And “Evelina” fully deserved the praise and interest which it obtained and still excites.  The aim was to describe the difficulties and sensations of a young girl just entering life.  The heroine chosen by Miss Burney was one whose circumstances particularly well suited her to form the centre of a varied collection of characters and of a comprehensive picture of contemporary society.  Well connected on her father’s side, Evelina moved in fashionable circles with the Mirvan family.  On account of the origin of her mother she was brought into close contact with humbler personages, with Madame Duval and the Brangtons.  Hence this novel presents to the reader a variety of social scenes which gives it a value possessed by no other work of fiction of the eighteenth century.  No novelist has described so well or so fully the aspect of the theatres, of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, of Bath in the season, of the ridottos and assemblies of the London fashionable world.  The shops, the amusements and the manners of the middle classes are made familiar to Evelina by her association with the Brangtons, and add greatly to the breadth of this valuable picture of metropolitan life.  With a feminine attention to detail, and a quick perception of salient characteristics, Miss Burney described the world about her so faithfully and picturesquely as to deserve the thanks of every student of social history.  The novel of “Evelina,” the letters of Horace Walpole and Mrs. Delany corroborate each other, and may be appropriately placed on the same shelf in a well-ordered library.

In the painting of manners Miss Burney was eminently successful.  But she was hardly less so in a point in which excellence could not have been expected in so youthful a writer.  The plot of “Evelina” is constructed with a skill worthy of a veteran.  Fielding alone, of the eighteenth century novelists, can be said to surpass Miss Burney in this respect.  The whole story of the mischances and misunderstanding of Evelina’s intercourse with Lord Orville, the skill with which the various personages are brought into contact with each other and made to contribute to the final denoument, compose a truly artistic success.  The introduction of Macartney and his marriage to the supposed daughter of Sir John Belmont form a very happy and effective invention.

In regard to her sketches of character, it may be objected that Miss Burney lacked breadth of treatment, that she dwelt on one distinctive characteristic at the expense of the others.  But still, Lord Orville, though somewhat too much of a model, and Mrs. Selwyn, though somewhat too habitually a wit, are vivid and life-like characters.  The Brangtons and Sir Clement Willougby are nature itself, and the girlish nature of Evelina is betrayed in her letters with great felicity.