Edgeworth's was perhaps less so than that of most. Her existence moved in the quiet circle of home, and like most women she was much and often occupied with what she happily calls "the necessary business of life, which must be done behind the scenes." The monotony of her existence was onty broken by visits to and from friends, and by receiving letters, events in those days of few newspapers, when letters were longer, more detailed than they are now, when they were sent round to a whole circle for perusal, when those who were abroad penned long descriptions of all they saw in what are now beaten tracks familiar to most persons as Piccadilly. The even course of life at Edgeworthstown certainly did not furnish much material for letters except to those interested in the well-being of the numerous members of the household, and Miss Edgeworth's are mostly filled with domestic details of this nature. In August 1821 she writes:—
What do you think is my employment out of doors, and what it has been this week past? My garden? No such elegant thing; but making a gutter! a sewer and a pathway in tin' Btreet of Edgeworthstown; and I do declare lam as much interested about it as I ever was in writing anything in my life. We have never here yet found it necessary to have recourse to public contribution for the poor. 1ml it is necessary to give some assistance to the labouring class; and I find that making the said gutter and pathway will employ twenty men for three weeks.
In the late autumn she yielded to the invitations of her many English friends to spend some time among them. She took with her her former travelling companions, for without some of her family Miss Edgeworth felt as if she had left too many pieces of herself behind, and could not enjoy anything thoroughly. Once more the sisters passed some interesting and agreeable months, visiting at the houses of various
