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 Copyright, 1883, by Ftjxk & Wagxali s. 
 
 Fn »rpH in \pw York Pnst-Offic« ai second-clais mail matter. 
 
 Subucription price, 
 per year, f-5. 
 
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 re 
 
 5 
 
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 NUMB ERS 1 TO 79. 
 
 Previous numbers of this Library were known by the name Standard Series. 
 A list of these 79 books will be found on the 3d page of the cover of this volume. They 
 are printed In 4to, 8vo, and 12mo sizes, and are bound In postal card manllla. They are 
 standard books, and are very cheap. 
 
 I 
 
 rr* 
 
 AN HOUR WITH CHARLOTTE BRONTE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 Flowers from a Yorkshire Moor, 
 
 There was but one Charlotte Bronte, as there was but one William Shakespeare. 
 She wa* a passionate, fire-winged genius, whose life and history form one of the most 
 interesting and exciting stories ever told. No one who has read " Jane Eyre" or pored 
 over the pages of " Villette" could be indifferent to the personal history of the York- 
 shire girl who wrote them. Her jtrange existence in the little hamlet of Hawoi th 
 reads, as her biographer tells us, "like an olden tragedy twined into English fact." 
 Charlotte Bronte's character is not an easy one to understand, because of her genius, her 
 environment, and her singular shyness and avoidance of publicity. To write her life 
 acceptably, one must have made it the study of years, have known it in the integrity of 
 all its relations, and considered it from its broadest as well as its narrowest aspects. 
 This is what Mrs. Holloway has done. She has, with loving reverence and pride, gazed 
 upon her great sister woman, from the standpoint of Tier literary endeavors and 
 achievements and her domestic surroundings, and her conclusions are worthy of her 
 • 4 Hour" with her subject. It is a fascinating biography told in a charming style. It 
 has been said by a critic that " the title is a misnomer; a week, a month with Charlotte 
 Bronte would better express the true character of its contents." 
 
 Mrs. Holloway has had an extended correspondence on the subject of her literary 
 idol ; has taken infinite pains to seek out " those who had enjoyed the priceless 
 privilege of looking into her pure, frank face," and has introduced the facts she lias 
 gleaned into her carefully written biography. The book will be welcomed by all lovt-rs 
 of pure biographical literature. 
 
 L.C. 
 
 Holloway 
 
 EARLIER 
 
 NUMBERS. 
 
 No. 80, Standard Library (No. 1, 
 
 PAXTON HOOD'S LIFE OF CROMWELL. 
 1883 Series). Price, 25 cents. 
 
 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.S.A., 
 F.C.S. No. 81, Standard Library (No. 2, 1883 Series). Price, 25 cents. 
 
 AMERICAN HUMORISTS. By R. H. Haweis. No. 82, Standard Library 
 (No. 3, 1883 Series). Price, 15 cents. 
 
 LIVES OF ILLUSTRIOUS SHOEMAKERS. By William Edward Winks. 
 No. 83, Standard Library (No. 4, 1883 Series). Price, 25 cents. 
 
 FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. By Thomas Gibson Bowles. No. 84, Standard 
 Library (No. 5, 1883 Series). Price, 25 cents. 
 
 THE HIGHWAYS OF LITERATURE; or, What to Read and How to Read. 
 By David Pryde, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.E., F.S.A., etc. No. 85, Standard Library 
 (No. 6, 1883 Series). Price, 15 cents. 
 
 COLIN CLOUT'S CALENDAR. A Record op a Summer. By Grant Allen. 
 No. 86, Standard Library (No. 7, 1883 Series). Price, 25 cents. 
 
 THE ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. Complete. Collected and arranged, with 
 an Introduction on her " Analysis of Motives." By Nathan Shbppard. No. 87, 
 Standard Library (No. 8, 1883 Series). Price, 25 cents. 
 
 Funk 
 
 4 
 
 Wagnall 
 
 mm 
 
 From hundreds of periodicals in all sections of the country we have received the most 
 enthusiastic testimonials, like the following from the Danbury News, Danbury, Conn. : 
 
 " Had there been an Act of Congress empowering FUNK dt WA GNALLS, the New 
 York Publishers, to drive out bad literature by substituting good, at a price ivithin the 
 reach of all, the firm could, not have done better than it is doing. . . . There is the 
 AMERICAN HUMORIST, the last issue, printed in clear, but not staring type, on fine 
 paper. It contains one hundred and eighty pages and sells for 15 cents— the price of <* 
 good cigar/" 
 
AN HOUR 
 
 WITH 
 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE; 
 
 OR, 
 
 FLOWERS FROM A YORKSHIRE MOOR. 
 
 BY 
 5* 4 
 
 LAURA C: HOLLO WAT 
 
 AUTHOR OP "LADIES OP THE WHITE HOUSE," ETC., ETC. 
 
 KEW YORK : 
 
 FUNK & WAGKALLS, Publishers, 
 
 10 and 12 Dey Street. 
 

 Entered, according to Act of Congres?, in the year 1883, by 
 
 LAURA C. HOLLOWAY, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Biographical Essay and Review, ... 7 
 
 Letters, 49 
 
 Selections from Writings, .... 79 
 
 Poems, 133 
 
'A being breathing thoughtful breath, 
 A traveller between life and death : 
 The reason firm, the temperate will, 
 Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; 
 A perfect woman, nobly planned 
 To warn, to comfort, and command ; 
 And yet a spirit still, and bright 
 With something of an angel light. " 
 
 —Wordsworth. 
 
 Pass in, pass in, the angels say, 
 
 Into the upper doors, 
 
 Nor count compartments of the floors, 
 
 But mount to Paradise 
 
 By the stairway of surprise." 
 
 — Emerson. 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 The story of Charlotte Bronte's life is one of the most fas- 
 cinating in our language. The English reading world is ac- 
 quainted with her novels, and many have enjoyed " Jane 
 Eyre" as much perhaps as did a mother of several grown-up 
 daughters who took the book from one of them with a reproof 
 for reading a novel — something she had never done, and who 
 was discovered in the night poring over it. She had opened it 
 to see what it was, and had remained up all night to settle the 
 question for herself. 
 
 The author of this novel was a mere reed, physically — a 
 woman frail yet strong, spiritual yet still indomitable. Few if 
 any stronger women have possessed her power of endurance ; 
 her patient inflexibility. She had a rare and an unusual devel- 
 opment, and her domestic life was one of the most singular 
 ever known. She was born at Thornton, in Yorkshire, Eng- 
 land, the 21st day of April, 1816, and was the third of six 
 children. Her father, Patrick Bronte, was an Episcopal cler- 
 gyman, who for more than forty years was settled at Haworth, 
 in Yorkshire. 
 
 The impossibility of learning the particulars of Charlotte 
 Bronte's life while she lived added increased interest to the 
 
8 CHARLOTTE BROHTE. 
 
 story after she died, and yet it is but just now that all the real 
 facts and true history of this wonderful woman are known. To 
 understand her life it must be studied in the integrity of its re- 
 lations, for the life of one human being cannot be considered 
 apart from its connection with other lives, and be understood 
 aright. It is but one of many fibres that form a strange and 
 complex web, tangled by destiny and separated only by death. 
 
 Her life history ought to be written in tears, so sad was it. 
 But if, as we are told, the capacity to suffer is the mark of 
 rank in nature, she occupied her right place. She was won- 
 drously blessed with great intellectual gifts, and hence her do- 
 mestic surroundings seemed all the more narrow and con- 
 tracted. In the years that have passed since she died, all the 
 brightness that could be gleaned from whatever legitimate 
 source has been thrown upon the sad story, yet it remains as 
 cruel as an olden tragedy twined into English fact. 
 
 Her gifts were higher than intellectual culture and reflection ; 
 they were spiritual, akin,to the prophetic. She was psycholog- 
 ical and clairvoyant — the most exquisite and sensitive of hu- 
 man beings. 
 
 With her mind she could see, independent of the organs of 
 vision ; and her wonderful intuitive powers invested her with 
 a knowledge of human nature incompatible with the restricted 
 life she led. And, though restricted, there was a sombre fas- 
 cination in her isolated existence rendered eventful only by 
 sorrow. 
 
 None of the accessories of wealth or high rank were hers ; it 
 is her genius and her intensely pathetic domestic story that 
 captivates the world and holds it, and will continue to captivate 
 and hold it so long as men and women remain responsive to 
 noble sentiment and appreciate true greatness. 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 9 
 
 The characteristic she possessed which men called genius she 
 knew as courage and determined will, and the early consecra- 
 tion of her life to others she considered duty, not self-sacrifice. 
 
 The solitude of a gray old parsonage nursed her imaginative 
 faculty, and in the absolute dearth of society she learned to 
 think and to write* She lost her mother when she was five 
 years old, and was left the care-taker of her younger sisters 
 and brother, after the two eldest sisters had been sent away to 
 school. Mr. Bronte did not know how to undertake the care 
 and education of so many children, but he was a student him- 
 self and enforced his Spartan ideas of stndy upon his willing 
 pupils. Fortunately, they were all the inheritors of his intel- 
 lectual tastes, and to this circumstance they owed all the pleas- 
 ure they enjoyed. 
 
 None of them had any childhood or knew how to be merry, 
 and on one occasion they suffered severe mortification in conse- 
 quence of their ignorance. The children of the parish were in- 
 vited to the parsonage on a memorable afternoon, and when 
 they had come Charlotte and her sisters were in despair. Their 
 guests knew nothing but childish sports, and the Bronte chil- 
 dren did not know how to play. Very gravely Charlotte asked 
 to be taught, and the guests, instead of having a nice visit, de- 
 voted the time to missionary work trying to teach the grave 
 children of the parsonage the plays of childhood. Time wasted 
 evidently, for the young writers were only too glad to be left 
 alone again with their busy pens and busier brains. 
 
 Of the mother of Charlotte Bronte there is little to be told, 
 but that little is pleasant to record. She was a Yorkshire girl 
 of excellent family, who married the handsome Irish curate 
 soon after he settled in the village. Her married life was a 
 brief one, spent in the care of her children and in fulfilling the 
 
10 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 duties required of the wife of a minister. She was a sensitive- 
 ly organized woman, and was gifted with exceeding refinement 
 and beauty of mind and person. From all that can be learned 
 of her, it is surmised that she rather feared her excitable, irrita- 
 ble, yet brilliant husband, and was not quite so thoroughly un- 
 derstood as she deserved to be. Instances are recorded tend- 
 ing to show Mr. Bronte's unfortunate disposition to play the 
 part of domestic tyrant, and nothing in the way of conduct 
 could be more unattractive than this picture of him in that role. 
 A relative of his wife had sent her a pretty figured dress over 
 which her gentle heart had no doubt rejoiced in happy and 
 harmless vanity. Seeing that its brightness gave offence to her 
 husband, she carefully put it away in a bureau drawer out of his 
 sight, but, as the sequel proved, not out of his remembrance. 
 One day when she was lying in her darkened room enduring 
 the tortures of a nervous headache, she heard Mr. Bronte's 
 footsteps in the room overhead where her treasure had been 
 placed and feared the effect upon him at such a time of its gay 
 tints. It was as she dreaded it would be, and when next she 
 saw her pretty gift it was a wreck. He had taken the scissors 
 and cut it into shreds ! In like manner he had on a previous 
 occasion burned the fancy colored shoes sent his little daugh- 
 ters by their aunt. 
 
 A martial way he had of relieving his anger and quieting his 
 ruffled spirits that greatly annoyed his household. He would 
 take his pistol into the yard and fire it off repeatedly in the air 
 or at the barn-door, the latter being his favorite target. These 
 explosive moods were less annoying to his daughters, however, 
 than a certain cunning he would manifest on the most trivial 
 occasions. Patient endurance was the only way to meet them, 
 and he had no opposition from his gentle wife or timid children. 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 11 
 
 Hard work and too much of it exhausted the wife's delicate 
 system, and she died when Charlotte was five years old. The 
 two sisters older than Charlotte were put to a school kept for 
 clergymen's daughters, and later, Charlotte and Emily were 
 sent to join them. These two sisters both died from the treat- 
 ment they received at this school, and it would have ended the 
 lives of the younger girls if they had not been recalled. As it 
 was, their health was permanently injured, and Charlotte, to 
 the latest day of her life, had cause to remember it. The 
 pupils all knew the pangs of unappeased hunger, and a feeling 
 of nausea overcame her for years when she recalled the food 
 she was compelled to eat there. This school was pictured in 
 " Jane Eyre" as Cowan's Bridge, and the character of Helen 
 Burns is an exact delineation of the eldest sister. Charlotte's 
 wonderful power of reproducing character was admirably typi- 
 fied in this instance, and with so much success that all who 
 were pupils there at the time at once recognized the sisters, 
 and all the neighborhood immediately identified the school. 
 Maria Bronte must have been as rare a character as either 
 Charlotte or Emily. Her sensibility was extreme, and to a 
 morbid conscientiousness she added a high degree of courage, 
 and the indomitable spirit noticeable in Charlotte in later years. 
 She was the best pnpil in the school, and was a physical wreck 
 at the age of eight, years. The shadowy outline given of her 
 character reminds us strongly of Charlotte, while Elizabeth, the 
 next sister, would seem to have been more of the make-up of 
 Anne, docile and affectionate, but not as intellectually strong as 
 her older sisters. 
 
 The severity of the strain put upon her in this school killed 
 her. Charlotte tells us of the long, cold walks the pupils were 
 compelled to take in the snow and rain, hungry and insufh- 
 
12 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 ciently clad ; of the barren, uncomfortable church in which they 
 sat shivering through a long sermon, only to resume their 
 weary march at the end of it, and then to go supperless to 
 bed, or eat food that was distasteful and wholly inadequate to 
 supply their needs. Charlotte never grew an inch in stature 
 after leaving this school. She was the smallest of women, and 
 attributed all her physical woes to the treatment she had re- 
 ceived there. 
 
 She remained at home from this time, taking the responsi- 
 bility of caring for the three younger children, and dividing 
 her time between her books and their comfort. Her absorbing 
 occupation when free to engage in it was writing, and her 
 purely imaginative composition at this time was precocious and 
 singular, while the amount produced was immense. The old 
 nurse, their only companion, sat beside the children as they 
 were grouped about the kitchen table in the evening writing, 
 or listened to their unlimited stock of fairy stories, which they 
 told each other for entertainment when she was cross and would 
 not allow them to have the coveted candle to write by. These 
 were peaceful, happy times for this closely united band, and they 
 lived singularly studious lives for children who were not at 
 school or subjected to any of the external incentives that lead 
 the young to aspire for success. Doubtless much of the orig- 
 inality and freshness of their thoughts may be ascribed, on the 
 other hand, however, to their home studies. 
 
 This story ha3 to do with but one of these children, and yet 
 it cannot be separated from the others. Until death had taken 
 them from her, Charlotte's life was absorbed in theirs, and she 
 loved them with all the strong affection of her strong and great 
 nature. Her life was largely influenced by that of her more 
 masculine sister Emily, who, if she had lived, would have been 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 13 
 
 the greater, though perhaps not the more successful, author of 
 the two. Branwell, the golden-haired son of the home, and 
 Anne, the youngest of that family, were both full of promise, 
 and the eldest sister looked upon herself as the least among 
 them all. She was the plainest in personal appearance, yet so 
 spiritual and refined in organization was she, that the expression 
 of her face was a study to her home companions, and a marvel 
 to those who could not know that a great soul was enshrined in 
 her little body. Charlotte was now sixteen years of age, and 
 she was so small that she called herself stunted, but she was 
 well formed, and as a child, exquisitely refined. In her attire 
 she was neat and dainty, though her clothing, as befitted her 
 father's idea of a minister's daughter, was plain and homely. 
 
 Her head was beautifully shaped and very large, while her 
 great brown eyes beamed with animation. Her complexion 
 was as variable as her emotions. With a nature so sensitive it 
 was affected by every passing feeling, but at no time was it 
 ruddy or blooming. Even in her best physical states it gave 
 evidence of inadequate vitality. " The usual expression of her 
 eyes," said one who knew her well, " was of listening intelli- 
 gence. But now and then when exercised by some strong emo- 
 tion a light would shine out as if some spiritual lamp had been 
 lighted behind those glowing, expressive orbs." Her features 
 were plain, but her countenance was remarkable for its power 
 and expression. Her hands were small and strong, and indica- 
 tive of the extreme sensibility of her organism. Her fingers 
 had a fineness of sensation that gave them constant unrest. 
 They were never still, and when nervous she would clinch them 
 together with a force that often left a bruise for days. Having 
 a finely shaped head, she had a broad and handsome brow, and 
 in her day it was not considered fashionable to hide it. Char- 
 
14 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 lotte Bronte as a girl of nineteen had much book knowledge of 
 a desultory kind, but her definite acquirements were few. 
 She was not very reliable in orthodox matters ; of religion in 
 its sunny aspect and beautifying influence she knew little, and 
 it was not surprising that she early exhibited antagonistic feel- 
 ings toward the Calvinistic views of her father, and hated with 
 girlish vim the long-faced curates and travelling preachers who 
 occasionally appeared at the parsonage table. 
 
 She was not devoted to mathematics, nor was she well ad- 
 vanced in the sciences. She studied nature as an enthusiast, 
 but not at this period as a student. She tried to be a botanist, 
 but found that she loved flowers too well to dissect them. 
 
 Though something of a musician, she did not rely upon her 
 abilities in that direction very far. Her opportunities were not 
 great, and her endeavors in this direction received very little 
 encouragement from her austere parent. He tolerated it as a 
 necessary adjunct to a girl's education and accomplishments. 
 But Charlotte loved music, and its influence over her was pow- 
 erful. It was a passion with her, and her soul, responsive to 
 melody, caught the refrain of every accent of softness or sweet- 
 ness, and its influence reached the world in the heart-music she 
 sang, which vibrates and reverberates wherever the Anglo-Sax- 
 on tongue is known ! 
 
 When the question of earning her bread came to be consid- 
 ered by her, and it came early, Charlotte realized that teaching 
 young children was her only available accomplishment, and she 
 sought and obtained a position as governess. She was but nine- 
 teen years old at the time, but a woman in fixedness of purpose 
 and appreciation of her worldly condition. Very bravely she 
 entered upon and endured the uncongenial task, and resolutely 
 attempted a second siege of it, after having been well-nigh 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 15 
 
 prostrated by the first. But it was work which was simply re- 
 pugnant to every feeling and emotion of her life, and she gave 
 it up in despair. Not to live in idleness, however, or to throw 
 upon others the burden of her support. To screen and protect 
 her sisters, she went forth to earn money, and she ceased her 
 efforts only when illness brought on by wretchedness compelled 
 her to return home. 
 
 There is something fascinating in the pictures given of Ha- 
 worth parsonage at this time and previous to it. Haworth is 
 now connected with the outer world by manufacturing interests 
 and by a railroad which has a station there, and the villagers 
 have mixed of late years more with society beyond Yorkshire, 
 yet it is a sombre place, and its people retain now the dialect 
 which Charlotte depicted so successfully in " Shirley." The 
 straggling village has but one street, and the old gray stone 
 parsonage stands quite at the top of the hill, facing down it, and 
 surrounded on all sides but one by the village graveyard. The 
 view from the side where there are no graves is the bleakest 
 one of all. It looks out upon moors which are as barren as a 
 prairie in winter, and colorless as a desert save when the heather 
 is in bloom. 
 
 To an American accustomed to great variety of scenery the 
 desolate monotony of those North of England moors is well- 
 nigh insupportable. There is nothing for the eye to feed upon 
 in those great tracts of dun-colored wastes, and in their unvary- 
 ing silence and sameness they are most depressing to one unac- 
 customed to them. 
 
 Something of the feeling that Washington Irving had when 
 visiting the Border Country affects the American when viewing 
 Haworth. He, fresh from the superb and matchless views of 
 the Hudson River, tried hard to admire the Doon, but he 
 
16 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 could see nothing on its " banks and braes" to call forth en- 
 thusiasm. Even with Walter Scott as a guide, he whose en- 
 chantment lingers over all the land he loved so well, Irving 
 could find nothing grand in the way of scenery, and turned 
 from the Eildon Hills with a disappointment all the more 
 keen because of his wish to be charmed. He could not forget 
 the Catskiils, and the knowledge he had of finer scenes at 
 home left it not possible for him to be aught than he was — 
 silent. But what the Alps are to the Swiss, the sea to the 
 Hollanders, are the moors to the North Country people. As- 
 sociation clothes them with beauty perennial. Their change- 
 less monotony grated not at all harshly on the girls of a home 
 that was even more cheerless, and they spent some of their 
 happiest hours upon them. A walk in the dull and waning 
 light of a winter's afternoon enabled those motherless children 
 to return to their writing or their planning at evening time with 
 new zeal, and while the wind sang its requiem without, or 
 the storm pelted the doors and windows of the kitchen in which 
 they sat, they thought and wrote the compositions that were 
 weird and extraordinary, and in the case of each were charac- 
 teristic of their later work. If the storm was severe they cow- 
 ered together, not in fear but from acute nervous pain. Their 
 sensitive bodies were powerfully affected by the lightning flash 
 or the roll of thunder, and they tremblingly talked, if they 
 talked at all, at such a time. Their misery was born of their 
 weak nerves and too vivid imaginations. For they were all 
 rich in imagination, that priceless gift which enables one to 
 drink the wine of human existence without the lees, and inhale 
 the perpetual breath of summer even after the snows of winter 
 have clogged the dull course of life. 
 
 To know Charlotte Bronte, one must know her father. She 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 17 
 
 was the most like him in mental qualities of any of the chil- 
 dren, and yet Charlotte was not the most gifted of them. Emily 
 Bronte, the Ellis Bell of English fiction, if she had reached her 
 meridian of growth would have been phenomenal — at least she 
 was so in promise. Her father seems never to have understood 
 her, but it must be said in his extenuation that she was a hard 
 nature to comprehend, and only Charlotte of all the household 
 knew her great intellectual breadth and power. 
 
 The original family name was Prunty, and it was exchanged 
 to Bronte to gratify an uncle who paid Mr. Bronte's way 
 through Cambridge and started him in life. His selfishness 
 was cultivated as an amiable eccentricity at first, and it became 
 second nature by constant indulgence and lack of opposition. 
 His gentle daughters, as their mother before them, never 
 thought of opposing him, and he himself did not know how 
 selfish he was, nor realize until they were all dead how cheer- 
 less had been the childhood he had given them. Charlotte, 
 who knew him so well, and his kind so slightly, imagined 
 through her early life that all men were as deeply imbued with 
 this attribute as he. She could never wholly divest herself of 
 the idea that selfishness was peculiarly a masculine quality. 
 Few Americans can understand or thoroughly realize the lonely 
 English parsonage of which there are happily not many so 
 lonely as that of Ilaworth. There is no such free and cordial 
 relationship between the pastor and his rustic flock as writers 
 in this country picture and as really exists. 
 
 The causes of this are not far to seek. The English clergy- 
 man, however poor his benefice may be, has the twofold 
 reason for indifference and self-isolation, that being the officer 
 of a department of the State, his people did not give him a 
 call and cannot give him a dismissal. He is there for life, as 
 
18 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 long as he does not break the law, unless he be promoted to a 
 better living. Mr. Bronte seems to have had no ambition. 
 Such men are not so rare as one might think. Once settled in 
 their narrow sphere, however uncomfortable they may feel at 
 first, they learn to endure and then to love it. Like the old 
 debtor in the Marshalsea whom no persuasion could induce to 
 accept liberation, it is doubtful if Mr. Bronte would have ac- 
 cepted higher preferment in the Church if it had been offered 
 him. Everything in his character and life indicates that he 
 was one of the immovables so far as his own and his children's 
 interests were concerned. At St. John's College, Cambridge, 
 after taking his Bachelor's degree, he never proceeded farther, 
 although the poorest curate in England is always anxious to 
 take his Master of Arts degree. He had mind, but no ambition 
 to direct and utilize it. He wasted his life as he did the gun- 
 powder that fired his pistol. His career was useless practice 
 with an empty gun. To use Archbishop Whately's words of 
 English preaching, " He aimed at nothing and he hit it. ,, 
 The effect of this may be traced in the neglected genius of his 
 daughters, and still more painfully in the chaotic and purpose- 
 less career of his sen. 
 
 Branwell Bronte, this only son of the house, was a lad of 
 great promise. He was the handsomest of all the family, and 
 was his father's idol. He was the liveliest and wittiest of 
 them all, but his training had not been of the kind to make 
 him strong to meet the world. He started out in life a bril- 
 liant young fellow, but he quickly fell into the snares about 
 him, and came home from his first venture as a teacher in a 
 private family, contaminated and already entered upon his 
 downward course. Mr. Henry J. Raymond, who visited 
 Haworth after Charlotte's death, found that Bran well's mem- 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 19 
 
 ory was most lovingly cherished in the village by the people 
 who had known him as a boy, and who delighted in his clever- 
 ness and admired his beauty. He had mingled most with 
 them, and they recalled his memory with more pride than any 
 of the others of the family. He took to drink, and the sisters 
 were glad to have the society of an aunt who at this time came 
 to live with them. This aunt, their mother's sister, never left 
 the parsonage again, and to her steadfast kindness they owed 
 much gratitude. She was a matter-of-fact person, of elderly 
 years, and not, in its best sense, a companion to her gifted nieces. 
 The sisters were not allowed to associate with their little 
 neighbors, and their acquaintance was a limited one even in that 
 small hill- side hamlet. The one friend upon whom they placed 
 reliance and loved without limit of affection was Tabby, the 
 faithful servant who had nursed their mother through illness and 
 been with her at her death. She pitied the little flock left to 
 her tender mercies, and if she failed to understand them, she 
 jealously watched over and protected them. The sisters helped 
 her in all domestic duties, and patiently and obediently heeded 
 their father's commands. But at the night-time, after their 
 elders had retired, they would then possess themselves of the 
 kitchen, bring out their paper and pens and write ; or, if the 
 spirit for composition was absent, they would slowly pace the 
 room together, talking over their cares and trials, and plan and 
 consult about their future. All had ambitions to become some- 
 thing above their present condition, and to make of life some- 
 thing more than existence. This time was the most congenial 
 of all they spent, not even excepting their afternoon walks on 
 the moors, often prolonged until dark, their only protector 
 being Emily's great dog, and as the years passed it became 
 sacred to one of them — the last surviving sister. It was then 
 
20 CHAKLOTTE BRONTE, 
 
 i 
 
 that they discussed the plots of their novels, read each other 
 
 the chapters when written, and comforted one another with what 
 
 little hope they could command. When "both Emily and Anne 
 
 were dead, Charlotte continued the habit of walking alone, 
 
 sadly resuming her work or weeping in her misery. 
 
 Charlotte, and indeed the others, had written much that was 
 tolerably successful even in their own opinion, and for advice 
 and counsel Charlotte wrote to Southey. He replied gra- 
 ciously, and was evidently interested in the young girl, for he 
 invited her to visit him at the " Lakes." But there was no 
 money in that home to devote to visiting, and Charlotte and 
 Emily had both concluded by this time that their writings 
 would not bring it to them. 
 
 Charlotte proposed to Emily the idea of enlarging the par- 
 sonage and opening a school there, and Emily, who had tried 
 to be a governess with even less success than Charlotte, gladly 
 assented to this plan that would enable them to live at home 
 and together. The obstacle they had to contend against was 
 their lack of accomplishments, and they resolved to conquer 
 this drawback. To do it successfully, they went to Brussels to 
 study for six months. Charlotte was twenty-six years old then 
 -—a time of life when most women feel that their youth is be- 
 hind them, and when the generality of people consider that 
 their days of study are over. 
 
 At the expiration of the six months the two sisters were of- 
 fered positions in the school in which they were, and there they 
 would have remained but for the shadow that fell upon the 
 home circle in the death of their aunt, the faithful relative who 
 had furnished the girls with means to study abroad. They 
 returned to Haworth to find the idolized brother a being upon 
 whom they could only look with grief and shame. The sight 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 21 
 
 of this brother's dissipation distressed these sisters grievously, 
 and the youngest sister, Anne, who had borne the brunt of it 
 so far, asked a respite from the pain, and she went out for a 
 time to fill a governess' place, leaving Emily at home, while 
 Charlotte turned her face again toward Brussels. 
 
 This step in her life was a mistake, as the pages of " Villette" 
 show. It has left her fame and honor as a woman as bright as 
 sunshine, but it was here that Charlotte Bronte ceased to be a 
 girl, and came, through a baptism of pain, to her true status as 
 a woman. When she left Brussels to go home her heart was 
 behind her, and in a moment of weakness and contrary to her 
 best judgment she went back there. It was an unreasonable 
 impulse, and for her selfish folly she suffered, as she herself has 
 said, a withdrawal, for more than two years, of happiness and 
 peace of mind. Her heart had been captured by an acquaint- 
 ance in Brussels, and Paul Emanuel, the hero of " Villette," 
 was the portraiture of the man she loved. Indeed, in all her 
 writings Charlotte Bronte was more of a domestic historian 
 than a creator of incidents. Her works are mainly delinea- 
 tions of actual experiences ; she was not an inventor of fiction. 
 Her fancy filled in the background of her pictures, but her own 
 knowledge of people and things supplied the material. The 
 incidents narrated in this novel were a literal transcription of 
 actual facts. From its pages may be gleaned some of the pain 
 she suffered while a teacher in Brussels, but not all. She was 
 the one English girl in a house full of French-speaking people. 
 She was poor, and could not, if she desired, find pleasure or 
 companionship outside of the school. The man she loved was 
 an inmate of that school, and taught her French in return for 
 lessons in English. She hated herself for the weakness of 
 staying there, yet could not bear to go. 
 
