weather, and
keenly observing all the wild creatures that came and went in the
loneliest sweeps of the hills. He has seen eagles stooping low in search
of food for their young; no eagle is ever seen on those mountain slopes
now.

He fearlessly took whatever side in local or national politics appeared
to him right. In the days of the Luddites, he had been for the
peremptory interference of the law, at a time when no magistrate could be
found to act, and all the property of the West Riding was in terrible
danger. He became unpopular then among the millworkers, and he esteemed
his life unsafe if he took his long and lonely walks unarmed; so he began
the habit, which has continued to this day, of invariably carrying a
loaded pistol about with him. It lay on his dressing-table with his
watch; with his watch it was put on in the morning; with his watch it was
taken off at night.

Many years later, during his residence at Haworth, there was a strike;
the hands in the neighbourhood felt themselves aggrieved by the masters,
and refused to work: Mr. Bronte thought that they had been unjustly and
unfairly treated, and he assisted them by all the means in his power to
"keep the wolf from their doors," and avoid the incubus of debt. Several
of the more influential inhabitants of Haworth and the neighbourhood were
mill-owners; they remonstrated pretty sharply with him, but he believed
that his conduct was right and persevered in it.

His opinions might be often both wild and erroneous, his principles of
action eccentric and strange, his views of life partial, and almost
misanthropical; but not one opinion that he held could be stirred or
modified by any worldly motive: he acted up to his principles of action;
and, if any touch of misanthropy mingled with his view of mankind in
general, his conduct to the individuals who came in personal contact with
him did not agree with such view. It is true that he had strong and
vehement prejudices, and was obstinate in maintaining them, and that he
was not dramatic enough in his perceptions to see how miserable others
might be in a life that to him was all-sufficient. But I do not pretend
to be able to harmonize points of character, and account for them, and
bring them all into one consistent and intelligible whole. The family
with whom I have now to do shot their roots down deeper than I can
penetrate. I cannot measure them, much less is it for me to judge them.
I have named these i