the maturing stress of circumstances, un- | fully distinguished, gifted, and fascinating, suspected strength, unsuspected weakness, whose fortunes are always being marred and determining their ultimate destiny by by their curious propensity to set their their own right or wrong action, in the hearts on other people's wives, husbands, mimic world of the romance as in the real, and lovers; and whose story often closes the living world; for, though but a small in self-murder, and in the undeserved segment of that world was visible to Jane misery of all the respectable dramatis Austen, it enabled her to divine the laws persona. This kind of art, in high favor ruling the whole. to-day, may, perhaps, plead in justification of its truth and realism the numerous vulgar tragedies of the same sort which the columns of the daily papers supply; it would be a permissible and formidable reply to such a plea to show that these acts of tragic folly are often inspired by the study of the very fictions whose lines they closely follow in their piteous travesty of the romance of crime.

A recent critic, referring to the last new fashion in fiction of psychological analysis, whereof America has produced the most numerous, enthusiastic, and aggressive exponents, claims, as the true foundress of that school, the "little woman who, eighty years ago, lived a secluded life in a Hampshire parsonage, and was yet the pioneer (leagues in advance of the vanguard) of a new and exquisite art." But if Miss Austen was a psychological analyst, which we do not deny (how the "polysyllabic pomp" of such a title would have made the gentle lady laugh!), she did her analyzing very differently from her successors in the art. It was not her way to discourse lengthily, in her own proper person, about the motives, moods, and dispositions of her characters; she preferred the more dramatic method of letting the good people reveal themselves in word and action. Her stories are not mere strings of incidents, as loosely connected as the items of a news-monger's gossip; but her plots are constructed with the consummate skill that does not advertise its own existence; every commonplace incident, so naturally introduced, has its own part to play in bringing on the dénouement a dénouement which, in sad nonconformity to modern taste, always involves a happy marriage between persons who have been finding out their exact suitability to each other throughout the whole progress of the story, and which leaves the reader only sorry to part with the companions whose sunny cheerfulness has never been quite overclouded by the saddest vicissitudes of their fortunes.

In one at least of her novels, and that not the most admired, Miss Austen has employed such an outline for her work as is still in high favor with our story-tellers. The chief heroine of "Mansfield Park " is a gentle girl, shy, sensitive, and attractive, whose position in the great family with whom she resides is something between that of adopted daughter and poor relation. Patient attendant on the whims of the kindly, but lazy and obtuse, mistress of the house; souffre-douleur of a shrewish, more actively selfish aunt; of no account in the family circle save as a sort of foil to the beauty and accomplishments of her cousins, it is Fanny Price's manifest destiny, as the Cinderella of the tale, to triumph over her disadvantages, to prosper more than her splendid cousins, to carry off from their rivalry their most coveted admirer, and be compensated for early trials by happiness as unclouded as mortal may hope for — a destiny she duly fulfils. Add to this well-worn plot some darker incidents unhappily quite as familiar — of sin and suffering, of slighted passion impelling a proud beauty into a loveless marriage for wealth and position, whose bonds she soon casts off to gratify a criminal attachment; and all the elements of a not very healthy story, of a common type enough, appear revealed.

This is not life! our modern literary exponents of the Gospel of Dissatisfaction and Despair may say. Yet none but their Under Miss Austen's skilful handling most bigoted disciples will deny that happy the story is neither sensational, nor ununions of well-matched pairs are still healthy, nor commonplace. It is a lesson within the range of human possibilities, of patient continuance in well doing, of and that they are often accomplished by grateful acquiescence in a lowly and sommeans of long trains of otherwise unremarkable events working insensibly towards them. It is at least as pleasant it is certainly more wholesome to contemplate pictures of such innocent and rational happiness than to dwell on those which display to us personages wonder

bre lot, of duty faithfully done under difficulties, which is evolved from the experiences of the unpretending heroine, whose goodness does not meet the vulgar reward of rank and riches, to which at one moment she seemed destined, but is recompensed with the simple home-felt bliss,

