ple delight in; but we question whether, | Or again: "I never can read Miss Edgeafter all, it is fair to a dead woman to lay worth's works without finding the wonderful bare all her little vanities, her self-import- predominance of the head over the heart. ance, her hasty opinions, all her fluctuations from one fancy to another, and the misfortunes which have given shape and colour to her whole life. In saying this, we do not mean to imply that such a collection of letters should not be printed. The public has to be amused at all costs, and we can well imagine what a temptation they must have been to an executor. But still the reader cannot choose but be struck by the curious disadvantage to begin with in which poor Miss Mitford is placed by her fluent pen, in comparison with the more reticent woman whose name we have coupled with hers. We have been so often told that the faculty of writing letters is a special gift, and one of the most charming of literary talents, that it is needless to say anything more on so hackneyed a subject. If it could be possible to put the real emotions of a life into such letters as form the three volumes now before us, they would no doubt be of infinite interest to all readers. But that, we well know, is impossible; for perhaps no man or woman does ever in his or her life write more than a dozen letters which are wholly inspired by any vehement reality of sentiment. Miss Mitford has told us a great deal about her own life in the pleasantest way in the bits of autobiography which are scattered through her works; and the chief interest of her letters consists in the further revelations they make of her domestic history. In other respects they are not remarkable. Distinguished names, no doubt, occur here and there throughout their course; but the most well known persons among her correspondents (with the exception of Mrs. Barrett Browning, with whom she became intimate in the latter part of her life), were Haydon the painter and Charles Kemble. And all that she has to say about others is her own enthusiastic opinion of the moment, her womanish admiration of Whitbread's fine head and natural eloquence; her halfdoubting admiration of Scott; her snatches of very ordinary literary gossip about Moore and Byron. A sprinkling of well known names is not sufficient to give to a long series of private letters any title to be considered a contribution to the literary history of the time. What intelligent young lady of the present or any other period might not write to her correspondents as follows: "Have you read Southey's Life of Nelson? It is a work which I earnestly recommend to you as one of the most beautiful pieces of biography I ever met with." .. I am perfectly well inclined to agree with you in attributing the tiresome parts of her works to her prosing father." Or again: "Have you seen my Lord Byron's ode? and are you not shocked at the suicidal doctrine it inculcates? He will finish that way himself from fair weariness of life. But true courage makes a different ending." This is not giving us any information about Southey, or Byron, or the Edgeworths; and there is certainly nothing in the notes themselves to entitle them to the dignity of print. The two books from which we are to draw any new sparks of light that may be in them, in respect to two women who have a special claim upon the interest of their country, are thus without any sound raison d'etre, not specially called for, not conveying very much information that is new to us. But they form an occasion for recollecting over again, in one case, a series of works which have found for themselves a place among English classics; and, in the other, a great deal of genial, pleasant writing, the brightest, sunshiny, rural sketches of a state of things which is daily changing, and may soon come to be purely historical. Miss Mitford has no right to a place in the same rank with Miss Austen; and yet there are qualities in her writings superior to Miss Austen's a breadth and atmosphere impossible to the greater writer. The one recognizes a big world about her, even though she only draws it within the limited proportions of Our Village "—a world full of different classes-rich and poor, small and great; whereas the other confines herself to a class - the class of which she has herself the most perfect knowledge— striking out with an extraordinary conscientiousness which one does not know whether to call self-will or self-denial, everything above and everything below. Lady Catherine de Burgh and the housekeeper at Pemberly-conventional types of the heaven above and the abyss below - - are the only breaks which Miss Austen ever permits herself upon the level of her squirearchy; while Miss Mitford's larger heart takes in all the Joes and Pollys and Harriets of a country-side, and makes their wooings and jealousies as pleasant to us as if they were the finest ladies and gentlemen. To be sure, Miss Austen's ladies and gentlemen are seldom fine; but they are all to be found in the same kind of house with the same kind of surroundings. Their poverties, when they have any, are caused in a genteel way by the entail of an estate, or by the premature death of the father