perfect orb and vital. Life, as it appears to an English gentlewoman
peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in
her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest
for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual experience of
life; you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel
something of personal affection towards them. The marvellous reality
and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led
Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspere. If the whole force of the
distinction which lies in that epithet _prose_ be fairly appreciated,
no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspere it
would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely
demarcated within the limits of their kind. We do not find such
profound psychological insight as may be found in George Sand (not to
mention male writers), but taking the type to which the characters
belong, we see the most intimate and accurate knowledge in all Miss
Austen's creations.

Only cultivated minds fairly appreciate the exquisite art of Miss
Austen. Those who demand the stimulus of effects, those who can only
see by strong lights and shadows, will find her tame and uninteresting.
We may illustrate this by one detail. Lucy Steele's bad English, so
delicately and truthfully indicated, would in the hands of another have
been more obvious, more "effective" in its exaggeration, but the loss
of this comic effect is more than replaced to the cultivated reader by
his relish of the nice discrimination visible in its truthfulness. And
so of the rest. _Strong_ lights are unnecessary, _true_ lights being
at command. The incidents, the characters, the dialogue--all are of
every-day life, and so truthfully presented that to appreciate the art
we must try to imitate it, or carefully compare it with that of others.

We are but echoing an universal note of praise in speaking thus highly
of her works, and it is from no desire of simply swelling that chorus
of praise that we name her here, but to call attention to the peculiar
excellence, at once womanly and literary, which has earned this
reputation. Of all imaginative writers she is the most _real_. Never
does she transcend her own actual experience, never does her pen trace
a line that does not