Miss Edgeworth. 205 



orator, or of distrust and contempt of the taste of those 

 whom he is trying thus to captivate. 



I suppose nobody yet has completely mastered the 

 tides, therefore I may well content myself with my in- 

 ability to comprehend what relates to them. But instead 

 of plaguing } r ou with an endless enumeration of my diffi- 

 culties, I ha5 better tell you some of the passages which 



gave me, ignoramus as I am, peculiar pleasure 



I am afraid I shall transcribe your whole book if I go 

 on to tell you all that has struck me, and you would not 

 thank me for that you, who have so little vanity, and 

 so much to do better with your time than to read my 

 ignorant admiration. But pray let me mention to you 

 a few of the passages that amused my imagination 

 particularly, viz., 1st, the inhabitant of Pallas going 

 round his world or who might go in five or six 

 hours in one of our steam carriages ; 2nd, the moderate- 

 sized man who would weigh two tons at the surface 

 of the sun and who would weigh only a few pounds 

 at the surface of the four new planets, and would be 

 so light as to find it impossible to stand from the 

 excess of muscular force ! I think a very entertaining 

 dream might be made of a man's visit to the sun and 

 planets these ideas are all like dreamy feelings when one 

 is a little feverish. I forgot to mention (page 58) a passage 

 on the propagation of sound. It is a beautiful sentence, 

 as well as a sublime idea, " so that at a very small height 

 above the surface of the earth, the noise of the tempest 

 ceases and the thunder is heard no more in those bound- 

 less regions, where the heavenly bodies accomplish their 

 periods in eternal and sublime silence." 



Excuse me in my trade of sentence-monger, and believe 



