sponds with the
universal ideas of beauty. So the pen of the biographer should
portray only those who by their public have interested us in their
private characters; or who, in a superior degree, have possessed the
virtues and mental endowments which claim the general love and
admiration of mankind.' This biography, however, was never finished,
as Edgeworth found another friend, Mr. Keir, had undertaken it; he
therefore sent the materials to him, but some of them are
incorporated in the Memoirs, Sabrina, whom Mr. Day had educated, and
intended to marry (though he gave up the idea when he doubted her
docility and power of adaptiveness to his strange theories of life),
ultimately married his friend, Mr. Bicknel, while Mr. Day married
Miss Milne, a clever and accomplished lady, who had sufficient tact
to fall in with his wishes, and a wifely devotion which made up to
her for their seclusion from general society. In her widowhood she
found Mr. Edgeworth a most faithful and helpful friend; he offered
to come over and aid in the search which was made at Mr. Day's death
for a large sum of money which was not forthcoming, and which it was
thought he might, after his eccentric fashion, have concealed; as he
took this measure when, 'at the time of the American War, he had
apprehended that there would have been a national bankruptcy, and
under this dread he had sold out of the Stocks. ... A very
considerable sum had been buried under the floor of the study in his
mother's house. This he afterwards took up, and placed again in the
public funds at the return of peace.'

Mr. Day had, before his marriage, promised to leave his library to
his friend Edgeworth, but no mention was made of this in the will;
he left almost everything to Mrs. Day. She, however, hearing of Mr.
Day's promise, offered his library to his friend; but Edgeworth, in
the same generous spirit, refused it, and Mrs. Day then wrote to him
as follows:

'MY DEAR MR. EDGEWORTH,--I will ingenuously own, that of all the
bequests Mr. Day could have made, the leaving his whole library from
me would have mortified me the most--indeed, more than if he had
disposed of all his other property, and left me only that. My ideas
of him are so much associated with his books, that to part with them
would be, as it were, breaking some of the last ties which still
connect me with so beloved an object. The being in the midst of
books he has been accustomed to read, and which contain his