It was reserved for Fanny Burney, and still more Jane Austen, to “make a story” out of the trivialities of our everyday existence; to reveal humanity at a tea-party or an afternoon call. This is, of course, but carrying on his reform one step further. The women, besides introducing the new element of their own especial point of view, made the new realism strictly _domestic_; and learned to depend, even less than he, upon the exceptional, more obviously dramatic, or less normal, incidents of actual life. If Richardson invented the ideal of fidelity to human nature, Miss Burney selected its everyday habits and costume for imitation. Evelina’s account of “shopping” in London would not fit into Richardson’s scheme; while the many incidents and characters, introduced merely for comic effect, lie outside his province. Miss Burney’s ideal for heroines, indeed, must seem singularly old-fashioned to-day; nor do we delight in _Evelina_ for those passages to which its author devoted her most serious ambitions. She does not excel in minute, or sustained, characterisation; nor have we ever entirely confirmed the appreciation which declares that her work was “inspired by one consistent vein of passion, never relaxed.” The passion of Evelina--by which, however, the critic does _not_ mean her love for Orville--has always seemed to us melodramatic and artificial. We have little, or no, patience with those refined tremors and heart-burnings which completely prostrate the young lady at the mere possibility of seeing her long-lost father. It is not in human nature to feel so deeply about anyone we have never seen, of whom we know nothing but evil.