OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 113

To MRS. EDGEWORTH.
TRIM, Nov. 1, 1840.
I am perfect, dearest mother, so no more about it, and thank you from my heart and every component part of my precious self for all the care and successful care you have taken of me, your old petted nursling. Thank you and Mrs. Mitchell for the potted meat luncheon, and Mr. Tuite for his grapes,—Mary Anne and Charlotte had some. I was less tired than I could have expected when I reached Trim, and there was Mr. Butler on the steps ready to welcome us, and candles and firelight in the drawing-room so cheerful. I slept like a sleeping top. Harriet read out Ferdinand and Isabella, which, with all its chivalresque interest, I do like very much. I am sure Rosa's Spanish interest in the book will grow by that it feeds upon, and I am very glad that she who has such fresh genuine pleasure in literature should have this book, which is so beautifully written, because it is so well felt by the author. Poor kind man. I will write to Mr. Ticknor as soon as I come to Finis.
The birds got home well; but travelling, Harriet tells me, does not agree with them, because they cannot stick upon their perch, and it is a perpetual struggle between cling and jolt.
Nov. 10.
I enclose a note of Miss Crampton's and two notes of Lady Normanby's. I never read more unaffected, affectionate, wife-like letters. How gratifying they must be to Crampton, and it raises one's opinion of Lord Normanby himself to find he can so attach a woman and a wife.
The History of a Flirt, which Harriet is reading to me, is rather entertaining but not interesting—a new and ingenious idea of a flirt, who is not looking for establishment or match-making, and therefore her disinterestedness charms all the lords and gentlemen who have been used to match-making mothers and young-lady-hunters for titles, and under favour of this disinterestedness her insolence and faithlessness is passed over, while all the time she is in love with a captain with "soft Venetian eyes," as Mrs. Thrale used to say of Piozzi.
Nov. 16.
The ear-comforter or earwig is beautiful and comfortable, and is, I hear, as becoming to me as was the Chancellor's wig to Francis Forbes when he acted Of Age To-morrow. I am acting of age to-day, and very gay, and perhaps may arrive at years of discretion at eighty, if I live so long. I certainly wish to live till next month that I may see you all at home again. You know the classic distich, which my father pointed out and translated for me, which was over the entrance door of the Cross Keys inn, near Beighterton:
    If you are told you will die to-morrow you smile:
    If you are told you will die a month hence you will sigh.
I do not know where this may be in a book, but I know it is in human nature.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Mrs. Francis Edgeworth.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 112

To MRS. EDGEWORTH, IN LONDON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Aug. 25, 1839.
You will, I am sure, give me credit for having so well and pleasantly performed our visits—Rosa, Lucy, and Francis with me—to the Pakenhams and Pollards. Francis found Mr. Pollard very agreeable, and was charmed with Mrs. Pollard's manners and conversation. We called on Mrs. Dease on our return, and walked in her garden, in which, in all my seventy years, I never walked before, and saw huge bunches of crimson Indian pinks, some of which are now in my garden, and well doing there.
In the morning, before we went to Kinturk, came a note from a gentleman at the White Hart, Edgeworthstown, waiting for an answer: an American medical professor, Dr. Gibson. It was very unlucky that I was engaged to go out—irrevocably settled: however, I sat two hours and a half with Dr. Gibson, and very clever and agreeable I found him.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 106

MARIA to MISS RUXTON.
LOUGH GLYN, Sept. 16, 1836.
You may suppose how I felt the kindness of your note. You are now my friend of longest standing and dearest parentage in this world; and in this world, in which I have lived nearly three quarters of a century, I have found nothing one quarter so well worth living for as old friends.
We go to Moore Hall to-morrow. We had here yesterday a party at dinner, all exquisite in their way; Lord and Lady Dillon and Miss Dillon, Lord Oranmore and his son, Mr. Brown, and two Miss Stricklands and their brothers; and coloured fireworks in the evening: of all of which you shall hear more when we meet. Breakfast-bell ringing in my ears.
March 5, 1837.
The last accounts will have prepared you—more prepared, perhaps, than I was, for hope had lived in spite of reason when life was gone—your beloved and most amiable, angelic-tempered goddaughter is gone. She preserved her charming mind quite clear all through, and had her mother with her, and the comfort of knowing that her children were in the care of Mr. Butler and Harriet.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Her sister Sophy. Mrs. Barry Fox, who died March 1.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 111

