too richly by their gratitude. She was certainly one of the few people who practise what they preach; she exemplified in her own person all those judicious plans and rules for helping the needy which she had brought forward in her works. When it is further remembered that Miss Edgeworth retained, to the very last, until her 82nd year, that faculty, which is judged the exclusive gift of youth, of admitting new interests into her life, and that she further made them to run side by side with those she had held of yore, in this mode enriching and widening her mental and emotional horizon, it is little wonder that her old age was one of serene felicity.
The marriage of Fanny Edgeworth, Miss Edgeworth's favourite among all her younger sisters, was a real grief to her for the moment, though, with her usual unselfishness, she upbraided herself for feeling such "shameful, weak, selfish sorrow, at parting with this darling child." A pleasure of a very different kind came to her shortly after in the shape of Sir Walter Scott's introduction to his collected Waverley Novels. The sheets, while passing through the press, had been sent to her, and she felt that Scott had, in the most delightful and kind manner, said everything that could gratify her "as an author, friend, and human creature.'"
