which brought tears to Sir Walter Scott's eyes when he laid down Simple Susan, is only the reflection of the cheerful home life she steadfastly helped to brighten.
Her restrictions as a writer are perhaps most felt by those who admire her most. Her pet virtue—after prudence—is honesty; and yet how poor a sentiment it becomes under her treatment!—no virtue at all, in fact, but merely a policy working for its own gain. Take the long conversation between the little Italian merchants on the respective merits of integrity and sharpness in their childish traffic. Each disputant exhausts his wits in trying to prove the superior wisdom of his own course, but not once does the virtuous Francisco make use of the only argument which is of any real value,—I do not cheat because it is not right. There is more to be learned about honesty, real unselfish, unrequited honesty, in Charles Lamb's little sketch of Barbara S—— than in all Miss Edgeworth has written on the subject in a dozen different tales.
"Taking up one's cross does not at all mean having ovations at dinner parties, and being put over everybody else's head," says Ruskin,