To MISS MARGARET RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Nov. 8, 1838.
You are the first person I write to upon returning from church after the accomplishment of Honora and Captain Beaufort's marriage. Captain Beaufort was affected more than any man I ever saw in the same circumstances, yet in the most manly manner. Aunt Mary went to church, as she had intended: they had both received her blessing, kneeling as to a mother, the evening before in her own room. Lestock and Barry were at the church door, to hand her up the aisle. Old Mr. Keating was there, excellent, warm-hearted man; and Mr. Butler performed the ceremony. The bride and bridegroom went off from the church door, and are, I suppose, by this time, five o'clock, at Trim.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 107

To MISS MARGARET RUXTON.
EDGEWORTHSTOWN, Dec. 17, 1837.
We are very anxious indeed to hear of Sophy: the last account Harriet gave was quite alarming. I see Richard going about the house with his watch in his hand to feel Sophy's pulse, and looking so anxious. How glad he must be that he had returned home, and to Sophy what a comfort it must be, to have the certainty of his affection, and to have the earliest companion of her childhood and her manly friend beside her now! I will go to her instantly if she desires it.
I long to hear that you have had, and that you like, the Memoirs of Mr. Smedley. I am sure that, when Sophy is well enough to hear or to read anything, that book will be the very thing for her.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Miss Ruxton, Miss Edgeworth's cousin and dearest friend, died at Black Castle, December 30.
# Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth/Volume 2/Letter 108

To MRS. EDGEWORTH.
TRIM, July 25, 1838.
Mrs. Lazarus's death did indeed shock and grieve me. But it is, as you say, the condition, the doom of advancing, advanced age, to see friend after friend go; but in proportion as it detaches one from life, it still more makes us value the friends we have left. And continually, at every fresh blow, I really wonder, and am thankful, most truly thankful, that I have so many, so much left.

## Footnotes

* ↑ Formerly Miss Mordecai.
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1765

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.
| Fifth Series, Volume XXII. | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | No. 1765. — April 13, 1878. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | From Beginning Vol. CXXXVII. |
CONTENTS. :
| I. | Equality. By Matthew Arnold, | Fortnightly Review, | 67 |
| II. | Erica. Part XVIII. Translated for The Living Age, from the German of | Frau von Ingersleben, | 80 |
| III. | The English Language as Spoken and Written. By Francis W. Newman, | Contemporary Review, | 94 |
| IV. | Within the Precincts. By Mrs. Oliphant. Part V., | Advance Sheets, | 103 |
| V. | On the Decay of Fine Manners, | Cornhill Magazine, | 110 |
| VI. | On Teaching English. By Francis W. Newman, | Fraser's Magazine, | 115 |
| VII. | Madonna Dunya. By Emily Pfeiffer, | Contemporary Review, | 117 |
| VIII. | The Last of the Gases, | Nature, | 121 |
| IX. | The Centenary of Voltaire, | Pall Mall Gazette, | 123 |
| X. | The Use and Abuse of Princes, | Tatler, | 125 |
| XI. | The Green Flag of the Prophet, | Chambers' Journal, | 126 |
POETRY. :
| Two Cities, | 66 | Hacia Casa, | 66 |
| A Strange Singer, | 66 | Madonna Dunya, | 117 |
| Homeward, | 66 | |
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1765/Two Cities

* TWO CITIES.
* Side by side rise the two great cities,
* Afar on the traveller's sight;
* One, black with the dust of labor,
* One, solemnly still and white.
* Apart, and yet together,
* They are reached in a dying breath,
* But a river flows between them,
* And the river's name is — death.
* Apart, and yet together,
* Together and yet apart,
* As the child may die at midnight
* On the mother's living heart.
* So close come the two great cities,
* With only the river between;
* And the grass in the one is trampled,
* But the grass in the other is green.
* The hills with uncovered foreheads,
* Like the disqiples meet,
* While ever the flowing water
* Is washing their hallowed feet.
* And out on the glassy ocean,
* The sails in the golden gloom
* Seem to me but moving shadows
* Of the white enmarbled tomb.
* Anon, from the hut and the palace,
* Anon, from early till late,
* They come, rich and poor together,
* Asking alms at thy beautiful gate.
* And never had life a guerdon
* So welcome to all to give,
* In the land where the living are dying,
* As the land where the dead may live.
* O silent city of refuge
* On the way to the city o'erhead!
* The gleam of thy marble milestones
* Tells the distance we are from the dead.
* Full of feet, but a city untrodden,
* Full of hands, but a city unbuilt,
* Full of strangers who know not even
* That their life-cup lies there spilt.
* They know not the tomb from the palace,
* They dream not they ever have died:
* God be thanked they never will know it
* Till they live on the other side!
* From the doors that death shut coldly
* On the face of their last lone woe:
* They came to thy glades for shelter
* Who had nowhere else to go.
* Rev. S. Miller Hagerman.
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1765/Hacia Casa

