Abbey, its completeness, finish, and entrain, obscure the undoubted

critical facts that its scale is small, and its scheme, after all, that

of burlesque or parody, a kind in which the first rank is reached with

difficulty. Persuasion, relatively faint in tone, and not enthralling

in interest, has devotees who exalt above all the others its exquisite

delicacy and keeping. The catastrophe of Mansfield Park is admittedly

theatrical, the hero and heroine are insipid, and the author has almost{x}

wickedly destroyed all romantic interest by expressly admitting that

Edmund only took Fanny because Mary shocked him, and that Fanny might

very likely have taken Crawford if he had been a little more assiduous;

yet the matchless rehearsal-scenes and the characters of Mrs. Norris and

others have secured, I believe, a considerable party for it. Sense and

Sensibility has perhaps the fewest out-and-out admirers; but it does

not want them.
I suppose, however, that the majority of at least competent votes

would, all things considered, be divided between Emma and the present

book; and perhaps the vulgar verdict (if indeed a fondness for Miss

Austen be not of itself a patent of exemption from any possible charge

of vulgarity) would go for Emma. It is the larger, the more varied, the

more popular; the author had by the time of its composition seen rather

more of the world, and had improved her general, though not her most

peculiar and characteristic dialogue; such figures as Miss Bates, as the

Eltons, cannot but unite the suffrages of everybody. On the other hand,

I, for my part, declare for Pride and Prejudice unhesitatingly. It

seems to me the most perfect, the most characteristic, the most

eminently quintessential of its author’s works; and for this contention

in such narrow space as is permitted to me, I propose here to show

cause.
In the first place, the book (it may be barely necessary to remind the