Oct 3, '98.
My father went to Dublin the day before yesterday, to see Lord Cornwallis about the Court of Enquiry on the sergeant who harangued the mob. About one o'clock to-day Lovell returned from the Assizes at Longford with the news, met on the road, that expresses had come an hour before from Granard to Longford, for the Reay Fencibles, and all the troops; that there was another rising and an attack upon Granard: four thousand men the first report said, seven hundred the second. What the truth may be it is impossible to tell, it is certain that the troops are gone to Granard, and it is yet more certain that all the windows in this house are built halfway up, guns and bayonets dispersed by Captain Lovell in every room. The yeomanry corps paraded to-day, all steady: guard sitting up in house and in the town to-night.
Thursday Morning.
All alive and well. A letter from my father: he stays to see Lord
Cornwallis on Friday. Deficient arms for the corps are given by Lord
Castlereagh.
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Mrs. Edgeworth writes:
The sergeant was to have been tried at the next sessions, but he was by this time ashamed and penitent, and Mr. Edgeworth did not press the trial, but knowing the man was, among his other weaknesses, very much afraid of ghosts, he said to him as he came out of the Court House, "I believe, after all, you had rather see me alive than have my ghost haunting you!"
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In 1798 Practical Education was published in two large octavo volumes, bearing the joint names of Richard and Maria Edgeworth upon their title-page. This was the first work of that literary partnership of father and daughter which Maria Edgeworth describes as "the joy and pride of my life."
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