erature of
his own. How life appears to him now, from the vantage-ground of his
almost fourscore years, it would be interesting to know. Many years ago
he wrote, a little wearily:--

"There's a fancy some lean to and others hate,--
That when this life is ended begins
New work for the soul in another state,
Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins,--
Where the strong and the weak this world's congeries
Repeat in large what they practised in small,
Through life after life in an infinite series,--
Only the scale's to be changed, that's all.

"Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen
By the means of Evil that Good is best,
And through earth and its noise what is heaven's serene,--
When its faith in the same has stood the test,--
Why, the child grown man, we burn the rod;
The uses of labor are surely done.
There remaineth a rest for the people of God,
And I have had troubles enough for one."

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHARLOTTE BRONTE.

In the crowded little churchyard at Haworth, in the wild, bleak
Yorkshire region, are eight mounds which mark the extinction of a family
whose genius and sorrows have made them known the world over. In the
little church there is a mural tablet which tells the names of this
illustrious group, and the many visitors to this little out-of-the-way
house of worship read with a melancholy interest these sad inscriptions.
First we are told of Maria Bronte, the mother, who died in 1821, when
only thirty-nine years old, leaving the six children whose names follow,
all in the helplessness of early childhood. Next to her come Maria and
Elizabeth, both of whom followed her in 1825; then Branwell and Emily,
who died in 1848, and Anne, who lived one year longer. But it is to the
last of the inscriptions that all eyes are turned with the greatest
interest, for there we read--

CHARLOTTE,
WIFE OF THE REV. ARTHUR BELL NICHOLS, A. B.
AND DAUGHTER OF THE REV. E. P. BRONTE, A. M., INCUMBENT.
SHE DIED MARCH 31ST, 1855, IN THE 39TH YEAR OF HER AGE.

There is no sadder history in all literature than the history of this
gifted family and their early doom. A pathos clings about it which is
really painful, so few are the gleams of light which are thrown upon the
dark picture. From the time when the Rev. Patrick Bronte (himself a
gifted but somewhat erratic man) brought his young wife into the
solitude of this moorland parsonage