portrays with warmth and sympathy the domestic affections, and the charms of benevolence and virtue; but in Don Sebastian we have besides an interesting though melancholy plot and characters vividly sketched. Anna's sister, Jane, was later in developing her literary talent, but had a much greater gift; and her two romances, Thaddeus of Warsaw (1803) and The Scottish Chiefs (1810), were both exceptionally popular in their day. Thaddeus, high-flown and but imperfectly true to Polish character or historical setting, was translated into French

blank failures. Her last considerable enterprise was on a work given out as a record of real experience merely 'edited' by her. Sir Edward Seaward's Shipwreck, as written in his own Diary (1831), although the authorship was long ascribed to her, was probably the work of her eldest brother, Dr William Ogilvie Porter (1774-1850). Another brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter (17771842), battle-painter, travelled much, was consul in Venezuela, and wrote books of travel in Russia, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Georgia, Persia, and Armenia.

Joanna Baillie borrows freely from Jane Porter's Wallace for her equally non-authentic 'William Wallace' in the Metrical Legends, and cites from the Scottish Chiefs this passage as one of 'terrific sublimity :'

The Burning of the Barns of Ayr.

When all was ready, Wallace, with the mighty spirit of retribution nerving every limb, mounted to the roof, and tearing off part of the tiling, with a flaming brand in his hand, shewed himself glittering in arms to the affrighted revellers beneath, and as he threw it blazing amongst them, he cried aloud, 'The blood of the murdered calls for vengeance, and it comes.' At that instant

JANE PORTER.

From the Drawing by George Henry Harlow in the National Portrait Gallery.

and German, delighted Kosciuszko, and brought its authoress an honorary office from the King of Würtemberg. The Chiefs is wonderfully untrue to real history and national manners; it is stilted, conventional, sentimental, and its Wallace is alternately a drawing-room hero and a stagey poseur, not the rough captain of a rougher militia. Yet the story is animated and picturesque, was enormously popular in Scotland, was translated into French, German, and Russian, and had the honour of being proscribed by Napoleon. It used to be credited (contrary to probability) with an even higher honour-that of having suggested to Scott the idea of the Waverley Novels. But Thaddeus and the Chiefs are almost the only historical novels before Scott's time that can be said still to live. The Chiefs was more than a dozen times reprinted before the end of the nineteenth century, and Thaddeus was at least twice reprinted in its last decade. Other novels were The Pastor's Fireside, Duke Christian of Luneburg (the idea of which was suggested by George IV., the materials supplied by Dr Clarke), and The Forty Footsteps. Two or three plays by her were

ANNA MARIA PORTER.

From the Drawing by George Henry Harlow in the National Portrait Gallery.

the matches were put to the faggots which surrounded the building, and the whole party, springing from their seats, hastened towards the doors: all were fastened, and, retreating again in the midst of the room, they fearfully looked up to the tremendous figure above, which, like a supernatural being, seemed to avenge their crimes and rain down fire on their guilty heads. . . . The rising smoke from within and without the building now obscured his terrific form. The shouts of the Scots as the fire covered its walls, and the streaming flames

licking the windows and pouring into every opening of the building, raised such a terror in the breasts of the wretches within that with the most horrible cries they again and again flew to the doors to escape. Not an avenue appeared; almost suffocated with smoke, and scorched with the blazing rafters that fell from the roof, they at last made a desperate attempt to break a passage through the great portal.

