Page:Maria Edgeworth (Zimmern 1883).djvu/182

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
170
MARIA EDGEWORTH.

turned to enjoyment. Sir Walter and Miss Edgeworth shared this faculty of looking on the bright side of the necessary discomforts of a journey, and extracting amusement from every incident, a faculty for want of which so many travellers fail to enjoy themselves. They charmed all with whom they came in contact, down to the very boatman who rowed them on the lake of Killarney, and who, rowing Lord Macaulay twenty years afterwards, told him that the circumstance had made him amends for missing a hanging that day! On Sir Walter Scott's birthday a large gathering of the clans Edgeworth and Scott took place at Dublin. "Sir Walter's health was drunk with more feeling than gaiety," and on that same evening he and Miss Edgeworth parted, never to meet again.