..
This is not pleasant to you, Emma, and it is very far from pleasant to
me, but I must, I will, I will tell you truths while I am satisfied with
proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that
you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do me
now.'

'While they talked they were advancing towards the carriage: it was
ready, and before she could speak again he had handed her in. He had
misinterpreted the feeling which kept her face averted and her tongue
motionless.' Mr. Knightly's little sermon, in its old-fashioned English,
is as applicable now as it was when it was spoken. We know that he was
an especial favourite with Jane Austen.

IV.

Mr. Austen died at Bath, and his family removed to Southampton. In 1811,
Mrs. Austen, her daughters, and her niece, settled finally at Chawton,
a house belonging to Jane's brother, Mr. Knight (he was adopted by an
uncle, whose name he took), and from Chawton all her literary work was
given to the world. 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' were
already written; but in the next five years, from thirty-five to forty,
she set to work seriously, and wrote 'Mansfield Park,' 'Emma,' and
'Persuasion.' Any one who has written a book will know what an amount of
labour this represents.... One can picture to oneself the little family
scene which Jane describes to Cassandra. 'Pride and Prejudice' just come
down in a parcel from town; the unsuspicious Miss B. to dinner; and Jane
and her mother setting to in the evening and reading aloud half the
first volume of a new novel sent down by the brother. Unsuspicious Miss
B. is delighted. Jane complains of her mother's too rapid way of getting
on; 'though she perfectly understands the characters herself, she cannot
speak as they ought. Upon the whole, however,' she says, 'I am quite
vain enough and well-satisfied enough.' This is her own criticism of
'Pride and Prejudice':--'The work is rather too light, and bright, and
sparkling. It wants shade. It wants to be stretched out here and there
with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn
specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story--an essay
on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the "History of Bonaparte."'

And so Jane Austen lives quietly working at her labour of love,
interested in her 'own darling children's' success; 'the light of the
home,' one of the real living children says afterwards, speaking in