reader. Such an unfinished fragment cannot be
presented to the public; but I am persuaded that some of Jane Austen's
admirers will be glad to learn something about the latest creations which
were forming themselves in her mind; and therefore, as some of the
principal characters were already sketched in with a vigorous hand, I
will try to give an idea of them, illustrated by extracts from the work.

The scene is laid at Sanditon, a village on the Sussex coast, just
struggling into notoriety as a bathing-place, under the patronage of the
two principal proprietors of the parish, Mr. Parker and Lady Denham.

Mr. Parker was an amiable man, with more enthusiasm than judgment, whose
somewhat shallow mind overflowed with the one idea of the prosperity of
Sanditon, together with a jealous contempt of the rival village of
Brinshore, where a similar attempt was going on. To the regret of his
much-enduring wife, he had left his family mansion, with all its
ancestral comforts of gardens, shrubberies, and shelter, situated in a
valley some miles inland, and had built a new residence--a Trafalgar
House--on the bare brow of the hill overlooking Sanditon and the sea,
exposed to every wind that blows; but he will confess to no discomforts,
nor suffer his family to feel any from the change. The following extract
brings him before the reader, mounted on his hobby:--

'He wanted to secure the promise of a visit, and to get as many of the
family as his own house would hold to follow him to Sanditon as soon as
possible; and, healthy as all the Heywoods undeniably were, he foresaw
that every one of them would be benefitted by the sea. He held it indeed
as certain that no person, however upheld for the present by fortuitous
aids of exercise and spirit in a semblance of health, could be really in
a state of secure and permanent health without spending at least six
weeks by the sea every year. The sea air and sea-bathing together were
nearly infallible; one or other of them being a match for every disorder
of the stomach, the lungs, or the blood. They were anti-spasmodic, anti-
pulmonary, anti-bilious, and anti-rheumatic. Nobody could catch cold by
the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody
wanted strength. They were healing, softening, relaxing, fortifying, and
bracing, seemingly just as was wanted; sometimes one, sometimes the
other. If the sea breeze failed, the sea-bath was the certain
corrective; and