We, who knew HER so long and so well, who have lived in the house of happiness with THEM, can hardly imagine, much less describe, the lonely blank that is left-more particularly in the heart of the venerable lady, who must have deeply felt the want of object, the want of counsel, the want of sympathy-the want of one who filled her thoughts from morning till night, either to share her sorrows or enjoyments, and make up by unceasing love and pity, the one for the other, the heavy losses they both sustained, particularly within the last few years by the death of Mrs. Edgeworth's beloved children—almost, if not quite, as dear to the one as to the other; but we can picture the mourning village, when she was carried within that church, and laid in her father's tomb, beneath the shadow of the spire, which tells of his invention and perseverance, as well as his desire to add to the beauty of the Christian church of his own parish; we can fancy the wail of the weeping children of the schools, and the utter desolation which reigns in that once cheerful library. All that relates

she completed her eighty-second birthday. It shows how bright and kind she was ever, and to the last :

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My dear Mrs. Hall,-Your cordial warm-hearted note, was the very pleasantest I received on my birthday, except those from my own family.

'I am truly obliged to you for it, and quite touched by your kind remembrance. 'Mrs. Edgeworth felt it as I do, and so did a sister of mine, whom you do not know, but whom you would like very much if you did know her, Mrs. Butler-the "Harriette Edgeworth "justly described in Sir Walter Scott's letters.

'I hope you and Mr. Hall will revisit Ireland one of these days, and that you will make your way again to Edgeworthstown. You must not delay long if you mean to see me again; remember, you have just congratulated me on my eighty-second birthday.

'I wish you would be so very kind as to give me as a birthday present yours and Mr. Hall's third volume of "Ireland." I have only one number of it, that which cost you so much thought and care to word; and which gratified me and my family so much, from the manner you mentioned us, saying nothing we could wish unsaid.

'I am ashamed to beg this volume from you, but I do so wish to have it from the kind author, that I cannot refrain from making this request. If there be any of mine that you would accept, or if your dear little girl would like to have a set of my little books, just now republished, let me know and I will have them sent to you.'

Our 'little girl' rejoiced as much at this prospect as we should have done at her age; but the following little circumstance marks the charming mind of the giver. The books came from the London publisher's, but Miss Edgeworth had enclosed him, written with her own hand on slips of paper, "To Mrs. S. C. Hall's dear good little girl. From Maria Edgeworth, in her eighty-third year." And these were carefully pasted, by her direction, in each volume.

to this honoured and honourable family, is becoming matter of history; and in a short space of time, hundreds who have learned all the good that books can teach from those imperishable monuments of Maria Edgeworth's zeal and industry in every good cause, will make pilgrimages to her shrine -the neutral ground of Ireland-where all may worship, without idolatry, the ESSENCE of as pure, as high a nature as ever ascended in the spirit of faith to the throne of the Supreme.

THE GARDEN OF SIR THOMAS MORE.

HILE living in the neighbourhood of Chelsea, we determined to look upon the few broken walls that once enclosed the residence of Sir Thomas More-a man, who despite the bitterness inseparable from a persecuting age, was of most wonderful goodness as well as intellectual power. We first read over the memories of him preserved by Erasmus, Hoddesdon, Roper, Aubrey, his

own namesake, and others. It is pleasant to muse over the past,pleasant to know that much of malice and bigotry has departed, to return no more, that the prevalence of a spirit which could render even Sir Thomas More unjust, and, to seeming, cruel, is passing away. Though we do implicitly believe there would be no lack of great hearts, and brave hearts, at the present day, if it were necessary to bring them to the teststill, there have been few men like unto him. It is a pleasant, and a profitable task, so to sift through past ages, as to separate the wheat from the chaff,-to see, when the feelings of party and prejudice sink to their proper insignificance, how the morally great stands forth in its own dignity, bright, glorious, and everlasting. St. Evremond sets forth the firmness and constancy of Petronius Arbiter in his last moments, and imagines he discovers in them a softer nobility of mind and resolution, than in the deaths of Seneca, Cato, or Socrates himself; but Addison says, and we

cannot but think truly, that if he was so well pleased with gaiety of humour in a dying man, he might have found a much more noble instance of it in Sir Thomas More, who died upon a point of religion, and is respected as a martyr by that side for which he suffered. What was

pious philosophy in this extraordinary man, might seem phrensy in any one who does not resemble him as well in the cheerfulness of his temper as in the sanctity of his life and manners.'

Oh, that some such man as he were to sit upon our woolsack now; what would the world think, if when the mighty oracle commanded the next cause to come on, the reply should be, Please your good lordship, there is no other!' Well might the smart epigrammatist write :—

When MORE some time had Chancellor been,

NO MORE Suits did remain ;

The same shall never MORE be seen,

Till MORE be there again!

We mused over the history of his time until we slept-and dreamed: and first in our dream we saw a fair meadow, and it was sprinkled over with white daisies, and a bull was feeding therein; and as we looked upon him he grew fatter and fatter, and roared in the wantonness of power and strength, so that the earth trembled; and he plucked the branches off the trees, and trampled on the ancient enclosures of the meadow, and as he stormed, and bellowed and destroyed, the daisies became human heads, and the creature flung them about and warmed his hoofs in the hot blood that flowed from them; and we grew sick and sorry at heart, and thought, is there no one to slay the destroyer? And when we looked again, the Eighth Harry was alone in the meadow; and, while many heads were lying upon the grass, some kept perpetually bowing before him, while others sung his praises as wise, just, and merciful. trumpet ringing its scarlet music through the air, and we stood in the old tilt-yard at Whitehall, and the pompous Wolsey, the bloated King, the still living Holbein, the picturesque Surrey, the Aragonian Catherine, the gentle Jane, the butterfly Anne Bullen, the coarse-seeming but wisethinking Ann of Cleves, the precise Catherine Howard, and the stouthearted Catherine Parr, passed us so closely by, that we could have touched

Then we heard a

their garments-then a bowing troop of Court gallants came on-others whose names and actions you may read of in history-and then the hero of our thoughts, Sir Thomas More-well dressed, for it was a time of pageants-was talking somewhat apart to his pale-faced friend Erasmus, while Son Roper,' as the Chancellor loved to call his son-in-law, stood watchfully and respectfully a little on one side. Even if we had never seen the pictures Holbein painted of his first patron, we should have known him by the bright benevolence of his aspect, the singular purity of his

complexion, his penetrating yet gentle eyes, and the incomparable grandeur with which virtue and independence dignified even an indifferent figure. His smile was so catching that the most broken-hearted were won by it to forget their sorrows; and his voice, low and sweet though it was, was so distinct, that we heard it above all the coarse jests, loud music, and trumpet calls of the vain and idle crowd. And while we listened, we awoke; resolved next day to make our Pilgrimage, perfectly satisfied at the outset, that though no fewer than four houses in Chelsea contend for the honour of his residence, Doctor King's arguments in favour of the site. being the same as that of Beaufort House-upon the greater part of which now stands Beaufort-row-are the most conclusive; those who are curious