century, and few who take it up will deny its charm and humour, or manage to resist the peculiar "atmosphere" with which Miss Eden has invested her story.
Miss Austen laid her characters, for the most part, a degree lower in the social scale, and seldom turned her attention to the aristocracy, whom she usually portrayed in caricature. Miss Eden, on the other hand, frankly despised the middle classes and the landed gentry, and depicted intimately the life of her own exclusive world, and could yet draw, a thing which, curiously, Miss Austen never once attempted, the characters of servants with brilliance of touch and a knowledge of flunkeiana which Thackeray might have envied.
It has been said of Miss Austen that if, by her upbringing, she was shielded from the truth, very little of the truth was shielded from her. And it has been said that genius means nothing more than the power of guessing right. Miss Austen is acknowledged as a genius, and genius is not claimed for Miss Eden. The latter knew her world, and knew, from experience at any rate, considerably more about life, men and women, than did Miss Austen.
The genius of Miss Austen made up for her inexperience by accurate guessing. It is claimed for Miss Eden that by a power of selecting judiciously from her own wide experience, she was sometimes able to accomplish what the genius of Miss Austen accomplished. It is best to be a good guesser—a genius. It is better to be a judicious and clever photographer than an indifferent guesser. Miss Eden's description of Teviot's feelings in the height of his passion reveals the fact that she knew a good deal about men, and, like Miss Austen, little of the truth was shielded from her.
Her style is easy, and falls into a graceful and natural antithesis, and everywhere abounds in humour. It is not my intention to quote at any length from the pages that
