That Miss Edgeworth was not affected by the current sentimentalism of the period the above remark shows. Indeed, her earliest letters evince her practical straight-forward common-sense. Romance had no place in her nature. In 1794 she was engaged upon her Letters to Literary Ladies. She wrote to her cousin:
Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries after Letters to Literary Ladies. I am sorry to say they are not as well as can be expected, nor are they likely to mend at present : when they are fit to be seen—if that happy time ever arrives—their first visit shall be to Black Castle. They are now disfigured by all manner of crooked marks of Papa's critical indignation, besides various abusive marginal notes, which I would not have you see for half-a-crown sterling, nor my aunt for a whole crown as pure as King Hiero's.
The arts of peace, as she herself expresses it, were going on prosperously side by side with those of war; the disturbances, of which Miss Edgeworth continues to write quite lightly, having become sufficiently serious to require military intervention.
In 1795 the Letters to Literary Ladies were published. Considering the time when the work was written it showed much independence and advance of thought, though to-day it would be stigmatised as somewhat retrograde. It is nothing more than a plea in favour of female education, repeating arguments that of late years have been well-worn, and of which
- ↑ Afterwards changed into Patronage.
