efforts. They are also as a whole more powerful and varied
than any of her previous productions.

The first series consisted of four stories: _Ennui_, _The Dun_,
_Manoeuvring_, and _Almeria_, of which the first is by far the
longest. As is too often the case with Miss Edgeworth, the plot is
clumsily and coldly contrived, the proportions not well maintained; but
the work abounds with masterly delineations of character, and is a
striking picture of the satiety induced by being born, like the hero,
Lord Glenthorne, on the pinnacle of fortune, so that he has nothing to
do but to sit still and enjoy the barrenness of the prospect, or to eat
toffee, like the duke in _Patience_. He tries all amusements, but finds
them wanting, and he would probably have been ruined mentally and bodily
if a convenient catastrophe had not precipitated him temporarily into
indigence and aroused all those better qualities of his nature and
excellent abilities that lay buried and inert. It is not the least
skillful part of this clever tale that it is told as an autobiography,
the hero himself both consciously and unconsciously dissecting his
foibles. Much of the scene is laid in Ireland, and gives Miss Edgeworth
scope for those amusing collateral incidents, those racy delineations of
the various classes of Irish society, in which she is still unsurpassed.
She knew how to hit off to the life the several peculiarities of
respective stations and characters, and we know not whom most to admire
and delight in: the Irish pauper who officiates as postilion, and who
assures Lord Glenthorne that his crazy chaise is the best in the
country--"we have two more, to be sure, but one has no top and the other
no bottom;" the warm-hearted, impulsive, happy-go-lucky Irish nurse, who
has no scruple about committing a crime for the sake of those she loves;
or Lady Geraldine, the high-born, high-bred Irish peeress, who speaks
with an Irish accent, uses Irish idioms, and whose language is more
interrogative, more exclamatory, more rhetorical, accompanied with more
animation of countenance and demonstrative gesture, than that of the
English ladies with whom she is contrasted. With inimitable skill we are
made to see that there is something foreign in this lady's manner,
something rather French than English, and yet not French either, but
indigenous. Of course, rebels play a part in the story--it would not be
a true Irish story without them, but, as usual, Miss Edgeworth d