tling down to it she was
obeying his commands.

It had been not only his darling wish, but his dying injunction, that
she should complete the memoir of his life which he had begun and
abandoned ten years previously. Why Mr. Edgeworth had written his life
is not made clear, even by the preface, in which he attempts to explain
the reasons that impelled him. The real reason was probably the
excessive importance he attached to himself and his actions. It had
always been his intention that Miss Edgeworth should revise and complete
this memoir; but when he was dying he emphatically enjoined that it
should be published without any change. This complicated her task, which
she felt a heavy one. Excepting a few passages, he had never shown what
he had written even to his own family; and when he was urged by them to
continue it, he used to say he "would leave the rest to be finished by
his daughter Maria." Almost before her eyes were recovered she set to
work upon her pious duty. Her anxiety lest she should not do justice to
the theme weighed upon her so greatly that she could hardly speak of
the memoirs even to her most intimate friends. It is reflected in the
touchingly helpless preface she prefixed to the second volume:--

Till now I have never on any occasion addressed myself to the
public alone, and speaking in the first person. This egotism is not
only repugnant to my habits, but most painful and melancholy.
Formerly I had always a friend and father who spoke and wrote for
me; one who exerted for me all the powers of his strong mind, even
to the very last. Far more than his protecting kindness I regret,
at this moment, the want of his guiding judgment now, when it is
most important to me--where _his_ fame is at stake.

To save her eyesight her sisters assisted her in copying or in writing
from her dictation; but even so she was forced to use her own vision,
and while busy with the memoirs she allowed herself little of what was
now her greatest relaxation, writing letters to her friends:--

We are looking to the bright side of every object that remains to
us, and many blessings we have still. I am now correcting what I
had written of my father's life, and shall be for some months, so
shall not write any letters of such length as this.

Bear up and struggle as she would, bitterly and painfully she missed the
always kind and ready adviser, the sympathetic intellect