You are a goose or a gosling, whichever you like best, for I perceive
you are in great anxiety lest my poor little imagination should not have
been completely set to rights. Now set your heart at ease, for I,
putting my left hand upon my heart, because I could not conveniently put
my right, which holds the pen, though I acknowledge that would be much
more graceful, do hereby declare that I perfectly understood and
understand the explanation contained in your last, and am fully
satisfied, righted, and delighted therewith.
I have been much interested by the _Letters from Lausanne_; I think them
in some parts highly pathetic and eloquent, but as to the moral tendency
of the book I cannot find it out, turn it which way I will. I think the
author wrote merely with the intention of showing how well he could
paint passion, and he has succeeded. The Savage of Aveyron [Footnote: A
little history of a boy found in France, "a wild man of the woods." He
was brought to Paris, and the philosophers disputed much on his mental
powers; but he died before they came to any conclusion.] is a thousand
times more interesting to me than Caliste. I have not read anything for
years that interested me so much. Mr. Chenevix will be here in a few
days, when we will cross-question him about this savage, upon whom the
eyes of civilised Europe have been fixed. Mr. Chenevix and his sister,
Mrs. Tuite, and with them Mrs. Jephson, spent a day here last week: she
is clever and agreeable. What did you think of M. Pictet's account of
Edgeworthstown?
* * * * *
Professor Marc-Auguste Pictet, of Geneva, visited the Edgeworths this
summer, coming over from Mr. Tuite's, of Sonna, where he was staying
with Mr. Chenevix. He afterwards published an interesting account of his
visit to Edgeworthstown in the _Bibliothèque Britannique_, as well as in
his _Voyage de trois mots en Angleterre_, which was published at Geneva
in 1802. Of Maria Edgeworth he says:
* * * * *
I had persuaded myself that the author of the work on Education, and of
other productions, useful as well as ornamental, would betray herself by
a remarkable exterior. I was mistaken. A small figure, eyes nearly
always lowered, a profoundly modest and reserved air, with expression in
the features when not speaking: such was the result of my first survey.
But when she spoke, which was too rarely for my taste, nothing could
have been better thought, and nothing better said, though always timidly
expressed, than that which fell from her mouth.
* * * * *
M. Pictet's account of the society at Paris induced Mr. Edgeworth to
determine on going there. He set out in the middle of September, with
Mrs. Edgeworth, Maria, Emmeline, and Charlotte. Emmeline left the rest
of the family at Conway, and went to stay with Mrs. Beddoes at Clifton,
where she was married to Mr. King (or Konig, a native of Berne), a
distinguished surgeon.
In London Mr. Edgeworth purchased a roomy coach, in which his family
travelled very comfortably.
* * * * *
MARIA EDGEWORTH _to_ MISS SOPHY RUXTON.