revolve, while in Miss Edgeworth's earlier novels the subsidiary characters are the most interesting and amusing. We wish Belinda well, but she does not move our feelings as does Lady Delacour, and Sir Philip Baddeley is infinitely more diverting than Clarence Harvey is fascinating. And it is the same in all the others, while the centre of Helen is the girl herself. Yet the other characters are no less admirably drawn, with the old delicacy and firmness of touch, the occasional quaint gleams of humour. In its way Miss Edgeworth never limned a finer portrait than that of Lady Davenant, the large-brained, large-hearted woman of the world, endowed with strong principle, keen sense and real vigour of character, mingled with prejudice, impulsive likes and dislikes, an imperfect adherence in practice to her own theories of right and wrong, and a stern power of self- judgment. There is nothing exaggerated in this admirable and vigorous piece of work. We comprehend Cecilia's nervous fear of the mother whose unswerving truth cows her, while it attracts the answering truth of nature of her truer and stronger friend. Equally good is the character of Lady Cecilia, through whose duplicity and cowardice arise all Helen's troubles; her husband, General Clarendon, who held
A friend to truth, in speech and action plain;
the malicious Lady Beatrice and her silly pretty sister; while Horace Churchill, the man about town, who is more modern in tone than Miss Edgeworth's earlier portraits of the same class, loses nothing by comparison with them. Despite his restless egotism, his spitefulness, his generally unpleasant character, he is a gentle-
