o my beloved mother is
stronger than ever. Often do I sit and trace her
features in his, till my heart overflows at my
eyes. I always tenderly loved my Uncle, but I
think he is now dearer to me than ever, as being
the nearest and best beloved relation of the never
to be sufficiently regretted parent I have lost;
Cassandra and Jane are both very much grown (the
latter is now taller than myself), and greatly
improved as well in manners as in person, both of
which are now much more formed than when you saw
them. They are I think equally sensible and both
so to a degree seldom met with, but still my heart
gives the preference to Jane, whose kind
partiality to me indeed requires a return of the
same nature. Henry is now rather more than six
feet high, I believe; he also is much improved,
and is certainly endowed with uncommon abilities,
which indeed seem to have been bestowed, though in
a different way, upon each member of this family.
As to the coolness which you know had taken place
between H. and myself, it has now ceased, in
consequence of due acknowledgement, on his part,
and we are at present on very proper relationlike
terms. You know that his family design him for the
Church. Cassandra was from home when I arrived;
she was then on a visit to Rowling, the abode of
her brother Edward--from which she returned some
time since, but is now once more absent, as well
as her sister, on a visit to the Miss Lloyds, who
live at a place called Ibthorp, about eighteen
miles from hence. . . . There has been a Club Ball at
Basingstoke and a private one in the
neighbourhood, both of which my cousins say were
very agreeable.

The date 1790 or 1791 must be assigned to the portrait--believed to be
of Jane Austen, and believed to be by Zoffany--which has been chosen as
the frontispiece for this book, as it was for Lord Brabourne's edition
of the Letters.[43] We are unable for want of evidence to judge of the
likeness of the picture to Jane Austen as a girl; there is, so far as we
have heard, no family tradition of her having been painted; and, as her
subsequent fame could hardly have been predicted,