a little different from ourselves in every single thing; who held their heads differently, who pointed their toes differently, who addressed each other in a language just a little unlike our own.  The very meanings of the words shift from one generation to another, and we are perhaps more really in harmony with our great-great-grandfathers than with the more immediate generations.

Her society was charming, so every one agrees; and her acquaintance with all the most remarkable men of her time must not be forgotten, nor the genuine regard with which she inspired all who came across her path.

’In external appearance she is quite the fairy of our nursery tale, the WHIPPETY STOURIE, if you remember such a sprite, who came flying through the window to work all sorts of marvels,’ writes Sir Walter.  ’I will never believe but what she has a wand in her pocket, and pulls it out to conjure a little before she begins those very striking pictures of manners.’