Although we had known Miss Edgeworth in London, it will be readily understood how much more to advantage she was seen in her own house; she was the very gentlest of lions, the most unexacting, apparently the least conscious of her right to prominence. In London she did not reject, yet she seemed averse to the homage accorded her. At home she was emphatically at home!

In person she was very small--she was "lost in a crowd!" Her face was pale and thin, her features irregular; they may have been considered plain, even in youth, but her expression was so benevolent, her manners were so perfectly well-bred, partaking of English dignity and Irish frankness, that one never thought of her with reference either to beauty or plainness. She ever occupied, without claiming attention, charming continually by her singularly pleasant voice, while the earnestness and truth that beamed from her bright blue--very blue--eyes increased the value of every word she uttered. She knew how to _listen_ as well as to _talk_, and gathered information in a manner highly complimentary to those from whom she sought it; her attention seemed far more the effect of respect than of curiosity. Her sentences were frequently epigrammatic; she more than once suggested to me the story of the good fairy from whose lips dropped diamonds and pearls whenever they were opened. She was ever neat and particular in her dress, her feet and hands were so delicate and small as to be almost childlike. In a word, Maria Edgeworth was one of those women who do not seem to require beauty.

Miss Edgeworth has been called "cold"; but those who have so deemed her have never seen, as I have, the tears gather in her eyes at a tale of suffering or sorrow, nor heard the genuine, hearty laugh that followed the relation of a pleasant story. Never, so long as I live, can I forget the evenings spent in her library in the midst of a family highly educated and self-thinking, in conversation unrestrained, yet pregnant with instructive thought.

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In January 1843 Miss Edgeworth was dangerously ill with a fever. Afterwards she wrote to a friend: