ting,
glazing, roofing, fencing, furnishing, all were wanting. The back
yard, and even the front lawn round the windows of the house, were
filled with loungers, "followers" and petitioners; tenants,
under-tenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent, were to have audience;
and they all had grievances and secret informations, accusations,
reciprocating and quarrels each under each interminably.
Alternately as landlord and magistrate, the proprietor of an estate
had to listen to perpetual complaints, petty wranglings and
equivocations, in which no human sagacity could discover the truth
or award justice.

Returning to the country at the age of sixteen,[2] Maria Edgeworth
looked at everything with fresh eyes. She was much struck with the
difference between England and Ireland; the tones and looks, the
melancholy and gaiety of the people, were new and extraordinary to her.
A deep impression was made upon her observant mind, and she laid the
foundations for those acute delineations of Irish character with which
she afterwards delighted the world. It was her good fortune and ours
that at an age when the mind is most impressionable she came into these
novel scenes in lieu of having lived in their midst from childhood, when
it is unlikely that she would so well have seized their salient traits.

It was June when the family arrived at Edgeworthstown, and though
nominally summer, there was snow on the roses Maria ran out to gather.
She felt as if transported into a novel and curious world. Unfortunately
neither the situation nor the house of Edgeworthstown were beautiful;
there was nothing here to arouse romance in the girl's nature. The
country of Longford is in general flat, consisting of large districts of
bog; only on the northern boundaries are there some remarkably sterile
mountains. The house was an old-fashioned mansion, built with no
pretensions to beauty. It needed much alteration and enlargement to suit
the requirements of a growing family, and to accommodate his seven
children suitably, Mr. Edgeworth saw himself forced to build. His
extreme good sense guarded him from the usual errors committed by the
Irish squires of that period, who were either content to live in
wretched houses, out of repair, or to commence building on a scale as
though they had the mines of Peru at their command, and then abandoning
their plans as though they had not sixpence. The house at
Edgeworthsto