Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/173

 most uninteresting manner at the end, so that even "Laurentina's skeleton" becomes at last a tame and common-place subject. Jane Austen burlesqued this style by introducing her heroine with obvious mock solemnity as one destined to go through many distressing and fearful adventures; then magnifying absurdly the ordinary events of a young lady's life in Bath, and finally representing her as being (from constant study of Mrs. Radcliffe, and her copyists) so much on the look-out for alarming adventures that she involves herself in a series of ridiculous errors and misfortunes, very much in the style of the Female Quixote, a work she may have had in her mind. If any writer but Jane Austen had attempted this, the story might not have been better worth reading than many which are now forgotten; but, in the first place, the heroine, Catherine Morland, is herself a very lovable, simple-minded girl, whom we like in spite of her folly; and the other characters, such as the Allens, Thorpes and Tilneys are quite good enough in themselves to make any book famous.

The Allens are the friends with whom Catherine, at seventeen years old, goes to Bath, having lived till then in a secluded country parsonage, ten miles from any town.

"Mrs. Allen was one of that numerous class of females whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any man in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner. The air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind were all that could account for her being the choice of a sensible, intelligent man like Mr. Allen.