2'Z CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 The mental pain she suffered after her return had well nigh 
 driven her insane. She was spending the long vacation alone 
 in the deserted school, with only a servant to keep her com- 
 pany, and the strain upon her nervous system made her very 
 ill. One day, a close, sultry day in June, she rose from her 
 bed of fever, and arraying herself went forth in the wet streets 
 for a walk. She was in despair — her bright imagination, her 
 strong will, both had failed her — and her grief was all the more 
 keen because it was of her own making. As she rushed along, 
 not caring whither she went, the bells of a church arrested her 
 footsteps. She wandered in and knelt down with others on 
 the stone pavement. It was an old, solemn church, its pervad- 
 ing gloom not gilded but purpled by light shed through stained 
 glass. When the others had gone to the confessional and 
 returned consoled, she mechanically rose and went forward. 
 The English girl had never before been in the confessional, and 
 was ignorant of its formulae. She saw before her an elderly 
 man, whose benign face was quickly turned toward her when 
 she said, half in apology and half in fright, " My father, I am 
 Protestant." But she received such kindly counsel, after she 
 had explained her lonely position and her great mental and 
 physical sufferings, that she never forgot it. He was kind to 
 her when she needed kindness, and though she never returned 
 as he invited her to, she pays him tribute in her book. 
 
 None of her family ever knew from her what she had 
 suffered in her unfortunate attachment for the relative of her 
 employer — a cruel, despotic woman who is described accurately 
 in " Villette" — but they realized a depth and strength of char- 
 acter not before observable. She was a sad woman now, chas- 
 tened by a sorrow she never told, but was ready to put the past 
 behind her — a past in which there was no memory of wrong- 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 23 
 
 doing, no ghost, save that of pain, to haunt the future. Peo- 
 ple are so willing to believe that strong natures arrive at per- 
 fection without having known pain, and are acquainted with 
 human nature through their intuitions only and not their 
 experiences, that it shocks them sometimes to learn their mis- 
 take. Charlotte Bronte learned herself, not by the develop- 
 ment of her intellect, but through a great tempest of love that 
 swept over her life — a tempest which she was enabled by her 
 native purity, strong character, and excellent discipline to mas- 
 ter. She bridged this bitter experience by active work per- 
 formed with merciless disregard for her bodily and mental con- 
 dition, and won her peace at last. 
 
 Had she not known the experience, we should not have had 
 such books as she wrote, for no woman without actual self- 
 knowledge could ever have pictured such a character as Roches- 
 ter, or been able to write such a book as " Jane Eyre." The 
 public believed the daughter of the village minister to be a 
 genius whose imagination and ability supplied the materials for 
 her work. But as we have seen, her knowledge of the world 
 and of herself was not as limited as was generally believed. 
 Before she wrote her famous books she had realized her own 
 nature and governed it ; had wrestled with the great emotion 
 of love ; tested her strength in its fiery school, and had found 
 it sufficient for her needs. Henceforth, she was ready to 
 guide the weak and teach many lessons to her kind. 
 
 When Charlotte reached home from Brussels, she showed 
 Emily and Anne some of the poetry she had been writing of 
 late, and was greatly surprised to learn that they too had tried 
 their talents in that direction. They consulted together and 
 determined to publish their compositions. Charlotte wrote to 
 a London publisher, and an agreement was made by which the 
 
24 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 book was issued at their expense. It was called " Poems of 
 Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell," and, it is needless to add, it 
 had no success. Emily's poems are the best, some of them 
 possessing a lyrical beauty and a depth of meaning more 
 clearly defined later in " Wuthering Heights," her only novel. 
 Charlotte's poems show that she had not the true poet's faculty 
 of harmonizing thought and metre. She wrote with earnestness 
 and feeling, but with evident constraint, her wild, imaginative 
 faculty responding awkwardly to the limitations of verse. 
 
 The year 1846 was one of peculiar domestic hardships and 
 unusual mental activity to Charlotte Bronte. She had a 
 troubled heart to cure, and an increased necessity for work that 
 would pay her. Her brother had by this time become a help- 
 less burden, making life a continued torture to those at home, 
 and, to crown all her trials, the father was threatened with 
 blindness. With this crushing misfortune upon them the 
 younger sisters well nigh gave up, but Charlotte, reasonable 
 woman that she was, met the calamity with resolute energy 
 and proposed a visit to a noted oculist. 
 
 It was in this year of 1846 that she accompanied the almost 
 sightless father to Manchester to have an operation performed 
 upon his eyes, and while in a strange city and under such dis- 
 cordant circumstances she made another attempt at book-mak- 
 ing. Previous to this time she had written " The Professor," 
 a story which no publisher would accept, and which had been 
 returned to her, while both her sisters' efforts at story-writing 
 had been rewarded with success. With the soiled manuscript 
 of this first attempt now before her, with the thought of the 
 dissipated brother whose dark shadow rested over it, in the 
 presence of her fault-finding father, and dwelling constantly 
 upon her absent sisters whom she loved so truly, she began 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 25 
 
 "Jane Eyre.'* It was at such a time that her great talent, 
 which she could never wholly ignore and which she had sup- 
 pressed at duty's demand repeatedly, burst forth, asserted its 
 sway and made her more contented and happy, for her imagi- 
 native faculty was, under all circumstances, a source of 
 comfort. 
 
 Now, as in all times of trial, she must work or die, and her 
 friendly pen was her solace, her salvation, her one consolation 
 through all the vicissitudes of life. Very little more than this 
 is known of the conception and composition of her greatest 
 work ; but it is enough to stamp her heroic spirit with immor- 
 tality, and send her familiar name echoing down the silent 
 corridors of time. 
 
 It was the necessity for mind occupation that impelled her 
 to write, not a desire for fame. She had already lain down 
 the bloom of her life and the best opportunities for self- 
 improvement under the Juggernaut of duty, thereby crushing 
 and impoverishing her own nature that she might fulfil her part 
 as a daughter and sister. Like all people who do great work, 
 she had no thirst for greatness. She wrought out her ideas in 
 order to satisfy the imprisoned angel that lived within her, and 
 to use that magnificent phosphoric element in her brain which 
 consumed her vital forces. She published her book under her 
 masculine nom de plume, il Currer Bell," and told no one but 
 her sisters of its existence. When it was published, and before 
 it had raised the storm of applause that followed its public 
 reception, she took a copy of it in one hand and an adverse 
 review of it in the other to her father, and quietly told him of 
 her task and the result. Then, for the first time, he realized 
 what the postman's call meant when some time before he had 
 stopped at the door with a letter for Currer Bell, and was met 
 
26 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 with the reply from himself that there was no such person in 
 the village. 
 
 Then came the abuse which the critics who could not appre- 
 ciate her book heaped upon it. She was assailed as the expo- 
 nent of views not compatible with womanly purity, and her 
 great soul was inexpressibly pained. She realized that she was 
 not quite understood, and so she kept steadily and. silently on 
 her course with the same unconscious energy that draws the 
 tide up and down the yellow sands, or causes the subtle mag- 
 netic currents to keep the needle forever journeying and striv- 
 ing toward the poles. 
 
 To her family she remained faithful as a slave ; to herself, 
 merciless and pitiless. In her obscure home she stayed un- 
 interruptedly and held herself constant to the maxims of her 
 life — which were expressed in her industry and great conscien- 
 tiousness. 
 
 After her name had become a household word, even here in 
 America, she withstood every temptation which extraordinary 
 literary success throws in the way of women, and only exhib- 
 ited herself to her London publishers on one occasion, some 
 time after the book had been published, to correct the widely 
 circulated charge that she had satirized Thackeray under the 
 character of Rochester, and had even obtruded on the sorrows 
 of his private life. 
 
 Nothing that came of the fame that " Jane Eyre" achieved 
 caused the commotion in that village parsonage that this scan- 
 dal did. She and Anne started for London the evening of the 
 same day they heard it, and next morning, after partaking of 
 breakfast at the depot, they went to the publisher's office. 
 Charlotte had some difficulty in seeing the gentleman she had 
 corresponded with, and when he reluctantly left his private 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 27 
 
 office to speak with her, he opened the conversation with an 
 impatient " Well, young woman, what do you want of 
 me?" 
 
 One can imagine the quiet confidence with which she replied 
 that she wished to see him privately ; that she wrote "Jane 
 Eyre." He was greatly amazed, and quickly led the way to his 
 office, where he plied her with questions, complimented her book, 
 and persuaded the sisters to become his mother's guests. This 
 they did, and Charlotte afterward spoke of the strong contrasts 
 of that day in London. In the morning utter strangers, that 
 night guests of people delighted to show them attentions, and 
 in the midst of a distinguished audience listening to Jenny 
 Lind sing. 
 
 Immediately the report that had done her such injustice was 
 corrected, and when she next visited London she was intro- 
 duced to Thackeray, and was invited by him to attend one of 
 his readings. He, proud of her presence, singled her out for 
 special attention, and it soon became known to the audience 
 that the author of " Jane Eyre" was in the hall. She blushed 
 and fidgeted under the notice she received, and went back to 
 her publisher's house writhing under the pangs. She was not 
 at all fitted for notoriety, and never did realize that she was a 
 brilliant and successful author. She wrote for pure love of 
 writing, and planned her work on the best model she knew. 
 Few women, comparatively speaking, were engaged in the 
 pursuit then, and book-making for money was not common. 
 Charlotte Bronte was fortunate in some respects, in one par- 
 ticularly — she died before trashy novels became the fashion. 
 
 The quiet home-life at the parsonage was continued after the 
 publication of " Jane Eyre," and Charlotte and her sisters had 
 their hands full in watching over their ruined brother, and 
 
28 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 cheering as best they could their disappointed and unhappy 
 father. 
 
 There never was a character more susceptible to and more 
 influenced by personal environment than that of Charlotte 
 Bronte. If her lot had fallen in a fair ground and pleasant 
 places, with genial company of other children, and the guiding 
 influence of those great minds that learned too late to love her, 
 she would have shown, to her own and the world's advantage, 
 less of the wild flower grown in the wilderness than she did. 
 She could not then have deemed Rochester's imperiousness 
 heroic or even manly ; she would have seen humanity in its 
 truest phases less in the lightning and the storm, and more in 
 the still small voice that sings in every true heart. The 
 wonder is that the heart of Jane Eyre is so unscarred by hard- 
 ship and neglect, by misunderstanding and the fatality of 
 suffering from no self-inflicted wound as it is. As she teaches 
 her pupil, her own childhood seems to be renewed by the gra- 
 cious and invisible touch of a divine Healer's hand. A smile 
 of happier thought breaks over the patient brow ; the iron that 
 has entered into her soul no longer pains her ; years of heart- 
 ache and distress vanish like the early mist ; she becomes as 
 the lily no longer persecuted by the thorns, and feels once 
 
 more 
 
 " A young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks." 
 
 Such is the resuscitative vital power of noble natures only. 
 
 But was Rochester worthy of a nature like this ? Who does 
 not grudge as well as envy him his " little Jane" ? In our 
 time — for the world's ideal of men and women has moved 
 apace since then — a man who could browbeat a defenceless 
 woman, and still more his own dependent, as he did, would be 
 called a brute instead of a hero. His own sufferings were no 
 
CHARLOTTE BBONTE. 29 
 
 excuse, for she had not caused them. Indeed, there is a touch 
 of mock disease and egotism in his craving for Jane's sympathy 
 and playing upon it with his rough, coarse hands, because he 
 knew the tender music that was stored beneath that quiet 
 manner. 
 
 The relation of the sexes to each other before marriage (which 
 has, in the language of orthodoxy, made of the man and the 
 woman " no more twain but one flesh") is the most complex of 
 social problems. We think that Charlotte Bronte managed Jane 
 Eyre and Rochester far better than George Eliot manages 
 Dorothea and Ladislaw. But when people talk about moral as 
 apart from legal dissolution of marriage, of a wife or husband 
 being morally though not technically free from the marriage 
 bond, they talk nonsense, because domestic union with another 
 is not a necessity, and it is a selfish love and ignoble passion 
 and not a true affection which would ask a woman to forfeit 
 her social status in the world. 
 
 "JaUe Eyre" was nearly all transcribed on paper in that 
 kitchen, and at night. It was a surprise to her that what had 
 been written under such quiet influences should have created so 
 much comment. Dickens, then in the zenith of his great pop- 
 ularity, Thackeray, and Miss Martineau were among the many 
 writers who quickly recognized the genius of the unknown 
 author, and George Eliot, then a maiden of four and twenty, 
 and already entertaining radical views on many subjects, ex- 
 pressed admiration for the book, but took issue with the writer 
 respecting Rochester's right to contract a fresh marriage situated 
 as he was. She considered that he was justified in so doing, 
 while the Quarterly Review denounced the morals of the work, 
 and decided that its author was an improper woman who " for 
 some sufficient reason had forfeited the society of her sex." 
 
30 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 It is not a little remarkable that this first work was the most 
 popular of all she produced, and singular also that in it she 
 does not touch upon the experiences of her own life, which are 
 the characteristic features of " The Professor" and " Villette," 
 and are touched upon in " Shirley." 
 
 This second one of her novels was commenced and brought 
 out in the midst of fearful domestic anguish. Branwell's career 
 was drawing to a close, and the circumstances of his death 
 greatly distressed his sensitive and long- suffering sisters. His 
 final taking off was without much warning, but when he real- 
 ized that the end was approaching he resolved to die as no one 
 else had, and, rising to his feet and steadying himself against 
 the wall, he expired standing. In this act he exhibited the 
 eccentricity of the family, and a strength of will sadly want- 
 ing in his life. 
 
 The despair of the father was drowned in drink, and for 
 months he was a care and anxiety to those about him. The 
 girls faced this sorrow as they had all others, and Charlotte, 
 the strongest of all, by reason of her past experience, rose to 
 the demands of each new situation with an outward calm born 
 of the fierce lessons she had learned. Neither Charlotte nor 
 Emily suffered over Branwell's fate as did Anne. She could 
 not rally from the effect his sinful course had made upon her. 
 The eldest sister was deeply grieved over the blighted life of 
 the only son and brother of the family, but she could not view 
 his evil ways without condemnation, and she had no patience 
 with the weakness he exhibited. 
 
 In " The Professor," written some time before Branwell's 
 death, she depicts his character in these words, used in de- 
 scribing one of its personages : 
 
 " Limited as has yet been my experience of life, I had onco 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 31 
 
 had the opportunity of contemplating near at hand an example 
 of the results produced by a course of domestic treachery. No 
 golden halo of fiction was about this example. I saw it bare 
 and real, and it was very loathsome. I saw a mind degraded 
 by the practice of mean subterfuge, by the habit of perfidious 
 deception, and a body depraved by the infectious influence of 
 the vice-polluted soul. I had suffered much from the forced 
 and prolonged view of this spectacle ; those sufferings I do not 
 now regret, for their simple recollection acted as a most whole- 
 some antidote to temptation. They had inscribed on my 
 reason the conviction that unlawful pleasure, trenching on 
 another's rights, is delusive and envenomed pleasure — its 
 hollowuess disappoints at the time, its poison cruelly tortures 
 afterward, its effects deprave forever." 
 
 Writing to one of her friends after his death, she says : 
 " Many, under the circumstances, would think our loss 
 rather a relief than otherwise ; in truth, we must acknowledge, 
 in all humility and gratitude, that God has greatly tempered 
 judgment with mercy ; but yet, as you doubtless know from 
 experience, the last earthly separation cannot take place be- 
 tween near relatives without the keenest pangs on the part of 
 the survivors. Every wrong and sin is forgotten then ; pity and 
 grief share the heart and memory between them. Yet we are 
 not without comfort in our affliction. A most propitious change 
 marked the few last days of poor Branwell's life ; his de- 
 meanor, his language, his sentiments, were all singularly altered 
 and softened, and this change could not be owing to the fear 
 of death, for within half an hour of his decease he seemed un- 
 conscious of danger." 
 
 Those who had sat in judgment upon her recent work and 
 deemed it immoral in tone should have seen her at this time. 
 
32 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 Her sister, the strong-hearted and greatly endowed Emily, 
 went into a rapid decline, and died in less than two months 
 after her brother's death. The youngest sister, prostrated by 
 this blow and already sickening from over-anxiety and grief, 
 became an invalid, and Charlotte buried her six months later. 
 Three deaths in the household in less than a year ! all Char- 
 lotte's loves gone ; only her father, who was no stay or com- 
 fort to her, left. 
 
 Anne, the youngest sister, had died away from home. 
 Charlotte and a friend had accompanied her to the seaside, and 
 while there she sank rapidly, as the others had, of consump- 
 tion. It was against Charlotte's better judgment to take her 
 from home, for she realized that the gentle life was well nigh 
 spent when they started, but Anne was hopeful, and the father 
 was eager for anything that promised benefit to his child. 
 When the end came, Charlotte could do no more than turn her 
 face, alone, toward Haworth. Her father met her at the gate 
 on her return and tried hard to be cheerful, as he welcomed 
 his only child back to share his loneliness ; but the desolation 
 was all-pervading, and the anguish of the two as they passed 
 together into the old house was uncontrollable. 
 
 When Charlotte Bronte was thirty-five years old she began 
 to write her last work, " Villette. " It was her best beloved 
 brain-child, far dearer to her than her powerful " Shirley," or 
 her more popular "Jane Eyre." Every sentence of "Vil- 
 lette" was written, literally, through her tears. The task was 
 a cruel if a passionately absorbing one. She was picturing the 
 darkest chapter of her own life, and suffering the loneliness of 
 death in a house where the visits of the great destroyer had 
 been so persistent. Only her active interest m the welfare of 
 those about her, the lonely father and aged servant, kept her 
 
CHARLOTTE BROXTE. 33 
 
 mind healthful or her heart at peace. In a letter to a friend 
 she says : 
 
 " It is useless to tell you how I live. I endure life, but 
 whether I enjoy it or not is another question. However, I get 
 on. The weather, I think, has not been very good lately, or 
 else the beneficial effect;: of change of air and scene are evapo- 
 rating. In spite of regular exercise, the old headaches and 
 starting, wakeful nights are coming upon me again. But I do 
 get on, and have neither wish nor right to complain.'' 
 
 In " Villette" she gave vent to feelings that time had 
 softened and which the sorrows she had passed through made 
 insignificant compared to what they had been. "Madame 
 Beck," however, she seems never to have forgiven, for she 
 outlines her portrait in " The Professor," and touches upon it 
 in " Shirley," where she quite irrelevantly introduces the 
 following reference to her : 
 
 " I remember once seeing a pair of blue eyes, that were 
 usually thought sleepy, secretly on the alert, and I knew by their 
 expression — an expression which chilled my blood, it was in that 
 quarter so wondrously unexpected — that for years they had been 
 accustomed to silent soul-reading. The world called the owner 
 of those blue eyes ' bonne petite femme ' (she was not an English- 
 woman). I learned her nature afterward — got it off by heart — 
 studied it in its farthest, most hidden recesses — she was the 
 finest, deepest, subtlest schemer in Europe." 
 
 " Lucy Snowe" was not a match for this " subtlest schemer," 
 and her soul loathed the unprincipled methods of the Belgian 
 who had it in her power to hurt her so deeply. The passion 
 of love was never more finely depicted than in her novels, 
 and the best of her men are lovers. " Villette" was written 
 after the master passion of her life had begun to die and she 
 
34 CHARLOTTE URONTE. 
 
 was able to examine its corpse with the dissecting-knife of the 
 physician. Therefore she makes Lucy Snovve cool, reserved, 
 courageous, and strong. What Jane Eyre had been Lucy 
 Snowe had then become, and her finest writing is to be 
 found in this her ablest work. Her descriptions of nature 
 are stirring and thrilling. Mr. Swinburne, however, quotes one 
 phrase from " Shirley," which he pronounces exalted and 
 perfect poetry, and her finest effort in this direction. It is 
 this : " The moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale ; as glad 
 as if she gave herself to its fierce caress with love." This, 
 he adds, " is painting wind like David Cox, and light like 
 Turner. To find anything like it in verse we must go to the 
 highest springs of all ; to Pindar or to Shelley or to Hugo." 
 
 Throughout all its pages she does as good descriptive writing 
 as this, which seems to have delighted the soul of this poet ; 
 and in character painting she has established her claim to genius 
 in the wonderful man — Paul Emanuel. What writer of less 
 power could have made this eccentric little professor, with his 
 faults and infirmities, his sudden gusts of temper and childish 
 weaknesses, so altogether lovable ? 
 
 But the world preferred Rochester to Paul, just as it largely 
 prefers Jane Eyre to Lucy Snowe. The coarse, imperious 
 ways of Rochester pleased the English reading public of her I 
 day, and led even Miss Martineau to say of the creator of the 
 character, " that in her vocation she had, in addition to the 
 deep intuitions of a gifted woman, the strength of a man, the 
 patience of a hero, and the conscientiousness of a saint." 
 
 As a piece of literary work " Jane Eyre" lacked, as the 
 critics have told us, in artistic merit, and yet it was and is a 
 passionately absorbing novel. In the power to make her read- 
 ers feel as she herself must have felt in writing it, she is to-day 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 35 
 
 one of the few great writers of fiction. So great was the fervor 
 and force of her spiritual insight that she swayed her readers 
 as the fierce wind does the tall pines and the low shrubs alike, 
 and she reached to the core of the human heart because she 
 wrote from the innermost convictions of her earnest soul. 
 
 Poor little Charlotte Bronte, knowing neither the mother- 
 love nor the child-love, and having been compelled to stifle the 
 one absorbing affection of her life, gave to her heroine the un- 
 attractiveness she believed she must possess. Even the portrait 
 of " Emma," the fragment left unfinished when she went to 
 her room one day " to lie down awhile," and never left it again, 
 is the same plain, austere, and pathetic picture of childhood. 
 Had she lived to have finished it under the newly awakened 
 mother feelings in her own heart, we would have had a brighter 
 fulfilment of life's promises, perhaps, and known her heroine 
 in the central position she never reached with them. The 
 womanhood of all her heroines, Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Lucy 
 Snowe, we admire, but we can hardly contemplate them as 
 mothers. She had not painted in all her character painting a 
 proud and fond mother, happy in her home and in her chil- 
 dren. 
 
 As has been said, Charlotte's novels were mainly delineations 
 of actual experiences. The rich imaginative endowment she 
 possessed enabled her to clothe the commonest incidents of life 
 with interest and beauty. Her life would have been intoler- 
 able in its monotony to a woman of less imaginative brilliancy. 
 To her readers who do not realize this fact it is a mystery how 
 she dwelt amid scenes so at variance outwardly with all she has 
 written. That quality of her mind enabled her to live two 
 lives, be two individuals. Those who have been in the old 
 stone-floored parsonage kitchen where she did the greater part 
 
36 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 of her literary work, and have been oppressed with the deso- 
 lateness of the view that lies without, have not stopped to think 
 with what eyes she looked upon it, or how much the silence 
 and peace tbat characterized it helped her in her absorbing 
 tasks. 
 
 Emily Bronte had exercised an influence over the heart of 
 her sister that no other of her family seemed to possess. 
 Charlotte had rightly appreciated her individuality and great 
 talents. She knew how heroic Emily was, and she pictured 
 her faithfully in "Shirley." She had seen Emily do such 
 things as only large and strong natures are capable of perform- 
 ing. Had known her to take a hot iron and burn her arm 
 where a dog had buried his teeth when mad, and withhold the 
 fact from the household until the danger was well nigh over. 
 Emily was less disciplined than Charlotte, and was less inclined 
 to conform her way of life to that of others. She lived a sep- 
 arate existence apart from all her kind, and wrote a book which 
 to-day is one of the curiosities of English fiction. It stands 
 alone, not so much for its lifelike portraitures of men and 
 women, as for the revelations it gives of the great genius of a 
 young girl who had known nothing of the world. It seemed a 
 cruel fate that took her out of life before she had tested her 
 own powers or given to literature a fitting successor to 
 " Wuthering Heights." 
 
 Charlotte Bronte was a pioneer in the woman movement so 
 far as it related to literature, and was a blue-stocking when a 
 blue-stocking in England was looked upon very much as a 
 woman suffragist was here years ago. The majority of her sex 
 when they learned her identity charged her with having un- 
 sexed herself, and condemned as impure a morality that was a 
 quality apart from expediency and subterfuge. It may have 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 37 
 
 been justice, as justice was conceived for woman in that day, 
 but when we think of all the opposition and abuse heaped upon 
 Charlotte Bronte's " Jane Eyre," the matchless love-story of 
 the age, and know how little she realized out of all that was 
 made by it, a spirit of indignation is stirred. And, think of 
 it, that woman whose earnest efforts to earn money which was 
 sorely needed in her home ; who had to recognize and tacitly 
 apologize, in her assumption of a masculine title, to the narrow- 
 ness of public opinion, was continually assailed for what she 
 had elevated English fiction in performing. 
 
 And, further, this woman who toiled in poverty, who studied 
 her books as she kneaded bread, and who achieved celebrity as 
 a writer with the first story she published, could not demand a 
 penny from America for all the happiness and entertainment 
 she gave and is still giving us ; was not paid a stipend of all 
 we owe her. The lack of an international copyright law de- 
 prived her of much of her dues while she lived, and her friends 
 after she died. Now each time that a book of hers is sold in 
 America, we are just as guilty of taking that which does not 
 belong to us as was Rob Roy McGregor, who found it more 
 convenient to supply himself with beef by stealing it alive from 
 the adjacent glens than by buying it killed in the butcher's 
 market. 
 
 To Charlotte Bronte women owe a debt of gratitude that 
 cannot be paid in admiration of her achievements ; it must be 
 expressed in steady endeavor to establish the principles she so 
 admirably, because so womanly and gently, advocated in her 
 books. She chose the field of fiction in which to work, and 
 through it she taught her sister- women the way to convert 
 mental poverty into riches, obstacles into opportunities, and 
 their duty to demand for themselves the divine rights of 
 
38 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 womanhood. She was one of the first writers of her day to 
 realize what Matthew Arnold speaks of as the want of corre- 
 spondenee between the forms of modern England and its spirit. 
 She saw this want of correspondence conspicuously displayed 
 in the real and the pretended recognition of her sex in all 
 fields. The popular idea that there is sex in mind she worked 
 valiantly to correct, and she longed to hail that season when 
 bright minds should be classed no longer as men. and women, 
 but be seen only in the neutral light of authorship. 
 
 Miss Martineau found something inexpressibly affecting in 
 the aspect of the frail little creature, who had done such won- 
 derful things, and who was able to bear up with so bright an 
 eye and so composed a countenance, under not only such a 
 weight of sorrow, but such a prospect of solitude. And we 
 have a melancholy pleasure in contemplating her energy and 
 her will-power, and love to meditate upon the singular life of 
 this little Yorkshire girl whose vicissitudes only nerved her to 
 greater effort. And yet it is always with a feeling of rebellion 
 that we note the never-ending sacrifices wherein she gave up 
 health and achievement, and realize what she could have been 
 with greater culture and length of days ; might have been if 
 taken out from her constant teachings and toilings and given a 
 measure of the happiness she could have enjoyed. 
 
 One of the least known incidents in the life of Charlotte 
 Bronte is that of her marriage. Among the few of her 
 father's acquaintances whom she knew well was Mr. Nicholls, 
 his curate, who had been living in Haworth for some years 
 when he asked her to be his wife. For herself, Charlotte pre- 
 ferred her spinster state, but she realized that her father's 
 active life was drawing to its close, and believed that this kindly 
 gentleman would be a stay and a prop to him as he grew old and 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 30 
 
 infirm. With these feelings, and perhaps with no emotion 
 stronger than friendly interest, she told her father of the honor 
 that had been paid her and asked his advice. To her astonish- 
 ment he grew violently angry ; denounced his assistant as pre- 
 sumptuous, and was so unreasonable that Charlotte made haste 
 to assure him of her willingness to decline the offer. " The 
 veins on his forehead stood out like whip-cords," Charlotte 
 tells a friend in a letter, and " his eyes glared with rage." 
 She really feared for his reason, and quickly and sorrowfully 
 acquainted Mr. Nicholls with her father's decision. 
 
 There is something quaint and pathetic in the filial obedience 
 of this great woman, who, at a time of life when most women 
 have forgotten their child-reverence for parents, is yielding the 
 privileges she has earned and the rights that belong to her age 
 and position to her irritable, unreasonable parent. Mr. Nich- 
 olls departed from Haworth, and Charlotte and her father lived 
 on alone in the silent old house. The death of Emily's faith- 
 ful old dog is recorded by Charlotte as one of the few inci- 
 dents that occurred of note during this lonely time. She 
 wrote and kept house and watched over her father, and had 
 fully made up her mind that things were not to be different 
 while she lived, when one day, quite unexpectedly to her, Mr. 
 Bronte proposed to recall Mr. Nicholls and asked his daughter 
 to write him. He insisted, and seemed in such haste that he 
 could not wait patiently until, in response to Charlotte's invita- 
 tion, Mr. Nicholls returned. He had noted the failing health 
 of his last child, and believing that she was grieving over his 
 obduracy in this matter, relented. His daughter sent for the 
 two friends she loved most ardently from her school days to 
 her death, her friend " Ellen"'* and Miss Wooller, her 
 * Miss Ellen Nussey. 
 
40 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 teacher, and very quietly one bright June morning in 1854 she 
 became Charlotte Nicholls. The new husband carried his wife 
 to visit his relatives in Ireland, and then they returned to the 
 lonely father to cheer his life with their presence. She entered 
 into her husband's interests and occupations as much as she 
 could, but she was clearly unfitted for an active, matter-of-fact 
 existence. He wanted her to be an assistant to him, and cared 
 nothing for her celebrity as an author. He rather opposed 
 allusion to it, seeming to feel that her authorship belonged to 
 her single life and had no part in her present existence. She 
 could not separate herself from her pen-work, and one night 
 when the two sat alone, listening to the winds sighing over the 
 moors, she thought it a fitting time to tell him that she was 
 writing another story. " If you were not with me I should be 
 writing now," she said, and then she went to her desk and 
 brought from it the freshly written manuscript. He heard her 
 read it, remarked upon its opening pages as recalling "Jane 
 Eyre," and listened to her plans regarding it. It was laid 
 away that night and never touched by her again. Her two old 
 friends were asked to come and see her, and one of them has- 
 tened to her side. She saw, what husband and father were 
 slow to believe, that she was dying. The new year came and 
 found her far on her last journey. She died very quietly early 
 one Saturday morning in March, 1855, in the eighth month 
 after her marriage and the ninth year of her authorship. 
 
