Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/23

 was wofully disappointed with her future home when taken to visit it as a bride-elect. Coming as she did from Henley-on-Thames she may have been hypercritical, but those who know the Hampshire scenery near Basingstoke will understand her feeling, for it is not of the kind to fascinate anyone at first sight. It is not exactly flat, but neither is it very hilly; it has plenty of trees, but no very fine timber, though there are many pretty walks and quiet nooks which make it a pleasant home-like neighbourhood to anyone living in it, and knowing it well. There is a good view of Steventon from the railway between Basingstoke and Popham Beacon, but the parsonage house which we see there now is not the one in which Jane Austen opened her eyes to the world nearly a hundred and fourteen years ago. That one was pulled down more than sixty years ago; it is said to have been a square, comfortable-looking house on the other side of the valley to the present one; it was approached from the road by a shady drive, and was large enough to contain not only all the Austens and their household, but at different times many other people as well. It had a good-sized, old-fashioned garden, which was filled with fruit and flowers in delightfully indiscriminate profusion, and sloped gently upwards to a most attractive turf terrace. Every reader of Northanger Abbey will identify this terrace with a smile! From the parsonage garden there was a curious walk to the church; it was what natives of Hampshire call "a hedge," which may be explained to those who are not natives of Hampshire as a footpath, or even sometimes a cart-track, bordered irregularly with copse wood and timber, far prettier than the ordinary type of English hedge, and forming