d that its head would
come off, and afraid that her father would find her sitting there and
laugh at her, till seeing the footman passing she called "Samuel" in a
terrified voice, and made him walk before her backwards down the stairs
till she safely reached the sitting-room.' For all these younger
children Maria seems to have had a most tender and motherly regard, as
indeed for all her young brothers and sisters of the different families.
Many of them were the heroines of her various stories, and few heroines
are more charming than some of Miss Edgeworth's. Rosamund is said by
some to have been Maria herself, impulsive, warm-hearted, timid, and yet
full of spirit and animation.

In his last letter to Mr. Edgeworth Dr. Darwin writes kindly of the
authoress, and sends her a message. The letter is dated April 17, 1802.
'I am glad to find you still amuse yourself with mechanism in spite of
the troubles of Ireland;' and the Doctor goes on to ask his friend to
come and pay a visit to the Priory, and describes the pleasant house
with the garden, the ponds full of fish, the deep umbrageous valley,
with the talkative stream running down it, and Derby tower in the
distance. The letter, so kind, so playful in its tone, was never
finished. Dr. Darwin was writing as he was seized with what seemed a
fainting fit, and he died within an hour. Miss Edgeworth writes of the
shock her father felt when the sad news reached him; a shock, she says,
which must in some degree be experienced by every person who reads this
letter of Dr. Darwin's.

No wonder this generous outspoken man was esteemed in his own time. To
us, in ours, it has been given still more to know the noble son of 'that
giant brood,' whose name will be loved and held in honour as long as
people live to honour nobleness, simplicity, and genius; those things
which give life to life itself.

VIII.

'Calais after a rough passage; Brussels, flat country, tiled houses,
trees and ditches, the window shutters turned out to the street;
fishwives' legs, Dunkirk, and the people looking like wooden toys set in
motion; Bruges and its mingled spires, shipping, and windmills.' These
notes of travel read as if Miss Edgeworth had been writing down only
yesterday a pleasant list of the things which are to be seen two hours
off, to-day no less plainly than a century ago. She jots it all down
from her corner in the postchaise, where she is propped up with a
father, brother, stepmother, and