he voices of our
distant home, associated with every familiar story.

The personal history of Jane Austen belongs to the close of the last
and the beginning of the present century. Her father through forty
years was rector of a parish in the South of England. Mr. Austen was
a man of great taste in all literary matters; from him his daughter
inherited many of her gifts. He probably guided her early education
and influenced the direction of her genius. Her life was passed
chiefly in the country. Bath, then a fashionable watering-place, with
occasional glimpses of London, must have afforded all the intercourse
which she held with what is called "the world." Her travels were
limited to excursions in the vicinity of her father's residence.
Those were days of post-chaises and sedan-chairs, when the rush of
the locomotive was unknown. Steam, that genie of the vapor, was yet a
little household elf, singing pleasant times by the evening fire, at
quiet hearthstones; it has since expanded into a mighty giant, whose
influences are no longer domestic. The circles of fashion are changed
also. Those were the days of country-dances and India muslins; the
beaux and belles of "the upper rooms" at Bath knew not the whirl of
the waltz, nor the ceaseless involvements of "the German." Yet the
measures of love and jealousy, of hope and fear, to which their hearts
beat time, would be recognized to-night in every ballroom. Infinite
sameness, infinite variety, are not more apparent in the outward than
in the inward world, and the work of that writer will alone be lasting
who recognizes and embodies this eternal law of the great Author.

Jane Austen possessed in a remarkable degree this rare intuition. The
following passage is found in Sir Walter Scott's journal, under date
of the fourteenth of March, 1826:--"Read again, and for the third time
at least, Miss Austen's finely written novel of 'Pride and Prejudice.'
That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and
feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most
wonderful I ever met with. The Big Bow-wow strain I can do myself
like any now going; but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary
commonplace things and characters interesting from truth of the
description and the sentiment is denied to me." This is high praise,
but it is something more when we recur to the time at which Sir Walter
writes this paragraph. It is amid the dreary entries in his journal
of 18