system, for the children were all strong and healthy. Jane was probably
treated like the rest in this respect. In childhood every available
opportunity of instruction was made use of. According to the ideas of
the time, she was well educated, though not highly accomplished, and she
certainly enjoyed that important element of mental training, associating
at home with persons of cultivated intellect. It cannot be doubted that
her early years were bright and happy, living, as she did, with indulgent
parents, in a cheerful home, not without agreeable variety of society. To
these sources of enjoyment must be added the first stirrings of talent
within her, and the absorbing interest of original composition. It is
impossible to say at how early an age she began to write. There are copy
books extant containing tales some of which must have been composed while
she was a young girl, as they had amounted to a considerable number by
the time she was sixteen. Her earliest stories are of a slight and
flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be nonsensical, but the
nonsense has much spirit in it. They are usually preceded by a
dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family. It would seem
that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not
escaped her youthful penetration. Perhaps the most characteristic
feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter,
they are always composed in pure simple English, quite free from the over-
ornamented style which might be expected from so young a writer. One of
her juvenile effusions is given, as a specimen of the kind of transitory
amusement which Jane was continually supplying to the family party.



THE MYSTERY.
AN UNFINISHED COMEDY.