Most readers of Jane Austen will agree in thinking that in Emma she reached the summit of her literary powers. She has given us quite as charming individual characters both in earlier and later writings, but it is impossible to name a flaw in Emma; there is not a page that could with advantage be omitted, nor could any additions improve it. It has all the brilliancy of Pride and Prejudice, without any immaturity of style, and it is as carefully finished as Mansfield Park, without the least suspicion of prolixity. In Emma, too, as has been already noticed, she worked into perfection some characters which she had attempted earlier with less success, and she gave us two or three, such as Mr. Weston, Mrs. Elton, and Miss Bates, which we find nowhere else in her writings. Moreover, in Emma, above all her other works, she achieved a task in which many a great writer has failed; for she gives us there the portrait of a thorough English gentleman, drawn to the life. Edmund Bertram, indeed, is, in the best sense of the word, a gentleman, but he is a very young one; Mr. Darcy and Henry Tilney at times are on the verge of not being quite
