"Saint" or "Santa Claus" in many a family circle, will do well to remember the special charms of the Puzzle Toy-books for some of their younger clients. reprints of the popular old romances of "Jack and the Bean-stalk" and "Tom Thumb," and the pitiful tragedy of the "Babes in the Wood" -old stories which no newer ones have ever yet effaced from the memory of the old British reader. AUNT'S FRIENDLY NURSERY KEEPSAKE, published by the same house, deserves a place amongst juvenile gift-books of the season. It abounds in brilliantly-coloured pictures, and contains the most popular of the dear old stories, the memory of which survives the newer ones, and, retold by Aunt Friendly, are (if that were possible) more entertaining than ever. Amongst more familiar reprints, we find Hans Christian Andersen's delightful fairy-tale, "The Ugly Duckling," which appears estab-acquainted with "Esop's Fables;" but Messrs. lished as a favourite in English homesteads. NURSERY TALES AND STORIES, AND NURSERY SONGS AND BALLADS (Ward, Lock, and Tyler) come under the same category as the above, and make, perhaps, the nine hundred and ninety-ninth edition of these juvenile classics. of which the readers never seem to weary, We may say the same of Messrs. Routledge's For boys and girls of more advanced years, there is THE BOOK OF RARE OLD BALLADS (Ward, Lock, & Co.), THE BOY's HAND-BOOK OF NATURAL HISTORY (published by the above firm), and Mrs. S. C. Hall's MIDSUMMER'S EVE, a Fairy Tale of Loving and being Loved, republished with the original illustrations (Hotten). Most young people are Cassell, Petter, and Galpin have ventured on re producing them, with illustrations from the characteristic and humorous pencil of Griset. In looking over this list, we are struck by the absence of novelty. With one or two excep tions, all are reprints-of popular works certainly, but for which publishers have paid no copyright for many generations. MISS EDGEWORTH'S LIFE AND LETTERS. The readers of the Edinburgh Review have rarely enjoyed a treat rarely furnished by journalism. In its columns have appeared large extracts from an unpublished book printed in England for private circulation. The Memoir and Selected Letters of Miss Edgeworth, by the late Mrs. Edgeworth, is a title that will excite high expectations among those to whom the fertile invention and keen observation of the Irish novelist have made her name like that of a household friend; and the favoured few who had glimpses of the happy and well-ordered family life, whose movement is here displayed, will feel a double pleasure in finding their fragmentary remembrances in harmony with the whole tenor of her days. This volume is one of those rare biographies like Lockhart's "Life of Scott," or Moore's "Letters of Lord Byron;" a biography whose subject is memorable, whose materials are ample, whose execution combines judgment with affection. The oharge of concealing or of palliating faults, so often and so justly brought against those who write the lives of their friends, would have no reason here. Miss Edgeworth is before us in her letters just as she must have seemed to those around herthe lively, witty, sensible woman that our fathers found so attractive; a little prosaic, perhaps, never rising above a certain level in her writings, but within her own region thoroughly admirable. We design to give our readers, in as brief a space as possible, an idea of the contents of this book, especially of the social life described in it. Miss Edgeworth was not only a lion herself, but she was the friend or acquaintance of a great many other lions. Her social position was the best; and at that time almost every literary celebrity belonged either by birth or adoption to the set in which she lived. At home and abroad, she met the people of whom we like to hear. Her letters abound in anecdotes and details of the famous men and women of her time. She was born in Oxfordshire, January 1, 1767, and was the only daughter of her father's first marriage. He had four wives; and not the least entertaining and remarkable portion of the Memoir relates to him and them. His character, a it comes out through the book, is a peculiar one. He was a man of plans and purposes; full of energy and vivacity, and apt to talk of himself; something of a bore, we suppose, in general society, at our first extract will show; but alike agreeable and useful to his family. Lord Byron met him at a company in the later years of his life. "I have been reading the life by himself and daughter of Mr. R. L. Edgeworth, the father of the Miss Edgeworth. It is altogether a great name. In 1813, I recollect to have met them in the fashionable world of London, in the assemblies of the hour, and at a breakfast of Sir Humphrey and Lady Davy's, to which I was invited for the nonce. I had been the lion of 1812; Miss Edgeworth and Madame de Staël, with the Cossack, towards the end of 1813, were the exhibitions of the succeeding year. I thought Edgeworth a fine old fellow, of a clarety, elderly, red complexion, but active, brisk, and endless. He was seventy, but did not look fifty-no, nor forty-eight, even. I had seen poor Fitzpatrick not very long before a man of pleasure, wit, eloquence, all things. He tottered, but still talked like a gentleman, though feebly. Edgeworth bounced about, and talked loud and long, but he seemed neither weakly nor decrepit, and hardly old. "He was not much admired in London, and I remember a 'ryghte merrie' and