the doctor, describing his move from
Derby to the Priory, a few miles out of the town, and sending a
playful message to Maria: 'Pray tell the authoress that the water
nymphs of our valley will be happy to assist her next novel.'

A few lines after, the pen had stopped; another hand added the sad
news that Dr. Darwin had been taken suddenly ill with fainting fits:
he revived and spoke, but died that morning. The sudden death of
such an old and valued friend was a great shock to Edgeworth.

Some months later, his daughter mentions that, 'in passing through
England, we went to Derby, and to the Priory, to which we had been
so kindly invited by him who was now no more. The Priory was all
stillness, melancholy, and mourning. It was a painful visit, yet not
without satisfaction; for my father's affectionate manner seemed to
soothe the widow and daughters of his friend, who Were deeply
sensible of the respect and zealous regard he showed for Dr.
Darwin's memory.'

CHAPTER 10

Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth, with their daughters Maria and Charlotte,
travelled through the Low Countries--'a delightful tour,' Maria
writes--and at length reached Paris, where they spent the winter
1802-3. They soon got introductions, through the Abbe Morellet, into
that best circle of society, 'which was composed of all that
remained of the ancient men of letters, and of the most valuable of
the nobility; not of those who had accepted of places from
Buonaparte, nor yet of those emigrants who have been wittily and too
justly described as returning to France after the Revolution, sans
avoir rien appris, ou rien oublie.' . . . 'We felt,' Maria writes,
'the characteristic charms of Parisian conversation, the polish and
ease which in its best days distinguished it from that of any other
capital.

'During my father's former residence in France, at the time when he
was engaged in directing the works of the Rhone and Saone at Lyons,
as he mentions in his Memoirs, he wrote a treatise on the
construction of mills. He wished that D'Alembert should read it, to
verify the mathematical calculations, and for this purpose he had
put it into the hands of Morellet. D'Alembert approved of the essay;
and my father became advantageously known to Morellet as a man of
science, and as one who had gratuitously and honourably conducted a
useful work in France. His predominating taste thus continued, as in
former times, its influence, was still a connecting link between h