The Bront? Family, Vol. 2 of 2

k was Undertaken?-? 'The Professor'?-?'Agnes Grey'?-?'Wuthering Heights'?-?Branwell's Condition?-?A Touching Inc

earest to her could, with impunity, intrude unlicensed; it took hours to reconcile her to the discovery I had made, and days to persuade her that such poems merited publication.' Charlotte Bront? here grasped, with unfailing precision, the very secret spell which we find in Emily's poetry; the strange, wild, weird voice, with which it speaks to us, spoke first of all to her, and she felt the heather-scented breath, even as we do, of the moorland air on which its music was borne. Anne also produced verses, which had 'a sweet, sincere pathos of their own;' and the three sisters, believing, after anxious deliberation, that they might get their respective p

Jones, asking if they would publish a one-volume, octavo, of poems; if not at their own risk, o

et; but his sisters, now, with very different feelings, each set to work on a one-volume tale. It had occurred to them, we are told, that by novel writing money was to be made. They were, in fact, influenced by precisely the view of the profit to be derived from fiction which Branwell had propounded in his remarkable lett

d much to do with the tone which their works assumed. Writing under this belief, and with this intention,-as might have been expected,-she has found it necessary to paint every circumstance relating to him, and the inmates of the parsonage, in the darkest colours, and often ha

here. I long to travel; to work; to live a life of action.' Thus 'The Professor' is the story of the work and of the life of action for which the author herself was pining. William Crimsworth, neglected by his rich relations, cut off by his brutal brother, seeks his fortune in Brussels, and obtains a place as professor of English in a school there. He leads a life that Charlotte knows well; he is in the place she has learned to love; and he describes, with close observation, the character and the routine to which she is so well accustomed. Pelet, his master, is an original, as Paul Emanuel is, and Zora?de Reuter is the prototype of Madame Beck. These characters are forcibly conceived, as is that of Mademoiselle Henri; but the book bears the traces of a novice's hand. Thus, how unnatural does the proposal

he walked out with me, showing me nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where we could sit together, and where she could drop 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.' This was the phantom that visited Charlotte also. Of the effect of her brother's conduct on her I have found but two passages in 'The Professor,'-that which I have quoted respecting the youth of Victor Crimsworth earlier in this volume, and that, in Chapter xx., where William Crimsworth leaves Pelet's house lest a 'practical modern French novel' should be in process beneath

n, which she afterwards dwells upon more strongly in 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.' It is in this fictitious parallel of Anne Bront?'s own experience, if anywhere in her writings, that we might expect to find some reflection of the recent history of her brother's fall. Mr. Reid has asserted that this formed the dark turning-point in her life, for 'living under the same roof with him when he went astray,' she 'was compelled to be a closer and more constant witness of his sins and his sufferings than either Charlotte or Emily.' Her letters home, it has been stated, conveyed the news of her dark forebodings. But, all the same, the story she wrote, almost under the shadow of her brother's disgrace, is the simple, straightforward, humorous nar

had much concern. Inferentially, it is contended that, without the darkening effect on her understanding of Branwell's misfortunes, without the neighbourhood of the 'brother of set purpose drinking himself to death out of furious thwarted passion for a mistress he might not marry,' Emily Bront? could not

literary labours continued,-'the black shadow of remorse lying over one in their home.' What it was that the biographer of Charlotte supposed stung Branwell's conscience is well

at broods o'e

Scorpion g

ch remorse. He encouraged himself-after the first shock of his disappointment-with the hope that time would bring him the happiness he wished

se in this way, was the feature of Mrs. Gaskell's work, to which so great an analyzer of motives a

s usher and tutor had come to nothing; then followed the lapse which ended his stay with the railway company; and, lastly, the infatuation which had seized him in his late employment, with its vision of future opulence, and rest from all former change and trouble, ending in dismissal, distraction, and disgrace. All these things, rushing back upon his mind in moments of reflection, w

and who visited him at Haworth, says that he complained sometimes of the way

fell into melancholy musings. I wanted somebody to cheer me. I often do, but no kind word finds its way even to my ears, much less to my heart. Charlotte observed my depression, and asked what ailed me. So I told her. She looked at me with a look I shall never forget-if I live to be a hundred years old-which I never shall. It was not like her at all. It wounded me as if some one had struck me a blow in the mouth. It involved ever so many things in it. It was a dubious look. It ran over me, questioning, and examining, as if I had been a wild beast. It sai

other when she went into the room where he was; but he took no notice, and made no reply; he was stupefied; she had heard that he had go

ntinues pretty well, though often made very miserable by Branwell

c of his genius, which seems to have been inspired by the outcast feelings of which he spoke to Mr. Phillips, and

FATHER TO A CHI

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read beyond Death

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isting of three distinct and unconnected tales, which might be published either together, as a work of three volumes of the ordinary novel size, or separately, as singl

led herself to ask some questions. These were respecting the difficulty which unknown authors find in obtaining assistance from publishers; and Charlotte has indeed informed us t

poem 'Morley Hall,'-to which I have had occasion above to allude-a subject in which the sculptor was much interested. Shortly after his sister made the i

th, Br

or

dear

o my best in my intended lines on Morley, I want answers to the following questions.... If I learn these fac

on myself, I suffer so much wretchedness that I cannot withstand any temptation to get out of myself-and for that reason, I am prosecuting enquiries about situations sui

ghts are n

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ay no

have some little troubles astri

I cannot write what would be thrown unread into a library fire. Otherwise, I have the materials for a respectably sized volume, and, if I were in London personally, I might, perhaps, try -- --, a patronizer of the sons of rhyme; though I dare

while away the time this morning. I meant i

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caused the b

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at, prepared, o

t, and all our t

e life's Light; s

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her grave-Death

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festival of

joy, and joy t

ht us from, when he

most si

. Bro

ming hair, and averted face. We need not entertain a doubt as to whom it is intended to represent. It is inscr

musical cadences, and completeness of theme, so essential in this mode of expression, but exhibits the hig

ed the judgment he expressed six months before, that no pecuniary advantage was to be obtained by publishing verse. The sisters had expende

it: it was scarcely mentioned anywhere; but the sisters at Haworth waited patiently, and they were not dismayed that they waited in vain; for they had new-born hope in their other literary venture of the three prose stories. 'The book,' says Charlotte of the Poems, 'was

it. A total change of scene and circumstance would have been, at this time, his best cure and greatest blessing. Unh