er worship than
courtiers ever pay the throne. Your works of
taste, both of the pencil and the pen, were
continually offered to my notice as objects of
imitation and spurs to exertion. I shall never
forget the delight which I experienced when, on
producing a translation of a well-known Ode of
Horace to my father's criticism, he favoured me
with a perusal of your manuscript, and as a high
mark of commendation said that he was sure Mr.
Hastings would have been pleased with the perusal
of my humble essay.

There is also a pleasant picture of home life at Steventon drawn for us
in the _History of the Leigh Family_, in which the writer speaks of
Cassandra, 'wife of the truly respectable Mr. Austen,' and adds: 'With
his sons (all promising to make figures in life), Mr. Austen educates a
few youths of chosen friends and acquaintances. When among this liberal
society, the simplicity, hospitality, and taste which commonly prevail
in affluent families among the delightful valleys of Switzerland ever
recur to my memory.'

But though it might be an easy thing to educate his sons at home, it was
another matter to teach his daughters, and, according to a family
tradition, Cassandra and Jane were dispatched at a very early age to
spend a year at Oxford with Mrs. Cawley, a sister of Dr. Cooper--a fact
which makes it likely that their cousin, Jane Cooper, was also of the
party. Mrs. Cawley was the widow of a Principal of Brasenose College,
and is said to have been a stiff-mannered person. She moved presently to
Southampton, and there also had the three girls under her charge. At the
latter place Cassandra and Jane Austen were attacked by a putrid fever.
Mrs. Cawley would not write word of this to Steventon, but Jane Cooper
thought it right to do so, upon which Mrs. Austen and Mrs. Cooper set
off at once for Southampton and took their daughters away. Jane Austen
was very ill and nearly died. Worse befell poor Mrs. Cooper, who took
the infection and died at Bath whither she had returned. As Mrs. Cooper
died in October 1783, this fixes the date roughly when the sisters went
to Oxford and Southampton. Jane would have been full young to profit
from the instruction of masters at Oxford (she can hardly have been
seven years old when she went there), and it must have been more for the
sake of her being with Cassandra than for any oth