Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/14



than twenty years ago a gentleman visiting Winchester Cathedral asked a verger to show him Jane Austen's tomb. The man took him readily to a large slab of black marble set in the pavement near the centre of the north aisle, and the visitor stood for some time studying the inscription with keen interest; then, as he was turning away, the verger said in an apologetic tone, "Pray, Sir, can you tell me whether there was anything particular about that lady; so many people want to know where she was buried?" Such ignorance of Mansfield Park and Emma may be pardoned in a verger; perhaps it would have been rather more extraordinary if he had seemed to know anything about them, but it is strange to think how many hundreds of educated people there were then who delighted in every line of Jane Austen's writings, yet even so many years after their publication knew nothing about the life of their author, and could