Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/40

the world, for some time past convinced of the wisdom of according education to women, no longer stands in need. The book is interesting to-day merely as another proof of how much Mr. Edgeworth and his daughter were advanced in thought. They could not be brought to the common opinion then prevalent that ignorance was a woman's safe-guard, that taste for literature was calculated to lead to ill-conduct, though even a thinker so enlightened in many respects as Mr. Day endorsed Sir Anthony Absolute's dictum that the extent of a woman's erudition should consist in her knowing her letters, without their mischievous combinations.

Not even the honours of first authorship could cause Miss Edgeworth's private letters, then any more than afterwards, to be occupied with herself. “I beg, dear Sophy,” she writes to her cousin, “that you will not call my little stories by the sublime title of 'my works'; I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth.” It is the affairs of others, the things that it will please or amuse her correspondents to hear, that she writes about. The tone is always good-humoured and kindly.

Ever and again the noiseless tenor of her way was disturbed by the insurgents. She writes, Jan. 1796:

You, my dear aunt, who were so brave when the county of Meath was the seat of war, must know that we emulate your courage: and I assure you, in your own words, “that whilst our terrified neighbours see nightly visions of massacres, we sleep with our doors and windows unbarred.” I must observe, though, that it is only those doors and windows that have neither bolts nor bars that we leave unbarred, and these are more at present than we wish even for the reputation of our valour. All that I crave for my own part is that if I am to have my throat cut, it may not be by a man with his face blackened with charcoal. I shall look at every person that comes here very closely, to see if there be any marks of charcoal upon their visages. Old