This high-spirited lady lived to be ninety years
old, and left a numerous family. One grandson was the Abbe Edgeworth,
known in France as De Firmont, such being the alteration of Fairymount
on French lips. It was he who, at the peril of his own life, attended
Louis XVI. to the guillotine, and thus connected his name so closely
with the royal cause that when his cousin Richard Lovell Edgeworth, of
Edgeworths-town, visited France several years after, the presence of a
person so called was deemed perilous to the rising power of Napoleon.
This latter Mr. Edgeworth was the father of Maria, whose works we hope
are well known to our young readers.
The good Chevalier Bayard was wont to mourn over the introduction of
firearms, as destructive of chivalry; and certainly the steel-clad
knight, with barbed steed, and sword and lance, has disappeared from the
battle-field; but his most essential qualities, truth, honor,
faithfulness, mercy, and self-devotion, have not disappeared with him,
nor can they as long as Christian men and women bear in mind that
'greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his
friend'.
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