title of Harriet and Lucy, four volumes. These tales had been begun fifty years before by Mr Edgeworth, at a time when no one of any literary character, excepting Dr Watts and Mrs Barbauld, condescended to write for children.'

It is worthy of mention, that, in the autumn of 1823, Miss Edgeworth, accompanied by two of her sisters, made a visit to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. She not only, he said, completely answered, but exceeded the expectations which he had formed, and he was particularly pleased with the naïveté and good-humoured ardour of mind which she united with such formidable powers of acute observation. 'Never,' says Mr Lockhart, did I see a brighter day at Abbotsford than that on which Miss Edgeworth first arrived there; never can I forget her look and accent when she was received by him at his archway, and exclaimed, "everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream." The weather was beautiful, and the edifice and its appurtenances were all but complete; and day after day, so long as she could remain, her host had always some new plan of gaiety.' Miss Edgeworth remained a fortnight at Abbotsford. Two years afterwards she had an opportunity of repaying the hospitalities of her entertainer, by receiving him at Edgeworthtown, where Sir Walter met with as cordial a welcome, and where he found neither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling faces all about.' Literary fame had spoiled neither of these eminent persons, nor unfitted them for the common business and enjoyment of life. We shall never,' said Scott, 'learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine compared with the education of the heart.' 'Maria did not listen to this without some water in her eyes; her tears are always ready when any generous string is touched-(for, as Pope says, "the finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest"); but she brushed them gaily aside, and said, "You see how it is; Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that people might learn to treat him like a great lord. Sir Walter writes his in order that he may be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do.""*

In 1834 Miss Edgeworth reappeared as a novelist: her Helen, in three volumes, is fully equal to her Fashionable Tales,' and possesses more of ardour and pathos. The gradations of vice and folly, and the unhappiness attending falsehood and artifice, are strikingly depicted in this novel, in connexion with characters (that of Lady Davenant, for example) drawn with great force, truth, and nature. This is the latest work of fiction we have had from the pen of the gifted authoress; nor is it likely, from her advanced age, that she will make further incursions into that domain of fancy and observation she has enriched with so many admirable performances. Long, however, may she be able to dispense common sense to her readers, and to bring them within the precincts of real life and natural feeling! The good and evil of this world have supplied Miss Edgeworth with materials sufficient for her purposes as a novelist. Of poetical or romantic feeling she has exhibited scarcely a single instance. She is a strict utilitarian. Her knowledge of the world is extensive and correct, though in some of her representations of fashionable folly and dissipation she borders upon caricature. The plan of confining a tale to the exposure and correction of one particular vice, or one erroneous line of conduct, as Joanna Baillie confined her dramas each to the elucidation of one

* Life of Scott, vol. vi. p. 61.

particular passion, would have been a hazardous experiment in common hands. Miss Edgeworth overcame it by the ease, spirit, and variety of her delineations, and the truly masculine freedom with which she exposes the crimes and follies of mankind. Her sentiments are so just and true, and her style so clear and forcible, that they compel an instant assent to her moral views and deductions, though sometimes, in winding up her tale, and distributing justice among her characters, she is not always very consistent or probable. Her delineations of her countrymen have obtained just praise. The highest compliment paid to them is the statement of Scott, that the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact' of these Irish portraits led him first to think that something might be attempted for his own country of the same kind with that which Miss Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland. He excelled his model, because, with equal knowledge and practical sagacity, he possessed that higher order of imagination, and more extensive sympathy with man and nature, which is more powerful, even for moral uses and effects, than the most clear and irresistible reasoning. The object of Miss Edgeworth, to inculcate instruction, and the style of the preceptress, occasionally interfere with the cordial sympathies of the reader, even in her Irish descriptions; whereas in Scott this is never apparent. He deals more with passions and feelings than with mere manners and peculiarities, and by the aid of his poetical imagination, and careless yet happy eloquence of expression, imparts the air of romance to ordinary incidents and characters. It must be admitted, however, that in originality and in fertility of invention Miss Edgeworth is inferior to none of her contemporary novelists. She never repeats her incidents, her characters, dialogues, or plots, and few novelists have written more. Her brief and rapid tales fill above twenty closely-printed volumes, and may be read one after the other without any feeling of satiety or sense of repetition.

