, had you concentrated
your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henrv Crawford. These
should have been the chief figures of 'Mansfield Park.' But you timidly
decline to tackle Passion. 'Let other pens,' you write, 'dwell on guilt
and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can.' Ah, _there_
is the secret of your failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and
narrowness of the social circles you describe impair your popularity? I
scarce remember more than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and
these unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in
society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and we
get lords (and very queer lords) even from Republican authors, born in
a country which in your time was not renowned for its literature. I have
heard a critic remark, with a decided air of fashion, on the brevity
of the notice which your characters give each other when they
offer invitations to dinner. 'An invitation to dinner next day was
despatched,' and this demonstrates that your acquaintance 'went out'
very little, and had but few engagements. How vulgar, too, is one
of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy 'keep his breath to cool his
porridge.' I blush for Elizabeth! It were superfluous to add that your
characters are debased by being invariably mere members of the Church of
England as by law established. The Dissenting enthusiast, the open soul
that glides from Esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the
Higher Pantheism to the Higher Paganism, we look for in vain among your
studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown sound
to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's travailings?

You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours; proving
thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the duty of the
novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your works, to that
controversy which occupies the chief of our attention--the great
controversy on Creation or Evolution. Your Jane Bennet cries: 'I have
no idea of there being so much Design in the world as some persons
imagine.' Nor do you touch on our mighty social question, the Land Laws,
save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a Land Reformer, and rails bitterly
against the cruelty 'of settling an estate away from a family of five
daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.' There,
madam, in that cruelly unjust performance, what a text you h