ers
to Literary Ladies_. I am sorry to say they are not as well as can
be expected, nor are they likely to mend at present; when they are
fit to be seen--if that happy time ever arrives--their first visit
shall be to Black Castle. They are now disfigured by all manner of
crooked marks of papa's critical indignation, besides various
abusive marginal notes, which I would not have you see for
half-a-crown sterling, nor my aunt for a whole crown as pure as
King Hiero's.

The arts of peace, as she herself expresses it, were going on
prosperously side by side with those of war; the disturbances, of which
Miss Edgeworth continues to write quite lightly, having become
sufficiently serious to require military intervention.

In 1795 the _Letters to Literary Ladies_ were published. Considering the
time when the work was written it showed much independence and advance
of thought, though to-day it would be stigmatized as somewhat
retrograde. It is nothing more than a plea in favor of female education,
repeating arguments that of late years have been well worn, and of which
the world, for some time past convinced of the wisdom of according
education to women, no longer stands in need. The book is interesting
to-day merely as another proof of how much Mr. Edgeworth and his
daughter were advanced in thought. They could not be brought to the
common opinion then prevalent that ignorance was a woman's safeguard,
that taste for literature was calculated to lead to ill conduct, though
even a thinker so enlightened in many respects as Mr. Day indorsed Sir
Anthony Absolute's dictum that the extent of a woman's erudition should
consist in her knowing her letters, without their mischievous
combinations.

Not even the honors of first authorship could cause Miss Edgeworth's
private letters, then any more than afterwards, to be occupied with
herself. "I beg, dear Sophy," she writes to her cousin, "that you will
not call my little stories by the sublime title of 'my works;' I shall
else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth." It is the affairs of
others, the things that it will please or amuse her correspondents to
hear, that she writes about. The tone is always good-humored and kindly.

Ever and again the noiseless tenor of her way was disturbed by the
insurgents. She writes, January, 1796:--

You, my dear aunt, who were so brave when the county of Meath was
the seat of war, must know