 The anxious villagers heard the solemn notes of the passing 
 bell, and breathlessly counted the strokes as it rang out its dis- 
 sonance on the chilly air. Thirty-nine times it struck. " 'Tis 
 she," they said, and their hearts ached for the two left alone 
 in the empty old house. For six years after Charlotte's death 
 Mr. Bronte lived, ministered to and tended by her husband, 
 
CHARLOTTE BROXTE. 41 
 
 and then he died. Mr. Nicholls, alone now, returned to Ire- 
 land, and the parsonage passed into the hands of others. 
 
 All that is left of the Brontes in Haworth are the graves in 
 the now modernized church and their memory, kept green by the 
 thousands who have nocked there to learn all the particulars of 
 the life of the woman who had made her name a familiar one 
 to the reading world. Some years after the death of Mr. 
 Bronte Grace Greenwood visited Haworth, and gives this pic- 
 ture of the old church : 
 
 " The old church was only a few steps farther on. "We 
 went first to the little cottage of the sexton, opposite — oddly 
 enough, the only cheerful-looking house in the village, and not 
 finding that functionary at home, easily prevailed on his wife 
 to open the church for us. Never shall I forget my feelings on 
 entering ! First a chill from the sunless dampness of the build- 
 ing, then a sense of terrible oppression. I have been into many 
 old churches, but never one which seemed so frightfully close 
 and unwholesome. It was musty, and had about it a strange 
 odor of mortal decay, as though exhalations were coming up 
 through the very stones, from the charnel-house beneath. I 
 only wondered that the delicate Bronte sisters lived so long as 
 they did, having to sit through perhaps three long services 
 every Sunday in that dreadful place. The family are all buried 
 in the chancel, one above another — old Mr. Bronte, who died 
 in 1861, last. This, is seems, was according to his wish — for 
 the sexton's wife, who, by the way, was one of Charlotte 
 Bronte's Sabbath-school scholars, told us that the strange old 
 man had always expressed a desire to live to see them all bur- 
 ied. The stone which covers them is hidden by a wooden plat- 
 form, and over that a carpet ; but on the wall above is a plain 
 tablet, on which are inscribed the eight names — father, 
 
42 CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 
 
 mother, sisters, and brother. Here Charlotte Bronte was mar- 
 ried. I wonder that she could have borne to kneel during the 
 ceremony above her dead sisters. The old pew used by the 
 family has been removed — why I don't know. The church 
 also has been somewhat altered since Mr. Bronte's death, the 
 organ-loft has been changed, the tower heightened, and a clock 
 added, though the old sun-dial is still on the south side. In 
 the vestry, where we wrote our names, and could find no 
 record of other American pilgrims in the visitors' book, the 
 sexton's wife showed us the register of the marriage of Arthur 
 Bell Nicholls and Charlotte Bronte — her name written in a 
 rather trembling hand." 
 
 The destruction of this old church, which took place in 1881, 
 should have been prohibited by public sentiment. The vil- 
 lagers, both old and young, were in favor of its retention, and 
 the feeling among the dissenters of every denomination in the 
 place was opposed to its destruction. The Bronte sisters had 
 glorified it with their fame, and made it a shrine to which 
 strangers from all parts of the English-speaking world made 
 pilgrimages. The edifice was therefore sacred to the associa- 
 tions connected with the name of Bronte, and it should have 
 remained a monument to them as it was the burial-place of all 
 save one of the family. It was an old and venerable pile, 
 standing on the site of a chapel which had been erected in 
 1317, and containing within its walls a tablet to the memory 
 of one of its many rectors, " W. Grimshawe, A.B., minister, 
 1742." 
 
 The church was erected in 1755, and at the time of its 
 demolition had been altered but little, and was sufficient- 
 ly quaint and picturesque to have been retained as a relic. 
 A London paper, commenting upon its destruction, said : 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 43 
 
 "The Emperor Valens — we think it was Valens — imported 
 into England a considerable number of Vandals, according to 
 Gibbon, and the seed of them, as Lord Byron once remarked, 
 has not yet perished out of the land." 
 
 But Charlotte Bronte's fame and her glory belong to no land 
 or country, while her memory is cherished by the cultivated of 
 every clime. The remembrance of her life is an inspiration to 
 all who, like her, have pressed their bleeding feet upon the hard 
 rocks of life and left their impress upon them. 
 
 She met the ills of life with a determined and vigorous com- 
 posure, and a stern and trained self-reliance, and strove, like a 
 spiritual athlete, for the place and position awarded those who 
 overcome self-indulged indolence and sluggish dulness. She 
 saw the prize of her high calling, and recognizing only its dis- 
 tance, trod down petty cares and fancied wrongs, and grasped 
 at last the diadem. 
 
 The story is soon told. The poor have no lineage, and the 
 simple annals of her well-spent life comprise the nobility that 
 belongs to her name. 
 
 Nursed in solitude and under the dreary shadow of her 
 father's cheerless presence, she achieved — through many trials 
 and self-abnegations — success, and came at last by strange de- 
 velopments from humble obscurity to a noble fame. Those 
 who once enjoyed the priceless privilege of looking into her 
 pure, frank face could never doubt the faith that sustained her. 
 Her religion was as broad as her conception of life was earnest 
 and true. Her instincts taught her, and her genius led her to 
 heights which revealed the grandeur of her own endowments. 
 
 In studying this strange life we cannot help wondering at the 
 surprising courage exhibited in it, or of the gray shadows of 
 solitude that rested over it. Only those 
 
44 CHARLOTTE BROtfTE^ 
 
 " who have knowledge- 
 How dreary 'tis for women to sit still 
 On winter nights by solitary fires, 
 And hear the nations praising them far off," 
 
 could understand lier life or appreciate the perpetual loneliness 
 of her whose name had reached even the camp-fires on our 
 Western wilds, and been echoed over the snow-clad mountain 
 peaks of the distant Ural chain ! 
 
 Certitude was her passion, and she stood in the middle of 
 the nineteenth century, this century, which belongs to woman 
 as truly as the fifteenth did to the Renaissance, the sixteenth 
 the Reformation, or the eighteenth the Revolution — and was a 
 unique figure in it. 
 
 Of all the women of England of the present century, the two 
 who may be ranked as her worthiest successors as writers are 
 Mrs. Browning and George Eliot. The life-histories of both 
 these women are of equal interest with their authorship. No 
 one thinks of Mrs. Browning without recalling her invalidism, 
 her happy wifehood and motherhood. None now think of 
 George Eliot without a feeling of pride in her as the largest en- 
 dowed woman of this age, and one of the most exalted in her 
 domestic life and affectional nature. 
 
 All three of these women exemplify in their perfected lives 
 the power of personal character over literary attainments ; the 
 unconquerable strength of genius when allied to great virtues 
 and high convictions. They each and all drew out of sorrow 
 first and then out of love the fulness and richness of their lives, 
 and wrote from their hearts as well as their minds ; for in great 
 souls like theirs there is perfect union of pursuit and private 
 opinion. 
 
 Charlotte Bronte had more natural talent and far more spirit- 
 
CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 45 
 
 ual fervor and insight than either Mrs. Browning or George 
 Eliot ; she had far less culture than either, and a more limited 
 acquaintance with the world. But she was the completest 
 woman of her era, the worthy predecessor in authorship of these 
 two great women. 
 
 Neither of them has given to the world more than did Char- 
 lotte Bronte. She gave her sister women the inheritance of 
 her life — womanly excellence, intellectual greatness, noble char- 
 acteristics, and a stainless history. 
 
 Nearly three decades of time have glided into the unreturn- 
 ing past since the mural which bears her name was placed in 
 Haworth church. There now rests all that is earthly of that 
 wondrous woman whose name touches a tender chord in the 
 hearts of millions. All over the world her name is venerated. 
 England claims her dust, but we in America think of her as 
 our countrywoman, and find no phrase strong enough to express 
 all we feel toward that gentle, child- like soul ; that face of 
 strangely mixed sadness and mirth, touching in its weariness, 
 sublime in its patient, trustful expression — whose eyes were ever 
 looking yearningly into the future to find the promises of the 
 past realized, whose lips were tightly though sweetly closed on 
 all the revealings of her bruised heart. Long-suffering, yet truly 
 brave and self-contained to the end, enduring in time to be glad 
 in eternity. 
 
 Inasmuch as she used every atom of available power, her life 
 was truly heroic, and when all the battles of intellect are re- 
 corded, inscribed high upon the scroll of fame will appear the 
 imperishable name of Charlotte Bronte. 
 
THACKERAY'S TRIBUTE. 
 
 From Thackeray *s introduction to the fragment of a story enti- 
 tled "Emma" left by Charlotte Bronte, and published after 
 her death : 
 
 u I remember the trembling little frame, the little hand, the 
 great honest eyes. An impetuous honesty seemed to me to 
 characterize the woman. 
 
 " She gave me the impression of being a very pure and 
 lofty and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence 
 of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our 
 brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that 
 life so noble, so lovely — of that passion for truth — of those 
 nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, 
 depression, elation, prayer ; as one reads the necessarily in- 
 complete, though most touching and admirable history of the 
 heart that throbbed in this one little frame — of this one among 
 the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great 
 earth — this great earth ? this little speck in the infinite universe 
 of God — with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what 
 awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen 
 shall be clear ! As I read this little fragmentary sketch, I 
 think of the rest. Is it ? and where is it ? Will not the leaf 
 be turned some day, and the story be told ? Shall the deviser 
 
48 thackeray's tribute. 
 
 of the tale somewhere perfect the history of little Emma's 
 griefs and troubles ? Shall Titania come forth complete with 
 her sportive court, with the flowers at her feet, the forest 
 around her, and all the stars of summer glittering overhead ? 
 How well I remember the delight, and wonder, and pleasure 
 with which I read ' Jane Eyre, ' sent to me by an author whose 
 name and sex were then alike unknown to me ; the strange 
 fascinations of the book ; and how my own work pressing upon 
 me, I could not, having taken the volumes up, lay them down 
 until they were read through !" 
 
LETTERS AND EXTRACTS OF LETTERS. 
 
 Selected with the View of Giving a Better Understand- 
 ing of Charlotte Bronte's Character as a Woman and 
 as a Friend. 
 
 " Haworth, January 1, 1833. 
 " Dear E. : I believe we agreed to correspond once a month. 
 That space of time has now elapsed since I received your last 
 interesting letter, and I now therefore hasten to reply. Accept 
 my congratulations on the arrival of the New Year, every suc- 
 ceeding day of which will, I trust, find you wiser and better in 
 the true sense of those much used words. The first day of 
 January always presents to my mind a train of very solemn and 
 important reflections, and a question more easily asked than 
 answered frequently occurs, viz. : How have I improved the 
 past year, and with what good intentions do I view the dawn 
 of its successor ? These, my dearest E., are weighty consid- 
 erations, which (young as we are) neither you nor I can too 
 deeply or too seriously ponder. I am sorry your too great 
 diffidence, arising, I think, from the want of sufficient confi- 
 dence in your capabilities, prevented you from writing me in 
 French, as I think the attempt would have materially contrib- 
 uted to your improvement in that language. You very kindly 
 caution me against being tempted by the fondness of my sister 
 
50 LETTERS. 
 
 to consider myself of too much importance, and then in a 
 parenthesis you beg me not to be offended. Oh, E., do you 
 think I could be offended by any good advice you may give 
 me ? No, I thank you heartily, and love you, if possible, bet- 
 ter for it. I had a letter about a fortnight ago from Miss , 
 
 in which she tells me of the birth of Mrs. 's little boy, 
 
 and likewise tells me you had not been at for upward of 
 
 a month, but does not assign any reason for your absence. I 
 hope it does not arise from ill health. [I am glad you like 
 ' Kenil worth.' It is certainly a splendid production, more 
 resembling a romance than a novel, and in my opinion one of 
 the most interesting works that ever emanated from the great 
 Sir Walter's pen. I was exceedingly amused at the character- 
 istic and naive manner in which you expressed your detestation 
 of Varney's character, so much so, indeed, that I could not 
 forbear laughing aloud when I perused that part of your letter ; 
 he is certainly the personification of consummate villainy, and 
 in the delineation of his dark and profoundly artful mind Scott 
 exhibits a wonderful knowledge of human nature as well as sur- 
 prising skill in embodying his perceptions so as to enable others 
 to become participators in that knowledge.] Excuse the want 
 of news in this very barren epistle, for I really have none to 
 communicate. Emily and Annie beg to be kindly remembered 
 
 to you. Give my love to , and as it is very late, permit 
 
 me to conclude with the assurance of my unchanged, unchang- 
 ing, and unchangeable affection for you. Adieu, dearest E. 
 I am ever yours, C. B." 
 
 [From a letter written to her sister Emily in June, 1839, 
 when she was teaching in a " wealthy Yorkshire family."] 
 
 " I said in my last letter that Mrs. did not know me. 
 
LETTERS. 51 
 
 I now begin to find she does not intend to know me, and she 
 cares nothing about me, except to contrive how the greatest 
 possible quantity of labor may be got out of me ; and to that 
 end she overwhelms me with oceans of needlework, yards of 
 cambric to hem, muslin nightcaps to make, and, above all 
 things, dolls to dress. I do not think she likes me at all, be- 
 cause I can't help being shy in such an entirely novel scene, 
 surrounded as I have hitherto been by strange and constantly 
 changing faces. ... I used to think I should like to be 
 in the stir of grand folks' society, but I have had enough of 
 it ; it is dreary work to look on and listen. I see more clearly 
 than I have ever done before, that a private governess has no 
 existence — is not considered as a living, rational being, except 
 as connected with the wearisome duties she has to fulfil." . . . 
 
 To her friend Ellen Nussey, March 3d, 1841. [Miss Bronte 
 had taken another situation as governess, and it is from her 
 new home that she writes.] 
 
 " In taking the place I have made a large sacrifice in the 
 way of salary in the hope of securing comfort — by which word 
 I do not mean to express good eating and drinking, or warm 
 fire or a soft bed, but the society of cheerful faces, and minds 
 and hearts not dug out of a lead mine, or cut from a marble 
 quarry. My salary is not really more than £16 per annum, 
 though it is nominally £20, but the expense of washing will be 
 deducted therefrom. My pupils are two in number, a girl of 
 eight and a boy of six. As to my employers, you will not 
 expect me to say much about their characters when I tell you 
 that I only arrived here yesterday. I have not the faculty of 
 telling an individual's disposition at first sight. Before I can 
 venture to pronounce on a character, I must see it first under 
 
52 LETTERS.. 
 
 various lights, and from various points of view. All I can say 
 
 therefore is, both Mr. and Mrs. seem to me good sort of 
 
 people. I have as yet had no cause to complain of want of 
 considerateness or civility. My pupils are wild and unbroken, , 
 but apparently well-disposed. I wish I may be able to say as 
 much next time I write to you. My earnest wish and endeavor 
 will be to please them. If I can but feel that I am giving 
 satisfaction, and if at the same time I can keep my health, T 
 shall, I hope, be moderately happy. But no one but myself 
 can tell how hard a governess' work is to me ; for no one but 
 myself is aware how utterly averse my whole mind and nature 
 are for the employment. Do not think that I fail to blame 
 myself for this, or that I leave any means unemployed to con- 
 quer this feeling. Some of my greatest difficulties lie in things 
 that would appear to you comparatively trivial. I find it so 
 hard to repel the rude familiarity of children. I find it so 
 difficult to ask either servants or mistress for anything I want, 
 however much I want it. It is less pain for me to endure the 
 greatest inconvenience than to go into the kitchen to request 
 its removal. I am a fool. Heaven knows I cannot help it." 
 
 ' [At the end of her experiences in Brussels she writes from 
 Haworth, January 23d, 1844.] 
 
 " Every one asks me what I am going to do now that I am 
 returned home ; and every one seems to expect that I should 
 immediately commence a school. In truth it is what I should 
 wish to do. I desire it above all things. I have sufficient 
 money for the undertaking, and I hope now sufficient qualifica- 
 tions to give me a fair chance of success ; yet I cannot yet 
 permit myself to enter upon life — to touch the object which 
 
LETTERS. 53 
 
 seems now within my reach, and which I have been so long 
 straining to attain. You will ask me why ? It is on papa's 
 account ; he is now, as you know, getting old, and it grieves 
 me to tell you that he is losing his sight. I have felt for some 
 months that I ought not to be away from him ; and I feel now 
 that it would be too selfish to leave him (at least as long as 
 Branwell and Anne are absent), in order to pursue selfish inter- 
 ests of my own. With the help of God I will try to deny my- 
 self in this matter and to wait. 
 
 " I suffered much before I left Brussels. I think, however 
 long I live, I shall not forget what the parting with M. Heger 
 cost me. It grieved me so much to grieve him who has been 
 so true, kind, and disinterested a friend. At parting he gave 
 me a kind of diploma certifying my abilities as a teacher, 
 sealed with the seal of the Athenee Royal, of which he is pro- 
 fessor. I was surprised also at the degree of regret expressed 
 by my Belgian pupils when they knew I was going to leave. 
 I did not think it had been in their phlegmatic nature. . . . 
 I do not know whether you feel as I do, but there are times 
 now when it appears to me as if all my ideas and feelings, 
 except a few friendships and affections, are changed from what 
 they used to be ; something in me which used to be enthu- 
 siasm is tamed down and broken. I have fewer illusions ; 
 what I wish for is active exertion — a stake in life. Haworth 
 seems such a lonely, quiet spot, buried away from the world. 
 I no longer regard myself as young — indeed, I shall soon be 
 twenty-eight ; and it seems as if I ought to be working and 
 braving the rough realities of the world as other people do. 
 It is, however, my duty to restrain this feeling at present, and 
 I will endeavor to do so. ' ' 
 
54 LETTERS. 
 
 " March 24, 1845. 
 " I can hardly tell you how time gets on at Ha worth. 
 There is no event whatever to mark its progress. One day 
 resembles another, and all have heavy, lifeless physiognomies. 
 Sunday, baking-day, and Saturday are the only ones that 
 have any distinctive mark. Meantime, life wears away. I 
 shall 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." 
 
 " August 18, 1845. 
 " I have delayed writing because I have no good news to 
 communicate. My hopes ebb low indeed about Branwell. I 
 sometimes fear he will never be fit for much. The late blow 
 to his prospects and feelings has quite made him reckless. It 
 is only absolute want of means that acts as any check to him. 
 One ought, indeed, to hope to the very last ; and I try to do 
 so, but occasionally hope in his case seems so fallacious." 
 
 " December 31, 1845. 
 
 " You say well in speaking of , that no sufferings are so 
 
 awful as those brought on by dissipation ; alas ! I see the 
 
LETTERS. 00 
 
 truth of this observation daily proved, and must have as 
 
 weary and burden some a life of it in waiting upon their 
 unhappy brother. It seems grievous, indeed, that those who 
 have not sinned slfOuld suffer so largely." 
 
 [To Miss Woole?\] 
 
 " January 30, 1846. 
 . . . . " You ask about Bran well ; he never thinks of 
 seeking employment, and I begin to fear that he has rendered 
 himself incapable of filling any respectable station in life ; 
 besides, if money were at his disposal he would use it only 
 to his own injury ; the faculty of self-government is, I fear, 
 almost destroyed in him. You ask me if I do not think that 
 men are strange beings. I do, indeed. I have often thought 
 so ; and I think, too, that the mode of bringing them up is 
 strange : they are not sufficiently guarded from temptation. 
 Girls are protected as if they were something very frail or silly 
 indeed, while boys are turned loose on the world as if they, 
 of all beings in existence, were the wisest and least liable to be 
 led astray. ... I have already got to the point of con- 
 sidering that there is no more respectable character on this 
 earth than an unmarried, woman who makes her own way 
 through life quietly, perseveringly, without support of husband 
 or brother ; and who, having attained the age of forty-five or 
 upward, retains in her possession a well-regulated mind, a 
 disposition to enjoy simple pleasures, and fortitude to support 
 inevitable pains, sympathy with the sufferings of others, and 
 willingness to relieve want as far as her means extend. ' ' 
 
56 LETTERS. 
 
 [To . . . . ] 
 
 "June 17, 1846. 
 u Bran well declares that lie neither can nor will do 
 anything for himself ; good situations have been offered him, 
 for which, by a fortnight's work, he might have qualified 
 himself, but he will do nothing except drink and make us all 
 wretched." 
 
 [Extract from Letter of July 10, 1846.] 
 
 " The right path is that which necessitates the 
 greatest sacrifice of self-interest — which implies the greatest 
 good to others ; and this path, steadily followed, will lead, I 
 believe, in time, to prosperity and happiness ; though it may 
 seem, at the outset, to tend quite in a contrary direction." 
 
 [To Ellen JVussey.] 
 
 " Dear Nell : Your last letter both amused and edified me 
 exceedingly. I could not but laugh at your account of the fall 
 
 in B , yet I should by no means have liked to have made 
 
 a third party in that exhibition. I have endured one fall in 
 your company, and undergone one of your ill-timed laughs, and 
 don't wish to repeat my experience. Allow me to compliment 
 you on the skill with which you can seem to give an explana- 
 tion, without enlightening one one whit on the question asked. 
 I know no more about Miss R.'s superstition now than I did 
 before. What is the superstition ? — about a dead body ? 
 And what is the inference drawn ? Do you remember my 
 telling you — or did I ever tell you — about that wretched and 
 most criminal Mr. J. S. ? After running an infamous career 
 of vice, both in England and France, abandoning his wife to 
 
LETTERS. 57 
 
 disease and total destitution in Manchester, with two children, 
 and without a farthing, in a strange lodging-house ? Yester- 
 day evening Martha came up-stairs to say that a woman — 
 1 rather lady-like,' as she said — wished to speak to me in the 
 kitchen. I went down. There stood Mrs. S., pale and worn, 
 but still interesting-looking and cleanly and neatly dressed, 
 as was her little girl, who was with her. I kissed her heart- 
 ily. I could almost have cried to see her, for I had pitied 
 her with my whole soul when I heard of her undeserved 
 sufferings, agonies, and physical degradation. She took tea 
 with us, stayed about two hours, and frankly entered into 
 the narrative of her appalling distresses. Her constitution 
 has triumphed over her illness ; and her excellent sense, 
 her activity, and perseverance have enabled her to regain a 
 decent position in society, and to procure a respectable main- 
 tenance for herself and her children. She keeps a lodging- 
 house in a very eligible part of the suburbs of (which 
 
 I know), and is doing very well. She does not know where 
 Mr. S. is, and of course can never more endure to see him. 
 
 She is now staying a few days at E with the s, who, I 
 
 believe, have been all along very kind to her, and the circum- 
 stance is greatly to their credit. 
 
 " I wish to know whether about Whitsuntide would suit you 
 for coming to Haworth. We often have fine weather just 
 then. At least I remember last year it was very beautiful at 
 that season. Winter seems to have returned with severity on 
 us at present, consequently we are all in full enjoyment of a 
 cold. Much blowing of noses is heard, and much making 
 of gruel goes on in the house. How are you all ? 
 
 " When do you think I shall see you V' she cries to her friend 
 within a few days of her final return to Haworth. " I have, of 
 
58 LETTERS. 
 
 course, much to tell you, and I dare say you have much also 
 to tell me — things which we should neither of us wish to com- 
 mit to paper. ... I do not know whether you feel as I 
 do, but there are times when it appears to me as if all my 
 ideas and feelings, except a few friendships and affections, 
 are changed from what they used to be. Something in me 
 which used to be enthusiasm is tamed down and broken. I 
 have fewer illusions. What I wish for now is active exertion 
 — a stake in life. Haworth seems such a lonely, quiet spot, 
 buried away from the world. I no longer regard myself as 
 young ; indeed, I shall soon be twenty-eight, and it seems as 
 if I ought to be working and braving the rough realities of the 
 world, as other people do. It is, however, my duty to re- 
 strain this feeling at present, and I will endeavor to do so." 
 
 " December 21, 1848. 
 " Emily suffers no more from pain or weakness now. She 
 never will suffer more in this world. She is gone, after a hard, 
 short conflict. She died on Tuesday, the very day I wrote to 
 you. I thought it very possible she might be with us still for 
 weeks ; and a few hours afterward she was in eternity. Yes ; 
 there is no Emily in time or on earth now. Yesterday we put 
 her poor, wasted mortal frame quietly under the church pave- 
 ment. We are very calm at present. Why should we be 
 otherwise ? The anguish of seeing her suffer is over ; the 
 spectacle of the pains of death is gone by ; the funeral day is 
 past. We feel she is at peace. No need now to tremble 
 for the hard frost and the keen wind. Emily does not feel 
 them. She died in a time of promise. We saw her taken 
 from life in its prime. But it is God's will, and the place 
 where she is gone is better than that she has left." 
 
LETTERS 59 
 
 " March 24, 1849. 
 " Anne's decline is gradual and fluctuating ; out its nature is 
 not doubtful. ... In spirit she is resigned : at heart she 
 is, I believe, a true Christian. . . . May God support her 
 and all of us through the trial of lingering sickness, and aid 
 her in the last hour, when the struggle which separates soul 
 from body must be gone through ! We saw Emily torn from 
 the midst of us when our hearts clung to her with intense 
 attachment. . . . She was scarce buried when Anne's 
 health failed. . . . These things would be too much if 
 reason, unsupported by religion, were condemned to bear them 
 alone. I have cause to be most thankful for the strength that 
 has hitherto been vouchsafed both to my father and myself. 
 God, I think, is specially merciful to old age ; and for my 
 own part, trials, which in perspective would have seemed to me 
 quite intolerable, when they actually came, I endured without 
 prostration. Yet I must 'confess that, in the time which has 
 elapsed since Emily's death, there have been moments of 
 solitary, deep, inert affliction, far harder to bear than those 
 which immediately followed our loss. The crisis of bereave- 
 ment has an acute pang which goads to exertion ; the desolate 
 after-feeling sometimes paralyzes. I have learned that we are 
 not to find solace in our own strength ; we must seek it in 
 God's omnipotence. Fortitude is good ; but fortitude itself 
 must be shaken under us to teach us how weak we are !" 
 
