parting pleasure from little things-exercis- | as are described in her novel. She was ing wit and ingenuity on airy nothings-and haunted by bad news from home (by which surrounding themselves with an atmosphere might generally be understood the excesses of cheerfulness, which can be felt and en- of her brother Branwell), and her father had joyed, but not analyzed. All this was out of fears of becoming blind. No discouraging their sphere; they could play and sport no reports, however, could allay the thirst for more now than as little girls. But no minds old haunts and familiar faces. She writes to can always work and "make out; " and when Emily, who is at home again: wearied with such efforts any exercise for the body would be welcome.

"Dec. 1, 1843.

"This is Sunday morning. They are at their idolatrous 'messe,' and I am here, that is, in the Refectoire. I should like uncommonly to be in the dining-room at home, or in the kitchen, or in the back kitchen. I with the clerk and some register people at should like even to be cutting up the hash, the other table, and you standing by, watching that I put enough flour, not too much pepper, and, above all, that I save the best pieces of the leg of mutton for Tiger and Keeper, the first of which personages would be jumping about the dish and carving-knife, and the latter standing like a devouring flame on the kitchen-floor. To complete the picture, Tabby blowing the fire, in order to boil the potatoes to a sort of vegetable glue! How divine are these recollections to me at this moment! . . . . Tell me whether papa really wants me very much to come home, that I should be of no use there-a sort of and whether you do likewise. I have an idea aged person upon the parish. I pray with heart and soul, that all may continue well at Haworth; above all in our grey half-inhabited house. God bless the walls thereof! Safety, health, happiness, and prosperity to you, papa, and Tabby.”—Ibid. pp. 302-304.

She presently resigns herself to the dreaded necessity, and enters on another situation, where she realizes that, in the most favorable circumstances, such a life is not tolerable to her. The perpetual small occupations, the never-ending calls on her time, the constant subjection to another's will, and, above all, the want of leisure to pursue any train of thought, and the consequent languishing of the imagination made up a life of perpetual strain and resistance to the demands of her nature. Moreover, she knew nothing of children. She had never been a child herself -she could not sympathize with her charges; and added to all this, was the having to "live in other people's houses," which to her was the ascending" altrui scale," the worst feature of Dante's banishment. She grew anx ious, and with too much reason, about her youngest pet sister Anne's health, and longed to be with her. These things, together, led to the determination to attempt a school on their own account; and in order to carry out this plan with success, it was resolved that she and Emily should place themselves at a school in Brussels, to perfect themselves in French. The first part of the scheme was carried out; its purpose and object fell to the ground, or rather changed into furnishing materials and groundwork for her subsequent third and last novel, "Villette." The sisters seem to have made a sensation in the school by their industry and ready talent; and Emily, while she stayed, not less by her sullen reserve. M. Héger, husband of the lady at the head of the establishment, and whom we suspect to be the germ of M. Paul Emanuel, She returns home again, but the scheme observing Charlotte's capacity, gave, in the for keeping school falls through, for one course of his systematic instruction in French main reason, that Branwell's home, whenever composition, very valuable lessons in the art he chose to return to it, was no fit place for of composition in any language, by which we girls. For a long time the sisters seem to have no doubt her style profited. But the have shut their eyes to his failings, or sought banishment from country and home brought the consolation so fatal to elevation and on unusual depression. She endured, in the refinement of character, of involving all men grandes vacances, just such nervous miseries in the same sins; it was to the interest of

Not long after this she leaves Brussels, where she latterly acted as teacher, parting with great kindness from M. Héger. With Madame H. she had differences, which lead us to suspect that she also may be reproduced in " Villette;" but all was smoothed over at the last, and her pupils expressed a regret at losing her, which took her by surprise, but it did not, it seems, alter the deliberate opinion she had formed of foreign girlhood so far as to withhold another portrait of Belgic character more candid than flattering.

their blind affection to believe that he was only like other men of "any strength of character;" they fell, Mrs. Gaskell says, into the usual error of confounding strong passions with strong character-a notion at the bottom of what is blameable in all their books.

offers itself, without very clearly satisfying ourselves that it is right to endure. Misery and disgrace, borne stolidly, do not point the mind heavenwards, it needs some spring and cheerfulness to lift the mind so high. Self love is a divine instinct under proper bounds, and so is self-respect. There are sufferings in their nature elevating; pain, poverty, bereavement, all may be turned to noblest uses, but not constant forced intercourse for years with shameless vice. If we are to judge of the worth of the sacrifice by its fruits, we can be at no pains to decide. All the sisters, in some degree, suffered in moral tone from this familiarity with evil; "like the dyers' hand" their own minds became tinged by the habitual soil. In the two younger, Emily and Anne, the result, to judge by their books, was frightful; all the wickedness of the world seems to be at their fingers' ends, and they have no perception that society at large has not been subject to the same

