l sisters, Charlotte, Anne, and Emily Bronte, were
joined by uncommonly deep and intense bonds. Their strange, fervid
personalities; their solitary, melancholy lives; their tastes and
pursuits; their joys and triumphs, were held in common. Writing to
her best friend, Charlotte says, "You, my dear Miss W., know, as well
as I do, the value of sisters' affection to each other; there is
nothing like it in this world, I believe, when they are nearly equal
in age, and similar in education, tastes, and sentiments." In another
letter, written after she had lost both her sisters, she says, "Emily
had a particular love for the moors; and there is not a knoll of
heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf, not a
fluttering lark or linnet, but reminds me of her. The distant
prospects were Anne's delight; and, when I look round, she is in the
blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon."
Let any one, who would understand what these rare natures felt for
each other, read the memoir of her two sisters, prefixed by Charlotte
to "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey."

In 1846, Margaret Fuller wrote an account of a visit she had just
paid to Joanna Baillie, whom she had long honored almost above any of
her sex. She says, "I found on her brow, not, indeed, a coronal of
gold, but a serenity and strength undimmed and unbroken by the weight
of more than fourscore years, or by the scanty appreciation which her
thoughts have received. We found her in her little calm retreat, at
Hampstead, surrounded by marks of love and reverence from
distinguished and excellent friends. Near her was the sister, older
than herself, yet still sprightly and full of active kindness, whose
character, and their mutual relations, she has, in one of her last
poems, indicated with such a happy mixture of sagacity, humor, and
tender pathos, and with so absolute a truth of outline." This
admirable, semi-biographical, semi-psychological poem was addressed
by Joanna to her sister Agnes, her dear, life-long companion, on one
of the latest anniversaries of her birthday. It is an interesting
fragment in the literature of the friendships of sisters.

THE friendship of woman with woman, outside of the ties of blood, is
pictured with varying degrees of fidelity in the works of many
romance writers and novelists. One of the most glowing delineations
of it, also one of the most famous, is given by Richardson in the
character of Clarissa Harlowe.