Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/203

Rh perfection, but a very woman, wayward and weak some- times, but true, high-spirited, impulsively generous, staunch in her friendship and her love, with deep and passionate feelings controlled, not crushed, by duty. Another marked change is shown in the manner in which Helen and Granville Beauclerc fall in love. Miss Edgeworth had always protested against the doctrine that love is a mere matter of personal beauty, she showed how it may enslave for a moment, but that a preference resting on so precarious a foundation was but a paltry tribute to her sex. Love, she rightly preached, must be founded on higher motives; but her heroes and heroines were too apt to fall in love in an edifying and instructive manner, they knew too well why they succumbed to the tender passion. Until now she had almost denied the existence of romantic love, agreeing, it would seem, with her own Mrs. Broadhurst: "Ask half the men you are acquainted with why they are married, and their answer, if they speak the truth, will be—' Because I met Miss such-a-one at such a place, and we were continually together.'" "'Propinquity, propinquity,' as my father used to say—and he was married five times, and twice to heiresses." That amiable and respectable Bluebeard, Miss Edgeworth's father, had hitherto held final sway over her characters. Was it the removal of his influence that allowed Helen and Granville to fall in love in a more rational manner? Helen does not now wait to see whether Beauclerc has every virtue under the sun before she ventures to love him; indeed, she sees his foibles clearly, and it is just when she believes that he has shown a lack of honour and sincerity that in her burst of grief she discovers that she loves him, loves him whatever he is, whatever he does. As