We have already questioned the nature and quality of their intense exclusive family affection; whether it was possible to be devoted to Branwell to the very last, we do not know, but it is clear he was their hope and pride long after he should have been their shame, and that they tolerated his society, and sacrificed every consideration to him, when intercourse was contamination. He was idle; he drank; he degraded himself with vice; he insulted their ears by infamous confessions, and made them familiar with the foulest blasphemies; he stupified himself with opium; they lived in terror of their lives, from his threatened violence; their home was miserable, their nerves and health contamination with themselves. Not that shaken; and yet they endured his presence, not in hope of reclaiming him, but in simple endurance, without, it seems, a wish or thought of emancipation. We know not where the fault lay, or who was chiefly answerable for this state of things; but we wish to say that such endurance was a fault and not a merit. It is, we know, a difficult question (for he bore their name and was of their blood), and self-sacrifice is not too common and easy a virtue that we should disparage it, or treat slightingly its manifestations. But, in the first place, there was the indulgence of a weak affection to counterbalance the suffering; and next, it is certain that a servile, heavy, dead, unreflecting self-denial — the acquiescence in pain or degradation as if they were our fate-never can be a virtue

they manifest any love for vice, which is the reason most people write about it; the tone towards it is cold, moral, and misanthropical

but there it is unblushing and rampant, because as such they saw it in the only man (except their father) with whom they were brought into close contact-whose mind they could read. We have no means of judging who was the main cause of this incubus not being removed, but even if it was the father's wish, the daughters' submission was ill timed; they would have done well to remonstrate and urge their claim to consideration. But probably the question was never mooted, and never even occurred to any of them as a question; for the Brontes had the most extraordinary way of enduring evils that might have been remedied. There is a notable For after all, people have to choose be- unanimity in this respect. To begin with tween one form of self-devotion and another; Mr. Bronte : he sends four daughters to one we cannot nourish and cherish a brother school; two of them die from causes conBranwell and do our duty to society at large. nected with the climate and diet of the This monster took all, consumed their means school: he goes on sending the other twowhich they could have applied usefully, their it does not occur to him to change his plan : time which might have benefited others, their the authorities of the school have to decline friendship which could have cheered better the charge. His house and its situation natures; all happiness, credit, love, friendship, purity of mind, innocence of evil, all were laid upon this altar.

Unhappiness is by no means necessarily beneficial; we ought not to acquiesce in it for ourselves, if a way of escape or relief

prove unhealthy, there is no thought of a change; his servant becomes incapable, but she is never replaced. He begins to dine alone, and dines alone to the end of his days, until, poor man, there is no one to share his meals. Branwell embitters their existence,

destroys the health of body and mind of his | "When I last saw Charlotte (Jan. 1845), sisters-they bear with him; no one thinks she told me she had quite decided to stay at of placing him under salutary restraint and home. She owned she did not like it. Her health was weak. She said she should like privation elsewhere. Finally the daughters any change at first, as she had liked Brussels die one by one, in consequence, as it really at first, and she thought that there must be seems, of this system of blind acquiescence- some possibility for some people of having a one at least rejecting every attempt to avert life of more variety and more communion the danger, clinging to the routine of exist- with human kind, but she saw none for her. ence to the last moment. The remaining I told her very warmly, that she ought not to daughter struggles on in loneliness and de- stay at home; that to spend the next five pression, her instinct is to reject alleviation; would ruin her; that she would never recover years at home, in solitude and weak health, she feels herself under a fate: finally comes it. Such a dark shadow came over her face a lover offering to cheer her existence, and when I said, "Think of what you'll be five the father violently opposes himself, for no years hence!" that I stopped, and said, other reason than that it is a threatened" Don't cry, Charlotte!" She did not cry, change-as if the resolute pursuit of one unvarying course had answered. In fact they were a sort of zoophyte, at once rooted and sensitive; their habits were scarcely under the influence of reason, but of a blind necessity-and the result, a singular mixture of apathy and self-will, conspicuous in all, but modified in our heroine by some practical common sense and much real resignation, and reasonable, not simply blind and stolid patience and submission. Here is a sad picture of dejection caused by this brother. About this time, when they were giving up hope, she had been visiting her friend Mary, and writes:

"I begin to perceive that I have too little life in me, now-a-days, to be fit company for any except very quiet people. Is it age, or what else, that changes me so?'

but went on walking up and down the room, and said in a little while, "But I intend to stay, Polly.'”—Ibid. pp. 319, 320.

