The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863

We can readily suppose that the spheres of Jane Austen and Sir Egerton could not be very congenial; and it does not appear that he was ever tempted from the contemplation of his own performances, to read her "literary compositions." A letter from Robert Southey to Sir Egerton shows that the latter had not quite forgotten her. Southey writes, under the dale of Keswick, April, 1830:—

"You mention Miss Austen; her novels are more true to Nature, and have (for my sympathies) passages of finer feeling than any others of this age. She was a person of whom I have heard so much, and think so highly, that I regret not having seen her, or ever had an opportunity of testifying to her the respect which I felt for her."

A pleasant anecdote, told to us on good authority in England, is illustrative of Miss Austen's power over various minds. A party of distinguished literary men met at a country-seat; among them was Macaulay, and, we believe, Hallam; at all events, they were men of high reputation. While discussing the merits of various authors, it was proposed that each should write down the name of that work of fiction which had given him the greatest pleasure. Much surprise and amusement followed; for, on opening the slips of paper, seven bore the name of "Mansfield Park,"—a coincidence of opinion most rare, and a tribute to an author unsurpassed.

Had we been of that party at the English country-house, we should have written, "The last novel by Miss Austen which we have read"; yet, forced to a selection, we should have named "Persuasion." But we withdraw our private preference, and, yielding to the decision of seven wise men, place "Mansfield Park" at the head of the list, and leave it there without further comment.

"Persuasion" was her latest work, and bears the impress of a matured mind and perfected style. The language of Miss Austen is, in all her pages, drawn from the "wells of English undefiled." Concise and clear, simple and vigorous, no word can be omitted that she puts down, and none can be added to heighten the effect of her sentences. In "Persuasion" there are passages whose depth and tenderness, welling up from deep fountains of feeling, impress us with the conviction that the angel of sorrow or suffering had troubled the waters, yet had left in them a healing influence, which is felt rather than revealed. Of all the heroines we have known through a long and somewhat varied experience, there is not one whose life-companionship we should so desire to secure as that of Anne Elliot. Ah! could she also forgive our faults and bear with our weaknesses, while we were animated by her sweet and noble example, existence would be, under any aspect, a blessing. This felicity was reserved for Captain Wentworth. Happy man! In "Persuasion" we also find the subtle Mr. Elliot. Here, as with Mr. Crawford in "Mansfield Park," Miss Austen deals dexterously with the character of a man of the world, and uses a nicer discernment than is often found in the writings of women, even those who assume masculine names.

"Emma" we know to have been a favorite with the author. "I have drawn a character full of faults," said she, "nevertheless I like her." In Emma's company we meet Mr. Knightley, Harriet Smith, and Frank Churchill. We sit beside good old Mr. Woodhouse, and please him by tasting his gruel. We walk through Highbury, we are patronized by Mrs. Elton, listen forbearingly to the indefatigable Miss Bates, and take an early walk to the post-office with Jane Fairfax. Once we found ourselves actually on "Box Hill," but it did not seem half so real as when we "explored" there with the party from Highbury.

"Pride and Prejudice" is piquant In style and masterly in portraiture. We make perhaps too many disagreeable acquaintances to enjoy ourselves entirely; yet who would forego Mr. Collins, or forget Lady Catherine de Bourgh, though each in their way is more stupid and odious than any one but Miss Austen could induce us to endure. Mr. Darcy's character is ably given; a very difficult one to sustain under all the circumstances in which he is placed. It is no small tribute to the power of the author to concede that she has so managed the workings of his real nature as to make it possible, and even probable, that a high-born, high-bred Englishman of Mr. Darcy's stamp could become the son-in-law of Mrs. Bennet. The scene of Darcy's declaration of love to Elizabeth, at the Hunsford Parsonage, is one of the most remarkable passages in Miss Austen's writings, and, indeed, we remember nothing equal to it among the many writers of fiction who have endeavored to describe that culminating point of human destiny.

