Royal Academy. Probably there were impediments of both kinds.

'I am afraid if you give me my name I shall feel a prominence in the
book that I altogether shrink from. My very last wish would be to
appear in the book more than is absolutely necessary. If it were
possible, I would choose not to be known at all. It is my friend
only that I care to see and recognise, though your framing and
setting of the picture will very greatly enhance its value.--I am, my
dear Mrs. Gaskell, yours very sincerely,

'ELLEN NUSSEY.'

The book was published in two volumes, under the title of _The Life of
Charlotte Bronte_, in the spring of 1857. At first all was well. Mr.
Bronte's earliest acknowledgment of the book was one of approbation. Sir
James Shuttleworth expressed the hope that Mr. Nicholls would 'rejoice
that his wife would be known as a Christian heroine who could bear her
cross with the firmness of a martyr saint.' Canon Kingsley wrote a
charming letter to Mrs. Gaskell, published in his _Life_, and more than
once reprinted since.

'Let me renew our long interrupted acquaintance,' he writes from St.
Leonards, under date May 14th, 1857, 'by complimenting you on poor
Miss Bronte's _Life_. You have had a delicate and a great work to
do, and you have done it admirably. Be sure that the book will do
good. It will shame literary people into some stronger belief that a
simple, virtuous, practical home life is consistent with high
imaginative genius; and it will shame, too, the prudery of a not over
cleanly though carefully white-washed age, into believing that purity
is now (as in all ages till now) quite compatible with the knowledge
of evil. I confess that the book has made me ashamed of myself.
_Jane Eyre_ I hardly looked into, very seldom reading a work of
fiction--yours, indeed, and Thackeray's, are the only ones I care to
open. _Shirley_ disgusted me at the opening, and I gave up the
writer and her books with a notion that she was a person who liked
coarseness. How I misjudged her! and how thankful I am that I never
put a word of my misconceptions into print, or recorded my
misjudgments of one who is a whole heaven above me.

'Well have you done your work, and given us the picture of a valiant
woman made perfect by suffering. I shall now read carefully a