Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/100

88 still uusurpassed. She knew how to hit off to the life the several peculiarities of respective stations and characters, and we know not whom most to admire and delight in: the Irish pauper who officiates as postillion, and who assures Lord Glenthorne that his crazy chaise is the best in the country—"we have two more, to be sure, but one has no top and the other no bottom"—the warm-hearted, impulsive, happy-go-lucky Irish nurse who has no scruple about committing a crime for the sake of those she loves; or Lady Geraldine, the high-born, high-bred Irish peeress who speaks with an Irish accent, uses Irish idioms, and whose language is more interrogative, more exclamatory, more rhetorical, accompanied with more animation of countenance and demonstrative gesture, than that of the English ladies with whom she is contrasted. With inimitable skill we are made to see that there is something foreign in this lady's manner, something rather French than English, and yet not French either but indigenous. Of course rebels play a part in the story—it would not be a true Irish story without them—but, as usual, Miss Edgeworth dwells by preference upon the milder, more engaging aspects of the Irish character, upon their strange pathetic life; and while not ignoring, brings into as little prominence as may be, the frequent perjuries, the vindictive passions, the midnight butcheries, the lawless ferocity, the treacherous cruelty of her half-savage compatriots.

The Dun is a short tale in Miss Edgeworth's most didactic and least happy style, dealing with a theme that should be more often emphasized and brought into view; namely, the unfeeling thoughtlessness of the rich, that withholds from the poor the result of