to those of Miss Austin, our writers have delighted in painting the actual,—our fictions have been so many mirrors of men and manners—idealised as all things must be, reproduced by the agencies of the memory and of the imagination. Richardson was the first inventor of the domestic novel. He asked of poetry only its pathos, not the gorgeous richness of the drama—the earliest shape always taken by fiction. He began that delineation of middle life which is a peculiar feature in our literature, perhaps because the English middle classes have more independence, consequently more character, than those of any other country. We know no delineations more perfect than those of the whole Selby family: the only pendant to that most perfect old lady Mrs. Selby, is the equally exquisite Mrs. Bethune Baliol of Sir Walter Scott. The Scotch and the English portrait, high-bred, kind-hearted, with their lady-like niceties and peculiarities, are each admirable, charming as individuals, and historical as the representatives of a class.
Among the numerous followers in a path particularly calculated for feminine observation, namely, that of domestic life, occur the names of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austin: each might be considered the type of her national genius, as far as such could be embodied in a woman.
