MARIA EDGE WORTH.
Maria Edgeworth. By the Hon. Emily Lawless. "English Men of Letters." (Macmillan and Co. 2s. net.)—Miss Lawless's Life of . Maria Edgeworth will certainly take its place among the best of the excellent series to which it belongs. The writer's heart is evidently in her work, and her interest and delight in it communicate themselves, by a happy law of Nature, to the reader. One is carried along with increasing enjoyment through these two hundred agreeable pages, in which Miss Lawless im- proves her own acquaintance and ours with "one of the very pleasantest personalities to be met with in the whole wide world of books." The book is written and the portrait sketched with so light a touch that only the initiated are likely to know what an amount of accurate study and careful work is represented by the finished performance. Miss Lawless has occupied herself specially with the Irish side of Miss Edgeworth's life and writings, and arouses new interest in the latter, especially "Castle Rackrent," which is pretty sure to show itself in the practical form of new editions. She has been able to print for the first time a good many of Miss Edgeworth's delightful letters, and this fact adds much to the value of the book, for it gives us quite a fresh and charming impression of "the great Maria," whose character, as well as her talents, made her a worthy friend of Sir Walter Scott.
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