Jane Austen

was born 16th December 1775, at Steventon Rectory, near Basingstoke in Hampshire, the youngest of seven children-one other daughter, Cassandra, and five sons, of whom two rose to be admirals. Her father, the Rev. George Austen, was a competent scholar, who carefully cherished his daughter's talent; her education was better than that which most girls got towards the close of the eighteenth century; she learnt French and Italian, and had a good acquaintance with English literature, her favourite authors being Richardson, Johnson, Cowper, Crabbe, Fanny Burney, and Scott. In 1801 the family settled at Bath, and after the father's death there in 1805, the widow and two daughters removed to Southampton, and in 1809 to the village of Chawton near Alton. Jane had begun to write her novels as early at least as 1796, and four of them were published anonymously in her lifetime-Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814), and Emma (1816). In May 1817 ill-health rendered it necessary that she should remove to some place where constant medical advice could be secured. She went to Winchester, and died there on the 18th July 1817, her fortytwo years of placid existence having, save for a love disappointment about which she said little, been darkened by no sore trials, and undisturbed by any but the gentler emotions. The insidious consumption which carried her off seemed only to increase the powers of her mind; she wrote while she could hold pen or pencil, and the day before her death composed stanzas instinct with fancy and vigour. A few months after her death her friends gave to the world two unpublished novels, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, the first written as early as 1798, the latter finished only in 1816. By pretty general consent Pride and Prejudice is ranked as her masterpiece. But as Mr Austin Dobson has recorded: "There are who swear by Persuasion; there are who prefer Emma and Mansfield Park; . . . and there is even a section which advocates the pre-eminence of Northanger Abbey'-a proof, surely, of the abounding charm of all of them. Sense and Sensibility has fewest champions, or none for pre-eminency.

Though none of her works was published till the next century, three of her most characteristic ones-Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey, and the first draft of Sense and Sensibility—were finished in the eighteenth, and her manner was fully formed. Her work shows the most charac

teristic type of the pure domestic novel. She drew her material from what she actually saw around her; her experience of life was somewhat limited, and even mildly monotonous. This and her own temperament, more than any deliberate critical purpose, determined her to a kind of novelwriting completely opposed to what was then in vogue-the Udolpho, St Leon, and Monk type. Northanger Abbey is, partly at least, a deliberate parody of this style; and it was unquestionably her conscious conviction that a true picture of ordinary life could be made as interesting as the tale of lofty romance and overdrawn sentiment, of daggers and bowls, impossible disguises, incredible conjunctions, monstrous crimes, preternatural agonies and remorse. The charm of her work lies in its truth and simplicity. She gives us plain representations of English society in the middle and higher classes-sets us down in country-house and cottage, and introduces us to an entertaining company whose characters are displayed amid the ordinary incidents of daily life, and in marvellously lifelike dialogues and conversations. No doubt the same characters appear under various names, her brightly drawn groups consist of the same or similar persons. There is no attempt to attain to high things, to startle with scenes of surprising daring or distress, to make us forget that we are among commonplace mortals and humdrum existence. The materials she works on would seem to promise little for the novel-reader; in any but the most skilful hands they would not attract; yet Miss Austen's minute circumstantiality, her multiplicity of almost commonplace details, merely exhibit, as Mr W. H. Pollock has said, 'the triumph of the genius which endues commonplace with rarity, which makes of characters that might be met any day in the present time with a difference only of manners, forms of thought and emotion that may be encountered at any moment, a real possession for ever.' How well Miss Austen estimated her own literary powers may be seen from an amusing correspondence which she had with a Mr Clarke, the librarian of the Prince Regent, as a consequence of her dedication of Emma to the 'first gentleman in Europe.' Mr Clarke suggested that she should write a novel depicting 'the habits of life and character and enthusiasm of a clergyman who should pass his time between the metropolis and the country,' and tried to fire her ambition with the suggestion that on such a subject she might beat both Goldsmith and La Fontaine. But Miss Austen was not to be tempted. The comic part, she said, she might do, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary.' She had not the knowledge to imagine conversations on 'science and philosophy,' or to supply the 'quotations and allusions' that should adorn the talk of a learned divine. Nor was she less decided in her rejection of Mr Clarke's next proposal (in view of the projected marriage of the Princess Charlotte and

Prince Leopold) of 'an historical romance illustrative of the august house of Coburg.' 'I could not,' she answered, 'sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style, and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.'

