Among the most frequent visitors at Steventon were two families of cousins, who could both of them bring fresh experiences to the country parsonage. The one family, the Coopers, lived in the brilliant Bath of their generation, where Cassandra and Jane Austen, as young women, visited their relations long before they ever thought of Bath as a residence for themselves. Jane was still able to enjoy the gay watering-place with the keen appetite of a country-bred girl, and it is these vivid reminiscences which she transfers to the pages of “Northanger Abbey,” while she reserves the much more sober, rather adverse estimate of later years for the concluding chapters of “Persuasion.” One of these cousins, Jane Austen’s dear friend and namesake, was married from her uncle’s house at Steventon to a captain in the navy, under whom Charles Austen served. A few years afterwards, this favourite cousin was suddenly killed in a carriage accident. Another cousin had been brought up in Paris, and had married a Count de Feuillade, who was guillotined during the French Revolution. His widow escaped through many perils, took refuge in her uncle’s parsonage of Steventon, and ended by marrying her cousin Henry Austen, with whom she went to France, during the short Peace of Amiens, in 1802, and narrowly escaped being detained among the unfortunate English prisoners of war, by Napoleon. Thus the quiet Hampshire parsonage was not entirely without its excitements, in addition to the arrivals and departures of its sailor sons, the naval battles and sieges in which they were engaged, the ship-intelligence which was always eagerly scanned on their behalf. Had the future author been so disposed, she might have found in the conversation and adventures of her cousin and sister-in-law materials for novels which would have been more to the taste of a large section of the public than Jane Austen’s perfect tales. As it was, the chief immediate results of the young widowed countess’s stay at Steventon, when Jane Austen was just entering on her teens, were the improvement of the family French, and the performance of amateur theatricals in a summer theatre in the barn and a winter theatre in the little dining-room. Out of these theatricals Jane Austen made stock for “Mansfield Park,” in which, by the way, she infers decided disapproval of the amusement. Whether or not the real theatricals led to the attachment and engagement of Henry Austen and Madame de Feuillade we may conjecture, but cannot ascertain from Mr. Austen Leigh’s narrative.