class—­each the aristocrat of his own parish; and there was probably a greater difference in manners and refinement between this class and that immediately above them than could now be found between any two persons who rank as gentlemen.  For in the progress of civilisation, though all orders may make some progress, yet it is most perceptible in the lower.  It is a process of ‘levelling up;’ the rear rank ‘dressing up,’ as it were, close to the front rank.  When Hamlet mentions, as something which he had ‘for three years taken note of,’ that ‘the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier,’ it was probably intended by Shakspeare as a satire on his own times; but it expressed a principle which is working at all times in which society makes any progress.  I believe that a century ago the improvement in most country parishes began with the clergy; and that in those days a rector who chanced to be a gentleman and a scholar found himself superior to his chief parishioners in information and manners, and became a sort of centre of refinement and politeness.

Mr. Austen was a remarkably good-looking man, both in his youth and his old age.  During his year of office at Oxford he had been called the ‘handsome Proctor;’ and at Bath, when more than seventy years old, he attracted observation by his fine features and abundance of snow-white hair.  Being a good scholar he was able to prepare two of his sons for the University, and to direct the studies of his other children, whether sons or daughters, as well as to increase his income by taking pupils.

In Mrs. Austen also was to be found the germ of much of the ability which was concentrated in Jane, but of which others of her children had a share.  She united strong common sense with a lively imagination, and often expressed herself, both in writing and in conversation, with epigrammatic force and point.  She lived, like many of her family, to an advanced age.  During the last years of her life she endured continual pain, not only patiently but with characteristic cheerfulness.  She once said to me, ’Ah, my dear, you find me just where you left me—­on the sofa.  I sometimes think that God Almighty must have forgotten me; but I dare say He will come for me in His own good time.’  She died and was buried at Chawton, January 1827, aged eighty-eight.

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Her own family were so much, and the rest of the world so little, to Jane Austen, that some brief mention of her brothers and sister is necessary in order to give any idea of the objects which principally occupied her thoughts and filled her heart, especially as some of them, from their characters or professions in life, may be supposed to have had more or less influence on her writings:  though I feel some reluctance in bringing before public notice persons and circumstances essentially private.