 [To .... ] 
 
 " September 20, 1849. 
 . . . " The two human beings who understood me, 
 and whom I understood, are gone ; I have some that love me 
 yet, and whom I love, without expecting, or having a right to 
 
60 LETTERS. 
 
 expect, that they shall perfectly understand me, I am satisfied ; 
 but I must have my own way in the matter of writing. The 
 loss of what we possess nearest and dearest to us in this world 
 produces an effect upon the character : we search out what we 
 have yet left that can support, and, when found, we cling to it 
 with a hold of new-strung tenacity. The faculty of imagina- 
 tion lifted me when I was sinking, three months ago ; its 
 active exercise has kept my head above water since ; its results 
 cheer me now, for I feel they have enabled me to give pleasure 
 to others. I am thankful to God who gave me the faculty ; 
 and it is for me a part of religion to defend this gift, and to 
 profit by its possession. " 
 
 [To ..... ] 
 
 " (Spring of 1850.) 
 " I believe I should have written to you before, but I don't 
 know what heaviness of spirit has beset me of late, made my 
 faculties dull, made rest weariness, and occupation burdensome. 
 Now and then the silence of the house, the solitude of the 
 room has pressed on me with a weight I found it difficult to 
 bear, and recollection has not failed to be as alert, poignant, 
 obtrusive, as other feelings w r ere languid. I attribute this state 
 of things partly to the weather. Quicksilver invariably falls 
 low in storms and high winds, and I have ere this been 
 warned of approaching disturbance in the atmosphere by a 
 sense of bodily weakness, and deep, heavy mental sadness, 
 •which some would call presentiment. Presentiment indeed it 
 is, but not at all supernatural. The Haworth people have 
 been making great fools of themselves about * Shirley,' they 
 take it in the enthusiastic light. When they got the volumes 
 
LETTERS. 61 
 
 at the Mechanics' Institution, all the members wanted them ; 
 they cast lots for the whole three, and whoever got a volume 
 was only allowed to keep it two days, and to be fined a shil- 
 ling per diem for longer detention. It would be mere non- 
 sense and vanity to tell you what they say. I have had no 
 letters from London for a long time, and am very much 
 ashamed of myself to find, now that that stimulus is with- 
 drawn, how dependent upon it I had become. I cannot help 
 feeling something of the excitement of expectation till post 
 hour comes, and when day after day it brings nothing I get 
 low. This is a stupid, disgraceful, unmeaning state of things. 
 I feel bitterly enraged at my dependence and folly. It is so 
 bad for the mind to be quite alone, to have none with whom 
 to talk over little crosses and disappointments, and laugh them 
 away. If I could write I dare say I should be better, but I 
 cannot write a line. However (D. V.), I shall contend against 
 
 the idiocy. I had rather a foolish letter from Miss the 
 
 other day. Some things in it nettled me, especially an un- 
 necessarily earnest assurance that, in spite of all I had gone 
 and done in the writing line, I still retained a place in her 
 esteem. My answer took strong and high ground at once. I 
 said I had been troubled by no doubts on the subject, that I 
 neither did myself nor her the injustice to suppose there was 
 anything in what I had written to incur the just forfeiture of 
 esteem. I was aware, I intimated, that some persons thought 
 proper to take exceptions at * Jane Eyre,' and that for their 
 own sakes I was sorry, as I invariably found them individuals 
 in whom the animal largely predominated over the intellectual, 
 persons by nature coarse, by inclination sensual, whatever they 
 might be by education and principle. " 
 
62 LETTERS. 
 
 [To .... ] 
 
 " July 18, 1850. 
 " You must cheer up, for your letter proves to me that you 
 are low-spirited. As for me, what I said is to be taken in 
 this sense : that, under the circumstances, it would be pre- 
 sumptuous in me to calculate on a long life — a truth obvious 
 enough. For the rest, we are all in the hands of Him who 
 apportions His gifts, health or sickness, length or brevity of 
 days, as is best for the receiver : to him who has work to 
 do, time will be given in which to do it ; for him to whom no 
 task is assigned, the season of rest will come earlier. As to 
 the suffering preceding our last sleep, the sickness, decay, the 
 struggle of flesh and spirit, it must come sooner or later to all. 
 If, in one point of view, it is sad to have few ties in the world, 
 in another point of view it is soothing ; women who have 
 husbands and children must look forward to death with more 
 pain, more fear, than those who have none. To dismiss the 
 subject, I wish (without cant, and not in any hackneyed 
 sense) that both you and I could always say in this matter, The 
 will of God be done. I am beginning to get settled at home, 
 but the solitude seems heavy as yet. It is a great change, but 
 in looking forward I try to hope for the best. So little faith 
 have I in the power of any temporary excitement to do real 
 good, that I put off day by day writing to London to tell them 
 I have come home ; and till then it was agreed I should not 
 hear from them. It is painful to be dependent on the small 
 stimulus letters give. I sometimes think I will renounce it al- 
 together, close all correspondence on some quiet pretext, and 
 cease to look forward at post- time for any letters but yours. ' ' 
 
LETTERS. 63 
 
 " 1850. 
 " Ellen, it seems, told you that I spent a fortnight in 
 London last December. They wished me very much to stay 
 a month, alleging that I should in that time be able to secure 
 a complete circle of acquaintance, but I found a fortnight of 
 such excitement quite enough. The whole day was usually 
 spent in sight-seeing, and often the evening was spent in 
 society : it was more than I could bear for any length of time. 
 On one occasion I met a party of my critics — seven of them. 
 Some of them had been my bitter foes in print, but they were 
 prodigiously civil face to face. These gentlemen seemed 
 infinitely grander, more pompous, dashing, showy than the 
 other few authors I saw. Mr. Thackeray, for example, is a 
 man of very quiet, simple demeanor ; he is, however, looked 
 upon with some awe and even distrust. His conversation is 
 very peculiar, too perverse to be pleasant. It was proposed to 
 me to see Charles Dickens, Lady Morgan, Mesdames Trollope, 
 Gore, and some others ; but I was aware that these introduc- 
 tions would bring a degree of notoriety I was not disposed to 
 encounter ; I declined therefore with thanks. Nothing charmed 
 me more during my stay in town than the pictures I saw ; one 
 or two private collections of Turner's best water-colors were 
 indeed a treat. His later oil paintings are strange things 
 — things that baffle description. I have twice seen Mac- 
 ready act — once in Macbeth, and once in Othello. I as- 
 tounded a dinner party by honestly saying I did not like 
 him. It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting ; 
 anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive 
 than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The 
 fact is, the stage system altogether is hollow nonsense. They 
 act farces well enough ; the actors comprehend their parts, 
 
64 LETTERS. 
 
 and do them justice. They comprehend nothing about 
 tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by 
 so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation. I 
 was indeed obliged to dissent on many occasions, and to offend 
 by dissenting. It seems now very much the custom to admire 
 a certain wordy, intricate, obscure style of poetry, such as 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes. Some pieces were re- 
 ferred to, about which Currer Bell was expected to be very 
 rapturous, and failing in this he disappointed. London people 
 strike a provincial as being very much taken up with little 
 matters, about which no one out of particular town circles 
 cares much. They talk too of persons, literary men and 
 women, whose names are scarcely heard in the country, and 
 in whom you cannot get up an interest. I think I should 
 scarcely like to live in London, and were I obliged to live 
 there I should certainly go little in company — especially I 
 should eschew the literary critics." 
 
 [To Mien JSTussey.] 
 
 "1850, 
 
 " I have, since you went, had a remarkable epistle from 
 Thackeray — long, interesting, and characteristic ; but it un- 
 fortunately concludes with the strict injunction, Show this 
 letter to no one ; adding that if he thought his letters were 
 seen by others, he would either cease to write, or write only 
 what was conventional. But for this circumstance I should 
 have sent it with the others. I answered it at length. Whether 
 my reply will give satisfaction or displeasure remains yet to 
 be ascertained. Thackeray's feelings are not such as can be 
 
r LETTERS. 65 
 
 gauged by ordinary calculation : variable weather is what I 
 should ever expect from that quarter. Yet in correspondence, 
 as in verbal intercourse, this would torment me, ' ' 
 
 [To Miss Wooler.] 
 
 " Haworth, September 27, 1850. 
 . . . tl You say that you suspect I have formed a large 
 circle of acquaintances by this time. No ; I cannot say that 
 I have. I doubt whether I possess either the wish or the 
 power to do so. A few friends I should like to have, and 
 these few I should like to know well ; if such knowledge 
 brought proportionate regard I could not help concentrating 
 my feelings ; dissipation, I think, appears synonymous with 
 dilution. However, I have, as yet, scarcely been tried. 
 During the month I spent in London in the spring I kept very 
 quiet : having the fear of lionizing before my eyes. I only 
 went out once to dinner, and once was present at an evening 
 party ; and the only visits I have paid have been to Sir James 
 Kay Shuttleworth's and my publishers. From this system I 
 should not like to depart : as far as I can see, indiscriminate 
 visiting tends only to a waste of time and a vulgarizing of 
 character. Besides, it would be wrong to leave papa often ; 
 he is now in his seventy-fifth year, the infirmities of age begin 
 to creep upon him ; during the summer he has been much 
 harassed by chronic bronchitis, but I am thankful to say he 
 is now somewhat better. I think my own health has derived 
 benefit from change and exercise." 
 
GG LETTERS. 
 
 [To he* Publisher, who wrote her in reference to Phrenology, 
 
 then att.rar.tinr/ attention/] 
 
 then attracting attention.] 
 
 " July 8, 1851. 
 . . . " I will not say look higher ! I think you see the 
 matter as it is desirable we should all see what relates to our- 
 selves. If I had a right to whisper a word of counsel, it should 
 be merely this : whatever your present self may be, resolve 
 with all your strength of resolution never to degenerate thence. 
 Be jealous of a shadow of falling off. Determine rather to 
 look above that standard, and to strive beyond it. Everybody 
 appreciates certain social properties, and likes his neighbor for 
 possessing them ; but perhaps few dwell upon a friend's capac- 
 ity for the intellectual, or care how this might expand, if there 
 were but facilities allowed for cultivation, and space given for 
 growth. It seems to me that, even should space and facilities 
 be denied by stringent circumstances and a rigid fate, still it 
 should do you good fully to know, and tenaciously to remem- 
 ber, that you have such a capacity. When other people over- 
 whelm you with acquired knowledge such as you have not had 
 opportunity, perhaps not application, to gain, derive not pride 
 but support from the thought. If no new books had ever been 
 written, some of these minds would themselves have remained 
 blank pages : they only take an impression— they were not 
 born with a record of thought on the brain, or an instinct of 
 sensation on the heart. If I had never seen a printed volume, 
 nature would have offered my perceptions a varying picture of 
 a continuous narrative, which, without any teacher than herself, 
 would have schooled me to knowledge, unsophisticated but 
 genuine. ' ' 
 
LETTERS. 07 
 
 " London, June 12, 1850. 
 . . . " I have seen Lewes, too. . . I could not feel other- 
 wise to hiin than half-sadly, half-tenderly — a queer word that 
 last, but I use it because the aspect of Lewes' face almost 
 moves me to tears ; it is so wonderfully like Emily — her eyes, 
 her features, the very nose, the somewhat prominent mouth, 
 the forehead — even at moments the expression : whatever 
 Lewes says I believe I cannot hate him. ' ' 
 
 [To Emily.'] 
 
 " Haworth, December 4. 
 1 ' My Dear Emily : Christmas — dear Christmas — is rapidly 
 approaching, and the time is drawing on apace for your appear- 
 ance among us again at the ' ingle nook. ' I yearningly desire 
 ■ — after this prolonged separation — to press you once again to 
 my heart, my dearest sister. What a joyful meeting on that 
 day of all days — the anniversary of the birth of our blessed 
 Redeemer ! The cold air is bracing and exhilarating as I open 
 my window this genial morning in hoary December, and I 
 have a rosy glow playing around my heart, for I am truly 
 happy. Et vous ! — ah, you too must be happy, for the chord, 
 vibrating, is sympathetic, is responsive in your own dear breast. 
 We have, in good sooth, both reason to thank the Giver of all 
 things ; for have we not many blessings ? Do we not possess 
 the great poetic faculty : the Ideal, the Mirthful, the Imitative ? 
 Are we not both acknowledged authors ? The creative faculty 
 makes us truly happy. If you start next Thursday week I 
 will be waiting the coach ; do not hamper yourself with unnec- 
 essary clothes and luggage ; you can have everything here — 
 even to the wearing of my old slippers, out a little at the toes.' ' 
 
68 LETTERS. 
 
 [To G. H. Lewes, Esq.] 
 
 " November 1, 1849. 
 " My Dear Sir : It is about a year and a half since you 
 wrote to me ; but it seems a longer period, because since then 
 it has been my lot to pass some black milestones in the journey 
 of life. Since then there have been intervals when I have 
 ceased to care about literature, and critics, and fame ; when 
 I have lost sight of whatever was prominent in my thoughts at 
 the first publication of ' Jane Eyre ;' but now I want these 
 things to come back vividly, if possible ; consequently it was a 
 pleasure to receive your note. I wish you did not think me a 
 woman. I wish all reviewers believed ' Currer Bell ' to be a 
 man : they would be more just to him. You will, I know, 
 keep measuring me by some standard of what you deem becom- 
 ing to my sex ; where I am not what you consider graceful, 
 you will condemn me. All mouths will be open against that 
 first chapter ; and that first chapter is true as the Bible, nor is 
 it exceptional. Come what will, I cannot, when I write, 
 think always of myself and of what is elegant and charming in 
 feminity ; it is not on those terms, or with such ideas, I ever 
 took pen in hand ; and if it is only on such terms my writing 
 will be tolerated, I shall pass away from the public and trouble 
 it no more. Out of obscurity I came, to obscurity I can easily 
 return. Standing afar off, I now watch to see what will become 
 of ' Shirley.' My expectations are very low, and my anticipa- 
 tions somewhat sad and bitter ; still, I earnestly conjure you to 
 say honestly what you think ; flattery would be worse than 
 vain ; there is no consolation in flattery. As for condemnation, 
 I cannot, on reflection, see why I should much fear it ; there is 
 no one but myself to suffer therefrom, and both' happiness and 
 
LETTERS. 69 
 
 suffering in this life soon pass away. Wishing you all success 
 in your Scottish expedition, I am, dear sir, 
 
 " Yours, sincerely, C. Bell." 
 
 [To G. II. Leioes, Esq.] 
 
 " January 19, 1850. 
 
 " My Dear Sir : I will tell you why I was so hurt by 
 that review in the Edinburgh ; not because its criticism was 
 keen or its blame sometimes severe ; not because its praise 
 was stinted (for, indeed, I think you give quite as much praise 
 as I deserve), but because after I had said earnestly that I 
 wished critics would judge me as an author, not as a woman, 
 you so roughly — I even thought so cruelly — handled the ques- 
 tion of sex. I dare say you meant no harm, and perhaps you 
 will not now be able to understand why I was so grieved at 
 what you will probably deem such a trifle ; but grieved I was, 
 and indignant, too. 
 
 " There was a passage or two which you did quite wrong to 
 write. 
 
 " However, I will not bear malice against you for it ; I know 
 what your nature is ; it is not a bad or unkind one, though 
 you would often jar terribly on some feelings with whose recoil 
 and quiver you could not possibly sympathize. I imagine you 
 are both enthusiastic and implacable, as you are at once saga- 
 cious and careless ; you know much and discover much, but you 
 are in such a hurry to tell it all you never give yourself time 
 to think how your reckless eloquence may affect others ; and, 
 what is more, if you knew how it did affect them, you would 
 not much care. 
 
 " However, I shake hands with you : you have excellent 
 
70 LETTERS. 
 
 points ; you can be generous. I still feel angry, and think I 
 do well to be angry ; but it is the anger one experiences for 
 rough play rather than for foul play. I am yours, with a cer- 
 tain respect and more chagrin, Currer Bell." 
 
 " April 11, 1854. 
 " The result of Mr. Nicholls's visit is that Papa's consent is 
 gained and his respect now, for Mr. Nicholls has in all things 
 proved himself disinterested and forbearing. He has shown, 
 too, that while his feelings are exquisitely keen, he can freely 
 forgive. ... In fact, dear Ellen, I am engaged. Mr. 
 Nicholls in the course of a few months will return to the curacy 
 of Haworth. I stipulated that I would not leave Papa, and to 
 Papa himself I proposed a plan of residence which should 
 maintain his seclusion and convenience uninvaded, and in a 
 pecuniary sense bring him gain instead of loss. What seemed 
 at one time impossible is now arranged, and Papa begins really 
 
 to take pleasure in the prospect. For myself, dear E , 
 
 while thankful to one who seems to have guided me through 
 much difficulty, much and deep distress and perplexity of 
 mind, I am still very calm. . . . What I taste of happi- 
 ness is of the soberest order. Providence offers me this 
 destiny. Doubtless, then, it is best for me. Nor do I shrink 
 from wishing those dear to me one not less happy. It is 
 possible that our marriage may take place in the course of the 
 summer. Mr. Nicholls wishes it to be in July. He spoke of 
 you with great kindness, and said he hoped you would be at 
 our wedding. I said I thought of having no other brides- 
 maid. Did I say right ? I mean the marriage to be literally 
 as quiet as possible. Do not mention these things as yet. 
 Good-by. There is a strange, half-sad feeling in making 
 
LETTERS. 71 
 
 these announcements. The whole thing is something other 
 than the imagination paints it beforehand — cares, fears come 
 mixed inextricably with hopes. I trust yet to talk the matter 
 over with you." 
 
 " April 28, 1854. 
 " Papa, thank God, continues to improve much. He 
 preached twice on Sunday, and again on Wednesday, and was 
 not tired. His mind and mood are different to what they 
 were ; so much more cheerful and quiet. I trust the illusions 
 of ambition are quite dissipated, and that he really sees it is 
 better to relieve a suffering and faithful heart, to secure in its 
 fidelity a solid good, than unfeelingly to abandon one who is 
 truly attached to his interests, as well as mine, and pursue some 
 vain, empty shadow." 
 
 [To Mien JVussey.] 
 
 " January, 1852. 
 " I wish you could have seen the coolness with which I 
 captured your letter on its way to Papa, and at once conject- 
 uring its tenor, made the contents my own. Be quiet. Be 
 tranquil. It is, dear Nell, my decided intention to come to 
 
 B for a few days when I can come ; but of this last I must 
 
 positively judge for myself, and I must take my time. I am 
 better to-day — much better ; but you can have little idea of 
 the sort of condition into which mercury throws people to ask 
 me to go from home anywhere in close or open carriage. 
 And as to talking, four days ago I could not well have artic- 
 ulated three sentences. Yet I did not need nursing, and I 
 kept out of bed. It was enough to burden myself ; it would 
 have been misery to me to have annoyed another." 
 
TZ LETTERS. 
 
 11 Haworth, May 14, 1854. 
 " I took the time of the Leeds, Keighley, Skipton trains 
 from the February time-table, and when I got to Leeds found 
 myself all wrong. The trains on that line were changed. One 
 had that moment left the station — indeed, it was just steaming 
 away ; there was not another until a quarter after five o'clock ; 
 so I had just four hours to sit and twirl my thumbs. I got over 
 the time somehow, but I was vexed to think how much more 
 pleasantly I might have spent it at B. It was just seven 
 o'clock when I reached home. I found Papa well. It seems 
 he has been particularly well during my absence, but to-day he 
 is a little sickly, and only preached once. However, he is 
 better again this evening. I could not leave you, dear Ellen, 
 with a very quiet mind, or take away a satisfied feeling about 
 you. Not that I think that bad cough lodged in a dangerous 
 quarter ; but it shakes your system, wears you out, and makes 
 you look ill. Take care of it, do, dear JiJllen. Avoid the 
 evening air for a time ; keep in the house when the weather is 
 cold. Observe these precautions till the cough is quite gone, 
 and you regain strength, and feel better able to bear chill and 
 change. Believe me, it does not suit you at present to be 
 much exposed to variations of temperature. I send the mantle 
 with this, but have made up my mind not to let you have the 
 cushion now, lest you should sit stitching over it too closely. 
 It will do any time, and whenever it comes will be your 
 present all the same. ' ' 
 
 " Haworth, May 22, 1854. 
 " I wonder how you are, and whether that harassing cough 
 is better ; but I am afraid the variable weather of last week 
 will not be favorable to improvement. I will not and do not 
 
LETTERS. 73 
 
 believe the cough lies on any vital organ. Still it is a mark of 
 weakness, and a warning to be scrupulously careful about 
 undue exposure. Just now, dear Ellen, an hour's inadvertence 
 might derange your whole constitution for years to come — 
 t might throw you into a state of chronic ill-health which would 
 waste, fade, and wither you up prematurely. So, once and 
 
 again, take care. Tf you go to , or any other evening 
 
 party, pack yourself in blankets and a feather-bed to come 
 home, also fold your boa twice over your mouth, to serve as a 
 respirator. Since I came home I have been very busy sketch- 
 ing. The little new room is got into order now, and the green 
 and white curtains are up. They exactly suit the papering, 
 and look neat and clean enough. I had a letter a day or two 
 since, announcing that Mr. N. comes to-morrow. I feel 
 anxious about him — more anxious on one point than I dare 
 quite to express myself. It seems he has again been suffering 
 sharply from his rheumatic affection. I hear this not from 
 himself, but from another quarter. He was ill while I was at 
 Manchester and B. He uttered no complaint to me, dropped 
 no hint on the subject. Alas ! he was hoping he had got the 
 better of it ; and I know how this contradiction of his hopes 
 will sadden him. For unselfish reasons, he did so earnestly 
 wish this complaint might not become chronic. I fear, I fear 
 — but, however, I mean to stand by him now, whether in weal 
 or woe. This liability to rheumatic pain was one of the strong 
 arguments used against the marriage. It did not w r eigh, 
 somehow. If he is doomed to suffer, it seems that so much 
 the more will he need care and help. And yet the ultimate 
 possibilities of such a case are appalling. Well, come what 
 may, God help and strengthen both him and me. I look 
 forward to to-morrow with a mixture of impatience and 
 
74 LETTERS. 
 
 anxiety. Poor fellow ! I want to see with my own eyes how 
 he is." 
 
 " Haworth, September 16, 1854. 
 
 " My dear Miss : You kindly tell me not to write while 
 
 Ellen is with me : I am expecting her this week ; and as I think 
 it would be wrong long to defer answering a letter like 
 yours, I will reduce to practice the maxim, ' There is no time 
 like the present, ' and do it at once. It grieves me that you 
 should have any anxiety about my health ; the cough left me 
 before I quitted Ireland, and since my return home I have 
 scarcely had an ailment except occasional headaches. My dear 
 
 father, too, continues much better. Dr. B was here on 
 
 Sunday, preaching a sermon for the Jews, and he gratified me 
 much by saying that he thought Papa not at all altered since 
 he saw him last — nearly a year ago. I am afraid this opinion 
 is rather flattering ; but still it gave me pleasure, for I had 
 feared that he looked undeniably thinner and older. You 
 ask what visitors we have had. A good many among the 
 clergy, etc. , in the neighborhood, but none of note from a 
 distance. Haworth is, as you say, a very quiet place ; it is 
 also difficult of access, and unless under the stimulus of neces- 
 sity, or that of strong curiosity, or finally, that of true and 
 tried friendship, few take courage to penetrate to so remote a 
 nook. Besides, now that I am married, I do not expect to be 
 an object of such general interest. Ladies who have won some 
 prominence (call it either notoriety or celebrity) in their single 
 life often fall quite in the background when they change 
 their names. But if true domestic happiness replace fame, 
 the change is indeed for the better. Yes, I am thankful to 
 say my husband is in improved health and spirits. It makes 
 
LETTERS. 75 
 
 me content and grateful to hear him from time to time avow 
 his happiness in the brief but plain phrase of sincerity. My 
 own life is more occupied than it used to be ; I have not so 
 much time for thinking : I am obliged to be more practical, for 
 my dear Arthur is a very practical as well as a very punctual, 
 methodical man. Every morning he is in the national school 
 by nine o'clock ; he gives the children religious instruction 
 until half-past ten. Almost every afternoon he pays visits 
 among the poor parishioners. Of course he often finds a little 
 work for his wife to do, and I hope she is not sorry to help 
 him. I believe it is not bad for me that his bent should be so 
 wholly toward matters of real life and active usefulness — so 
 little inclined to the literary and contemplative. As to his 
 continued affection and kind attentions, it does not become me 
 to say much of them ; but as yet they neither change nor 
 
 diminish. I wish, my dear Miss , you had some kind, 
 
 faithful companion to enliven your solitude at R , some 
 
 friend to whom to communicate your pleasure in the scenery, 
 the fine weather, the pleasant walks. You never complain, 
 never murmur, never seem otherwise than thankful ; but I 
 know you must miss a privilege none could more keenly ap- 
 preciate than yourself." 
 
 [This letter of Charlotte Bronte's, and the succeeding one, 
 written by Miss Ellen Nussey, describe the last journey made 
 with Anne Bronte, and her death.] 
 
 " Next Wednesday is the day fixed for our departure ; Ellen 
 accompanies us, at her own kind and friendly wish. I would 
 not refuse her society, but dared not urge her to go, for I havs 
 little hope that the excursion will be one of pleasure or benefit 
 
76 LETTERS. 
 
 to those engaged in it. Anne is extremely weak. She herself 
 has a fixed impression that the sea-air will give her a chance of 
 regaining strength. That chance, therefore, she must have. 
 Having resolved to try the experiment, misgivings are useless, 
 and yet when I look at her, misgivings will rise. She is more 
 emaciated than Emily was at the very last ; her breath scarcely 
 serves her to mount the stairs, however slowly. She sleeps very 
 little at night, and often passes most of the afternoon in a 
 semi-lethargic state. Still, she is up all day, and even goes out 
 a little when it is fine. Fresh air usually acts as a temporary 
 stimulus, but its reviving power diminishes." 
 
 " On our way to Scarborough we stopped at York, and after 
 a rest at the George Hotel, and partaking of dinner, which she 
 enjoyed, Anne went out in a bath chair, and made purchases, 
 along with Charlotte, of bonnets and dresses, besides visiting 
 the minister. The morning after her arrival at Scarborough 
 she insisted on going to the baths, and would be left there 
 with only the attendant in charge. She walked back alone to 
 her lodgings, but fell exhausted as she reached the garden gate. 
 She never named this, but it was discovered afterward. The 
 same day she had a drive in a donkey carriage, and talked with 
 the boy driver on kindness for animals. On Sunday she 
 wanted again to be left alone, and for us to go to church. 
 Finding we would not leave her, she begged that she might go 
 out, and we walked down toward the saloon, she resting half 
 way, and sending us on with the excuse that she wanted us to 
 see that place, this being our first visit, though not hers. In 
 the evening, after again asking us to go to church, she sat by 
 the sitting-room window, enjoying a very glorious sunset. 
 Next morning (the day she died) she rose by seven o'clock and 
 
LETTEK3. 77 
 
 dressed herself, refusing all assistance. She was the first of 
 the little party to be ready to go down stairs ; but when she 
 reached the head of the stairs she felt fearful of descending. 
 Charlotte went to her, and discovered this. 
 
 " I, fancying there was some difficulty, left my room to see 
 what it was, when Anne smiling told me she felt afraid of the 
 steps downward. I immediately said, ' Let me try to carry 
 you ;' she looked pleased, but feared for me. Charlotte was 
 angry at the idea, and greatly distressed. I could see, at this, 
 new evidence of Anne's weakness. Charlotte was at last per- 
 suaded to go to her room and leave us. I then went a step or 
 two below Anne, and begged her to put her arms around my 
 neck, and I said, ' I will carry you like a baby. ' Strength 
 seemed to be given for the effort, but on reaching the foot of 
 the stairs poor Anne's head fell like a leaden weight upon the 
 top of mine. The shock was terrible, for I felt it could only be 
 death that was coming. I just managed to bear her to the front 
 of her easy-chair and drop her into it, falling myself on my 
 knees before her, very miserable at the fact, and letting her fall 
 at last, though it was not into her chair. She was shaken, but 
 she put out her arms to comfort me, and said, ' You know it 
 could not be helped, you did your best.' After this she sat at 
 the breakfast table and partook of a basin of boiled milk pre- 
 pared for her. As 11 a.m. approached, she wondered if she 
 could be conveyed home in time to die there. At 2 p.m. 
 death had come, and left only her beautiful form in the 
 sweetest peace." 
 
SELECTIONS. 
 
 The following Selections from all that she has written 
 will enable those who have not read the novels of 
 Charlotte Bronte to get a correct Idea of her lit- 
 erary Style and Method of Composition : 
 
 ROCHESTER'S ANALYSIS OF JANE EYRE'S 
 CHARACTER. 
 
 The flame nickers in the eye — the eye shines like dew , it 
 looks soft and fnll of feeling — it smiles at my jargon — it is sus- 
 ceptible ; impression follows impression through its clear 
 sphere ; when it ceases to smile, it is sad — an unconscious 
 lassitude weighs on the lid, that signifies melancholy resulting 
 from loneliness ; it turns from me ; it will not suffer further 
 scrutiny ; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance, the truth of 
 the discoveries I have already made — to disown the charge 
 both of sensibility and chagrin ; its pride and reserve only con- 
 firm me in my opinion. The eye is favorable. 
 
 As to the mouth, jt delights at times in laughter ; it is 
 disposed to impart all that the brain conceives, though, I dare 
 say, it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile 
 and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the 
 
SO SELECTIONS. 
 
 eternal silence of solitude ; it is a mouth which should speak 
 much and smile often, and have human affection for its inter- 
 locutor. That feature, too, is propitious. 
 
 I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow ; and 
 that brow professes to say — " I can live alone, if self-respect and 
 circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to 
 buy bliss. I have an inward treasure, born with me, which 
 can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, 
 or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give." The fore- 
 head declares — " Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she 
 will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild 
 chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, 
 as they are, and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain 
 things ; but judgment shall still have the last word in every 
 argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong 
 wind, earthquake shock, and fire may pass by, I shall follow 
 the guiding but of that still small voice which interprets the 
 dictates of conscience." 
 
 Well said, forehead ; your declaration shall be respected. 
 I have formed my plans — right plans I deem them — and in 
 them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels 
 of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and bloom 
 perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one dreg of shame or 
 one flavor of remorse were detected ; and I do not want sacri- 
 fice, sorrow, dissolution — such is not my taste. I wish to 
 foster, not to blight — to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of 
 blood — no, not of brine ; my harvest must be in smiles, in en- 
 dearments, in sweet — that will do. I think T rave in a kind of 
 exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment 
 ad infinitum, but I dare not. So far I have governed myself 
 thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act ; 
 
SELECTIONS. 81 
 
 but farther might try me beyond my strength. Rise, Miss 
 Eyre, leave me ; " the play is played out." 
 
 ******* 
 Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent expectant woman — 
 almost a bride — was a cold solitary girl again ; her life was 
 pale ; her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had 
 come at midsummer ; a white December storm had whirled 
 over June ; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the 
 blowing roses ; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud ; 
 lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were 
 pathless with untrodden snow ; and the woods which twelve 
 hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the 
 tropics, now spread waste, wild, and white as pine forests in 
 wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead — struck with a sub- 
 tile doom, such as in one night fell on all the first-born in the 
 land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday 
 so blooming and glowing ; they lay stark, still, livid corpses 
 that could never revive. I looked at my love ; that feeling 
 which was my master's — which he had created ; it shivered in 
 my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle ; sickness and 
 anguish had seized it ; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms 
 —it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more 
 could it turn to him ; for faith was blighted — confidence de- 
 stroyed ! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been ; for 
 he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice 
 to him ; I would not say he had betrayed me ; but the attri- 
 bute of stainless truth was gone from his idea ; and from his 
 presence I must go ; that I perceived well. AVhen — how, 
 whither, I could not yet discern ; but he himself, I doubted 
 not, would hurry from Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, 
 he could not have for me ; it had been only fitful passion : 
 
S2 SELECTIONS. 
 
 that was balked ; he would want me no more. I should fear 
 even to cross his path now ; my view must be hateful to him. 
 Oh, how blind had been my eyes ! How weak my conduct ! 
 
 My eyes were covered and closed ; eddying darkness seemed 
 to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused 
 a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to 
 have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river ; I 
 heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent 
 come : to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay 
 faint, longing to be dead. One idea only throbbed lifelike 
 within me — a remembrance of God : it begot an unuttered 
 prayer : these words went wandering up and down in my ray- 
 less mind, as something that should be whispered ; but no 
 energy was found to express them. 
 
 " Be not far from me, for trouble is near ; there is none to 
 help." 
 
 It was near ; and as I had lifted no petition to heaven to 
 avert it — as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, 
 nor moved my lips — it came : in full, heavy swing, the torrent 
 poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my 
 love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death- struck, swayed 
 full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter 
 hour cannot be described ; in truth, " the waters came into 
 my soul ; I sunk in deep mire ; I felt no standing ; I came 
 into deep waters ; the floods overflowed me." 
 
