Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/191

Rh too richly by their gratitude. She was certainly one of the few people who practise what they preach; she exemplified in her own person all those judicious plans and rules for helping the needy which she had brought forward in her works. When it is further remembered that Miss Edgeworth retained, to the very last, until her 82nd year, that faculty, which is judged the exclusive gift of youth, of admitting new interests into her life, and that she further made them to run side by side with those she had held of yore, in this mode enriching and widening her mental and emotional horizon, it is little wonder that her old age was one of serene felicity.

The marriage of Fanny Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth's favourite among all her younger sisters, was a real grief to her for the moment, though, with her usual unselfishness, she upbraided herself for feeling such "shameful, weak, selfish sorrow, at parting with this darling child." A pleasure of a very different kind came to her shortly after in the shape of Sir Walter Scott's introduction to his collected Waverley Novels. The sheets, while passing through the press, had been sent to her, and she felt that Scott had, in the most delightful and kind manner, said everything that could gratify her "as an author, friend, and human creature.'"

You might well say that I should be "ill to please"—you might have said impossible to please—if what you sent to me had not pleased, gratified, delighted me to the top of my bent; saturated me head and heart with the most grateful sense of the kindness of my most admired friend, and with the unspeakable gratification of such a testimony of his esteem and affection. I know full well, most sincerely I feel, that he over-values infinitely what I have written: but of this I am proud, because it proves to me that private friendship of his which I value above all, even his public praise