with unconscious, observation in which a young woman, with no active pursuit to occupy her, spends, without knowing it, so much of her time and youth. Courses of lectures, no doubt, or balls, or any decided out-of-door interest, interferes with this involuntary training; but such disturbances were rare in Miss Austen's day. out leaving an adequate provision for his lovely and accomplished girls. The neglect which leaves the delicate heroine without a horse to ride, or the injury conveyed in the fact that she has to travel post without a servant, is the worst that happens. If it were not that the class to which she thus confines herself was the one most intimately and thoroughly known to her, we should A certain soft despair of any one human be disposed to consider it, as we have said, creature ever doing any good to another — a piece of self-denial on Miss Austen's part of any influence overcoming those habits to relinquish all stronger lights and shad- and moods and peculiarities of mind which ows; but perhaps it is better to say that she the observer sees to be more obstinate than was conscientious in her determination to life itself-a sense that nothing is to be describe only what she knew, and that na- done but to look on, to say perhaps now ture aided principle in this singular limi-and then a softening word, to make the best tation. Of itself, however, it throws a cer- of it practically and theoretically, to smile tain light upon her character, which is not and hold up one's hands and wonder why the simple character it appears at the first human creatures should be such fools,glance, but one full of subtle power, keenness, such are the foundations upon which the finesse, and self-restraint a type not at all feminine cynicism which we attribute to Miss unusual among women of high cultivation, Austen is built. It includes a great deal especially in the retirement of the country, that is amiable, and is full of toleration and where such qualities are likely enough to patience, and that habit of making allowance be unappreciated or misunderstood. for others which lies at the bottom of all human charity. But yet it is not charity, and its toleration has none of the sweetness which proceeds from that highest of Christian graces. It is not absolute contempt either, but only a softened tone of general disbelief- amusement, nay enjoyment, of all those humours of humanity which are so quaint to look at as soon as you dissociate them from any rigid standard of right or wrong. Miss Austen is not the judge of the men and women she collects round her. She is not even their censor to mend their manners; no power has constituted her her Mr. Austen Leigh, without meaning it, throws out of his dim little lantern a passing gleam of light upon the fine vein of feminine cynicism which pervades his aunt's mind. It is something altogether different from the rude and brutal male quality that bears the same name. It is the soft and silent disbelief of a spectator who has to look at a great many things without showing any outward discomposure, and who has learned to give up any moral classification of social sins, and to place them instead on the level of absurdities. She is not surprised or of fended, much less horror-stricken or indig-brother's keeper. She has but the faculty nant, when her people show vulgar or mean of seeing her brother clearly all round as if traits of character, when they make it evi- he were a statue, identifying all his absurdident how selfish and self-absorbed they are, ties, quietly jeering at him, smiling with her or even when they fall into those social cru- eyes without committing the indecorum of elties which selfish and stupid people are so laughter. In one case only, so far as we often guilty of, not without intention, but can recollect, in the character of Miss Bates yet without the power of realizing half the in "Emma," does she rise beyond this, and pain they inflict. She stands by and looks touch the region of higher feeling by comon, and gives a soft half-smile, and tells the prehension of the natural excellence that story with an exquisite sense of its ridicul- lies under a ludicrous exterior. It is very ous side, and fine stinging yet soft-voiced lightly touched, but yet it is enough to show contempt for the actors in it. She sympa-that she was capable of a tenderness for the thizes with the sufferers, yet she can scarcely be said to be sorry for them; giving them unconsciously a share in her own sense of the covert fun of the scene, and gentle disdain of the possibility that meanness and folly and stupidity could ever really wound any rational creature. The position of mind is essentially feminine, and one which may be readily identified in the personal knowledge of most people. It is the natural result of the constant, though probably quite object of her soft laughter - a capability which converts that laughter into something totally different from the gentle derision with which she regards the world in general. Human-kind stands low in her estimation, in short, as a mass. There are a few pleasant young people here and there to redeem it, or even an old lady now and then, or in the back-ground a middle-aged couple who are not selfish, nor vulgar, nor exacting. But there is a great deal more amusement to be got out of the mean people, and to them accordingly she inclines. 