’On our journey homewards, in passing through Scotland, we met with much hospitality and kindness, and much that was interesting in the country and in its inhabitants But the circumstance that remains the most fixed in my recollection, and that which afterwards influenced my father’s life the most, happened to be the books we read during our last day’s journey.  These were the lives of Robertson the historian, and of Reid, which had been just given to us by Mr. Stewart.  In the life of Reid there are some passages which struck my father particularly.  I recollect at the moment when I was reading to him, his stretching eagerly across from his side of the carriage to mine, and marking the book with his pencil with strong and reiterated marks of approbation.  The passages relate to the means which Dr. Reid employed to prevent the decay of his faculties as he advanced in years; to remedy the errors and deficiencies of one failing sense by the increased activity of another, and by the resources of reasoning and ingenuity to resist, as far as possible, or to render supportable, the infirmities of age . . .  My father never forgot this passage, and acted on it years afterwards.’

It was not Henry who was taken first, but Charlotte, who was ’fresh as a rose’ on her first tour abroad.  In April 1807 she died of the same disease as her sisters, and about two years after her brother Henry followed her to the grave.

It needed a brave heart to bear up under such sorrows, but Edgeworth, though he felt them keenly, would not sink into the lethargy of grief, but roused himself to work for the public good.  He was on the board appointed to inquire into the education of the people of Ireland, and two of his papers on the subject were printed in the reports of the Commissioners; he also drew up the plan of a school for Edgeworth Town, which was afterwards carried into execution by his son, Lovell; and at this time he was writing his Memoirs, a task which was interrupted by a severe illness in 1809.  He had hardly recovered from this before he was engaged in the Government survey of bogs, and Maria writes:—­’It was late in the year, and the weather unfavourable.  In laying out and verifying the work of the surveyors employed, he was usually out from daybreak to sunset, often fifteen hours without food, traversing on foot, with great bodily exertion, wastes and deserts of bog, so wet and dangerous as to be scarcely passable at that season, even by the common Irish best used to them.  In these bogs there frequently occur great holes, filled with water of the same colour as the bog, or sometimes covered over with a slight surface of the peat heath or grass, called by the common people a shakingscraw.  ’In traversing these bogs a man must pick his way carefully, sometimes wading, sometimes leaping from one landing place to another, choosing these cautiously, lest they should not sustain his weight:  avoiding certain treacherous green spots on which the unwary might be tempted to set foot, and would sink, never to rise again.’