EMMA has even less story than either of the preceeding novels. (Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice). Miss E. W., from whom the book takes its name, is the daughter of a gentleman of wealth and consequence residing at his seat in the immediate vicinage of a country village called Highbury. The father, a good-natured, silly valetudinary, abandons the management of his household to Emma, he himself being only occupied by his summer and winter walk, his apothecary, his gruel, and his whist table. The latter is supplied from the neighboring village of Highbury with precisely the sort of persons who occupy the vacant corner of a regular whist table, when a village is in the neighborhood and better cannot be found within the family. We have the smiling and courteous vicar, who nourishes the ambitious hope of obtaining Miss W's hand. We have Mrs. Bates, the wife of a former rector past eveything but tea and whist; her daughter, Miss Bates, a good-natured, vulgar, and foolish old maid; Mr. Weston, a gentleman of a frank disposition and moderate fortune, in the vicinity, and his wife, an amiable and accomplished person, who had been Emma's governess and is devotedly attached to her. Amongst all these personages E. W. walks forth, the princess paramount, superior to all her companions in wit, beauty, anf fortune, and accomplishments, doted on by her father and the Westons, admired, and almost worshiped by the more humble companions of the whist table. The object of most young ladies is, or at least is usually supposed to be, a desirable connection in Marriage. But Emma W., either anticipating the taste of a later period of life, or, like a good sovereign, preferring the weal of her subjects of Highbury to her own private interest, sets generally about making matches for her friends, without thinking of matrimony on her own account. We are informed that she had been eminently successful in the case of Mr. and Mrs.Weston; and when the novel commences she is exerting her influence in favor of Miss Harriet Smith, a boarding-school girl without family or fortune, very good-humoured, very pretty, very silly, and, what suited Miss Woodhouse's purpose best of all. very much disposed to be married. In these conjugal machinations Emma is frequently interrupted, not only by the cautions of her father, who had a particular objection to anybody committing the rash act of matrimony, but also by the sturdy reproof and remonstrances of Mr. Knightly, the elder brother of her sister's husband, a sensible country-gentleman of thirty-five, who had known Emma from her cradle, and was the only person who ventured to find fault with her. In spite, however, of his censure and warning, Emma lays a plan of marrying Harriet Smith to the vicar; and though she succeeds perfectly in diverting her simple friend's thoughts from an honest farmer who had made her a very suitable offer, and in flattering her into a passion for Mr. Elton, yet on the other hand that co nceited divine totally mistakes the nature of the encouragement held out to him, and attributes the favor which he found in Miss W's eyes to a lurking affection on his own part. This at length encourages him to a presumptuous declaration of his sentiments; upon receiving a repulse, he looks abroad elsewhere, and enriches the Highbury society by uniting himself to a dashing young w oman with as many thousands as are usually called ten, and a corresponding quantity of presumption and ill-breeding. While Emma is vainly engaged in forging wedlock fetters for others, her friends have views of the same kind upon her, in favor of a son of Mr. Weston by a former marriage, who bears the name, lives under the patronage, and is to inherit the fortune, of a rich uncle. Unfortunately Mr. Frank Churchill had already settled his affections on Miss Jane Fairfax, a young lady of reduced fortune, but as this was a concealed affair, Emma, when Mr. C. first appears on the stage, has thoughts of being in love with him herself; speedily, however, recovering from that dangerous propensity, she is disposed to confer upon him her deserted friend Harriet Smith. Hariet has, in the interim, fallen desperately in love with Mr. Knightly, the sturdy advice-giving bachelor; and, as all the village supposes Frank Churchill and Emma to be attached to each other, there are cross-purposes enough (were the novel of more romantic cast) for cutting half the men's throats and breaking all the women's hearts. But at Highbury Cupid walks decorously, and with good discretion, bearing his torch under a lantern instead of flourishing it around to set the house on fire. Alln these entanglements bring on only a train of mistakes and embarrassing situations, and dialogues at balls and parties of pleasure, in which the author displays her peculiar powers of humor and knowledge of human life. The plot is extricated with great simplicity. The aunt of Frank Churchill dies; his uncle, no longer under her baneful influence, consents to his mariage with Jane Fairfax. Mr. Knightly and Emma are led, by this unexpected incident, to discover that they had been in love with each other all along. Mr. Woodhouse's objections to the marriage of his daughter are overpowered by the fears of house-breakers, and the comfort which he hopes to derive from having a stout son-in-law resident in the family; and the facile affections of Harriet Smith are transferred, like a bank bill by endorsation, to her former suitor, the honest farmer, who had obtained a favorable oppurtunity of renewing his addresses. Such is the simple plan of a story which we peruse with pleasure, if not with deep interest, and which perhaps we might more willingly resume than one of those narratives where the attention is strongly riveted during the first perusal, by the powerful excitement of curiosity.
The author's knowledge of the world, and the peculiar fact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognize, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish School of painting, The subjects are not often elegant, and certainly never grand; but they are finished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader. . . 4

4 In the paragraphs that follow, Scott quotes a specimen of Miss Austen's dialogue, praising its fidelity to real life, but querying whether, in the case of tedious characters, such fidelity may not itself become tedious.

This review is from the pen of Sir Walter Scott ( )