"The pleasure of walking and breathing fresh air" is the name of diamond # 134 in QD1. Russ and I took several walks in Hampshire, along lanes and footpaths that Jane Austen would have known near Chawton, Ibthorpe, and Steventon. "When the weather was good, the walks about Steventon were very beautiful; the lanes were full of primroses and violets in the spring, and the neighborhood had the beauty of Hampshire woodland. Jane said many years afterwards that she thought beauty of landscape must be one of the joys of heaven." Elizabeth Jenkins' biography of Jane Austen, page 10 Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bennet, Marianne Dashwood, Catherine Morland, Miss Tilney, Jane Fairfax, Anne Elliot and others, all enjoyed walking and observing landscape. |