once succeeded
effort; the heart-sickness of hope deferred was never hers; she was
therefore neither soured nor embittered by feeling within herself powers
which the world was unwilling or slow to acknowledge.

It was in 1798 that were published two large octavo volumes, called
_Practical Education_, bearing upon the title-page the joint names of
Richard Lovell and Maria Edgeworth. This was the first partnership work
of father and daughter, that literary partnership "which for so many
years," says Miss Edgeworth, "was the joy and pride of my life." The
book was the outcome of a series of observations and facts relative to
children, not originally intended for publication, registered first by
Mr. Edgeworth and his wife Honora, and afterwards continued by Mrs.
Elizabeth Edgeworth. In consequence of Mr. Edgeworth's exhortations,
Miss Edgeworth also began in 1791 to note down anecdotes of the children
around her, and to write out some of her father's conversation lessons.
The reason for giving all this to the world was that though assertions
and theories on education abounded, facts and experiments were wanting.
Undaunted by the fear of ridicule or the imputation of egotism, Mr.
Edgeworth bade his daughter work the raw materials into shape, blending
with anecdotes and lessons the principles of education that were
peculiarly his. For this work Miss Edgeworth claims for her father the
merit of having been the first to recommend, both by practice and
precept, what Bacon called the experimental method in education. Mr.
Edgeworth, as we know, was a disciple of the crude, mechanical school of
Rousseau; and though, owing to his failure with his eldest son, he had
seen the necessity of some modification, he had never wholly abandoned
it, and had imbued his daughter with the same ideas. Happily for her,
however, her earliest training had been less rigid than that of her
brothers and sisters. She thus obtained elbow-room for that development
which her father's formal and overloading system might have crushed. But
of this she was unconscious, and she was ready to echo his opinions,
believe in them blindly and propagate them.

The book, though prolix, dull and prosy in part, containing much
repetition, many paltry illustrations, many passages, such as the
chapter on servants, that might be omitted with advantage, was, as a
whole, of value, and would not even now be quite out of date. But its
chief and abiding merit is that it was a st