It was not till the autumn of 1794 that the disturbances in Ireland became alarming; and in a letter to Dr. Darwin, Edgeworth writes:  ’Just recovering from the alarm occasioned by a sudden irruption of defenders into this neighbourhood, and from the business of a county meeting, and the glory of commanding a squadron of horse, and from the exertion requisite to treat with proper indifference an anonymous letter sent by persons who have sworn to assassinate me; I received the peaceful philosophy of Zoonomia; and though it has been in my hands not many minutes, I found much to delight and instruct me. . . .

’We were lately in a sad state here—­the sans culottes (literally so) took a very effectual way of obtaining power; they robbed of arms all the houses in the country, thus arming themselves and disarming their opponents.  By waking the bodies of their friends, the human corpse not only becomes familiar to the sans culottes of Ireland, but is associated with pleasure in their minds by the festivity of these nocturnal orgies.  An insurrection of such people, who have been much oppressed, must be infinitely more horrid than anything that has happened in France; for no hired executioners need be sought from the prisons or the galleys.  And yet the people here are altogether better than in England. . . .  The peasants, though cruel, are generally docile, and of the strongest powers, both of body and mind.

’A good government may make this a great country, because the raw material is good and simple.  In England, to make a carte-blanche fit to receive a proper impression, you must grind down all the old rags to purify them.’

His daughter adds:  ’The disturbances in the county of Longford were quieted for a time by the military; but again in the autumn of the ensuing year (September 1796), rumours of an invasion prevailed, and spread with redoubled force through Ireland, disturbing commerce, and alarming all ranks of well-disposed subjects.’

CHAPTER 8

It was in 1797 that sorrow again visited the happy circle at Edgeworth Town, and Edgeworth wrote thus of his wife to Dr. Darwin:  ’She declines rapidly.  But her mind suffers as little as possible.  I am convinced from all that I have seen, that good sense diminishes all the evils of life, and alleviates even the inevitable pain of declining health.  By good sense, I mean that habit of the understanding which employs itself in forming just estimates of every object that lies before it, and in regulating the temper and conduct.  Mrs. Edgeworth, ever since I knew her, has carefully improved and cultivated this faculty; and I do not think I ever saw any person extract more good, and suffer less evil, than she has, from the events of life. . . .’

Mrs. Edgeworth died in the autumn of the year 1797.  Maria adds:  ’I have heard my father say, that during the seventeen years of his marriage with this lady, he never once saw her out of temper, and never received from her an unkind word or an angry look,’