cted 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:--

'I do not know how early the alarming symptoms of her malady came on.
It was in the following March that I had the first idea of her being
seriously ill. It had been settled that about the end of that month,
or the beginning of April, I should spend a few days at Chawton, in
the absence of my father and mother, who were just then engaged with
Mrs. Leigh Perrot