nderfully sustained; but hardly less
excellent is his brother, with his affected tones, his foreign airs, and
quick, talkative vanity. Lord William is another remarkably well-drawn
picture. He is an upright, honorable and enlightened nobleman, who
constantly fails to do himself justice, because he labors under that
morbid shyness known as _mauvaise honte_, so common in England, so rare
out of her borders. The patron, Lord Oldborough, a high-minded, austere,
but absorbingly ambitious man, is elaborated with much care and
penetration. Very skillfully are we made to feel that his vices are
rather those of his position than of his heart. Nor must Buckhurst
Falconer be passed over, the only member of the Falconer family who has
one redeeming feature. He once had a heart, and, though weak as water,
and swayed by the low principles that prevail in his family, he cannot
succeed in stifling every good or noble feeling, though he has striven
hard to compass this end. These will crop forth occasionally, though
they cannot stay his descent down the path of corruption. But they
permit us to feel for him, to pity him; he is no cut-and-dried
mechanical knave.

A book that contains so many fine conceptions cannot be called a
failure, even to-day, and since Miss Edgeworth's contemporaries admitted
her premises, it is no wonder that on its appearance _Patronage_
achieved a great success. In those days, when novel-writing had not
become so much of an art as now, the rapid downfall of the whole
Falconer family within the space of a few weeks presented nothing
ludicrous. Such incidents were familiar in romance, and held allowable
there, even if known to be untrue to life. We now judge from the latter
standard only, and reject, even in fiction, the improbable. In
_Patronage_, Miss Edgeworth's fondness for poetical justice has
certainly carried her very far. Here, as in other of her stories,
difficulties are not allowed to develop and be overcome gradually, but
the knot is cut in the most ludicrously childish and awkward manner, a
summary catastrophe is imagined, so that the modern reader cannot
forbear a smile. Still, _Patronage_ remains a remarkable book, replete
with sound sense, acute observation and rapid graphic illustrations of
character.

Scarcely so _Harrington_. Here, as in _Patronage_, Miss Edgeworth had
set herself to work out a moral, this time an apology for Jews. It was
written to suggestion, and was on a theme that lay entir