Can we indeed counteract it?

"I am glad that another work of yours will soon appear; most
curious shall I be to see whether you will write up to your own
principles, and work out your own theories. You did not do it
altogether in 'Ranthorpe'--at least not in the latter part; but
the first portion was, I think, nearly without fault; then it had
a pith, truth, significance in it, which gave the book sterling
value; but to write so, one must have seen and known a great
deal, and I have seen and known very little.

"Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that
point. What induced you to say that you would have rather written
"Pride and Prejudice,' or 'Tom Jones,' than any of the 'Waverley
Novels'?

"I had not seen 'Pride and Prejudice' till I read that sentence
of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An
accurate, daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a
carefully-fenced, highly-cultivated garden, with neat borders and
delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy,
no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I
should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in
their elegant but confined houses. These observations will
probably irritate you, but I shall run the risk.

"Now I can understand admiration of George Sand; for though I
never saw any of her works which I admired throughout (even
'Consuelo,' which is the best, or the best that I have read,
appears to me to couple strange extravagance with wondrous