glorious scenery. In
company, this can hardly be."

Again she writes to another:--

"Decidedly I find it does not agree with me to prosecute the search
for the picturesque in a carriage. A wagon, a spring-cart, even a
post-chaise might do; but a carriage upsets everything. I longed to
slip out unseen, and to run away by myself in amongst the hills and
dales. Erratic and vagrant instincts tormented me; and these I was
obliged to control, or rather suppress, for fear of growing in any
degree enthusiastic, and thus drawing attention to 'the lioness,'
the authoress."

The fact of her having sprung into sudden fame immediately after she was
known as the author of "Jane Eyre"--the most wonderful book of her
day--was a matter of great surprise to her, and would doubtless have
afforded her very keen pleasure, only that she was so overburdened with
home cares and sorrows at that time. Even the sweetness of her literary
triumph was embittered by the sadness of the home life. "Jane Eyre" had
been written during their worst trials with Branwell, and "Shirley" just
after his death and during the illness of Emily and Anne, both works
being the product of the very darkest hours of her darkened life. If
these works are morbid and unhealthy, as has been asserted, is it any
wonder, when we consider what must have been the state of her mind while
writing them? She was most devotedly attached to her sisters; indeed,
her very life may be said to have been bound up in theirs; and it was
peculiarly hard for her to lose them just when success appeared to be at
hand, and they might have looked forward to something of happiness
during the remainder of their lives. Charlotte gives her own affecting
account of Emily's death, which throws some light upon the character of
that remarkable woman, as remarkable perhaps as Charlotte herself,
although she did not live to do any work as lasting as that of her elder
sister. She says:--

"But a great change approached. Affliction came in that shape which
to anticipate is dread; to look back on, grief. In the very heat
and burden of the day the laborers failed over their work. My
sister Emily first declined. . . . Never in all her life had she
lingered over any task that lay before her, and she did not linger
now. She sank rapidly. She made haste to leave us. Day by day, when
I saw with what a front she met suffering, I looke