has not lessened. He found the last
half of the last volume _extremely interesting_.

On Friday we are to be snug with only Mr. Barlowe
and an evening of business. I am so pleased that
the mead is brewed. Love to all. I have written to
Mrs. Hill, and care for nobody.

Yours affectionately,
J. AUSTEN.

Henry must have read from a proof copy; for _Mansfield Park_ was not yet
published, though on the eve of being so. It was announced in the
_Morning Chronicle_ on May 23, and we shall see from the first letter in
the next chapter that the Cookes had already been reading it before June
13. It was probably a small issue;[285] but whatever the size may have
been, it was entirely sold out in the autumn.

The author broke new ground in this work, which (it should be
remembered) was the first dating wholly from her more mature Chawton
period. Though her novels were all of one type she had a remarkable
faculty for creating an atmosphere--differing more or less in each book;
and an excellent instance of this faculty is afforded by the decorous,
though somewhat cold, dignity of Sir Thomas Bertram's household. In
this household Fanny Price grows up, thoroughly appreciating its
orderliness, but saved by Edmund's affection and her own warmhearted
simplicity from catching the infection of its coldness. She required,
however, an experience of the discomforts and vulgarity of Portsmouth to
enable her to value to the full the home which she had left. In the
first volume she had been too much of a Cinderella to take her proper
position in the family party, and it was a real stroke of art to enhance
the dignity of the heroine through the courtship of a rich and clever
man of the world. A small point worth noticing in the third volume is
the manner in which, when the horrible truth breaks in upon Fanny--and
upon the reader--the tension is relaxed by Mrs. Price's commonplace
remarks about the carpet.

Probably, most readers will look upon the theatricals and the Portsmouth
episode as the most brilliant parts of the book; but the writing
throughout is full of point, and the three sisters--Lady Bertram, Mrs.
Norris, and Mrs. Price--are all productions of the author's most
delicately barbed satire. Mrs. Norris, indeed, is an instance of her
complex characters so justly praised by Macaulay. One thinks of h