and thrift are illustrated; while the contrary bad habits of laziness, idleness, falsehood, waste, and dishonesty are shown up in strong relief. How the busy household at Edgeworthstown was employed at this time may be seen from one of Miss Edgeworth's early letters, written on a fair day, "well proclaimed to the neighbourhood by the noise of pigs squeaking, men bawling,women brawling, and children squealing."
"I will tell you what is going on," says Maria Edgeworth to her cousin. Miss Sophy Ruxton, of Black Castle, "that you may see whether you like our daily bill of fare. … There is a balloon hanging up, and another going to be put on the stocks, there is soap making, and to be made, from a receipt in Nicholson's Chemistry, there is excellent ink made, and to be made by the same book, there is a cake of roses just squeezed in a vice, there is a set of accurate weights, just completed by the ingenious Messrs. Lovell and Henry Edgeworth, partners, for Henry is now a junior partner, and grown an inch and a-half upon the strength of it in two months."
All the family was tinctured with a taste for mechanics.
Mr. Edgeworth's plan of education with his numerous children was not so much to teach them, as to show them best how to teach themselves. It worked so well that he said, "I do