 That night I never thought to sleep, but a slumber fell on 
 me as soon as I lay down in bed. I was transported in 
 thought to the scenes of childhood : I dreamed that I lay in 
 the bed room at Gateshead ; that the night was dark, and my 
 mind impressed with strange fears. The light that long ago 
 
SELECTIONS. 83 
 
 had struck me into syncope, recalled in this vision, seemed 
 glidingly to mount the wall, and tremblingly to pause in the 
 centre of the obscured ceiling. I lifted up my head to look ; 
 the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim ; the gleam was such 
 as the moon imparts to vapors she is about to sever. I watched 
 her come, watched with the strangest anticipation, as though 
 some word of doom were to be written ou her disk. She 
 broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud ; a hand first 
 penetrated the sable folds and waved them away, then, not a 
 moon, but a white human form shone in the azure, inclining a 
 glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It 
 spoke to my spirit ; immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so 
 near, it whispered in my heart : 
 
 " My daughter, flee temptation !" 
 
 "Mother, I will." 
 
 So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. 
 It was yet night, but July nights are short ; soon after mid- 
 night, dawn comes. " It cannot be too early to commence the 
 task I have to fulfil," thought I. 
 
 HER VISION. 
 
 I was excited more than I had ever been ; and whether what 
 followed was the effect of excitement, the reader shall judge. 
 
 All the house was still ; for I believe all, except St. John 
 and myself, were now retired to rest. The one candle was 
 dying out ; the room was full of moonlight. My heart beat 
 fast and thick ; I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to 
 an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at 
 once to my head and extremities. The feeling was not like an 
 electric shock ; but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as start- 
 
84 SELECTIONS. 
 
 ling ; it acted on my senses us if their utmost activity hitherto 
 had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned, 
 and forced to wake. They rose expectant ; eye and ear waited, 
 while the flesh quivered on my bones. 
 
 ''What have you heard ? What do you see?" asked St. 
 John. I saw nothing ; but I heard a voice somewhere cry : 
 
 " Jane ! Jane ! Jane !" nothing more. 
 
 " Oh, God ! what is it ?" I gasped. 
 
 I might have said, " Where is it ?" for it did not seem in 
 the room — nor in the house — nor in the garden ; it did not 
 come out of the air — nor from under the earth — -nor from over- 
 head. I had heard it — where or whence, forever impossible to 
 know ! And it was the voice of a human being — a known, 
 loved, well-remembered voice — that of Edward Fairfax Roch- 
 ester ; and it spoke in pain and woe — wildly, eerily, urgently. 
 
 " I am coming !" I cried. " Wait for me ! Oh, I will 
 come !" I flew to the door, and looked into the passage ; it 
 was dark. I ran out into the garden ; it was void. 
 
 " Where are you ?" I exclaimed. 
 
 The hills beyond Marsh-Glen sent the answer faintly back, 
 lt Where are you ?" I listened. The wind sighed low in the 
 firs ; all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush. 
 
 " Down superstition !" I commented, as that spectre rose 
 up black by the black yew at the gate. " This is not thy 
 deception, nor thy witchcraft ; it is the work of nature. She 
 was roused, and did — no miracle — but her best." 
 
 I broke from St. John, who had followed, and would have 
 detained me. It was ray turn to assume ascendency. My 
 powers were in play, and in force. I told him to forbear ques- 
 tion or remark ; I desired him to leave me ; I must, and would 
 be alone. He obeyed at once. Where there is energy to 
 
SELECTIONS. 85 
 
 command well enough, obedience never fails. T mounted to 
 my chamber ; locked myself in ; fell on my knees ; and pray- 
 ed in my way — a different way to St. John's, but effective in 
 its own fashion. I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty 
 Spirit ; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at his feet. I 
 rose from the thanksgiving — took a resolve and lay down, un- 
 scared, enlightened — eager but for the daylight. 
 
 It wanted yet two hours of breakfast time. I filled the 
 interval m walking softly about my room, and pondering the 
 visitation which had given my plans their present bent. I 
 recalled that inward sensation I had experienced, for I could 
 recall it with all its unspeakable strangeness. I recalled the 
 voice I had heard ; again I questioned whence it came, as vain- 
 ly as before. It seemed in me — not in the external world. I 
 asked, was it a mere nervous impression — a delusion ? I could 
 not conceive or believe it ; it was more like an inspiration. 
 The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake 
 which shook the foundation of Paul and Silas's prison ; it had 
 opened the doors of the soul's cell, and loosed its bands — it 
 had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprung, trembling, 
 listening, aghast ; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled 
 ear, and in my quaking heart, and through my spirit, which 
 neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the suc- 
 cess of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent 
 of the cumbrous body. 
 
 " Ere many days," I said, as I terminated my musings, " I 
 will know something of him whose voice seemed last night to 
 summon me. Letters have proved of no avail — personal inquiry 
 shall replace them." 
 
86 SELECTIONS. 
 
 HIS VISION. 
 
 Some days since — nay, I can number them, four ; it was 
 last Monday night, a singular mood came over me ; one in 
 which grief replaced frenzy ; sorrow, snllenness. I had long 
 had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you 
 must be dead. Late that night, perhaps it might be between 
 eleven and twelve o'clock, ere I retired to my dreary rest, I 
 supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to him, I might soon 
 be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, 
 where there was still hope of rejoining Jane. 
 
 I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which 
 was open ; it soothed me to feel the balmy night air, though I 
 could see no stars, and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew 
 the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet ! Oh, I 
 longed for thee both with soul and flesh ! I asked of God, at 
 once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough 
 desolate, afflicted, tormented, and might not soon taste bliss 
 and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowl- 
 edged ; that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded ; and the 
 alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke involuntarily from 
 my lips, in the words, " Jane ! Jane ! Jane !" 
 
 " Did you speak these words aloud V 
 
 11 1 did, Jane. If any listener had heard me he would have 
 thought me mad, I pronounced them with such frantic energy. ' ' 
 
 II And it was last Monday night ; somewhere near mid- 
 night?" 
 
 " Yes ; but the time is of no consequence ; what followed is 
 the strange point. You will think me superstitious — some 
 superstition I have in my blood, and always had ; nevertheless, 
 this is true — true, at least, it is that I heard what I now relate. 
 
SELECTIONS. 87 
 
 " As I exclaimed ' Jane ! Jane ! Jane ! ' a voice — I cannot 
 tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was — 
 replied, ' I am coming ; wait for me ! ' and a moment after, 
 went whispering on the wind, the words, 'Where are you ? ' 
 
 " I'll tell you, if I can, the idea, the picture these words 
 opened to my mind ; yet it is difficult to express what I want 
 to express. Ferndean is buried, as you see, in a heavy wood, 
 where sound falls dull, and lies unreverberating. ' Where are 
 you V seemed spoken among mountains, for I heard a hill-sent 
 echo repeat the words. Cooler and fresher at the moment the 
 gale seemed to visit my brow ; I could have deemed that in 
 some wild, lone scene, I and Jane were meeting. In spirit, I 
 believe, we must have met. You, no doubt, were, at that 
 hour, in unconscious sleep, Jane ; perhaps your soul wandered 
 from its soul to comfort mine ; for those were your accents — 
 as certain as I live — they were yours !" 
 
 Reader, it was on Monday night, near midnight, that I too 
 had received the mysterious summons ; those were the very 
 words by which I had replied to it. I listened to Mr. Roches- 
 ter's narrative, but made no disclosure in return. The coinci- 
 dence struck me as too awful and inexplicable to be communi- 
 cated or discussed. If I told anything, my tale w T ould be such 
 as must necessarily make a profound impression on the mind of 
 my hearer ; and that mind, yet from its sufferings too prone to 
 gloom, needed not the deeper shade of the supernatural. I 
 kept these things, then, and pondered them in my heart. 
 
 Presentiments are strange things ! and so are sympathies, 
 and so are signs ; and the three combined make one mystery to 
 which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed 
 at presentiments m my life, because I have had strange ones of 
 my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between 
 
SELECTIONS. 
 
 far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives ; asserting, 
 notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to 
 which each traces his origin), whose workings baffle mortal com- 
 prehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the 
 sympathies of nature with man. 
 
 When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night 
 heard Bessie Leaven say to Martha Abbott that she had been 
 dreaming about a little child ; and that to dream of children 
 was a sure sign of trouble, either to one's self or one's kin. 
 The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a cir- 
 cumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix 
 it there. The next day Bessie was sent for home to the 
 death-bed of her little sister. 
 
 Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident ; 
 for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my 
 couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which 
 I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my 
 knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn ; or 
 again, dabbling its hands in running water. It was a wailing 
 child this night, and a laughing one the next — now it nestled 
 close to me, and now it ran away from me ; but whatever 
 mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed 
 not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I 
 entered the land of slumber. 
 
 I did not like this iteration of one idea — this strange re- 
 currence of one image ; and I grew nervous as bedtime came. 
 Night was come, and her planets were risen ; a safe, still night ; 
 too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God 
 is everywhere, 'but certainly we feel his presence most when 
 his works are on the grandest scale spread before us ; and it is 
 in the unclouded night-sky, where his worlds wheel their silent 
 
SELECTIONS. 89 
 
 course, that we read clearest his infinitude, his omnipotence, 
 his omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. 
 Rochester. Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the 
 mighty milky- way. Remembering what it was — what countless 
 systems there swept space like a soft trace of light — I felt the 
 might and strength of God. Sure was I of his efficiency to 
 save what he had made ; convinced I grew that neither earth 
 should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my 
 prayer to thanksgiving ; the Source of Life was also the Saviour 
 of Spirits. Mr. Rochester was safe ; he was God's, and by 
 God would be guarded. I again nestled to the breast of the 
 hill ; and ere-long, in sleep, forgot sorrow. 
 
 DUTY OF FATHERS TO DAUGHTERS. 
 
 I believe single women should have more to do — better 
 chances of interesting and profitable occupation than they 
 possess now. Could men live so themselves ? Would they 
 not be very weary ? And, when there came no relief to their 
 weariness, but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation 
 would not their weariness ferment in time to frenzy ? Lucretia, 
 spinning at midnight in the midst of her maidens, and Solo- 
 mon's virtuous woman, are often quoted as patterns of what 
 "the sex" (as they say) ought to be. I don't know. 
 Lucretia, I daresay, was a most worthy sort of a person, much 
 like my cousin Hortense Moore ; but she kept her servants up 
 very late. I should not have liked to be among the number 
 of the maidens. Hortense would just work me and Sarah in 
 that fashion if she could, and neither of us would bear it. The 
 " virtuous woman," again, had her household up in the very 
 middle of the night ; she " got breakfast over " (as Mrs. Sykes 
 
90 SELECTIONS. 
 
 says) before one o'clock a.m.; but she had something more to 
 do than spin and give out portions ; she was a manufacturer — 
 she made fine linen and sold it ; she was an agriculturist — she 
 bought estates and planted vineyards. That woman was a 
 manager ; she was what the matrons hereabouts call " a clever 
 woman. ' ' On the whole, I like her a good deal better than 
 Lucretia ; but I don't believe either Mr. Armitage or Mr. 
 Sykes could have got the advantage of her in a bargain ; yet I 
 like her. il Strength and honor were her clothing ; the heart 
 of her husband safely trusted in her. She opened her mouth 
 with wisdom ; in her tongue was the law of kindness ; her 
 children rose up and called her blessed ; her husband also 
 praised her." King of Israel ! your model of a woman is a 
 worthy model ! But are we, in these days, brought up to be like 
 her ? Men of Yorkshire, do your daughters reach this royal 
 standard ? Can they reach it ? Can you help them to reach 
 it ? Can you give them a field in which their faculties may be 
 exercised and grow ? Men of England ! look at your poor 
 girls, many of them fading around you, dropping off. in con- 
 sumption or decline ; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour 
 old maids — envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a 
 desert to them ; or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by 
 scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that posi- 
 tion and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied. 
 Fathers ! cannot you alter these things ? Perhaps not all at 
 once ; but consider the matter well when it is brought before 
 you, receive it as a theme worthy of thought ; do not dismiss 
 it with an idle jest or an unmanly insult. You would wish to 
 be proud of your daughters and not to blush for them — then 
 seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise 
 them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-making tale- 
 
SELECTIONS. 91 
 
 bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered — they 
 will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you ; 
 cultivate them — give them scope and work — they will be your 
 gayest companions in health ; your tenderest nurses in sick- 
 ness ; your most faithful props in age. 
 
 BRITISH TRADESMEN. 
 
 All men, taken singly, are more or less selfish ; and taken 
 in bodies they are intensely so. The British merchant 
 is no exception to this rule : the mercantile classes illustrate 
 it strikingly. These classes certainly think too exclusively 
 of making money ; they are too oblivious of every national 
 consideration but that of extending England's (i.e. their own) 
 commerce. Chivalrous feeling, disinterestedness, pride in 
 honor, is too dead in their hearts. A land ruled by them alone 
 would too often make ignominious submission — not at all from 
 the motives Christ teaches, but rather from those Mammon 
 instils. During the late war, the tradesmen of England would 
 have endured buffets from the French on the right cheek and 
 on the left ; their cloak they would have given to Napoleon, 
 and then have politely offered him their coat also, nor would 
 they have withheld their waistcoat if urged ; they would have 
 prayed permission only to retain their one other garment, for 
 the sake of the purse in its pocket. Not one spark of spirit, 
 not one symptom of resistance would they have shown till the 
 hand of the Corsican bandit had grasped that beloved purse ; 
 then, perhaps, transfigured at once into British bull-dogs, they 
 would have sprung at the robber's throat, and there they would 
 have fastened, and there hung — inveterate, insatiable, till the 
 treasure had been restored. Tradesmen, when they speak 
 
93 SELECTIONS, 
 
 against war, always profess to hate it because it is a bloody 
 and barbarous proceeding ; you would think, to hear them talk, 
 that they are peculiarly civilized — especially gentle and kindly 
 of disposition to their fellow-men. This is not the case. Many 
 of them are extremely narrow and cold-hearted, have no good 
 feeling for any class but their own, are distant — even hostile to 
 all others ; call them useless ; seem to question their right to 
 exist ; seem to grudge them the very air they breathe, and to 
 think the circumstance of their eating, drinking, and living in 
 decent houses, quite unjustifiable. They do not know what 
 others do in the way of helping, pleasing, or teaching their 
 race ; they will not trouble themselves to inquire ; whoever is 
 not in trade, is accused of eating the bread of idleness, of pass- 
 ing a useless existence. Long may it be ere England really 
 becomes a nation of shopkeepers ! 
 
 LOVERS, MASCULINE AND FEMININE. 
 
 A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge ex- 
 planation ; a lover feminine can say nothing ; if she did, the 
 result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self- 
 treachery. Nature would brand such demonstration as a rebel- 
 lion against her instincts, and would vindictively repay it 
 afterward by the thunderbolt of self- contempt smiting sud- 
 denly in secret. Take the matter as you find it : ask no ques- 
 tions, utter no remonstrances. It is your best wisdom. You 
 expected bread, and you have got a stone ; break your teeth 
 on it, and don't shriek because the nerves are martyrized ; do 
 not doubt that your mental stomach — if you have such a thing 
 — is strong as an ostrich's — the stone will digest. You held 
 out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. 
 
SELECTIONS. 93 
 
 Show no consternation. Close jour fingers firmly upon the 
 gift : let it sting through your palm. Never mind. In time, 
 after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with 
 torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have 
 learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the 
 whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test — some, it is 
 said, die under it — you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. 
 This you are not aware of, perhaps, at the time, and so cannot 
 borrow courage of that hope. Nature, however, as has been 
 intimated, is an excellent friend in such cases, sealing the lips, 
 interdicting utterance, commanding a placid dissimulation — a 
 dissimulation often wearing an easy and gay mien at first, set- 
 ting down to sorrow and paleness in time, then passing away, 
 and leaving a convenient stoicism, not the less fortifying 
 because it is half bitter. 
 
 Half bitter ! Is that wrong ? No — it should be bitter ; 
 bitterness is strength — it is a tonic. Sweet mild force follow- 
 ing acute suffering you find nowhere : to talk of it is delusion. 
 There may be apathetic exhaustion after the rack ; if energy 
 remains, it will be rather a dangerous energy — deadly when 
 confronted with injustice. 
 
 Who has read the ballad of " Puir Mary Lee ?" — that old 
 Scotch ballad, written I know not in what generation nor by 
 what hand. Mary had been ill-used — probably in being made 
 to believe that truth which was falsehood. She is not complain- 
 ing, but she is sitting alone in the snow-storm, and you hear 
 her thoughts. They are not the thoughts of a model heroine 
 under her circumstances, but they are those of a deeply-feeling, 
 strongly-resentful peasant girl. Anguish has driven her from 
 the ingle-nook of home to the white-shrouded and icy hills. 
 Crouched under the " cauld drift," she recalls every image of 
 
94 SELECTIONS. 
 
 horror : " tbe yellow-wymed ask," " the hairy adder," " the 
 auld moon-brewing-tyke," "the ghaist at e'en," "the sour 
 bullister," " the milk on the taed's back." She hates these, 
 but " waur she hates Robin-a-Ree !" 
 
 " Oh, ance I lived happily by yon bonny burn — 
 The warld was in love wi' me ; 
 But now I maun sit 'neath the cauld drift and mourn, 
 And curse black Robin-a-Ree ! 
 
 " Then whudder awa' thou bitter biting blast, 
 And sough through the scrunty tree, 
 And smoor me up in the snaw fu'fast, 
 And ne' er let the sun me see ! 
 
 " Oh, ne'er melt awa' thou wreath o' snaw, 
 That' s sae kind in graving me ; 
 But hide me frae the scorn and guffaw 
 O' villains like Robin-a-Ree. ' ' 
 
 The gray church and grayer tombs looked divine with this 
 crimson gleam on them. Nature is now at her evening 
 prayers ; she is kneeling before those red hills. I see her 
 prostrate on the great steps of her altar, praying for a fair night 
 for mariners at sea, for travellers in deserts, for lambs on 
 moors, and unfledged birds in woods. She is like what Eve 
 was when she and Adam stood alone on earth. 
 
 Well, life is short at the best ; seventy years, they say, 
 pass like a vapor — like a dream when one awaketh ; and every 
 path trod by human feet terminates in one bourne — the grave ; 
 the little chink in the surface of this great globe — the furrow 
 where the mighty husbandman with the scythe deposits the 
 seed he has shaken from the ripe stem ; and there it falls, 
 
SELECTIONS. 95 
 
 decays, and thence it springs again, when the world has rolled 
 round a few times more. So much for the body ; the soul 
 meantime wings its long flight upward, folds its wings on the 
 brink of the sea of fire and glass, and gazing down through the 
 burning clearness, finds there mirrored the vision of the Chris- 
 tian's triple Godhead : the Sovereign Father, the Mediating 
 Son, the Creator Spirit. Such words, at least, have been 
 chosen to express what is inexpressible ; to describe what 
 baffles description. The soul's rest hereafter, who shall 
 guess ? 
 
 Reader, when you behold an aspect for whose constant 
 gloom and frown you cannot account, whose unvarying cloud 
 exasperates you by its apparent causelessness, be sure that 
 there is a canker somewhere, and a canker not the less deeply 
 corroding because concealed. 
 
 Let England's priests have their due ; they are a faulty set in 
 some respects, being only of common flesh and blood, like us 
 al) ; but the land would be badly off without them ; Britain 
 would miss her church, if that church fell. God save it ! God 
 also reform it 1 
 
 It was a peaceful autumn day. The gilding of the Indian 
 summer mellowed the pastures far and wide. The russet woods 
 stood ripe to be stripped, but were yet full of leaf. The purple 
 of heath bloom, faded but not withered, tinged the hills. The 
 beck wandered down to the Hollow through a silent district ; 
 no wind followed its course, or haunted its woody borders. 
 Fieldhead gardens bore the seal of gentle decay. On the 
 walls, swept that morning, yellow leaves had fluttered down 
 
96 SELECTIONS. 
 
 again. Its time of flowers, and even of fruits, was over ; but 
 a scantling of apples enriched the trees ; only a blossom here 
 and there expanded pale and delicate amid a knot of faded 
 leaves. 
 
 Oh, child ! the human heart can suffer. It can hold more 
 tears than the ocean holds waters. We never know how deep, 
 how wide it is, till misery begins to unbind her clouds, and 
 fill it with rushing blackness. 
 
 What is that electricity they speak of, whose changes 
 makes us well or ill ; whose lack or excess blasts ; whose even 
 balance revives ? What are all those influences that are about 
 us in the atmosphere, that keep playing over our nerves like 
 fingers on stringed instruments, and call forth now a sweet 
 note, and now a wail — now an exultant swell, and anon the 
 saddest cadence ? 
 
 Where is the other world ? In what will another life 
 consist ? Why do I ask ? Have I not cause to think that the 
 hour is hasting but too fast when the veil must be rent for 
 me ? Do I not know the grand mystery is likely to burst 
 prematurely on me ? Great Spirit, in whose goodness I con- 
 fide, whom, as my Father, I have petitioned night and morn- 
 ing from early infancy, help the weak creation of thy hands ! 
 Sustain me through the ordeal I dread and must undergo ! 
 Give me strength ! Give me patience ! Give me — oh, give me 
 faith ! 
 
 Sisters do not like young ladies to fall in love with their 
 brothers : it seems, if not presumptuous, silly, weak, a delu- 
 
SELECTIONS. 97 
 
 sion, an absurd mistake. They do not love these gentlemen 
 — whatever sisterly affection they may cherish toward them — 
 and that others should, repels them with a sense of crude 
 romance. The first movement, in short, excited by such dis- 
 covery (as with many parents on finding their children to be in 
 love) is one of mixed impatience and contempt. Reason — if 
 they be rational people — corrects the false feeling in time ; but 
 if they be irrational, it is never corrected, and the daughter or 
 sister-in-law is disliked to the end. 
 
 Still indomitable was the reply, "I care for myself. The 
 more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, 
 the more t will respect myself. I will keep the law given by 
 God, sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received 
 by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws 
 and principles are not for the times when there is no tempta- 
 tion ; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul 
 rise in mutiny against their rigor ; stringent are they ; in- 
 violate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might 
 break them, what would be their worth ? They have a worth, 
 so I have always believed ; and if I cannot believe it now, it 
 is because I am insane, quite insane, with my veins running 
 fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. 
 Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations are all I have 
 at this hour to stand by ; there I plant my foot." 
 
 I hate boldness — that boldness which is of the brassy brow 
 and insensate nerves ; but I love the courage of the strong 
 heart, the fervor of the generous blood. 
 
 Look at the rigid and formal race of old maids — the race 
 whom all despise ; they have fed themselves from youth up- 
 
98 SELECTIONS. 
 
 ward on maxims of resignation and endurance. Many of them 
 get ossified with their dry diet. Self-control is so continually 
 their thought, so perpetually their object, that at last it absorbs 
 the softer and more agreeable qualities of their nature, and 
 they are mere models of austerity, fashioned out of a little parch- 
 ment and much bone. 
 
 There are impulses we can control, but there are others 
 which control us, because they attain us with a tiger-leap, and 
 are our masters ere we have seen them. 
 
 No man likes to acknowledge that he has made a mistake in 
 the choice of his profession, and every man worthy of the 
 name will row against wind and tide before he allows himself 
 to cry out, "lam baffled," and submits to be floated passively 
 back to land. 
 
 Yes, at that epoch I felt like a morning traveller who doubts 
 not that from the hill he is ascending he shall behold a glorious 
 sunrise. What if the track be strait, steep, and stony ? he 
 sees it not ; his eyes are fixed on that summit, flushed already ; 
 flushed and gilded, and, having gained it, he is certain of the 
 scene beyond. He knows that the sun will face him, that his 
 chariot is even now coming over the eastern horizon, and that 
 the herald breeze he feels on his cheek is opening for the god's 
 career a clear, vast path of azure, amid clouds soft as pearl and 
 warm as flame. Difficulty and toil were to be my lot, but sus- 
 tained by energy, drawn on by hopes as bright as vague, I 
 deemed such a lot no hardship. I mounted now the hill in the 
 shade ; there were pebbles, inequalities, briers in my path, but 
 my eyes were fixed on the crimson peak above ; my imagination 
 
* SELECTIONS. 99 
 
 was with the refulgent firmament beyond, and I thought 
 nothing of the stones turning under my feet, or of the thorns 
 scratching my face and hands. 
 
 God knows I am not by nature vindictive. I would not 
 hurt a man because I can no longer trust or like him ; but 
 neither my reason nor my feelings are of the vacillating order ; 
 they are not of that sandlike sort where impressions, if soon 
 made, are as soon effaced. Once convinced that my friend's 
 disposition is incompatible with my own, once assured that 
 he it is indelibly stained with certain defects obnoxious to my 
 principles, and I dissolve the connection. 
 
 Our likings are regulated by our circumstances. The artist 
 prefers a hilly country because it is picturesque ; the engineer a 
 flat one because it is convenient ; the man of pleasure likes what 
 he calls "a fine woman," she suits him ; the fashionable young 
 gentleman admires the fashionable young lady: she is of his 
 kind ; the toilworn, fagged, probably irritable tutor, blind 
 almost to beauty, insensible to airs and graces, glories chiefly 
 in certain mental qualities ; application, love of knowledge, 
 natural capacity, docility, truthfulness, gratefulness, are the 
 charms that attract his notice and win his regard. These he 
 seeks, but seldom meets ; these, if by chance he finds, he 
 would retain forever ; and, when separation deprives him of 
 them, he feels as if some ruthless hand had snatched from 
 him his only ewe lamb. 
 
 People who are only in each other's company for amusement 
 never really like each other so well, or esteem each other so 
 highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer 
 together. 
 
100 SELECTIONS. 
 
 Novelists should never allow themselves to weary of the 
 study of real life. If they observed this duty conscientiously, 
 they would give us fewer pictures checkered with vivid con- 
 trasts of light and shade ; they would seldom elevate their 
 heroes and heroines to the heights of rapture, still seldom sink 
 them to the depths of despair ; for, if we rarely taste the ful- 
 ness of joy in this life, we yet more rarely govern the acrid 
 bitterness of hopeless anguish ; unless, indeed, we have 
 plunged like beasts into sensual indulgence, abused, strained, 
 stimulated, again overstrained, and, at last, destroyed our 
 faculties for enjoyment ; then truly, we may find ourselves 
 without support, robbed of hope. Our agony is great, and 
 how can it end ? We have broken the spring of our powers ; 
 life must be all suffering — too feeble to conceive faith ; death 
 must be darkness ; God, spirits, religion can have no place in 
 our collapsed minds, where linger only hideous and polluting 
 recollections of vice, and time brings us on to the brink of the 
 grave, and dissolution flings us in, a rag eaten with pain, 
 stamped into the chuirchyard sod by the inexorable heel of 
 despair. 
 
 But the man of regular life and rational mind never despairs. 
 He loses his property — it is a blow — he staggers a moment ; 
 then his energies, roused by the smart, are at work to seek a 
 remedy, activity soon mitigates regret. Sickness affects him ; 
 he takes patience — endures what he cannot cure. Acute pain 
 racks him ; his writhing limbs know not where to find rest ; 
 he leans on Hope's anchor. Death takes from him what he 
 loves ; roots up and tears violently away the stem round which 
 his affections were twined — a dark, dismal time, a frightful 
 wrench ; but some morning religion looks into his desolate 
 house with sunrise, and says that in another world, another 
 
SELECTIONS. 101 
 
 life, he shall meet his kindred again. She speaks of that 
 world as a place uasullied by sin — of that life as an era uniin- 
 bittered by suffering ; she mightily strengthens her consola- 
 tion by connecting with it two ideas — which mortals cannot 
 comprehend, but on which they love to repose — Eternity, Im- 
 mortality ; and the mind of the mourner being filled with an 
 image, faint yet glorious — of heavenly hills all light and peace 
 — of a spirit resting there in bliss — of a day when his spirit 
 shall also alight there, free and disembodied — of a reunion 
 perfected by love, purified from fear, he takes courage — goes 
 out to encounter the necessities and discharge the duties of 
 life ; and, though sadness may never lift her burden from his 
 mind, Hope will enable him to support it. 
 
 On my reason had been inscribed the conviction that un- 
 lawful pleasure, trenching on another's rights, is delusive and 
 envenomed pleasure ; its hollowness disappoints at the time ; 
 its poison cruelly tortures afterward ; its effects deprave for- 
 ever. 
 
 If a wife's nature loathes that of the man she is wedded to, 
 marriage must be slavery. Against slavery all right thinkers 
 revolt, and though torture be the price of resistance, torture 
 must be dared ; though the only road to freedom lie through 
 the gates of death, those gates must be passed ; for freedom 
 is indispensable. 
 
 Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different mean- 
 ings ; no words could inspire a pleasanter content than did 
 M. Paul's wordless presence. 
 
 I do believe there are some human beings so born, so reared, 
 so guided from a soft cradle to a calm and late grave, that no 
 
102 SELECTIONS. 
 
 excessive suffering penetrates their lot, and no tempestuous 
 blackness overcasts their journey. And often these are not 
 pampered, selfish beings, but Nature's elect, harmonious and 
 benign ; men and women mild with charity, kind agents of 
 God's kind attributes. 
 
 There is in lovers a certain infatuation of egotism ; they will 
 have a witness of their happiness, cost that witness what it 
 may. 
 
 Pedigree, social position, and recondite intellectual acquisi- 
 tion, occupied about the same space and place in my interests 
 and thoughts ; they were my third-class lodgers, to whom 
 could be assigned only the small sitting-room and the little 
 back bedroom. Even if the dining- and drawing-rooms stood 
 empty, I never confessed it to them, as thinking minor ac- 
 commodations better suited to their circumstances. The 
 world, I soon learned, held a different estimate ; and I make 
 no doubt the world is very right in its view, yet believe also 
 that I am not quite wrong in mine. 
 
