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30 Mr. Edgeworth himself announced his intending nuptials to Dr. Darwin, at the end of a long letter dealing with the upas tree, frogs, agriculture, hot water-pipes, and so forth.

He was able to say so not only three years after, but to the end of his life. Whatever may be thought of Mr. Edgeworth's many and hasty marriages, it must be admitted that they all turned out to the happiness of himself and his children. Miss Edgeworth wrote a long letter to her future stepmother, characteristic both of her amiable disposition, her filial piety, and her method of regarding love. “Miss Edgeworth's Cupid,” as Byron observed, “was always something of a Presbyterian.” In it she assures Miss Beaufort (who was her junior) that she will find her “gratefully exact en belle fille”; a promise she fulfilled beyond the letter.

Within seven months of his late wife's death, just as public affairs were assuming a still stormier aspect, and the nation about to burst into the rebellion of 1798, Mr. Edgeworth was once more a bridegroom. The wedding trip of the couple took them through the disturbed districts; they beheld rebels hidden in the potato furrows, and passed a car between whose shafts the owner had been hanged—a victim to the “Defenders.” But in the house of Edgeworthstown there was, as ever, peace and concord; and the trying situation upon which the new wife was called to enter was smoothed for her even by the children of the