l they should have been outside the house, the sketch given of the
family life at home is very pleasant. The father lives in perfect
confidence with his children, admitting them to his confidence,
interesting them in his experiments, spending his days with them,
consulting them. There are no reservations; he does his business in the
great sitting-room, surrounded by his family. I have heard it described
as a large ground-floor room, with windows to the garden and with two
columns supporting the further end, by one of which Maria's writing-desk
used to be placed--a desk which her father had devised for her, which
used to be drawn out to the fireside when she worked. Does not Mr.
Edgeworth also mention in one of his letters a picture of Thomas Day
hanging over a sofa against the wall? Books in plenty there were,
we may be sure, and perhaps models of ingenious machines and different
appliances for scientific work. Sir Henry Holland and Mr. Ticknor give a
curious description of Mr. Edgeworth's many ingenious inventions. There
were strange locks to the rooms and telegraphic despatches to the
kitchen; clocks at the one side of the house were wound up by simply
opening certain doors at the other end. It has been remarked that all
Miss Edgeworth's heroes had a smattering of science. Several of her
brothers inherited her father's turn for it. We hear of them raising
steeples and establishing telegraphs in partnership with him. Maria
shared of the family labours and used to help her father in the business
connected with the estate, to assist him, also, to keep the accounts.
She had a special turn for accounts, and she was pleased with her
exquisitely neat columns and by the accuracy with which her figures fell
into their proper places. Long after her father's death this knowledge
and experience enabled her to manage the estate for her eldest stepbrother,
Mr. Lovell Edgeworth. She was able, at a time of great national
difficulty and anxious crisis, to meet a storm in which many a larger
fortune was wrecked.

But in 1782 she was a young girl only beginning life. Storms were not
yet, and she was putting out her wings in the sunshine. Her father set
her to translate 'Adele et Theodore,' by Madame de Genlis (she had a
great facility for languages, and her French was really remarkable).
Holcroft's version of the book, however, appeared, and the Edgeworth
translation was never completed. Mr. Day wrote a letter to congratulate
Mr. Edgewo