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. . . .