and deep histories of feeling and imagination, for
which others, odd as it sounds, have rarely time. This made it
inevitable that--later on, in her too short career--the intensity of her
feeling should wear out her physical health. The habit of "making out,"
which had grown with her growth, and strengthened with her strength, had
become a part of her nature. Yet all exercise of her strongest and most
characteristic faculties was now out of the question. She could not (as
while she was at Miss W---'s) feel, amidst the occupations of the day,
that when evening came, she might employ herself in more congenial ways.
No doubt, all who enter upon the career of a governess have to relinquish
much; no doubt, it must ever be a life of sacrifice; but to Charlotte
Bronte it was a perpetual attempt to force all her faculties into a
direction for which the whole of her previous life had unfitted them.
Moreover, the little Brontes had been brought up motherless; and from
knowing nothing of the gaiety and the sportiveness of childhood--from
never having experienced caresses or fond attentions themselves--they
were ignorant of the very nature of infancy, or how to call out its
engaging qualities. Children were to them the troublesome necessities of
humanity; they had never been drawn into contact with them in any other
way. Years afterwards, when Miss Bronte came to stay with us, she
watched our little girls perpetually; and I could not persuade her that
they were only average specimens of well brought up children. She was
surprised and touched by any sign of thoughtfulness for others, of
kindness to animals, or of unselfishness on their part: and constantly
maintained that she was in the right, and I in the wrong, when we
differed on the point of their unusual excellence. All this must be
borne in mind while reading the following letters. And it must likewise
be borne in mind--by those who, surviving her, look back upon her life
from their mount of observation--how no distaste, no suffering ever made
her shrink from any course which she believed it to be her duty to engage
in.

"March 3rd, 1841.

"I told some time since, that I meant to get a situation, and when I
said so my resolution was quite fixed. I felt that however often I
was disappointed, I had no intention of relinquishing my efforts.
After being severely baffled two or three times,--after a world of
trouble, in the way of correspondence and int