see some rabbits
which they were rearing down below. A lady who used to live at Clifton
as a little girl, and to be sometimes prescribed for by Dr. King, was
once brought up as a child to Miss Edgeworth, and she told me how very
much puzzled she felt when the bright old lady, taking her by the
hand, said, 'Well, my dear, how do you do, and how is my excellent
brother-in-law?' One can imagine what a vague sort of being an
'excellent brother-in-law' would seem to a very young child.

We read in Miss Edgeworth's memoir of her father that Mr. Edgeworth
recovered from his serious illness in 1814 to enjoy a few more years of
life among his friends, his children, and his experiments. His good
humour and good spirits were undiminished, and he used to quote an old
friend's praise of 'the privileges and convenience of old age.' He was
past seventy, but he seems to have continued his own education to the
end of life. 'Without affecting to be young, he exerted himself to
prevent any of his faculties from sinking into the indolent state which
portends their decay,' and his daughter says that he went on learning to
the last, correcting his faults and practising his memory by various
devices, so that it even improved with age.

In one of his last letters to Mrs. Beaufort, his wife's mother, he
speaks with no little paternal pleasure of his home and his children:
'Such excellent principles, such just views of human life and manners,
such cultivated understandings, such charming tempers make a little
Paradise about me;' while with regard to his daughter's works he adds
concerning the book which was about to appear, 'If Maria's tales fail
with the public, you will hear of my hanging myself.'

Mr. Edgeworth died in the summer of 1817, at home, surrounded by his
family, grateful, as he says, to Providence for allowing his body to
perish before his mind.

During the melancholy months which succeeded her father's death
Maria hardly wrote any letters; her sight was in a most alarming
state. The tears, she said, felt in her eyes like the cutting of a
knife. She had overworked them all the previous winter, sitting up
at night and struggling with her grief as she wrote 'Ormond.' She
was now unable to use them without pain.... Edgeworthtown now
belonged to Lovell, the eldest surviving brother, but he wished it
to continue the home of the family. Maria set to work to complete
her father's memoirs and to fulf