* HACIA CASA.
* "Luego te resta un descanso."
* Lento el dia va declinando al ocaso;
* El brillante sol decae, y su levante
* Aguardan las sierras lejanas; con alegre paso
* El cabrero se retira con sus rebanos delante:
* O alma mia, tan oprimida y lasa,
* Confortate, que la noche lleva á todos á casa.
* La gaviota aligera se refugia á su nido;
* Las olas menguantes se rompen en la ribera;
* Los barcos sol-dorados hácia tierra han ido;
* Las sombras se ofuscan sobre el mar y la tierra:
* Aquiétate, mi alma, tu hora tambien ven-dra,
* Que Dios una noche á casa te guiara.
* C. F. B.
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1765/Homeward

* HOMEWARD.
* "There remaineth a rest."
* [The following poem, which was published in No. 1750 of The Living Age, is reprinted by request, together with a Spanish translation of the same, which appeared in the Boston Advertiser. Ed.]
* The day dies slowly in the western sky;
* The sunset splendor fades, and wan and cold
* The far peaks wait the sunrise; cheerily
* The goatherd calls his wanderers to their fold:
* My weary soul, that fain would cease to roam,
* Take comfort; evening bringeth all things home.
* Homeward the swift-winged seagull takes its flight;
* The ebbing tide breaks softly on the sand;
* The red-sailed boats draw shoreward for the night;
* The shadows deepen over sea and land:
* Be still, my soul; thine hour shall also come;
* Behold, one evening God shall lead thee home.
* H. M.
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1766/Death's Changed Face

* DEATH'S CHANGED FACE.
* Sweet Saviour, since the time thy human feet
* Trod thirty years our parched and dusty ways,
* How hath the wilderness of life grown sweet
* With flowers and warbled praise!
* How hath the heavy mist that wrapt us round,
* The weary mist of tears and soul-wrung sighs,
* Lifted, and bared to us the blue profound
* Of God's far quiet skies!
* And more than all, how hath a gracious change,
* To poor scared men that slunk with fluttering breath,
* Passed o'er the face, that erst was stern and strange,
* Of thy strong angel, Death!
* Lo, through the mazes of a tangled wood,
* Nowhither bound, we groped through vistas dim,
* While shadowlike amid the shadows stood
* Old Death, the archer grim.
* We deemed his face was pitiless and blind;
* Shot all at random seemed each whirring dart,
* Yet none did fail a resting-place to find
* In some wrung, quivering heart.
* And there, with writhen limbs and sightless stare,
* Down in the drenched grass the victim lay,
* What erst was man, erect and tall and fair,
* Now shrunk and fading clay.
* And over him in dull and hopeless pain
* The mourners stood, sore stricken and perplext:
* "He lieth prone; he will not rise again;
* And who shall fall the next?"
* O sweet changed face! We see, we know him now, —
* Rent the thick mist that blurred our straining ken, —
* Death: of all angels round the throne that bow,
* Most pitiful to men!
* Through the dusk chamber where the watchers weep
* Slowly he moves with calm and noiseless tread,
* And o'er the weary one that longs for sleep
* He bends his gracious head.
* "Poor eyes!" he saith, "long have ye wept and waked;
* I come to bid your tears and vigils cease."
* "Poor heart!" he saith, "long hast thou yearned and ached;
* I come to give thee peace."
* "Be of good cheer," he saith, "world-weary waif.
* One sharp, swift step, and all the way is trod:
* Through the heaped darkness I will lead thee safe
* To the great light of God."
* A sharp, sweet silence smites the tingling ears.
* How snow-like falls the peace upon his brow!
* Hark! happy mourners, smiling through their tears,
* Whisper, "He sleepeth now!"
* Good Words.Frederick Langbridge.
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1764/My Wife

