Of the charm and goodness of the beautiful Honora there can be no doubt. She won all hearts. Her little step-daughter, Maria, loved her dearly, and admired her as much as she loved her. She remembered, in after years, standing at her step-mother’s dressing-table and looking up at her with a sudden thought, “How beautiful!” The second Mrs. Edgeworth became, under her husband’s tuition, a very good mechanic; and together they wrote a little book for children, called _Harry and Lucy_. Very few books for children had at that time been written, so that they were very early in a field which has since found so many labourers. Mrs. Honora discerned Maria’s remarkable qualities of mind. When the latter was only twelve years old her step-mother wrote to her expressing the pleasure she felt in being able to treat the young girl “as her equal in every respect but age.” Mr. Edgeworth, too, fully appreciated and studiously cultivated Maria’s gifts, and encouraged her in every way to treat him with openness and familiarity. This conduct was a very great contrast with the extreme stiffness and formality which then prevailed generally between parents and children. It was near this time, but a little later, that the well-known writer, William Godwin, was reproached by his mother with his too great formality in addressing her; he had been accustomed to speak and write to her as “Madam,” and she says in one of her letters to him that “Hon’d Mother” “would be full as agreeable.” Therefore the terms of friendly familiarity and equality between Maria and her parents were the more remarkable. The happiness of Mr. Edgeworth’s second marriage was unclouded, except by the symptoms of consumption in Honora, which warned them that an inevitable parting was at hand. She died in May 1780, when Maria was thirteen years old. By his dead wife’s side, Mr. Edgeworth wrote to Maria impressing upon her all the hopes that he and her step-mother had formed for her future. Very soon after he wrote again and bade her write a short story on the subject of generosity; “It must be taken,” he wrote, “from History or Romance, and must be sent the sennight after you receive this; and I beg that you will take some pains about it.” The story, when finished, was submitted to the judgment of Mr. William Sneyd, Honora’s brother, who said of it, “An excellent story, and extremely well written; but where is the generosity?”—a saying which afterwards became a household word with the Edgeworths.