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store for them. They desired it for themselves and they

sought it for their daughters. Other views had not opened

out to them; they had not thought of professions or public

life, nor had it entered into the mind of any of them that

maternity was not the highest duty and the crown of woman-

hood. Apparently they also confessed their aims to them-

selves and to each other with a frankness which would be

deemed indelicate in our time. The more worldly and am-

bitious of them sought in marriage rank and money, and

avowed that they did, whereas they would not avow it at

the present day. Gossip and speculation on these subjects

were common and more unrefined than they are now, and

they naturally formed a large part of the amusement of the

opulent and idle class from which Jane Austen's characters

were drawn. Often, too, she is ironical; the love of irony

is a feature of her mind, and for this also allowance must be

made. She does not approve or reward matchmaking or

husband-hunting. Mrs. Jennings, the great matchmaker in

"Sense and Sensibility," is also a paragon of vulgarity. Mrs.

Norris's matchmaking in "Mansfield Park" leads to the most

calamitous results. Charlotte Lucas in "Pride and Preju-

dice," who unblushingly avows that her object is a husband

with a good income, gets what she sought, but you are made

to see that she has bought it dear...

The life which Jane Austen painted retains its leading

features, and is recognized by the reader at the present

day with little effort of the imagination. It is a life of opu-

lent quiet and rather dull enjoyment, physically and morally

healthy compared with that of a French aristocracy, though

without much of the salt of duty; a life uneventful, exempt

from arduous struggles and devoid of heroism, a life pre-

senting no materials for tragedy and hardly an element of

pathos, a life of which matrimony is the chief incident, and

the most interesting objects are the hereditary estate and the

heir.

Such a life could evidently furnish no material for ro-

mance. It could furnish materials only for that class of

novel which corresponds to sentimental comedy. To that

class all Jane Austen's novels belong. -- From "Life of Jane

Austen," in "Great Writers," 1890.

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