Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/195

 Austen ever described love from any experience except what her genius gave her, but I think Persuasion would be far stronger testimony to her having once loved than Mansfield Park is. Fanny Price's apparently hopeless attachment is followed through its course with the affectionate but critical interest of one who regards a touching phase of human nature. Persuasion is in the tone of a woman who looks back upon her own early romance with sorrowful tenderness, and permits to her imaginary story the happy finale which she had not experienced herself. The heroine has a sort pf subdued charm about her; she makes no brilliant speeches, and exhibits no special gifts, but from first to last we feel that with Anne Elliot we are in the presence of a high-bred, gracious, charming woman, and nothing better could be said of Captain Wentworth than that he is worthy of her. Jane Austen was herself conscious of having evolved a superior heroine in her last novel, for in 1816 she wrote to her niece, Fanny Knight: "I have a something ready for publication which may, perhaps, appear about a twelvemonth hence You may, perhaps, like the heroine, as she is almost too good for me." From first to last the story may be said to strike a minor key, for it is no longer the bright picture of young love which Jane Austen gave us in her other novels; it is the coming together of sundered lovers after the difficulties and hindrances of eight years of separation, in which neither has ever been able to forget the other.

Anne Elliot is the second of the three daughters of Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, Somersetshire. She has lost her mother early, and has never had congenial society in her father or sisters. Sir Walter