there any similarity between herself and her heroine in ‘Mansfield Park.’  She did not indeed pass through life without being the object of warm affection.  In her youth she had declined the addresses of a gentleman who had the recommendations of good character, and connections, and position in life, of everything, in fact, except the subtle power of touching her heart.  There is, however, one passage of romance in her history with which I am imperfectly acquainted, and to which I am unable to assign name, or date, or place, though I have it on sufficient authority.  Many years after her death, some circumstances induced her sister Cassandra to break through her habitual reticence, and to speak of it.  She said that, while staying at some seaside place, they became acquainted with a gentleman, whose charm of person, mind, and manners was such that Cassandra thought him worthy to possess and likely to win her sister’s love.  When they parted, he expressed his intention of soon seeing them again; and Cassandra felt no doubt as to his motives.  But they never again met.  Within a short time they heard of his sudden death.  I believe that, if Jane ever loved, it was this unnamed gentleman; but the acquaintance had been short, and I am unable to say whether her feelings were of such a nature as to affect her happiness.

Any description that I might attempt of the family life at Steventon, which closed soon after I was born, could be little better than a fancy-piece.  There is no doubt that if we could look into the households of the clergy and the small gentry of that period, we should see some things which would seem strange to us, and should miss many more to which we are accustomed.  Every hundred years, and especially a century like the last, marked by an extraordinary advance in wealth, luxury, and refinement of taste, as well as in the mechanical arts which embellish our houses, must produce a great change in their aspect.  These changes are always at work; they are going on now, but so silently that we take no note of them.  Men soon forget the small objects which they leave behind them as they drift down the stream of life.  As Pope says—­

   Nor does life’s stream for observation stay;
   It hurries all too fast to mark their way.

Important inventions, such as the applications of steam, gas, and electricity, may find their places in history; but not so the alterations, great as they may be, which have taken place in the appearance of our dining and drawing-rooms.  Who can now record the degrees by which the custom prevalent in my youth of asking each other to take wine together at dinner became obsolete?  Who will be able to fix, twenty years hence, the date when our dinners began to be carved and handed round by servants, instead of smoking before our eyes and noses on the table?  To record such little matters would indeed be ’to chronicle small beer.’  But, in a slight memoir like this, I may be allowed to note some of those changes in social habits which give a colour to history, but which the historian has the greatest difficulty in recovering.