It was when he was eight years old, and while travelling with his father, that his attention was caught by ’a man carrying a machine five or six feet in diameter, of an oval form, and composed of slender ribs of steel.  I begged my father to inquire what it was.  We were told that it was the skeleton of a lady’s hoop.  It was furnished with hinges, which permitted it to fold together in a small compass, so that more than two persons might sit on one seat of a coach—­a feat not easily performed, when ladies were encompassed with whalebone hoops of six feet extent.  My curiosity was excited by the first sight of this machine, probably more than another child’s might have been, because previous agreeable associations had given me some taste for mechanics, which was still a little further increased by the pleasure I took in examining this glittering contrivance.  Thus even the most trivial incidents in childhood act reciprocally as cause and effect in forming our tastes.’

It was in 1754 that Mrs. Edgeworth, continuing much out of health, resolved to consult a certain Lord Trimblestone, who had been very successful in curing various complaints.  Lord Trimblestone received Mr. and Mrs. Edgeworth most cordially and hospitably, and though he could not hope to cure her, recommended some palliatives.  He had more success with another lady whose disorder was purely nervous.  His treatment of her was so original that I must quote it at length: 

’Instead of a grave and forbidding physician, her host, she found, was a man of most agreeable manners.  Lady Trimblestone did everything in her power to entertain her guest, and for two or three days the demon of ennui was banished.  At length the lady’s vapours returned; everything appeared changed.  Melancholy brought on a return of alarming nervous complaints—­convulsions of the limbs —­perversion of the understanding—­a horror of society; in short, all the complaints that are to be met with in an advertisement enumerating the miseries of a nervous patient.  In the midst of one of her most violent fits, four mutes, dressed in white, entered her apartment; slowly approaching her, they took her without violence in their arms, and without giving her time to recollect herself, conveyed her into a distant chamber hung with black and lighted with green tapers.  From the ceiling, which was of a considerable height, a swing was suspended, in which she was placed by the mutes, so as to be seated at some distance from the ground.  One of the mutes set the swing in motion; and as it approached one end of the room, she was opposed by a grim menacing figure armed with a huge rod of birch.  When she looked behind her, she saw a similar figure at the other end of the room, armed in the same manner.  The terror, notwithstanding the strange circumstances which surrounded her, was not of that sort which threatens life; but every instant there was an immediate hazard of bodily pain.  After some time, the mutes appeared again, with great