“The next day we took our leave of the Edgeworths. Miss Edgeworth had now read the whole of the book. She spoke of its excellences in the same terms as before, but she objected to some parts of our plan. She is afraid that the republicanism of the school may be alarming, and advises that this part should be made less prominent. She says she is afraid that parents will dread the republican spirit which our system must infuse among the boys. I think she has too much good sense to think this an evil in itself—indeed, she spoke of it only as a matter of prudence as regards ourselves. She, perhaps, may be right, but I think that we may venture; because, in the first place, the republican tendency of our plans is very far from obvious, and there are very few Miss Edgeworths to find it out. And again, I think people are now beginning to be a little enlightened on the subject, and that we shall soon be on the popular side of the question, even with that class which it is our interest to please.” On their way back to Dublin, the travellers overheard two Irishmen discussing the career of Napoleon, tidings of whose death had lately arrived. One of them maintained that the failure of his Russian campaign was altogether due to a premature setting-in of the monsoons. The other modestly remarked that he had always understood that these winds were known only on the Indian Ocean. “Yes,” replied the first; “but that year they blew a _tremendious_ long way inland, carrying with them prodigious cold.” The brothers took the steam-packet from Dublin to Holyhead. “The captain told them that his company intended to attempt running it throughout the next winter; and cautiously remarked that he thought in a storm a steamer might even have some advantages over a sailing-vessel.” In the summer of the following year (1822), Rowland Hill again visited the Isle of Wight, accompanied by two of his younger brothers:—