And in a few weeks after, Charlotte writes:

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I can hardly tell you how time gets on at Haworth. There is no event whatever to mark its progress. One day resembles another; and all have heavy, lifeless physiognomies. Sunday, baking-day, and Saturday, mark. Meantime, life wears away. I shall are the only ones that have any distinctive soon be thirty; and I have done nothing yet. Sometimes I get melancholy at the prospect before and behind me. Yet it is wrong and foolish to repine. Undoubtedly, my duty directs me to stay at home for the present. There was a time when Haworth was a very pleasant place to me; it is not so now. I feel as if we were all buried here. I long_to travel; to work; to live a life of action. Excuse me, dear, for troubling you with my fruitless wishes. I will put by the rest, and not trouble you with them. You must write to me. If you knew how welcome your letters are, you would write very often. Your letters, and the French newspapers, are the only messengers that come to me from the outer world beyond our moors; and very welcome messengers they are.""—Ibid. pp.

320, 321.

"Alas! she hardly needed to have asked this question. How could she be otherwise than "flat-spirited," "a poor companion," and "a sad drag" on the gaiety of those who were light-hearted and happy? Her honest plan for earning her own livelihood had fallen away, crumbled to ashes; after all her preparations, not a pupil had offered herself; and, instead of being sorry that this wish of many years could not be realized, she had reason to be glad. Her poor father, nearly To return to the influence of Branwell on sightless, depended upon her cares in his her general estimate of human nature and blind helplessness; but this was a sacred manners. In spite of the familiarity with pious charge, the duties of which she was evil, which we are led to suppose the unblessed in fulfilling. The black gloom hung restrained tone of conversation amongst the over what had once been the brightest hope few men of her acquaintance brought upon of the family-over Branwell, and the mys-her, it is satisfactory to find an honest repugtery in which his wayward conduct was en

complaints of him to her father, she says:

veloped. Somehow and sometime, he would nance to its open professors. In speaking of have to turn to his home as a hiding place a bad man-a curate-whose wife brought for shame; such was the sad foreboding of his sisters."-Ibid. pp. 318, 319. "Mary," who was then going to Australia,

says

"She expressed great disgust and contempt towards him, and did not affect to have a shadow of regard in any way. I do not

For now the notion of composition, with

wonder at this, but I do wonder she should from it-bitter against it, but with the subject ever marry a man towards whom her feelings necessarily always uppermost. must always have been pretty much the same as they are now. I am morally certain no the ultimate end of publishing, was assuming decent woman could experience any thing but aversion towards such a man as Mr.

Before I knew, or suspected his character, and when I rather wondered at his versatile talents, I felt it in an uncontrollable degree. I hated to talk with him-hated to look at him; though as I was not certain that there was substantial reason for such a dislike, and thought it absurd to trust to mere instinct, I both concealed and repressed the feeling as much as I could; and, on all occasions, treated him with as much civility as I was mistress of. I was struck with Mary's expression of a similar feeling at first sight; she said, when we left him, That is a hideous man, Charlotte!' I thought he is indeed.'"-1bid. pp. 222, 223.

a settled form in the sisters' minds. The

discovery of a MS. volume of Emily's verses led to a critical inspection of their joint stores and then followed a determination to print at their own risk. Charlotte was right, we think, in giving the first place to Emily; some of her poems convey an impression of remarkable force and vigor. The whole volume, indeed, exhibits thought, fancy, and power of versification of no common order. We wonder it made so little impression on the public mind; but the crudities and prolixities of young authors are drawbacks to account for any neglect of what is so little likely to excite attention as a volume of poetry with These feelings she never lost in contact unknown signatures (for here they first aswith actual mischief-working, misery-causing sumed the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton evil; she was severe on the great satirist Bell, at once preserving their initials and whom she so intensely reverenced and admired, concealing their sex); and the subjects, in because she thought him too lenient to Field- many cases harsh in themselves or in their ing's course of life; she shuddered because mode of treatment, would awaken little symshe remembered Branwell; but something pathy. However, the volume was printed warped her judgment, where sin is seen in a and scrupulously paid for, and the sisters more subtle shape; mere speculative devia- then began to feel their way in prose; all tions from the moral law do not outrage her writing at the same time, and under the in the same manner. It is the way a man same impulse, but with very different ultimate has erred that revolts her more than the sin success, though Charlotte's first great experiitself; thus George Sand's novels do not ment could little prepare her for her future offend her as they ought, though of course triumph. Her novel, "The Professor," was she does make some protest; but the situ- offered to all the world of publishers in vain. ations are too ideal to reach her resentments. The public is promised the opportunity of And where she sees a sort of apology for Mr. judging how far this universal rejection was Rochester in his unhappy marriage, her prin- merited, for "The Professor" is now in the ciples are not shocked, or her sense of (we press. Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes must say) decency outraged, by the extra- Grey," by Emily and Anne, found a publisher. ordinary confidence he imparts to Jane Eyre. In contrast with Emily's strange story, we Mrs. Gaskell says that in girlhood she had approach " Jane Eyre" with respect. There been used to hear that sort of language her- we see the purifying influence of genius, self; female ears did not enjoy the immunity which can discriminate between power and they do now in all but the most unprincipled brutality-which knows what to choose and society; and Branwell had confidences and what to reject-which, under every disparpretended confidences which would throw Mr. agement and hindrance, has an intuitive Rochester into the shade. The long habit of sense of beauty, grace and fitness-which finding excuses for him before he reached his can clothe intensity of feeling in reasonable latest degradation had lowered her standard; language-which can shake even a rude she did not want to believe in perfection. It heart to its foundations, and reveal its huis a noticeable fact that "Jane Eyre" was man passion, not its veriest dregs. After composed in the midst of the most poignant tasting her sister's "fierce ragouts," we do distresses caused by Branwell, and while she not wonder that she could not understand was, by her contact with him, most hardened what people meant by charging her story to the free discussion of immorality-suffering with coarseness. With such specimens in

