in ink afterwards. The quantity produced does not indicate any decline
of power or industry, for in those seven weeks twelve chapters had been
completed. It is more difficult to judge of the quality of a work so
little advanced. It had received no name; there was scarcely any
indication what the course of the story was to be, nor was any heroine
yet perceptible, who, like Fanny Price, or Anne Elliot, might draw round
her the sympathies of the reader. Such an unfinished fragment cannot be
presented to the public; but I am persuaded that some of Jane Austen's
admirers will be glad to learn something about the latest creations which
were forming themselves in her mind; and therefore, as some of the
principal characters were already sketched in with a vigorous hand, I
will try to give an idea of them, illustrated by extracts from the work.

The scene is laid at Sanditon, a village on the Sussex coast, just
struggling into notoriety as a bathing-place, under the patronage of the
two principal proprietors of the parish, Mr. Parker and Lady Denham.

Mr. Parker was an amiable man, with more enthusiasm than judgment, whose
somewhat shallow mind overflowed with the one idea of the prosperity of
Sanditon, together with a jealous contempt of the rival village of
Brinshore, where a similar attempt was going on. To the regret of his
much-enduring wife, he had left his family mansion, with all its
ancestral comforts of gardens, shrubberies, and shelter, situated in a
valley some miles inland, and had built a new residence--a Trafalgar
House--on the bare brow of the hill overlooking Sanditon and the sea,
exposed to every wind that blows; but he will confess to no discomforts,
nor suffer his family to feel any from the change. The following extract
brings him before the reader, mounted on his hobby:--

'He wanted to secure the promise of a visit, and to get as many of the