come out. have mentioned, when I was suddenly alarmed by the Now for the first time I was at leisure to attend to noise of some one stirring in the inner apartment. I the state of my strength and my health. My conhad looked into this room, and had perceived nothing finement in the Inquisition, and the treatment I had but the bed upon which the old man nightly reposed experienced, had before rendered me feeble and almost himself. I sprung up, however, at the sound, and helpless; but these appeared to be circumstances perceiving that the door had a bolt on the outside, I scarcely worthy of attention in the situation in which eagerly fastened it. I then turned to Mordecai-that I was then placed. The impulse I felt in the midst was the name of my host: Wretch, said I, did not of the confusion in the grand street of Valladolid, proyou assure me that there was no one but yourself in duced in me an energy and power of exertion which the house? Oh, cried Mordecai, it is my child! it is nothing but the actual experience of the fact could my child! she went into the inner apartinent, and has have persuaded me was possible. This energy, once fallen asleep on the bed. Beware, I answered; the begun, appeared to have the faculty of prolonging slightest falsehood more shall instantly be expiated itself, and I did not relapse into imbecility till the in your blood. I call Abraham to witness, rejoined occasion seemed to be exhausted which called for my the once more terrified Jew, it is my child only my exertion. I examined myself by a mirror with which child! Tell me, cried I with severity of accent, how Mordecai furnished me; I found my hair as white as old is this child? Only five years, said Mordecai: my snow, and my face ploughed with a thousand furrows. dear Leah died when she was a year old, and though I was now fifty-four, an age which, with moderate exwe had several children, this single one has survivedercise and a vigorous constitution, often appears like her. Speak to your child; let me hear her voice! the prime of human existence; but whoever had looked He spoke to her, and she answered, Father, I want to upon me in my present condition would not have I was satisfied it was the voice of a little doubted to affirm that I had reached the eightieth girl. I turned to the Jew: Take care, said I, how year of my age. I examined with dispassionate reyou deceive me now; is there no other person in that mark the state of my intellect: I was persuaded that room? He imprecated a curse on himself if there it had subsided into childishness. My mind had were. I opened the door with caution, and the little been as much cribbed and immured as my body. I girl came forward. As soon as I saw her, I seized her was the mere shadow of a man, of no more power and with a rapid motion, and returned to my chair. Man, worth than that which a magic lantern produces said I, you have trifled with me too rashly; you have upon a wall. These are thy works, superstition! this not considered what I am escaped from, and what I the genuine and proper operation of what is called have to fear; from this moment this child shall be the Christianity! Let the reader judge of what I had pledge of my safety; I will not part with her an in- passed through and known within those cursed walls stant as long as I remain in your house; and with by the effects; I have already refused, I continue to this rapier in my hand I will pierce her to the heart refuse, to tell how those effects were produced. Enough the moment I am led to imagine that I am no longer of compassion; enough of complaint; I will confine in safety. The Jew trembled at my resolution; the myself, as far as I am able, to simple history. emotions of a father worked in his features and glistened in his eye. At least let me kiss her, said he. I was now once again alone. The little girl, who Be it so, replied I: one embrace, and then, till the had been unusually disturbed and roused at an undawn of the coming day, she remains with me. I re-seasonable hour, sunk into a profound sleep. I heard leased my hold; the child rushed to her father, and he caught her in his arms. My dear Leah, cried Mordecai, now a sainted spirit in the bosom of our father Abrahain! I call God to witness between us, that, if all my caution and vigilance can prevent it, not a hair of this child shall be injured! Stranger, you little know by how strong a motive you have now engaged me to your cause. We poor Jews, hunted on the face of the earth, the abhorrence and execration of mankind, have nothing but family affections to support us under our multiplied disgraces; and family affections are entwined with our existence, the fondest and best loved part of ourselves. The God of Abraham bless you, my child! Now, sir, speak! what is it you require of me! * * the noise which Mordecai made in undressing himself, and composing his limbs upon a mattress which he had dragged for the present occasion into the front room, and spread before the hearth. I soon found by the hardness of his breathing that he also was asleep. I unfolded the papers he had brought me; they consisted of various medical ingredients I had directed him to procure; there were also two or three vials containing sirups and essences. I had near me a pair of scales with which to weigh my ingredients, a vessel of water, the chafing-dish of my host in which the fire was nearly extinguished, and a small taper, with some charcoal to relight the fire in case of necessity. While I was occupied in surveying these articles and arranging my materials, a sort of torpor came suddenly over me, so I told the Jew that I must have