orth waiting long while she wrote her answer
decidedly saying that she could not admit the unqualified control of a
husband over all her actions, nor the necessity for 'seclusion from
society to preserve female virtue.' Finding that Honora absolutely
refused to change her way of life, Mr. Day went into a fever, for which
Dr. Darwin bled him. Nor did he recover until another Miss Sneyd,
Elizabeth by name, made her appearance in the Close.

Mr. Edgeworth, who was of a lively and active disposition, had
introduced archery among the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and he
describes a fine summer evening's entertainment passed in agreeable
sports, followed by dancing and music, in the course of which Honora's
sister, Miss Elizabeth, appeared for the first time on the Lichfield
scene, and immediately joined in the country dance. There is a vivid
description of the two sisters in Mr. Edgeworth's memoirs, of the
beautiful and distinguished Honora, loving science, serious, eager,
reserved; of the more lovely but less graceful Elizabeth, with less of
energy, more of humour and of social gifts than her sister. Elizabeth
Sneyd was, says Edgeworth, struck by Day's eloquence, by his unbounded
generosity, by his scorn of wealth. His educating a young girl for his
wife seemed to her romantic and extraordinary; and she seems to have
thought it possible to yield to the evident admiration she had aroused
in him. But, whether in fun or in seriousness, she represented to him
that he could not with justice decry accomplishments and graces that he
had not acquired. She wished him to go abroad for a time to study to
perfect himself in all that was wanting; on her own part she promised
not to go to Bath, London, or any public place of amusement until his
return, and to read certain books which he recommended.

Meanwhile Mr. Edgeworth had made no secret of his own feeling for Honora
to Mr. Day, 'who with all the eloquence of virtue and of friendship'
urged him to fly, to accompany him abroad, and to shun dangers he could
not hope to overcome. Edgeworth consented to this proposal, and the two
friends started for Paris, visiting Rousseau on their way. They spent
the winter at Lyons, as it was a place where excellent masters of all
sorts were to be found; and here Mr. Day, with excess of zeal--

put himself (says his friend) to every species of torture,
ordinary and extraordinary, to compel his Antigallican limbs, in
spite of their nat