imagine, Mr. Bronte
must have formed some of his opinions on the management of children from
these two theorists. His practice was not half so wild or extraordinary
as that to which an aunt of mine was subjected by a disciple of Mr.
Day's. She had been taken by this gentleman and his wife, to live with
them as their adopted child, perhaps about five-and-twenty years before
the time of which I am writing. They were wealthy people and kind
hearted, but her food and clothing were of the very simplest and rudest
description, on Spartan principles. A healthy, merry child, she did not
much care for dress or eating; but the treatment which she felt as a real
cruelty was this. They had a carriage, in which she and the favourite
dog were taken an airing on alternate days; the creature whose turn it
was to be left at home being tossed in a blanket--an operation which my
aunt especially dreaded. Her affright at the tossing was probably the
reason why it was persevered in. Dressed-up ghosts had become common,
and she did not care for them, so the blanket exercise was to be the next
mode of hardening her nerves. It is well known that Mr. Day broke off
his intention of marrying Sabrina, the girl whom he had educated for this
purpose, because, within a few weeks of the time fixed for the wedding,
she was guilty of the frivolity, while on a visit from home, of wearing
thin sleeves. Yet Mr. Day and my aunt's relations were benevolent
people, only strongly imbued with the crotchet that by a system of
training might be educed the hardihood and simplicity of the ideal
savage, forgetting the terrible isolation of feelings and habits which
their pupils would experience in the future life which they must pass
among the corruptions and refinements of civilization.

Mr. Bronte wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the
pleasures of eating and dress. In the latter he succeeded, as far as
regarded his daughters.

His strong, passionate, Irish nature was, in general, compressed down
with resolute stoicism; but it was there notwithstanding all his
philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour; though he did not speak when
he was annoyed or displeased. Mrs. Bronte, whose sweet nature thought
invariably of the bright side, would say, "Ought I not to be thankful
that he never gave me an angry word?"

Mr. Bronte was an active walker, stretching away over the moors for many
miles, noting in his mind all natural signs of wind and