Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/208

, and, true to its character, the saddest and sweetest of her works. When she finished it, only a few months before her death, she had in fact laid down the pen for ever; and doubtless it was the consciousness of this which shaded the story to a more autumnal tone than anything she had yet written. We could not wish it otherwise, for the group of novels would have been incomplete without some such story of comparatively late happiness. In Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility we have the brilliant, rather thoughtless happiness of early youth; in Mansfield Park, Emma, and Pride and Prejudice the love-story goes on in the usual way, though somewhat slowly, through the usual period of life; in Persuasion the attachment of early youth is abruptly checked, and only comes to its full perfection after eight years of separation. The cycle is complete, and it seems as though Jane Austen would have been compelled to take some fresh departure, had she lived to write more. We regret that she did not, but we rejoice that her life was spared long enough to give us the immortal group we now possess, and we must all echo the already quoted lament of Sir Walter Scott, "What a pity such a gifted creature died so early."