better fitted for her modest worth. Her triumph over her bewitching rival, whose sparkling vivacity wins almost as much on the reader as on the love-smitten hero, is not gained by any superiority in beauty or wit, but by the unselfish loyalty to principle and to affection, of which the other proves herself incapable. And she is not idealized into impossible perfection; she has the natural defects of her qualities; nor are the friends, to whose slightly ponderous patronage she is indebted for many benefits, sacrificed to make her more interesting. No less exquisite art has been spent on their elderly figures than on her girlish graces; their conscious virtues and unconscious absurdities are endeared to our mirth by a hundred touches of that "gentlest satire, kin to charity," which, perhaps, reaches its ultimate perfection in the picture of the futile amateur theatricals at Mansfield Park described with so much delicate malice that aid powerfully in developing the characters of every actor, and have a large share in determining the course of the story. The less amiable personages are finely discriminated, and the moral of their errors, which arise from selfish vanity or worldly self-seeking, is sharply pointed, with no perilous lingering on the details of the unhallowed attachment that brings about the catastrophe of this novel. The vice in question is stripped bare of romantic illusion, and is referred to in terms of such austere reprobation as not one novelist in twenty would employ to-day; such as are certainly not employed by the numerous emulators of George Eliot's manner, nor even by that great writer herself, who, of all our modern romancers, most nearly resembles Jane Austen in her realistic honesty, whose style is much richer, whose descriptive power far more brilliant, whose range of feeling and reach of thought ampler far than those of her forerunner, but who lacks the unerring clearness of her moral perception, the airy lightness of her satiric touch, and whose works tend to produce dejection and discouragement as surely as those of Miss Austen minister to innocent invigorating mirth.

Of the remaining novels only "Persuasion " deals with a theme that might still commend itself to a novelist of the purely domestic type, such as the lamented author | of "John Halifax "a story of "two that wrecked each other's hope, parting coldly in their prime," and who are reunited when that prime, for one at least, is a little past;

when time has ripened the lady's judg ment, and softened the lover's resentment, and when the affection, which wrought their youthful misery, is found to be so steadfast and so warm as to ensure their lifelong happiness. There is a higher and a finer strain of thought and feeling in this, the last effort of Jane Austen's mellowed genius, than in any of her previous works. One might almost be justified in inferring that some deep personal experience had intervened, teaching her to look with more compassionate sympathy, and more penetrating insight, on that drama of life which she had long found interesting and amusing. The personages of the story appeal more directly to our admiration. No other jeune premier, to whom she has assigned the rôle of the happy lover, has so much unconventional brilliancy, so much spirit and fire and gay courage, blended with chivalrous tenderness and manly sense, as Captain Frederick Wentworth, of the Royal Navy, and she never drew a more attractive heroine than the sweet Anne Elliot, whom he loved and quarrelled with, and forgave. It has been objected to some other of her characters that they talk far too well, in sentences too long, too well constructed; that their reasoning and their repartee are too cogent and too clever for human probability, in the circumstances supposed that, for instance, a young lady uncivilly called to account for her love affairs, as Elizabeth Bennet, by Lady Catherine de Bourgh, would not be likely to meet the arrogance of her questioner with argument and wit, and prompt dexterity worthy of a Parliamentary debater. Perhaps we, for whom conversation has become a lost art since we lost our leisure, whose remarks must emulate the condensed brevity of post-cards and telegrams, and who must shun Johnsonian involutions like the plague if we would be listened to and understood, are not the best judges of the possibilities of a less impatient age.

But the reproach of "talking like a book "is one not so applicable to the personages of "Persuasion;" it would not be amiss if more books talked like Anne Elliot, whose touching and graceful plea for the superiority of woman in constancy over man could ill be spared from our literature, and cannot be called improbable on the lips of a thinking, feeling woman, for all its correctness of wording and reasoning.

"I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and

forget those they do love, or have loved. | have been addressed the last pathetic I believe the reverse," says her interloc- words, "I want nothing but death." utor, the hardy sailor whose own strong home attachments authorize him to speak, and who does speak, with a glow of honest eloquence, of "all man can bear and do, and glories to do, for those treasures of his existence," wife and children, winning from her the words that are made more pathetic by her hidden heart-troubles:

Oh! 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.

Here, if ever in her writings, Jane Austen speaks from her heart, with an accent of truth that is almost painful; though there is nothing painful in the fate of the gentle heroine whose voice she borrows for the occasion, and of whom she says so gracefully:

"What a pity," said Sir Walter Scott, "that so gifted a creature died so early! and though she had entered her fortysecond year, her death must be deemed early for a writer just attaining the fulness of her powers, and just beginning to taste the fame which she had scarcely coveted, being very incredulous as to the possibility of her ever attaining it, and not deeming it particularly desirable in itself for a woman.

We shall scarcely find in her work — certainly we shall not find in her earlier efforts - any departure from the simple ideals of womanly duty and happiness accepted in her circle and her generation. For her heroines a fortunate marriage is still the chief end of existence, and their plans of usefulness are bounded within limits that are not more than parochial at the utmost; larger ambitions of any sort do not trouble their dreams. But while conforming thus strictly to the canons then governing feminine propriety, she showed real originality and real courage of a special kind.

formation on matters literary, the lately In that mine of pleasant and curious inwhere we find Miss Austen honorably dispublished "Memoir of John Murray,' tinguished among the great bibliopole's clients, by her modest estimate of her own Prettier musings of high-wrought love and labors and of the money recompense due eternal constancy could never have passed to them, we may read also the judgment along the streets of Bath than Anne was passed on that very "pretty thing," sporting with from Camden Place to West-Pride and Prejudice," when first it apgate Buildings. It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way.