a suit of clothes as to allow me no time for resistance. I sunk upon conformable to the appearance of a Spanish cavalier, the bed. I remained thus for about half an hour, and certain medical ingredients that I named to him, seemingly without the power of collecting my thoughts. together with his chafing-dish of coals to prepare them; At length I started, felt alarmed, and applied my utand that done, I would then impose on him no further most force of mind to rouse my exertions. While I trouble. Having received his instructions, he imme- drove, or attempted to drive, my animal spirits from diately set out to procure what I demanded. He took limb to limb, and from part to part, as if to inquire with him the key of the house; and as soon as he was into the general condition of my frame, I became congone, I retired with the child into the inner apart- vinced that I was dying. Let not the reader be surment, and fastened the door. At first I applied my-prised at this; twelve years' imprisonment in a narself to tranquillise the child, who had been somewhat alarmed at what she had heard and seen this was no very difficult task. She presently left me, to amuse herself with some playthings that lay scattered in a corner of the apartment. My heart was now comparatively at ease; I saw the powerful hold I had on the fidelity of the Jew, and firmly persuaded myself that I had no treachery to fear on his part. Thus circumstanced, the exertion and activity with which I had lately been imbued left me, and I insensibly sunk into a sort of slumber. * row and unwholesome cell may well account for s sudden a catastrophe. Strange and paradoxical as it may seem, I believe it will be found in the experiment, that the calm and security which succeed to great internal injuries are more dangerous than the pangs and hardships that went before. I was now thoroughly alarmed; I applied myself with all vigilance and expedition to the compounding my materials. The fire was gone out; the taper was glimmering ir the socket: to swallow the julep, when I had prepared it, seemed to be the last effort of which my organs and muscles were capable. It was the elixir of immortality, exactly made up according to the prescription of the stranger. Whether from the potency of the medicine or the effect of imagination, I felt revived the moment I had swallowed it. I placed myself deliberately in Mordecai's bed, and drew over me the bedclothes. I fell asleep almost instantly. * * My sleep was not long: in a few hours I awaked. With difficulty I recognised the objects about me, and recollected where I had been. It seemed to me that my heart had never beat so vigorously, nor my spirits flowed so gay. I was all elasticity and life; I could scarcely hold myself quiet; I felt impelled to bound and leap like a kid upon the mountains. I perceived that my little Jewess was still asleep; she had been unusually fatigued the night before. I know not whether Mordecai's hour of rising were come; if it were, he was careful not to disturb his guest. I put on the garments he had prepared; I gazed upon the mirror he had left in my apartment. I can recollect no sensation in the course of any life so unexpected and surprising as what I felt at that moment. evening before I had seen my hair white, and my face ploughed with furrows; I looked fourscore. What I beheld now was totally different, yet altogether familiar; it was myself-myself as I had appeared on the day of my marriage with Marguerite de Damville; the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the complexion, every circumstance, point by point, the same. I leaped a gulf of thirty-two years. I waked from a dream, troublesome and distressful beyond all description; but it vanished like the shades of night upon the burst of a glorious morning in July, and left not a trace behind. I knew not how to take away my eyes from the mirror before me. The I soon began to consider that, if it were astonishing to me that, through all the regions of my countenance, I could discover no trace of what I had been the night before, it would be still more astonishing to my host. This sort of sensation I had not the smallest Sir Walter Scott, when a student at college, was intimate with the family, and, we are told, was very fond of either teazing the little female student when very gravely engaged with her book, or more often fondling her on his knees, and telling her stories of witches and warlocks, till both forgot their former playful merriment in the marvellous interest of the tale.' Mrs Porter removed to Ireland, and subsequently to London, chiefly with a view to the education of her children. Anna Maria became an authoress at the age of twelve. Her first work bore the appropriate title of Artless Tales, the first volume being published in 1793, and a second in 1795. In 1797 she came forward again with a tale entitled Walsh Colville; and in the following year a novel in three volumes, Octavia, was produced. A numerous series of works of fiction now proceeded from Miss Porter-The Lake of Killarney, 1804; A Sailor's Friendship and a Soldier's Love, 1805; The Hunga rian Brothers, 1807; Don Sebastian, or the House of Braganza, 1809; Ballad Romances, and other Poems, 1811; The Recluse of Norway, 1814; The Village of Mariendorpt; The Fast of St Magdalen; Tales of Pity for Youth; The Knight of St John; Roche Bianche; and Honor O'Hara. Altogether, the works of this lady amount to about fifty volumes. In private life Miss Porter was much beloved for her unostentatious piety and active benevolence. She died at Bristol while on a visit to her brother, Dr Porter of that city, on