I fear we have much to go through in this country before we come to quiet, settled life, and a ready obedience to the laws. There is literally no rein of law at this moment to hold the Irish; and through the whole country there is what I cannot justly call a spirit of reform, but a spirit of revolution, under the name of reform; a restless desire to overthrow what is, and a hope—more than a hope—an expectation of gaining liberty or wealth, or both, in the struggle; and if they do gain either, they will lose both again and be worse off than ever—they will afterwards quarrel amongst themselves, destroy one another, and be again enslaved with heavier chains. I am and have been all my life a sincere friend to moderate measures, as long as reason can be heard; but there comes a time, at the actual commencement of uproar, when reason cannot be heard, and when the ultimate law of force must be resorted to, to prevent greater evils. That time was lost in the beginning of the French Revolution—I hope it may not be lost in Ireland. It is scarcely possible that this country can now be tranquilized without military force to reestablish law; the people must be made to obey the laws or they cannot be ruled after any concessions. Nor would the mob be able to rule if they got all they desire; they would only tear each other to pieces, and die drunk or famish sober. The misfortune of this country has been that England has always yielded to clamor what should have been granted to justice.

As Miss Edgeworth advanced in life she often spoke of "my poor Ireland," showing that hopelessness with regard to the problem had dawned on her. She was a patriot, but belonged to no party; and was blind neither to the nation's wrongs, follies nor crimes. She grew more and more to advocate the laissez-faire system. She contended that her observations, which extended over so long a period of time, had shown her steady progression in Ireland, and she believed that the land would ultimately do well if people would only not force their political nostrums upon it. What she did demand from England was equality of legislation, but no more; and this accorded, she believed Ireland would rise from her state of degradation, though of necessity the rise would be slow, since the length of time of recovery must be in proportion to the length and force of the infliction. Mrs. Hall very rightly remarked that Miss Edgeworth's affection for Ireland was "philosophic." Yet another change Miss Edgeworth observed in the Irish, and one that made them less useful to her for literary purposes:—

The modern peasantry imagine they have a part to play in the organization of their country; their heads are fuller of politics than fun; in fact, they have been drilled into thinking about what they cannot understand, and so have become reserved and suspicious—that is, to what they used to be.

After Helen had passed through the press, Miss Edgeworth accompanied her friends Sir Culling and Lady Smith in a trip through Connemara. Of the adventures they had on this journey—real Irish adventures, with innumerable sloughs to traverse, with roads that imperilled life, with inns whose dirt and discomfort passed belief, with roadside hospitality from kindly but eccentric gentlefolks—Miss Edgeworth wrote a letter some forty pages long to a brother in India. For fun and graphic vivacity it is not surpassed by the best of her printed Irish scenes. After her return "rents and odious accounts" kept her mind from running too much upon Helen, about which she was more anxious than about any book she had ever sent into the world. It soon proved as great a success as her earlier works, and a second edition was demanded after a few weeks. Her own feelings about the matter are expressed in a letter she wrote to Mr. Bannatyne, who had congratulated her on its public reception:—

My dear Mr. Bannatyne:

I thank you with all my heart for the "nervousness" you felt about my venturing again before the public, and it is a heart-felt as well as a head-felt satisfaction to me that you do not think I have lowered what my father took such pains to raise for me. You cannot conceive how much afraid I was myself to venture what had not his corrections and his sanction. For many, many years that feeling deterred me from any attempt in this line. Of what consequence, then, to my happiness it is to be assured, by friends on whose sincerity and judgment I can depend, that I have not done what I ought to repent or to be ashamed of.

Concerning Helen contemporary public opinion was much divided; some regarded it as a falling-off in power, others as an advance, but all agreed that there was a change. The change is one of tone and feeling, induced in part, no doubt, by the fact that it was the emanation of her own brain only; in part that years had caused Miss Edgeworth, as it causes all of us, to regard life from a different standpoint. Experience had taught her to

Gentler scan her brother man

than she did in earlier life. Helen is so much superior in ease, nature and poetry, that it makes us deplore that Miss Edgeworth's talents had not been allowed unchecked sway. Not only is the fable more skillfully framed, but the whole shows greater passion and finer insight into the more subtle moods of humanity. Too often when men and women go on writing far into their latter years we are apt to wish that, like Prospero, they had buried their wand before it had lost its power. This is not the case with Miss Edgeworth. Helen, her last novel, which appeared after so long a silence, is in some respects the most charming of her tales—a fact doubtless due in some measure to the time that had elapsed since the cessation of her father's active influence. The old brilliancy, the quick humor, the strong sense of justice and truth which is the moral backbone of her work, are there as before; but through the whole tale there breathes a new spirit of wider tenderness for weak, struggling human nature, and a gentleness towards its foibles, which her earlier writings lacked. Years had taught her a wider toleration, had shown her, too, how large a part quick, unreasoning instincts and impulses play in the lives of men and women, even of those whose constant struggle it is to subdue act and thought to the rule of duty. Helen is more of a romance than any of its predecessors, perhaps because the chief interest of the tale is concentrated in the heroine, who is the central figure round which the other persons of the story revolve, while in Miss Edgeworth's earlier novels the subsidiary characters are the most interesting and amusing. We wish Belinda well, but she does not move our feelings as does Lady Delacour, and Sir Philip Baddeley is infinitely more diverting than Clarence Harvey is fascinating. And it is the same in all the others, while the centre of Helen is the girl herself. Yet the other characters are no less admirably drawn, with the old delicacy and firmness of touch, the occasional quaint gleams of humor. In its way Miss Edgeworth never limned a finer portrait than that of Lady Davenant, the large-brained, large-hearted woman of the world, endowed with strong principle, keen sense and real vigor of character, mingled with prejudice, impulsive likes and dislikes, an imperfect adherence in practice to her own theories of right and wrong, and a stern power of self-judgment. There is nothing exaggerated in this admirable and vigorous piece of work. We comprehend Cecilia's nervous fear of the mother whose unswerving truth cows her, while it attracts the answering truth of nature of her truer and stronger friend. Equally good is the character of Lady Cecilia, through whose duplicity and cowardice arise all Helen's troubles; her husband, General Clarendon, who held

All fraud and cunning in disdain,
A friend to truth, in speech and action plain;