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30 MARIA EDGEWORTH.
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Amokgst The Changes Which Have Taken Pla...
attacked to him , was then at the Charterhouse , London ; a few lines were written to him in pencil by his _dying brother , which , steeped
in milk , were immediately enclosed , along with an entreaty to hasten tion to Ed as geworthstown was possible . in His those journey days of was comparativel made with y as slow much travelling expedi- .
But all the speed was vain , life ebbed more quickly still ! When he arrived , the much loved William was no more .
Since that period , he has himself , as well as his brother Lovell , been summoned hence ; Miss Edgeworth lived to deplore four dear
brothers , so much her junior;—all laid in that melancholy vault . From the time of her father's death , her works had been exclu'
sively for the young ; but in 1834 ' Helen , a novel from her pen , was joyfully welcomed by the reading world . For interest of plot ,
strength in drawing of character , and distinctness in bringing out its moral , it is perhaps one of her happiest productions ; though it
must be confessed that the hero is rather flat , and we question whether the heroine be quite so interesting as is a certain faulty
fascinating Lady Cecilia . The last word of the novel names the virtue to be taught throughout . To shew the dignity and '
sustaining power of truth , ' the humiliation in departing from , the happiness in returning to this loffcy virtue , is the object of this her
most ' moral tale . ' Lady Cecilia Davenant , beautiful , engaging , and affectionate , marries
the noble minded General Clarendon , ( in our opinion , the hero of the story , ) whose peculiar idiosyncracy is a prejudice against uniting
himself to a woman who had been previously engaged . Failing in strength of mind to confess that in the first flush of youthful vanity ,
she had coquetted to a considerable degree with Henry D'Aubigne _, Cecilia , who had never learned to reverence truth _, and who , though
she would have shrunk from a deliberate falsehood , would too often ' rose-color a representation' to give pleasure or avoid inflicting
pain , prevails on her friend , Helen Stanley , to pass as her own , a packet of letters to this former admirerwhich most unluckily had
, come under the General ' s notice . The conflict between the agonizing consciousness of acting in a manner unworthy of the wife of
her idolized husband , and the cowardice which held her back from confessing the truth , is powerfully worked up ; and the character of
her mother Lady Davenant , a sort of female Lord Oldborough , is beautifully drawn . Less attractive , but how true to nature , is the
following description of the General ' s sister . reaction "Of a under strong disappointment body herself , capable grief of she great could resistance ill make , allowance and powerful for
feebler she had health great sympath and spirits , but i _^ rhap she or s could feebler , not character enter into ; for the great detail misfortunes of lesser ,
have sorrows , especiall mended y any from y of , Miss the Clarendon sentimental ' s tongue kind . * if * it * had Many been a truth uttered would in a
come , soft tone , and if she had paid a little more attention to times and seasons . "
Who does not know a Miss Clarendon ?
30 Maria Edgeworth.
30 MARIA EDGEWORTH .
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Sept. 1, 1858, page 30, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01091858/page/30/
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