The life and letters of Maria Edgeworth Author:Maria Edgeworth, Augustus John Cuthbert Hare Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: [18o8] MRS. APREECE 157 brogue, and Paddy with the short, and Terry with the butcher's-blue coat, and Dennis with no coat at all, and Eneas Hosey's widow, and... more » all the Devines, pleading and quarrelling about boundaries and bits of bog. I wish Lord Selkirk was in the midst of them, with his hands crossed before him; I should like to know if he could make them understand his Essay on Emigration. My father wrote to Sir Joseph Banks to apply through the French Institute for leave for Lovell to travel as a literate in Germany, and I have frequently written about him to our French friends; and those passages in my letters were never answered. All their letters are now written, as Sir Joseph Banks observed, under evident constraint and fear. Mrs. Edge worth writes : This summer of 1808 Mr. and Mrs. Ruxton and their two daughters passed some time with us. My father, mother, and sister came also, and Maria read out Ennui in manuscript. We used to assemble in the middle of the day in the library, and everybody enjoyed it. One evening when we were at dinner with this large party, the butler came up to Mr. Edgeworth. "Mrs. Apreece, sir; she is getting out of her carriage." Mr. Edgeworth went to the hall door, but we all sat still laughing, for there had been so many jokes about Mrs. Apreece, who was then travelling in Ireland, that we thought it was only nonsense of Sneyd's, who we supposed had dressed up some one to personate her; and we were astonished when Mr. Edge- worth presented her as the real Mrs. Apreece. She stayed some days, and was very brilliant and agreeable. She continued, as Mrs. Apreece and as Lady Davy, to be a kind friend and correspondent of Maria's. Maria to C. Sneyd Edgeworth, At Edinburgh. Edgeworthstown, Dec. 30, 1808. How little we can tell from da...« less