Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/136

120 household that emulated and inherited her virtues, and of a wider circle that loved and honoured her.

Jane was for some years after her sister^s marriage more closely associated with her beloved brother Isaac, and the most tender friendship subsisted between them. As Isaac's health was delicate,—and the youngest child of the family at Ongar was a daughter, Jemima, who became the devoted attendant on her mother,—Jane went with her brother to Devon and to Cornwall. At Marazion, in Mount's Bay, many of Janets later works were written; and it was no small comfort to the good father in his declining years, and to the mother, as delicacy of health, increased by her deafness, pressed on her, that Jane was realizing an independence by her writings.

It is strange to read that although their father wished to make his daughters artists, he at first shrunk from their being engaged in literature. "I have no wish that my daughters should be authors," he had said, when their honourable career was first opening before them. He lived to retract that wish; for not only his daughters, but his wife, when released by years from the pressure of domestic cares, became a very successful writer on domestic and educational subjects. Her pen was the solace to Mrs. Taylor's infirmities; and the substitute for the companionship of her children, as they had to leave the "old house at home."

In the year 1823, Miss Jane Taylor's health began