brother, Edward Ferrars, and Elinor,
Mrs. Henry Dashwood and her daughters left their old home with some
abruptness and went to live in Devonshire, where their old friend, Sir
John Middleton, of Barton Park, had provided them with a cottage close
to his own place.

Elinor, the eldest of the daughters, possessed a strength of
understanding and coolness of judgment which qualified her, though only
nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently
to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in
Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an
excellent heart. Her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were
strong; but she knew how to govern them. It was a knowledge which her
mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never
to be taught. Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal
to Elinor's. She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her
sorrows, her joys could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable,
interesting; she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her
and her mother was strikingly great, and her excess of sensibility,
which Elinor saw with concern, was by Mrs. Dashwood valued and
cherished.

Margaret, the other sister, was good-humoured; but she had already
imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without having much of her
sense, and, at thirteen, she did not bid fair to equal her sisters at a
more advanced period of life.

But whatever the virtues or failings of the Dashwood ladies, their
society was very welcome at Barton Park. Sir John Middleton was a
good-looking man about forty, thoroughly good-humoured in manner and
countenance, friendly and kind-hearted in disposition, who delighted in
collecting about him more young people than his house would hold.

Lady Middleton was a handsome woman of six-and-twenty, well-bred, and
graceful in address, but deficient in frankness, warmth, or anything to
say for herself. She piqued herself upon the elegance of her table
appointments and of all her domestic arrangements; and this kind of
vanity it was that constituted her greatest enjoyment in any of their
parties. Sir John was a sportsman; Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted
and shot, and she humoured her children; and these were their only
resources. Continual engagements at home and abroad, however, supplied
all the deficiencies of nature and education--supported the good