"What sort of a thing?" asked the sometimes come over a whole roomful other.

"A little sketch. It's a most curi- "Miss Fletching," he began, in his ous thing. I could have sworn I had singularly clear voice, with the happy left it on the round table, in the room consciousness that every one was liswhere the ladies were sitting this after-tening. noon, but I had a long search for it before dinner, and couldn't find it anywhere."

back, I fancy. Isn't it in that parcel I see on the table?"

must be, was at least better than this view," it wasn't really

Suddenly the awful truth flashed "Thank you," he said wearily; upon Sylvia, and almost overwhelmed "really, if you don't mind, I don't her. "Ethel," she whispered implor- think we'll discuss the matter furingly, "fetch my Indiarubber-quick ther." -fly!"

But she was too late. The crafty Dixon had already stepped up to the table, and deftly undoing the parcel, had drawn out the ill-fated nocturne and handed it to its rightful owner.

"If you'll look at the back, Porchester ." he said.

"Please, Mr. Dixon!" cried poor Sylvia imploringly.

But he went on relentlessly, "You will find some interesting criticisms of your work, in a handwriting which you will doubtless recognize. They will amply confirm what you said about the writer's character at dinner."

In a state of extreme bewilderment, Porchester, half mechanically, did as he was told, and looked at the back of his sketch. There, plainly written in that dainty penmanship he had praised, were the appalling words: "This is a ridiculous picture," followed by the advice, in the same writing: "Try Sunlight Soap!"

There was an awful silence. Porchester was too hurt and surprised to speak; Sylvia and her friends felt that an explanation would only make matters worse, while Mrs. Desborough, noticing that something was amiss, looked up anxiously through her spectacles. And Dixon wore the serenely virtuous air of a man who feels that he has performed a noble and disinterested action.

And if certain of the members of that household had found the afternoon rather dull, it was wildly cheerful compared with the gloom in which the remainder of that evening was passed.

III.

THE cloud had not passed off by breakfast time on the following morning, and the whole company was more or less depressed, with the single exception of Mr. Alfred Dixon, who was aggressively, not to say offensively, cheerful. As soon as breakfast was over Ralph Porchester withdrew into the library to write some letters, one of which was to announce to his landlady in London that he was obliged to return home a week earlier than he had anticipated.

While he was thus occupied, the door opened, and Sylvia Fletching entered. He just raised his eyes for a moment from his letter, and then went on doggedly with his task.

"Mr. Porchester," said Sylvia softly. "Well, Miss Fletching?"

"May I say something, please? I don't want you to-to have a worse opinion of me than I deserve."

Porchester felt inclined to retort that this would be impossible, but he restrained his impatience. Indeed, a ray of hope flashed across him. Could there have been some mistake? He rose hurriedly from his chair.

"I beg your pardon," he said. is" Please sit down. I suppose you are referring to that unfortunate incident of yesterday? Please forget it; I don't see that we shall do any good by talking about it."

At length Porchester recovered himself somewhat. "This this somewhat unexpected, Miss Fletching. Of course you have a perfect right to hold any opinion about my work you please, but I hardly thought-but you clearly considered me a conceited jackass, and chose this way of lessening my vanity. Allow me to offer you my thanks for the trouble you have taken." "Oh!" exclaimed Sylvia, Ethel, and Mabel, in one breath, feeling that the real explanation, involved as it

Perhaps it was only a girlish freak done on the spur of the moment, he reflected. With most girls he would have thought little of it, but that Sylvia

"Oh yes, but you must let me explain," cried the remorseful Sylvia.

"I didn't mean to be rude. I didn't and in both fields she has had the know it was yours."

usual fate of pioneers that, namely, And then, not without tears, she con- of being outstripped and superseded by fessed how his drawing must have those to whom she showed the way of been lying, face downwards, on the success. Her novels of manners will table, to be swept with the others into always be worth reading, for their the parcel, when the artist had come in strong sense and shrewd, observant unexpectedly on the previous after-humor; but they lack just that touch noon. Also how she had made sure of creative genius which defies the that the picture was by her pet enemy, touch of time, and which gives the Clara Myles, and how she was so very, dateless stamp of immortality to Miss very sorry, because Mr. Porchester had Austen's characters. The Irish tales, been so kind to her and at this point in which her genius found its fullest her feelings became too much for her, expression, have been overshadowed and she broke down altogether. by the stupendous achievement of Scott; and her noblest title to remembrance as a writer with future generations will probably be that passage in

Ralph heard the beginning of this story with a grim smile, but now a new hope dawned in his eyes.

