We feel that we are in the moral atmosphere of Paley and Butler when she adds:—­’Far beyond the pleasures of celebrity, or praise in any form, he classed self-approbation and benevolence:  these he thought the most secure sources of satisfaction in this world.’  This is the spirit of the Eighteenth Century, the clear cold tone of the moral philosopher, not the enthusiastic impulse of the fervid theologian, of Pusey, Keble, or Newman.  One star does indeed differ from another in glory, but all give brilliance to our firmament and raise our thoughts from earth.

Such a life as Richard Edgeworth’s seems to me to be more instructive than even that excellent moral guide-book written by Sir John Lubbock, The Uses of Life, because abstract maxims take less hold of uncultivated or unanalytical minds than the portrait of a man of flesh and blood.  Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress reaches many hearts which are unmoved by an ordinary sermon, and Edgeworth’s life was indeed a progress, a constant striving not only to improve himself but to help others onward in the right way.  He showed what a good landlord could do in Ireland, and what a good father can do in binding a family in happy union.