I have been reading _a power_ of good books: _Montesquieu sur la
Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_, which I recommend to you as a book
you will admire, because it furnishes so much food for thought, it shows
how history may be studied for the advantage of mankind, not for the
mere purpose of remembering facts and repeating them.
Sneyd [Footnote: Second son of Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth.] has come home
to spend a week of vacation with us. He is now full of logic, and we
perpetually hear the words _syllogisms_, and _predicates, majors_ and
_minors, universals_ and _particulars, affirmatives_ and _negatives_,
and BAROK and BARBARA, not Barbara Allen or any of her relations: and we
have learnt by logic that a stone is not an animal, and conversely that
an animal is not a stone. I really think a man talking logic on the
stage might be made as diverting as the character of the _Apprentice_
who is arithmetically mad; pray read it: my father read it to us a few
nights ago, and though I had a most violent headache, so that I was
forced to hold my head on both sides whilst I laughed, yet I could not
refrain. Much I attribute to my father's reading, but something must be
left to Murphy. I have some idea of writing in the intervals of my
_severer studies_ for _Professional Education_, a comedy for my father's
birthday, but I shall do it up in my own room, and shall not produce it
till it is finished. I found the first hint of it in the strangest place
that anybody could invent, for it was in Dallas's _History of the
Maroons_, and you may read the book to find it out, and ten to one you
miss it. At all events pray read the book, for it is extremely
interesting and entertaining: it presents a new world with new manners
to the imagination, and the whole bears the stamp of truth. It is not
well written in general, but there are particular parts admirable from
truth of description and force of feeling.
Your little goddaughter Sophy is one of the most engaging little
creatures I ever saw, and knows almost all the birds and beasts in
Bewick from the tom-tit to the hip-po-pot-a-mus, and names them in a
sweet little droll voice.
_To_ HENRY EDGEWORTH, AT EDINBURGH.