The first, who was the elder but survived Miss Yonge and died at a very great age quite recently, had much less talent than her junior: but undoubtedly deserves the credit of setting the style. In her novels (_Gertrude, Katharine Ashton_, etc.) she carried, even farther than Miss Austen, the principle of confining herself rigidly to the events of ordinary life. Not that she eschews the higher middle or even the higher classes: though, on the other hand, Katharine Ashton, evidently one of her favourite heroines, is the daughter of a shopkeeper. But the law of average and ordinary character, incident, atmosphere, is observed almost invariably. Unfortunately Miss Sewell (she was actually a schoolmistress) let the didactic part of her novels get rather too much the upper hand: and though she wrote good English, possessed no special grace of style, and little faculty of illustration or ornament from history, literature, her own fancy, current fashions, even of the most harmless kind, and so forth. The result is that her books have a certain dead-aliveness--that the characters, though actually alive, are neither interestingly alive nor, as Miss Austen had made hers, interesting in their very uninterestingness. Sometimes, for a scene or two, her truth to nature and fact is rewarded by that curious sense of recognition which the reader feels in the presence of actual _mimesis_--of creation of fictitious fact and person. But this is not common: and the epithet "dull," which too commonly only stigmatises the person using it, may really suggest itself not seldom in reference to Miss Sewell. A "success of esteem" is about the utmost that can be accorded her.