Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 104

MARIA to PAKENHAM EDGEWORTH.

EDGEWORTHSTOWN,

ST. PATRICK'S DAY IN THE MORNING, 1835.

How provoking, how chilling a feeling it gives of the distance between us, my dear Pakenham, that we must wait twelve months for an answer to any question the most important or the most trivial! But, thank heaven, letters and journals&mdash;bating this year between&mdash;do bring us happily together, almost face to face and smile to smile. I have often admired the poor Irishman's oratorical bull when he exclaimed, as he looked through a telescope for the first time and saw the people at a cottage door, miles off, brought near, "Then I heard 'em speak quite plain, I think." I think I sometimes hear you speaking and hear the people call you Sahib.

You have seen in the papers the death of our amiable friend, Mr. Malthus. How well he loved you! His lectureship on Political Economy has been filled up by a very able and deserving friend of mine, Mr. Jones, whose book on Rents you have just been reading, and whose book and self I had the pleasure of first introducing to Lord Lansdowne, under whose Administration this appointment was made. The pupils at Haileybury must now learn from Jones's lectures the objections he made to Malthus's system! I remember once hearing the answer of a sceptic in Political Economy, when reproached with not being of some Political Economy Club. "Whenever I see any two of you gentlemen agree, I shall be happy to agree with you."

I hope your box of seeds will come safe and will grow. I daresay Harriet will have told you of the Cornish gentleman she met at Black Castle, who told of the blue hydrangea fifteen feet high, and bearing such a profusion of flowers that they were counted, 2352 bunches, each bunch as large as his head! We endeavoured to correct, and said florets for bunches, presuming he so meant, but he distinctly said bunches&mdash;so make what you can of it.

March 19.

Yesterday I am sure you recollected and honoured as Barry and Sophy's wedding day. Honora had the breakfast table covered with flowers, primroses, violets, polyanthus, and laurustinus, and some of Sophy's own snowdrops, double and single, which obligingly lingered on purpose to celebrate the day.

Did you see how Lord Darnley cut his foot with an axe while he was hewing the root of a tree, and died in consequence of lock-jaw! Harriet, who knew him and all the good he did in their neighbourhood, is very sorry for him.

I have not, I believe, mentioned to you any books except my own; but we have been amused with the Invisible Gentleman. You must swallow one monstrous magical absurdity at the beginning, and the rest will go down glibly&mdash;that is, amusing.

Instructive and entertaining: Burne's Mission to Lahore and Bokhara.

Instructive, interesting, and entertaining: Roget on Physiology, with reference to Theology&mdash;one of the Bridgewater Treatises, full of facts the most curious, arranged in the most beautifully luminous manner. The infinitely large, and the infinitely small in creation, admirably displayed.

Hannah More's Letters: many of them entertaining&mdash;many admirable for manner and matter, altogether too much; two volumes would have been better than four.

Inglis's Ireland: I think he is an honest writer, a man of great observation and ability, and a true admirer of the beauties of nature. He exaggerates and makes some mistakes, as all travellers do.


 * Still drops from life some withering joy away.

Year after year, we must witness these sad losses. Aunt Alicia gone! and Aunt Bess Waller, of whom you were so fond. What an amiable and highly cultivated mind she had, and so hospitable and kind.