love him most sincerely, as indeed I do all the
family. I believe it was your first acquaintance
with Cassandra and Jane.

Though Philadelphia's reply to this letter has not been preserved, we
have a letter of hers to her brother. Writing on July 23, she says:--

Yesterday I began an acquaintance with my two
female cousins, Austens. My uncle, aunt,
Cassandra, and Jane arrived at Mr. F. Austen's
the day before. We dined with them there. As it's
pure nature to love ourselves, I may be allowed to
give the preference to the eldest, who is
generally reckoned a most striking resemblance of
me in features, complexion, and manners. I never
found myself so much disposed to be vain, as I
can't help thinking her very pretty, but fancied I
could discover _she_ was not so well pleased with
the comparison, which reflection abated a great
deal of the vanity so likely to arise and so
proper to be suppres't. The youngest [Jane] is
very like her brother Henry, not at all pretty and
very prim, unlike a girl of twelve; but it is
hasty judgment which you will scold me for. My
aunt has lost several fore-teeth, which makes her
look old; my uncle is quite white-haired, but
looks vastly well; all in high spirits and
disposed to be pleased with each other.

A day or two later, Philadelphia wrote further:--

I continue to admire my amiable likeness the best
of the two in every respect; she keeps up
conversation in a very sensible and pleasing
manner. Yesterday they all spent the day with us,
and the more I see of Cassandra the more I admire
[her]. Jane is whimsical and affected.

'Not at all pretty,' 'whimsical and affected.' 'Poor Jane!' one is
tempted to exclaim, but whatever she would have said to this estimate of
herself, of one thing we may be perfectly sure: that she would have been
the first to agree with her critic as to her own absolute inferiority to
Cassandra.

There is a passage in a letter written from Southampton, February
1807,[41] in which she says she is often 'all astonishment and shame'
when she thinks of her own manners as a young girl and contrasts them
with what she sees in the 'best children' of a later date.

One other mentio