rd Chancellor attended his last lecture, and Mr.
Thackeray says he expects a place from him; but in this I think he
was joking. Of course Mr. T. is a good deal spoiled by all this, and
indeed it cannot be otherwise. He has offered two or three times to
introduce me to some of his great friends, and says he knows many
great ladies who would receive me with open arms if I would go to
their houses; but, seriously, I cannot see that this sort of society
produces so good an effect on him as to tempt me in the least to try
the same experiment, so I remain obscure.

'Hoping you are well, dear papa, and with kind regards to Mr.
Nicholls, Tabby, and Martha, also poor old Keeper and Flossy,--I am,
your affectionate daughter,

'C. BRONTE.

'_P.S._--I am glad the parlour is done and that you have got safely
settled, but am quite shocked to hear of the piano being dragged up
into the bedroom--there it must necessarily be absurd, and in the
parlour it looked so well, besides being convenient for your books.
I wonder why you don't like it.'

There are many pleasant references to Thackeray to be found in Mrs.
Gaskell's book, including a letter to Mr. George Smith, thanking him for
the gift of the novelist's portrait. 'He looks superb in his beautiful,
tasteful, gilded gibbet,' she says. A few years later, and Thackeray was
to write the eloquent tribute to his admirer, which is familiar to his
readers: 'I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us and
rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals.' 'She gave me,' he tells us,
'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. Who that has known her books has not admired the artist's noble
English, the burning love of truth, the bravery, the simplicity, the
indignation at wrong, the eager sympathy, the pious love and reverence,
the passionate honour, so to speak, of the woman? What a story is that
of the family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy Yorkshire
moors!'

CHAPTER XVI: LITERARY FRIENDSHIPS

There is a letter, printed by Mrs. Gaskell, from Charlotte Bronte to
Ellen Nussey, in which Miss Bronte, when a girl of seventeen, discusses
the best books to read, and expresses a particular devotion to Sir Walter
Scott. During