 A calm day had settled into a crystalline evening. The 
 world wore a North Pole coloring. All its lights and tints 
 looked like the " reflets" of white, or violet, or pale-green 
 gems. The hills wore a lilac blue ; the setting sun had purple 
 in its red ; thy sky was ice, all silvered azure ; when the stars 
 rose, they were of white crystal — not gold ; gray, or cerulean, 
 or faint emerald hues — cool, pure, and transparent — tinged the 
 mass of the landscape. 
 
 Man is ever clogged with his mortality, and it was my 
 mortal nature which now pattered and plained ; my nerves 
 
SELECTIONS. 103 
 
 which jarred and gave a false sound, because the soul, of late 
 rushing headlong to an aim, had overstrained the body's com- 
 parative weakness. A horror of great darkness fell upon me ; 
 I felt my chamber invaded by one I had known formerly, but 
 had thought forever departed. I was temporarily a prey 
 to hypochondria. She had been my acquaintance, nay, my 
 guest once before in boyhood ; I had entertained her at bed 
 and board for a year ; for that space of time I had her to 
 myself in a secret ; she lay with me ; she ate with me ; she 
 walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in 
 hills, where we could sit together, and where she could 
 droop her drear veil over me, and so hide sky and sun, grass 
 and green tree ; taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom 
 and holding me with arms of bone. What tales she would tell 
 me at such hours ! What songs she would recite in my ears ! 
 How she would discourse to me of her own country — the 
 grave — and again and again promise to conduct me there ere 
 long ; and drawing me to the very brink of a black, sullen 
 river, show me on the other side shores unequal with mound, 
 monument, and tablet, standing up in a glimmer more hoary 
 than moonlight. "Necropolis!" she would whisper, pointing 
 to the pale piles, and add, " it contains a mansion prepared 
 for you." But my boyhood was lonely, parentless, uncheered 
 by brother or sister ; and there was no marvel that, just as I 
 rose to youth, a sorceress, finding me lost in vague mental 
 wanderings, with many affections and few objects, glowing- 
 aspirations and gloomy prospects, strong desires and tender 
 hopes, should lift up her illusive lamp to me in the distance, 
 and lure me to her vaulted home of horrors. 
 
104 SELECTIONS. 
 
 REASON. 
 
 This hag, this Reason, would not let me look up, or smile, or 
 hope ; she could not rest unless I were altogether crushed, 
 cowed, broken-in, and broken down. According to her I was 
 born only to work for a piece of bread, to await the pains of 
 death, and steadily through all life to despond. Reason might 
 be right ; yet no wonder we are glad at times to defy her, to 
 rush from under her rod and give a truant hour to Imagination 
 — her soft, bright foe, our sweet Help, our divine Hope. We 
 shall and must break bounds at intervals, despite the terrible 
 revenge that awaits our return. Reason is vindictive as a 
 devil ; for me she was always envenomed as a stepmother. If 
 I have obeyed her, it has chiefly been with the obedience of 
 fear, not of love. Long ago I should have have died of her 
 ill-usage ; her stint, her chill, her barren board, her icy bed, 
 her savage, ceaseless blows ; but for that kinder Power who 
 holds my secret and sworn allegiance. Often has Reason 
 turned me out by night, in mid -winter, on cold snow, flinging 
 for sustenance the gnawed bone dogs had forsaken ; sternly 
 has she vowed her stores held nothing more for me — harshly 
 denied my right to ask better things. . . . Then, looking 
 up, have I seen in the sky a head amid circling stars, of which 
 the midmost and the brightest lent a ray sympathetic and 
 attent. A spirit, softer and better than Human Reason has 
 descended with quiet flight to the waste — bringing all round 
 her a sphere of air borrowed of eternal summer ; bringing 
 perfume of flowers which cannot fade — fragrance of trees 
 whose fruit is life ; bringing breezes pure from a world whose 
 day needs no sun to lighten it. My hunger has this good 
 angel appeased with food, sweet and strange, gathered among 
 
SELECTIONS. 105 
 
 gleaning angels, garnering their dew-white harvest in the first 
 fresh hour of a heavenly day ; tenderly has she assuaged the 
 insufferable tears which weep away life itself — kindly given 
 rest to deadly weariness — generously lent hope and impulse 
 to paralyzed despair. Divine, compassionate, succorable in- 
 fluence ! When I bend the knee to other than God, it shall 
 be at thy white and winged feet, beautiful on mountain or on 
 plain. Temples have been reared to the Sun — altars dedicated 
 to the Moon. Oh, greater glory ! To thee neither hands 
 build nor lips consecrate ; but hearts, through ages, are faith- 
 ful to thy worship. A dwelling thou hast, too wide for walls, 
 too high for dome — a temple whose floors are space — rites 
 whose mysteries transpire in presence, to the kindling, the 
 harmony of worlds ! 
 
 To " sit in sunshine calm and sweet" is said to be excellent 
 for weak people ; it gives them vital force. 
 
 There are human tempers, bland, glowing, and genial, 
 within whose influence it is as good for the poor in spirit to 
 live, as it is for the feeble in frame to bask in the glow of noon. 
 
 These struggles with the natural character, the strong native 
 bent of the heart, may seem futile and fruitless, but in the 
 end they do good. They tend, however slightly, to give the 
 actions, the conduct, that turn which Reason approves, and 
 which Feeling, perhaps, too often opposes. They certainly 
 make a difference in the general tenor of a life, and enable 
 it to be better regulated, more equable, quieter on the surface ; 
 and it is on the surface only the common gaze will fall. As 
 to what lies below, leave that with God. Man, your equal, 
 weak as you, and not fit to be your judge, may be shut out 
 
106 SELECTIONS. 
 
 thence. Take it to your Maker ; show Him the secrets of the 
 spirit He gave ; ask Him how you are to bear the pains He 
 has appointed ; kneel in His presence, and pray with faith for 
 light in darkness, for strength in piteous weakness, for patience 
 in extreme need. Certainly, at some hour, though perhaps 
 not your hour, the waiting waters will stir ; in some shape, 
 though perhaps not the shape you dreamed, which your heart 
 loved, and for which it bled, the healing herald will descend, 
 the cripple, and the blind, and the dumb, and the possessed 
 will be led to bathe. Herald, come quickly ! Thousands lie 
 round the pool, weeping and despairing, to see it, through 
 slow years, stagnant. Long are the " times" of heaven. The 
 orbits of angel messengers seem wide to mortal vision : they 
 may enring ages. The cycle of one departure and return 
 may clasp unnumbered generations ; and dust, kindling to 
 brief suffering life, and through pain, passing back to dust, 
 may meanwhile perish out of memory again, and yet again. 
 To how many maimed and mourning millions is the first and 
 sole angel visitant, him Easterns call Azrael ! 
 
 The short winter day, as I perceived from the far-declined 
 sun, was already approaching its close ; a chill frost-mist was 
 
 rising from the river on which X stands, and along whose 
 
 banks the road I had taken lay ; it dimmed the earth, but did 
 not obscure the clear, icy blue of the January sky. There was 
 a great stillness near and far ; the time of the day favored tran- 
 quillity, as the people were all employed within doors, the hour 
 of evening release from the factories not being yet arrived ; a 
 sound of full-flowing water alone pervaded the air, for the river 
 was deep and abundant, swelled by the melting of a late snow. 
 I stood awhile leaning over a wall, and, looking down at the 
 
SELECTIONS. 107 
 
 current, I watched the rapid rush of its waves. I desired 
 memory to take a clear and permanent impression of the scene, 
 and treasure it for future years. Grovetown church clock 
 struck four. Looking up, I beheld the last of that day's sun 
 glinting red through the leafless boughs of some very old oak 
 trees surrounding the church : its light colored and character- 
 ized the picture as I wished. I paused yet a moment till the 
 sweet, low sound of the bell had quite died out of the air ; 
 then ear, eye, and feeling satisfied, I quitted the wall, and once 
 more turned my face toward X . 
 
 Where my soul went during that swoon I cannot tell. 
 Whatever she saw, or wherever she travelled in her trance on 
 that strange night, she kept her own secret, never whispering a 
 word to Memory, and baffling imagination by an indissoluble 
 silence. She may have gone upward, and come in sight of 
 her eternal home, hoping for leave to rest now, and deeming 
 that her painful union with matter was at last dissolved. 
 While she so deemed, an angel may have warned her away 
 from heaven's threshold, and, guiding her weeping down, have 
 bound her once more, all shuddering and unwilling, to that poor 
 frame, cold and wasted, of whose companionship she was 
 grown more than weary. 
 
 How often, while women and girls sit warm at sung firesides, 
 their hearts and imaginations are doomed to divorce from the 
 comfort surrounding their persons, forced out by night to 
 wander through dark ways, to dare stress of weather, to con- 
 tend with the snow-blast, to wait at lonely gates and stiles in 
 wildest storms, watching and listening to see and hear the 
 father, the son, the husband coming home. 
 
108 SELECTIONS. 
 
 There are people whom a lowered position degrades morally, 
 to whom loss of connection costs loss of self-respect : are not 
 these justified in placing the highest value on that station and 
 association which is their safeguard from debasement ? If a 
 man feels that he would become contemptible in his own eyes 
 were it generally known that his ancestry were simple and not 
 gentle, poor and not rich, workers and not capitalists, would it 
 be right severely to blame him for keeping these fatal facts out 
 of sight — for starting, trembling, quailing at the chance which 
 threatens exposure ? The longer we live the more our experi- 
 ence widens ; the less prone are we to judge our neighbor's con- 
 duct, to question the world's wisdom ; whenever an accumula- 
 tion of small defences is found, whether surrounding the prude's 
 virtue or the man of the world's respectability, there, be sure, 
 it is needed. 
 
 Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid 
 the seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwell- 
 ings, are liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out 
 of the memory of their friends, the denizens of a freer world ! 
 Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon some space of 
 unusually frequent intercourse — some congeries of rather excit- 
 ing little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather seem 
 to be the quickening than the suspension of communication — 
 there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank of 
 oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank ; alike entire and 
 unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut 
 off ; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur ; the book, 
 paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, comes no 
 more. 
 
 Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the 
 
SELECTIONS. 109 
 
 hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his 
 connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. 
 That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very 
 clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the 
 likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones — that same 
 interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for 
 his friends. 
 
 The hermit — if he be a sensible hermit — will swallow his 
 own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions during these 
 weeks of inward winter. He will know that Destiny designed 
 him to imitate, on occasion, the dormouse, and he will be com- 
 fortable ; make a tidy ball of himself, creep into a hole of 
 life's wall, and submit decently to the drift which blows in and 
 soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for the season. 
 
 Ah ! when imagination once runs riot, where do we stop ? 
 What winter tree so bare and branchless — what wayside, hedge- 
 munching animal so humble, that Fancy, a passing cloud, and 
 a struggling moonbeam, will not clothe it in spirituality, and 
 make of it a phantom ? 
 
 There are certain things in which we so rarely meet with our 
 double that it seems a miracle when that chance befalls. 
 
 For a little while, the blooming semblance of beauty may 
 nourish round weakness, but it cannot bear a blast ; it soon 
 fades, even in serenest sunshine. 
 
 I have ever felt most burdensome that sort of sensibility 
 which bends of its own will, a giant slave under the sway of 
 
 good sense. 
 
110 SELECTIONS. 
 
 We walked back to the Rue Fossette by moonlight — such 
 moonlight as fell on Eden — shining through the shades of the 
 Great Garden, and haply gilding a path glorious for a step 
 divine — a Presence nameless. Once in their lives some men 
 and women go back to these first fresh days of our great sire 
 and mother — taste that grand morning's dew — bathe in its sun- 
 rise. 
 
 Faithful women err in this, that they think themselves the 
 sole faithful of God's creatures. 
 
 No mockery in this world ever sounds to me so hollow as 
 that of being told to cultivate happiness. What does such 
 advice mean ? Happiness is not a potato, to be planted in 
 mould and tilled with manure. Happiness is a glory shining 
 far down upon us out of heaven. She is a divine dew which 
 the soul, on certain of its summer mornings, feels gently drop- 
 ping upon it from the amaranth bloom and golden fruitage of 
 Paradise. 
 
 If there are words and wrongs like knives, whose deep- 
 inflicted lacerations never heal — cutting injuries and insults of 
 serrated and poison-dripping edge — so, too there are consola- 
 tions of tone too fine for the ear not fondly and forever to 
 retain their echo : caressing kindnesses — loved, lingered over 
 through a whole life, recalled with unfaded tenderness, and 
 answering the call with undimmed shine, out of that raven 
 cloud foreshadowing Death himself. 
 
 Where, indeed, does the moon not look well ? What is the 
 scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow ? 
 
SELECTIONS. Ill 
 
 Rosy or fiery, she mounted now above a not distant bank ; 
 even while we watched her flushed ascent, she cleared to gold, 
 and in very brief space floated up stainless into a now calm sky. 
 
 Our natures own predilections and antipathies alike strange. 
 There are people from whom we secretly shrink, whom we 
 would personally avoid, though reason confesses that they are 
 good people. There are others with faults of temper, etc., evi- 
 dent enough, beside whom we live content, as if the air about 
 them did us good. 
 
 No man — no woman, is always strong, always able to bear up 
 against the unjust opinion — the vilifying word. Calumny, 
 even from the mouth of a fool, will sometimes cut into un- 
 guarded feelings. 
 
 I believe — I daily find it proved — that we can get nothing 
 in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a 
 conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through strength- 
 ening peril. We err ; we fall ; we are humbled — then we 
 walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of 
 the gilded cup of vice, or from the beggar's wallet of avarice ; 
 we are sickened, degraded ; everything good in us rebels 
 against us ; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies ; 
 there is a period of civil war ; if the soul has strength, it con- 
 quers and rules thereafter. 
 
 Not always do those who dare such divine conflict prevail. 
 Night after night the sweat of agony may burst dark on the 
 forehead ; the suppliant may cry for mercy with that soundless 
 voice the soul utters when its appeal is to the Invisible. 
 
112 SELECTIONS. 
 
 " Spare my beloved," it may implore, " Heal my life's life. 
 Rend not from me what long affection entwines with my whole 
 nature. God of heaven, bend — hear — be clement !" And 
 after this cry and strife, the sun may rise and see him worsted. 
 That opening morn, which used to salute him with the whisper 
 of zephyrs, the carol of skylarks, may breathe, as its first 
 accents, from the dear lips which color and heat have quitted, 
 " Oh, I have had a suffering night. This morning I am worse. 
 I have tried to rise. I cannot. Dreams I am unused to have 
 troubled me." 
 
 Then the watcher approaches the patient's pillow, and sees a 
 new and strange moulding of the familiar features, feels at 
 once that the insufferable moment draws nigh, knows that it is 
 God's will that his idol shall be broken, and bends his head, 
 and subdues his soul to the sentence he cannot avert, and 
 scarce can bear. 
 
 This is an autumn evening, wet and wild. There is only 
 one cloud in the sky, but it curtains it from pole to pole. The 
 wind cannot rest ; it hurries sobbing over hills of sullen outline, 
 colorless with twilight and mist. Rain has beat all day on that 
 church tower. It rises dark from the stony inclosure of its 
 graveyard. The nettles, the long grass, and the tombs, all drip 
 with wet. This evening reminds me too forcibly of another 
 evening some years ago — a howling, rainy autumn evening, 
 too, when certain persons who had that day performed a 
 pilgrimage to a new-made grave in a heretic cemetery sat near 
 a wood-fire on the hearth of a foreign dwelling. They were 
 merry and social, but they each knew that a gap, never to be 
 filled, had been made in their circle. They knew they had lost 
 something whose absence could never be quite atoned for so 
 
SELECTIONS. 113 
 
 long as they lived ; and they knew that heavy-falling rain was 
 soaking into the wet earth which covered their lost darling, 
 and that the sad, sighing gale was mourning above her buried 
 head. The fire warmed thern ; life and friendship yet blessed 
 them ; but Jessie lay cold, coffined, solitary, only the sod 
 screening her from the storm. 
 
 The true poet, quiet externally though he may be, has often 
 a truculent spirit under his placidity, and is full of shrewdness 
 in his meekness, and can measure the whole stature of those 
 who look down on him, and correctly ascertain the weight and 
 value of the pursuit they disdain him for not having followed. 
 It is happy that he can have his own bliss, his own society with 
 his great friend and goddess, nature, quite independent of 
 those who find little pleasure in him, and in whom he finds no 
 pleasure at all. It is just that while the world and circum- 
 stances often turn a dark, cold side to him — and properly, too, 
 because he first turns a dark, cold, careless side to them — he 
 should be able to maintain a festal brightness and cherishing 
 glow in his bosom, which makes all bright and genial for him ; 
 while strangers, perhaps, deem his existence a Polar winter 
 never gladdened by a sun. The true poet is not one whit to 
 be pitied ; and he is apt to laugh in his sleeve when any mis- 
 guided sympathizer whines over his wrongs. Even when utili- 
 tarians sit in judgment on him, and pronounce him and his art 
 useless, he hears the sentence with such a hard derision, such a 
 broad, deep, comprehensive and merciless contempt of the 
 unhappy Pharisees who pronounce it, that he is rather to be 
 chidden than condoled with. 
 
 After all, the British peasantry are the best taught, best 
 mannered, most self-respecting of any in Europe. 
 
114 SELECTIONS. 
 
 It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from in- 
 digence to wealth — a very fine thing ; bat not a matter one 
 can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And 
 then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapt- 
 nre-giving ; this is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing 
 ideal about it ; all its associations are solid and sober, and its 
 manifestations are the same. One does not jump, and spring, 
 and shout hurrah ! at hearing one has got a fortune ; one 
 begins to consider responsibilities and to ponder business ; on 
 a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares — and we 
 contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow. 
 
 A splendid midsummer shone over England ; skies so pure, 
 suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom 
 favor, even singly, our wave-girt land. It was as if a band of 
 Italian days had come from the South, like a flock of glorious 
 passenger-birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of 
 Albion, The hay was all got in ; the fields around Thorn- 
 field were green and shorn ; the roads white and baked ; the 
 trees were in their dark prime ; hedge and wood, full-leaved 
 and deeply-tinted, contrasted well with the Bunny hue of the 
 cleared meadows between. 
 
 It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance, 
 and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion : I had left 
 this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now 
 with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great suffer- 
 ings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries — 
 to be reconciled, and clasp hands in amity. 
 
 All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not ; 
 whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots — provided 
 
SELECTIONS. 115 
 
 only they be sincere— have their sublime moments ; when they 
 subdue and rule. 
 
 If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little 
 amazed ; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an 
 illusion about women ; they do not read them in a true light ; 
 they misapprehend them, both for good and evil : their good 
 woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel ; their bad woman 
 almost always a fiend. Then to hear them fall into ecstasies 
 with each other's creations, worshipping the heroine of such 
 a poem — novel — drama, thinking it fine — divine ! Fine and 
 divine it may be, but often quite artificial — false as the rose in 
 my best bonnet there. If I spoke all I think on this point ; if 
 I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters in 
 first-rate works, where should I be ? Dead under a cairn of 
 avenging stones in half an hour. 
 
 Yorkshire has such families here and t4iere among her hills 
 and wolds — peculiar, racy, vigorous ; of good blood and strong 
 brain ; turbulent somewhat in the pride of their strength, and 
 intractable in the force of their native powers ; wanting polish, 
 wanting consideration, wanting docility, but sound, spirited, 
 and true-bred as the eagle on the cliff or the steed in the steppe. 
 
 It flashes on me at this moment how sisters feel toward each 
 other. Affection twined with their life, which no shocks of 
 feeling can uproot, which little quarrels only trample an instant 
 that it may spring more freshly when the pressure is removed ; 
 affection that no passion can ultimately outrival, with which 
 even love itself cannot do more than compete in force and 
 truth. Love hurts us so : it is so tormenting, so racking, and 
 
US SELECTIONS. 
 
 it burns away our strength with its flame ; in affection is no 
 pain and no lire, only sustenance and balm. 
 
 That British love of decency will work miracles. The 
 poverty which reduces an Irish girl to rags is impotent to rob 
 the English girl of the neat wardrobe she knows necessary to 
 her self-respect. 
 
 Mother, the Lord who gave each of us our talents will 
 come home some day, and will demand from all an account. 
 The teapot, the old stocking-foot, the linen rag, the willow- 
 pattern tureen, will yield up their barren deposit in many a 
 house. Suffer your daughters at least to put their money to 
 the exchangers, that they may be enabled at the Master's 
 coming to pay him his own with usury. 
 
 The future sometimes seems to sob a low warning of the 
 events it is bringing us, like some gathering though yet remote 
 storm, which, in tones of the wind, in flushings of the firma- 
 ment, in clouds strangely torn, announces a blast strong to 
 strew the sea with wrecks : or commissioned to bring in fog 
 the yellow taint of pestilence, covering white Western isles 
 with the poisoned exhalations of the East, dimming the lattices 
 of English homes with the breath of Indian plague. At other 
 times, this future bursts suddenly, as if a rock had rent, and 
 in it a grave had opened, whence issues the body of one that 
 slept. Ere you are aware, you stand face to face Avith a 
 shrouded and unthought-of calamity — a new Lazarus. 
 
 Most people have had a period or periods in their lives 
 when they have felt thus forsaken ; when, having long hoped 
 
SELECTIONS. 117 
 
 against hope, and still seen the day of fruition deferred, their 
 hearts have truly sickened within them. This is a terrible 
 hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise 
 of day ; that turn of the year when the icy January wind car- 
 ries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter and 
 the prophecy of coming spring. The perishing birds, how- 
 ever, cannot thus understand the blast before which they 
 shiver ; and as little can the suffering soul recognize, in the 
 climax of its affliction, the dawn of its deliverance. Yet let 
 whoever grieves still cling fast to love and faith in God : God 
 will never deceive, never finally desert him. " Whom he 
 loveth, he chasteneth." These words are true, and should not 
 be forgotten. 
 
 " I saw kneeling on those hills — I now see — a woman- 
 Titan ; her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the 
 heath, where yonder flock is grazing ; a veil, white as an 
 avalanche, sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques 
 of lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her 
 zone, purple like that horizon ; through its blush shines the 
 star of evening. Her steady eyes I cannot picture ; they 
 are clear — they are deep as lakes — they are lifted and full of 
 worship — they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre 
 of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and 
 is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers ; 
 she reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stilbro' Moor ; her 
 mighty hands are joined beneath it. So kneeling, face to face 
 she speaks with God. That Eve is Jehovah's daughter, as 
 Adam was his son." 
 
 " She is very vague and visionary ! Come, Shirley, we 
 ought to go into church." 
 
118 SELECTIONS. 
 
 " Caroline, ± will not : I will stay out here with my mother 
 Eve, in these days called Nature. I love her — undying, 
 mighty being ! Heaven may have faded from her brow when 
 she fell in Paradise ; but all that is glorious on earth shines 
 there still. She is taking me to her bosom, and showing me 
 her heart. Hush, Caroline ! you will see her and feel as I do, 
 if we are both silent." 
 
 It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four. " Day 
 its fervid fires had wasted," and dew fell cool on panting plain 
 and scorched summit. Where the sun had gone down in simple 
 state — pure of the pomp of clouds — spread a solemn purple, 
 burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one 
 point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and 
 still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own charm of 
 fine, deep blue, and its own modest gem, a rising and solitary 
 star ; soon it will coast the moon, but she was yet beneath the 
 horizon. 
 
 1 walked awhile on the pavement, but a subtile, well-known 
 scent — that of a cigar — stole from some window ; I saw the 
 library casement open a hand-breadth ; I knew I might be 
 watched thence, so I went in the orchard. No nook in the 
 grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like : it was full of 
 trees, it bloomed with flowers ; a very high wall shut it out 
 from the court, on one side ; on the other, a beech avenue 
 screened it from the lawn. At the bottom was a sunk fence, 
 its sole separation from lonely fields : a winding walk, bor- 
 dered with laurels and terminating in a giant chestnut, circled 
 at the base by a seat, led down to the fence. Here one could 
 wander unseen. While such honey-dew fell, such silence 
 reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt us if I could haunt 
 
SELECTIONS. 119 
 
 such shade forever : but in threading such flower and fruit 
 parterres at the upper part of the inclosure, enticed there by 
 the light the now rising moon casts ©n this more open quarter, 
 my step is stayed — not by sound, not by sight, but once more 
 by a warning fragrance. 
 
 Sweetbrier and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have 
 long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense : this new 
 scent is neither of shrub nor flower ■ it is — I know it well — it 
 is Mr. Rochester's cigar ! 
 
 Nothing irks me like the idea of being a burden and a bore 
 — an inevitable burden — a ceaseless bore ! 
 
 Nothing ever charms me more than when I meet my su- 
 perior — one who makes me sincerely feel that he is my su- 
 perior. 
 
 Often had she gone up the Hollow with him after sunset, 
 to scent the freshness of the earth, where a growth of fragrant 
 herbage carpeted a certain narrow terrace, edging a deep 
 ravine, from whose rifted gloom was heard a sound like the 
 spirit of the lonely watercourse, moaning among its wet stones, 
 and between its weedv banks, and under its dark bower of 
 alders. 
 
 However old, plain, humble, desolate, afflicted we may be, 
 so long as our hearts preserve the feeblest spark of life, they 
 preserve also, shivering near that pale ember, a starved, ghostly 
 longing for appreciation and affection. To this extenuated 
 spectre, perhaps, a crumb is not thrown once a year ; but 
 when ahungered and athirst to famine — when all humanity hai 
 
120 SELECTIONS. 
 
 forgotten the dying tenant of a decaying house — Divine Mercy 
 remembers the mourner, and a shower of manna falls for 
 lips that earthly nutriment is to pass no more. Biblical 
 promises, heard first in health, but then unheeded, come whis- 
 pering to the couch of sickness ; it is felt that a pitying God 
 watches what all mankind have forsaken ; the tender com- 
 passion of Jesus is recalled and relied on ; the faded eye, 
 gazing beyond Time, sees a Home, a Friend, a Refuge in 
 Eternity 
 
 " What was I created for, I wonder ? Where is my place 
 in the world?" 
 
 She mused again. 
 
 41 Ah ! I see," she pursued presently ; " that is the question 
 which most old maids are puzzled to solve ; other people solve 
 it for them by saying, ' Your place is to do good to others, 
 to be helpful whenever help is wanted. ' That is right in some 
 measure, and a very convenient doctrine for the people who 
 hold it ; but I perceive thrt certain sets of human beings are 
 very apt to maintain that other sets should give up their lives 
 to them and their service, and then they requite them by 
 praise ; they call them devoted and virtuous. Is this enough ? 
 Is it to live ? Is there not a terrible hollowness, mockery, 
 want, craving, in that existence which is given away to others, 
 for want of something of your own to bestow it on ? I sus- 
 pect there is. Does virtue lie in abnegation of self ? I do 
 not believe it. Undue humility makes tyranny ; weak con- 
 cession creates selfishness. 
 
 " Each human being has his share of rights. I suspect it 
 would conduce to the happiness and welfare of all if each knew 
 his allotment, and held to it as tenaciously as the martyr to 
 
SELECTIONS. 121 
 
 his creed. Queer thoughts these, that surge in my mind ; are 
 they right thoughts ? I am not certain. 
 
 " The utmost which ought to be required of old maids, in 
 the way of appearance, is that they should not absolutely 
 offend men's eyes as they pass them in the street ; for the 
 rest they should be allowed, without too much scorn, to be as 
 absorbed, grave, plain-looking, and plain-dressed as they 
 please. ' ' 
 
 Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity 
 or registering wrongs. We are, and must be, one and all, 
 burdened with faults in this world : but the time will soon 
 come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our 
 corruptible bodies ; when debasement and sin will fall from us 
 with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the 
 spirit will remain, the impalpable principle of life and thought, 
 pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature : whence 
 it came it will return — perhaps again to be communicated to 
 some being higher than man — perhaps to pass through grada- 
 tions of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the 
 seraph ! Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to 
 degenerate from man to fiend ! No ; I cannot believe that ; I 
 hold another creed, which no one ever taught me, and which I 
 seldom mention, but in which I delight, and to which I cling ; 
 for it extends hope to all : it makes Eternity a rest — a mighty 
 home, not a terror and abyss. Besides, with this creed, I can 
 so closely distinguish between the criminal and his crime ; I 
 can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last : with 
 this creed, revenge never worries my heart, degradation never 
 too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low. I 
 live in calm, looking to the end. 
 
122 SELECTIONS. 
 
 4 ' We forget Nature, imprimis. ' ' 
 
 ' ' And then Nature forgets us ; covers her vast calm brow 
 with a dim veil, conceals her face, and withdraws the peaceful 
 joy with which, if we had been content to worship her only, 
 she would have filled our hearts." 
 
 " What does she gives us instead ?" 
 
 " More elation and more anxiety : an excitement that steals 
 the hours away fast, and a trouble that ruffles their course.' ' 
 
 Commonplace young ladies can be quite as hard as common- 
 place young gentlemen — quite as worldly and selfish. Those 
 who suffer should always avoid them ; grief and calamity they 
 despise : they seem to regard them as judgments of God on the 
 lowly. With them, to " love" is merely to contrive a scheme 
 for achieving a good match ; to be " disappointed " is to have 
 their scheme seen through and frustrated. They think the feel- 
 ings and projects of others on the subject of love similar to 
 their own, and judge them accordingly. 
 
 Men and women are so different ; they are in such a differ- 
 ent position. W'omen have so few things to think about — men 
 so many ; you may have a friendship for a man, while he is 
 almost indifferent to you. Much of what cheers your life may 
 be dependent on him, while not a feeling or interest of moment 
 in his eyes may have reference to you. 
 
