must have taken most people by surprise. The writer once expressed her
surprise at the extraordinary influence that Mr. Edgeworth seems to have
had over women and over the many members of his family who continued to
reside in his home after all the various changes which had taken place
there. Lady S---- to whom she spoke is one who has seen more of life
than most of us, who has for years past carried help to the far-away
and mysterious East, but whose natural place is at home in the more
prosperous and unattainable West End. This lady said, 'You do not in the
least understand what my Uncle Edgeworth was. I never knew anything
like him. Brilliant, full of energy and charm, he was something quite
extraordinary and irresistible. If you had known him you would not have
wondered at anything.'

'I had in the spring of that year (1797) paid my first visit to
Edgeworthtown with my mother and sister,' writes Miss Beaufort,
afterwards Mrs. Edgeworth, the author of the Memoirs. 'My father
had long before been there, and had frequently met Mr. Edgeworth
at Mrs. Ruxton's. In 1795 my father was presented to the living of
Collon, in the county of Louth, where he resided from that time.
His vicarage was within five minutes' walk of the residence of Mr.
Foster, then Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, the dear
friend of Mr. Edgeworth, who came to Collon in the spring of 1798
several times, and at last offered me his hand, which I accepted.'

Maria, who was at first very much opposed to the match, would not have
been herself the most devoted and faithful of daughters if she had not
eventually agreed to her father's wishes, and, as daughters do, come by
degrees to feel with him and to see with his eyes. The influence of a
father over a daughter where real sympathy exists is one of the very
deepest and strongest that can be imagined. Miss Beaufort herself seems
also to have had some special attraction for Maria. She was about her
own age. She must have been a person of singularly sweet character and
gentle liberality of mind. 'You will come into a new family, but you
will not come as a stranger, dear Miss Beaufort,' writes generous Maria.
'You will not lead a new life, but only continue to lead the life you
have been used to in your own happy cultivated family.' And her
stepmother in a few feeling words describes all that Maria was to her
from the very first when she came as a bride to the home