Edgeworth wrote a long letter about scientific matters to Darwin, and kept his most important news to the last: 'I am going to be married to a young lady of small fortune and large accomplishments,--compared with my age, much youth (not quite thirty), and more prudence--some beauty, more sense--uncommon talents, more uncommon temper,--liked by my family, loved by me.

If I can say all this three years hence, shall not I have been a fortunate, not to say a wise man ?' Maria adds: 'A few days after the preceding letter was written, we heard that a conspiracy had been discovered in Dublin, that the city was under arms, and its inhabitants in the greatest terror.

Dr.
Beaufort and his family were there; my father, who was at Edgeworth Town, set out immediately to join them.
'On his way he met an intimate friend of his; one stage they travelled together, and a singular conversation passed.

This friend, who as yet knew nothing of my father's intentions, began to speak of the marriage of some other person, and to exclaim against the folly and imprudence of any man's marrying in such disturbed times.

"No man of honour, sense or feeling, would incumber himself with a wife at such a time!" My father urged that this was just the time when a man of honour, sense, or feeling would wish, if he loved a woman, to unite his fate with hers, to acquire the right of being her protector.
'The conversation dropped there.