Letter From Barbara Hofland PDF Download

Relating a conversation in which someone "...told me a friend of hers had met Miss Edgeworth at an evening party and was quite charmed with her & said she had never spent so pleasant a night. I hope she won't go for a good while yet. I see no reason why she should ever go again, she was born in England why should she not die there and honour the soil with her remains? I think exactly with you of her great value to us all;" commenting on news from "...a very sweet & clever young woman Miss Hook who is at Sheffield & tells me how great difficulty she has among her friends to get to an assembly & they are all so very puritanical, she says she is perpetually arguing on the lawfulness of this and that, in which she finds no difference. Thus playing cards is lawful for they play - dancing is a sin, they don't dance. Poor girl I wish she were in the house she is mistress of with a kind father who is always content if she is happy, but this is the way the world is in at this time, gaping at gnats and swallowing camels, paying tithe of mint & cummin [sic] but neglecting the weightier matters of the law;" saying she is pleased at the recipient's brother's recovery and asking to be remembered to Miss Emily & Miss Susan and adding "I wish you were all here we would have a rubber, less perfect perhaps than Mrs. Sarah Battle's, but there would be a bright fire & pleasant looks at all events among us - is not said Sarah one of Charles Lambs very best acquaintance? Please to love my unloved one & to remember that the publisher has cut clean out the best episode in the tale, for the which author is very angry but not the less obliged to you for taking her last child in tow, and that she is your truly affectionate / sincerely obliged / Barbara Hofland."