minus Bozzy," we have been much indebted in this sketch,-first made Curran's acquaintance. Nothing can be more graphic than the words in which he has related his impressions of the man at this mature period of his career. "When I was called to the bar," says he," he was on the bench; and, not only bagless, but briefless, I was one day, with many an associate, taking the idle round of the Four Courts, when a common friend told me he was commissioned by the Master of the Rolls to invite me to dinner that day at the Priory, a little country villa about four miles from Dublin. Those who recollect their first introduction to a really great man, may easily comprehend my delight and my consternation. Hour after hour was counted as it passed, and, like a timid bride, I feared the one which was to make me happy. It came at last, the important five o'clock, the ne plus ultra of the guest who would not go dinnerless at Curran's. Never shall I forget my sensations when I caught the first glimpse of the little man through the vista of his avenue. There he was, as a thousand times afterward I saw him, in a dress which you would imagine he had borrowed from his tip-staff-his hands on his sides his face almost parallel with the horizon-his under lip protruded, and the impatient step and the eternal attitude only varied by the pause during which his eye glanced from his guest to his watch, and from his watch reproachfully to his diningroom. It was an invincible peculiarity, one second after five o'clock, and he would not wait for the viceroy. The moment he perceived me, he took me by the hand, said he would not have any one introduce me, and with a manner which I often thought was charmed, at once banished every apprehension and completely familiarized me at the Priory. I had often seen Curran-often heard of him—often read him-but no man ever knew anything about him who did not see him at his own table with the few whom he selected. He was a little convivial deity. He soared in every region, and was at home in all; he touched everything, and seemed as if he had created it; he mastered the human heart with the same ease that he did his violin. You wept and you laughed, and you wondered; and the wonderful creature who made you do all at will, never let it appear that he was more than your equal. After this, we have but little to record, though the detail of his strongly marked personal character as given by his appreciative biographers might supply many a page of amusing and instructive incident. His last years were passed in broken health, chiefly in Dublin and London, in intimacy with the society gathering about the brilliant Whig leaders of the time. His death, following upon an attack of apoplexy, occurred at his lodgings at Brompton, a suburb of London, on the 14th of October, 1817, in the sixty-eighth year of his age. His remains were privately interred in a vault of one of the London churches, and seventeen years after, were removed to a public cemetery at Dublin, where they repose in a massive sarcophagus, simply inscribed with the name of CURRAN. Altered wwwrding to act of thruress #8: by dson Wilson & ta in the offes of the ravan of Congress at Washington. JANE AUSTEN. T HE readers of the novels of Jane | its and inclinations, and she had apAusten, and the class includes a parently no wish to go beyond it. It large number of persons of taste and is of this serene home-life, though it refinement, have only of late had the might have been suspected from her opportunity of becoming, as it were, writings, that the reading world has personally acquainted with her, in the its first accurate knowledge in a singu possession of any adequate notice of larly appropriate Memoir, published her modest, unobtrusive life, outside in 1870, more than half a century after of a private circle of family and friends. her death, by her nephew, J. E. AustenShe was slightly known to her own Leigh, vicar of a country parish in Enggeneration, except by her writings; land. and as these were not published till the later years of her short life, and her name was not given on the titlepage of any of them till after her death, though there was no mystery of concealment, she attracted but little of the notice of her contemporaries. There is probably no other example in the history of English literature of an author of so much merit having courted or received so little personal attention. This arose from no defect on either side. The fair authoress, if she had sought the society of the literary celebrities of the day, might have been received with as much distinction as her predecessor, Miss Burney; but her lot was cast apart from the great world of London, in a happy sphere of provincial life, congenial and all-sufficient to her hab 52 Jane Austen was born December 16th, 1775, at the Parsonage House of Steventon, in Hampshire, England. Her father, the Rev. George Austen, rector of the parish, was of an old established family in Kent; he had been well educated, and had obtained a fellowship at St. John's College, Oxford. He was married to the daughter of a fellow clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Leigh, of Warwickshire, a younger brother of Dr. Theophilus Leigh, celebrated for his longevity-he held the mastership of Baliol College at Oxford for more than half a century-and for his ready wit, which would have delighted Sydney Smith. Of this we have an instance in a letter of Mrs. Thrale to Doctor Johnson, written when the Master was eighty-six. "I never 66 heard," she says, a more perfect or of as remarkable for her prudence and excellent pun than his, when some one judgment. Educated by their father, told him how, in a late dispute among the children all proved in their severthe privy counsellors, the Lord Chan- al walks of life, persons of intelligence cellor struck the table with such vio- and character, acting well their parts lence that he split it. 'No, no, no,' re- in the world, repaying to their home plied the Master; 'I can hardly per- the benefits of its amiable culture. suade myself that he split the table, "This was the small circle, continually though I believe he divided the Board." enlarged, however, by the increasing His humorous cheerfulness remained families of four of her brothers, within with him to the last. Only three days which Jane Austen found her wholebefore he expired, at the age of ninety, some pleasures, duties and interests, he was told that an old acquaintance and beyond which she went very little was lately married, who had recovered into society during the last ten years from a long illness by eating eggs, and of her life. There was so much that that the wits said that he had been was agreeable and attractive in this egged on to matrimony. "Then," said family party, that its members may be he, on the instant, "may the yoke sit excused if they were inclined to live easy on him." "I do not know," says somewhat too exclusively within it. Mr. Austen-Leigh, "from what com- They might see in each other much to mon ancestor the Master of Baliol and love and esteem, and something to adhis great-niece, Jane Austen, with some mire. The family talk had abundance others of the family, may have derived of spirit and vivacity, and was never the keen sense of humor which they troubled by disagreements, even in litcertainly possessed." tle matters, for it was not their habit to dispute or argue with each other: above all, there was strong family af fection and firm union, never to be broken but by death. It cannot be doubted that all this had its influence on the author in the construction of her stories, in which a family party usually supplies the narrow stage, while the interest is made to revolve round a few actors. The Austens, the father and mother of Jane, lived at Steventon for about thirty years, a family of five sons and two daughters growing up about them. Of the sons, the oldest, James, the father of our biographer, in his youth at Oxford, was the projector and chief supporter of the collection of essays on University subjects entitled, "The Loiterer;" the second, adopted by his cousin, Mr. Knight, a wealthy gentleman in Hampshire, came into possession of his name and property; the third became a clergyman, and the two youngest entered the navy, both attaining the rank of admiral. The elder of the two sisters, Cassandra, to whom Jane was devotedly attached, is spoken |