pages, so natural and
unaffected are they, and yet they never lived except in the imagination
of one lady with bright eyes, who sat down some seventy years ago to an
old mahogany desk in a quiet country parlour, and evoked them for us.
One seems to see the picture of the unknown friend who has charmed us so
long--charmed away dull hours, created neighbours and companions for
us in lonely places, conferring happiness and harmless mirth upon
generations to come. One can picture her as she sits erect, with her
long and graceful figure, her full round face, her bright eyes cast
down,--Jane Austen, 'the woman of whom England is justly proud'--whose
method generous Macaulay has placed near Shakespeare. She is writing
in secret, putting away her work when visitors come in, unconscious,
modest, hidden at home in heart, as she was in her sweet and womanly
life, with the wisdom of the serpent indeed and the harmlessness of a
dove.

Some one said just now that many people seem to be so proud of seeing
a joke at all, that they impress it upon you until you are perfectly
wearied by it. Jane Austen was not of these; her humour flows gentle and
spontaneous; it is no elaborate mechanism nor artificial fountain, but
a bright natural stream, rippling and trickling over every stone and
sparkling in the sunshine. We should be surprised now-a-days to hear a
young lady announce herself as a studier of character. From her quiet
home in the country lane this one reads to us a real page from the
absorbing pathetic humorous book of human nature--a book that we can
most of us understand when it is translated into plain English; but
of which the quaint and illegible characters are often difficult to
decipher for ourselves. It is a study which, with all respect for Darcy's
opinion, must require something of country-like calm and concentration
and freedom of mind. It is difficult, for instance, for a too impulsive
student not to attribute something of his own moods to his specimens
instead of dispassionately contemplating them from a critical distance.

Besides the natural fun and wit and life of her characters, 'all
perfectly discriminated,' as Macaulay says, Jane Austen has the gift of
telling a story in a way that has never been surpassed. She rules her
places, times, characters, and marshals them with unerring precision.
In her special gift for organisation she seems almost unequalled. Her
picnics are models for all future and past picnics; he