the 21st of June 1832, aged fifty-two. The most popular, and perhaps the best of Miss Porter's novels, is her Don Sebastian.' In all of them she portrays the domestic affections and the charms of benevolence and virtue with warmth and earnest ness, but in Don Sebastian' we have an interesting though melancholy plot, and characters finely dis criminated and drawn. The second fails entirely as a picture of national manners (the Scot tish patriot Wallace, for example, being represented as a sort of drawing-room hero), but is written with great animation and picturesque effect. In appeals to the tender and heroic passions, and in vivid scenepainting, both these ladies have evinced genius, but their works want the permanent interest of real life, variety of character, and dialogue. A third work by Miss Porter has been published, entitled The Pastor's Fireside. thoress of two romances, Thaddeus of Warsaw, 1803, MISS JANE PORTER, who still survives, is auand The Scottish Chiefs, 1810; both were highly ambition to produce: one of the advantages of the popular. The first is the best, and contains a good metamorphosis I had sustained, consisted in its ten-plot and some impassioned scenes. dency, in the eyes of all that saw me, to cut off every species of connexion between my present and my former self. It fortunately happened that the room in which I slept, being constructed upon the model of many others in Spain, had a stair at the further end, with a trap-door in the ceiling, for the purpose of enabling the inhabitant to ascend on the roof in the cool of the day. The roofs were flat, and so constructed that there was little difficulty in passing along them from house to house, from one end of the street to the other. I availed myself of the opportunity, and took leave of the residence of my kind host in a way perfectly unceremonious, determined, however, speedily to transmit to him the reward I had promised. It may easily be believed that Mordecai was not less rejoiced at the absence of a guest whom the vigilance of the Inquisition rendered an uncommonly dangerous one, than I was to quit his habitation. I closed the trap after me, and clambered from roof to roof to a considerable distance. At length I encountered the occasion of an open window, and fortunately descended, unseen by any human being, into the street. ANNA MARIA PORTER. This lady was a daughter of an Irish officer, who died shortly after her birth, leaving a widow and several children, with but a small patrimony for their support. Mrs Porter took her family into Scotland, while ANNA MARIA was still in her nursemaid's arms, and there, with her only and elder sister Jane, and their brother, Sir Robert Ker Porter, she received the rudiments of her education. MISS EDGEWORTH. MARIA EDGEWORTH, one of our best painters of national manners, whose works stimulated the genius of Scott, and have delighted and instructed generations of readers, commenced her career as an autho ress about the year 1800. She was of a respectable Irish family, long settled at Edgeworthtown, county of Longford, and it was on their property that Goldsmith was born. Her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), was himself a man attached to literary pursuits, and took great pleasure in exciting and directing the talents of his daughter. When *Mr Edgeworth wrote a work on Professional Education, one volume, quarto, 1808; also some papers in the Philosophical ages, and an account of a telegraph which he invented. This Transactions, including an essay on Spring and Wheel Car gentleman was educated at Trinity college, Dublin, and was afterwards sent to Oxford. Before he was twenty, he ran off with Miss Elers, a young lady of Oxford, to whom he was married at Gretna Green. He then embarked on a life of fashionable gaiety and dissipation, and in 1770 succeeded, by ever the latter thought of writing any essay or story, she always submitted to him the first rough plans; and his ready invention and infinite resource, when she had run into difficulties or absurdities, never failed to extricate her at her utmost need. It was the happy experience of this,' says Miss Edgeworth, 'and my consequent reliance on his ability, decision, and perfect truth, that relieved me from the vacillation and anxiety to which I was so much subject, that I am sure I should not have written or finished anything without his support. He inspired in my mind a degree of hope and confidence, essential, in the first instance, to the full exertion of the mental powers, and necessary to insure perseverance in any occupation.' An able work, the joint production of Mr and Miss Edgeworth, appeared in 1801 under Lichfield, he became enamoured of Miss Honora Sneyd, a Among his numerous schemes, was an attempt to educate his the title of an Essay on Irish Bulls. Besides some critical and humorous illustration, the authors did justice to the better traits of the Irish character, and illustrated them by some interesting and pathetic stories. The same object was pursued in the tale, Castle Rackrent, and in Belinda, a novel of real life and ordinary characters. In 1804 Miss Edgeworth came forward with three volumes of Popular Tales, characterised by the features of her genius-a genuine display of nature, and a certain tone of rationality and good sense, which was the more pleasing, because in a novel it was then new.' The practical cast of her father's mind probably assisted in directing Miss Edgeworth's talents into this useful and unromantic channel. It appeared strange at first, and the best of the authoress's critics, Mr Jeffrey, said at the time that it required