Page:A memoir of Jane Austen (Fourth Edition).pdf/178

 public. Perhaps it may be thought that she has seldom written anything more brilliant; and that, independent of the original manner in which the dénouement is brought about, the pictures of Charles. Musgrove's goodnatured boyishness and of his wife's jealous selfishness would have been incomplete without these finishing strokes. The cancelled chapter exists in manuscript. It is certainly inferior to the two which were substituted for it: but it was such as some writers and some readers might have been con- tented with; and it contained touches which scarcely any other hand could have given, the suppression of which may be almost a matter of regret.

The following letter was addressed to her friend. Miss Bigg, then staying at Streatham with her sister, the wife of the Reverend Herbert Hill, uncle of Robert Southey. It appears to have been written three days before she began her last work, which will be noticed in another chapter; and shows that she was not at that timc aware of the serious nature of her malady:-

Chawton, January 24, 1817. 'MY DEAR ALETHEA, I think it time there should be a little writing between us, though I believe the epistolary debt is on your side, and I hope this will find all the Streatham party well, neither carried away by the flood, nor rheumatic through the damps. Such mild weather is, you know, de-