ro of it, Michael Dunne, whom he chanced to meet in the
town of Navan, where he was living respectably. He kept a shop where
Mr. Edgeworth went to purchase some boards, and observing something
very remarkable about the man's countenance, he questioned him as
they were looking at the lumber in his yard, and Dunne readily told
his tale almost in the very words used by Moriaty. . . . Mr.
Edgeworth also wrote the meeting between Moriaty and his wife when
he jumps out of the carriage the moment he hears her voice.'

Edgeworth kept his intellectual faculties to the last. 'To the last
they continued clear, vigorous, energetic; and to the last were
exerted in doing good, and in fulfilling every duty, public and
private. . . .

'In the closing hours of his life his bodily sufferings subsided,
and in the most serene and happy state, he said, before he sank to
that sleep from which he never wakened:

'"I die with the soft feeling of gratitude to my friends and
submission to the God who made me."'

He died the 13th of June 1817.

It may be thought to be an easy task to make an abridgment of a
biography, but in some ways it is almost as difficult as it is for
the sketcher to choose what he will put into his picture and yet
preserve a due proportion and give a faithful idea of the whole
scene before him. I have tried to give such portions of the Memoirs
as will present the many-sided character of R. L. Edgeworth in
relation to his scientific, literary, and educational work, and in
relation to his position as a landlord, a father, and a friend. He
was a singular instance of great mental activity with little
ambition; of a genial nature in his own family circle and among his
friends, he withdrew from the multitude, and refused to lower his
standard of cultivated intercourse in order to win favour with
coarser natures. He is chiefly remembered now as an educational
reformer and as the guide of Maria Edgeworth in the earlier stages
of her literary career. What she achieved was in great part due to
her father's judicious training and encouragement.

A little more ambition and the spur of poverty might have made
Edgeworth better known as an inventor of useful machines: it is
curious to remark how nearly he invented the bicycle. He saw the
advantage that light railways would be to Ireland, but the breath of
mechanical life, steam, as a power, he did not foresee.

He might have written a book on 'The Domestic Life,' so fully had
he