almost able life, and the swarms of peers, foundlings, and the same courage to get rid of the jargon of fashionseducers, as it did to sweep away the mythological persons of antiquity, and to introduce characters who spoke and acted like those who were to peruse their adventures.' In 1806 appeared Leonora, a novel, in two volumes. A moral purpose is here aimed at, and the same skill is displayed in working up ordinary incidents into the materials of powerful fiction; but the plot is painful and disagreeable. The seduction of an exemplary husband by an aban doned female, and his subsequent return to his injured but forgiving wife, is the groundwork of the story. Irish characters figure off in Leonora' as in the Popular Tales.' In 1809 Miss Edgeworth issued three volumes of Tales of Fashionable Life, more powerful and various than any of her previous productions. The history of Lord Glenthorn affords a striking picture of ennui, and contains some excellent delineation of character; while the story of Almeria represents the misery and heartlessness of a life of mere fashion. Three other volumes of Fashionable Tales were issued in 1812, and fully supported the authoress's reputation. The number of tales in this series was three- Vivian,' illustrating the evils and perplexities arising from vacillation and infirmity of purpose; 'Emilie de Coulanges,' depicting the life and manners of a fashionable French lady; and The Absentee' (by far the best of the three stories), written to expose the evils and mortifications of the system which the authoress saw too many instances of in Ireland, of persons of fortune forsaking their country seats and native vales for the frivolity, scorn, and expense of fashionable London society. In 1814 Miss Edgeworth entered still more extensively and sarcastically into the manners and characters in high-life, by her novel of Patronage, in four volumes. The miseries the death of his father, to his Irish property. During a visit to cousin of Anna Seward's, and married her shortly after the death of his wife. In six years this lady died of consumption, and he married her sister, a circumstance which exposed him to a good deal of observation and censure. After a matrimonial union of seventeen years, his third wife died of the same malady as her sister; and, although past fifty, Mr Edgeworth scarce lost a year till he was united to an Irish lady, Miss Beaufort. His latter years were spent in active exertions to benefit Ireland, by reclaiming bog land, introducing agricultural and mechanical improvements, and promoting education. He was fond of mechanical pursuits and new projects of all kinds. eldest son on the plan delineated in Rousseau's Emile. He dressed him in jacket and trousers, with arms and legs bare, and allowed him to run about wherever he pleased, and to do nothing but what was agreeable to himself. In a few years he found that the scheme had succeeded completely, so far as related to the body; the youth's health, strength, and agility were conspicuous; but the state of his mind induced some perplexity. He had all the virtues that are found in the hut of the savage; he was quick, fearless, generous; but he knew not what it was to obey. It was impossible to induce him to do anything that he did not please, or prevent him from doing anything that he did please. Under the former head, learning, even of the lowest description, was never included. In fine, this child of nature grew up perfectly ungovernable, and never could or would apply to anything; so that there remained no alternative but to allow him to follow his own inclination of going to sea! Maria Edgeworth was by her father's first marriage: she was born in Oxfordshire, and was twelve years old before she was taken to Ireland. The family were involved in the troubles of the Irish rebellion (1798), and were obliged to make a precipitate retreat from their house, and leave it in the hands of the rebels; but it was spared from being pillaged by one of the invaders, to whom Mr Edgeworth had previously done some kindness. Their return home, when the troubles were over, is thus described by Miss Edgeworth in her father's memoirs. It serves to show the affection which subsisted between the landlord and his dependents. When we came near Edgeworthtown, we saw many well-resulting from a dependence on the patronage of the known faces at the cabin doors looking out to welcome us. One man, who was digging in his field by the road-side, when he looked up as our horses passed, and saw my father, let fall his spade and clasped his hands; his face, as the morning sun shone upon it, was the strongest picture of joy I ever saw. The village was a melancholy spectacle; windows shattered and doors broken. But though the mischief done was great, there had been little pillage. Within our gates we found all property safe; literally not a twig touched, nor a leaf harmed." Within the house everything was as we had left it. A map that we had been consulting was still open on the library table, with pencils, and slips of paper containing the first lessons in arithmetic, in which some of the young people (Mr Edgeworth's children by his second and third wife) had been engaged the morning we had been driven from home; a pansy, in a glass of water, which one of the children had been copying, was still on the chimney-piece. These trivial circumstances, marking repose and tranquillity, struck us at this moment with an unreasonable sort of surprise, and all that had passed seemed like an incoherent dream.' great-a system which she says is twice accursed -once in giving, and once in receiving'-are