"Northanger Abbey" is written in a fine vein of irony, called forth, in some degree, by the romantic school of Mrs. Radcliffe and her imitators. We doubt whether Miss Austen was not over-wise with regard to these romances. Though born after the Radcliffe era, we well remember shivering through the "Mysteries of Udolpho" with as quaking a heart as beat in the bosom of Catherine Morland. If Miss Austen was not equally impressed by the power of these romances, we rejoice that they were written, as with them we should have lost "Northanger Abbey." For ourselves, we spent one very rainy day in the streets of Bath, looking up every nook and corner familiar in the adventures of Catherine, and time, not faith, failed, for a visit to Northanger itself. Bath was also sanctified by the presence of Anne Elliot. Our inn, the "White Hart," (made classic by the adventures of various well-remembered characters,) was hallowed by exquisite memories which connected one of the rooms (we faithfully believed it was our apartment) with the conversation of Anne Elliot and Captain Harville, as they stood by the window, while Captain Wentworth listened and wrote. In vain did we gaze at the windows of Camden Place. No Anne Elliot appeared.

"Sense and Sensibility" was the first novel published by Miss Austen. It is marked by her peculiar genius, though it may be wanting in the nicer finish which experience gave to her later writings.

The Earl of Carlisle, when Lord Morpheth, wrote a poem for some now forgotten annual, entitled "The Lady and the Novel." The following lines occur among the verses:—

"Or is it thou, all-perfect Austen? hereLet one poor wreath adorn thy early bier,That scarce allowed thy modest worth to claimThe living portion of thy honest fame:Oh, Mrs. Bennet, Mrs. Morris, too,While Memory survives, she'll dream of you;And Mr. Woodhouse, with abstemious lip,Must thin, but not too thin, the gruel sip;Miss Bates, our idol, though the village bore,And Mrs. Elton, ardent to explore;While the clear style flows on without pretence,With unstained purity, and unmatched sense."

If the Earl of Carlisle, in whose veins flows "the blood of all the Howards," is willing to acknowledge so many of our friends, who are anything but aristocratic, our republican soul shrinks not from the confession that we should like to accompany good-natured Mrs. Jennings in her hospitable carriage, (so useful to our young ladies of sense and sensibility,) witness the happiness of Elinor at the parsonage, and the reward of Colonel Brandon at the manor-house of Delaford, and share with Mrs. Jennings all the charms of the mulberry-tree and the yew arbor.

An article on "Recent Novels," in "Fraser's Magazine" for December, 1847, written by Mr. G.H. Lewes, contains the following paragraphs:—"What we most heartily enjoy and applaud is truth in the delineations of life and character…. To make our meaning precise, we would say that Fielding and Miss Austen are the greatest novelists in our language…. We would rather have written 'Pride and Prejudice,' or 'Tom Jones,' than any of the 'Waverley Novels'…. Miss Austen has been called a prose Shakspeare,—and among others, by Macaulay. In spite of the sense of incongruity which besets us in the words prose Shakspeare, we confess the greatness of Miss Austen, her marvellous dramatic power, seems, more than anything in Scott, akin to Shakspeare."

The conclusion of this article is devoted to a review of 'Jane Eyre,' and led to the correspondence between Miss Brontè and Mr. Lewes which will be found in the memoir of her life. In these letters it is apparent that Mr. Lewes wishes Miss Brontè to read and to enjoy Miss Austen's works, as he does himself. Mr. Lewes is disappointed, and felt, doubtless, what all true lovers of Jane Austen have experienced, a surprise to find how obtuse otherwise clever people sometimes are. In this instance, however, we think Mr. Lewes expected what was impossible. Charlotte Brontè could not harmonize with Jane Austen. The luminous and familiar star which comes forth into the quiet evening sky when the sun sets amid the amber light of an autumn evening, and the comet which started into sight, unheralded and unnamed, and flamed across the midnight sky, have no affinity, except in the Divine Mind, whence both originate.

