e transacting his business on the Bristol Exchange he is
violently seized by a pressgang, with oaths and imprecations. Mr. Farr,
attempting to speak to him, is told by the Lieutenant that if he does
not keep off he will be shot with a pistol. Mr. Caton is violently
carried off, locked up in a horrible stinking room, prevented from
seeing his friends; after a day or two he is forced on board a tender,
where Mr. Tripp, a midshipman, behaves with humanity, but the Captain
and Lieutenant outvie each other in brutality; Captain Hamilton behaving
as an 'enraged partisan.' Poor Mr. Caton is released at last by the
exertions of Mr. Edmund Burke, of Mr. Farr, and another devoted friend,
who travel post-haste to London to obtain a Habeas Corpus, so that he
is able to write indignantly and safe from his own home to the LONDON
PACKET to describe his providential escape. The little sheet gives one
a vivid impression of that daily life in 1779, when Miss Edgeworth
must have been a little girl of twelve years old, at school at Mrs.
Lataffiere's, and learning to write in her beautiful handwriting. It
was a time of great events. The world is fighting, armies marching and
counter-marching, and countries rapidly changing hands. Miss Seward is
inditing her elegant descriptions for the use of her admiring circle.
But already the circle is dwindling! Mr. Day has parted from Sabrina.
The well-known episodes of Lichfield gaieties and love-makings are over.
Poor Major Andre has been exiled from England and rejected by Honora.
The beautiful Honora, whose "blending charms of mind and person"
are celebrated by one adoring lover after another, has married Mr.
Edgeworth. She has known happiness, and the devoted affection of an
adoring husband, and the admiring love of her little step-daughter, all
this had been hers; and now all this is coming to an end, and the poor
lady lying on her death-bed imploring her husband to marry her sister
Elizabeth. Accordingly Mr. Edgeworth married Elizabeth Sneyd in 1780,
which was also the year of poor Andre's death.

There is a little oval picture at the National Gallery in Dublin, the
photograph of a sketch at Edgeworthstown House, which gives one a very
good impression of the family as it must have appeared in the reigns of
King George and the third Mrs. Edgeworth. The father in his powder and
frills sits at the table with intelligent, well-informed finger showing
some place upon a map. He is an agreeable-looking