Page:Notable Irishwomen.djvu/101

 picturesque family group make a study for a painter?

Something must be said as to Maria Edgeworth's outward woman. Mrs. S. C. Hall describes her vividly, and this description is worth quoting here. "In person, she was very small, she was lost in a crowd, her face was pale and thin, her features irregular, they may have been considered plain, even in youth, but her expression was so benevolent, her manners so perfectly well-bred—partaking of English dignity and Irish frankness—that one never thought of her with reference either to beauty or plainness. She ever occupied, without claiming, attention, charming continually by her singularly pleasant voice, while the earnestness and truth that beamed from her bright blue, very blue eyes, increased the value of every word she uttered. She knew how to listen as well as to talk, and gathered information in a manner highly complimentary to those from whom she sought it &hellip; her sentences were frequently epigrammatic, she more than ever suggested to me the story of the good fairy from whose lips dropped diamonds and pearls whenever they were opened. She was ever neat and particular in her dress—a duty of society that literary women sometimes culpably neglect. Her feet and hands were so delicate and small as to be almost childlike. In a word, Maria