Cheshire market-town; and there is a larger preponderance of those "charming glimpses of rural life" of which Lady Ritchie speaks admiringly in her sympathetic preface. And with regard to the "bits of scenery"--as Mr. Thomson himself calls them--it may be noted that one of the Manchester papers, speaking of _Cranford_, praised the artist's intimate knowledge of the locality,--a locality he had never seen. Most of his backgrounds were from sketches made on Wimbledon Common, near which--until he moved for a space to the ancient Cinque Port of Seaford in Sussex--he lived for the first years of his London life. In strict order of time, Mr. Thomson's next important effort should have preceded the books of Miss Mitford and Mrs. Gaskell. The novels of Jane Austen--to which we now come--if not the artist's high-water mark, are certainly remarkable as a _tour de force_. To contrive some forty page illustrations for each of Miss Austen's admirable, but--from an illustrator's standpoint--not very palpitating productions,--with a scene usually confined to the dining-room or parlour,--with next to no animals, and with rare opportunities for landscape accessory,--was an "adventure"--in Cervantic phrase--which might well have given pause to a designer of less fertility and resource. But besides the figures there was the furniture; and acute admirers have pointed out that a nice discretion is exhibited in graduating the appointments of Longbourn and Netherfield Park,--of Rosings and Hunsford. But what is perhaps more worthy of remark is the artist's persistent attempt to give individuality, as well as grace, to his dramatis persona;. The unspeakable Mr. Collins, Mr. Bennet, the horsy Mr. John Thorpe, Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Norris, the Eltons--are all carefully discriminated. Nothing can well be better than Mr. Woodhouse, with his "almost immaterial legs" drawn securely out of the range of a too-fierce fire, chatting placidly to Miss Bates upon the merits of water-gruel; nothing more in keeping than the Right Honourable Lady Catherine de Bourgh, "in the very torrent, tempest, and whirlwind" of her indignation, superciliously pausing to patronise the capabilities of the Longbourn reception rooms. Not less happy is the dumbfounded astonishment of Mrs. Bennet at her toilet, when she hears--to her stupefaction--that her daughter Elizabeth is to be mistress of Pemberley and ten thousand a year. This last is a head-piece; and it may be observed, as an additional difficulty in this group of novels, that, owing to the circumstances of publication, only in one of the books. _Pride and Prejudice_, was Mr, Thomson free to decorate the chapters with those ingenious _entetes_ and _culs-de-lampe_ of which he so eminently possesses the secret.[32] Note: