for
songs. Campbell can write an ode and I can write a ballad, but Moore
beats us all at a song."

Miss Edgeworth was charmed with Scott and his home, with the excursions
he took with them, with the drives she had with him in his little
carriage, during which the flow of his anecdotes, wit and wisdom never
ceased. His joyous manner and life of mind, his looks of fond pride in
his children, the pleasantness of his easy manners, his keen sense of
humor, enchanted her. She also liked Lady Scott, a liking that was
returned. Miss Edgeworth considered her

A most kind-hearted, hospitable person, who had much more sense and
more knowledge of character and discrimination than many of those
who ridiculed her. I know I never can forget her kindness to me
when I was ill at Abbotsford. Her last words at parting were: "God
bless you! we shall never meet again." At that time it was much
more likely that I should have died, I thought, than she.

This was not Miss Edgeworth's first visit to Edinburgh, and Lady Scott
expressed her surprise that Sir Walter and she had not met earlier.
"Why," said Sir Walter, with one of his queer looks, "you forget, my
dear, Miss Edgeworth was not a lion then, and my mane, you know, was not
grown at all."

Sir Walter was as sorry to part with his guests as Miss Edgeworth was to
go, but she felt that the longer she lingered the more difficult it
would be to depart.

After paying some more Scotch visits and a few Irish ones, the Misses
Edgeworth returned home in September, and life once more became
uneventful. Even to Mrs. Ruxton there was nothing to tell.

It is a long time since I have written to you, always waiting a day
longer for somebody's coming or going, or sailing or launching. You
ask what I am doing. Nothing but reading and idling, and paving a
gutter and yard to Honora's pig-sty and school-house. What have I
been reading? The _Siege of Valencia_, by Mrs. Hemans, which is an
hour too long, but it contains some of the most beautiful poetry I
have read for years.

Sickness, deaths, marriages and births were of frequent occurrence in
that large family. Miss Edgeworth's heart was capacious and could answer
to all calls made upon it. Whether it was to rejoice with those that
rejoiced, or to weep with those that wept, she always responded.

It is the condition, the doom of advancing, advanced age, to see
friend after