She read French with facility, and knew something in Italian.... In history she followed the old guides--Goldsmith, Hume and Robertson. Critical enquiry into the usually received statements of the old historians was scarcely begun.... Jane, when a girl, had strong political opinions, especially about the affairs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She was a vehement defender of Charles I. and his grandmother Mary; but I think it was rather from an impulse of feeling than from any enquiry into the evidence by which they must be condemned or acquitted. As she grew up, the politics of the day occupied very little of her attention, but she probably shared the feeling of moderate Toryism which prevailed in her family. REV. J. E. AUSTEN-LEIGH: ‘A Memoir of Jane Austen.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: A modest opinion.] I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. JANE AUSTEN: _Letter to Mr. J. S. Clarke_, quoted in ‘Memoir,’ by Austen-Leigh. * * * * * [Sidenote: Taste in reading.] She was well acquainted with the old periodicals, from the ‘Spectator’ downward. Her knowledge of Richardson’s works was such as no one is likely again to acquire, now that the multitude and the merits of our light literature have called off the attention of readers from that great master. Every circumstance narrated in Sir Charles Grandison, all that ever was said or done in the cedar parlor, was familiar to her; and the wedding-days of Lady L. and Lady G. were as well remembered as if they had been living friends. Amongst her favorite writers, Johnson in prose, Crabbe in verse, and Cowper in both, stood high. It is well that the native good taste of herself and of those with whom she lived, saved her from the snare into which a sister novelist had fallen, of imitating the grandiloquent style of Johnson. She thoroughly enjoyed Crabbe; perhaps on account of a certain resemblance to herself in minute and highly finished detail; and would sometimes say, in jest, that if she ever married at all, she could fancy being Mrs. Crabbe; looking on the author quite as an abstract idea, and ignorant and regardless what manner of man he might be. Scott’s poetry gave her great pleasure; she did not live to make much acquaintance with his novels. REV. J. E. AUSTEN-LEIGH: ‘A Memoir of Jane Austen.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Love of dancing.] There were twenty dances, and I danced them all, and without any fatigue. I was glad to find myself capable of dancing so much, and with so much satisfaction as I did; from my slender enjoyment of the Ashford balls, I had not thought myself equal to it, but in cold weather and with few couples I fancy I could just as well dance for a week together as for half an hour.