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 VI.

1767-1849.

HE County of Longford is, perhaps, one of the least interesting in Ireland. There are no chains of blue mountains, no wooded glens, no rushing waterfalls, and yet it is to this country, with its flat plains and its vista of bogs, that two of the greatest names in literature belong. It was at Pallas, in the County Longford, that Oliver Goldsmith first saw the light, though the adjoining Westmeath parish of Lissoy, of which his father became soon afterwards curate—"passing rich on forty pounds a year"—was the original of

"Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain."

And Maria Edgeworth, of whom Macaulay said, "that she was the second woman of her age," lived and wrote and died at the family place of Edgeworthstown, also in the County of Longford. Though born out of Ireland, she was to all intents and purposes Irish. So she is always considered, and so she considered