And now for that other Hampshire personage, of whom I gave you a hint, as being also guiltless of London life and almost of London acquaintances; it is a lady now of whom I have to speak,[3] and one who deserves to be well known. She lived, when her books were published, only three or more miles away from Selborne, across the hills northward--at the village of Chawton, which lies upon the old coach road from Farnham to Winchester. Miss Austen was much younger--as I have said--than our old friend the parson; indeed she was only beginning to try her pen when Gilbert White was ready to lay his down. She had all his simplicities of treatment and all his acuteness of observation--to which she added a charming humor and large dramatic power; but her subjects were men and women, and not {266} birds. She wrote many good old-fashioned novels which people read now for their light and delicate touches, their happy characterizations, their charming play of humor, and their lack of exaggeration. She makes you slip into easy acquaintance with the people of her books as if they lived next door, and would be pulling at your bell to-morrow, or to-night. And you never confound them; by the mere sound of their voices you know which is Ellinor, and which is Marianne; and as for the disagreeable people in her stories, they are just as honestly and naturally disagreeable as any neighbor you could name--whether by talking too much, or making puns, or prying into your private affairs. Walter Scott, who read her books over and over, says, "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with." Macaulay, too, admired her intensely; ventured even to speak of her amazing, effective naturalness--in the same paragraph with Shakespeare. Miss Mitford confided to a young niece of the authoress, that "she would {267} give her hand," if she could write a story like Miss Austen. We may not and must not doubt her quality and her genius, whatever old-time stiffness we may find in her conversations. One book of hers at least you should read, if only to learn her manner; and as you read it remember that it was written by a young woman who had passed nearly her whole life in Hampshire--who knew scarce any of the literary people of the day; who had only made chance visits to London, and a stay of some four years in the lively city of Bath. She was very winning and beautiful--if her portrait[4] is to be relied upon--with a piquant, mischievous expression--looking very capable of making a great many hearts ache, beside those which ache in her books.