aged fifty-three, lost his third wife, and he married a fourth in the following May. The fourth wife, at first objected to, was young enough to be a companion and friend, and between her and Maria Edgeworth a fast friendship came to be established. In the year of her father’s fourth marriage Maria joined him in the production of two volumes on “Practical Education.” Then followed books for children, including “Harry and Lucy,” which had been begun by her father years before in partnership with his second wife, when Thomas Day began writing “Sandford and Merton,” with the original intention that it should be worked in as a part of the whole scheme.

In the year 1800 Miss Edgeworth, thirty-three years old, began her independent career as a novelist with “Castle Rackrent;” and from that time on, work followed work in illustration of the power of a woman of genius to associate quick wit and quick feeling with sound sense and a good reason for speaking. Sir Walter Scott in his frank way declared that he received an impulse from Miss Edgeworth’s example as a story-teller. In the general preface to his own final edition of the Waverley Novels he said that “Without being so presumptuous as to hope to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact, which pervade the works of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland—something which might introduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favourable light than they had been placed hitherto, and tend to procure sympathy for their virtues and indulgence for their foibles.”

Of the three stories in this volume, who—“Murad the Unlucky” and “The Limerick Gloves”—first appeared in three volumes of “Popular Tales,” which were first published in 1804, with a short introduction by Miss Edgeworth’s father. “Madame de Fleury” was written a few years later.

H. M.

 

MURAD THE UNLUCKY

CHAPTER I

It is well known that the grand seignior amuses himself by going at night, in disguise, through streets of Constantinople; as the caliph Haroun Alraschid used formerly to do in Bagdad.

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