Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/223

 them. Those who do appreciate her novels will think no praise too high for them, while those who do not, will marvel at the infatuation of her admirers; for no one ever cares moderately for Jane Austen's works: her readers either award them unbounded praise or find them insufferably dull. In her own day, the latter class were the larger, and reasons for this have been suggested; now, and for many years past, the tide of popular opinion has set strongly the other way, and we may believe it will continue to do so as long as novel-readers can appreciate life-like pictures of human beings who are immortal in their truth to nature, though their setting belongs to a bygone day.

London: Printed by W. H. Allen & Co., 13 Waterloo Place.