He really has a great deal of subdued individuality, and it _had_ to be subdued, because it would not have done to let him be too superior to Catherine.

James Morland and Frederick Tilney are not to be counted as more than "walking gentlemen," Mr.Allen only as a little more: and they fulfil their law.
But Isabella Thorpe is almost better than her brother, as being nearer to pure comedy and further from farce; Eleanor Tilney is adequate; and Mrs.Allen is sublime on her scale.

A novelist who, at the end of the eighteenth century, could do Mrs.Allen, could do anything that she chose to do; and might be trusted never to attempt anything that she could not achieve.

And yet the heroine is perhaps--as she ought to be--the greatest triumph of the whole, and the most indicative of the new method.

The older heroines had generally tried to be extraordinary: and had failed.