EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 12.
Mr. Creed, my dear good Mr. Creed, has been most kind in taking into his employment one of the young Gerrards who behaved so gallantly in recovering their father's arms from robbers. The poor people are seldom rewarded when they do right, yet surely, in the government of human creatures, Hope and Reward are strong and elevating powers, while Fear and Punishment can at best only restrain from crime. Hope can produce the finest and most permanent springs of action.
We have not been able to go on with our reading for some days. The more I live I see more and more the misery of uncultivated minds, and the happiness of the cultivated, when they can keep themselves free from literary and scientific jealousies and party spirit.
To MRS. R. BUTLER.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, March 1842.
I am surprised to find how much more history interests me now than when I was young, and how much more I am now interested in the same events recorded, and their causes and consequences shown, in this History of the French Revolution, and in all the History of Europe during the last quarter of a century, than I was when the news came fresh and fresh in the newspapers. I do not think I had sense enough to take in the relations and proportions of the events. It was like moving a magnifying glass over the parts of a beetle, and not taking in the whole.
To MISS MARGARET RUXTON, then residing at HYÈRES.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, April 16, 1842.
It seems such an immense time since I have heard from you, so now I sit down to earn a letter.
And first I have to tell you that, on the 14th, between the hours of eleven and twelve, a new cousin of yours was brought into this world, a monstrous large boy: Rosa doing well: house very full, [Footnote: All the family had assembled to meet Pakenham Edgeworth on his return, on leave, from India.] but all as quiet as mice. We breakfast in the study, to keep all noise from Rosa in the plume room.