In a work lately published, Ireland,' by Mr and Mrs Hall, there is a very interesting account of the residence and present situation of Miss Edgeworth:The library at Edgeworthtown,' say the writers, is by no means the reserved and solitary room that libraries are in general. It is large, and spacious, and lofty; well stored with books, and embellished with those most valuable of all classes of printsthe suggestive; it is also picturesque, having been added to so as to increase its breadth; the addition is supported by square pillars, and the beautiful lawn seen through the windows, embellished and varied by clumps of trees judiciously planted, imparts much cheerfulness to the exterior. An oblong table in the centre is a sort of rallying-point for the family, who group around it-reading, writing, or working; while Miss Edgeworth, only anxious upon one point-that all in the house should do exactly as they like without reference to her-sits quietly and abstractedly in her own peculiar corner on the sofa; her desk, upon which lies Sir Walter Scott's pen, given to her by him when in Ireland, placed before her upon a little quaint table, as unassuming as possible. Miss Edgeworth's abstractedness would puzzle the philosophers; in that same corner, and upon that table, she has written nearly all that has enlightened and delighted the world. There she writes as eloquently as ever, wrapt up to all appearance in her subject, yet knowing, by a sort of instinct, when she is really wanted in dialogue; and, without laying down her pen, hardly looking up from her page, she will, by a judicious sentence, wisely and kindly spoken, explain and elucidate in a few words so as to clear up any difficulty, or turn the conversation into

these little people right if they are wrong; to rise | from her table to fetch them a toy, or even to save a servant a journey; to mount the steps and find a volume that escapes all eyes but her own, and having done so, to find exactly the passage wanted, are hourly employments of this most unspoiled and admirable woman. She will then resume her pen, and, what is more extraordinary, hardly seem to have even frayed the thread of her ideas; her mind is so rightly balanced, everything is so honestly weighed, that she suffers no inconvenience from what would disturb and distract an ordinary writer.'

MISS AUSTEN.

Mr

JANE AUSTEN, a truly English novelist, was born on the 16th December 1775, at Steventon, in Hampshire, of which parish her father was rector. Austen is represented as a man of refined taste and acquirements, who guided, though he did not live to witness the fruits of his daughter's talents. After the death of the rector, his widow and two daughters retired to Southampton, and subsequently to the village of Chawton, in the same county, where the novels of Jane Austen were written. Of these, four were published anonymously in her lifetime, namely, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. In May 1817 the health of the authoress rendered it necessary that she should remove to some place where constant medical aid could be procured. She went to Winchester, and in that city she expired on the 24th of July 1817, aged fortytwo. Her personal worth, beauty, and genius, made her early death deeply lamented; while the public had to regret the failure not only of a source of innocent amusement, but also of that supply of practical good sense and instructive example which she would probably have continued to furnish better than any of her contemporaries.'* The insidious

* Dr Whateley, archbishop of Dublin (Quarterly Review, 1821). The same critic thus sums up his estimate of Miss Austen's works:- They may be safely recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combining, in an eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct effort at the former, of which we have complained as sometimes defeating its object. For those

There is no

decay or consumption which carried off Miss Austen seemed only to increase the powers of her mind. She wrote while she could hold a pen or pencil, and the day preceding her death composed some stanzas replete with fancy and vigour. Shortly after her death, her friends gave to the world two novels, entitled Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, the first being her earliest composition, and the least valuable of her productions, while the latter is a highly finished work, especially in the tender and pathetic passages. The great charm of Miss Austen's fictions lies in their truth and simplicity. She gives us plain representations of English society in the middle and higher classes-sets us down, as it were, in the duces us to various classes of persons, whose characcountry-house, the villa, and cottage, and introters are displayed in ordinary intercourse and most attempt to express fine things, nor any scenes of surlife-like dialogues and conversation. prising daring or distress, to make us forget that we Such materials would seem to promise little for the are among commonplace mortals and real existence. novel reader, yet Miss Austen's minute circumstances and common details are far from tiresome. They all aid in developing and discriminating her characters, in which her chief strength lies, and we become so intimately acquainted with each, that they appear as old friends or neighbours. She is quite at home in describing the mistakes in the edufoibles and vanity-in family differences, obstinacy, cation of young ladies-in delicate ridicule of female and pride-in the distinctions between the different classes of society, and the nicer shades of feeling and conduct as they ripen into love or friendship, or subside into indifference or dislike. Her love is not who cannot or will not learn anything from productions of this kind, she has provided entertainment which entitles her to thanks; for mere innocent amusement is in itself a good, when it interferes with no greater, especially as it may occupy the place of some other that may not be innocent. The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless. Those, again, who delight in the study of human nature, may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions as those before us.'

