Here we are: arrived at three o'clock: found Henrica looking very well. Such a nice, pretty, elegant house! and they have furnished it so comfortably. It is delightful to see my father here; he enjoys himself so much in his son's house, and Sneyd and Henrica are so happy seeing him pleased with everything. Lady Longford has been here this morning; told us Sir Edward Pakenham was so fatigued by riding an uneasy horse at the battle of Vittoria, he was not able to join for four days. A buckle of Lord Wellington's sword-belt saved him: he wrote four times in one week to Lady Wellington, without ever mentioning his wound. I long for you to see Henrica; she is so kind, and so well-bred and easy in her manners. * * * * * In April Mr. Edgeworth had a dangerous illness. He was just out of danger, when, late at night on the 10th of May, his son Lovell arrived from Paris, liberated by the peace after eleven years' detention. * * * * * MARIA EDGEWORTH _to_ MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 16, 1814/._ My father's contentment at Lovell's [Footnote: The only son of Mr. Edgeworth's second marriage, with Miss Honora Sneyd.] return has done him more good than all the advice of all the surgeons, I do believe, now that the danger is over. If you have suffered from suspense in absence, yet, my dear aunt, you have been spared the torturing terrors we have felt at the sight of the daily, hourly changes, so rapid, so unaccountable: one day, one hour, all hope, the next all despair! The lamp of life, now bright, starting up high and brilliant, then sinking suddenly almost to extinction; the flame flitting, flickering, starting, _leaping_, as it were, on and off by fits. Some day we shall talk it over in security; now I can hardly bear to look back to it. All that has passed in France in the last few weeks! a revolution without bloodshed! Paris taken without being pillaged! the Bourbons, after all hope and reason for hope had passed, restored to their capital and their palaces! With what mixed sensations they must enter those palaces! I daresay it has not escaped my aunt that the Venus de Medicis and Apollo Belvidere are both missing together: I make no remarks. I hate scandal--at least I am not so fond of it as the lady of whom it was said she could not see the poker and tongs standing together without suspecting something wrong! I wonder where our ideas, especially those of a playful sort, go at some times? and how it is that they all come junketing back faster than there is room for them at other times? How is it that hope so powerfully excites, and fear so absolutely depresses all our faculties? _Aug. 24._