s trying time. The tradition
in the family is that she escaped through dangers and difficulties to
England and found a refuge at Steventon; but we have no positive
information of her having returned to France at all. It is quite
possible that she was at Steventon, and if so, the horror-struck party
must have felt as though they were brought very near to the guillotine.
It was an event to make a lasting impression on a quick-witted and
emotional girl of eighteen, and Eliza remained so closely linked with
the family that the tragedy probably haunted Jane's memory for a long
time to come.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] _The Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife._ Introduced and
annotated by Sydney C. Grier, p. 456 _et seq._ For articles by the same
author on the Hancock family, see 'A Friend of Warren Hastings' in
_Blackwood's Magazine_, April 1904, and 'A God-daughter of Warren
Hastings' in _Temple Bar_, May 1905.

[26] _Genuine Memoirs of Asiaticus_, by Philip Dormer Stanhope, London,
1784.

[27] This did not prove to be the case.

[28] This, and not 'de Feuillade,' is the correct spelling.

[29] Beaumont Lodge, Old Windsor, where Warren Hastings was then living.

[30] Henry Austen, and his elder brother, James.

[31] In the _Memoir_ this action is by mistake attributed to the Count.

[32] _National Archives_, Paris (de Feuillide), W. 328, dossier 541, and
T. 738; (Marboeuf), W. 320, dossier 481.

CHAPTER IV

FAMILY LIFE

1779-1792

The eldest brother of the family, James, was nearly eleven years older
than Jane, and had taken his degree at Oxford before she left school. He
had matriculated at St. John's (where he obtained a 'founder's kin'
Scholarship and, subsequently, a Fellowship) in 1779, at the early age
of fourteen; his departure from home having been perhaps hastened in
order to make room for the three or four pupils who were sharing his
brothers' studies at that time. His was a scholarly type of mind; he was
well read in English literature, had a correct taste, and wrote readily
and happily, both in prose and verse. His son, the author of the
_Memoir_, believes that he had a large share in directing the reading,
and forming the taste, of his sister Jane. James was evidently in
sympathy with Cowper's return to nature from the more artificial and
mechanical style of Pope's imitators, and so was she; in _Sense and
Sensibility_, Marianne, after her first conversation with Willoughby,
had happily assu