I suspect it would not be an easy task to bring young people, nowadays, to much enthusiasm about Miss Edgeworth[9] and her books; and yet if I were to tell all that "we fellows" used to think about her when her _Popular Tales_, and her delightful _Parent's Assistant_, with its stories exactly of the right length--about Lazy Lawrence, and Simple Susan, and the False Key, and Tarlton--were in vogue, I am afraid you would give me very little credit for critical sagacity. A most proper and interesting old lady we reckoned her, and do still. I for one never counted on her being {278} young; it seemed to me that she must have been born straight into the severities of middle age and of story-telling. I could never imagine her at a game of romps, or buying candies on the sly. Though I had never seen her portrait--and no one else, for that matter--yet I knew the face--as well as that of my own grandmother; and what a good, kind, serene, motherly face it was! There was dignity in it, however; no boy would have thought of approaching her without a study of his deportment; he would see to it that his shoe-lacings were tied and his waistcoat buttons all in place--else, a shake of the head that would have made the cap-strings, and the frisette, and the starched ruffles shiver. But we must not speak lightly of the authoress, to whom thousands of elderly people owe so much of instruction and of entertainment. [Sidenote: Miss Edgeworth.] She was the daughter of an Irish gentleman who made a runaway match at Gretna Green, Maria Edgeworth being a child of that irregular marriage; and her father being widowed shortly after, married three other wives[10] successively, whose {279} children filled the great house at Edgeworthtown in Ireland, where the authoress grew up (though born in England), and where she came to that knowledge of Irish character and habit which gives distinction and the greatest charm to her books. Scott read them gleefully and admiringly, and as he himself confesses, took a hint from them, to put Scottish character into story, as this English-Irish lady had put Irish character into hers; and he says in his first outspoken preface to the _Waverley_ series--that Miss Edgeworth in "making the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbors may truly be said to have done more toward completing the union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up." Such laurels were enough for her fame--did not braver ones grow out of the thumb-worn edges of her books. I think it would be safe to distrust the honor and directness of purpose of any boy or man who, after reading--has either scorn or dread of Maria Edgeworth.