 Love is real : the most real, the most lasting — the sweetest 
 and yet the bitterest thing we know. 
 
 It is vulgar and puerile to confound generals with particulars ; 
 in every case there is the rule, and there are the exceptions. 
 
SELECTION'S. 123 
 
 Sincerity is never ludicrous ; it is always respectable. 
 Whether truth — be it religious or moral truth — speak elo- 
 quently and in well-chosen language or not, its voice should be 
 heard with reverence. Let those who cannot nicely and with 
 certainty discern the difference between the tones of hypocrisy 
 and those of sincerity, never presume to laugh at all, lest they 
 should have the miserable misfortune to laugh in the wrong 
 place, and commit impiety when they think they are achieving 
 wit. 
 
 Eleemosynary relief never yet tranquillized the working- 
 classes — it never made them grateful ; it is not in human nature 
 that it should. I suppose were all things ordered aright, they 
 ought not to be in a position to need that humiliating relief ; 
 and this they feel : we should feel it were we so placed. 
 
 For those who are not hungry, it is easy to palaver about the 
 degradation of charity, and so on ; but they forget the brevity 
 of life, as well as its bitterness. We have none of us long to 
 live ; let us help each other through seasons of want and woe 
 as well as we can, without heeding in the least the scruples of 
 vain philosophy. 
 
 The black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze through 
 the grounds. I covered my head and arms with the skirt of 
 my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation 
 which was quite sequestered ; but I found no pleasure in the 
 silent trees, the fallen fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, 
 russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened 
 together. I leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty 
 field where no sheep were feeding, where the short grass was 
 
12A SELECTION'S. 
 
 nipped and blanched. It was a very gray day ; a most opaque 
 sky, " onding on snaw," canopied all ; thence flakes fell at 
 intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea 
 without melting. I stood a wretched child enough, whispering 
 to myself over and over again, " What shall I do ? what shall 
 I do?" 
 
 It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel 
 itself quite alone in the world ; cut adrift from every connec- 
 tion, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be 
 reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning 
 to that it has quitted. 
 
 Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is 
 an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits ; that world is round 
 us, for it is everywhere ; and those spirits watch us, for they 
 are commissioned to guard us ; and if we were dying in pain 
 and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed 
 us, angels see our tortures, recognize our innocence (if innocent 
 we be, as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brockle- 
 hurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from 
 Mrs. Reed ; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and 
 on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of 
 spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, 
 should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so 
 soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness — to 
 glory ? 
 
 Men rarely like such of their fellows as read their inward 
 nature too clearly and truly. It is good for women, especially, 
 to be endowed with a soft blindness ; to have mild, dim eyes, 
 
SELECTIONS. 125 
 
 that never penetrate below the surface of things — that take all 
 for what it seems ; thousands, knowing this, keep their eyelids 
 dropped, on system ; but the most downcast glance has its 
 loophole, through which it can, on occasion, take its sentinel- 
 survey of life. I remember once seeing a pair of blue eyes, 
 that were usually thought sleepy, secretly on the alert, and 1 
 knew by their expression — an expression which chilled my 
 blood, it was in that quarter so wondrously unexpected — that 
 for years they had been accustomed to silent soul -reading. 
 The world called the owner of these blue eyes ' ' bonne petite 
 femme" (she was not an Englishwoman); I learned her nature 
 afterward — got it off by heart — studied it in its farthest, most 
 hidden recesses — she was the finest, deepest, subtlest schemer 
 in Europe. 
 
 I know no medium ; I never in my life have known any 
 medium in my dealings with positive hard characters, antago- 
 nistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined 
 revolt. I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the 
 very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, 
 into the other. 
 
 A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and 
 trembled through the boughs of the chestnut ; it wandered 
 away — away — away — to an indefinite distance — rit died. The 
 nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour. 
 
 \ 
 
 It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with 
 tranquillity : they must have action ; and they will make it if 
 they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom 
 than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. 
 
126 SELECTIONS. 
 
 Nobody knows how many rebellions, besides political rebellions, 
 ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are 
 supposed to be very calm generally ; but women feel just as 
 men feel ; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for 
 their efforts as much as their brothers do ; they suffer from too 
 rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men 
 would suffer ; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged 
 fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to 
 making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the 
 piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn 
 them, or laugh at them if they seek to do more or learn more 
 than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. 
 
 Feeling without judgment is a washy draught indeed ; but 
 judgment untempered by feeling is too bitter and husky a 
 morsel for human deglutition. 
 
 Obtrusiveness is a crime ; forwardness is a crime ; and 
 both disgust. But love ! — no purest angel need blush to love ! 
 When I see or hear either man or woman couple shame with 
 love, I know their minds are coarse, their associations debased. 
 Many who think themselves refined ladies and gentlemen, and 
 on whose lips the word " vulgarity " is for ever hovering, cannot 
 mention * ' love ' ' without betraying their own innate and imbe- 
 cile degradation ; it is a low feeling in their estimation, con- 
 nected only with low ideas for them. 
 
 Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings ; 
 and if the analysis is partly affected in thought, they know not 
 how to express the result of the process in words. 
 
SELECTIONS. 127 
 
 I then sat with my doll on my knee till the fire got low, 
 glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse 
 than myself haunted the shadowy room ; and when the embers 
 sunk to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and 
 strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and dark- 
 ness in my crib. To this crib I always took my doll ; human 
 beings must love something, and in the dearth of worthier ob- 
 jects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and 
 cherishing a faded, graven image, shabby as a miniature scare- 
 crow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sin- 
 cerity I doted on this wooden toy, half fancying it alive and 
 capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in 
 my night-gown ; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was 
 comparatively happy, believing it happy likewise. 
 
 One evening — and I was not delirious ; I was in my sane 
 mind — I got up — I dressed myself, weak and shaking. The 
 solitude and the stillness of the long dormitory could not be 
 borne any longer ; the ghastly white beds were turning into 
 spectres — the coronal of each became a death's head, huge and 
 sun-bleached — dead dreams of an elder world and mightier race 
 lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes. That evening more 
 firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate 
 was of stone, and Hope a false idol — blind, bloodless, and of 
 granite core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me 
 was gaining its climax, and must now be turned by my own 
 hands, hot, feeble, trembling as they were. It rained still, and 
 blew ; but with more clemency, I thought, than it had poured 
 and raged all day. Twilight was falling, and I deemed its in- 
 fluence pitiful ; from the lattice I saw coming night-clouds, 
 trailing low like banners drooping. It seemed to me that at 
 
128 SELECTIONS, 
 
 this hour there was affection and sorrow in Heaven above for 
 all pain suffered on earth beneath ; the weight of my dreadful 
 dream became alleviated — that insufferable thought of being no 
 more loved — no more owned, half yielded to hope of the con- 
 trary — I was sure this hope would shine clearer if I got out 
 from under this house-roof, which was crushing as the slab of 
 a tomb, and went outside the city to a certain quiet hill, a long 
 way distant in the fields. 
 
 ****** 
 If the storm had lulled a little at sunset, it made up now for 
 lost time. Strong and horizontal thundered the current of the 
 wind from northwest to southeast ; it brought rain like spray, 
 and sometimes a sharp hail, like shot. It was cold, and 
 pierced me to the vitals. I bent my head to meet it, but it 
 beat me back. My heart did not fail me at all in this conflict ; 
 I only wished that I had wings and could ascend the gale, 
 spread and repose my pinions on its strength, career in its 
 course, sweep where it swept. While wishing this, I suddenly 
 felt colder where before I was cold, and more powerless where 
 before I was weak. I tried to reach the porch of a great 
 building near, but the mass of frontage and the giant spire 
 turned black and vanished from my eyes. Instead of sinking 
 on the steps as I intended, I seemed to pitch headlong down 
 an abyss. I remember no more. 
 
 The first woman's breast that heaved with life on this world 
 yielded the daring which could contend with Omnipotence ; 
 the strength which could bear a thousand years of bondage — 
 the vitality which could feed that vulture death through un- 
 counted ages — the unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, 
 sister to immortality, which, after millenniums of crimes, 
 
SELECTIONS; 129 
 
 struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah. 
 The first woman was heaven-born : vast was the heart whence 
 gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations ; and grand the 
 undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation. 
 
 If the company of fools irritates, as you say, the society 
 of clever men leaves its own peculiar pain also. Where the 
 goodness or talent of your friend is beyond and above all 
 doubt, your own unworthiness to be his associate often becomes 
 a matter of question. 
 
 The world can understand well enough the process of perishing 
 for want of food ; perhaps few persons can enter into or follow 
 out that of going mad from solitary confinement. They see the 
 long-buried prisoner disinterred, a maniac or an idiot ! — how his 
 senses left him — how his nerve's, first inflamed, underwent 
 nameless agony, and then sunk to palsy — is a subject too intri- 
 cate for examination, too abstract for popular comprehension. 
 Speak of it ! you might as well stand up in an European market- 
 place, and propound dark sayings in that language and mood 
 wherein Nebuchadnezzar, the imperial hypochondriac, com- 
 muned with his baffled Chaldeans. 
 
 Men, and women too, must have delusion of some sort ; if 
 not made ready to their hand, they will invent exaggeration foi 
 themselves. 
 
 Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, will 
 not, match the expectation. 
 
 There is no excellent beauty, no accomplished grace, no re- 
 liable refinement, without strength as excellent, as complete, 
 
130 SELECTIONS. 
 
 as trusthworlhy. As well might you look for good fruit and 
 blossom on a rootless and sapless truee, as for charms that will 
 endure in a feeble and relaxed nature. For a little while, the 
 blooming semblance of beauty may flourish round weakness ; 
 but it cannot bear a blast ; it soon fades, even in serenest sun- 
 shine. 
 
 Where, indeed, does the moon not look well ? What is the 
 scene, confined or expansive, which her orb does not hallow ? 
 Rosy or fiery, she mounted now above a not distant bank ; 
 even while we watched her flushed ascent, she cleared to gold, 
 and in a very brief space, floated up stainless into a now calm 
 sky. 
 
 Some real lives do — for some certain days or years — actually 
 anticipate the happiness of heaven ; and I believe, if such per- 
 fect happiness is once felt by good people (to the wicked it 
 never comes), its sweet effect is never wholly lost. Whatever 
 trials follow, whatever pains of sickness or shades of death, 
 the glory precedent still shines through, cheering the keen 
 anguish, and tinging the deep cloud. 
 
 The multitude have something else to do than to read hearts 
 and interpret dark sayings. Who wills, may keep his own 
 counsel — be his own secret's sovereign. 
 
 How seem in the eyes of that God who made all firmaments, 
 from whose nostrils issue whatever of life is here, or in the 
 stars shining yonder — how seem the differences of man ? But 
 as time is not for God, nor space, so neither is measure nor 
 comparison. We abase ourselves in our littleness, and we do 
 
SELECTIONS. 131 
 
 right ; yet it may be that the constancy of one heart, the truth 
 and faith of one mind, according to the light He has ap- 
 pointed, impart as much to Him as the just motion of the 
 satellites about their planets, of planets about their suns, of 
 suns around that mighty unseen centre incomprehensible, irreal- 
 izable, with strange mental effort only divine. 
 
 Happy hour — stay one moment ! droop those plumes, rest 
 those wings ; incline to mine that brow of heaven ! White 
 Angel ! let thy light linger ; leave its reflection on succeeding 
 clouds ; bequeath its cheer to that time which needs a ray in 
 retrospect. 
 
 THE CLOSE OF " VILLETTE." 
 
 The sun passes the equinox ; the days shorten, the leaves 
 grow sere ; but — he is coming. 
 
 Frosts appear at night ; November has sent his fogs in 
 advance ; the wind takes its autumn moan ; but — he is 
 coming. 
 
 The skies hang full and dark — a wreck sails from the west ; 
 the clouds cast themselves into strange forms — arches and 
 broad radiations ; there rise resplendent mornings — glorious, 
 royal, purple as monarch in his state ; the heavens are one 
 flame ; so wild are they, they rival battle at its thickest — so 
 bloody, they shame Victory in her pride. I know some signs 
 of the sky ; I have noted them ever since childhood. God 
 watch that sail ! Oh, guard it ! 
 
 The wind shifts to the west. Peace, peace, Banshee — 
 " keening" at every window ! It will rise — it will swell — it 
 shrieks out long : wander as I may through the house this 
 
132 SELECTIONS. 
 
 night, I cannot lull the blast. The advancing hours make it 
 strong ; by midnight all sleepless watchers hear and fear a 
 wild southwest storm. 
 
 That storm roared, frenzied, for seven days. It did not 
 cease till the Atlantic was strewn with wrecks : it did not lull 
 till the deeps had gorged their full of sustenance. Not till the 
 destroying angel of tempest had achieved his perfect work, 
 would he fold the wings whose waft was thunder — the tremor 
 of whose plumes was storm. 
 
 Peace, be still ! Oh, a thousand weepers, praying in agony 
 on waiting shores, listened for that voice, but it was not uttered 
 — not uttered till, when the hush came, some could not feel it : 
 till, when the sun returned, his light was night to some ! 
 
POEMS. 
 
 ROCHESTER'S SONG. 
 
 The truest love that ever heart 
 
 Felt at its kindled core, 
 Did through each vein, in quickened start, 
 
 The tide of being pour. 
 
 Her coming was my hope each day, 
 
 Her parting was my pain ; 
 The chance that did her steps delay 
 
 Was ice in ©very vein. 
 
 I dreamed it would be nameless bliss, 
 
 As I loved, loved to be ; 
 And to this object did I press 
 
 As blind as eagerly. 
 
 But wide as pathless was the space 
 
 That lay, our lives, between, 
 And dangerous as the foamy race 
 
 Of ocean-surges green. 
 
134 POEMS. 
 
 * And haunted as a robber-path 
 Through wilderness of wood, 
 For Might and Right, and Woe and Wrath 
 Between our spirits stood. 
 
 I dangers dared ; I hind' ranee scorned ; 
 
 I omens did defy ; 
 Whatever menaced, harassed, warned, 
 
 I passed impetuous by. 
 
 On sped my rainbow, fast as light ; 
 
 I flew as in a dream ; 
 For glorious rose upon my sight 
 
 That child of Shower and Gleam. 
 
 Still bright on clouds of suffering dim 
 Shines that soft, solemn joy ; 
 
 Nor care I now how dense and grim 
 Disasters gather nigh : 
 
 I care not in this moment sweet, 
 Though all I have rushed o'er 
 
 Should come on pinion, strong and fleet, 
 Proclaiming vengeance sore : 
 
 Though haughty hate should strike me down, 
 
 Right, bar approach to me, 
 And grinding Might, with furious frown, 
 
 Swear endless enmity, 
 
POEMS. lad 
 
 My love has placed her little hand 
 
 With noble faith in mine, 
 And vowed that wedlock's sacred band 
 
 Our natures shall entwine. 
 
 My love has sworn, with sealing kiss, 
 
 With me to live — to die ; 
 I have at last my nameless bliss : 
 
 As I love — loved am I ! 
 
 EVENING SOLACE. 
 
 The human heart has hidden treasures, 
 
 In secret kept, in silence sealed ; — 
 The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, 
 
 Whose charms were broken if revealed. 
 And days may pass in gay confusion, 
 
 And nights in rosy riot fly, 
 While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion, 
 
 The memory of the Past may die. 
 
 But there are hours of lonely musing, 
 
 Such as in evening silence come, 
 When, soft as birds their pinions closing, 
 
 The heart's best feelings gather home. 
 Then in our souls there seems to languish 
 
 A tender grief that is not woe ; 
 And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish, 
 
 Now cause but some mild tears to flow. 
 
136 POEMS. 
 
 And feelings, once as strong as passions, 
 
 Float softly back — a faded dream ; 
 Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations, 
 
 The tale of others' sufferings seem. 
 Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding, 
 
 How longs it for that time to be, 
 When, through the mist of years receding, 
 
 Its woes but live in reverie ! 
 
 And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer, 
 
 On evening shade and loneliness ; 
 And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer, 
 
 Feel no untold and strange distress — 
 Only a deeper impulse given 
 
 By lonely hour and darkened room, 
 To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven, 
 
 Seeking a life and a world to come. 
 
 REGRET. 
 
 Long ago I wished to leave 
 
 " The house where I was born ;" 
 Long ago I used to grieve, 
 
 My home seemed so forlorn. 
 In other years, its silent rooms 
 
 Were filled with haunting fears ; 
 Now, their very memory comes 
 
 O'ercharged with tender tears. 
 
poems. 137 
 
 Life and marriage I have known, 
 
 Things once deemed so bright, 
 Now how utterly is flown 
 
 Every ray of light ! 
 'Mid the unknown sea of life 
 
 I no blest isle have found ; 
 At last, through all its wild waves' strife, 
 
 My bark is homeward bound. 
 
 Farewell, dark and rolling deep ! 
 
 Farewell, foreign shore ! 
 Open, in unclouded sweep, 
 
 Thy glorious realm before ! 
 Yet though I had safely passed 
 
 That weary, vexed main, 
 One loved voice, through surge and blast, 
 
 Could call me back again. 
 
 Though the soul's bright morning rose 
 
 O'er Paradise for me, 
 William, even from Heaven's repose 
 
 I'd turn, invoked by thee ! 
 Storm nor surge should e'er arrest 
 
 My soul, exulting then : 
 All my heaven was once thy breast, 
 
 Would it were mine again ! 
 
138 POEMS. 
 
 LIFE. 
 
 Life, believe, is not a dream, 
 
 So dark as sages say ; 
 Oft a little morning rain 
 
 Foretells a pleasant day : 
 Sometimes there are clouds of gloom, 
 
 But these are transient all ; 
 If the shower will make the roses bloom, 
 Oh, why lament its fall ? 
 Rapidly, merrily, 
 Life's sunny hours flit by ; 
 
 Gratefully, cheerily, 
 Enjoy them as they fly. 
 
 What though death at times steps in, 
 
 And calls our Best away ? 
 What though sorrow seems to win 
 
 O'er Hope a heavy sway ? 
 Yet Hope again elastic springs 
 
 Unconquered though she fell ; 
 Still buoyant are her golden wings, 
 Still strong to bear us well. 
 Manfully, fearlessly, 
 The day of trial bear, 
 
 For gloriously, victoriously, 
 Can courage quell despair. 
 
POEMS. 
 
 [From Poem entitled "Preference."] 
 
 Man of conscience — man of reason ; 
 
 Stern, perchance, but ever just ; 
 For to falsehood, wrong, and treason, 
 
 Honor's shield, and virtue's trust 1 
 Worker, thinker, firm defender 
 
 Of Heaven's truth — -man's liberty ; 
 Soul of iron — proof to slander 
 
 Rock where founders tyranny. 
 
 Fame he seeks not — but full surely 
 
 She will seek him, in his home ; 
 This I know, and wait securely 
 
 For the atoning hour to come. 
 To that man my faith is given, 
 
 Therefore, soldier, cease to sue ; 
 While God reigns in earth and heaven, 
 
 I to him will still be true ! 
 
 [From Poem entitled "Parting."] 
 
 In the evening when we're sitting 
 
 By the fire, perchance alone, 
 Then shall heart with warm heart meeting 
 
 Give responsive tone for tone. 
 
 We can burst the bonds which chain us, 
 Which cold human hands have wrought, 
 
 And where none shall dare restrain us 
 We can meet again in thought. 
 
 139 
 
140 POEMS. 
 
 So there's no use in weeping, 
 Bear a cheerful spirit still ; 
 
 Never doubt that Fate is keeping 
 Future good for present ill ! 
 
 WINTER STORES. 
 
 We take from life one little share, 
 
 And say that this shall be 
 A space, redeemed from toil and care, 
 
 From tears and sadness free. 
 
 And, haply, Death unstrings his bow, 
 
 And Sorrow stands apart, 
 And, for a little while, we know 
 
 The sunshine of the heart. 
 
 Existence seems a summer eve, 
 Warm, soft, and full of peace ; 
 
 Our free, unfettered feelings give 
 The soul its full release. 
 
 A moment, then, it takes the power 
 To call up thoughts that throw 
 
 Around that charmed and hallowed hour, 
 This life's divinest glow. 
 
 But time, though viewlessly it flies, 
 
 And slowly, will not stay ; 
 Alike through clear and clouded skies, 
 
 It cleaves its silent way. 
 
POEMS. 141 
 
 Alike the bitter cup of grief, 
 
 Alike the draught of bliss, 
 Its progress leaves but moraeut brief 
 
 For baffled lips to kiss. 
 
 The sparkling draught is dried away, 
 
 The hour of rest is gone, 
 And urgent voices, round us, say, 
 " Ho, lingerer, hasten on l" 
 
 And has the soul, then, only gained, 
 
 From this brief time of ease, 
 A moment's rest, when overstrained, 
 
 One hurried glimpse of peace ? 
 
 No ; while the sun shone kindly o'er us, 
 And flowers bloomed round our feet — 
 
 While many a bud of joy before us 
 Unclosed its petals sweet — 
 
 An unseen work within was plying : 
 
 Like honey-sucking bee, 
 From flower to flower, unwearied, flying, 
 
 Labored one faculty — 
 
 Thoughtful for Winter's future sorrow, 
 
 Its gloom and scarcity ; 
 Prescient to-day of wan to-morrow, 
 
 Toiled quiet Memory. 
 
142 POEMS. 
 
 'Tis she that from each transient pleasure 
 
 Extracts a lasting good ; 
 'Tis she that finds, in summer, treasure 
 
 To serve for Winter's food. 
 
 And when Youth's summer day is vanished, 
 And Age brings Winter's stress, 
 
 Her stores, with hoarded sweets replenished, 
 Life's evening hours will bless. 
 
 WATCHING AND WISHING. 
 
 Oh, would I were the golden light 
 
 That shines around thee now, 
 As slumber shades the spotless white 
 
 Of that unclouded brow ! 
 It watches through each changeful dream 
 
 Thy features' varied play ; 
 It meets thy waking eyes' soft gleam 
 
 By dawn — by op'ning day. 
 
 Oh, would I were the crimson veil 
 
 Above thy couch of snow, 
 To dye that cheek so soft, so pale, 
 
 With my reflected glow ! 
 Oh, would I were the cord of gold 
 
 Whose tassel, set with pearls, 
 Just meets the silken cov'ring's fold 
 
 And rests upon thy curls, 
 
poems. 143 
 
 DishevelPd in thy rosy sleep, 
 
 And shading soft thy dreams ; 
 Across their bright and raven sweep 
 
 The golden tassel gleams ! 
 I would be anything for thee, 
 
 My love — my radiant love — 
 A flower, a bird, for sympathy, 
 
 A watchful star above. 
 
 [From ''The Teacher's Monologue."] 
 
 'Tis not the air I wished to play, 
 
 The strain I wished to sing ; 
 My wilful spirit slipped away 
 
 And struck another string. 
 I neither wanted smile nor tear, 
 
 Bright joy nor bitter woe, 
 But just a song that, sweet and clear, 
 
 Though haply sad, might flow. 
 
 A quiet song, to solace me 
 
 When sleep refused to come ; 
 A strain to chase despondency 
 
 When sorrowful for home. 
 In vain I try ; I cannot sing ; 
 
 All feels so cold and dead ; 
 No wild distress, no gushing spring 
 
 Of tears in anguish shed ; 
 
144 POEMS. 
 
 But all the impatient gloom of one 
 
 Who waits a distant day, 
 When, some great task of suffering done, 
 
 Repose shall toil repay. 
 For youth departs, and pleasure flies, 
 
 And life consumes away, 
 And youth's rejoicing ardor dies 
 
 Beneath this drear delay ; 
 
 And Patience, weary with her yoke, 
 
 Is yielding to despair, 
 And Health's elastic spring is broke 
 
 Beneath the strain of care. 
 Life will be gone ere I have lived — 
 
 Where now is life's first prime ? 
 I've worked and studied, longed and grieved, 
 
 Through all that rosy time. 
 
 To toil, to think, to long, to grieve — 
 
 Is such my future fate ? 
 The morn was dreary, must the eve 
 
 Be also desolate ? 
 Well, such a life at least makes Death 
 
 A welcome, wished-for friend ; 
 Then aid me, Reason, Patience, Faith, 
 
 To suffer to the end. 
 
TO Otm ^OOIS BUTEHS- 
 
 14S 
 
 Tlie Dlew Yorlt Journal of 
 
 Commerce, one of the oldest, most 
 substantial and influential dailies on the 
 continent, says: "Announcements of 
 new books by Funk & Wagnalls should 
 always be carefully consulted. The 
 publications they advertise are entirely 
 different from anything issued by any 
 other firm in America. The peculiar 
 work to which they devote themselves 
 is the supply cf books of the highest 
 character and of permanent value, * * * 
 at prices as low as the cheapest novels. 
 They occupy a field previously unfilled. 
 These cheap volumes have strong and 
 handsome covers, and are printed on the 
 finest paper in large clear type. Kow 
 they sell them so cheaply is a mystery 
 to all but themselves." 
 
 Royalties to Authors on our 
 
 Standaed Libeaby books.— There are 
 those who profess to be unable to be- 
 lieve that we can afford royalty on our 
 cheap books to English authors and 
 publishers. The following letters ought 
 to bring conviction to the most skep- 
 tical mind : 
 
 Messes. Funk & Wagnaeles : 
 
 G.ntlemen : I beg to acknowledge 
 the receipt through Messrs. Hodder & 
 Stoughton, my London publishers, of 
 
 £ royalty on your publication of 
 
 my "Oliver Cromwell," right of pub- 
 lication in the United States being re- 
 serve! to me. I thank you for your 
 generous acknowledgment of tlis right, 
 and will mate it known. I would be 
 pleased if you could soe your way to 
 publish others of my books on your 
 royalty basis, etc. 
 
 Edwin Paxton Hood. 
 Islington, London. 
 Messes. Funk & Wagnalls: 
 
 Dear Sirs : We return our best thanks 
 for your favor containing remittance of 
 £— in recognition cf our rights in 
 
 Mattieu Williams' "Science in Short 
 
 Chapters: " also remittance of £ 
 
 on account of Haweis' " American Hu- 
 morists." We highly appreciate this 
 spontaneous evidence of good feeling, 
 and hope that your venture may prove 
 successful, etc., etc. 
 
 CHATTO & WlNDUS. 
 
 214 Piccadilly, London. 
 
 Messes. Funs & Wagnalls : 
 
 Your favor containing £ for re- 
 print cf Winks' " Illustrious Shoe" 
 makers," came duly to hand and is 
 placed to the credit of our joint account 
 with the author. We need scarcely 
 say that this act of courtesy is duly ap- 
 preciated by ourselves and the author. 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 Sampson, Low & Co. 
 
 London O, wn Builuing, 188 Flset St. 
 
 Messes. Funk & Wagnalls; 
 
 Deir Siis: 
 
 I thank you most heartily for the 
 Three Hundred Pounds ($1,500) you 
 have just remitted as royalty on my 
 'Treasury of David" in America, fright 
 gratefully acknowledge tkis. You have 
 acted toward me in a highly honorable 
 and satisfactory manner, and I have 
 great pleasure in having your house to 
 publish my works. Fair dealing, where 
 there is no law to compel it, is not so 
 common that it becomes a matter of 
 course. Long may you prosper, and 
 find it to be all the sweeter to prosper 
 because you deal generously with au- 
 thors. 
 
 I am now forty-nine, and cannot ex- 
 pect as many more years of authorship 
 as I have had. Yours most heartily, 
 C. H. Spubgedn. 
 
 London, England. 
 
 Kev. Charles F. Deems, Lfj.D,, 
 
 New York, says: " I have placed the 
 first two volumes of the 1883 Eeries in 
 our church library.'" 
 
TO O"0"S. BOOK BTT2"EK.S. 
 
 Five Dollars.— The price of sub- 
 scription for the twenty-six book 
 "Standard Libpary ' for one year is 
 Five Dollars. At this price these valuable 
 books cost the subscribers, post-paid, 
 lessHhan twenty cents each. 
 
 The New Yorlc San says: * Mr. 
 Hood's biography must be regarded a s 
 a positive boon to the mass of readers, 
 because it presents a more correct view 
 cf the great Puritan s oldier and states- 
 man than is attainable in any of the 
 shorter lives heretofore published 
 whether we compare it with Southey's, 
 Guizot's or even Forster's." 
 
 Rev. Geo. C. Wielding, Presid- 
 ing Elder, Parkersburg, "W. Va , says: 
 «'A few days since I sent a letter, like 
 the inclosed copy, and a good stout 
 bundle of your circulars to each of the 
 seventeen preachers in my district, and 
 also the other presiding elders of the 
 Conference. I think it will help th 6 
 good cheap book boom." 
 
 Clotn-baund standard Li- 
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 They are printed on the same paper as 
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 paying the difference. 
 
 *<Did He Die Game?" said one 
 bootblack to another in the Bowery, 
 New York, in reference to the boy 
 murderer, McGloin, who was hanged. 
 McGloin himself after the murder said, 
 "lam now a tough: I have killed my 
 man." This is the talk in the prev- 
 
 alent lurid literature for boys. Such 
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 A Difference. — Sundry persons are 
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 dare, following as closely as the law 
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 us see if they will keep it up during the 
 year. Especially is it easy if authors a; e 
 paid nothing, thin paper and poor press- 
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147 
 
 How our Chea p Book Pla n is Received. 
 
 Do not fail to read [see advertising pages] what is said about this plan by 
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 Just as we go to press the following letters have come to hand, all indicat- 
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PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK &> WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. 
 
 149 
 
 TALKS TO FARMERS. 
 
 BY CHARLES H. SPURGEON. 
 
