Castle Rackrent | Page 7

glebe lands lie beyond the village. They reach as far as the church
on its high plateau, from which you can see the Wicklow Hills on a fine
day, and the lovely shifting of the lights of the landscape. The remains
of the great pew of the Edgeworth family, with its carved canopy of
wood, is still a feature in the bare church from which so much has been
swept away. The names of the fathers are written on the chancel walls,
and a few medallions of daughters and sisters also. In the churchyard,
among green elder bushes and tall upspringing grasses, is the square
monument erected to Mr. Edgeworth and his family; and as we stood
there the quiet place was crossed and recrossed by swallows with their
beating crescent wings.
III
Whatever one may think of Mr. Edgeworth's literary manipulations and
of his influence upon his daughter's writings, one cannot but respect the

sincere and cordial understanding which bound these two people
together, and realise the added interest in life, in its machinery and
evolutions, which Maria owed to her father's active intelligence. Her
own gift, I think, must have been one for perceiving through the minds
of others, and for realising the value of what they in turn reflected; one
is struck again and again by the odd mixture of intuition, and of
absolute matter of fact which one finds in her writings.
It is difficult to realise, when one reads the memoirs of human beings
who loved and hated, and laughed and scolded, and wanted things and
did without them, very much as we do ourselves, that though they
thought as we do and felt as we do (only, as I have said, with greater
vehemence), they didn't LOOK like us at all; and Mr. Edgeworth, the
father of Maria Edgeworth, the 'gay gallant,' the impetuous, ingenious,
energetic gentleman, sat writing with powdered hair and a queue, with
tights and buckles, bolt upright in a stiff chair, while his family, also
bequeued and becurled and bekerchiefed, were gathered round him in a
group, composedly attentive to his explanations, as he points to the roll
upon the table, or reads from his many MSS. and note- books, for their
edification.
To have four wives and twenty-two children, to have invented so many
machines, engines, and curricles, steeples and telegraph posts, is more
than commonly falls to the lot of one ordinary man, but such we know
was Mr. Edgeworth's history told by his own lips.
I received by chance an old newspaper the other day, dated the 23rd
July 1779. It is called the LONDON PACKET, and its news, told with
long s's and pretty curly italics, thrills one even now as one looks over
the four short pages. The leading article is entitled 'Striking Instance of
the PERFIDY of France.' It is true the grievance goes back to Louis
XIV., but the leader is written with plenty of spirit and present
indignation. Then comes news from America and the lists of New
Councillors elected:
'Artemus Ward, Francis Dana, Oliver Prescott, Samuel Baker, while a
very suitable sermon on the occasion is preached by the Rev. Mr.
Stillman of Boston.' How familiar the names all sound! Then the thanks

of the Members of Congress are given to 'General Lee, Colonel
Moultrie, and the officers and soldiers under their command who on the
28th of June last Repulsed with so much Valour the attack that was
made that day on the State of South Carolina by the fleet and army of
his Britannic Majesty.'
There is an irresistible spirit of old-world pigtail decorum and dash
about it all. We read of our 'grand fleet' waiting at Corunna for the
Spanish; of 80,000 men on the coast of Brittany supposed to be ready
for an invasion of England; of the Prince of Conde playing at cards,
with Northumberland House itself for stakes (Northumberland House
which he is INTENDING to take). We read the list of Lottery Prizes, of
the L1000 and L500 tickets; of the pressing want of seamen for His
Majesty's Navy, and how the gentlemen of Ireland are subscribers to a
bounty fund. Then comes the narrative of James Caton of Bristol, who
writes to complain that while transacting his business on the Bristol
Exchange he is violently seized by a pressgang, with oaths and
imprecations. Mr. Farr, attempting to speak to him, is told by the
Lieutenant that if he does not keep off he will be shot with a pistol. Mr.
Caton is violently carried off, locked up in a horrible stinking room,
prevented from seeing his friends; after a day or two he is forced on
board a tender, where Mr. Tripp, a midshipman, behaves with humanity,
but the Captain and Lieutenant outvie each other in