Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/282

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Austin
270
Austin

that he intends to take in hand, among which are 'Christ's Love to his Church, shadowed out in Joseph and Potiphar's Daughter in a familiar Dialogue betwixt them,' 'Two Lovers in one Heart,' 'The Young Man's speech to a silent Woman,' &c. What became of him after the publication of the 'Panegyrick' is not known.

[Wood, Athen. Oxon. ed. Bliss, ii. 499, iii. 675; Corser's Collectanea, i. 90-93; Boase and Courtney, Biblioth. Cornub. i. 8.]

A. H. B.

AUSTIN, SAMUEL (d. 1834), water-colour painter, was a native of Liverpool. He commenced life as a banker's clerk, but eventually gave up a good position in order to devote himself entirely to the art in which he had excelled as an amateur, and of which he was enthusiastically fond. He exhibited water-colour drawings at the Society of British Artists from 1824 to 1826, and from 1827 at the annual exhibitions of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, of which body he was elected an associate in the last-named year. He painted landscapes, and occasionally rustic figures: but his best works were coast scenes, introducing boats and figures, some of which were from sketches in Holland, France, and on the Rhine. An example of his work, 'Shakespeare's Cliff, Dover, with Luggers on the Beach,' is in the South Kensington Museum. A 'View of Dort' has been engraved after him by William Miller. He died at Liverpool in July 1834.

[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists of the English School, 1878; Society of British Artists, Exhibition Catalogues, 1824-6; Society of Painters in Water-Colours, Exhibition Catalogues, 1827-34.]

R. E. G.

AUSTIN, SARAH (1793–1867), translator, wife of John Austin the jurist, was born at Norwich in 1793. Her father, John Taylor, a yarn maker of that city, and a descendant of John Taylor, a celebrated divine, was a man of literary tastes. Her mother, whose maiden name was Susanna Cook, was accomplished and beautiful. Sarah Austin, who was the youngest of her family, received an excellent education under the direction of her mother. She was remarkably handsome and attractive, and it caused some surprise in Norwich when she married the grave John Austin [see Austin, John]. The marriage, which took place in 1820, was a union of rare intellectual sympathy, and one to which she brought an unusual share of devotion. During the first years of their married life they lived in Queen's Square, Westminster. Mrs. Austin's stately yet charming manners, her talk always full of information, interesting and sensible, if not brilliant, and her many-sided nature made her many warm friends. The younger Mill testified the esteem which he felt for her by the title of Mutter, by which he always addressed her. The only child of the marriage, Lucie (afterwards Lady Duff Gordon), was born in 1821. Her husband's scanty measure of success stimulated Mrs. Austin's literary labours, and for many years she was unceasingly busy with her pen. In 1833 she published 'Selections from the Old Testament,' arranged under heads to illustrate the religion, morality, and poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures. 'My sole object has been,' she wrote in the preface, to put together all that presented itself to my own heart and mind as most persuasive, consolatory, or elevating, in such a form and order as to be easy of reference, conveniently arranged and divided, and freed from matter either hard to be understood, unattractive, or unprofitable (to say the least) for young and pure eyes.' In the same year she published one of the many admirable translations by which she is best known: 'Characteristics of Goethe from the German of Falk, Von Müller, and others,' with valuable original notes, illustrative of German literature. Her own criticisms are few, but they are excellent, and are marked by that temperance and good sense which distinguished every line she wrote.

In 1834 she translated 'The Story without an End' by Carové, and this admirable translation has since been often republished. In the same year she translated the famous report on the 'State of Public Instruction in Prussia,' addressed by Cousin to Count Montalivet, minister of public instruction. In the preface she pleads eloquently for the cause of national education. 'Society,' she says, 'is no longer a calm current, but a tossing sea; reverence for tradition, for authority, is gone. In such a state of things who can deny the absolute necessity of national education.?' In 1839 she returned to the same subject in a pamphlet, originally published in a short-lived periodical, Cochrane's 'Foreign Quarterly Review.' Arguing from the experience of Prussia and France, she urged the establishment in England of a national system of education. One of her last publications (1859) consisted of two letter's addressed to the 'Athenæum' on girls' schools and on the training of working women. In these she shows that she had modified her opinions. Speaking of the old village schools, she admits that the teachers possessed little book lore. They were often widows 'better versed in the toils and