en she speaks to him. We are told that Marianne and
Ellinor have been supposed to represent Cassandra and Jane Austen; but
Mr. Austen Legh says that he can trace no resemblance. Jane Austen is
not twenty when this book is written, and only twenty-one when 'Pride
and Prejudice' is first devised.

Cousins presently come on the scene, and amongst them the romantic
figure of a young, widowed Comtesse de Feuillade, flying from the
Revolution to her uncle's home. She is described as a clever and
accomplished woman, interested in her young cousins, teaching them
French (both Jane and Cassandra knew French), helping in their various
schemes, in their theatricals in the barn. She eventually marries her
cousin, Henry Austen. The simple family annals are not without their
romance; but there is a cruel one for poor Cassandra, whose lover dies
abroad, and his death saddens the whole family-party. Jane, too,
'receives the addresses' (do such things as addresses exist nowadays?)
'of a gentleman possessed of good character and fortune, and of
everything, in short, except the subtle power of touching her heart.'
One cannot help wondering whether this was a Henry Crawford or an Elton
or a Mr. Elliot, or had Jane already seen the person that even Cassandra
thought good enough for her sister?

Here, too, is another sorrowful story. The sisters' fate (there is a sad
coincidence and similarity in it) was to be undivided; their life, their
experience was the same. Some one without a name takes leave of Jane one
day, promising to come back. He never comes back: long afterwards they
hear of his death. The story seems even sadder than Cassandra's in its
silence and uncertainty, for silence and uncertainty are death in life
to some people....

There is little trace of such a tragedy in Jane Austen's books--not one
morbid word is to be found, not one vain regret. Hers was not a nature
to fall crushed by the overthrow of one phase of her manifold life. She
seems to have had a natural genius for life, if I may so speak; too
vivid and genuinely unselfish to fail her in her need. She could gather
every flower, every brightness along her road. Good spirit, content, all
the interests of a happy and observant nature were hers. Her gentle
humour and wit and interest cannot have failed.

It is impossible to calculate the difference of the grasp by which one
or another human being realises existence and the things relating to it,
nor how much more vivid