exacted much from their pupils and readers
is beyond question, but they regarded this as a wholesome effort, and
they were probably right. One thing is certain: that whatever their
shortcomings, Miss Edgeworth's children's tales exercised a wide, deep
and lasting influence over a long range of time, and nothing of equal or
even approximate importance arose coeval with them. It was she who first
brought rational morality to the level of the comprehension of
childhood, who taught the language of virtue and truth in the alphabet
of the young, thus forestalling the teaching of schools by her rare
power of combining ethics with entertainment. Miss Edgeworth can still
with advantage and pleasure hold her own even upon the present
well-stocked nursery book-shelves, and it might be well for the next
generation if we saw her there a little oftener. Better Miss Edgeworth
any day, with all her arid utilitarianism, her realism, than the sickly
sentimental unrealities of a far too popular modern school.

CHAPTER VI.

IRISH AND MORAL TALES.

In 1800 was published anonymously a small book called _Castle Rackrent_.
It professed to be a Hibernian tale, taken from facts and from the
manners of the Irish squires before the year 1782. It proved to be a
most entertaining, witty history of the fortunes of an Irish estate,
told professedly by an illiterate, partial old steward, who recounted
the story of the Rackrent family in his vernacular with the full
confidence that the affairs of Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit and Sir
Condy were as interesting to all the world as they were to himself.
_Honest_ Thaby, as this curious but characteristic specimen of Irish
good humor, fidelity and wrong-headedness was pleased to call himself,
having no conception of the true application of this epithet, had
certainly shown literary perception, or rather his creator for him. For
this was no other than Maria Edgeworth, who stood confessed upon the
title-page of the second edition that was clamorously demanded within a
few months of issue. The confession was wrung from her because some one
had not only asserted that he was the author, but had actually taken the
trouble to copy out several pages with corrections and erasures, as if
it were his original manuscript. It was in this work that Miss Edgeworth
first struck her own peculiar vein, and had she never written anything
but _Castle Rackrent_ her fame could not have died. It is a page torn
from