are the solace of sickly, uninteresting women who desire some one to share with them the monotonous current of existence. The Middletons, we are assured, "lived in a style of equal hospitality and elegance. They were scarcely ever without some friends staying with them in the house, and they kept more company of every kind than any other family in the neighborhood." This indulgence, it appears, while equally welcome to host and hostess, was more necessary to Sir John's happiness than to his wife's; for she at least possessed one other source of continual and unflagging diversion. "Sir John was a sportsman, Lady Middleton a mother. He hunted and shot, and she humored her children; and these were their only resources. Lady Middleton, however, had the advantage of being able to spoil her children all the year round, while Sir John's independent employments were in existence only half the time."
Guests play an important part in Miss Austen's novels, as they did in Miss Austen's life, and in the lives of all the hospitable country-people of her time. Moreover, the visits her heroines and their friends pay are not little tri-
