modestly silent, and have leisure, if they have sense, to judge of what others say, and to form by choice, and not by chance, their opinions of what goes on in that great world into which they have not yet entered."
And is it really only ninety years since this delicious sentence was penned in sober earnest, as representing an existing state of things! There is an antique, musty, long-secluded flavor about it, that would suggest a monograph copied from an Egyptian tomb with thirty centuries of dust upon its hoary head. Yet Rosamond, sitting "modestly silent" under the delusion that grown-up people are worth listening to, can talk fluently enough when occasion demands it, though at all times her strength lies rather in her heart than in her head. She represents that tranquil, unquestioning, unselfish family love, which Miss Edgeworth could describe so well because she felt it so sincerely. The girl who had three stepmothers and nineteen brothers and sisters, and managed to be fond of them all, should be good authority on the subject of domestic affections; and that warm, happy, loving atmosphere which charms us in her stories, and
