pathy was only another form of quackery." Yet she
may reconsider this opinion and come to a different conclusion; her
second thoughts are often the best.

'The _North American Review_ is worth reading; there is no mincing
the matter there. What a bad set the Bells must be! What appalling
books they write! To-day, as Emily appeared a little easier, I
thought the _Review_ would amuse her, so I read it aloud to her and
Anne. As I sat between them at our quiet but now somewhat melancholy
fireside, I studied the two ferocious authors. Ellis, the "man of
uncommon talents, but dogged, brutal, and morose," sat leaning back
in his easy chair drawing his impeded breath as he best could, and
looking, alas! piteously pale and wasted; it is not his wont to
laugh, but he smiled half-amused and half in scorn as he listened.
Acton was sewing, no emotion ever stirs him to loquacity, so he only
smiled too, dropping at the same time a single word of calm amazement
to hear his character so darkly portrayed. I wonder what the
reviewer would have thought of his own sagacity could he have beheld
the pair as I did. Vainly, too, might he have looked round for the
masculine partner in the firm of "Bell & Co." How I laugh in my
sleeve when I read the solemn assertions that _Jane Eyre_ was written
in partnership, and that it "bears the marks of more than one mind
and one sex."

'The wise critics would certainly sink a degree in their own
estimation if they knew that yours or Mr. Smith's was the first
masculine hand that touched the MS. of _Jane Eyre_, and that till you
or he read it no masculine eye had scanned a line of its contents, no
masculine ear heard a phrase from its pages. However, the view they
take of the matter rather pleases me than otherwise. If they like, I
am not unwilling they should think a dozen ladies and gentlemen aided
at the compilation of the book. Strange patchwork it must seem to
them--this chapter being penned by Mr., and that by Miss or Mrs.
Bell; that character or scene being delineated by the husband, that
other by the wife! The gentleman, of course, doing the rough work,
the lady getting up the finer parts. I admire the idea vastly.

'I have read _Madeline_. It is a fine pearl in simple setting.
Julia Kavanagh has my esteem; I would rather know her than many far