conceited jest which was rife among the gallants of the day, viz., a paper had been presented for the recall of Mrs. Siddons to the stage, to which all men had been called to subscribe. Whereupon Thomas Moore, of profane and poetical memory, did propose that a similar paper should be subscribed and circumscribed for the recall of Mr. Edgeworth to Ireland. The fact was everybody cared more about her. She was a nice little unassuming Jenny-Deans-looking body,' as we Scotch say; and if not handsome, certainly not ill-looking. Her conversation was as quiet as herself. One would never have guessed she could write her name; whereas her father talked, not as if he could write nothing else, but as if nothing else was worth writing." Byron iss aid to have proposed a Society for the Suppression of Edgeworth; but 66 Edgeworth was insuppressible; and, take him for all in all, he was not a man whom it was proper or expedient to suppress. With the simple change of gender, we might apply to him what Talleyrand said of Madame de Stael: 'Elle est vraiment insupportable; which he qualified after a short pause by, 'c'est son Beul défaut.' Certainly he was not a stupid man; his letters and the anecdotes of him prove the contrary. He came of a stock that had plenty of nerve and wit. "His maternal grandfather was a Welsh judge, named Lovell, of whom it is related that, travelling over the sands of Beaumaris as he was going circuit, he was overtaken by the tide ; the coach stuck fast in a quicksand; the water rose rapidly, and the registrar, who had crept out of the window and taken refuge on the coach-box, whilst the servants clustered on the roof, earnestly entreated the judge to do the same. With the water nearly touching his lips, he gravely replied: "I will follow your counsel if you can quote any precedent for a judge's mounting a coach-box.' Edgeworth himself said, "I am not a man of prejudice; I had four wives: the second and third were sisters; and I was in love with the second in the lifetime of the first." It came about in this wise: The first Mrs. Edgeworth, Maria's mother, seems to heve been neither attractive nor cheerful. In 1770, her husband visited his friend Day, the author of "Sandford and Merton," in Lichfield; then he met Miss Honora Sneyd, and his admiration for her appears from his memoirs; but conscious of his weakness, he went abroad with Day. "He was certainly deeply attached to her; and so was Day, who wrote her an argumentative proposal comprised in several sheets of paper, to which she wrote an equally long and argumentative refusal. The pith of his reasoning was that the best thing for her would be to live with him secluded from what is called the world; the pith of her reply being that she would rather live in it. On receiving this reply he took to his bed and was profusely bled by his friend Dr. Darwin; but speedily thought better of the matter, got up, rejoined the circle, and fell in love with her sister." This sister had a high esteem for dancing and fencing; and Day went abroad to learn them. They spent two years in Lyons; Mrs. Edgeworth died in 1773, and shortly afterwards the widower married Miss Sneyd. "On Mr. Edgeworth's marriage with Honora Sneyd, Maria accompanied them to Ireland. Of this visit she recollected very little, except that she was a mischievous child, amusing herself once at her aunt Fox's when the company were unmindful of her, cutting out the squares in a checked sofa cover, and one day trampling through a number of hot-bed frames that had just been glazed, laid on the grass before the door at Edgeworth-Town. She recollected her delight at the crashing of the glass, but, immorally, did not remember either cutting her feet or how she was punished for this perform ance." This stepmother was a most affectionate parent to her; her only printed letter to her daughterin-law, written in the last year of her life, shows her watchful kindness. She says: "It is very agreeable to me to think of conversing with you as my equal in every respect but age, and of my making that inequality of use to you, by giving you the advantage of the experience I have had, and the observations I have been able to make, as these are parts of knowledge which nothing but time can bestow." Edgeworth himself, in his first letter, says much the same : "It would be very agreeable to me, my dear Maria, to have letters from you familiarly; I wish to know what you like and what you dislike; I wish to communicate to you what little knowledge I have acquired, that you may have a tincture of every species of literature, and form your taste by choice and not by chance." Honora died in 1780, and the next year Edgeworth, in accordance with her dying wish, married her sister Elizabeth, "who had flung over Day after he had undergone a regular gymnastic training for her sake.' After Honora's death, Mr. Edgeworth writes to his daughter: "I beg that you will send me a tale about the length of a Spectator' upon the subject of Generosity; it must be taken from history or romance, and must be sent the day s'n'night after you receive this, and I beg you will take some pains about it." "The same subject (we are informed in the memoir) was given at the same time to a young gentlemen from Oxford, then at Lichfield When the two stories were completed, they were given to Mr. William Sneyd, Mr. Edgeworth's brother-in-law, to decide on their merits; he pronounced Maria's to be very much the best; an excellent story, and extremely well written; but where's the Generosity ? A saying which became a sort of proverb with her afterwards. It was Maria's first story; but it has not been preserved; she used to say that there was in it a sentence of inextricable confusion between a saddle, a man, and his horse." In this year she was removed from Mrs. Lataffiere's boarding-school to "the fashionable establishment of Mrs. Davis." Mrs. Davis, it is stated, treated Maria with kindness and consideration, thongh she was neither beautiful nor fashionable, and gave her the full benfit of an invention for drawing out young ladies, which we hope died out with this establishment. 