orders and forced marches for want of intelligence, and from that
indecision, which must always be the consequence of insufficient
information. Many days were spent in terror, and in fruitless wishes
for an English fleet. ... At last Ireland was providentially saved
by the change of the wind, which prevented the enemy from effecting
a landing on her coast.'

Another of Edgeworth's inventions was a one-wheeled carriage adapted
to go over narrow roads; it was made fast by shafts to the horse's
sides, and was furnished with two weights or counterpoises that hung
below the shafts. In this carriage he travelled to Birmingham and
astonished the country folk on the way.

I must now give a sketch of Edgeworth's matrimonial adventures. They
began after a strange fashion, when, at fifteen, he and some young
companions had a merry-making at his sister's marriage, and one of
the party putting on a white cloak as a surplice, proposed to marry
Richard to a young lady who was his favourite partner. With the door
key as a ring the mock parson gabbled over a few words of the
marriage service. When Richard's father heard of this mock marriage
he was so alarmed that he treated it seriously, and sued and got a
divorce for his son in the ecclesiastical court.

It was while visiting Dr. Darwin at Lichfield that Edgeworth made
some friendships which influenced his whole life. At the Bishop's
Palace, where Canon Seward lived, he first met Miss Honora Sneyd,
who was brought up as a daughter by Mrs. Seward. He was much struck
by her beauty and by her mental gifts, and says: 'Now for the first
time in my life, I saw a woman that equalled the picture of
perfection which existed in my imagination. I had long suffered much