Could there have been for one of such serene and self-sufficing spirit as Miss Austen for one so content with her simple domestic existence, so blessed in the dear sisterly affection that she loved to depict for her readers - could there have been, for her too, "a nearer one yet, and a dearer one still, than all others," from whom she was severed by some cloud of misunderstanding, but whose memory she so cherished that "their union could not divide her more from other men than their final separation"? It is almost an impertinent inquiry, yet it rises in the mind, as we close the cheerful pages of "Persuasion," and remember that when it was published its writer had faded away in a lingering decline, despite the fond attentions of the "dearest sister, tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse," who hung over her dying bed, and to whom must

peared, by Gifford, severely fastidious editor of the Quarterly, who shows himself delighted with the lady's sense in discarding in favor of every-day scenes, personages, and incidents, all the romantic machinery employed by the school of which Mrs. Radcliffe was facile princeps, and Monk Lewis an honored memberthe haunted halls and castles, the surprises, stratagems, and abductions, the spectres, banditti, and mysterious criminals, that had long formed the delight of novel-readers and play-goers, and may even be suspected of doing much to determine Byron's very peculiar taste in heroes. As "Northanger Abbey," Miss Austen's first essay in literature, did not see the light till after her death, when it was pub lished in company with "Persuasion," the sagacious critic could not know that the author whose sense and taste he so approved had begun her career with a spirited satire of the very methods he was

applauding her for rejecting; "Northanger | caricaturist in black and white, the unflatAbbey," which has been pronounced the tering portraits being too sharply bitten in least valuable, but which is certainly not with satiric acid a reproach that is less the least amusing of its author's produc- and less applicable to every succeeding tions, being written in a vein of gay, good- effort of the artist. This is very evident humored mockery of the then reigning when we compare the Mrs. Bennet of fashion in novels, and affording in many "Pride and Prejudice " with the Miss passages a whimsical parody of such Bates of "Emma." Both are figures of popular favorites as the "Mysteries of pure comedy; but the latter is handled Udolpho," while the heroine, in person, with a tenderness very different from the accomplishments, and adventures, is made unsparing ridicule poured on Mrs. Bennet, as carefully unheroic as may be; even to the "woman of mean understanding, little the point of having been first to love, and information, and uncertain temper; who, first to betray that she loved, the husband when discontented, fancied herself nerto whom, after a proper amount of suffer-vous; the business of whose life was to ing and anxiety, she is finally united.

"Though Henry was now sincerely attached to her," we are told, "though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character, and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only means of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of a heroine's dig. nity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own."

Thus far removed from the romantic ideal, Catherine Morland is, notwithstanding, a most attractive little heroine; her guileless purity of heart, her simple enthusiasms, and the ingenuous mistakes of her ignorance being almost equally engaging; and there is even to-day when such a very lowly flower of maidenhood could hardly be found blooming in any English home

get her daughters married, and its solace, visiting and Lews." In such terms we are introduced to her; and not one softening touch of womanly sweetness is allowed to interfere with the development of the character of pure folly thus outlined, through all the course of the brilliant story in which she plays a conspicuous part. Miss Bates is that common butt for ridicule in novels and out of them, an old maid unromantically left apart, with points of mind and manner that lay her open to ill-natured laughter, yet she is so handled as to win the respect of the reader for her prosaic goodness, dashed with absurdity as it is, and to enlist more of our sympathy than the wilful young heroine of the tale, whose mistakes are more serious, and whose worst fault we feel to be as the author means us to feel it her thoughtless unkindness to the inoffensive creature, in portraying whom Miss Austen's art perhaps touches its highest point of delicate skill; for this figure cannot be surpassed by any even in "Persuasion."

The daughter of one clergyman, the sister-in-law of another, whose house afforded the home of her closing years, Jane Austen inevitably moved much in clerical society, and, as might be expected, there is not one of her novels but supplies a clerical portrait or two. They are not, however, more uniformly drawn en beau than are those of Anthony Trollope, who is Miss Austen's worthiest successor in this class of portraiture. The inimitable Mr. Collins in "Pride and Prejudice," whose letters, as masterpieces of unconscious, pompous folly and inconsequence, have never been surpassed in fiction, and are only approached in pure humor by the wonderful love-letter of Mr. Casaubon in

