love of animals.  About 1826 the Austins went to Germany, Mr. Austin having been nominated Professor of Civil Law in the new London University, and wishing to study Roman Law under Niebuhr and Schlegel at Bonn.  ‘Our dear child,’ writes Mrs. Austin to Mrs. Grote, ’is a great joy to us.  She grows wonderfully, and is the happiest thing in the world.  Her German is very pretty; she interprets for her father with great joy and naivete.  God forbid that I should bring up a daughter here!  But at her present age I am most glad to have her here, and to send her to a school where she learns—­well, writing, arithmetic, geography, and, as a matter of course, German.’  Lucie returned to England transformed into a little German maiden, with long braids of hair down her back, speaking German like her own language, and well grounded in Latin.  Her mother, writing to Mrs. Reeve, her sister, says:  ’John Mill is ever my dearest child and friend, and he really dotes on Lucie, and can do anything with her.  She is too wild, undisciplined, and independent, and though she knows a great deal, it is in a strange, wild way.  She reads everything, composes German verses, has imagined and put together a fairy world, dress, language, music, everything, and talks to them in the garden; but she is sadly negligent of her own appearance, and is, as Sterling calls her, Miss Orson. . . .  Lucie now goes to a Dr. Biber, who has five other pupils (boys) and his own little child.  She seems to take to Greek, with which her father is very anxious to have her thoroughly imbued.  As this scheme, even if we stay in England, cannot last many years, I am quite willing to forego all the feminine parts of her education for the present.  The main thing is to secure her independence, both with relation to her own mind and outward circumstances.  She is handsome, striking, and full of vigour and animation.’

From the very first Lucie Austin possessed a correct and vigorous style, and a nice sense of language, which were hereditary rather than implanted, and to these qualities was added a delightful strain of humour, shedding a current of original thought all through her writings.  That her unusual gifts should have been so early developed is hardly surprising with one of her sympathetic temperament when we remember the throng of remarkable men and women who frequented the Austins’ house.  The Mills, the Grotes, the Bullers, the Carlyles, the Sterlings, Sydney Smith, Luttrell, Rogers, Jeremy Bentham, and Lord Jeffrey, were among the most intimate friends of her parents, and ‘Toodie,’ as they called her, was a universal favourite with them.  Once, staying at a friend’s house, and hearing their little girl rebuked for asking questions, she said:  ‘My mamma never says “I don’t know” or “Don’t ask questions."’