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her own family of utter unscrupulousness of | cannot but wonder how there could be a modiction on paper, or vivá voce, she must have ment's doubt as to the sex of the writer. been rather conscious in herself of a guarded The scenes are all seen through woman's scrupulosity of decorum. Our readers must eyes; there is an identification of the author not suspect us of approving of Mr. Roches- with the heroine which could not be assumed. ter, either in his conduct or tone of conver- These considerations, as we look at them sation, but these strange revelations extenu- now, outweigh the difficulties presented by ate some points. The woman who drew either vigor of style or unscrupulousness of such a character had not to go out of the way expression and execution. But then the for his worst features. She thought real publishers were as much in the dark as the men were all that sort of thing,-selfish, world at large. Difficulties began to beset somewhat grovelling, with no guiding princi- the sisters, who were charged with being one ple, but redeemable through their purer af- and the same; a more stupid mistake "the fections. She gives her heroine these senti- public," or any portion of it, never fell into; ments. Resolute and unyielding in her own and Mrs. Gaskell makes a very pretty rosense of duty, such as it is, her heart is not mance out of the two sisters'-Charlotte and repelled by the act of treachery her lover all Anne's-sudden journey to London to prove but carried out against her. His affection that they were two. Their arrival at the was an extenuation at the time when she ful- Chapter Coffee-house,-their short walk to filled the "intolerable duty" of leaving him; the publishers, prolonged to an hour's length it was a claim, not for a moment to be dis- by their fear of the crossings. Mr. Smith's puted when the barrier against their union astonishmentwas removed.

"When Charlotte put his own letter into his hands; the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before. Where did you get this?' said he,-as if he could not black, of slight figure and diminutive stature, believe that the two young ladies dressed in looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell, for whom curiosity had been hunting so eagearly in vain."-1bid. vol. ii. p. 68.

"Jane Eyre" was begun under the additional anxiety of her father's threatened blindness. She had accompanied him to Manchester, where the operation for cataract was successfully performed; and here, in spite of the discouragement of her first story being returned upon her hands, she set about proving the view she had recently laid down to her sisters, that it was a mistake to make heroine always handsome. "I will prove Their shy rejection of his hospitable invito you that you are wrong; I will show you a tations, and determination to remain un heroine as plain and as small as myself, who known, which also influenced their refusal to shall be as interesting as any of yours." meet well-known names-their visit to the When once in the train of the story she Opera in their country-shaped dresses-the wrote continuously; we are not surprised frightful headache, the consequence of so that by the time she had effected her hero-much excitement-the return home," gray ine's escape from Thornfield she had wrought and very old," as she describes herself—all herself into a fever. Certainly it was a daz- this would have answered to nobody's ideas zling power to find herself possessed of. of the author of "Jane Eyre: " as little What masculine force of style-what vivid would the patient return to her dreary home life in the scenes-what daring originality in after this brilliant episode. the situations-what a grasp of detail! The whole course of that abortive wedding-day is a masterpiece of bold and powerful writing. This time she had no repulse to complain of. She sent her book to Messrs. Smith and Elder. The firm seem successively to have sat up all night reading the MS.;-it was accepted, and published within two months, and "Currer Bell" was famous. But who was "Currer Bell?" The name and style were masculine, and yet, looking at it now, we

"Branwell is the same in conduct as ever. His constitution seems much shattered.Papa, and sometime all of us, have sad nights with him. He sleeps most of the day, and consequently will lie awake at night. But has not every house its trial ?"—Ibid. vol. ii. p. 75.

Two months later, after three years of outrageous conduct, during which all respect seem to have been thrown aside, he died. She records that—

"His mind had undergone the peculiar