-a freshness and piquancy about her humble adventures that make us wonder a little at the undiscerning publisher, who, having bought for £10 the piece of sparkling mischief called "Northanger Abbey," would not venture to issue a story that he deemed unpromising, and gladly restored it to its author when, after several years, she volunteered to repurchase it. Though it be a much less serious effort, it has rather more promise of its writer's peculiar excellence than "Sense and Sensibility," her first successful story, of which the serious personages are less probable, the vulgar and absurd ones more purely vulgar and absurd, and both of a more antiquated type, than in any subsequent tale from Miss Austen's pen. It is otherwise with "Pride and Preju-“Middlemarch,” is, perhaps, the most dice;" but here, too, is more of lively satire and less of mellow humor than in the later novels; the art of the painter is sometimes exchanged for that of the mere

striking example of the ecclesiastical Anglais pour rire with which Miss Austen has favored us. But he is not so contemptible as the vain, ambitious, little

when he led the people of England into a crusade against the people of France."

wider than a provincial audience. Might not something be done, we inquired tentatively, to mitigate the severity of the sentence which a rather narrow, if austerely virtuous, tribunal had pronounced against those who like ourselves were outside the pale? It was then that a highly speculative friend, whose resources were as siender as his projects were vast, audaciously declared that he was prepared, if properly supported, to give the Dissenters, the rebels, the despised minority, a chance of being heard. "We shall have a weekly paper from which the Whig and the Whig only, shall be severely excluded. The lion shall lie down with the lamb; ultra-Tories and ultra-Radicals shall work harmoniously together; and in fact, gentlemen, you are welcome to ventilate any paradoxes, or heresies, or superstitions you like, so long as you vigorously assail the common enemy.'

Edinburgh was at that time one of the shrines of the Whig faith; and it was the good fortune of the writer of this paper as a lad (through James Syme, Andrew Coventry, and other true believers who hailed from Fife and Kinross) to see something of the priests who ministered at its altars. Ebony" has always been as generous as he is just; and he will permit me to say that, during the closing years of his life, Jeffrey, at his pleasant villa of Craigcrook, with his granddaughter at his knee, presented as charming a picture of a serene but vigilant old age as one could wish to see. Sydney Smith years before had said of him when he went on the bench: "His robes, God knows, will cost him little; one buck-rabbit will clothe him to the heels;" and during the interval the wonderful little man had grown even more transparently delicate and fragile. His boyhood had been earnest and passionate, his manhood energetic and distinguished; but there was a peculiar mellowness about his age. The enthusiasm and the passion had not died out, nor the keen and finely discriminating intellect been dimmed. But now, besides and beyond the fastidious taste, the playful irony, the dignified re-tributors were E. S. Dallas (afterwards for serve, there was added an admirable grace and simplicity, a peculiar sweetness and gentleness, which it was difficult to associate with one who had been an unsparing critic and a formidable foe. "A man," Goethe said the year before he died, "has only to become old to become tolerant;" and Jeffrey was a notable example of the mellowing catholicity of advancing years. It was no wonder that such a man should have retained his influence to the last. Outsiders who had found his collected essays rather thin and jejune, might fail to understand wherein the charm consisted; but then, as Pitt once said of his rival, "they had not been under the wand of the magician."

It was about the year 1850-the year of Jeffrey's death-that some of us who were then preparing for active life began to rebel against the prevailing superstition. The Whig tradition was still allpowerful in the city where so many of its high-priests had been bred, and from whence its sacred writings had issued; and John Wilson and his jovial companions of the "Noctes" were regarded as outlaws and banditti by the select and privileged caste to whom the true faith had been revealed. "Maga" was then as ever true to her colors; but "Maga" appealed to a

On the basis of this elastic confession of faith the Edinburgh Guardian was established about the year 1852. It was published every Saturday, and it lived for four or five years. Spencer Baynes (then Sir William Hamilton's assistant, and afterwards professor of logic at St. Andrews) was the editor, and among the con

many years the leading critic of the Times), Sydney Dobell, Alexander Smith, Patrick Alexander, the redoubtable Alister of Skye, and "Shirley"-"Shirley" being the nom de plume then assumed for the first time by a half-fledged jurist, who desired for professional reasons (quite unnecessarily, as it turned out) to preserve his anonymity.

There was certainly some admirable writing in the Guardian, — Dallas's theatrical and artistic articles, and Baynes's weekly "Diary of Juniper Agate "being really first-rate. To "Shirley" the department entitled "Things in General" was intrusted, and in the audacity of oneand-twenty he hit so hard all round that more than once the coach threatened to upset. Edinburgh was then a stronghold of the Free Kirk as well as of the Whigs; and when, in addition to defending Disraeli from the onslaughts of the Saturday, and Currer Bell from the insults of the Quarterly, and bribery and corruption (oa the ground that if the franchise was an inalienable natural right, a man was entitled to do what he liked with his own) from the political purists, we took to rec ommending the incomprehensible heresies of Maurice and the muscular latitudinarianism of Kingsley, the paper and its