‘It has already been announced, in another part of these columns, that Mrs. Austin, widow of the late John Austin, well known as one of the most eminent professors of the science of jurisprudence whom this country has produced, expired on the 8th inst. at her residence at Weybridge, after an acute attack of a malady of the heart, with which she had long been afflicted. Although the life of Mrs. Austin was spent in the active discharge of her private duties, and although no one was less disposed to court celebrity, which she might have enjoyed in a far larger degree had she cared to seek it, she undoubtedly filled so considerable a place in society and in literature that some record of so remarkable a woman may not unfitly appear in this place. To the attractions of great personal beauty in early life, and of a grace of manner undiminished by years, Mrs. Austin added a masculine intellect and a large heart. It was not by the play of a vivid imagination, or by an habitual display of what is termed wit, that she secured the affections and the friendship of so many of the wisest and noblest of her contemporaries. The power she exercised in society was due to the sterling qualities of her judgment, her knowledge, her literary style—which was one of great purity and excellence—and, above all, to her cordial readiness to promote all good objects, to maintain high principles of action, and to confer benefits on all who claimed her aid.

‘Mrs. Austin was descended from the Taylors of Norwich, a family which has in several generations produced men and women distinguished by literary and scientific ability. She was born in 1793, and she received in her father’s house an education of more than common range. In 1820 she married Mr. John Austin, then a barrister on the Norfolk Circuit, and came to reside next door to Mr. Bentham and Mr. James Mill, in Queen Square, Westminster. Although that house could boast of none of the attractions of luxury, for the fortune of its owners was extremely small, it soon collected within its walls as remarkable an assemblage of persons as ever met in a London drawing-room. There might be seen—a dim and flitting figure of the past—Mr. Bentham and his two disciples, James and John Stuart Mill, the Grotes, the rising lawyers of that day whose success has justified the promise of their dawn, Bickersteth, Erle, Romilly, and Senior; and all this wisdom and learnviiiing was enlivened in later years by the wit of Charles Buller, by the hearty sallies of Sydney Smith, by the polished eloquence of Jeffrey, by the courteous amenity of Lord Lansdowne, and by the varied resources of foreign visitors who found a home by Mrs. Austin’s hearth.

‘Mrs. Austin never aspired to original literary composition. Except in some of the prefaces to her translations, she disclaimed all right to address the public in her own person. She, therefore, devoted the singular power of her pen to reproduce in English many of the best contemporary works of German and French literature. Her translations from the German, more especially, were of the highest excellence, and among these her version of Ranke’s Popes of Rome has been commended by the best judges as deserving to retain a place in English historical literature.

‘Much of Mrs. Austin’s life was spent abroad, and not a few of the most eminent persons in continental society enjoyed her friendship. She had inhabited two German Universities for the prosecution of her husband’s studies, after he had quitted the bar for a chair of jurisprudence in the London University. She had accompanied him to Malta when he was sent as a commissioner to that island. She remained for some years in Paris, where her small salon had an intellectual stamp and charm not inferior to that of her London circle. The revolution of 1848 drove the Austins back to England; they established themselves in the village of Weybridge, and calmly anticipated the day when they should rest side by side in Weybridge churchyard. Mrs. Austin, however, survived her husband for several years, and that interval was employed by her in accomplishing a task which to most women would have seemed hopeless. The greater part of the Lectures delivered by Professor Austin on the principles of jurisprudence had remained in manuscript. His ill-health led him constantly to postpone the task of preparing them for the press. After his death his widow, assisted by one or two legal friends on whose judgment she could rely, succeeded in completing the imperfect edifice from the fragments of it that remained; and we owe to Mrs. Austin, already advanced in years, and struggling with a painful disease, the production of a work on jurisprudence, which is unquestionably the noblest monument that could be raised to the memory of her husband.’