The details in Jane Austen's works are not, as in Balzac, multiplied overmuch; they all aid in developing and discriminating her characters, who, if they do not throb and thrill with passion, have amazing vitality and lifelikeness; they are presented with extraordinary dramatic truth and effect; 'every one says the right thing in the right place and in the right way.' 'Of all his successors she is the one who most nearly resembles Richardson in the power of impressing reality upon her characters.' Wherever Miss Austen introduces us, we soon find ourselves amongst friends and neighbours, more familiar to us, in spite of their old-fashioned dresses and old-world phrases, than many of the people amongst whom we actually live. She is amazingly deft in delicate ridicule of womanly foibles and vanity, and is great on mistakes in the education of girls - on family differences, obstinacy, and pride-on the distinctions between the different classes of society, and the nicer shades of feeling and conduct as they ripen into love or friendship or subside into indifference or dislike. We do not find, we do not miss that morbid colouring of the stronger and darker passions which so many novelists of her time affected. The clear daylight of nature as reflected in domestic life is her genial and inexhaustible element. Yet as every work of art, every true story, has its ethical value, a more pointed moral lesson can hardly be conveyed than in the distress of the Bertram family in Mansfield Park, brought about by the vanity and callousness of the two daughters, who had been taught nothing but 'accomplishments.' Such criticisms of life dawn on us in the development of the story, not by thesis or disquisition, and they tell with double force because they are inculcated not in didactic style, but by art skilfully imitating nature. And nature teaches the most unwilling pupils.

The novels were well received from the beginning, but found their warmest admirers after they had been many years before the world. Whately, an enthusiastic critic, compared Jane Austen's method to that of the Dutch painters; she herself to miniature work. Her scope is limited, but within it she is wonderfully perfect. G. H. Lewes declared that no author had a truer sense of proportioning means to ends; and in this Charlotte Brontë, a not too sympathetic critic, agreed. She was

marvellously acute in observing, skilful in portraying what she interested herself in, gifted with true humour and a vein of gentle but effective satire ; poetry was not her forte, and she deliberately turned her back on romance. Sir Walter Scott, after reading Pride and Prejudice for the third time, thus summed up Jane Austen in his diary with the authority of a master and with an unforgettable contrast: 'That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bowwow strain I can do myself like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!' Macaulay wrote: 'I have now read once again all Miss Austen's novels; charming they are. There are in the world no compositions which approach nearer to perfection;' and even went so far as to declare that she approached nearest to Shakespeare in characterdrawing-an appreciation recently defended by Mr Pollock: 'Her place is unique amongst women novelists.' Coleridge, Southey, and Sydney Smith were amongst her admirers, a representative trio. Justin M'Carthy is almost the only nameworthy writer who has of late ventured to speak of her as 'a disappearing author;' the general consensus is that she is as highly thought of as ever both by critics and by the general public. Edward FitzGerald in one of his letters (1860) styles her 'perfect;' in another, eleven years afterwards, he in one point modifies this judgment by complaining that she is capital as far as she goes, but she never goes out of the Parlour; if but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or even one of Fielding's Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility, and swear a round Oath or two!'

Men and Women.

'Your feelings may be the strongest,' replied Anne, 'but ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived, which exactly explains my views of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be hard upon you if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life to be called your own. It would be hard indeed' (with a faltering voice) 'if woman's feelings were to be added to all this.'

'We shall never agree upon this point,' Captain Harville said. 'No man and woman would, probably. But let me observe that all histories are against you, all stories, prose and verse. If I had such a memory as Benwick, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side of the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy. Songs and proverbs all talk of woman's fickleness. But perhaps you will say these were all written by men.'

'Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in a much higher degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.'

'But how shall we prove anything?'

'We never shall. We never can expect to prove anything upon such a point. It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin probably with a little bias towards our own sex, and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle: many of which circumstances (perhaps those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or, in some respect, saying what should not be said.'

JANE AUSTEN.

From a Drawing made at the Age of Fifteen.

'Ah!' cried Captain Harville, in a tone of strong feeling, if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, "God knows whether we ever meet again!" And then if I could convey to you the glow of his soul when he does see them again; when, coming back after a twelvemonth's absence, perhaps, and obliged to put in to another port, he calculates how soon it will be possible to get them there, pretending to deceive himself, and saying, "They cannot be here till such a day," but all the while hoping for them twelve hours sooner, and seeing them arrive at last, as if Heaven had given them wings, by many hours sooner still! If I could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear and do, and glories to do, for the sake of these treasures of his existence! I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!'-pressing his own with emotion.

