The article describes Jaszuny, a village four miles from Vilnius, owned by the family of Michał Baliński. Jan Śniadecki was also to spend the last days of his life in Jaszuny. The history and appearance of the manor house there are described. Also mentioned is the history of Śniadecki's portrait and the issue of letters from Magdalena née Dzieduszycka Morska. (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1865, T:11, pp. 41-42., after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

Jaszuny Manor.

Jaszuny, the village whose manor house is given in the attached woodcut, situated on the Mereczanka River, about four miles from Vilnius, on the postal route leading through the Lido to Grodno, is the property of the family of the late Michał Baliński, well known in our literature. The last moments of his life were spent here by the famous Jan Śniadecki, uncle of Zofia Śniadecka, Baliński's wife. Having reached an advanced age, "he decided to spend the rest of his days in Jaszuny, in the bosom of his family. He liked the healthy surroundings, surrounded by forests and abundantly sprinkled with living crinoids, and the opportunity for hunting, which he had once passionately enjoyed.

In 1823 he announced his intention to build himself a comfortable and decorative house in Jaszuny and to live permanently with the Balinski family. Professor Karol Podczaszyński was immediately asked to make a plan, which, with minor modifications, was then executed. In June 1824 the construction of this manor house began, which took four years. It was not until St John's Day in 1828 that Sniadecki, with his library and all his retinue and household, finally moved from Vilnius to Yashun and settled into his new home, satisfied with everything that surrounded him. He was already 70 years old at the time. In this rural retreat, surrounded by a circle of loved ones and lovers, he was happy to complete the course in his mathematics, begun many years ago with the announcement of algebra.

But old age and lack of strength did not permit him to do so; so he passed his time reading and in the company of his household and the few friends and neighbours who came to visit him, and sometimes in hunting entertainment. A couple of times the old man, forgetting his feeble strength, wanted to belong to a bear hunt. And once he had great joy, for on one such hunting expedition in which he participated, a bear was slaughtered shortly after the gunners were set up, a hundred paces from him. The hunters received a generous reward, and a merry feast, to which Śniadecki also contributed, ended the hardship and fun for the whole hunt.

The old rector of the Vilnius academy, Father Jundzill, who had been staying in Yashuny for several weeks in the summer, and Bishop Klagiewicz, as well as a former pupil of Sniadecki's and his successor in astronomy, Slawinski, visited. Among the neighbours, the nicest to Sniadecki was Wawrzyniec Putkamer, husband of Maryla Mickiewicz, who lived three miles away in Bokieniki, once a warrior and a beautiful lancer, smoked with the dust of the battles of Liitzen and Bautzen. "He was a completely different man (writes Michał Baliński) from what Mickiewicz's biographies describe him as. No aristocrat, and not only not rich, but very poor.

Having inherited a parcel of land that had been stripped and destroyed, he made his living by sparse activity and industry from established factories. However, besides this, this uncommon citizen possessed qualities of heart and mind so great that they are rarely encountered in the whole world. Hard-working, enlightened, a lover of the freedom of the country folk, he was loved and adored by his peasants, whose serfdom he abhorred and who left their honour and devotion to his son as the most pleasant legacy; a faithful and devoted friend to those he loved, even forgetting himself; cheerful at the same time, in spite of his constant struggle with the necessities of life and daily bread, very witty, a veritable treasure trove of anecdotes and amusing adventures, fond in his leisure moments of books and hunting.

Such was our neighbour beloved by us, who entered into the confidential company of Jan Śniadecki". The second of our neighbours was the illustrious and historic heir of Pawłowo, the founder of the local Commonwealth during the 1791 Sejm, priest Pawel count Brzostowski, who lived two miles away in Turgiels, where he was parish priest. The latter, unable to visit Yashun for his advanced age, sent Sniadecki his poems and beautiful birch bark products with astronomical emblems. In the summer of 1830. Sławiński brought the artist Kleinibowski, who drew a portrait of Śniadecki and, going to Paris, took it to Oleszczyński for engraving.

This is the same portrait that became so popular with us, and now belongs to the Vilnius Album. Unable to work himself, and keenly interested in the development of literature, he was delighted to receive frequent letters from Professor Szopowicz in Kraków and maintained a constant correspondence with him. Through him, having learnt of the death in 1828 of his good servant Grzegorz Ciechoński, whom he had left in Kraków, he donated to his widow zip. 100 a year. He was also occupied by the letters of Mrs Magdalena Morska, née Dzieduszycka, known in Galicia for her beautifully landscaped and decorated estate of Zarzecz.

Apart from news about events and acquaintances, the letters of this noble matron, who had been friendly to Śniadecki for a long time, contained many descriptions of farming and gardening, which occupied Śniadecki as a resident of the village and an amateur gardener. His old friends from Warsaw, Niemcewicz and Sierakowski, showered him with their news; but his advanced age was bringing him ever closer to the grave.

In 1827, he was rescued from a serious illness by Dr Józef Mianowski, then an adjunct of the clinic at Jędrzej Śniadecki, a friend of the house and Jan's trusted physician. He soon began to fall more frequently; but having gone to Vilnius to seek help, in April 1830 he returned to Jaszun full of strength and vigour long since unknown in him. But the improvement was apparent. D. 9 November this year, at the moment when he started to eat dinner, he ended his life without any suffering. His corpse was buried on a hill overgrown with forest, a few hundred paces from the manor house beyond the river, as a place of his favourite and almost daily walk. Michał Baliński also died last year in this manor, and was buried next to the ashes of Jan Śniadecki.