As my subject carries me back about a hundred years, it will afford
occasions for observing many changes gradually effected in the manners
and habits of society, which I may think it worth while to mention. They
may be little things, but time gives a certain importance even to
trifles, as it imparts a peculiar flavour to wine. The most ordinary
articles of domestic life are looked on with some interest, if they are
brought to light after being long buried; and we feel a natural curiosity
to know what was done and said by our forefathers, even though it may be
nothing wiser or better than what we are daily doing or saying ourselves.
Some of this generation may be little aware how many conveniences, now
considered to be necessaries and matters of course, were unknown to their
grandfathers and grandmothers. The lane between Deane and Steventon has
long been as smooth as the best turnpike road; but when the family
removed from the one residence to the other in 1771, it was a mere cart
track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be impassable for a light carriage.
Mrs. Austen, who was not then in strong health, performed the short
journey on a feather-bed, placed upon some soft articles of furniture in
the waggon which held their household goods. In those days it was not
unusual to set men to work with shovel and pickaxe to fill up ruts and
holes in roads seldom used by carriages, on such special occasions as a
funeral or a wedding. Ignorance and coarseness of language also were
still lingering even upon higher levels of society than might have been
expected to retain such mists. About this time, a neighbouring squire, a
man of many acres, referred the following difficulty to Mr. Austen's
decision: 'You know all about these sort of things. Do tell us. Is
Paris in France, or France in Paris? for my wife has been disputing with
me about it.' The same gentleman, narrating some conversation which he
had heard between the rector and his wife, represented the latter as
beginning her reply to her husband with a round oath; and when his