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My father never forgot this passage, and acted on it years afterwards.' It was not Henry who was taken first, but Charlotte, who was 'fresh as a rose' on her first tour abroad.

In April 1807 she died of the same disease as her sisters, and about two years after her brother Henry followed her to the grave.
It needed a brave heart to bear up under such sorrows, but Edgeworth, though he felt them keenly, would not sink into the lethargy of grief, but roused himself to work for the public good.
He was on the board appointed to inquire into the education of the people of Ireland, and two of his papers on the subject were printed in the reports of the Commissioners; he also drew up the plan of a school for Edgeworth Town, which was afterwards carried into execution by his son, Lovell; and at this time he was writing his Memoirs, a task which was interrupted by a severe illness in 1809.
He had hardly recovered from this before he was engaged in the Government survey of bogs, and Maria writes:--'It was late in the year, and the weather unfavourable.

In laying out and verifying the work of the surveyors employed, he was usually out from daybreak to sunset, often fifteen hours without food, traversing on foot, with great bodily exertion, wastes and deserts of bog, so wet and dangerous as to be scarcely passable at that season, even by the common Irish best used to them.