al in the sense of being wide-minded, they were not in
religious matters advanced in thought. Indeed, they thought little, if
at all, of the next world, finding full occupation for their minds in
this. Miss Edgeworth was hemmed in by the visible; she did not seek to
justify the ways of God to man; life was to her no riddle; if man would
but act rightly, all would be well; she deemed that it is given into his
own hands to do good or evil, to be happy or the reverse. There was in
her nothing of the poet and the seer; and by so much as she fails to
speak to humanity in all its aspects, by so much she fails to take rank
among the greatest teachers of our race. But with wisdom and good sense
she recognized her limitations; she set herself a humbler but no less
useful task; she carried out her aim faithfully and conscientiously, and
by so much she too must be ranked among the good and faithful servants
who do the work appointed by their Lord. And after all, is not the
harmony of humanity best served by the free emission of the most diverse
notes? Miss Edgeworth set herself to preach utilitarianism and the
minor virtues. She succeeded; and in so far as she succeeded in that
which she set herself to do, life was for her successful, and she was
great.

CHAPTER XI.

VISITS ABROAD AND AT HOME.

Life at Edgeworthstown underwent no outward change owing to the death of
its master. His place was taken by his eldest and unmarried son, Lovell,
who sought to the best of his abilities to keep the house a home for his
father's widow and his numerous brothers and sisters, an endeavor in
which he was successful. Miss Edgeworth describes herself at this time
as "quite absorbed in low domestic interests, of which only those who
love home and love us can possibly bear to hear."

For some years after her father's death all she did was done as an
effort, and more from a high sense of duty and from the thought that it
would have pleased him who was gone, than from any inner desire to act.
When the family after a short absence reassembled at Edgeworthstown, it
required all her inherited activity of mind, all her acquired
self-command, to enable her to keep up her spirits on reentering that
house in which for her the light was quenched. It was well for her not
only that work was the purpose in life of all that family, that no
drones were suffered in that household, but that her work had been
planned for her by her father, and that in set