to all moral tales, by no matter whom. Miss Edgeworth
strove to civilize and instruct by the rehearsal of a tale, and if we
all, from the perversity of human nature, rather revolt against being
talked to for our good, it must ever be added in her praise that she
generally allures us and makes us listen to her maxims of right living.
Her self-imposed task was neither humble nor easy, but one that required
judgment, patience and much knowledge of the world; her moral
wholesomeness cannot be rated too highly or be too much commended. If
she ascribed too large a share of morality to the head instead of the
heart, this was the result of the doctrines with which her father had
imbued her.

The most successful of the _Moral Tales_ is beyond question _Angelina_.
Its moral is not obtrusive, its fable is well constructed, the tale is
told with point, spirit, gentle but incisive satire. The sentimental
young lady, a female Don Quixote, roaming the world in search of an
unknown friend whose acquaintance she has made solely through the medium
of her writings, is a genus that is not extinct. Never has Miss
Edgeworth been happier than here, when she combats her heroine's errors,
not by serious arguments, but with the shafts of ridicule. The tale is a
gem. _Forester_, on the other hand, for which Mr. Edgeworth claims that
it is a male version of the same character, does not strike us in that
light, nor is it as perfect in conception or execution. The character of
the eccentric youth who scorns the common forms of civilized society,
and is filled with visionary schemes of benevolence and happiness, was
based, it would seem, upon that of Mr. Day, and, as a portrait, was
doubtless a happy one. But the hero fails to interest, his aberrations
are simply foolish, the means whereby he is redeemed too mechanical and
crude, the whole both too detailed and too much condensed to hold our
attention or to seem probable. _The Good French Governess_ embodies the
Edgeworthian mode of giving lessons, which was to make them pleasures,
not tasks, to the pupils; maxims now universally recognized and
practiced, but new in the days when for little children there were no
pleasant roads to learning in the shape of _kindergaerten_. _The Good
Aunt_ insists upon the necessity of home example and instruction, the
lack of which no school training can supply. It is the weakest of all
the tales, and verges dangerously upon the namby-pamby. _Mademoiselle
Panache_, ac