a blind passion, the offspring of romance; nor has she any of that morbid colouring of the darker passions in which other novelists excel. The clear daylight of nature, as reflected in domestic life, in scenes of variety and sorrowful truth, as well as of vivacity and humour, is her genial and inexhaustible element. Instruction is always blended with amusement. A finer moral lesson cannot anywhere be found than the distress of the Bertram family in Mansfield Park,' arising from the vanity and callousness of the two daughters, who had been taught nothing but 'accomplishments,' without any regard to their dispositions and temper. These instructive examples are brought before us in action, not by lecture or preachment, and they tell with double force, because they are not inculcated in a didactic style. The genuine but unobtrusive merits of Miss Austen have been but poorly rewarded by the public as respects fame and popularity, though her works are now rising in public esteem. 'She has never been so popular,' says a critic in the Edinburgh Review, 'as she deserved to be. Intent on fidelity of delineation, and averse to the commonplace tricks of her art, she has not, in this age of literary quackery, received her reward. Ordinary readers have been apt to judge of her as Partridge, in Fielding's novel, judged of Garrick's acting. He could not see the merit of a man who merely behaved on the stage as anybody might be expected to behave under similar circumstances in real life. He infinitely preferred the "robustious periwig-pated fellow," who flourished his arms like a windmill, and ranted with the voice of three. It was even so with many of the readers of Miss Austen. She was too natural for them. It seemed to them as if there could be very little merit in making characters act and talk so exactly like the people whom they saw around them every day. They did not consider that the highest triumph of art consists in its concealment; and here the art was so little perceptible, that they believed there was Her works, like well-proportioned rooms, are rendered less apparently grand and imposing by the very excellence of their adjustment.' Sir Walter Scott, after reading Pride and Prejudice' for the third time, thus mentions the merits of Miss Austen in his private diary:-That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the description and the sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so early!'

none.

MRS BRUNTON.

MRS MARY BRUNTON, authoress of Self-Control and Discipline, two novels of superior merit and moral tendency, was born on the 1st of November 1778. She was a native of Burrey, in Orkney, a small island of about 500 inhabitants, no part of which is more than 300 feet above the level of the sea, and which is destitute of tree or shrub. In this remote and sea-surrounded region the parents of Mary Brunton occupied a leading station. Her father was Colonel Balfour of Elwick, and her mother, an accomplished woman, niece of fieldmarshal Lord Ligonier, in whose house she had resided previous to her marriage. Mary was carefully educated, and instructed by her mother in the French and Italian languages. She was also sent some time to Edinburgh; but while she was only sixteen, her mother died, and the whole cares and

duties of the household devolved on her. With these she was incessantly occupied for four years, and at the expiration of that time she was married to the Rev. Mr Brunton, minister of Bolton, in Haddingtonshire. In 1803 Mr Brunton was called to one of the churches in Edinburgh, and his lady had thus an opportunity of meeting with persons of literary talent, and of cultivating her own mind. Till I began Self-Control,' she says in one of her letters, I had never in my life written anything but a letter or a recipe, excepting a few hundreds of vile rhymes, from which I desisted by the time I had gained the wisdom of fifteen years; therefore I was so ignorant of the art on which I was entering, that I formed scarcely any plan for my tale. I merely intended to show the power of the religious principle in bestowing self command, and to bear testimony against a maxim as immoral as indelicate, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.' 'SelfControl' was published without the author's name in 1811. The first edition was sold in a month, and a second and third were called for. In 1814 her second work, 'Discipline,' was given to the world, and was also well received. She began a third, Emmeline, but did not live to finish it. She died on the 7th of December 1818. The unfinished tale, and a memoir of its lamented authoress, were published in one volume by her husband, Dr Brunton.

'Self-Control' bids fair to retain a permanent place among British novels, as a sort of Scottish Calebs, recommended by its moral and religious tendency, no less than by the talent it displays. The acute observation of the authoress is seen in the development of little traits of character and conduct, which give individuality to her portraits, and a semblance of truth to the story. Thus the gradual decay, mental and bodily, of Montreville, the account of the De Courcys, and the courtship of Montague, are true to nature, and completely removed out of the beaten track of novels. The plot is very unskilfully managed. The heroine, Laura, is involved in a perpetual cloud of difficulties and dangers, some of which (as the futile abduction by Warren, and the arrest at Lady Pelham's) are unnecessary and improbable. The character of Hargrave seems to have been taken from that of Lovelace, and Laura is the Clarissa of the tale. Her high principle and purity, her devotion to her father, and the force and energy of her mind (without overstepping feminine softness), impart a strong interest to the narrative of her trials and adventures. She surrounds the whole, as it were, with an atmosphere of moral light and beauty, and melts into something like consistency and unity the discordant materials of the tale. The style of the work is also calculated to impress the reader: it is always appropriate, and rises frequently into passages of striking sentiment and eloquence.

[Final Escape of Laura.]

[The heroine is carried off by the stratagems of Hargrave, put on board a vessel, and taken to the shores of Canada. There, in a remote secluded cabin, prepared for her reception, she is confined till Hargrave can arrive. Even her wonted firmness and religious faith seem to forsake her in this last and greatest of her calamities, and her health sinks under the continued influence of grief and fear.]

The whole of the night preceding Hargrave's arrival was passed by Laura in acts of devotion. In her life, blameless as it had appeared to others, she saw so much ground for condemnation, that, had her hopes ! rested upon her own merit, they would have vanished like the sunshine of a winter storm. Their support was more mighty, and they remained unshaken. The raptures of faith beamed on her soul. By degrees they