4th marriage with Frances Anna Beaufort. Francis Beaufort, b. 1809; married, 1831, Rosa Florentina Eroles, and had four sons and a daughter. The second son, Antonio Eroles, eventually succeeded his uncle Sneyd at Edgeworthstown. Michael Pakenham, b. 1812; married, 1846, Christina Macpherson, and had issue. Frances Maria (Fanny), married, 1829, Lestock P. Wilson, Esq., and died, 1848. Harriet, married, 1826, Rev. Richard Butler, afterwards Dean of Clonmacnoise. Sophia, married, 1824, Barry Fox, Esq. and d. 1837. Lucy Jane, married, 1843, Rev. T.R. Robinson, D.D. During the months which succeeded her father's death, Maria wrote scarcely any letters; her sight caused great anxiety. The tears, she said, felt in her eyes like the cutting of a knife. She had overworked them all the previous winter, sitting up at night and struggling with her grief as she wrote _Ormond_; and she was now unable to use them without pain. In October she went to Black Castle, and remained there till January 1818, having the strength of mind to abstain almost entirely from reading and writing. It required all Maria Edgeworth's inherited activity of mind, and all her acquired command over herself, to keep up the spirits of her family on their return to Edgeworthstown: from which the master-mind was gone, and where the light was quenched. But, notwithstanding all the depression she felt, she set to work immediately at what she now felt to be her first duty--the fulfilment of her father's wish that she should complete the Memoirs of his life, which he had himself begun. Yet her eyes were still so weak that she seldom allowed herself what had been her greatest relaxation--writing letters to her friends. * * * * * MARIA _to_ MRS. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _Jan. 24, 1818._ My dearest aunt and friend--friend of my youth and age, and beloved sister of my father, how many titles you have to my affection and gratitude, and how delightful it is to me to feel them all! Since I have parted from you, I have felt still more than when I was with you the peculiar value to me of your sympathy and kindness. I find my spirits sink beyond my utmost effort to support them when I leave you, and they rise involuntarily when I am near you, and recall the dear trains of old associations, and the multitude of ideas I used to have with him who is gone for ever. Thank you, my dear aunt, for your most kind and touching letter. You have been for three months daily and hourly soothing, and indulging, and nursing me body and mind, and making me forget the sense of pain which I could not have felt suspended in any society but yours. My uncle's opinion and hints about the Life I have been working at this whole week. Nothing can be kinder than Lovell is to all of us.