for Granville, he falls in love in a thorough-going, earnest manner which increases our feeling of his reality. It has been objected to Miss Edgeworth's love-making that it is stiff as compared with that of the present day. It certainly presents a contrast to that of the Broughton school; but the loves of Helen and Granville as told by her in so real and human a manner, reveal their feelings to be none the less tender that they are not hysterical, or any the less deep for their power of modesty, reverence, and reserve.
Helen was suggested by Crabbe's tale, The Confidant, but that feeling which is sinfully gratified and severely punished in Crabbers story becomes refined and reformed in Miss Edgeworth's crucible. It is, however, interesting to compare her romance with the rapid sketch of the stern original. Another new feature in Helen is a tendency to describe natural objects. Until now, there had never been in Miss Edgeworth's writings a description of scenery or a sign of delight in it. She had, as we know, a contempt for the mere pleasures of the senses, and so little appreciation of the beautiful that she once condemns a character who buys something to gratify the eye, not recognising that the eye, as well as the body and mind, must be fed. Yet in Helen, to our surprise, Ave encounter some lovingly detailed scenic bits, we even find her citing Wordsworth. It is clear she had not remained wholly untouched by the new influences surging around her. Another feature of Helen is the lack of a didactic tone. Speaking of Scott's novels, she remarks that his morality is not in purple patches, ostentatiously obtrusive, but woven in through the very texture of the stuff. She knew that her faults lay in the opposite direction, and it is evident she had striven to avoid them. A