'Excellent masters were in attendance, and Maria went through all the usual torture of back boards, iron cellars, and dumb-bells, with the unusual one of being swung by the neck to draw out the muscles and increase the growth, a signal failure in her case.' Did it succeed in any case? There is a story of a wry-necked Prince of Condé falling in the hunting field, and coming to himself just in time to stop the peasants who picked him up in a well-intended effort to pull him straight; but the notion of pulling out a young lady like a telescope was surely peculiar to a finishing' school." Some traits of her school-days are related : "She had a great facility for learning languages. and she found her Italian and French excercises so easy that she wrote off those given out for the whole quarter at once, keeping them strung together in her desk, and read for amusetheir tasks. Her favourite scat during playtime ment whilst the other girls were labouring at was under a high ebony cabinet which stood at one end of the school-room; and here she often remained so completely absorbed by the book she was reading as to be perfectly deaf to all the noise around her, only occasionally startled into consciousness of it by some unusual uproar. This early habit of concentrated attention, perhaps inherent iu minds of great genius, continued through life. In 1782 she left school and went with the family to Edgeworth-Town, where she had her home for the rest of her life. These are her first impressions of Ireland: 66 I accompanied my father to Ireland. Before this time I had not, except dering a few months of my childhood. ever been in that country, therefore everything there was new to me; and though I was then but twelve years old, and though such a length of time has since elapsed, I have retained a clear and strong recollection of our arrival at Edgeworth-Town. "Things and persons are so much improved in Ireland of latter days, that only those who can remember how they were some thirty or forty years ago, can conceive the variety of domestic grievance, which, in those times, assailed the master of a family, immediately upon his arrival at his Irish home, Wherever he turned his eyes, in or out of his house, damp, dilapidation, waste appeared. Painting, glazing, roofing, fencing, finishing-all were wanting! "The back yard, and even the front lawn round the windows of the house, were filled with loungers, followers, and petitioners, tenants, undertenants, drivers, sub-agent and agent were to have audience: and they all had grievances and secret informations, accusations reciprocating, and quarrels each under each interminable." Of her father she says: "I was with him constantly, and I was amused and interested in seeing how he made his way through these complaints, petitions, and grievance, with decision and despatch; he, all the time, in good humour with the people, and theydelighted with him; though he often rated them roughly,' when they stood before him perverse in litigation, helpless in procras tination, detected in cunning, or convicted of falsehood. They saw into his character, almost mark which I heard whispered aside among the as soon as he understood theirs. The first repeople, with congratulatory looks at each other, was: His honour, any way, is good pay.' "It was said of the celebrated King of liked in Ireland; but there is a higher descrip. Prussia, that he scolded like a trooper, and paid like a prince.' Such a man would be tion of character, which (give them but time to know it) the Irish wonld infinitely prefer. One who paid, not like a prince, but like a man of sense and humanity. "Some men live with their family, without letting them know their affairs; and however great may be their affection and esteem for their "She was remembered by her companions, wives and children, think that they have nothing both as Mrs. Lataffiere's and Mrs. Davis's, for to do with business. This was not my father's her entertaining stories, and she learned with all way of thinking. On the contrary, not only the tact of an improvisatrice to know which his wife, but his children knew all his affairs. story was most successful by the unmistakable Whatever business he had to do was done in evidence of her hearers' wakefulness, when she the midst of his family, usually in the common narrated at night to those who were in the bed-sitting-room; so that we were intimately ac room with her." quainted, not only with his general principles of conduct, but with the most minute details of their every-day application. I further enjoyed some peculiar advantages; he kindly wished to give me habits of business; and for this purpose, allowed me during many years to assist him in copying his letters of business, and in receiving his rents." 