the more subtle moods of humanity. Too often when men and women go
on writing far into their latter years we are apt to wish that, like
Prospero, they had buried their wand before it had lost its power. This
is not the case with Miss Edgeworth. _Helen_, her last novel, which
appeared after so long a silence, is in some respects the most charming
of her tales--a fact doubtless due in some measure to the time that had
elapsed since the cessation of her father's active influence. The old
brilliancy, the quick humor, the strong sense of justice and truth
which is the moral backbone of her work, are there as before; but
through the whole tale there breathes a new spirit of wider tenderness
for weak, struggling human nature, and a gentleness towards its foibles,
which her earlier writings lacked. Years had taught her a wider
toleration, had shown her, too, how large a part quick, unreasoning
instincts and impulses play in the lives of men and women, even of those
whose constant struggle it is to subdue act and thought to the rule of
duty. _Helen_ is more of a romance than any of its predecessors, perhaps
because the chief interest of the tale is concentrated in the heroine,
who is the central figure round which the other persons of the story
revolve, while in Miss Edgeworth's earlier novels the subsidiary
characters are the most interesting and amusing. We wish Belinda well,
but she does not move our feelings as does Lady Delacour, and Sir Philip
Baddeley is infinitely more diverting than Clarence Harvey is
fascinating. And it is the same in all the others, while the centre of
_Helen_ is the girl herself. Yet the other characters are no less
admirably drawn, with the old delicacy and firmness of touch, the
occasional quaint gleams of humor. In its way Miss Edgeworth never
limned a finer portrait than that of Lady Davenant, the large-brained,
large-hearted woman of the world, endowed with strong principle, keen
sense and real vigor of character, mingled with prejudice, impulsive
likes and dislikes, an imperfect adherence in practice to her own
theories of right and wrong, and a stern power of self-judgment. There
is nothing exaggerated in this admirable and vigorous piece of work. We
comprehend Cecilia's nervous fear of the mother whose unswerving truth
cows her, while it attracts the answering truth of nature of her truer
and stronger friend. Equally good is the character of Lady Cecilia,
through whose duplicity and cowardice