th in
the right direction.

[40]'Her own mature opinion of the desirableness of such an early habit
of composition is given in the following words of a niece:--

As I grew older, my aunt would talk to me more
seriously of my reading and my amusements. I had
taken early to writing verses and stories, and I
am sorry to think how I troubled her with reading
them. She was very kind about it, and always had
some praise to bestow, but at last she warned me
against spending too much time upon them. She
said--how well I recollect it!--that she knew
writing stories was a great amusement, and _she_
thought a harmless one, though many people, she
was aware, thought otherwise; but that at my age
it would be bad for me to be much taken up with my
own compositions. Later still--it was after she
had gone to Winchester--she sent me a message to
this effect, that if I would take her advice I
should cease writing till I was sixteen; that she
had herself often wished she had read more, and
written less in the corresponding years of her own
life.

'As this niece was only twelve years old at the time of her aunt's
death, these words seem to imply that the juvenile tales which we have
mentioned had, some of them at least, been written in her childhood;
while others were separated only by a very few years from the period
which included specimens of her most brilliant writing.'

In the summer of 1788, when the girls were fifteen and twelve
respectively, they accompanied their parents on a visit to their
great-uncle, old Mr. Francis Austen, at Sevenoaks. Though Jane had been
to Oxford, Southampton, and Reading before, it is probable that this was
her first visit into Kent, and, what must have been more interesting
still, her first visit to London. We have no clue as to where the party
stayed in town, but one of Eliza de Feuillide's letters to Philadelphia
Walter mentions that they dined with Eliza and her mother on their way
back to Hampshire.

They talked much of the satisfaction their visit
into Kent had afforded them. What did you think of
my uncle's looks? I was much pleased with them,
and if possible he appeared more amiable than ever
to me. What an excellent and pleasing man he is; I