drawn in vivid colours, and contrasted with the cheerfulness, the buoyancy of spirits, and the manly virtues arising from honest and independent exertion. In 1817 our authoress supplied the public with two other tales, Harrington and Ormond. The first was written to counteract the illiberal prejudice entertained by many against the Jews; the second is an Irish tale, equal to any of the former. The death of Mr Edgeworth in 1817 made a break in the literary exertion of his accomplished daughter, but she completed a memoir which that gentleman had begun of himself, and which was published in two volumes in 1820. In 1822 she returned to her course of moral instruc tion, and published in that year Rosamond, a Sequel to Early Lessons, a work for juvenile readers, of which an earlier specimen had been published. A further continuation appeared in 1825, under the title of Harriet and Lucy, four volumes. These tales had been begun fifty years before by Mr Edgeworth, at a time when no one of any literary character, excepting Dr Watts and Mrs Barbauld, condescended to write for children.' It is worthy of mention, that, in the autumn of 1823, Miss Edgeworth, accompanied by two of her sisters, made a visit to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. She not only, he said, completely answered, but exceeded the expectations which he had formed, and he was particularly pleased with the naïveté and good-humoured ardour of mind which slic united with such formidable powers of acute observation. Never,' says Mr Lockhart, did I see a brighter day at Abbotsford than that on which Miss Edgeworth first arrived there; never can I forget her look and accent when she was received by him at his archway, and exclaimed, “everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream." The weather was beautiful, and the edifice and its appurtenances were all but complete; and day after day, so long as she could remain, her host had always some new plan of gaiety.' Miss Edgeworth remained a fortnight at Abbotsford. Two years afterwards she had an opportunity of repaying the hospitalities of her entertainer, by receiving him at Edgeworthtown, where Sir Walter met with as cordial a welcome, and where he found neither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling faces all about.' Literary fame had spoiled neither of these eminent persons, nor unfitted them for the common business and enjoyment of life. We shall never,' said Scott, learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine compared with the education of the heart.' 'Maria did not listen to this without some water in her eyes; her tears are always ready when any generous string is touched-(for, as Pope says, "the finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest"); but she brushed them gaily aside, and said, "You see how it is; Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that people might learn to treat him like a great lord. Sir Walter writes his in order that he may be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do.""* In 1834 Miss Edgeworth reappeared as a novelist: her Helen, in three volumes, is fully equal to her Fashionable Tales,' and possesses more of ardour and pathos. The gradations of vice and folly, and the unhappiness attending falsehood and artifice, are strikingly depicted in this novel, in connexion with characters (that of Lady Davenant, for example) drawn with great force, truth, and nature. This is the latest work of fiction we have had from the pen of the gifted authoress; nor is it likely, from her advanced age, that she will make further incursions into that domain of fancy and observation she has enriched with so many admirable performances. Long, however, may she be able to dispense common sense to her readers, and to bring them within the precincts of real life and natural feeling! The good and evil of this world have supplied Miss Edgeworth with materials sufficient for her purposes as a novelist. Of poetical or romantic feeling she has exhibited scarcely a single instance. She is a strict utilitarian. Her knowledge of the world is extensive and correct, though in some of her representations of fashionable folly and dissipation she borders upon caricature. The plan of confining a tale to the exposure and correction of one particular vice, or one erroneous line of conduct, as Joanna Baillie confined her dramas each to the elucidation of one *Life of Scott, vol. vi. p. 61. particular passion, would have been a hazardous ex periment in common hands. Miss Edgeworth over came it by the ease, spirit, and variety of her de lineations, and the truly masculine freedom with which she exposes the crimes and follies of mankind. Her sentiments are so just and true, and her style si clear and forcible, that they compel an instant assent to her moral views and deductions, though some times, in winding up her tale, and distributing justicc among her characters, she is not always very consistent or probable. Her delineations of her countrymen have obtained just praise. The highest compliment paid to them is the statement of Scott, that the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact' of these Irish portraits led him first to think that something might be attempted for his own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland. He excelled his model, because, with equal knowledge and practical sagacity, he possessed that higher order of imagination, and more extensive sympathy with man and nature, which is more powerful, even for moral uses and effects, than the most clear and irresistible reasoning. The object of Miss Edgeworth, to inculcate