66 We have said that Mr. Austen Leigh throws a little feeble light on this particular of the great novelist's character. In almost the only view of her youth which he is able to give us, he tells us of "an old copybook containing several tales," childish essays at composition, which were “ generally intended to be nonsensical." Her first book was written when she was twenty, so that it is a little difficult to divine exactly what her biographer means when he speaks of a time when she was quite a girl." But he goes on to inform us of "another stage of her progress, during which she produced several tales not without merit, but which she considered unworthy of publication. . . . Instead of presenting faithful copies of nature,” he adds, "these tales were generally burlesques, ridiculing the improbable events and exaggerated statements which she had met with in sundry silly romances." Such a commencement is not without its significance. A girl who ridiculed improbable events and exaggerated sentiments between the ages of sixteen and twenty, must already have begun to learn the lesson congenial to her temperament, and commenced that amused, indifferent, keen-sighted, impartial inspection of the world as a thing apart from herself, and demanding no excess of sympathy, which is characteristic of all the work of her life. It is not to be supposed, however, that our opinion of Miss Austen or her work is lessened by this view of her character. A fine poetical enthusiasm for her fellowcreatures, and belief in them, might have been a sentiment for which we should have felt greater sympathy, as in itself it seems more natural and congenial to the early speculations of youth. But unfortunately enthusiasm has a great tendency to make itself ridiculous in its earlier manifestations, and could have had no share in the production of such a book as "Pride and Prejudice," or the charming, sprightly pages of "Emma." Nothing but a mind of this subtle, delicate, speculative temper could have set before us pictures which are at once so refined and so trenchant, so softly feminine and polite, and so remorselessly true. If contrast be expedient to bring out the full force of individual character, no more effectual foil could be found than by placing Mary Mitford by Jane Austen's side. The fat, roundabout, roly-poly girl, who was winning prizes in her London school, and chattering to her "dear darlings," and pouring out every funny little exaggerated sentiment and clever little bit of observa 66 66 The tion that was in her, with the most charming absence of humour, when the pretty young lady in the Steventon vicarage had begun to write her novels, was as full of enthusiasm as the other was destitute of it. But then her enthusiasm embraced everything with a want of perspective as amusing as her own utter want of any perception of its absurdity. Her father was her "darling," but so was her dog and her owl, and a multiplicity of other pets. She finds Whitbread, whom she sees at a public meeting, to be "exquisitely handsome a most elegant figure," said the ardent girl, “and a voice which I could listen to with transport, even if he spoke in an unknown tongue!" Her friend Miss Rowden's poem, Pleasures of Friendship," she finds equal to the celebrated works on Memory' and 'Hope,' ," and its descriptions are, she considers, exquisitely beautiful." Whatever she loves becomes by an instantaneous process beautiful to her. The glamour of the poets is in her eyes. The father who ruined all her earthly prospects, and made her a literary drudge through all her mature womanhood, continues to receive the same worshipping admiration and love from her after all the illusions of youth were dispelled, and she had been taught to estimate his deficiencies by something approaching a just standard. The same characteristics accompany her when she begins her most living work, the pleasant records of "Our Village." She is, like her more illustrious companion, a spectator in the tranquil breathing scene; yet what a difference is there in the spectatorship! While Miss Austen sees only the ladies and gentlemen, the genial blue eyes of the younger woman warm in a kindly sympathy over all the world. She spies at once, not the gentry at their drawing-room windows, but the cheerful haymakers in the field, the women standing at their doors; and with eyes shining with fun, and yet tender with sympathy, stops to point out to us the cobbler and his wife, the poor shopkeeper overwhelmed with debt and care, the pretty Letty or Patty, with red eyes, in a corner, who has quarrelled with her lover. Miss Mitford's world is a world twice as full as Miss Austen's. It is indeed overflowing with life, like a medieval picture - passengers on all the ways, market-carts as well as carriages, and Dame Whittaker with her great basket, and little Harry on the dusty path, as well as my lady with her footman behind her, who perhaps, if he is an honest lad, and belongs to the country-side, has his story too. And though the villagers are sometimes