* MY WIFE.
* My little wife is out beyond the burn,
* I see her parasol behind the fir,
* And here am I inditing verse to her
* Ere she return.
* That pretty bird is happy there conceal'd,
* This fragrant chamber smiles a peaceful smile, —
* What joy to sing the joys of home — the while
* My joy's afield!
* My spouse is mild — she's meek as any nun,
* And yet her spiritual calm is such …
* Somehow one's always feeling she is much
* Too good for one.
* She thinks I'm wise and handsome — 'tis her creed.
* I wonder am I either! On my word
* Sometimes I've wonder'd "an my bonnie bird"
* Think so indeed:
* Perhaps! for she my homage ne'er repels;
* Perhaps I might have loved her half a life,
* Perhaps — had she but been the little wife
* Of some one else.
* But why should I complain of cross or cares?
* While entertaining her (who won't complain)
* It may be I an angel entertain
* — And unawares.
* Cornhill Magazine.Frederick Locker.
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1765/A Strange Singer

* A STRANGE SINGER.
* Joy's the shyest bird
* Mortal ever heard;
* Listen rapt and silent when he sings;
* Do not seek to see,
* Lest the vision be
* But a flutter of departing wings.
* Straight down out of heaven
* Drops the fiery leaven,
* Beating, burning, rising in his breast;
* Never, never long
* Canst thou bear the song,
* All too high for labor or for rest.
* Hope can sit and sing
* With a folded wing,
* Long contented in a narrow cage;
* Patience on the nest,
* Hour by hour will rest,
* Brooding tender things in hermitage.
* Singers true and sweet,
* Mockers bright and fleet,
* Close about thy door they flit and call;
* One that will not stay
* Draws thy heart away;
* Listen! listen! It is more than all.
* SpectatorCarl Spenser.
# Littell's Living Age/Volume 137/Issue 1766

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.
| Fifth Series, Volume XXII. | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ | No. 1766. — April 20, 1878. | $\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$ | From Beginning Vol. CXXXVII. |
CONTENTS. :
| I. | A Broad-Church Bishop, | Church Quarterly Review, | 131 |
| II. | Macleod of Dare. By William Black. Part VI., | Advance Sheets, | 143 |
| III. | Mr. Froude's "Life and Times of Thomas Becket". By Edward A. Freeman, | Contemporary Review, | 150 |
| IV. | Erica. Part XIX. Translated for The Living Age, from the German of | Frau von Ingersleben, | 164 |
| V. | Story of George Cruirshank, | Chambers' Journal, | 178 |
| VI. | The Analogies of Plant and Animal Life, | Nature, | 182 |
| VII. | The Tobacco-Tax in Germany, | Spectator, | 187 |
| VIII. | The Gardener Bird, | Spectator, | 189 |
| IX. | The Legitimate Sphere of Agnosticism, | Spectator, | 192 |
POETRY. :
| Death's Changed Face, | 130 | The Explorer, | 130 |
# Lyrical Ballads (1798)/The Complaint of a forsaken Indian Woman

THE COMPLAINT
OF A FORSAKEN
INDIAN WOMAN.
page
THE COMPLAINT,
&c.
# Lyrical Ballads (1798)/The Idiot Boy

THE
IDIOT BOY.
THE
IDIOT BOY.
# Lyrical Ballads (1798)/The Tables turned; an Evening Scene, on the same subject

THE TABLES TURNED;
AN EVENING SCENE, ON THE SAME SUBJECT.
# Lyrical Ballads (1798)/The Mad Mother

THE
MAD MOTHER.
# Lyrical Ballads (1798)/The Dungeon

THE DUNGEON.
And this place our forefathers made for man! This is the process of our love and wisdom, To each poor brother who offends against us— Most innocent, perhaps—and what if guilty? Is this the only cure? Merciful God! Each pore and natural outlet shrivell'd up By ignorance and parching poverty, His energies roll back upon his heart, And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison, They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot; Then we call in our pamper'd mountebanks— And this is their best cure! uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears, And savage faces, at the clanking hour, Seen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon, By the lamp's dismal twilight! So he lies Circled with evil, till his very soul Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed By sights of ever more deformity!
With other ministrations thou, O nature! Healest thy wandering and distempered child: Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets, Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters, Till he relent, and can no more endure To be a jarring and a dissonant thing, Amid this general dance and minstrelsy; But, bursting into tears, wins back his way, His angry spirit healed and harmonized By the benignant touch of love and beauty.
Cite error: <ref> tags exist for a group named "errata", but no corresponding <references group="errata"/> tag was found
Cite error: <ref> tags exist for a group named "errata", but no corresponding <references group="errata"/> tag was found
Cite error: <ref> tags exist for a group named "errata", but no corresponding <references group="errata"/> tag was found
# Lyrical Ballads (1798)/The Convict

