Solved cryptogram
What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant?
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, chapter 43.
The passage it comes from
The quotation is marked in the paragraph it sits in, with the prose either side of it for company.
In the gallery there were many family portraits, but they could have little to fix the attention of a stranger. Elizabeth walked on in quest of the only face whose features would be known to her. At last it arrested her - and she beheld a striking resemblance of Mr. Darcy, with such a smile over the face, as she remembered to have sometimes seen, when he looked at her. She stood several minutes before the picture, in earnest contemplation, and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery. Mrs. Reynolds informed them, that it had been taken in his father's lifetime.
There was certainly at this moment, in Elizabeth's mind, a more gentle sensation towards the original than she had ever felt in the height of their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed on him by Mrs. Reynolds was of no trifling nature. What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant? As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship! How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow! How much of good or evil must be done by him! Every idea that had been brought forward by the housekeeper was favourable to his character; and as she stood before the canvas, on which he was represented, and fixed his eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised before: she remembered its warmth, and softened its impropriety of expression.
When all of the house that was open to general inspection had been seen, they returned down stairs; and, taking leave of the housekeeper, were consigned over to the gardener, who met them at the hall door.
Text from the Project Gutenberg edition, which is in the public domain in the United States.
Solve it yourself
This quotation is a cryptogram here: 59 letters over 18 different ones, graded hard.
- Written byJane Austen
- Taken fromPride and Prejudice
- Difficultyhard
- Length59 letters, 18 of them different
Nearby in the book
The puzzles either side of this one in the novel.
- Chapter 43medium, 80 letters
- Chapter 43medium, 90 letters
- Chapter 43easy, 79 letters
- Chapter 43medium, 84 letters
About as hard as this one
Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.
- Chapter 22hard, 55 letters
- Chapter 52hard, 75 letters
- Chapter 58hard, 59 letters
- Chapter 43hard, 62 letters
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