letters, of which I never tire; and I almost envy Fanny
and Harriet the pleasure of reading them for the first time. After
breakfast I take my little table into Lucy's room and write there
for an hour: she likes to have me in her room, though she only
hears the scribble, scribble; she is generally reading at that hour
or doing Margaret's delight--algebra. I am doing the sequel to
_Frank_. Walking, reading and talking fill the rest of the day. I
do not read much; it tires my eyes, and I have not yet finished the
_Life of Wesley_. I think it a most curious, entertaining and
instructive book. A life of Pitt by the Bishop of Winchester is
coming out; he wrote to Murray about it, who asked his friends,
"Who is George Winton, who writes to me about publishing Pitt's
life?"

Soon after his return from enforced exile Lovell Edgeworth had
established a school at Edgeworthstown, after a plan proposed by his
father, in which boys of all classes and creeds should be educated
together. It succeeded admirably, and was a source of interest and
occupation not only to its founder, but to Miss Edgeworth, who always
threw herself with ardor into everything that interested those about
her.

The lives of women are rarely eventful, and Miss Edgeworth's was perhaps
less so than that of most. Her existence moved in the quiet circle of
home, and like most women she was much and often occupied with what she
happily calls "the necessary business of life, which must be done behind
the scenes." The monotony of her existence was only broken by visits to
and from friends, and by receiving letters, events in those days of few
newspapers, when letters were longer, more detailed than they are now,
when they were sent round to a whole circle for perusal, when those who
were abroad penned long descriptions of all they saw in what are now
beaten tracks familiar to most persons as Piccadilly. The even course of
life at Edgeworthstown certainly did not furnish much material for
letters except to those interested in the well-being of the numerous
members of the household; and Miss Edgeworth's are mostly filled with
domestic details of this nature. In August, 1821, she writes:--

What do you think is my employment out of doors, and what it has
been this week past? My garden? No such elegant thing; but making a
gutter! a sewer and a pathway in the street of Edgeworthstown; and
I