broth, and tends her mother to the distant tune of Philip's pipe
coming across the fields. As we read the story again it seems as if
we could almost scent the fragrance of the primroses and the double
violets, and hear the music sounding above the children's voices, and
the bleatings of the lamb, so simply and delightfully is the whole story
constructed. Among all Miss Edgeworth's characters few are more familiar
to the world than that of Susan's pretty pet lamb.

II.

No sketch of Maria Edgeworth's life, however slight, would be complete
without a few words about certain persons coming a generation before her
(and belonging still to the age of periwigs), who were her father's
associates and her own earliest friends. Notwithstanding all that has
been said of Mr. Edgeworth's bewildering versatility of nature, he seems
to have been singularly faithful in his friendships. He might take up
new ties, but he clung pertinaciously to those which had once existed.
His daughter inherited that same steadiness of affection. In his life of
Erasmus Darwin, his grandfather, Mr. Charles Darwin, writing of these
very people, has said, 'There is, perhaps, no safer test of a man's real
character than that of his long-continued friendship with good and
able men.' He then goes on to quote an instance of a long-continued
affection and intimacy only broken by death between a certain set of
distinguished friends, giving the names of Keir, Day, Small, Boulton,
Watt, Wedgwood, and Darwin, and adding to them the names of Edgeworth
himself and of the Galtons.

Mr. Edgeworth first came to Lichfield to make Dr. Darwin's acquaintance.
His second visit was to his friend Mr. Day, the author of 'Sandford and
Merton,' who had taken a house in the valley of Stow, and who invited
him one Christmas on a visit. 'About the year 1765,' says Miss Seward,
'came to Lichfield, from the neighbourhood of Reading, the young and gay
philosopher, Mr. Edgeworth; a man of fortune, and recently married to a
Miss Elers, of Oxfordshire. The fame of Dr. Darwin's various talents
allured Mr. E. to the city they graced.' And the lady goes on to describe
Mr. Edgeworth himself:--'Scarcely two-and-twenty, with an exterior yet
more juvenile, having mathematic science, mechanic ingenuity, and a
competent portion of classical learning, with the possession of the
modern languages.... He danced, he fenced, he winged his arrows with
more than philosophic skill,' continues the lady,