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 looks after her father's comfort, and plays backgammon with him in the evenings. Of politics she knows nothing, and the most complicated social problem she is called on to face is the recognition, or the rejection, of her less fashionable neighbours. Are, or are not, the Coles sufficiently genteel to warrant her dining with them? Highbury is her universe, and no restless discontent haunts her with waking dreams of the Tiber and the Nile. Frank Churchill may go to London, sixteen miles off, to get his hair cut; but Emma remains at Hartfield, and holds the centre of the stage. We can count the days, we can almost count the hours in her monotonous life. She is unemotional, even for her setting; and it was after reading her placid history that Charlotte Brontë wrote the memorable depreciation of all Miss Austen's novels.

But, though beset and environed by