181
In approaching Persuasion, we have to deal with the last, and, in my opinion, the greatest of Jane Austen's works, for though Emma usually holds the first place in her writings, and although there are unquestionably one or two weak points in Persuasion from which Emma is free, I cannot but heartily concur with Dr. Whewell that "Persuasion is the most beautiful of all Jane Austen's stories." It is, I think, the only one of those stories to which the epithet "beautiful" can appropriately be given; not that it differs in style from her earlier works, or contains any intentional sentiment beyond what all her stories have, but it possesses throughout a sort of tender, pathetic grace that appears nowhere else. A reviewer, who criticised Mansfield Park in 1821, asserted that the details of Fanny Price's attachment could scarcely have come from any writer but a woman who had herself lived through such an attachment. It is unnecessary and, as has been seen, would probably be incorrect, to say that Jane