tyrannical and unjust, and very cross to their young people, yet there is always a soft place in their hearts somewhere or other, a string that being touched will discourse gentler music. and all the painful humanity underneath suppressed too, as nature commands when the sun is shining and all the world is gay. It is more superficial, and, so far as art is concerned, is on an infinitely lower level, and yet it is truer to all those deep instinctive unities which art may sometimes ignore, but which nature never ignores. Miss Austen's work is infinitely more perfect; she is a far greater artist, going deeper and seeing farther, but her world is not such a pleasant world as that of her contemporary. The skies are often leaden There is one curious feature of personal and still in the greater picture, but in the resemblance in the lives of the two women lesser they are always aglow with sunshine thus placed before us which, considering or tumultuous with real clouds; there is their occupation, is noticeable enough, and always a fresh air blowing, and the cottage which at the same time gives a very flat windows shine, and the surface of the earth contradiction to one of the most popular of is gay with flowers. Whether it is peculiar fallacies. Miss Austen was a born novelist, to Berkshire or to Miss Mitford one cannot and Miss Mitford a teller of love-stories; quite tell; but one feels it must be Berk- they were neither of them recluses, nor in shire, every detail is so true. What banks any way shut out from the world. The first of violets, what primroses by the hedgerows, was pretty and full of charm; the second, what thickets of honeysuckle and rose! and though not pretty, yet possessed all the were there ever such geraniums as those in attractions which a sprightly intelligence, the garden, which is so little and so gor- and sweet temper, and most amiable dispogeous, and so carefully tended, where our sition could give. And yet there is not the friend sits writing hard by, and her hand- ghost of a romance belonging to either of some father, with his loftly white head, and them. If either loved or was beloved again, all his sins forgiven, loafs about in the sun- she must have done it in absolute secrecy, shine, complacently conscious of having which is next to impossible. In the face spent three fortunes; and Ben is audible of the popular notion that love is the chief in the distance grooming the white pony, occupation of a woman's life or let us say, or trim Harriet crosses the corner of the at least, of a young woman's life — an idea flower-beds with her white apron blazing in which, no doubt, both of these women over the summer brightness? The picture is a and over again promulgated stands this little false, because, if we could look under curious fact: Miss Austen and Miss Mitford the surface, the handsome old father is a were surrounded with other affections and worthless personage enough, notwithstand- occupations their lives were full and ing his beauty; and his daughter, as she showed no lack; and it would be hard to writes, has a sore heart, and does not know find any trace of that (let our readers parhow the bills are to be paid, and is weary don us the horrible word) sexual unrest beyond description of drudging at her pen and discontent which, at a later period, all day long for daily bread. Miss Austen found a startling revelation in the works of would set it before you in three sentences, Charlotte Brontë, and have since been reso that you would no longer see any beauty peated ad nauseam in many inferior pages in the scene. She would impale Dr. Mit-in the productions of either. Through ford with a keen sudden touch and the usu- all the voluminous correspondence just al smile in her eyes; and however sensible given to the public by Miss Mitford's exeshe was of his daughter's goodness, could cutors, and through the pleasanter and not resist the temptation of letting you more concentrated notes, and introductions, know that Miss Mary was fat and some- and reminiscences in which she herself gave what gushing, and thought very well of her the public such indication as pleased her of literary fancy-work. And Ben and Harriet her own life, there is not a word that sugand the white pony, those half-seen accesso-gests a lover; there is not even a recollecries, which give population and fulness to tion such as calls the soft sigh, which is the other sketch, would disappear altogether from Miss Austen's canvas, along with the blazing geraniums, and all the soft delicious breathing of the more fragrant flowers. It would be much finer, clearer, distinct as daylight - a thing done in aquafortis, and capable of outliving the world; but for our poor part, we would rather have Miss Mitford's sweet flowery picture, with Ben's suppressed hiss in the background, more pleasure than pain, and the tender smile of gratitude and etherealized vanity from an old lady's lips when a name or an allusion brings before her something which might have been. There is nothing in all Mary Mitford's much utterance which conveys the faintest idea that anything could ever have been, except her devotion to her parents, her care of them as if she had been