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 164 above all, by no means without the exhilarating consciousness of success. In fact, when we read her biography, we are principally impressed by the amount of adulation she received, by the extraordinary enthusiasm her pleasant tales aroused. The struggling novelist is tempted to wish that he also might have lived in those halcyon days, until he remembers that a far greater writer, Miss Austen, had no share in this universal and unbounded applause. Miss Edgeworth was as much the pet of the literary world as of her own household and friends. She had little need to doubt her powers, or to fear neglect and indifference. If she really regretted poor M. Edelcrantz—who went back to Sweden with a sore heart and never married anybody else—she gave no outward token of repentance, but lived to be eighty-two, the most cheerful and radiant of old maids, faithful to the last to her family affections, and happy to die in the midst of those who had made the sunshine of her life.

It is in the case of Miss Austen, however, that truly strenuous efforts have been made to