encouragement of a love and a study of natural objects, would do as much thereby to humanize and Christianize the younger members of their flocks as they can possibly do by Vanity Fairs or parochial oyster suppers. The modest house of Gilbert White * was occupied very many years by the venerable Professor Bell, late president of the Linnean Society, who died in 1880. The study of the old naturalist remained long as the master left it; his oaken bookcase was still there; so was the thermometer attached to the shelves by which he made his observations; his dial by which he counted the hours stands at the foot of the garden; and in the churchyard near by is his grave; while within the quaint old church, to the right of the altar, is a tablet in his honor; and in his honor, too, all the birds of Selborne will sing night and morning year after year. * A charmingly illustrated edition of The Natural History of Selborne-showing his ivy-covered home and other obJects of interest, was published by Macmillan & Co. in 1875 (edited by Frank Buckland). I am indebted for a copy to my friend, Wm. Robinson, of the London Garden. A Hampshire Novelist. And now for that other Hampshire personage, of whom I gave you a hint, as being also guiltless of London life and almost of London acquaintances; it is a lady now of whom I have to speak,* and one who deserves to be well known. She lived, when her books were published, only three or more miles away from Selborne, across the hills northward at the village of Chawton, which lies upon the old coach road from Farnham to Winchester. Miss Austen was much younger as I have said than our old friend the parson; indeed she was only beginning to try her pen when Gilbert White was ready to lay his down. She had all his simplicities of treatment and all his acuteness of observation - to which she added a charming humor and large dramatic power; but her subjects were men and women, and not -- * Jane Austen, b. 1775; d. 1817. Sense and Sensibility, published 1811. Life was written by her nephew J. Austen Leigh. Her Letters, edited by Lord Brabourne, 1884. birds. She wrote many good old-fashioned novels which people read now for their light and delicate touches, their happy characterizations, their charming play of humor, and their lack of exaggeration. She makes you slip into easy acquaintance with the people of her books as if they lived next door, and would be pulling at your bell to-morrow, or to-night. And you never confound them; by the mere sound of their voices you know which is Ellinor, and which is Marianne; and as for the disagreeable people in her stories, they are just as honestly and naturally disagreeable as any neighbor you could name-whether by talking too much, or making puns, or prying into your private affairs. Walter Scott, who read her books over and over, says, "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." Macaulay, too, admired her intensely; ventured even to speak of her amazing, effective naturalness-in the same paragraph with Shakespeare. Miss Mitford confided to a young niece of the authoress, that "she would give her hand," if she could write a story like Miss Austen. We may not and must not doubt her quality and her genius, whatever old-time stiffness we may find in her conversations. One book of hers at least you should read, if only to learn her manner; and as you read it remember that it was written by a young woman who had passed nearly her whole life in Hampshire-who knew scarce any of the literary people of the day; who had only made chance visits to London, and a stay of some four years in the lively city of Bath. She was very winning and beautiful-if her portrait is to be relied upon with a piquant, mischievous expression - looking very capable of making a great many hearts ache, beside those which ache in her books. It would be impossible to cite fragments from her stories that would give any adequate notion of her manner and accomplishment; it would be very like showing the feather of a bird, to give an *Not the dreadful, seamy, photographic reproduction of an old oil painting that Lord Brabourne gives, which must be wholly unfair to her; but the earlier engravings. idea of its swoop of wing. Perhaps Pride and Prejudice, though her first written work, is the one most characteristic. You do not get lost in its sentimental strains; you do not find surfeit of immaculate conduct. There are fine woods and walks; but there is plenty of mud, and bad-going. The very heroines you often want to clutch away from their uncomely surroundings; and as for the elderly Mrs. Bennett, whose tongue is forever at its "click-clack," you cannot help wishing that she might-innocently-get choked off the scene, and appear no more. But that is not the deft Miss Austen's way; that gossiping, silly, irritating mater familias, goes on to the very end-as such people do in life- making your bile rise; and when the rainbows of felicity come at last to arch over the scenes of Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennett's clacking tongue is still strident, and still reminds you in the strongest possible way, that Miss Austen has been busy with the veriest actualities of life, and not with its pretty, shimmering vapors. Persuasion is a less interesting book, and less complete than Pride and Prejudice; its heroine, |