Jane Austen was a commonplace person.  She swept, sewed, worked, and did the duty that lay nearest her.  She wrote because she liked to, and because it gave pleasure to others.  She wrote as well as she could.  She had no thought of immortality, or that she was writing for the ages—­no more than Shakespeare had.  She never anticipated that Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, Guizot and Macaulay would hail her as a marvel of insight, nor did she suspect that a woman as great as George Eliot would declare her work flawless.

But today strong men recognize her books as rarely excellent, because they show the divinity in all things, keep close to the ground, gently inculcate the firm belief that simple people are as necessary as great ones, that small things are not necessarily unimportant, and that nothing is really insignificant.  It all rings true.

And so I sing the praises of the average woman—­the woman who does her work, who is willing to be unknown, who is modest and unaffected, who tries to lessen the pains of earth, and to add to its happiness.  She is the true guardian angel of mankind!

No book published in Jane Austen’s lifetime bore her name on the title-page; she was never lionized by society; she was never two hundred miles from home; she died when forty-two years of age, and it was sixty years before a biography was attempted or asked for.  She sleeps in the cathedral at Winchester, and not so very long ago a visitor, on asking the verger to see her grave, was conducted thither, and the verger asked:  “Was she anybody in particular?  So many folks ask where she’s buried, you know!”

But this is changed now, for when the verger took me to her grave and we stood by that plain black marble slab, he spoke intelligently of her life and work.  And many visitors now go to the cathedral, only because it is the resting-place of Jane Austen, who lived a beautiful, helpful life and produced great art, yet knew it not.

EMPRESS JOSEPHINE

You have met General Bonaparte in my house.  Well—­he it is who would supply a father’s place to the orphans of Alexander de Beauharnais, and a husband’s to his widow.  I admire the General’s courage, the extent of his information, for on all subjects he talks equally well, and the quickness of his judgment, which enables him to seize the thoughts of others almost before they are expressed; but, I confess it, I shrink from the despotism he seems desirous of exercising over all who approach him.  His searching glance has something singular and inexplicable, which imposes even on our Directors; judge if it may not intimidate a woman.  Even—­what ought to please me—­the force of a passion, described with an energy that leaves not a doubt of his sincerity, is precisely the cause which arrests the consent I am often on the point of pronouncing. —­Letters of Josephine

[Illustration:  Empress Josephine]