The notice of Miss Austen, by Macaulay, to which Mr. Lewes alludes, must be, we presume, the passage which occurs in Macaulay's article on Madame D'Arblay, in the "Edinburgh Review," for January, 1843. We do not find the phrase, "prose Shakspeare," but the meaning is the same; we give the passage as it stands before us:—

"Shakspeare has neither equal nor second; but among writers who, in the point we have noticed, have approached nearest the manner of the great master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, as a woman of whom England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters, all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day. Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they were the most eccentric of human beings. There are, for example, four clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in any parsonage in the kingdom,—Mr. Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Edward Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of the upper part of the middle class. They have been all liberally educated. They all lie under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young. They are all in love. Not any one of them has any hobby-horse, to use the phrase of Sterne. Not one has any ruling passion, such as we read in Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike Jourdain, Joseph Surface is not more unlike Sir Lucius O'Trigger, than every one of Miss Austen's young divines to all his reverend brethren. And almost all this is done by touches so delicate that they elude analysis, that they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to exist only by the general effect to which they have contributed."

Dr. Whately, the Archbishop of Dublin, in the "Quarterly Review," 1821, sums up his estimate of Miss Austen with these words: "The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure would have deserved well of mankind, had he stipulated it should be blameless. Those again who delight in the study of human nature may improve in the knowledge of it, and in the profitable application of that knowledge, by the perusal of such fictions. Miss Austen introduces very little of what is technically called religion into her books, yet that must be a blinded soul which does not recognize the vital essence, everywhere present in her pages, of a deep and enlightened piety.

There are but few descriptions of scenery in her novels. The figures of the piece are her care; and if she draws in a tree, a hill, or a manor-house, it is always in the background. This fact did not arise from any want of appreciation for the glories or the beauties of the outward creation, for we know that the pencil was as often in her hand as the pen. It was that unity of purpose, ever present to her mind, which never allowed her to swerve from the actual into the ideal, nor even to yield to tempting descriptions of Nature which might be near, and yet aside from the main object of her narrative. Her creations are living people, not masks behind which the author soliloquizes or lectures. These novels are impersonal; Miss Austen never herself appears; and if she ever had a lover, we cannot decide whom he resembled among the many masculine portraits she has drawn.

Very much has been said in her praise, and we, in this brief article, have summoned together witnesses to the extent of her powers, which are fit and not few. Yet we are aware that to a class of readers Miss Austen's novels must ever remain sealed books. So be it. While the English language is read, the world will always be provided with souls who can enjoy the rare excellence of that rich legacy left to them by her genius.

Once in our lifetime we spent three delicious days in the Isle of Wight, and then crossed the water to Portsmouth. After taking a turn on the ramparts in memory of Fanny Price, and looking upon the harbor whence the Thrush went out, we drove over Portsdown Hill to visit the surviving member of that household which called Jane Austen their own.

We had been preceded by a letter, introducing us to Admiral Austen as fervent admirers of his sister's genius, and were received by him with a gentle courtesy most winning to our heart.

In the finely-cut features of the brother, who retained at eighty years of age much of the early beauty of his youth, we fancied we must see a resemblance to his sister, of whom there exists no portrait.

It was delightful to us to hear him speak of "Jane," and to be brought so near the actual in her daily life. Of his sister's fame as a writer the Admiral spoke understandingly, but reservedly.

We found the old Admiral safely moored in that most delightful of havens, a quiet English country-home, with the beauty of Nature around the mansion, and the beauty of domestic love and happiness beneath its hospitable roof.

There we spent a summer day, and the passing hours seemed like the pages over which we had often lingered, written by her hand whose influence had guided us to those she loved. That day, with all its associations, has become a sacred memory, and links us to the sphere where dwells that soul whose gift of genius has rendered immortal the name of Jane Austen.

* * * * *

THE PROCLAMATION

"I order and declare that all persons held as slaves in the said designated States and parts of States are and hereafter shall be free,… and I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence."

