THERE is very little story to tell in the life of Jane Austen. She was one of the greatest writers of English fiction; but her own life, like the life she describes with such extraordinary and minute accuracy in her tales, had no startling incidents, no catastrophes. The solid ground never shook beneath her feet; neither she, nor the relations and neighbours with whom her tranquil life was passed, were ever swept away by the whirlwind of wild passions, nor overwhelmed by tragic destiny. The ordinary, everyday joys and sorrows that form a part of the lives of all of us, were hers; but nothing befell her more sensational or wondrous than what falls to the lot of most of us. This even tenor of her own way she reproduces with marvellous skill in the pages of her novels. It has been well said that “every village could furnish matter for a novel to Miss Austen.” The material which she used is within the reach of every one; but she stands alone, hitherto quite unequalled, for the power of investing with charm and interest these incidents in the everyday life of everyday people which are the whole subject-matter of her six finished novels. A silly elopement on the part of one of the five Miss Bennets in _Pride and Prejudice_, and the fall which stuns Louisa Musgrove in _Persuasion_, when she insists on jumping off the cob at Lyme, are almost the only incidents in her books that can even be called unusual. Her novels remind us of pictures we sometimes see which contain no one object of supreme or extraordinary loveliness, but which charm by showing us the beauty and interest in that which lies around us on every side. There is a picture by Frederick Walker, called “A Rainy Day,” which is a very good instance of this; it is nothing but a village street just by a curve in the road; the houses are such as may be seen in half the villages in England: a dog goes along looking as dejected as dogs always do in the rain, the light is reflected in the puddles of the wet road, one foot-passenger only has ventured out. There is nothing in the picture but what we may all of us have seen hundreds and thousands of times, and yet one could look and look at it for hours and never weary of the charm of quiet, truthful beauty it contains. This is one of the things which true artists, whether their art is painting pictures or writing books, can do for those who are not artists—that is, help them to see and feel the beauty and interest of the ordinary surroundings of everyday life. Robert Browning makes a great Italian painter say—