The great crimes and horrors of the world lie outside the hedge-rows surrounding the Jane Austen rectory. We can hear the guns and smell the powder smoke, but the deadly missiles never pass the magic barrier. Two of Jane’s brothers are naval officers, and they come and go in imposing uniforms; the Napoleonic wars are on, and they are guarding the channel, and in later life become admirals. An intimate friend of the family is Warren Hastings, who conquered India for the British; when he was placed on trial for wholesale graft, he explained by saying that when he considered his opportunities, he marveled, not that he had taken so much, but that he had not taken more. Nothing of anything like this enters into the novels. What does enter are the quiverings of Sensibility, the ups and downs of the “tender emotions.” When we were children we used to take a daisy and pull off the petals, and with petal number one we would say: “He loves me,” and with petal number two: “He loves me not,” and so on. With petal number one our heart goes up, and with petal number two it goes down. There is another question, equally thrilling: “Do I love him, or do I not?” Many things get in the way; Pride and Prejudice, for example. It is hard to know our own minds; and sometimes when we hesitate too long, it is necessary for the older members of our family to apply Persuasion. (I am making puns on the titles of the novels.) I would not be understood to disparage this little English old maid. She did not make her world, in which the father of the family preaches in the name of the Prince of Peace, and the sons go out to kill and loot. She is a most charming and witty old maid, and her queer people are alive in every throb of their quivering hearts. She was a sly little body, and we suspect her of knowing more than she tells. There was a terrible scandal whispered concerning her, which she vehemently denied; we hate to pass it on, but this is a book of plain speaking and we have to do our duty--so let it be recorded that some of the neighbors suspected Jane Austen of watching them at tea-parties and church fairs, with the intention of putting their peculiarities into her books! CHAPTER LIII TORY ROMANCE Upon our first visit to Scotland we kept low company; but now we return to dwell in a castle, and play the host to our Sovereign Lord the King. Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh in 1771, the son of a prosperous lawyer who held the high office of sheriff. The father made a specialty of his country’s antiquities, and the boy was brought up, as it were, in the property-room of a moving picture studio. He was lame, which made it impossible for him to repeat the valorous deeds of his ancestors; so he took to dreams, and gave the world a new form of art, the historical romance.