ts as can be most safely utilised.
Another, Miss Charlotte Yonge, the chief practitioner of the religious
novel, was contemporary with almost the earliest of these, but falls out
of this book as still living.

The members of this group were, as happens with a repeated coincidence
in literary history too distinct to be altogether neglected, born within
a very few years of each other: Reade in 1814, Trollope in 1815, Miss
Bronte next year, Kingsley and Miss Evans in 1819; but as generally
happens likewise, their appearance as authors, or at least as novelists,
did not follow in exact sequel. The first-renowned, the shortest-lived,
and though by no means the most brilliant or powerful, in a certain way
the freshest and most independent, was Charlotte Bronte, the daughter of
a Yorkshire clergyman of eccentric and not altogether amiable character
and of Irish blood. She was born on 21st April 1816. The origin of the
Brontes or Pruntys has, as well as their family history generally, been
discussed with the curiously disproportionate minuteness characteristic
of our time; but hardly anything need be said of the results of the
investigation, except that they were undoubtedly Irish. Charlotte's
mother died soon after the Rev. Patrick Bronte had received the living
of Haworth, and Charlotte herself was sent to school at a place called
Cowan's Bridge, her experiences at which have in the same way been the
subject of endless inquiry into the infinitely little, in connection
with the "Lowood" of _Jane Eyre_. After two of her sisters had died, and
she herself had been very ill, she was taken away and educated partly at
home, partly elsewhere. Her two surviving sisters, who were her juniors,
Emily by two years and Anne by four, were both of more or less literary
leanings, and as they were all intended to be governesses, the sole
profession for poor gentlewomen in the middle of the century, Emily and
Charlotte were sent to Brussels to qualify. In 1846 the three published
a joint volume of _Poems_ under the pseudonyms (which kept their
initials) of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, and to people over middle
age Charlotte Bronte is still perhaps most familiar as Currer Bell.
Emily's poems are elsewhere commented upon. The eldest and youngest
sister had no poetical vocation, and Anne had not much for prose. But
she, like the others, attempted it after the failure of their verse in a
triad of novels, _The Professor_, by Charlotte; _Wuthering H