fathers, and where
great-great-grandmothers rush into the discussion with vehement spelling
and remonstrance, and make matters no better by their interference. I
never read more passionately eloquent letters and appeals. There
are also records of a pleasanter nature; merrymakings, and festive
preparations, and 12s. 6d. for a pair of silk stockings for Miss
Margaret Edgeworth to dance in, carefully entered into the family
budget. All the people whose portraits are hanging up, beruffled,
dignified, calm, and periwigged, on the old walls of Edgeworthstown
certainly had extraordinarily strong impressions, and gave eloquent
expression to them. I don't think people could feel quite so strongly
now about their own affairs as they did then; there are so many printed
emotions, so many public events, that private details cannot seem quite
as important. Edgeworths of those days were farther away from the world
than they are now, dwelling in the plains of Longford, which as yet
were not crossed by iron rails. The family seems to have made little
of distances, and to have ridden and posted to and fro from Dublin to
Edgeworthstown in storm and sunshine.

II

When Messrs. Macmillan asked me to write a preface to this new edition
of Miss Edgeworth's stories I thought I should like to see the place
where she had lived so long and where she had written so much, and so it
happened that being in Ireland early this year, my daughter and I found
ourselves driving up to Broadstone Station one morning in time for the
early train to Edgeworthstown. As we got out of our cab we asked the
driver what the fare should be. 'Sure the fare is half a crown,' said
he, 'and if you wish to give me more, I could keep it for myself!'

The train was starting and we bought our papers to beguile the road.
'Will you have a Home Rule paper or one of them others?' said the
newsboy, with such a droll emphasis that we couldn't help laughing.
'Give me one of each,' said I; then he laughed, as no English newsboy
would have done. . . . We went along in the car with a sad couple of
people out of a hospital, compatriots of our own, who had been settled
ten years in Ireland, and were longing to be away. The poor things
were past consolation, dull, despairing, ingrained English, sick and
suffering and yearning for Brixton, just as other aliens long for their
native hills and moors. We travelled along together all that spring
morning by the blossoming hedges, and trium