The cottage in which the Dashwoods were installed at Barton seems greatly to have resembled the cottage at Chawton. “As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window-shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles. A narrow passage led directly through the house into the garden behind. On each side of the entrance was a sitting-room about sixteen feet square and beyond them were the offices and the stairs. Four bedrooms and two garrets formed the rest of the house. It had not been built many years and was in good repair.” But as _Sense and Sensibility_ was written long before Jane went to live at Chawton, it is possible this account of the cottage was interpolated later, perhaps when she revised the book for publication in 1811. On the whole, though interesting enough, _Sense and Sensibility_ does not take very high rank among the novels. _Northanger Abbey_ was begun in 1798, soon after the completion of _Sense and Sensibility_, and, unlike its predecessors, it does not seem to have been based on existing MSS., but to have been written as we now have it, though the writing was spread over a long period. It is the one of all Miss Austen’s novels about which opinions differ most. It was written avowedly as a skit on the romantic school, whose high priestess was Mrs. Radcliffe; but, as Mr. Austin Dobson says: “The ironical treatment is not always apparent, and there are indications that, as often happens, the author’s growing interest in the characters diverts her from her purpose.” This is true enough, and the book certainly improves in consequence as it goes on, for at first it is sententious, and the author talks aside to her readers and explains her characters in a way that she does nowhere else. Archbishop Whateley remarks that it is “decidedly inferior to her other works—yet the same kind of excellences that characterise the other novels may be perceived in this to a degree which would have been highly creditable to most other writers of the same school, and which would have entitled the author to considerable praise had she written nothing better.” The scene of _Northanger Abbey_ is laid in Bath, and it is easy to see how very well acquainted not only with the topography, but with the manners of Bath, Jane was. The chattering and running to and fro from Pump rooms to Upper or Lower Assembly rooms, the continual meetings, and the saunterings in the streets, with all the affected or real gaiety, and the magnifying of trifles, are cleverly sketched in the earlier part of the book. The sincere but foolish little heroine, with her contrast to and intense admiration for her silly and selfish friend, Isabella Thorpe, is a life-like figure. Her mother is one of the very few elderly ladies who are allowed to be sensible in Jane’s books, and she comes in so little as to be a very minor figure.