uches in my style and imagery,
you must not draw any conclusion from that--I may employ an
amanuensis. Seriously, sir, I am very much obliged to you for your
kind and candid letter. I almost wonder you took the trouble to read
and notice the novelette of an anonymous scribe, who had not even the
manners to tell you whether he was a man or a woman, or whether his
'C. T.' meant Charles Timms or Charlotte Tomkins."

There are two or three things noticeable in the letter from which these
extracts are taken. The first is the initials with which she had
evidently signed the former one to which she alludes. About this time,
to her more familiar correspondents, she occasionally calls herself
"Charles Thunder," making a kind of pseudonym for herself out of her
Christian name, and the meaning of her Greek surname. In the next place,
there is a touch of assumed smartness, very different from the simple,
womanly, dignified letter which she had written to Southey, under nearly
similar circumstances, three years before. I imagine the cause of this
difference to be twofold. Southey, in his reply to her first letter, had
appealed to the higher parts of her nature, in calling her to consider
whether literature was, or was not, the best course for a woman to
pursue. But the person to whom she addressed this one had evidently
confined himself to purely literary criticisms, besides which, her sense
of humour was tickled by the perplexity which her correspondent felt as
to whether he was addressing a man or a woman. She rather wished to
encourage the former idea; and, in consequence, possibly, assumed
something of the flippancy which very probably existed in her brother's
style of conversation, from whom she would derive her notions of young
manhood, not likely, as far as refinement was concerned, to be improved
by the other specimens she had seen, such as the curates whom she
afterwards represented in "Shirley."

These curates were full of strong, High-Church feeling. Belligerent by
nature, it was well for their professional character that they had, as
clergymen, sufficient scope for the exercise of their warlike
propensities. Mr. Bronte, with all his warm regard for Church and State,
had a great respect for mental freedom; and, though he was the last man
in the world to conceal his opinions, he lived in perfect amity with all
the respectable part of those who differed from him. Not so the curates.
Dissent wa