sister for travelling companions, and
a new book to beguile the way. She is charmed with her new book. It is
the story of 'Mademoiselle de Clermont,' by Madame de Genlis, and only
just out. The Edgeworths (with many other English people) rejoiced in
the long-looked-for millennium, which had been signed only the previous
autumn, and they now came abroad to bask in the sunshine of the Continent,
which had been so long denied to our mist-bound islanders. We hear of
the enthusiastic and somewhat premature joy with which this peace was
received by all ranks of people. Not only did the English rush over to
France; foreigners crossed to England, and one of them, an old friend of
Mr. Edgeworth's, had already reached Edgeworthtown, and inspired its
enterprising master with a desire to see those places and things once
more which he heard described. Mr. Edgeworth was anxious also to show
his young wife the treasures in the Louvre, and to help her to develop
her taste for art. He had had many troubles of late, lost friends and
children by death and by marriage. One can imagine that the change must
have been welcome to them all. Besides Maria and Lovell, his eldest
son, he took with him a lovely young daughter, Charlotte Edgeworth, the
daughter of Elizabeth Sneyd. They travelled by Belgium, stopping on
their way at Bruges, at Ghent, and visiting pictures and churches along
the road, as travellers still like to do. Mrs. Edgeworth was, as we have
said, the artistic member of the party. We do not know what modern
rhapsodists would say to Miss Edgeworth's very subdued criticisms and
descriptions of feeling on this occasion. 'It is extremely agreeable to
me,' she writes, 'to see paintings with those who have excellent taste
and no affectation.' And this remark might perhaps be thought even more
to the point now than in the pre-aesthetic age in which it was innocently
made. The travellers are finally landed in Paris in a magnificent hotel
in a fine square, 'formerly Place Louis-Quinze, afterwards Place de la
Revolution, now Place de la Concorde.' And Place de la Concorde it
remains, wars and revolutions notwithstanding, whether lighted by the
flames of the desperate Commune or by the peaceful sunsets which stream
their evening glory across the blood-stained stones.

The Edgeworths did not come as strangers to Paris; they brought letters
and introductions with them, and bygone associations and friendships
which had only now to be resumed.