to feel again in a literary work. Lockhart managed
the business arrangements, for to this she did not feel equal, and when
asked if the book should be in two or three volumes, replied:--

I have satisfied my own conscience, which is my point, as I know
that far from having stretched a single page, or a single sentence,
to _make out_ a third volume, I have cut as much as ever I
could--cut it to the quick; and now it matters not whether it be
printed in three or in two volumes. If tiresome to the ear in
three, it would be equally so in two, and would look worse to the
eye.

The reason why her new story was not an Irish one she gives in a letter
to a brother in India:--

I should tell you beforehand that there is no humor in it and no
Irish character. It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in
a book of fiction--realities are too strong, party passions too
violent to bear to see, or care to look at their faces in the
looking-glass. The people would only break the glass and curse the
fool who held the mirror up to nature--distorted nature, in a
fever. We are in too perilous a case to laugh: humor would be out
of season, worse than bad taste. Whenever the danger is passed, as
the man in the sonnet says, "We may look back on the hardest part
and laugh." Then I shall be ready to join in the laugh. Sir Walter
Scott once said to me, "Do explain to the public why Pat, who gets
forward so well in other countries, is so miserable in his own." A
very difficult question; I fear above my power. But I shall think
of it continually, and listen, and look, and read.

Things were once more in a bad way in that unhappy country, and Miss
Edgeworth saw great distress all around her. A letter written at that
time might almost be written to-day:--

I fear we have much to go through in this country before we come to
quiet, settled life, and a ready obedience to the laws. There is
literally no rein of law at this moment to hold the Irish; and
through the whole country there is what I cannot justly call a
spirit of _reform_, but a spirit of _revolution_, under the name of
reform; a restless desire to overthrow what _is_, and a hope--more
than a hope--an expectation of gaining liberty or wealth, or both,
in the struggle; and if they do gain either, they will lose both
again and be worse o