il his last wish.

It was not without great hesitation and anxiety that she determined to
finish writing her father's Life. There is a touching appeal in a letter
to her aunt Ruxton. 'I felt the happiness of my life was at stake.
Even if all the rest of the world had praised it and you had been
dissatisfied, how miserable should I have been!' And there is another
sentence written at Bowood, very sad and full of remembrance: 'I feel as
if I had lived a hundred years and was left alive after everybody else.'
The book came out, and many things were said about it, not all praise.
The 'Quarterly' was so spiteful and intolerant that it seemed almost
personal in its violence. It certainly would have been a great loss to
the world had this curious and interesting memoir never been published,
but at the time the absence of certain phrases and expressions of
opinions which Mr. Edgeworth had never specially professed seemed
greatly to offend the reviewers.

The worst of these attacks Miss Edgeworth never read, and the task
finished, the sad months over, the poor eyes recovered, she crossed to
England.

XIII.

One is glad to hear of her away and at Bowood reviving in good company,
in all senses of the word. Her old friend Lord Henry Petty, now Lord
Lansdowne, was still her friend and full of kindness. Outside the house
spread a green deer-park to rest her tired eyes, within were pleasant
and delightful companions to cheer her soul. Sir Samuel Romilly was
there, of whom she speaks with affectionate admiration, as she does of
her kind host and hostess. 'I much enjoy the sight of Lady Lansdowne's
happiness with her husband and her children. Beauty, fortune, cultivated
society all united--in short, everything that the most reasonable or
unreasonable could wish. She is so amiable and desirous to make others
happy.'

Miss Edgeworth's power of making other people see things as she does
is very remarkable in all these letters; with a little imagination one
could almost feel as if one might be able to travel back into the
pleasant society in which she lived. When she goes abroad soon after
with her two younger sisters (Fanny, the baby whose head so nearly came
off in her arms, and Harriet, who have both grown up by this time
to be pretty and elegant young ladies), the sisters are made welcome
everywhere. In Paris, as in London, troops of acquaintance came forward
to receive 'Madame Maria et mesdemoiselles ses soeurs,' as they used