makes it easy to know how to treat myself.  You will be glad to hear thus much of me, I am sure.  We have just had a few days’ visit from Edward, who brought us a good account of his father, and the very circumstance of his coming at all, of his father’s being able to spare him, is itself a good account.  He grows still, and still improves in appearance, at least in the estimation of his aunts, who love him better and better, as they see the sweet temper and warm affections of the boy confirmed in the young man:  I tried hard to persuade him that he must have some message for William, {169a} but in vain. . . .  This is not a time of year for donkey-carriages, and our donkeys are necessarily having so long a run of luxurious idleness that I suppose we shall find they have forgotten much of their education when we use them again.  We do not use two at once however; don’t imagine such excesses. . .  Our own new clergyman {169b} is expected here very soon, perhaps in time to assist Mr. Papillon on Sunday.  I shall be very glad when the first hearing is over.  It will be a nervous hour for our pew, though we hear that he acquits himself with as much ease and collectedness, as if he had been used to it all his life.  We have no chance we know of seeing you between Streatham and Winchester:  you go the other road and are engaged to two or three houses; if there should be any change, however, you know how welcome you would be. . . .  We have been reading the “Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo,” and generally with much approbation.  Nothing will please all the world, you know; but parts of it suit me better than much that he has written before.  The opening—­the proem I believe he calls it—­is very beautiful.  Poor man! one cannot but grieve for the loss of the son so fondly described.  Has he at all recovered it?  What do Mr. and Mrs. Hill know about his present state?

   ’Yours affly,
   ’J.  AUSTEN.

’The real object of this letter is to ask you for a receipt, but I thought it genteel not to let it appear early.  We remember some excellent orange wine at Manydown, made from Seville oranges, entirely or chiefly.  I should be very much obliged to you for the receipt, if you can command it within a few weeks.’

On the day before, January 23rd, she had written to her niece in the same hopeful tone:  ’I feel myself getting stronger than I was, and can so perfectly walk to Alton, or back again without fatigue, that I hope to be able to do both when summer comes.’

Alas! summer came to her only on her deathbed.  March 17th is the last date to be found in the manuscript on which she was engaged; and as the watch of the drowned man indicates the time of his death, so does this final date seem to fix the period when her mind could no longer pursue its accustomed course.

And here I cannot do better than quote the words of the niece to whose private records of her aunt’s life and character I have been so often indebted:—­