Mr. Edgeworth, having also lost his third wife, Elizabeth, is now the husband of a fourth, a daughter of the reverend Dr. Beaufort of Ireland. He had four children by his first; a son, who of late years died in America; Miss Edgeworth, the celebrated writer of Stories for Children, and Moral Tales for Young People, &c.; Miss Anna, married to the ingenious Dr. Beddoes of Bristol; and Miss Emmeline, married to Mr. King, surgeon of the same place. Honora left him an infant girl and boy, when she died in the year 1780. The former inherited her mother's name, her beauty, and her malady, and died of consumption at sixteen. The amiable son yet lives, with fine talents, but infirm health. By his third wife, Elizabeth, he has several children; and by the present, two or three. From Mr. Edgeworth's large family elaborate systems of infantile education have proceeded: of them the author of these memoirs cannot speak, as she has never seen them. Other compositions, which are said to be humorous and brilliant, are from the same source. CHAP. II IT is now perhaps more than time to resume the recollected circumstances of Dr. Darwin's life. van After Dr. Small and Mr. Michell ished from the earth, and Mr. Day and Mr. Edgeworth, in the year 1772, left the Darwinian sphere, the present sir Brooke Boothby became an occasional inhabitant of Lichfield; sought, on every possibility, the conversation of Dr. Darwin, and obtained his lasting friendship. Sir Brooke had not less poetic fancy than Mr. Day, and even more external elegance than Mr. Edgeworth possessed when he won Honora's heart; elegance, which time, its general foe, has to this hour but little tarnished in the frame of sir Brooke Boothby. A votary to botanic science, a deep reasoner, and a clear-sighted politician, is sir Brooke Boothby, as his convincing refutation of that splendid, dazzling, and misleading sophistry, Burke on the Fal French Revolution, has proved. Ever to be lamented is it, that national pride, and jealousy, made our efficient senate, and a large majority of people in these kingdoms, unable to discern the fallacy which sir Brooke's answer unveiled. lacy, which has eventually overthrown the balance of power in Europe; built up by the strong cement of opposition, the Republic's menacing and commanding tower, and wasted in combat with the phantom, Jacobinism, the nerves and sinews of defence against the time when real danger may assault Great Britain. About the period at which sir Brooke first sought Dr. Darwin, sought him, also, Mr. Munday of Marketon, whose exertions, as a public magistrate, have through life been most benignly sedulous and wise; with whom "The fair ey'd Virtues in retirement dwell;" and whose Needwood Forest' is one of the most beautiful local poems that has been written. Its landscapes vivid and appropriate; its episodes sweet and interesting; its machinery well fancied and original; its numbers spirited, correct, and harmonious; while an infusion of sweet and gentle morality pervades the whole, and renders it dear to the heart as to the eye and ear. Great is the loss to poetic literature, that, of this delightful composition, only a few copies were privately printed, for presents to the author's friends and acquaintance; that he cannot overcome his reluctance to expose it to the danger of illiberal criticism from some of the self-elected censors in every periodical publication. The public imagines, that, on each subjcet discussed in a review and magazine, it obtains the joint opinion of a set of learned men, employed to appreciate the value of publications.... That in every such work many writers are engaged is true; yet is it no less true that in each seperate tract the opinion is merely individual on every various theme. One person is appointed to review the medical, another the chirurgical, another the clerical, another the historical, another the philosophical articles, another the ethics in prose, and another the poetry; and each criticises singly, and unassisted, in his appointed range The most distinguished of Dr. Darwin's scientific friends, who visited him from a distance when he lived in Lichfield, have now been enumerated. He once thought inoculation for the measles might, as in the small-pox, materially soften the disease; and after the patriotic example of lady Mary Wortley Montague, he made the trial in his own family, upon his youngest son, Robert, now Dr. Darwin of Shrewsbury, and upon an infant daughter, who died within her first year. Each had, in consequence, the disease so severely, as to repel, in their father's mind, all future desire of repeating the experiment. In the year 1768, Dr. Darwin met with an accident of irretrievable injury in the human frame. His propensity to mechanics had unfortunately led him to construct a very singular carriage. It was a platform, with a seat fixed upon a very high pair of wheels, and supported in the front, upon the back of the horse, by means of a kind of probos. cis, which, forming an arch, reached over the hind quarters of the horse, and passed through a ring, placed on an upright piece of iron, which worked in a socket, fixed in the saddle. The horse could thus move from one side of the road to the other, quartering, as it is called, at the will of the driver, whose constant attention was necessarily employed to regulate a piece of machinery contrived, but not well contrived for that purpose. From this whim-* sical carriage the Doctor was several times thrown, and the last time he used it, had the misfortune, from a similar accident, to break the patella of his |