instruction, and the style of the preceptress, occasionally interfere with the cordial sympathies of the reader, even in her Irish descriptions; whereas in Scott this is never apparent. He deals more with passions and feelings than with mere manners and peculiarities, and by the aid of his poetical imagination, and careless yet happy eloquence of expression, imparts the air of romance to ordinary incidents and characters. It must be admitted, however, that in originality and in fertility of invention Miss Edgeworth is inferior to none of her contemporary novelists. She never repeats her incidents, her characters, dialogues, or plots, and few novelists have written more. Her brief and rapid tales fill above twenty closely-printed volumes, and may be read one after the other without any feeling of satiety or sense of repetition. In a work lately published, Ireland,' by Mr and Mrs Hall, there is a very interesting account of the residence and present situation of Miss Edgeworth:The library at Edgeworthtown,' say the writers, 'is by no means the reserved and solitary room that libraries are in general. It is large, and spacious, and lofty; well stored with books, and embellished with those most valuable of all classes of printsthe suggestive; it is also picturesque, having been added to so as to increase its breadth; the addition is supported by square pillars, and the beautiful lawn seen through the windows, embellished and varied by clumps of trees judiciously planted, imparts much cheerfulness to the exterior. An oblong table in the centre is a sort of rallying-point for the family, who group around it-reading, writing, or working; while Miss Edgeworth, only anxious upon one point-that all in the house should do exactly as they like without reference to her-sits quietly and abstractedly in her own peculiar corner on the sofa; her desk, upon which lies Sir Walter Scott's pen, given to her by him when in Ireland, placed before her upon a little quaint table, as unassuming as pos sible. Miss Edgeworth's abstractedness would puzzle the philosophers; in that same corner, and upon that table, she has written nearly all that has enlightened and delighted the world. There she writes as el quently as ever, wrapt up to all appearance in her subject, yet knowing, by a sort of instinct, when she is really wanted in dialogue; and, without laying down her pen, hardly looking up from her page, she will, by a judicious sentence, wisely and kindly spoken, explain and elucidate in a few words so as t clear up any difficulty, or turn the conversation into 570 a new and more pleasing current. She has the most of memory and love. Mr Francis Edgeworth, the harmonious way of throwing in explanations-in- youngest son of the present Mrs Edgeworth, and forming without embarrassing. A very large family- of course Miss Edgeworth's youngest brother, has party assemble daily in this charming room, young a family of little ones, who seem to enjoy the freeand old bound alike to the spot by the strong cords | dom of the library as much as their elders: to set these little people right if they are wrong; to rise | MISS AUSTEN. There is no decay or consumption which carried off Miss Austen seemed only to increase the powers of her mind. She wrote while she could hold a pen or pencil, and the day preceding her death composed some stanzas replete with fancy and vigour. Shortly after her death, her friends gave to the world two novels, entitled Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, the first being her earliest composition, and the least valuable of her productions, while the latter is a highly finished work, especially in the tender and pathetic passages. The great charm of Miss Austen's fictions lies in their truth and simplicity. She gives us plain representations of English society in the middle and higher classes-sets us down, as it were, in the JANE AUSTEN, a truly English novelist, was born duces us to various classes of persons, whose characcountry-house, the villa, and cottage, and introon the 16th December 1775, at Steventon, in Hamp-ters are displayed in ordinary intercourse and most shire, of which parish her father was rector. Mr Austen is represented as a man of refined taste and acquirements, who guided, though he did not live to witness the fruits of his daughter's talents. After the death of the rector, his widow and two daughters retired to Southampton, and subsequently to the village of Chawton, in the same county, where the novels of Jane Austen were written. Of these, four were published anonymously in her lifetime, namely, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. In May 1817 the health of the authoress rendered it necessary that she should remove to some place where constant medical aid could be procured. She went to Winchester, and in that city she expired on the 24th of July 1817, aged fortytwo. Her personal worth, beauty, and genius, made her early death deeply lamented; while the public had to regret the failure not only of a source of innocent amusement, but also of that supply of practical good sense and instructive example which she would probably have continued to furnish better than any of her contemporaries.'* The insidious * Dr Whateley, archbishop of Dublin (Quarterly Review, 1821). The same critic thus sums up his estimate of Miss Austen's works:- They may be safely recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combining, in an eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct effort at the former, of which we have complained as sometimes defeating its object. For those life-like dialogues and conversation. |