The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 1Edgeworth, Maria
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The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 1
Edgeworth, Maria
Edgeworth, Maria, 1768-1849; Novelists, Irish -- 19th century -- Biography
My aunt and Sophy were on the steps of the inn at Newry to receive me.
The road from Newry to Rosstrevor is both sublime and beautiful. The inn
at Rosstrevor is like the best sort of English breakfasting inn. But to
proceed with my journey, for I must go two miles and a half from
Rosstrevor to my aunt's house. Sublime mountains and sea--road, a flat
gravelled walk, walled on the precipice side. You see a slated English
or Welsh-looking farmhouse amongst some stunted trees, apparently in the
sea; you turn down a long avenue of firs, only three feet high, but
old-looking, six rows deep on each side. The two former proprietors of
this mansion had opposite tastes--one all for straight, and the other
all for serpentine lines; and there was a war between snug and
picturesque, of which the traces appear every step you proceed. You seem
driving down into the sea, to which this avenue leads; but you suddenly
turn and go back from the shore, through stunted trees of various sorts
scattered over a wild common, then a dwarf mixture of shrubbery and
orchard, and you are at the end of the house, which is pretty. The front
is ugly, but from it you look upon the bay of Carlingford--Carlingford
Head opposite to you--vessels under sail, near and distant--little
islands, sea-birds, and landmarks standing in the sea. Behind the house
the mountains of Morne. I saw all this with admiration, tired as I was,
for it was seven o'clock. In the parlour is a surprising chimney-piece,
as gigantic as that at Grandsire's at Calais, with wonderful wooden
ornaments and a tablet representing Alexander's progress through India,
he looking very pert, driving four lions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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