Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 70

To MRS. EDGEWORTH.

BLOOMFIELD, Jan. 19, 1829.

An immense concourse of people, cavalcade and carriages innumerable, passed by here to-day. We saw it, and you will see it all in the newspapers. Banners with Constitutional Agitation printed in black, Mobility and Nobility in black, crape hatbands, etc. Lord Anglesea's two little sons riding between two officers, in the midst of the hurricane mob, struck me most. One of the boys, a little midge, seemed to stick on the horse by accident, or by mere dint of fearlessness: the officer put his arm round him once, and set him up, the boy's head looking another way, and the horse keeping on his way, through such noise, and struggling, and waves multitudinous of mob.

There is an entertaining article in the Quarterly Review on The Subaltern. I do not like that on Madame de Genlis&mdash;coarse, and over-doing the object by prejudice and virulence. The review of Scott's Prefaces is ungrounded and confused&mdash;how different from his own writing! But there is an article worth all the rest put together, on Scientific Institutions, written in such a mild, really philosophical spirit, such a pure, GREAT MAN'S desire to do good; I cannot but wish and hope it might prove to be Captain Beaufort's. If you have not read it, never rest till you do.