Edgeworth lost entire faith in the practical application of the Rousseau scheme in after years; but the lasting effect it seems to have produced upon the unfortunate victim was to place him in the ranks of mediocrity, for he was hardly ever spoken of thereafter by his family; and in order to remove himself from further disturbance, as soon as he reached years of discretion, he hastened to place miles between himself and the scenes of his youth; Richard came to America. Edgeworth’s love affairs--for four times he was married--are involved, and do not concern us, save as they effect Thomas Day. But, personally, he enters our plan as influencing his daughter, Maria Edgeworth (1767–1849), with whom he wrote “Practical Education.” There are some men--and Edgeworth was bordering on the type--who assume an almost dreadful position in a household; who torture the mind of boy or girl by prying, and by wishing to emphasise hidden meaning in everything; who make children fear to ask questions lest a lecture, dry and unoriginal, be the penalty. Such men have a way of fixing youth with intense, severe gaze--of smiling with a fiendish self-complacency over their own superiority--of raising their eyebrows and reprimanding should the child be watching the flight of a sparrow instead of being ever alert for an unexpected question or bit of information which a grown person might put to him on earth. Such men are the kind who make presents of Cobbet’s “Advice to Young Men,” and who write mistaken sentiments of nobility on the fly-leaf of Samuel Smiles’s “Self-Help.” Edgeworth’s redeeming trait was his earnest desire to bring the best within reach of his children, and he considered his severity the proper kind of guidance for them. Whatever sin of commission is to be laid to his charge, it is nevertheless true that it was not so great as to destroy the love Maria had for him. The literary critic has to reckon with the total amount of effect his teaching, his personal views had upon the writings of his daughter. That he did influence her is certain, and nowhere more thoroughly shown than in her work for children. In theory this work traces its origin to Rousseau, while in its modelling it bears a close relationship to Madame de Genlis and to Berquin. Banish dolls is the cry in “Practical Education,” and if you have toys in the nursery at all, let them be of a useful character--not mechanical novelties, but cubes, cylinders, and the like. Place before children only those pictures which deal with familiar objects, and see to it that the pose of every figure, where there are figures, is natural; a boy once went with Sir Joshua Reynolds through an art gallery, and invariably he turned with displeasure away from any form represented in a constrained attitude. This is the general tone of the Edgeworths as teachers.