6 you will soon be in the same kingdom again, and that is one great point gained, as Mr. Weaver, a travelling astronomical lecturer, who carried the univers e about in a box, told us Sir,' said he to my father, when you look at a map, do you know that the east is always on your right-hand, and the west on your left? Yes,' replied my father, with a very modest look, 'I believe I do.' 'Well,' said the man of learning, that's one great point gained.' ” Her next literary effort was a translation from Madame de Genlis; but neither this, nor any of the tales which from this time she began to compose, were published until 1789. Day had Elizabeth Edgeworth died in 1797, and in a great dislike of feminine authorship, and May of the next year her father married his from deference to him her father waited till after fourth wife, Miss Beaufort. Miss Edgeworth his old friend's death. No doubt the delay was blamed at the time for too ready an ac was a real advantage to Maria. She wrote at quiescence in these speedy unions; but she this time "The Bracelets," and several other seems to have done just enough, and yielded short stories; writing them on a slate and read-gracefully at the right time. She says: ing them to the family, and if they were liked, copying them. Her father was her chief critic: "Whenever I thought of writing anything, I always told him my first rough plans; and always, with the instinct of a good critic, he used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose: Sketch that and show it to me.' These words, from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hope of success. It was then sketched. Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I used to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected. 'I don't want any of your paintingnone of your drapery!-I can imagine all that; let me see the bare skeleton.'" Among their most intimate friends was Dr. Darwin. It was to her father he gave his celebrated definition of a fool: "A fool, you know, Mr. Edgeworth, is a man who never tried an experiment in his life." She writes in 1792: 66 My father has just returned from Dr. Darwin's, where he has been nearly three weeks; they were extremely kind, and pressed him very much to take a house in or near Derby for the summer. He has been, as Dr. Darwin expressed it, 'breathing the breath of life into the hrazen lungs of a clock,' which he had made at Edgeworth-Town as a present for him. He saw the first part of Dr. Darwin's Botanic Garden; £900 was what his bookseller gave him for the whole! On his return from Derby, my father spent a day with Mr. Kier, the great chemist, at Birmingham; he was speaking to him of the late discovery of fulminating silver, with which I suppose your ladyship is well acquainted, though it be new to Henry and me. A lady and gentleman went into a laboratory where a few grains of fulminating silver were lying in a mortar; the gentleman as he was talking, happened to stir it with the end of his cane, which was tipped with iron-the fulminating silver exploded instantly, and blew the lady, the gentleman, and the whole laboratory to pieces! Take care how you go into laboratories with gentlemen, unless they are like Sir Plume, skilled in the 'nice conduct' of their canes." Again, in the course of the same letter: "Anna was extremely sorry that she could not see you again before she left Ireland; but "When I first knew of this attachment, and before I was well acquainted with her, I own I did not wish for the marriage. I had not my father's quick penetration into character: I did not at first see the superior abilities or qualities which he discovered; nor did I anticipate any of the happy consequences from this union which he foresaw. All that I thought, I told him. With the most kind patience he bore with me, and instead of withdrawing his affection, honoured me the more with his confidence." "All resistance and repugnance," says the reviewer, "were overcome by his eloquence or pertinacity, and he closes a letter to Day about a bust, the upas-tree, frogs, agriculture, a heating apparatus, and a speaking machine, with this passage: "And now for my piece of news, which I have kept for the last. I am going to be married to a young lady of small fortune and large accomplishments-compared with my age, much youth (not quite thirty), and more prudence-some beauty, more sense- -uncommon talents, more uncommon_temper-liked by my family, loved by me. If I can say all this three years hence, shall I not have been a fortunate, not to say a wise man?" Miss Edgeworth writes to her prospective step-mother, some years younger than herself: "I flatter myself that you will find me gratefully exact en belle fille. I think there is a great deal of difference between that species of ceremony which exists with acquaintance, and that which should always exist with the best of friends; the one prevents the growth of affection, the other preserves it in youth and age. Many foolish people make fine plantations, and forget to fence them; so the young trees are destroyed by the young cattle, and the bark of the forest trees is sometimes injured. You need not, dear Miss Beaufort, fence yourself round with strong palings in this family, where all have been early accustomed to mind their bouudaries. As for me, you see my intentions, or at least my theories, are good enough: if my practice be but half as good, you will be content, will you not? But theory was born in Brobdignag, and practice in Lilliput. So much the better for