that _Harrington_
should not be left unread, even though we may regret that such capital
figures, painted with such nice skill and delicate discrimination,
should be imbedded in so puerile a tale. The characters are keenly and
lightly drawn, standing out boldly and clearly. The jargon of society is
once more successfully reproduced, as well as those fashionable ladies
who hide the claws of a tigress under a velvet paw, and whose complex
and shifting nature Miss Edgeworth understood so well and reproduced so
faithfully. How she, with her simple, direct character, came to
comprehend them so fully, is almost a marvel. But intuition of character
was a forte with Miss Edgeworth and the grand secret of her novelistic
success. Her truth of touch was remarkable. Lady Anne Mowbray is a
perfect model of that mixture of feline grace and obstinate silliness
which the world so much admires in its young ladies; while her mother's
insignificance, which is not disguised by a stately, formal manner, is
delineated and sustained to perfection. Lord Mowbray is yet another of
Miss Edgeworth's marvelously acute portraits of a true man of the world,
of an evil nature. This is concealed by a fair semblance and good
manners, so that it is needful to know him well to guess at the villain
that is hidden under this attractive disguise.

Miss Edgeworth is at her ease and at her happiest in _Ormond_. Here she
is on Irish ground, always for her the best, where she moves with most
_abandon_; where she casts aside for a time some of her cold philosophy,
and allows herself to appear as the vivacious Irishwoman, which at heart
she was. Ireland, with its long history of bloodshed and social
disorder, had none of those romantic incidents to offer to the novelist
that were to be found in the equally wild but more noble and chivalric
history of Scotland. Hence Sir Walter Scott had an easier task to
perform than Miss Edgeworth. The history of which he treated allowed of
judicious and poetic gilding. It lifted into more romantic regions.
Irish history has, unfortunately, never been elevating, soul-ennobling.
It is too much the record of rebellious seditions and foolish intrigues,
lightly entered upon, inconsistently carried out. Such a history could
scarcely kindle romantic ideas and desires in the hearts of youth, as
did Scott's pictures; and Miss Edgeworth did wisely in her Irish tales
to leave history carefully on one side, and to deal only with the
Hiberni