to him also an amusing sketch of some other collateral members of the
family; the fine animated old lady, who immediately gets him to explain
the reason why a concave mirror inverts while a convex mirror leaves
them erect; the young ladies, one of whom was particularly anxious to
persuade him that the roundness of the planets was produced by friction,
perhaps by their being shaken together like marbles in a bag.

There is also an interesting letter from Sir W. Hamilton at
Edgeworthstown on 23rd September 1829. Wordsworth is also staying there.
'After some persuasion Francis and I succeed in engaging Mr. Wordsworth
in many very interesting conversations. Miss Edgeworth has had for some
time a very serious illness, but she was able to join us for dinner
the day that I arrived, and she exhibited in her conversations with Mr.
Wordsworth a good deal of her usual brilliancy; she also engaged
Mr. Marshall in some long conversations upon Ireland, and even Mr.
Marshall's son, whose talent for silence seems to be so very profound,
was thawed a little on Monday evening, and discussed after tea the
formation of the solar system. Miss Edgeworth tells me that she is at
last employed in writing for the public after a long interval, but does
not expect to have her work soon ready for publication.' [There is a
curious criticism of Miss Edgeworth by Robert Hall, the great preacher,
which should not be passed over. 'As to her style,' he says, 'she is
simple and elegant, content to convey her thoughts in their most plain
and natural form, that is indeed the perfection of style. . . . In point
of tendency,' he continues, 'I should class her books among the most
irreligious I ever read. . . . She does not attack religion nor inveigh
against it, but makes it appear unnecessary by exhibiting perfect virtue
without it. . . . No works ever produced so bad an effect on my own mind
as hers.']