n to her previous monotonous life.

Brave heart, ready to die in harness! She went back to her work, and
made no complaint, hoping to subdue the weakness that was gaining ground
upon her. About this time, she would turn sick and trembling at any
sudden noise, and could hardly repress her screams when startled. This
showed a fearful degree of physical weakness in one who was generally so
self-controlled; and the medical man, whom at length, through Miss W---'s
entreaty, she was led to consult, insisted on her return to the
parsonage. She had led too sedentary a life, he said; and the soft
summer air, blowing round her home, the sweet company of those she loved,
the release, the freedom of life in her own family, were needed, to save
either reason or life. So, as One higher than she had over-ruled that
for a time she might relax her strain, she returned to Haworth; and after
a season of utter quiet, her father sought for her the enlivening society
of her two friends, Mary and Martha T. At the conclusion of the
following letter, written to the then absent E., there is, I think, as
pretty a glimpse of a merry group of young people as need be; and like
all descriptions of doing, as distinct from thinking or feeling, in
letters, it saddens one in proportion to the vivacity of the picture of
what was once, and is now utterly swept away.

"Haworth, June 9, 1838.

"I received your packet of despatches on Wednesday; it was brought me
by Mary and Martha, who have been staying at Haworth for a few days;
they leave us to-day. You will be surprised at the date of this
letter. I ought to be at Dewsbury Moor, you know; but I stayed as
long as I was able, and at length I neither could nor dared stay any
longer. My health and spirits had utterly failed me, and the medical
man whom I consulted enjoined me, as I valued my life, to go home. So
home I went, and the change has at once roused and soothed me; and I
am now, I trust, fairly in the way to be myself again.

"A calm and even mind like yours cannot conceive the feelings of the
shattered wretch who is now writing to you, when, after weeks of
mental and bodily anguish not to be described, something like peace
began to dawn again. Mary is far from well. She breathes short, has
a pain in her chest, and frequent flushings of fever. I cannot tell
you what agony these symptoms give me; they remind me too strongly of
my two s