ruth, we suspect one of Miss Austin's great merits in our
eyes to be, the insight she gives us into the peculiarities of female
character. Authoresses can scarcely ever forget the _esprit de corps_--
can scarcely ever forget that they _are authoresses_. They seem to feel
a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. _Elles se
peignent en buste_, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described
by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out
before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own
conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austin is free. Her
heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them
to acknowledge it. As liable to "fall in love first," as anxious to
attract the attention of agreeable men, as much taken with a striking
manner, or a handsome face, as unequally gifted with constancy and
firmness, as liable to have their affections biassed by convenience or
fashion, as we, on our part, will admit men to be. As some illustration
of what we mean, we refer our readers to the conversation between Miss
Crawford and Fanny, vol. iii, p. 102. Fanny's meeting with her father,
p. 199; her reflections after reading Edmund's letter, 246; her
happiness (good, and heroine though she be) in the midst of the misery
of all her friends, when she finds that Edmund has decidedly broken with
her rival; feelings, all of them, which, under the influence of strong
passion, must alloy the purest mind, but with which scarcely any
_authoress_ but Miss Austin would have ventured to temper the aetherial
materials of a heroine.

But we must proceed to the publication of which the title is prefixed to
this article. It contains, it seems, the earliest and the latest
productions of the author; the first of them having been purchased, we
are told, many years back by a bookseller, who, for some reason
unexplained, thought proper to alter his mind and withhold it. We do not
much applaud his taste; for though it is decidedly inferior to her other
works, having less plot, and what there is, less artificially wrought
up, and also less exquisite nicety of moral painting; yet the same kind
of excellences which characterise the other novels may be perceived in
this, in a degree which would have been highly creditable to most other
writers of the same school, and which would have entitled the author to
considerable praise, had she written nothing better.

We alrea