me.", EB In 1798 she and her father published, in joint authorship, "Practical Education," a large and miscellaneous work. The preface states that more than two-thirds of the book is hers. She writes this year: of the learned languages. The notes on the Dublin shoeblack's metaphorical language, I recollect, are chiefly his. "I have heard him tell that story with all the natural, indescribable Irish tones and gestures, idea. He excelled in imitating the Irish, because he never overstepped the modesty or the assurance of nature. He marked exquisitely the happy confidence, the shrewd wit of the people, without condescending to produce effect by caricature. "In the Monthly Review' for October, thereof which written language can give but a faint is this anecdote. After the King of Denmark, who is somewhat silly, had left Paris, a Frenchman, who was in company with the Danish ambassador, but did not know him, began to ridicule the King-Ma foi, il a une tête, une tête'-' Couronnée,' replied the ambassador, with presence of mind and politeness. My father, who was much delighted with this answer, asked Lovell, Henry, and Sneyd, without telling the right answer, what they would have said. "LOVELL: A head-and a heart, sir.' "And adds: "Tell me which answer you like The "Parent's Assistant" had been published two years before. Writing of it to her cousin, she says: "I beg, dear Sophy, that you will not call my little stories by the sublime title of my works; I shall else be ashamed when the little mouse comes forth." The first story in her peculiar vein is "Castle Rackrent," in 1800. The first edition was published without her name, "and its success was so triumphant that some one not only asserted that he was the author, but actually took the trouble to copy out several pages with corrections and erasures as if it was his original MS." In 1802, Maria writes from Paris: "Castle Rackrent has been translated into German, and we saw in a French book an extract from it, giving the wake, the confinement of Lady Cathcart, and sweeping the stairs with the wig, as common and universal occurrences in that extraordinary kingdom." "Belinda" and "Moral Tales" were published in 1801, and the "Essay on Irish Bulls," in conjunction with her father, in 1802. She says of it: "Mrs. Edgeworth relates that a gentleman much interested in improving the breed of Irish cattle, sent, on seeing the advertisement, for the work on Irish bulls: He was rather confounded by the appearance of the classical bull at the top of the first page, which I had designed from a gem, and when he began to read the book he threw it away in disgust; he had purchased it as secretary to the Irish Agricultural Society.' In the autumn of 1802 the family went to Paris. There "they seem to have known everybody worth knowing." Madame Recamier, La Harpe, Montmorenci, Kosciusko, are a few among many. She says of Madame Oudinot, Rousseau's Julie: "Julie is now seventy-two years of age, a thin woman in a little black bonnet. She appeared to me shockingly ugly; she squints so much that it is impossible to tell which way she is looking. But no sooner did I hear her speak than I began to like her; and no sooner was I seated beside her, than I began to find in her counteoance a most benevolent and agreeable expression. She entered into conversation immediately; her manner invited and could not fail to obtain confidence. She seems as gay and open-hearted as a girl of seventeen. It has been said of her that she not only never did any harm, but never suspected any. . . I wish I could at seventy-two be such a woman! "She told me that Rousseau, whilst he was writing so finely on education and leaving his own children in the Foundling Hospital, de"After Practical Education,' the next book fended himself with so much cloquence that which we published in partnership was the even those who blamed him in their hearts Essay on Irish Bulls.' The first design of could not find tongues to answer him. Once this essay was his. Uuder the semblance of at a dinner at Madame d'Oudinot's there was a attack, he wished to show the English public fine pyramid of fruit. Rousseau, in helping the eloquence, wit, and talents of the lower himself, took the peach, which formed the base classes of people in Ireland. Working zeal of the pyramid, and the rest fell immediately. ously upon the ideas which he suggested, some-Rousseau,' said she, that is what you always times, what was spoken by him, was afterwards do with all our systems, you pull down with a written by me; or, when I wrote my first single touch, but who will build up what you thoughts, they were corrected and improved by pull down?" I asked if he was grateful for all him; so that no book was ever written more the kindness shown to him? No, he was completely in partnership. ungrateful; he had a thousand bad qualities, but I turned my attention from them to his genius, and the good he had done mankind." On this, as on most subjects, whether light or serious, when we wrote together, it would now be difficult, almost impossible, to recollect, which thoughts originally were his, and which were mine. All passages, in which there are Latin quotations or classical allusions, must be his exclusively, because I am entirely ignorant We quote now from the reviewer : "The grand event of her-of every woman'slife came to pass at this period. On quitting Paris in March, 1803, she could say, for the first time, Ich habe gelebt und geliebet' (I have |