ABRAHAM LINCOLNSaint Patrick, slave to Milcho of the herdsOf Ballymena, sleeping, heard these words:"Arise, and fleeOut from the land of bondage, and be free!"Glad as a soul in pain, who hears from heavenThe angels singing of his sins forgiven,And, wondering, seesHis prison opening to their golden keys,He rose a man who laid him down a slave,Shook from his locks the ashes of the grave,And outward trodInto the glorious liberty of God.He cast the symbols of his shame away;And passing where the sleeping Milcho lay,Though back and limbSmarted with wrong, he prayed, "God pardon him!"So went he forth: but in God's time he cameTo light on Uilline's hills a holy flame;And, dying, gaveThe land a saint that lost him as a slave.O dark, sad millions, patiently and dumbWaiting for God, your hour, at last, has come,And freedom's songBreaks the long silence of your night of wrong!Arise and flee! shake off the vile restraintOf ages! but, like Ballymena's saint,The oppressor spare,Heap only on his head the coals of prayer!Go forth, like him! like him, return again,To bless the land whereon in bitter painYe toiled at first,And heal with freedom what your slavery cursed!* * * * *

THE LAW OF COSTS

Our nation is now paying the price, not only of its vice, but also of its virtue,—not alone of its evil doing, but of its noble and admirable doing as well. It has of late been a customary cry with a certain class, that those who cherish freedom and advocate social justice are the proper authors of the present war. No doubt there is in this allegation an ungracious kind of truth; that is, had the nation been destitute of a political faith and of moral feeling, there would have been no contest. But were one lying ill of yellow-fever or small-pox, there would be the same sort of lying truth in the statement, that the life in him, which alone resists the disease, is really its cause; since to yellow-fever, or to any malady, dead bodies are not subject. There is no preventive of disease so effectual as death itself,—no place so impregnable to pestilence as the grave. So, had the vitality gone out of the nation's heart, had that lamp of love for freedom and justice and of homage to the being of man, which once burned in its bosom so brightly, already sunk into death-flicker and extinction, then in the sordid and icy dark that would remain there could be no war of like nature with this that to-day gives the land its woful baptism of blood and tears. Oh, no! there would have been peace—and putrefaction: peace, but without its sweetness, and death, but without its hopes.

In one important sense, however, this war—hateful and horrible though it be—is the price which the nation must pay for its ideas and its magnanimity. If you take a clear initial step toward any great end, you thereby assume as a debt to destiny the pursuit and completion of your action; and should you fail to meet this debt, it will not fail to meet you, though now in the shape of retribution and with a biting edge. The seaman who has signed shipping-papers owes a voyage, and must either sail or suffer. The nation which has recognized absolute rights of man, and in their name assumed to shed blood, has taken upon itself the burden of a high destination, and must bear it, if not willingly, reluctantly, if not in joy and honor, then in shame and weeping.

Our nation, by the early nobility of its faith and action, assumed such a debt to destiny, and now must pay it. It needed not to come in this shape: there need have been no horror of carnage,—no feast of vultures, and carnival of fiends,—no weeping of Rachel, mourning for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they are not. There was required only a magnanimity in proceeding to sustain that of our beginning,—only a sympathy broad enough to take our little planet and all her human tribes in its arms, deep enough to go beneath the skin in which men differ, to the heart's blood in which they agree,—only pains and patience, faith and forbearance,—only a national obedience to that profound precept of Christianity which prescribes service to him that would be greatest, making the knowledge of the wise due to the ignorant, and the strength of the strong due to the weak. The costs of freedom would have been paid in the patient lifting up of a degraded race from the slough of servitude; and the nation would at the same time have avoided that slough of lava and fire wherein it is now ingulfed.

It was not to be so. History is coarse; it gets on by gross feeding and fevers, not by delicacy of temperance and wisdom of regimen. Our debt was to be paid, not in a pure form, but mixed with the costs of unbelief, cowardice, avarice. Yet primarily it is the cost, not of meanness, but of magnanimity, that we are now paying,—not of a base skepticism, but of a noble faith. For, in truth, normal qualities and actions involve costs no less than vicious and abnormal. Such is the law of the world; and it is this law of the costs of worthiness, of knowledge and nobility, of all memorable being and doing, that I now desire to set forth. Having obtained the scope and power of the law, having considered it also as applying to individuals, we may proceed to exhibit its bearing upon the present struggle of our Republic.

