By the blind bookseller my father will send you some books, and I hope that we shall soon have finished Godwin, that he may set out for Black Castle. There are some parts of his book [Footnote: _Essays_, by the author of _Caleb Williams._] that I think you will like much--"On Frankness," and "Self-taught Genius;" but you will find much to blame in his style, and you will be surprised that he should have written a dissertation upon English style. I think his essay on Avarice and Profusion will please you, even after Smith: he has gone a step farther. I am going to write a story for boys, [Footnote: _The Good Aunt._] which will, I believe, make a volume to follow the _Good French Governess._ My father thinks a volume of trials and a volume of plays would be good for children. He met the other day with two men who were ready to go to law about a horse which one had bought from the other, because he had one little fault. "What is the fault?" said my father. "Sir, the horse was standing with us all the other day in our cabin at the fire, and plump he fell down upon the middle of the fire and put it out; and it was a mercy he didn't kill my wife and children as he fell into the midst of them all. But this is not all, sir; he strayed into a neighbour's field of oats, and fell down in the midst of the oats, and spoiled as much as he could have eaten honestly in a week. But that's not all, sir; one day, please your honour, I rode him out in a hurry to a fair, and he lay down with me in the ford, and I lost my fair." * * * * * For the last few years Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth's sisters, Charlotte and Mary Sneyd, had lived entirely at Edgeworthstown, not only beloved and honoured by the children of their two sisters, but tenderly welcomed and cherished by the children of their predecessor, especially by Maria, to whom no real aunts could have been more dear. During the seventeen years through which her married life lasted, Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth had become increasingly the centre of the family circle, to which she had herself added five sons and four daughters. In every relation of life she was admirable. Through the summer of 1797 her health rapidly declined, and in November she died. Mr. Edgeworth, then past fifty, had truly valued his third wife, of whom he said that he had "never seen her out of temper, and never received from her an unkind word or an angry look." Yet, when he lost her, after his peculiar fashion, he immediately began to think of marrying again.