ed not only by looks and gestures, but by what is
often as significant, by moments of silence, by changes of countenance,
by all the minor matters that distinguish spoken from written words.
Neither in dramatic presentation of incident, nor in picturesqueness and
vividness of character-drawing, has Miss Edgeworth ever touched a higher
standard than in _Ormond_. The fact that it was written and sent to
press so quickly, in order to gratify her sick father, proved in its
favor. The result was that it was penned with more spontaneity, was less
carefully worked up than either _Patronage_ or _Belinda_, or even the
_Absentee_, and consequently it reads more natural. There are fewer
forced sentences, fewer attempts at pointed and epigrammatic writing.
These epigrammatic sentences, which, with but few exceptions, are but
half epigrams, are somewhat aggravating, especially if too constantly
repeated, since they thus picture neither common nor uncommon talk. It
is this tendency, carried to its highest expression in the _Modern
Griselda_, that makes Miss Edgeworth's personages, while acting and
thinking like real people, not always talk as men and women would. As a
rule, however, her style is easy, finished, flexible, and at times racy,
and while seldom rising to eloquence, never sinking to tameness. Now and
then it is a trifle cold, and she is too fond of erudite or far-fetched
illustrations. The conversation of her day was, to use the language of
the day, "polite;" that is to say, slightly stilted, prim, and confined
within narrow bounds, and that she reflected it is a matter of course,
but, as a whole, she managed to keep herself singularly free from its
worst features. Indeed, her work was really of first-rate quality, and
if we read it without troubling ourselves about her ethical designs or
expecting to find a cleverly-told plot, we cannot fail to derive
enjoyment from it, or to comprehend why her contemporaries rated her so
highly, though they, on their part, perhaps, valued her moral teaching
more than the present generation, which does not believe in mere sermons
as panaceas. Indeed, now-a-days, the fashion is too much to divorce art
from didactic intention. In those days it was the fashion to over-rate
the service works of imagination can render virtue.

It would be easy to bring forward testimony regarding the fervent
admiration bestowed on Miss Edgeworth by her contemporaries. She
certainly missed, but she only just mis