The personal history of Jane Austen belongs to the close of the last
and the beginning of the present century. Her father through forty
years was rector of a parish in the South of England. Mr. Austen was
a man of great taste in all literary matters; from him his daughter
inherited many of her gifts. He probably guided her early education
and influenced the direction of her genius. Her life was passed
chiefly in the country. Bath, then a fashionable watering-place, with
occasional glimpses of London, must have afforded all the intercourse
which she held with what is called "the world." Her travels were
limited to excursions in the vicinity of her father's residence.
Those were days of post-chaises and sedan-chairs, when the rush of
the locomotive was unknown. Steam, that genie of the vapor, was yet a
little household elf, singing pleasant times by the evening fire, at
quiet hearthstones; it has since expanded into a mighty giant, whose
influences are no longer domestic. The circles of fashion are changed
also. Those were the days of country-dances and India muslins; the
beaux and belles of "the upper rooms" at Bath knew not the whirl of
the waltz, nor the ceaseless involvements of "the German.
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