related to the kings of Ireland, but that was before my time."
If there was an ulterior end in view in this story beyond that of recording national characteristics which she had had peculiarly good opportunities of observing, and which she here reproduced from the life with broad, full strokes, Miss Edgeworth has masked it so happily that it does not obtrude itself. The society and manners of the Irish are painted as equally provoking and endearing. The book is an epitome of the Irish character, "fighting like devils for conciliation, and hating one another for the love of God." Never did laughter and tears, sympathy and repugnance, lie more closely together than in this tale. It is curious to read the author's prefatory apology when there are still alive, in every exasperated form, the very conditions she thinks belong to a state of things rapidly passing away "owing to the probable loss of Irish identity after the union with England." The supposed "obsolete prejudices and animosities of race" are unhappily still extant. Perhaps it is partly this fact that makes Miss Edgeworth's Irish Tales so fresh to this day. But only in part, on their own account alone they are delightful, and Castle Rackrent even more than the rest.
We have Mrs. Barbauld's testimony that Miss Edgeworth wrote Castle Rackrent unassisted by her father, and judging how infinitely superior in spontaneity, flexibility, and nervousness of style, force, pith, and boldness, it is to those of her writings with which he meddled, it is forcibly impressed upon us that Mr. Edgeworth's literary tinkering of his daughter's works was far from being to their advantage. Her next published book was her first attempt to deal with the
