only for moral improvement, but to exercise the best affections of the
human heart."

With one of the books mentioned by the _Monthly Review_--_Evenings at
Home_--Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards
format, to associate herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her
cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, "are printed and bound the same size as
_Evenings at Home_, and I am afraid you will dislike the title." Her
father had sent the book to press as the _Parent's Friend_, a name no
doubt suggested by the _Ami des Enfants_ of Berquin; but "Mr. Johnson
[the publisher]," continues Miss Edgeworth, "has degraded it into _The
Parent's Assistant_, which I dislike particularly, from association with
an old book of arithmetic called The _Tutor's Assistant_." The ground of
objection is not very formidable; but the _Parent's Assistant_ is
certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author's letters
we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her
father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was
greatly interested in education,--or, as he would have termed it,
practical education,--and long before this date, as early, indeed, as
May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a
London school, to write him a tale about the length of a _Spectator_;
upon the topic of "Generosity," to be taken from history or romance.
This was her first essay in fiction; and it was pronounced by the judge
to whom it was submitted,--in competition with a rival production by a
young gentleman from Oxford,--to be an excellent story, and extremely
well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat
damaging inquiry,--"But where's the Generosity?" The question cannot be
answered now, as the manuscript has not been preserved, though the
inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with
the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained