reaching, and
feminine occupations in the house, did not present much to write about;
and Charlotte was naturally driven to criticise books.

Of these there were many in different plights, and according to their
plight, kept in different places. The well-bound were ranged in the
sanctuary of Mr. Bronte's study; but the purchase of books was a
necessary luxury to him, but as it was often a choice between binding an
old one, or buying a new one, the familiar volume, which had been
hungrily read by all the members of the family, was sometimes in such a
condition that the bedroom shelf was considered its fitting place. Up
and down the house were to be found many standard works of a solid kind.
Sir Walter Scott's writings, Wordsworth's and Southey's poems were among
the lighter literature; while, as having a character of their
own--earnest, wild, and occasionally fanatical--may be named some of the
books which came from the Branwell side of the family--from the Cornish
followers of the saintly John Wesley--and which are touched on in the
account of the works to which Caroline Helstone had access in
"Shirley:"--"Some venerable Lady's Magazines, that had once performed a
voyage with their owner, and undergone a storm"--(possibly part of the
relics of Mrs. Bronte's possessions, contained in the ship wrecked on the
coast of Cornwall)--"and whose pages were stained with salt water; some
mad Methodist Magazines full of miracles and apparitions, and
preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticisms; and the
equally mad letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the Living."

Mr. Bronte encouraged a taste for reading in his girls; and though Miss
Branwell kept it in due bounds, by the variety of household occupations,
in which she expected them not merely to take a part, but to become
proficients, thereby occupying regularly a good portion of every day,
they were allowed to get books from the circulating library at Keighley;
and many a happy walk, up those long four miles, must they have had,
burdened with some new book, into which they peeped as they hurried home.
Not that the books were what would generally be called new; in the
beginning of 1833, the two friends seem almost simultaneously to have
fallen upon "Kenilworth," and Charlotte writes as follows about it:--

"I am glad you like 'Kenilworth;' it is certainly more resembling a
romance than a novel: in my opinion, one of the most interesting works
tha