Another instance is in the case of Lady Middleton, who obviously had not married either for love or for suitability, but only for convenience; she is a cold woman, incapable of passion in the usual sense, but her nature breaks out in an adoration of her children which is neither for their benefit nor for hers. We see this again and again in real life; it is the cold, unloving wives who idolise their children because they are theirs, a feeling which is not real love but a kind of extended selfishness, an instinct which, in the case of animals, finds expression in licking their young. The books abound in similar true touches, put in apparently without effort, and almost without thought. When one considers that out of the mass of novels of that age, then, as now, circulated and read by the aid of libraries, such books as Hannah More’s _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_ and Mackenzie’s _Man of Feeling_ and _Man of the World_ were read and praised almost universally as being far superior to the usual run of novels, one gains some idea of the poverty of matter and manner that must have disgraced the ruck. Both these “masterpieces,” so acclaimed as they were issued, are the dullest, driest stuff, without a gleam of humour, any attempt at a story, or any vivacity of expression or character. The general style is, “Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So are to-day expected. Mr. So-and-So is a pious, virtuous man, I am afraid I cannot say so much for his wife,” and thereupon follows a long verbose description of the two, who when they appear on the scene do and say nothing to indicate any characteristics, but are mere dummies, pegs on which to hang the discourse that precedes their entry. A favourite device for filling up the pages that must be filled, is the narration by some secondary character of all that has ever befallen them since their birth. Even Miss Burney is not free from this; in _Cecilia_ at least the characters break into narration as easily as some persons do into song. With this kind of stuff to set the standard, the miracle of Jane’s books becomes more admirable than ever, for anyone who has ever attempted to write knows how exceedingly difficult it is to resist the influence of the conventional canons in vogue. [Illustration: MISS BURNEY (MADAME D’ARBLAY)] Jane Austen seems to have been also as far ahead of her time in the use of simple direct English as she was in construction and effect. She is at least a generation in advance of average contemporary letters and journals, in which the phrasing is often ponderous; the sonorous roll of heavily-weighted sentences in the Johnsonian style, then so much admired, does not ever seem to have occurred to her.