THE CONVICT.
# Lyrical Ballads (1800)/Volume 2/Song

SONG.
She dwelt among th' untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A Maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love.
A Violet by a mossy stone Half-hidden from the Eye! —Fair, as a star when only one Is shining in the sky!
She liv'd unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceas'd to be; But she is in her Grave, and Oh! The difference to me.
# Lyrical Ballads (1800)/Volume 2/Nutting

NUTTING.
—————————It seems a day, One of those heavenly days which cannot die, When forth I sallied from our cottage-door, And with a wallet o'er my shoulder slung, A nutting crook in hand, I turn'd my steps Towards the distant woods, a Figure quaint, Trick'd out in proud disguise of Beggar's weeds Put on for the occasion, by advice And exhortation of my frugal Dame. ​Motley accoutrements! of power to smile At thorns, and brakes, and brambles, and, in truth, More ragged than need was. Among the woods, And o'er the pathless rocks, I forc'd my way Until, at length, I came to one dear nook Unvisited, where not a broken bough Droop'd with its wither'd leaves, ungracious sign Of devastation, but the hazels rose Tall and erect with milk-white clusters hung, A virgin scene!—A little while I stood, Breathing with such suppression of the heart As joy delights in; and with wise restraint Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed The banquet, or beneath the trees I sate Among the flowers, and with the flowers I play'd; A temper known to those, who, after long And weary expectation, have been bless'd With sudden happiness beyond all hope.— —Perhaps it was a bower beneath whose leaves The violets of five seasons re-appear ​And fade, unseen by any human eye, Where fairy water-breaks do murmur on For ever, and I saw the sparkling foam, And with my cheek on one of those green stones That, fleec'd with moss, beneath the shady trees, Lay round me scatter'd like a flock of sheep, I heard the murmur and the murmuring sound, In that sweet mood when pleasure loves to pay Tribute to ease, and, of its joy secure The heart luxuriates with indifferent things, Wasting its kindliness on stocks and stones, And on the vacant air. Then up I rose, And dragg'd to earth both branch and bough, with crash And merciless ravage; and the shady nook Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower Deform'd and sullied, patiently gave up Their quiet being: and unless I now Confound my present feelings with the past, Even then, when from the bower I turn'd away, Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings ​I felt a sense of pain when I beheld The silent trees and the intruding sky.—
Then, dearest Maiden! move along these shades In gentleness of heart with gentle hand Touch,——for there is a Spirit in the woods.
# Lyrical Ballads (1800)/Volume 2/Rural Architecture

RURAL ARCHITECTURE.
There's George Fisher, Charles Fleming, and Reginald Shore, Three rosy-cheek'd School-boys, the highest not more Than the height of a Counsellor's bag; To the top of Great How did it please them to climb, And there they built up without mortar or lime A Man on the peak of the crag.
They built him of stones gather'd up as they lay, They built him and christen'd him all in one day, An Urchin both vigorous and hale; And so without scruple they call'd him Ralph Jones. Now Ralph is renown'd for the length of his bones; The Magog of Legberthwaite dale.
​Just half a week after the Wind sallied forth, And, in anger or merriment, out of the North Coming on, with a terrible pother, From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away. And what did these School-boys?—The very next day They went and they built up another.
—Some little I've seen of blind boisterous works In Paris and London, 'mong Christians or Turks, Spirits busy to do and undo: At remembrance whereof my blood sometimes will flag —Then, light-hearted Boys, to the top of the Crag! And I'll build up a Giant with you.
Great How is a single and conspicuous hill, which rises towards the foot of Thirl-mere, on the western side of the beautiful dale of Legberthwaite, along the high road between Keswick and Ambleside.
# Lyrical Ballads (1800)/Volume 2/Song for the wandering Jew

SONG
FOR THE
WANDERING JEW.
Though the torrents from their fountains Roar down many a craggy steep, Yet they find among the mountains Resting-places calm and deep.
Though almost with eagle pinion O'er the rocks the Chamois roam, Yet he has some small dominion Which no doubt he calls his home.
If on windy days the Raven Gambol like a dancing skiff, Not the less he loves his haven On the bosom of the cliff.
​Though the Sea-horse in the ocean Own no dear domestic cave; Yet he slumbers without motion On the calm and silent wave.
Day and night my toils redouble! Never nearer to the goal, Night and day, I feel the trouble, Of the Wanderer in my soul.