Anne Eliot, is not possessed of very salient qualities; hardly gaining or holding very earnest attention; yet with a quiet sense of duty, and such every-day fulfilment of it, as makes her righteously draw toward her all the triumphs of the little drama; a lost love is reclaimed by these quiet forces, and victory comes to crown her easy gentleness. Northanger Abbey is weaker, but with bold, striking naturalism in it; all the littlenesses and plottings and vain speech of the Bath Pump-Room seem to come to life in its pages; to just such life as we may find about our Cape Mays, and Pequod, and Ocean houses, every blessed summer's day! Miss Austen's earlier novels, which made her reputation, were written before she was twenty-five, and published later, and under many difficulties - anonymously; so she had none of that public incense regaling her, which was set ablaze for the less capable Miss Burney; and it was almost as an unknown, strange, quiet gentlewoman that she went down, in the later years of her life, to the shores of the beautiful Southampton Waters-seeking health there; and again, on the same search to the higher lands of the

Hampshire downs- where she died, only fortytwo, and lies buried under a black marble slab, which you may find under the vaults of the interesting old Cathedral of Winchester.

The recognition of her high qualities was not so extended in her life-time, as it is now; and thirty years after her death, a visitor to the great Hampshire Cathedral was asked by the respectable verger: "What there was particular about Miss Austen, that so many people should want to see her grave?" Even the most wooden of vergers would hardly ask the question now; her extraordinary quickness and justness of observation astonish every intelligent reader. All the more, since her life was lived within narrow lines; but what she saw, she saw true, and she remembered. That wonderful masterly Shakespearian alertness of mind in seizing upon traits and retaining their relations and colors, is what distinguishes her, as it distinguishes every kindred genius. I can understand how many people cannot overmuch relish the stories of Miss Austen because they do not relish the people to whom she introduces us; but I cannot understand how any reader can fail to be

impressed and electrified by her marvellous photographic reproduction of social shades of conduct. How delightful is that indignation of Sir John Middleton, when he learns of the villainy and falsity of Willoughby. "To think of it! and he had offered the scoundrel one of Follies' puppies!" And then-reflectively-"A pretty man he was too, and owner of one of the finest pointer bitches in England! The devil take him!" What a synopsis of the man's qualities, and of Sir John's measurement of them!

Old Juvenilia.

I cannot pass from this epoch, without saying somewhat concerning that tide of literature for young people which set in strongly about those times. There was Sandford and Merton, for instance; can it be that the moderns are growing up to maturity without a knowledge of the wise inculcations of that eminently respectable work? Sixty years ago it was a stunning book for all good boys, and for the good sisters of good boys. Whoever was at the head of his class was pretty apt to

get Sandford and Merton; whoever had a birthday present was very likely to get Sandford and Merton; if a good aunt was in search of a proper New Year's gift for a lad the bookseller was almost sure to recommend Sandford and Merton; and when a boy went away to school, some considerate friend was very certain to pop a copy of Sandford and Merton into his satchel.

It is in the guise of a great lumbering narrative -supposed to be true-into which are whipped a score or more of little stories, each one capped with a bouncing moral. Thus, there is an illnatured boy going out for a day's scrimmage, and playing his tricks-on a poor girl, and a blind beggar, and a lame beggar, and a farmer, and a donkey. This goes on very well for awhile; but at last the tables are turned, and he gets bitten by the blind beggar, and beaten by the lame beggar, and thrashed by the farmer, and is thrown by the donkey, and a large dog seizes him by the leg; this latter is printed in capitals, and there is a picture of it. At last, in bed, and with watery eyes, the boy reflects that "no one can long hurt others

with impunity;" so he determined to "behave

better for the future." Is it any wonder that those who had access to such instructive tales a half a century ago should have grown up to be excellent men!

This book of Sandford and Merton was written by Thomas Day,* an eccentric rich man (the world of to-day would have called him a crank), who had a fine place near to Putney on the Thames, who sympathized strongly with Americans in Revolutionary times; who was also a disciple of Rousseau, and undertook to educate a young girl two of them in fact, one being a foundling

so that he might have a wife of his own training, after the Rousseau standard; but the young persons did not train as he wished; so he found his mate otherwheres.

Another comfit of a book for young people, but with fewer plums of romance in it, was Evenings at Home by Dr. Aikin and Mrs. Barbauld. I am sure the very name must bring up tender memories to a great many; for it was a current book down to a time when respectable, and even mirth-loving

* Thomas Day, b. 1748; d. 1789. Oxford man ; married, 1778; Sandford and Merton published 1783.

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