'Oh,' cried Anne eagerly, 'I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow creatures. I should deserve

utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as if I may be allowed the expression-so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.'

She could not immediately have uttered another sentence. Her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed. (From Persuasion.)

A Family Scene.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.

'My dear Mr Bennet,' said his lady to him one day, 'have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?' Mr Bennet replied that he had not.

'But it is,' returned she; 'for Mrs Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.'

Mr Bennet made no answer.

'Do not you want to know who has taken it ?' cried his wife impatiently.

You want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.'

This was invitation enough.

'Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week. 'What is his name?'

'Bingley.'

'Is he married or single?'

'Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!'

'How so? How can it affect them?'

'My dear Mr Bennet,' replied his wife, 'how can you be so tiresome? You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.'

'Is that his design in settling here?'

'Design! Nonsense; how can you talk so! But it is very likely he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.'

'I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr Bingley might like you the best of the party.'

'My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be anything extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown-up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.'

In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.'

'But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr Bingley when he comes into the neighbourhood.'

'It is more than I engage for, I assure you.'

'But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lucas are determined to go, merely on that account, for, in general, you know, they visit no newcomers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for us to visit him if you do not.'

'You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.'

'I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Jane, nor half so goodhumoured as Lydia. But you are always giving her the preference.'

'They have none of them much to recommend them,' replied he; they are all silly and ignorant, like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.'

'Mr Bennet, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.'

'You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.'

'Ah! you do not know what I suffer.'

'But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.'

'It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come, since you will not visit them.'

'Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all.'

Mr Bennet was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three-and-twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. Her mind was less difficult to develop. She was a woman of mean derstanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented, she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.

un

(From Pride and Prejudice.)

A Clerical Proposal.

The next day opened a new scene at Longbourn. Mr Collins made his declaration in form. Having resolved to do it without loss of time, as his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, and having no feelings of diffidence to make it distressing to himself even at the moment, he set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the observances which he supposed a regular part of the business. On finding Mrs Bennet, Elizabeth, and one of the younger girls together soon after breakfast, he addressed the mother in these words:

'May I hope, madam, for your interest with your fair daughter Elizabeth, when I solicit for the honour of a private audience with her in the course of this morning?'

Before Elizabeth had time for anything but a blush of surprise, Mrs Bennet instantly answered:

'Oh dear! Yes, certainly. I am sure Lizzy will be very happy I am sure she can have no objection.— Come, Kitty, I want you upstairs.' And gathering her work together, she was hastening away, when Elizabeth called out:

I beg you will not go. He can have nothing to

'Dear ma'am, do not go. Mr Collins must excuse me. say to me that anybody need not hear. I am going away myself.'

'No, no, nonsense, Lizzy. I desire you will stay where you are.' And upon Elizabeth's seeming really, with vexed and embarrassed looks, about to escape, she added, 'Lizzy, I insist upon your staying and hearing Mr Collins.'

Elizabeth would not oppose such an injunction; and a moment's consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to get it over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down again, and tried to conceal, by incessant employment, the feelings which were divided between distress and diversion. Mrs Bennet and Kitty walked off, and as soon as they were gone Mr Collins began:

'Believe me, my dear Miss Elizabeth, that your modesty, so far from doing you any dis-service, rather adds to your other perfections. You would have been less amiable in my eyes had there not been this little unwillingness; but allow me to assure you that I have your respected mother's permission for this address. You can hardly doubt the purport of my discourse, however your natural delicacy may lead you to dissemble; my attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as soon as I entered the house I singled you out as the companion of my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying-and, moreover, for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did.'

The idea of Mr Collins, with all his solemn composure, being run away with by his feelings, made Elizabeth so near laughing that she could not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to stop him farther, and he continued:

'My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and, thirdly, which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford,-between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs Jenkinson was arranging Miss De Bourgh's footstool, -that she said, "Mr Collins, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly; choose a gentlewoman for my sake, and for your own; let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her." Allow me, by the way, to