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When Pride and Prejudice came out in 1813, it completed the series of Jane Austen's earlier writings, excepting only Northanger Abbey, which was not then in her hands for publication. The two novels that had already appeared were finished before she was four-and-twenty; those that followed were not begun till she was well over thirty, and I think that, even without the authority of dates, no one could doubt that Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion belong to a later stage of authorship than Sense and Sensibility, or Pride and Prejudice. They are no less brilliant, but they are more matured; the motives and actions of the dramatis personæ are more complex; there is less rapidity in the working out (rapidity is usually a sure sign of youth), and the satire is a little softened; the feelings expressed, too, are more womanly and less girlish. In both the earlier novels the really predominant passion is the love of the sisters for each other; the love-making is gracefully worked out and properly adjusted, but on the lady's side it is left very much to our imagination, and it is scrupulously kept under till the gentleman has revealed his devotion. In each of her three last and greatest
