it is in many
respects her best work. Later came "The Absentee," "Belinda,"
"Helen," the "Tales of Fashionable Life," and the "Moral
Tales." Sir Walter Scott wrote that reading these stories of
Irish peasant life made him feel "that something might be
tempted for my own country of the same kind as that which Miss
Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland," something that
would procure for his own countrymen "sympathy for their
virtues and indulgence for their foibles." As a study of Irish
fidelity in the person of Old Thady, the steward who tells the
story of "Castle Rackrent," the book is a masterpiece.

_I.--Sir Patrick and Sir Murtagh_

Having, out of friendship for the family, undertaken to publish the
memoirs of the Rackrent family, I think it my duty to say a few words
concerning myself first. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the
family I've always been known as "Honest Thady"; afterwards, I remember
to hear them calling me "Old Thady," and now I've come to "Poor Thady."
To look at me you would hardly think poor Thady was the father of
Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and having better than fifteen
hundred a year, landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady. But I wash
my hands of his doings, and as I lived so will I die, true and loyal to
the family.

I ought to bless that day when Sir Tallyhoo Rackrent lost a fine hunter
and his life, all in one day's hunt, for the estate came straight into
_the_ family, upon one condition, that Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin (whose
driver my grandfather was) should, by Act of Parliament, take the
surname and arms of Rackrent.

Now it was the world could see what was in Sir Patrick. He gave the
finest entertainments ever was heard of in the country; not a man could
stand after supper but Sir Patrick himself. He had his house, from one
year's end to another, as full of company as it would hold; and this
went on, I can't tell you how long.

But one year, on his birthday, just as the company rose to drink his
health, he fell down in a sort of fit, and in the morning it was all
over with poor Sir Patrick.

Never did any gentleman die more beloved by rich and poor. All the
gentlemen in the three counties came to his funeral; and happy the man
who could get but a sight of the hearse!

Just as they were passing through his own town the body was seized for
debt! Little gain had the creditors!

First and foremost,