"Then you didn't really think me an the general introduction to the "Wainsufferable puppy?” he said.

66

"Of- of course not," she sobbed, "I know nothing about art-I will never criticise another picture as long as I live !"

He took her hands and looked in her eyes. And there it seemed that he read the answer that he sought to his unspoken question, for he took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Sylvia," he said, "you are free to abuse my pictures as much as you will, on condition-only on condition, mind -that you care a little for their painter ! "

66

ANTHONY C. DEANE.

From The London Quarterly Review.
MARIA EDGEWORTH.1

As a woman," said Miss Edgeworth once, when asked to write a biographical preface to her novels, "my life, wholly domestic, can offer nothing of interest to the public." Yet, as we lay down the two volumes of her collected letters, edited, with all his wonted taste and judgment, by Mr. Augustus Hare, one feels that it is precisely as a woman, and in her private and domestic capacity, that Maria Edgeworth appeals most strongly to this generation. She was a pioneer, both in literature and in education; 1 Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth. Edited by A. J. C. Hare. London: Edward Arnold.

verley Novels," which gives, as one determining cause of their inception, the author's wish to do for Scotland a service akin to that which Miss Edgeworth had rendered to her own country by her sketches of national manners and character.

As an educator she was equally a striker-out of new paths, in which thousands have followed, and some, perhaps, surpassed her. The educational principles which were looked upon almost as revolutionary innovations, when Maria and her father published the "Parents' Assistant," are now the commonplaces of every normal college lecture-room. But those who reap the fruits of a rational and scientific system of education in our time are bound to remember what they owe, not only to reformers like Pestalozzi and David Stowe, but also to those who, like the Edgeworths, introduced, improved, and popularized their system among us.

But there is one art in which her achievements will never grow obsolete, and in which her example will always, one may hope, be fruitful of good. We are all set to study the art of living, although many of us never master its principles till the time for applying them is past. And as a mistress in this art Maria Edgeworth, such as these volumes reveal her, stands out, a memorable instance of a woman,

most wise and yet most womanly, | branches of his genealogical tree. The whom fame could not spoil, nor the book is interesting, not merely for its engrossing nature of her own pursuits vivid portrayal of a vanished state of absorb; and who, when placed in cir- society, but for the light it throws on cumstances where the most delicate the very curious character of its tact, the most skilful "management" author. A more perfect portrait of the might well have gone astray, came off genial egotist, of the amiable busyconqueror by simply following the dic- body, of the self-satisfied utilitarian, tates of her own sincere, unselfish, and confining his views to the limits of his magnanimous nature. Her life was own kitchen-garden, and then calmly devoted to her father while he lived, pronouncing, "Whatever is, is best,” and after that to the care of his chil- can scarcely be imagined. He tells a dren by his four successive wives. story of himself that illustrates the She was the bond of peace and union strength and weakness of his character in that heterogeneous household. She better than any elaborate analysis. gave up a man whom she loved with While quite a youth, at Paris, he was all the warmth of her generous heart constantly solicited to gamble a pracrather than leave her home duties un- tice of which he disapproved. Not done and her home place unfilled. wishing, however, to earn the stigma She had her reward, it is true, in the of "Puritan " or "Methodist" by reuntiring gratitude and affection of fusing, he settled within himself the those to whom she had thus sacrificed sum which he could afford to lose at herself; but, had it been otherwise, play; and, when that limit was she would have done the same. "Her reached, declined to continue. This whole life of eighty-five years," says her biographer, "had been an aspiration after good."

