no one was ever
more successful in using them for exhibitions of character. The letters
of Lucy Steele, Mr. Collins, Isabella Thorpe, Lady Bertram, and Mary
Musgrove are all masterpieces of unconscious humour--and some of the
more serious letters are not far behind them.

The extant letters of Jane herself begin in 1796, and will accompany us
through the rest of the story. They are far the most important additions
that can be made to the short history contained in the _Memoir_; and the
little notices which we have given--it may have seemed with needless
particularity--of her relations and neighbours have been given partly in
order to enable the readers of her letters to follow the numerous
personal allusions to be found in them. We must not, however, try to
extract more out of the letters than they will yield. The bulk of them
belong to the collection published by Lord Brabourne, and nearly the
whole of this collection consists of letters from Jane to Cassandra. But
the normal condition of the sisters' lives was to be together--residing
in one house, sleeping in one room. We can therefore only learn from
this source what happened on the comparatively rare occasions when they
were separated. Nor is this all, for a good deal of their
correspondence is missing. Some of it is probably lost by accident; a
great deal was certainly destroyed by Cassandra of set purpose. The
Austens had a great hatred and dread of publicity. Cassandra felt this
with especial force, and the memory of Jane was to her so sacred that to
allow the gaze of strangers to dwell upon the actions or the feelings of
so precious a being would have seemed to her nothing short of
profanation. In her old age she became aware that Jane's fame had not
only survived but increased, and that a time might come when the public
would wish to know more details of her life than had been given in the
short memoir, written by Henry Austen, and prefixed to her posthumous
works. Cassandra would not indeed be likely to think it possible that
the letters themselves should be published,[61] but they might be made
use of as materials, and so she determined to do what must have been a
great sacrifice, and burn all those which were specially dear to
herself, feeling confident that the remainder would not be disturbed.
The destroyed MSS. without doubt included much that would have been of
particular value to the biographer.

We must also remember that the correspondence was betwe