make out a third volume, I have cut ;is much as ever I could — cut it to the quick; and now it matters not whether it be printed in three or in two volumes. If tiresome to the ear in three, it would be equally so in two, and would look worse to the eye.
The reason why her new story was not an Irish one she gives in a letter to a brother in India:—
I should tell you beforehand that there is no humour in it, and no Irish character. It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in a book of fiction—realities are too strong, party-passions too violent to bear to see, or care to look at their faces in the looking-glass. The people would only break the glass, and curse the fool who hold the mirror up to nature—distorted nature, in a fever. We are in too perilous a case to laugh, humour would be out of season, worse than bad taste. Whenever the danger is past, as the man in the sonnet says, "We may look back on the hardest part and laugh." Then I shall be ready to join in the laugh. Sir Walter Scott once said to me, "Do explain to the public why Pat, who gets forward so well in other countries, is so miserable in his own?" A very difficult question: I fear above my power. But I shall think of it continually, and listen. and look, and read.
Things were once more in a bad way in that unhappy country, and Miss Edgeworth saw great distress all around her. A letter written at that time might almost be written to-day:—
I fear we have much to go through in this country before we come to quiet, settled life, and a ready obedience to the laws. There is literally no rein of law at this moment to hold the Irish; and through the whole country there is what I cannot justly call a spirit of Reform, but a spirit of Revolution, under the name of reform; a restless desire to overthrow what is, and a hope—more than a hope—an expectation, of gaining liberty or wealth, or both, in the struggle; and if they do gain either, they will lose both again, and be worse off than ever—they will afterwards quarrel amongst themselves, destroy one another, and be again enslaved with heavier chains. I am, and have been all my life, a sincere friend to moderate measures, as long as reason can be heard ; but there comes a time, at the actual commencement of uproar, when reason caimot be heard, and when the ultimate law of force must be resorted to, to prevent greater evils. That time was lost in the beginning of the French Revolution— I hope it
