Lord Carrington was so kind as to frank to me these extraordinary performances, which shall reach you through Lord Rosse, if you please. It is wonderful that a poet could work up such an enthusiasm about one-pound notes; wonderful that a lawyer should venture to be so violent on the occasion as to talk of brandishing claymores, and passing the fiery cross from hand to hand; and yet there is the Chancellor of the Exchequer answering it from his place in Parliament as a national concern! If Pat had written it, the Attorney-General would, perhaps, have noticed it; but "Up with the shillalah!" in Pat's mouth, and "Out with the claymore!" in Sir Malachy's, are different quite.
A visit from Sir Humphrey Davy during the summer was a great delight. Miss Edgeworth speaks of the range and pitch of his mind with high praise, and relates besides an amusing anecdote that he told:—
Sir Humphrey repeated to us a remarkable criticism of Bonaparte's on Talma's acting: "You don't play Nero well; you gesticulate too much; you speak with too much vehemence. A despot does not need all that; he need only pronounce. Il sait qu'il se suffit. And," added Talma, who told this to Sir Humphrey, "Bonaparte, as he said this, folded his arms in his well-known manner, and stood as if his attitude expressed the sentiment."
A little later another sister was taken from the family circle by marriage; this time it was Miss Edgeworth's travelling companion and friend Harriet, who married Mr. Butler, a clergyman. The home party was thinning, and Miss Edgeworth, who liked to have a large number of her loved ones about her, felt this keenly. But happily young nephews and nieces were springing up to take the places of those who were gone, and fill the house with that sunshine of child-life and child-laughter that had seldom been absent from its walls.
She wrote to her brother about a little nephew:—
How you will like that child and make it see "upper air!" How long since those times when you used to show its mother and Harriet upper air! Do you remember how you used to do it to frighten me, and how I used to shut my eyes when you threw them up, and how you used to call me to look? Ah! le bon temps! But we are all very happy now, and it is delightful to hear a child's voice cooing or even crying again in this house.
She was devoted to children, and never happier than when surrounded by them. They in their turn loved the kind little old lady—for she was getting an old lady now—who played with them so merrily, who entered into all their fun, who told them such pretty stories, who plied them with pennies and all manner of good and pretty things. She never lost the power of speaking their language; her letters to children are among some of the most genial she wrote. She was pleased and gratified when the little ones liked her or her stories.
Visits to Mrs. Ruxton at Black Castle, to married brothers and sisters, or to friends, formed more and more frequent interludes in her home-life; but each time she returns, Miss Edgeworth records her excessive happiness to find herself at Edgeworthstown again, with her beloved stepmother and those who still were left.
After one such visit to Mrs. Ruxton, she writes to her:—
After spending four months with you, it is most delightful to me to receive from you such assurances that I have been a pleasure and a comfort to you. I often think of William's most just and characteristic expression, that you have given him a desire to live to advanced age, by showing him how much happiness can be felt and conferred in age, where the affections and intellectual faculties are preserved in all their vivacity. In you there is a peculiar habit of allowing constantly for the compensating good qualities of all connected with you, and never unjustly expecting impossible perfections. This, which I have so often admired in you, I have often determined to imitate; and in this my sixtieth year, to commence in a few days, I will, I am resolved, make great progress. "Rosamond at sixty," says Margaret. We are all a very happy party here, and I wish you could see at this moment, sitting opposite to me on a sofa and in an arm-chair, the mother and daughter and grandchild.