The worked sleeves are for Mrs. Stewart, and you are to offer them to her,--nobody can say I do not know how to choose my ambassadors well! If Mrs. Stewart should begin to say, "O! it is a pity Miss Edgeworth should spend her time at such work!" please to interrupt her speech, though that is very rude, and tell her that I like work very much, and that I have only done this at odd times, after breakfast you know, when my father reads out Pope's _Homer_, or when there are long sittings, when it is much more agreeable to move one's fingers than to have to sit with hands crossed or clasped immovably. I by no means accede to the doctrine that ladies cannot attend to anything else when they are working: besides, it is contrary, is not it, to all the theories of _Zoonomia_? Does not Dr. Darwin show that certain habitual motions go on without interrupting trains of thought? And do not common sense and experience, whom I respect even above Dr. Darwin, show the same thing? _To_ MISS SOPHY RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _March 25, 1805._ To-morrow we all, viz. Mr. Edgeworth, two Miss Sneyds, and Miss Harriet Beaufort, and Miss Fanny Brown, and Miss Maria, and Miss Charlotte, and Miss Honora, and Mr. William Edgeworth, go in one coach and one chaise to Castle Forbes, to see a play acted by the Ladies Elizabeth and Adelaide Forbes, Miss Parkins, Lord Rancliffe, Lord Forbes, and I don't know how many grandees with tufts on their heads, for every grandee man must now you know have a tuft or ridge of hair upon the middle of his pate. Have you read Kotzebue's _Paris_? Some parts entertaining, mostly stuff. We have heard from Lovell, still a prisoner at Verdun, but in hopes of peace, poor fellow. _To_ C. SNEYD EDGEWORTH, AT TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _May 4, 1805._ We are all very happy and tolerably merry with the assistance of William and the young tribe, who are always at his heels and in full chorus with him. Charlotte _cordials_ me twice a day with _Cecilia_, which she reads charmingly, and which entertains me as much at the third reading as it did at the first. We are a little, but very little afraid of being swallowed up by the French: they have so much to swallow and digest before they come to us! They did come once very near to be sure, but they got nothing by it. _To_ MISS S. RUXTON. EDGEWORTHSTOWN, _June 1, 1805._