do declare I am as much interested about it as I ever was in
writing anything in my life. We have never here yet found it
necessary to have recourse to public contribution for the poor, but
it is necessary to give some assistance to the laboring class; and
I find that making the said gutter and pathway will employ twenty
men for three weeks.

In the late autumn she yielded to the invitations of her many English
friends to spend some time among them. She took with her her former
travelling companions, for without some of her family Miss Edgeworth
felt as if she had left too many pieces of herself behind, and could not
enjoy anything thoroughly. Once more the sisters passed some interesting
and agreeable months, visiting at the houses of various friends; and
during the spring and winter months hiring a house of their own in
London, where they entertained and were entertained. They lived in a
whirl of town dissipation, knowing six different and totally independent
sets: "scientific, literary, political, travelled, artist, and the fine
fashionable of various shades." Miss Edgeworth found the different
styles of conversation very entertaining, and sent home bright pictures
of the various things she saw and heard.

In the hurried life we have led for some weeks past, and among the
great variety of illustrious and foolish people we have seen pass
in rapid panoramas before us, some remain forever fixed in the
memory and some few touch the heart.

At one house Mrs. Somerville was met and thus described:--

Mrs. Somerville--little, slightly made, fair hair, pink color;
small, gray, round, intelligent, smiling eyes; very pleasing
countenance; remarkably soft voice, strong but well-bred Scotch
accent; timid, not disqualifying timid, but naturally modest, yet
with a degree of self-possession through it which prevents her
being in the least awkward, and gives her all the advantages of her
understanding, at the same time that it adds a prepossessing charm
to her manner and takes off all dread of her superior scientific
learning.

Some days were happily spent visiting Mr. Ricardo, with whose fairness
in argument Miss Edgeworth was struck. While her sisters danced, acted
charades or played round games, Miss Edgeworth conversed with the elders
of the company; but she was ever ready to turn from grave to gay, and
often the first to improvise a