Miss Edgeworth seems to be about four-and-twenty in the sketch; she
was born in 1767; she must have been eleven in 1778, when Mr. Edgeworth
finally came over to Ireland to settle on his own estate, and among
his own people. He had been obliged some years before to leave
Edgeworthstown on account of Mrs. Honora Edgeworth's health; he now
returned in patriarchal fashion with Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth, his third
wife, with his children by his first, second, and third marriages,
and with two sisters-in-law who had made their home in his family. For
thirty-five years he continued to live on in the pretty old home which
he now adapted to his large family, and which, notwithstanding Miss
Edgeworth's objections, would have seemed so well fitted for its various
requirements. The daughter's description of his life there, of his
work among his tenants, of his paternal and spirited rule, is vivid and
interesting. When the present owner of Edgeworthstown talked to us of
his grandfather, one felt that, with all his eccentricities, he must
have been a man of a far-seeing mind and observation. Mr. Erroles
Edgeworth said that he was himself still reaping the benefit of his
grandfather's admirable organisation and arrangements on the estate,
and that when people all around met with endless difficulties and
complications, he had scarcely known any.
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