 300 pp., 12mo, Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 This is the last, and one of the best, of the wonderful productions 
 of the fertile pen and prolific brain of Mr. Spurgcon It consists of a 
 series of Talks to Farmers. Each Talk is a short sermon from a 
 text on some subject concerning agriculture. Mr. Spurgeon is as 
 much at home in, and as famili:r with, the scores of nature as he is 
 with the stores and business of mighty London. 
 
 WHAT IS THOUGHT OF IT. 
 
 'The Corn of Wheat Dying to Bring 
 Forth Fruit,' 'The Ploughman," 
 •Ploughing the Rock,' *Tbe Pnrable 
 of the Sower,' 'The Principal Wh< at,' 
 ♦ Spring in the Heart,' « Farm Labor- 
 er-',' 'What the Farm Laborers Can 
 Do and What They Cannot Do,' "I he 
 Sieep before the Shearers,' 'In the 
 Hay Field,' ' Spiritual Gleaning.' 
 'Meal lime in the Cornfield,' ' Tbe 
 reading Wagon,' 'Threshing,' 'The 
 Wheat in tbe Barn.' Every farmer 
 should read this book." 
 
 TIio Christian IWonitor, St. 
 Louis, Mo., rays : "Most interesting and 
 unique. The arguments in favor of 
 C ris'ianity a r e able and convincing, 
 and there is not adry.uninteresting lino 
 in the book; the distinguished author 
 presents ihe principles cf religious lif^ 
 in a novel but instructive manner, and 
 tbe garniture of truth and earnestness 
 in his competent hands mabes the book 
 eminently readable. ' 
 
 Canadian Bnpt's* says : "Oar 
 readers need no information about Mr. 
 Spurgeon. His name is a household 
 word. They read his sermons con- 
 stantly. They have only to be told that 
 something new of bis has appeared, and 
 they are eager to procure and read. In 
 nothing, perbaps, does Mr. Spurgeon's 
 greatness manifest itself mere con- 
 spicuously than in his wonderful 
 powr of adapting his discourse •) to tho 
 needs of th'>fe to wh m he speaks 
 'John Pioughman's Tal.s' and 'John 
 Ploughman's Pictures' are admirable 
 illustrations of this power. So is tho 
 Do-\k before us. It will bo especially 
 interesting to farm rs, but all will en- 
 joy the practical common sense, tho 
 abundance of illustrative anecdote, the 
 depth of spiritual insight, the richness 
 of .magery, that prevail in the volume. 
 The subjects of the different chapters 
 are: 'The Sluggard's Farm,' -The 
 Broken Fence,' * Frost and Thaw,' 
 
 Codet's Commentary on. Eomaas, 
 
 This American edition is edited by Talbot W. Chambers, D.D. 
 large octavo pages. Cloth, $2.50. 
 
 544 
 
 Howard Crostoy, K.D., says: 
 
 ■* I consider Godet a man of soundest 
 learning and purest orthodoxy." 
 
 Thomas Arm'tagp, H.r»., pays: 
 "Especially must I commend the fair, 
 pains(,aking,thorougb and devout work 
 of Dr. Godet. All his works are wel- 
 come to every true thinker." 
 
 Arthur Brooks, D.D., says : 
 " Any one acquainted with Godet's 
 other works will congratulate himself 
 that the same author s clear logic an 1 
 deep leai-ning, as brought to bear upon 
 the difficulties of the Epistle to the Ro- 
 mans, are to be made accessible through 
 this publication." 
 
 &&■ The above w rks ivi.l be sent by mail, postage paid, oh receipt of the prux. 
 
iro 
 
 THROUGH THE PRISON TO THE THRONE: 
 
 Illustrations of Life from the Biography of Joseph. 
 By Kev. JOS. S. VAN DYKE. 
 
 Price, $1. 
 
 This volume presents in succinct from and in fascinating style 
 the rich, wholesome and abundant fruits of careful study upon an 
 interesting theme — the life and times of Joseph. Into this narra- 
 tive is woven, in sententious and striking language, such an 
 amount of attractive moral precept, proverbial philosophy and 
 practical knowledge of life as renders the volume, in the language 
 of one of its reviewers, "the best Bible history to be found.' ' In 
 its adaptations to the young it has few rivals. As an assistant to 
 pastors in suggesting fruitful thoughts, especially for addresses to 
 the young, it is invaluable. To Sunday-school pupils, and particu- 
 larly to Bible Classes, it is very attractive. In the family circle it 
 is eagerly read by all. Into the captivating narrative is adroitly 
 woven valuable and beautiful lessons for every period of life. It 
 is a striking biography skilfully written, " containing passages of 
 very great beauty ;" but it is more, being an admirable commen- 
 tary of that portion of God's word, and an able exposition of many 
 practical doctrinal questions. These statements of ours are more 
 than sustained by the 
 
 NOTICES OIT THE JPXIESS. 
 
 "Fresh in thought and vigorous in 
 method of presentation, the book 
 will be read with interest."— Luth. 
 Obs. 
 
 " The lessons are practical and sug- 
 gestive, and evince careful reading 
 and deep thought. We heart iij 
 commend this volume." — Christian 
 Guardian, Toronto, Ca. 
 
 " A rare amount of pleasing truth 
 and strong common sense. As an aid 
 to Sunday-school teachers and ad- 
 vanced pupils it is very valuable. The 
 general reader, and especially the 
 ministry, will find it interesting and 
 profitable. "—Luth. Evangelist. 
 
 "The fruit is pleasant, wholesome, 
 and abundant. ' ' — Ca. Pres. 
 
 "A valuable addition to Sunday- 
 school libraries, and parents would 
 do well to get their children to read 
 it, while they also might profit largely 
 by reading it."— The Pacific. 
 
 "An excellent book." — Central 
 Christian Advocate. 
 
 '.' An interesting work and one cal- 
 culated to do much good. Sunday- 
 
 school teachers and advanced pupils 
 will find valuable aid here."— Balti- 
 more Presbyter. 
 
 " Appropriate thoughts tersely and 
 interestingly expressed. It is adapted 
 especially to youth and members of 
 Bible classes."— Lpis. Reg. 
 
 "Its discussion of questions of 
 Egyptology is conducted with dis- 
 cretion. Sunday-school teachers 
 will here find much valuable material 
 for use in t heir classes."— The Chris- 
 tian Union. 
 
 " A good book for the young to 
 read."— The Gos. Adv. 
 
 " We welcome another book, one of 
 the best of all, upon the story of the 
 long ago— the story God has given for 
 old and young. Not written especially 
 for children, the volume will find 
 easier readers among them, and the 
 older people will find food for mature 
 thought."— Chris. Adv. 
 
 "No history of Joseph presents a 
 greater amount of pleasing truth and 
 Btrong common sense."— Ike Interior. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK <& WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. 15! 
 
 «• The most important and practical work of the age on. the 
 
 Psalms.'-SCKAFF. 
 
 SIX VOLUMES NOW R.KAUV. 
 
 -SPURGEOW'S CHE&T LIFE WORK- 
 
 THE TREASURY OF DAVID! 
 
 To be published in seven octavo volumes of about 470 pages each, 
 uniformly bound, and making a library of 3,300 pages, 
 in handy form for reading and reference. 
 It is published simultaneously with, and contains the exact matter of, 
 the English Edition, which ha3 sold at $4.00 per volume 
 in this country — $28.00 for the work when com- 
 pleted. Oar edition is in every way pref- 
 erable, and is furnished at 
 
 ONE-HALF TEE PEICE OP 
 
 THE ENGUSH 
 
 EDITION. 
 
 Price, Per Vol. $2X0. 
 
 "Messrs. Funk cr 5 Wagnalls have entered into an arrangement zuith 
 me to reprint THE TREASUR Y OF DA VID in the United States. I 
 have every confidence in them that they will issue it correctly and worthily. 
 It has been the great literary work of my life, and I trust it will be as 
 kindly received in America as in England. I wish for Messrs. Funk suc- 
 cess in a venture which must involve a great risk and much outlay. 
 
 "Dec. 8, 1881. C. II. SPURGE ON:' 
 
 Volumes I., II., EX, IV., V. and VI. are now ready; volume 
 VII., which completes the great work, is now under the hand of the 
 author. Subscribers can consult their convenience by ordering all 
 the volumes issued, or one volume at a time, at stated intervals, until 
 the set is completed by the delivery of Volume VII. 
 
 From the large number of hearty commendations of this import- 
 ant work, we give the following to indicate the value set upon the 
 eame by 
 
 EMINENT THEOLOGIANS AND SCHOLARS. 
 
 Philip Schatff, ?>.D., the Eminent tical v^oik of the age on the Psalter is 
 
 ' The Treasury of David,' by Charles H 
 Spurgeon. It is full of the force and 
 genius of this celebrated preacher, and 
 
 Commentator and the President of the 
 American Bjble Revision Committee, 
 says: "The most important and prac- 
 
 (OVER. 
 
 &g~The above works -will be sent by mail, postage Paid, on receipt of the price. 
 
3E2 
 
 PUBLIC A TIONS OF FUNK J- WAGh 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 rich in selections from the entire range 
 ol literature." 
 
 Wi liam M. Taylor. D.O., 
 
 New York says: ' In the exposition of 
 the heart 'The TREASURy of Davi / is 
 sui gen-ris, rich in experience and pre- 
 eminently devotional. The exposition 
 is alwa^ s fresh. To the preacher it is 
 especially suggestive." 
 
 John H*I\ D.T>., New York, 
 says: -'There are two questions that 
 must interest every expositor of tha 
 Divine Word. What does a particular 
 passage mean, and to what use is it to 
 "be applied in public teaching? In the 
 department of the latter Mr. Spur- 
 geon's great work on the Psalms is 
 without an equal. Eminently practical 
 in his own teaching, he has c fleeted in 
 these volumes the best thoughts of the 
 best minds on the Ps-lter, and es e- 
 cially of that great body .loose'y grouped 
 together as the Puritan divines. lam 
 heartily glad that by arrangements, 
 sa> isfactory to all concerned, tl e Messr3. 
 Punk & Waanalls are to bring mis gr at 
 work within ths reach ot ministers 
 everywhere, as the English edition is 
 necessarily expensive. I wish the 
 highest success to the enterprise." 
 
 William Ormiston, Tl.^., New 
 York, says: " I consider « 1 he Treasury 
 of David' a work of surpassing excel- 
 lence, of inest:niablo value to every stu- 
 dent of the ► Salter. It will prove a 
 standard work on the Psalms lor all 
 time. The instructive introductions, 
 the racy ori inal expositions, the 
 numerous q aint illustrations gath- 
 ered irom wide and varied fields, and 
 the suggestive sarmonic hints, render 
 the volumes invaluable toallpreacheis, 
 and indispensable to every minister's 
 library. All who delight in reading the 
 Psj1u,s — and what Christian does not? 
 — will prize this work. It i3 a rich 
 •cycl rpaedia of the literature of these 
 ancient odes." 
 
 Then. L.. r U yler, D.D.. Brook- 
 lyn, says: " I have use 1 Mr. Spurgeon's 
 * Tee Treasury of David' for three 
 years, and lound it worthy of its name. 
 Whoso goeth in there will find ' rich 
 spoils.' At both my visits to Mr. S ha 
 spoke with much enthusiasm of this 
 undertaking as one of his favor te 
 injthods of enriching himself and 
 others." 
 
 JesaeB. Thomas, D.D , Brook- 
 lyn, says: " I have the highest concep- 
 
 mst 
 
 tion of the sterling worth of all Mr. 
 Spurgeon's publications, and I incline 
 to regard his Treasury of David' as 
 having received more of his loving 
 labor than any other. I regard its 
 publication at a lower price as a great 
 service to American Bible Students." 
 
 New York: Observer says: " A 
 rich compendium of suggestive com- 
 ment upon the richest devotional 
 poetry ever given to mankind. ' 
 
 Thi Congregatlrnalist, Bos- 
 ton, says: " As a devout and spiritually 
 sugg stive work, it is meeting with 
 the warmest approval and receiving 
 the hearty commendation of the most 
 distinguished divines." 
 
 United Presbyterian, Pitts- 
 burg, Pa , says: " It is unapproached 
 as a commentary on the Psalms. It is 
 of equal value to ministers and lay- 
 men — a quality that works of the kind 
 rarely possess." 
 
 North. American, Philadelphia, 
 Pa.: says: "Vvill find a place in the 
 l.brary of every minister who knows 
 how to appreciate a good thing." 
 
 New York Indepe**d« nt says: 
 " He has ransacked evangelical litera- 
 ture, and comes forth, like Jessica from 
 her father's house, 'gilded with 
 ducats' and rich plunder in the shape 
 of good and li.dp.ul quotations.' 
 
 Kew York Tribune says: "For 
 tho great majority of readers who seek 
 in the Psalms those practical lessons 
 in which they are so rich, and those 
 vronderful interpretations of heart-life 
 and expressionof emotion in which 
 they anticipate 'the New Testament, we 
 know of no book like this, nor as good. 
 Ic is literally a ' Treasury.' " 
 
 P. S. Times sas: "Mr. Fpurgeon'a 
 style is simple, direct and perspicuous, 
 oiten reminding one of the matchless 
 prose of Bunyan." 
 
 Western Christian Advca'c, 
 Cincinnati, O., says: "The price is ex- 
 tremely moderate for so Jarge and im- 
 portant a work. * * * We have ex- 
 amined this volume with care, and v, e 
 are greatly pleased with the plan of 
 execution." 
 
 Christian Herald says: "Con- 
 tains mora felicitous illustraiions, 
 more valuable sermonic hints, than can 
 be found in all other works on the 
 same book put together." 
 
 The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price. 
 
FVB LIGATIONS OF FUNK &* W AG N ALLS, NFJV YORK. 
 
 153 
 
 GEMS OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 From the Writings of Dr. Guthrie, arranged under 
 
 the subjects which they illustrate. 
 
 By an American Clergyman. 
 
 Price, in Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 This book abounds in picturesque similes. Dr. Guthrie has rarely, 
 if ever, been equaled either in the number, beauty or force of tho 
 illustrations with which his sermons and writings abound. They 
 have boen collected by an American clergyman, a great admirer of 
 the author, and the book forms a perfect storehouse of anecdotes, 
 comparisons, examples and illustrations. It contains the choicest of 
 his illustrations, arranged under the subjects which they illustrate. 
 
 Ihe L mdo i T.mes says: " Dr. Guthrie is the most elegant orator in 
 Europe." 
 
 Dr. Gondii h says: "Dr. Guthrie's genius has long since placed 
 him at the head of all the gifted and popular preachers of our day." 
 
 Dr. James W. Alexander says : "I listened to him for fifty minutes, 
 but they rassed like nothing." 
 
 The WesUrn Chrlettian Ad- 
 vocate says : "Dr. Guthrie was pe- 
 culiarly heppy in tiie use 01 brilliant 
 and forcible illustrations in his ser- 
 mons and writings, An American hs-s 
 selected many of these gems oi thought 
 end arranged taem under the subjects 
 wliich they illustrate. Headers and 
 preachers will enjoy them, and will find 
 many bjantiful sentiments and seed- 
 thoughts for present and future use." 
 
 The Bo-ton Sunday Globe 
 
 says : "Dr. Guthrie's illustrations are 
 rich and well chosen and give great 
 force to his ideas. Love, faith, hope, 
 charity are the pillars of hii belief." 
 
 The Laihernn Observer, Phila- 
 delphia, says: "Tho power of illustra- 
 tion should be cu tivated by preachers 
 of the Gospel, and this volume o. speci- 
 mens, if used aright, will •urnish valu- 
 able suggestions. A good illustration 
 in a sermon awakens the imagination, 
 helps the memory and gives the barb 
 to truth that it may fasten ia the 
 heart. 5 ' 
 
 The Christian Tr»<elllgs>ncpr 
 
 says : " It is a large repository full of 
 stirring thoughts set in those splendid 
 furms of * spiritualized imagination,' of 
 which Dr. Guthrie was the peerless 
 master. ' 
 
 The Christian Observe-, Louis- 
 ville, says: "No words of ours could 
 a^d to its value." 
 
 The Bost-n P >st says: "A rare 
 mine of literary wealth." 
 
 Tho Observer, New York, says: "It 
 was no; given to every generation to 
 have a Guthrie.'' 
 
 ^h?» C'jr s'i^ti Advoea'e, New 
 
 York, says: " Th's book will be read 
 with interest by ths religious world.' 
 
 The Z Ion's Il»rnl ', Boston, says: 
 "Preichers will appreciate this vol- 
 ume." 
 
 The Christian Ganrdian. To- 
 mato, says: "An exceedingly interesting 
 and valuable work." 
 
 The above works will be sent by mail, p. -stage paid, on receipt of the price. 
 
154 
 
 PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK &> WAGNALLS, NEW YuRA' 
 
 What Our Girls Ought to Know. 
 
 —BY- 
 MARY J. STUDLEY, M. D. 
 
 261 pp., 12 mo. Cloth $1.03. 
 
 A most practical and valuable book; should be placed in the hands of every 
 girl. 
 
 Intelligently read, it will accomplish much in the elevation of the human race. 
 
 It is lull of information which every girl ought to know. 
 
 Paren's Teachers. Clergymen and others who have the education of children, 
 or who have occasion to address, in sermon or lecture, girls, will find this book 
 ' crammed -^ith suggestiveness." 
 
 The authoress, Mary J. Studley, M. D., was a physician of large practice and 
 great success. She was a graduate, resident physician and teacher ot the Natural 
 Sciences in the State Normal School, Framingham. Mass.: also graduate of the 
 "Woman's Medical College, New York; Dr. Emily Blackwell, Secretary oi the 
 Faculty, and Dr. Wiilard Parker. Chairman of the Loard of Examiners. 
 
 WMJl T IS TM O UG T OF IT. 
 
 is a practical book, and will do good if 
 thjughfully read." 
 
 Montreal T*aily Witness says: 
 
 \ew York World says: " Sen si- 
 able essays on subjects which the au- 
 thor has taught in the schoolroom, 
 written in a style that is clear and pro- 
 perly chosen for girls." 
 
 Boston Wom»n's Jnnrna' 
 Bays: "It derives its principal value 
 from the fact that Dr. Studley was a 
 firm believer in the possibiiity and duty 
 of so regulating the details of every-day 
 life as to secure and preserve physical 
 health and vigor, and that such a course 
 is essential as a foundatio i for the 
 higher moral and intellectual develop- 
 ment." 
 
 Union Argus, Brooklyn, says: "It 
 
 " It is a valuable book for girls." 
 
 MelSviist Recorder, Pittsburg, 
 says: "It should be placed in the 
 hands of every girl." 
 
 (Joinmerci»l, Cincinnati, says: 
 "Dr. Mary Studley waa a gifted woman. 
 Her knowledge was ripe. The book is a 
 good one." 
 
 School Jonrnar, New York, says: 
 "Every sensible mother will wish to 
 place a book like this in her daughter's 
 hands." 
 
 .Journal of Commerce, New 
 York, says: " This is a capital book." 
 
 THIS AND STORIES ADCUT HEROES ASD HOLIDAYS. 
 
 Price, cloth, illustrated, $1.25.; paper, 60 cents. 
 This book contains most interesting talks to boys and girls by- 
 many well-known men, such as Drs. Cuyler, Storrs, Newton, and 
 others, aud is richly illustrated by forty new cuts and many inci- 
 dent nnd object-illustrations, making it a beautiful gift book. The 
 addresses are nearly ell written in a cheerful and happy style. 
 
 WHAT MS SAID OF IT. 
 
 711us*ra/*-i! rhr'stian W*>eltlv 
 
 says: "A good many bright and suggest- 
 ive things will be found herein." 
 
 teniral Presbyteii'n says: "A 
 beautiful present for a child, a parent, 
 a teacher, ora preacher.' 
 
 The Advaiiee says: "The ser- 
 mons are plain, practical, easily under- 
 stood and full of illustration." 
 
 BIfeie '*'« ach**r says: "A very 
 interesting book for the home circle." 
 
 American Literary Church- 
 
 man says: "Are well adapted to ar- 
 rest attention." 
 
 Con-. v reg:stJOTjalist says: "Spec" 
 iinens of the work which many pastors 
 are doing week by week for the children 
 of their congregations." 
 
 National G-azet'e says: "Both 
 edifying and entertaining." 
 
 Gospel in All L»nds says: 
 " Brief, racy sermons full of the Gospel 
 and common 3ense." 
 
 The above works will be sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of the price. 
 
155 
 
 THE STANDARD LIBRARY. 
 
 WHAT REPRESENTATIVE CLERGYMEN SAY 
 
 OF IT. 
 
 Chas. K. Hall, D.D., Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, 
 says : 
 " Great book monopolies, like huge railroad syndicates, are now the mo- 
 narchical relics against which the benevolence and radicalism of tbe age, 
 from different standpoints, are bound to wage war. Each source will have 
 its own motives and arguments, but each will resolve to conquer in the long 
 run. At one end of the scale we have the Life of Dickens offered for $80u, 
 that some one wealthy man may enjoy the comfort of his proud privilege 
 of wealth in having what no other mortal possesses ; at the other, we find 
 the volume offered at 10 or 20 cents, which any newsboy or thoughtful 
 laborer uses in common with thousands. In the great strife for the great- 
 est good of the largest number, put me down as on the side of the last. I 
 enclose my subscription order for a year." 
 
 Rev. Chas. W. Cashing, D.D., First M. E. Church, Rochester, 
 
 N. Y., says : 
 "One of the most pernicious sources of evil among onr young people 
 is the books they read. When I can get a young man interested in substan- 
 tial books, I have great hope of him. For this reason 1 have been deeply 
 interested in your effort to make good books as cheap as bad ones. I rnen- 
 _ tioned the matter from my pulpit. As a result I at once got fifty-four sub- 
 scribers for the full set, and more to come." 
 
 J. O. Peck, D.D., First M. E. Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., says: 
 
 " Your effort is commendable. You ought to have the co-operation of 
 all good men. It is a moral, heroic, and humane enterprise." 
 
 Pres. Mark Hopkins, D.D., of Williams College, says : 
 
 "The attempt of Messrs. Funk and Wagnalls to place good literature 
 within reach of the masses is worthy of all commendation and encourage- 
 ment. If the plan can be successfully carried out, it will be a great boon 
 to the country." 
 
 Geo. C. Lorrimer, D.D., Baptist Church, Chicago, says : 
 
 u I sincerely hope your endeavors to circulate a wholesome and elevat- 
 ing class of books will prove successful. Certainly, clergymen, and Chris- 
 tians generally, cannot afford thnt it should fail. In proof of my personal 
 iuterestin your endeavors, I subscribe for a year." 
 
 J. P. Newman, D.D., New York, says : 
 
 " I have had faith from the beginning in the mission of Messrs. Funk .% 
 Wagnalls. It required great faith on their part, and their success is in 
 proof that all things are possible to him that believeth. Thev hnve done 
 for the public what long was needed, but what other publishers did not 
 venture to do." 
 
 Henry J. Van Dyke, D.I>., Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, N, Y., 
 
 says : 
 " Good books are orent blessings. They drive out darkness by letting 
 * light. Your plan ought not to fail for lack of support. Put my name 
 °Hhe list of subscribers." 
 
156 
 
 T. W. ChamVrs, P.D., Collegiate Reformed Church, New York, says: 
 
 " The plan seems to me both praiseworthy and feasible. I trust it will 
 meet with speedy and abundant success." 
 
 Sylvester F. Scovel, D.D., First Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, 
 Pa., says : 
 
 "Your plans deserve a place in the category of moral reforms. The 
 foes they meet, the width of the battle-ground they can be expanded to 
 cover, the manifold incidental blessings they may convey to thousands of 
 households, the national and international currents of thought they may 
 set in motion, entitle them beyond all question to prompt and efficient aid 
 from clergymen and the whole Christian Church." 
 
 Ezra Abbot, D.B., JLL.D., of Harvard College, says: 
 
 "I heartily approve of your project. I shall be glad to receive and 
 commend the volumes to buyers. I send you my subscription." 
 
 Tbos. Armitage, D.D., Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, New York, 
 says: 
 " Your plan is grand and philanthropic. I wish you success, and ask 
 you to put me down for one set, with the assurance that I will aid you by 
 every kind word which opportunity suggests." 
 
 William M. Taylor, D.D., Broadway Tabernacle, New York, says : 
 
 " The success of the plan depends very much on the character of the 
 books selected ; but if you are wise in that particular, as I have no doubt, 
 you will be benefactors to many struggling readers in whose experience ji 
 new book is one of the rarest treats. I am glad to see, too, that you are 
 making arrangements with the English publishers, so that in conferring 
 a boon upon readers here you will not be doing injustice to authors across 
 the sea." 
 
 James Eells, D.D., Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, O., says : 
 " From the reputation of your house I am ready to believe that you will 
 publish only worthy books. I heartily wish you success." 
 
 E. J. Wolf, D.D., of the Lutheran Seminary, Gettysburg, Pa., says: 
 
 " A more laudable project I can hardly conceive of. Vicious literature 
 has long had the advantage in that it was put within easy reach of: the 
 masses/ The poverty of many who fain would use the very best books has 
 often distressed me. I feel in my heart that the noble enterprise of your 
 house is deserving of the most liberal encouragement." 
 
 Bishop Samuel Fallows, Reformed Episcopalian Church, Chicago, 
 
 says: 
 "Your plan for supplying the masses with the best reading at such a 
 nominal price cannot be too highly commended." 
 
 J. L. Burrows, D.D., Baptist Church, Norfolk, Va., says: 
 
 " Every endeavor to supersede poison by food for the people deserves 
 encouragement." 
 
 Rev. W. F. Crafts, Lee Avenue Congregationalist Church, Brooklyn, 
 
 says : 
 "In the West they displace the worthless prairie grass by sowing blue 
 grass. The soil is too rich to be inactive. It will have a right or wrong 
 activity. So about the love of reading in the young. It is prime soil aud 
 will bear tall wire grass if we do not give it blue grass. It will have b?^ 
 leading, if the good, equally cheap and attractive, is not provided." 
 
the: standard series. 
 
 Best Books fox- a, Trifle. 
 
 Thbsz booka are printed in readable type, on fair paper, and are bound in postal 
 Mrd manilla. 
 
 These books are printed wholly -without abridgment, except Canon Farrar's "Life 
 Bf Christ" and his "Life of Paul." 
 
 No. Prict. 
 
 1. John Ploughman's Talk. C. H. 
 Spurgeon. On Choice of Books. 
 Thomas Varlyle. 4to. Both.... $0 12 
 
 2. Manlin* of Christ. Thomas 
 Hughes. 4to 10 
 
 3. Essays. Lord Macaulay. 4to... 15 
 
 4. Lniht of Asia. Edwin Arnold. 4to. 15 
 
 5. Imitation of Christ. Thomas a 
 Kempis. 4to 15 
 
 6-7. Life of Christ. Canon Farrar. 
 
 4to... 50 
 
 8. Essays. Thomas Carlyle. 4to.. 20 
 9-10. Life >nd Work of St. Paul. 
 
 Cation Farrar. 4to 2 parts, both 50 
 11. Self-Culture. Prof. J. S. Blackie. 
 
 4to. 2 parts, both 10 
 
 12-19. Popular History of England. 
 
 Chas. Knight. 4to 2 80 
 
 10-21. Ru«kin r s Letters to Workmen 
 
 and Laborer*. 4to. 2 parts, both 30 
 
 22. Idyls of the King. Alfred Tenny- 
 son. 4to 20 
 
 23. Life of Rowland Hill. Rev. V. J. 
 Charlesworth. 4ro 15 
 
 24. Town Geology. Charles Kings- 
 ley. 4to 15 
 
 25. Alfred the Great. Thos. Hughes. 
 
 4to 20 
 
 26. Outdoor Life in Europe. Rev. E. 
 
 P. Thwing. 4to 20 
 
 27. Calamities of Authors. I. DTs- 
 raeli. 4to 20 
 
 28. Salon of Madame Necker. Parti. 
 
 4to 15 
 
 29. Ethics of the Dust. JohnRuskin. 
 
 4to 15 
 
 30-31. Memories of My Exile. Louis 
 
 Kossuth. 4ro 40 
 
 32. Mister Horn and His Friend*. 
 
 Illustrated. 4to 15 
 
 33-34. Orations of Demosthenes. 4to. 40 
 
 35. Frondes Agrestes. John Rus- 
 
 kin. 4to 15 
 
 36. Joan of Arc. Alphonse de La- 
 martine. 4to 10 
 
 37. Thoughts of M. Aurelius Anto- 
 ninus. 4to 15 
 
 38. Salon of Madame Necker. Part 
 
 II. 4to 15 
 
 39. The Hermits. Chas. Kingsley. 4to. 15 
 
 40. John Ploughman's Pictures. C. 
 
 H. Spurgeon. 4to 15 
 
 41. Pulpit Table-Talk. Dean Ram- 
 say. 4fo 10 
 
 42. Bible and Newspaper. C. H. 
 Spurgeon. 4to 15 
 
 43. Lacon. Rev. C. C. Colton. 4to. 20 
 
 No. PriM. 
 
 44. Goldsmith's Citizen of the World. 
 
 4to $0 20 
 
 45. America Revisited. George Au- 
 
 fustus Sala. 4to 20 
 ife of C. H. Spurgeon. 8vo 20 
 
 47. John Calvin. M. Guizot. 4to... 15 
 48-49. Dickens' Christmas Books. 
 
 Illustrated. 8vo 50 
 
 50. Shairp's Culture and Religion. 8vo. 15 
 51-52. Godet's Commentary on Luke. 
 Ed. by Dr. John Hall. 8vo,2parts, 
 
 both 2 00 
 
 53. Diary of a Minister's Wife. Part 
 
 I. 8vo 15 
 
 54-57. Van Doren's Suggestive Com- 
 mentary on Luke. New edition, 
 enlarged. 8vo 3 00 
 
 58. Diary of a Minister's Wife. Part 
 
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