line of conduct won him considerable applause for his strength of mind; and his daughter, in particular, so admired No estimate of Miss Edgeworth's it that she attributed it to the hero in life would be 'complete that did not one of her novels. It may, perhaps, take into account the extraordinary be true that it requires more power of personality of that father who was also will to stop in a dangerous course than her partner, literary adviser, and most to refuse to enter upon it. Still, one intimate friend throughout the greater cannot but feel that Mr. Edgeworth's part of her life. Richard Lovell Edge- prudence in this instance was entirely worth was descended from one Roger selfish. Complete abstention from an Edgeworth, a monk, who took advan-evil practice may help those who are tage of the religious changes under likely to be led astray; guarded indulHenry VIII. to marry and found a gence never does. family. One of his sons, under Eliz- The same impression of innate selfabeth, obtained a grant of land in regard and self-esteem, however corIreland, and settled down at Edge-rected by a natural uprightness and worthstown, in Longford County. amiability of temper, is left by his own Energy of mind and body, and no account of his first marriage. After inconsiderable dash of eccentricity, six months at Trinity College, passed seem always to have distinguished the very much in the style of Lever's Edgeworths. It is useless, one fears, heroes in "Charles O'Malley," young to recommend the "Memoirs" of Rich- Lovell Edgeworth was entered at ard Lovell Edgeworth to a generation Corpus Christi College, Oxford, as a which has neither taste nor time for gentleman-commoner. His father had "browsing in libraries; " but any one given him an introduction to an old who has ever happened to meet with friend in the neighborhood, who that most entertaining book must re- frankly stated that he had four attracmember the picturesque stories of tive daughters at home, and that, if headlong pleasure and reckless en- Mr. Edgeworth, senior, wished the terprise with which he adorns the acquaintance for his son, he must be

prepared to take the consequences. would hardly prepare one for the adThe warning was disregarded, and mirable manner in which she fulfilled before the precocious youth was twenty her duties to his children. She was he had wooed and won Miss Anna not only beautiful and gifted, but Maria Elers, and fled with her to high-principled and thoughtful, with a Gretna Green. Reflection came, as gentle, resolute hand on the reins of usual, too late. "I soon felt," he says discipline. It was to her that Maria in his "Memoirs," "the inconvenience owed those habits of order and method of an early and hasty marriage, but, which no doubt did much to control, in though I heartily repented my folly, I her case, the somewhat scatter-brained determined to bear with firmness and vivacity of the Edgeworth tempertemper the evils I had brought on ament: myself." He does not seem to have felt it any part of his duty to conceal from his wife that she had disappointed him. Mrs. Edgeworth was left very much to herself, while her volatile husband was building bridges at Lyons, or making one in the circle of wits and blue-stockings who gathered round Dr. Darwin and the once cele

brated Anna Seward at Lichfield. Here he met a friend of Miss Seward's, Honora Sneyd, in whom he saw "for the first time in his life a woman that equalled the picture of perfection existing in his imagination." As soon as he realized the state of his own feelings, he did the only honorable thing possible in removing himself from the scene of temptation. Taking with him his son, whom he had determined to educate on the system of Rousseau, he made his escape to Lyons, where he settled down for two years. His wife, neglected and unloved, remained meanwhile with her own relatives in England-"a kind and excellent, but a very sad woman."

She died in 1773 after the birth of her daughter Anna. Mr. Edgeworth, on hearing of his release, rushed over to Eugland, offered himself to Honora Sneyd, and was accepted.

It is very agreeable to me [Honora writes to her little stepdaughter] to think of conversing with you as my equal in every respect but age, and of my making that inequality of use to you by giving you the advantage of the experience I have had, and the observations I have been able to make, as these are parts of knowledge which nothing but time can bestow.

The second Mrs. Edgeworth died of consumption in 1780, leaving two children. Mr. Edgeworth's grief was intense; but it did not prevent his forming another matrimonial connection within eight months of her death.

Nothing [wrote Mr. Edgeworth] is more erroneous than the common belief that a man who has lived in the greatest happiness with one wife will be the most averse to take another. On the contrary, the loss of happiness which he feels when he loses her, necessarily urges him to endeavor to be placed again in the situation which constituted his former felicity. I felt that Honora had judged wisely and from a thorough knowledge of my character, when she advised me to marry again as soon as I could meet with a woman who would make a good mother to my children and an agreeable companion to me. She had formed an idea that her sister Elizabeth was bet

ter suited to me than any other woman, and thought I was equally suited to her. But, of all Honora's sisters, I had seen the least of Elizabeth.

Maria Edgeworth, the eldest child of this unfortunate first marriage, was The wisdom of Honora Edgeworth's born in 1767, at the house of her prevision was justified by events. Elizgrandfather, Mr. Elers, in Oxford- abeth Sneyd made him a faithful and shire, where she spent her time with affectionate wife, and his children, the. occasional interludes of visiting her kindest and wisest of stepmothers. Shep aunts in London, till her father's sec- had nine children of her own, and ond marriage. The somewhat precip- when Maria returned from the London itate way in which Honora Sneyd boarding-school, where her narrative accepted Mr. Edgeworth's addresses, talent, like Sir Walter Scott's, had