the parent and they the children, and her It is warm-hearted effusive regard for her friends. | we have no right to complain, seeing that Perhaps, indeed, the want may be accounted they did not shape their lives to please us, for in her case by the mere fact of this though they have shaped various other lines strange transposition of nature which made of existence in which the deficiency is supher the real head of the little family, with plied. Such a question, it is unnecessary all the care upon her head, and all the work to say, could not have been discussed by a to do, a combination of circumstances en- contemporary; but the critic at this distirely unfavourable to love-making-if it tance may be permitted to regret that there were not that love-making is one of those is not somewhere a faded bunch of violets, perverse things which have a special ten- or some dead forget-me-not, to be thrown dency to produce themselves where their with the myrtle and the bay of their counpresence is embarrassing, and where they try's appreciation, upon these two maiden are not wanted. But not even the fact that graves. a love-story would have been very much Miss Austen began her literary work at in her way, and added greatly to her em- so early an age that its skill and extreme barrassments, seems to have brought that refinement, as well as the peculiar point of climax of youthful experience to Miss Mit- view from which she regarded the world, ford. In Miss Austen's case there was becomes more and more wonderful. nothing, so far as one can see, to hinder a very difficult thing to realize how a brain the natural romance. She had no over- of one-and-twenty could have identified whelming duties upon her head, nothing to such a family as the Bennets, such a charbind her to maidenhood, no tragical necessi-acter as Mr. Collins, and could have willties of any kind to damp her courage or restrain life in its ordinary course. Yet all her biographer can say on this interesting subject is "Of Jane herself I know of no tale of love to relate." Mr. Austen Leigh quotes from one of her reviewers the not unnatural idea that in depicting the hidden and tenacious love of one of her heroines, she was drawing from personal recollection, but only to assure us that "this conjecture was wide of the mark. She did not, indeed, pass through life," he adds, "without being the object of strong affection, and it is probable that she met with some whom she found attractive; but her taste was not easily satisfied, nor her heart to be lightly won. I have no reason to think that she ever felt any attachment by which the happiness of her life was at all affected." ingly filled up her background with figures such as those of the female Bingleys, Wickham, Lady Catherine, and the rest. Nothing could be more lifelike, and more utterly real. The household is not described, but rises vividly before us as if we had visited it yesterday, with all its rusticity and ignorance, its eager thirst for pleasure, and incapacity to perceive the bad taste and futility of its own efforts. The first wonder that occurs to us is how Jane and Elizabeth should have found a place in such a family. The eldest is all sweetness and grace and beauty; the second brightly intelligent, quick to perceive and equally quick to take up false impressions, but clever and affectionate and honest to the highest degree; while every one else in the house is a study of absurdity and vulgarity of one sort or We are thus resolutely denied a love-tale another. Miss Austen had too much genius in both their lives, which is hard. Had to fall into the vulgar error of making they been married women whose romance had ended naturally in the commonplace way, the omission would have been less noteworthy; but there is a charm in the love which has never come to anything. the tender, pathetic, sweet recollection laid up in a virgin life, amid the faded rose-out of the midst of whom the heroes and leaves and fallen flowers of youth which is infinitely sweet and touching, -more touching than the successful and prosperous can ever be. This satisfaction, however, is, we repeat, denied us. There is no such soft secret in these two good, and pleasant, and beautiful lives. No man's existence could be more entirely free from sentiment. All is honest, and moderate, and open as the day. If love is a woman's chief business, then here were two very sweet women who had no share in it. It is a want, but her heroes and heroines all perfect, and relieving them against a background of unalloyed villany, but her actual conception of the world, as shown in her first completed work, is not much less elevated. The background is full, not of villains, but of fools, heroines rise in all the glory of superior talents and more elevated character. The power that is spent in setting forth these fools their endless variety the different shapes in which conceit, and vanity, and selfishness, and vulgar ambition display themselves the wonderful way in which they amalgamate and enhance each other, now and then rising into the successes of triumphant cunning, or sinking to pure folly once more, is set before us with a skill which is quite marvellous. It is all so |