Maria Edgeworth may be said to have invented the modern novel, which gives the traits, the speech, the manners, and the thoughts of a peasantry instead of moving only among the upper ten thousand. Sir Walter Scott, with his usual frankness and generosity, stated in his preface to the Waverley Novels that what really started him in his career as a novelist was the desire to do for Scotland and the Scottish peasantry what Miss Edgeworth had done for Ireland and the Irish peasantry. “I felt,” he said, “that something might be attempted for my own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland—something which might introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favourable light than they had been placed hitherto, and to tend to procure sympathy for their virtues and indulgence for their foibles.” Another of the leading writers of this century has acknowledged his indebtedness to Miss Edgeworth. The great Russian novelist, Ivan Tourgenieff, told a friend that when he was quite young he was unacquainted with the English language, but he used to hear his elder brother reading out to his friends translations of Miss Edgeworth’s Irish stories, and the hope rose in his mind that one day he would be able to do for Russia and her people what Miss Edgeworth had done for Ireland. Readers of the life of Maria Edgeworth find plenty of evidence of the extremely disturbed state of Ireland during the ten or twelve years which immediately preceded the passing of the Act of Union in 1800. Reports of midnight outrages by armed and disguised bands of assassins were frequent; unpopular people were hooted and pelted by day, and sometimes murdered by night; country houses were provided with shutters so contrived as to make it possible to open a cross-fire upon these murderous bands in case of necessity. The “Thrashers” and the “Whitetooths” were the names then assumed by those marauders who in later times have been known as Whiteboys and Moonlighters. The state of Ireland, politically and socially, became so critical that many people began to feel that almost any change must be for the better. Added to all the other elements of confusion, there was, about 1798, the almost daily expectation of the French invasion. England and France were at war, and it was believed by our enemies that if they could once effect a landing in Ireland the people of that island were so ready for rebellion that the landing of the French would be in itself almost enough to place the whole country at their disposal. In this expectation they were, fortunately, very much deceived. A graphic description of the French invasion, and its utter failure to accomplish its purpose, has been given by Miss Edgeworth. Her family had, indeed, a very close acquaintance with the rebels and the invaders. The county in which Edgeworthstown was situated was in actual insurrection, and when the