The general statement is this,—that whatever has a worth has also a cost. "The law of the universe," says a wise thinker, "is, Pay and take." If you desire silks of the mercer or supplies at the grocery, you, of course, pay money. Is it a harvest from the field that you seek? Tillage must be paid. Would you have the river toil in production of cloths for your raiment? Only pay the due modicum of knowledge, labor, and skill, and you shall bind its hand to your water-wheels, and turn all its prone strength into pliant service. Or perhaps you wish the comforts of a household. By payment of the due bearing of its burdens, you may hope to obtain it,—surely not otherwise. Do you ask that this house may be a true home, a treasury for wealth of the heart, a little heaven? Once more the word is pay,—pay your own heart's unselfish love, pay a generous trustfulness, a pure sympathy, a tender consideration, and a sweet firm-heartedness withal. And so, wherever there is a gaining, there is a warning,—wherever a well-being, a well-doing,—wherever a preciousness, a price of possession; and he who scants the payment stints the purchase; and he that will proffer nothing shall profit nothing; but he that freely and wisely gives shall receive as freely.

But these desiderata which I have named are all prices either of ordinary use, of comfort, or felicity; and it is generally understood that happiness is costly: but virtue? Virtue, so far from costing anything, is often supposed to be itself a price that you pay for happiness. It is told us that we shall be rewarded for our virtue; what moralistic commonplace is more common than this? But rewarded for your virtue you are not to be; you are to pay for it; at least, payment made, rather than received, is the principal fact. He who is honest for reward is a knave without reward. He who asks pay for telling truth has truth only on his tongue and a double lie in his heart. Do you think that the true artist strives to paint well that he may get money for his work? Or rather, is not his desire to pay money, to pay anything in reason, for the sake of excellence in his art? And, indeed, what is worthier than Worth? What fitter, therefore, to be paid for? And that payment is made, even under penal forms, every one may see. For what did Raleigh give his lofty head? For the privilege of being Raleigh, of being a man of great heart and a statesman of great mind, with a King James, a burlesque of all sovereignty, on the throne. For what did Socrates quaff the poison? For the privilege of that divine sincerity and penetration which characterized his life. For what did Kepler endure the last straits of poverty, his children crying for bread, while his own heart was pierced with their wailing? For the privilege—in his own noble words—"of reading God's thoughts after Him,"—God's thoughts written in stellar signs on the scroll of the skies. And Cicero and Thomas Cromwell, John Huss and John Knox, John Rogers and John Brown, and many another, high and low, famed and forgotten, must they not all make, as it were, penal payment for the privilege of being true men, truest among true? And again I say, that, if one knows something worthier than Worth, something more excellent than Excellence, then only does he know something fitter than they to be paid for.

Payment may assume a penal form: do not think this its only form. And to take the law at once out of the limitations which these examples suggest, let me show you that it is a law of healthy and unlamenting Nature. Look at the scale of existence, and you will see that for every step of advance in that scale payment is required. The animal is higher than the vegetable; the animal, accordingly, is subject to the sense of pain, the vegetable not; and among animals the pain may be keener as the organization is nobler. The susceptibility not only to pain, but to vital injury, observes the same gradation. A little girdling kills an oak; but some low fungus may be cut and troubled and trampled ad libitum, and it will not perish; and along the shores, farmers year after year pluck sea-weed from the rocks, and year after year it springs again lively as ever. Among the lowest orders of animals you shall find a creature that, if you cut it in two, straightway duplicates its existence and floats away twice as happy as before; but of the prick of a bodkin or the sting of a bee the noblest of men may die.

In the animal body the organs make a draft from the general vigors of the system just in proportion to their dignity. The eye,—what an expensive boarder at the gastric tables is that! Considerable provinces of the brain have to be made over to its exclusive use; and it will be remembered that a single ounce of delicate, sensitive brain, full of mysterious and marvellous powers, requires more vital support than many pounds of common muscle. The powers of the eye are great; it has a right to cost much, and it does cost. Also we observe that in this organ there is the exceeding susceptibility to injury, which, as we have observed, invariably accompanies powers of a lofty grade.