N,--I read your last letter with a great deal of
interest. Perhaps it is not always well to tell people when we
approve of their actions, and yet it is very pleasant to do so; and
as, if you had done wrongly, I hope I should have had honesty enough
to tell you so, so now, as you have done rightly, I shall gratify
myself by telling you what I think.

'If I made you my father confessor I could reveal weaknesses which
you do not dream of. I do not mean to intimate that I attach a _high
value_ to empty compliments, but a word of panegyric has often made
me feel a sense of confused pleasure which it required my strongest
effort to conceal--and on the other hand, a hasty expression which I
could construe into neglect or disapprobation has tortured me till I
have lost half a night's rest from its rankling pangs.

'C. BRONTE.

'_P.S._--Don't talk any more of sending for me--when I come I will
_send_ myself. All send their love to you. I have no prospect of a
situation any more than of going to the moon. Write to me again as
soon as you can.'

Here is the only glimpse that we find of her Penzance relatives in these
later years. They would seem to have visited Haworth when Charlotte was
twenty-four years of age. The impression they left was not a kindly one.

TO MISS ELLEN NUSSEY

'_August_ 14_th_, 1840.

'MY DEAR ELLEN,--As you only sent me a note, I shall only send you
one, and that not out of revenge, but because like you I have but
little to say. The freshest news in our house is that we had, a
fortnight ago, a visit from some of our South of England relations,
John Branwell and his wife and daughter. They have been staying
above a month with Uncle Fennell at Crosstone. They reckon to be
very grand folks indeed, and talk largely--I thought assumingly. I
cannot say I much admired them. To my eyes there seemed to be an
attempt to play the great Mogul down in Yorkshire. Mr. Branwell was
much less assuming than the womenites; he seemed a frank, sagacious
kind of man, very tall and vigorous, with a keen active look. The
moment he saw me he exclaimed that I was the very image of my aunt
Charlotte. Mrs. Branwell sets up for being a woman of great talent,
tact, and accomplishment. I thought there was much more n