ch as it surprised me--by the coming of M.
Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman whom we have mentioned to you, of
superior understanding and mild manners. He came to offer me his
hand and heart! My heart, you may suppose, cannot return his
attachment, for I have seen but very little of him, and have not
had time to have formed any judgment except that I think nothing
could tempt me to leave my own dear friends and my own country to
live in Sweden.

Maria Edgeworth was now about thirty years of age, at a time of life
when people are apt to realise perhaps almost more deeply than in early
youth the influence of feeling, its importance, and strange power over
events. Hitherto there are no records in her memoirs of any sentimental
episodes, but it does not follow that a young lady has not had her own
phase of experience because she does not write it out at length to her
various aunts and correspondents. Miss Edgeworth was not a sentimental
person. She was warmly devoted to her own family, and she seems to have
had a strong idea of her own want of beauty; perhaps her admiration for
her lovely young sisters may have caused this feeling to be exaggerated
by her. But no romantic, lovely heroine could have inspired a deeper or
more touching admiration than this one which M. Edelcrantz felt for his
English friend; the mild and superior Swede seems to have been
thoroughly in earnest.

So indeed was Miss Edgeworth, but she was not carried away by the
natural impulse of the moment. She realised the many difficulties and
dangers of the unknown; she looked to the future; she turned to her own
home, and with an affection all the more felt because of the trial
to which it was now exposed. The many lessons of self-control and
self-restraint which she had learnt returned with instinctive force.
Sometimes it happens that people miss what is perhaps the best for
the sake of the next best, and we see convenience and old habit and
expediency, and a hundred small and insignificant circumstances,
gathering like some avalanche to divide hearts that might give and
receive very much from each. But sentiment is not the only thing in
life. Other duties, ties, and realities there are; and it is difficult
to judge for others in such matters. Sincerity of heart and truth to
themselves are pretty sure in the end to lead people in the right
direction for their own and for other people's happiness. Only, in the
experience of many