Castle Rackrent | Page 5

past it gave one to stand staring at the old books, with their
paper backs and old-fashioned covers, at the gray boards, which were
the liveries of literature in those early days; at the first editions, with
their inscriptions in the author's handwriting, or in Maria's pretty
caligraphy. There was the PIRATE in its original volumes, and
Mackintosh's MEMOIRS, and Mrs. Barbauld's ESSAYS, and
Descartes's ESSAYS, that Arthur Hallam liked to read; Hallam's
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, and Rogers's POEMS, were there all
inscribed and dedicated. Not less interesting were the piles of
Magazines that had been sent from America. I never knew before how
many Magazines existed even those early days; we took some down at
hazard and read names, dates, and initials. . . . Storied urn and
monumental bust do not bring back the past as do the books which

belong to it. Storied urns are in churches and stone niches, far removed
from the lives of which they speak; books seem a part of our daily life,
and are like the sound of a voice just outside the door. Here they were,
as they had been read by her, stored away by her hands, and still safely
preserved, bringing back the past with, as it were, a cheerful
encouraging greeting to the present. Other relics there are of course, but,
as I say, none which touch one so vividly. There is her silver ink-stand,
the little table her father left her on which she wrote (it had belonged to
his mother before him). There is also a curious trophy--a table which
was sent to her from Edinburgh, ornamented by promiscuous views of
Italy, curiously inappropriate to her genius; but not so the inscription,
which is quoted from Sir Walter Scott's Preface to his Collected Edition,
and which may as well be quoted here: 'WITHOUT BEING SO
PRESUMPTUOUS AS TO HOPE TO EMULATE THE RICH
HUMOUR, THE PATHETIC TENDERNESS, AND ADMIRABLE
TRUTH WHICH PERVADE THE WORKS OF MY
ACCOMPLISHED FRIEND,' Sir Walter wrote, I FELT THAT
SOMETHING MIGHT BE ATTEMPTED FOR MY OWN
COUNTRY OF THE SAME KIND AS THAT WHICH MISS
EDGEWORTH SO FORTUNATELY ACHIEVED FOR IRELAND.'
In the MEMOIRS of Miss Edgeworth there is a pretty account of her
sudden burst of feeling when this passage so unexpected, and so deeply
felt by her, was read out by one of her sisters, at a time when Maria lay
weak and recovering from illness in Edgeworthstown.
Our host took us that day, among other pleasant things, for a
marvellous and delightful flight on a jaunting car, to see something of
the country. We sped through storms and sunshine, by open moors and
fields, and then by villages and little churches, by farms where the pigs
were standing at the doors to be fed, by pretty trim cottages. The lights
came and went; as the mist lifted we could see the exquisite colours,
the green, the dazzling sweet lights on the meadows, playing upon the
meadow-sweet and elder bushes; at last we came to the lovely glades of
Carriglass. It seemed to me that we had reached an enchanted forest
amid this green sweet tangle of ivy, of flowering summer trees, of
immemorial oaks and sycamores.

A squirrel was darting up the branches of a beautiful spreading
beech-tree, a whole army of rabbits were flashing with silver tails into
the brushwood; swallows, blackbirds, peacock- butterflies, dragonflies
on the wing, a mighty sylvan life was roaming in this lovely orderly
wilderness.
The great Irish kitchen garden, belonging to the house, with its seven
miles of wall, was also not unlike a part of a fairy tale. Its owner, Mr.
Lefroy, told me that Miss Edgeworth had been constantly there. She
was a great friend of Judge Lefroy. As a boy he remembered her
driving up to the house and running up through the great drawing-room
doors to greet the Judge.
Miss Edgeworth certainly lived in a fair surrounding, and, with Sophia
Western, must have gone along the way of life heralded by sweetest
things, by the song of birds, by the gold radiance of the buttercups, by
the varied shadows of those beautiful trees under which the cows gently
tread the grass. English does not seem exactly the language in which to
write of Ireland, with its sylvan wonders of natural beauty. Madame de
Sevigne's descriptions of her woods came to my mind. It is not a place
which delights one by its actual sensual beauty, as Italy does; it is not
as in England, where a thousand associations link one to every scene
and aspect--Ireland seems to me to contain some unique and most
impersonal charm, which is quite unwritable.
All that evening we sat talking with our hosts round the fire (for it was
cold enough for a fire), and