I am always sorry. He sits
opposite to Anne at church, sighing softly, and looking out of the
corners of his eyes to win her attention, and Anne is so quiet, her
look so downcast, they are a picture.'

'_July_ 19_th_, 1841.

'Our revered friend, W. W., is quite as bonny, pleasant,
lighthearted, good-tempered, generous, careless, fickle, and
unclerical as ever. He keeps up his correspondence with Agnes
Walton. During the last spring he went to Appleby, and stayed
upwards of a month.'

During the governess and Brussels episodes in Charlotte's life we lose
sight of Mr. Weightman, and the next record is of his death, which took
place in September 1842, while Charlotte and Emily were in Brussels. Mr.
Bronte preached the funeral sermon, {287} stating by way of introduction
that for the twenty years and more that he had been in Haworth he had
never before read his sermon. 'This is owing to a conviction in my
mind,' he says, 'that in general, for the ordinary run of hearers,
extempore preaching, though accompanied with some peculiar disadvantages,
is more likely to be of a colloquial nature, and better adapted, on the
whole, to the majority.' His departure from the practice on this
occasion, he explains, is due to the request that his sermon should be
printed.

Mr. Weightman, he told his hearers, was a native of Westmoreland,
educated at the University of Durham. 'While he was there,' continued
Mr. Bronte, 'I applied to the justly venerated Apostolical Bishop of this
diocese, requesting his Lordship to send me a curate adequate to the
wants and wishes of the parishioners. This application was not in vain.
Our Diocesan, in the scriptural character of the Overlooker and Head of
his clergy, made an admirable choice, which more than answered my
expectations, and probably yours. The Church Pastoral Aid Society, in
their pious liberality, lent their pecuniary aid, without which all
efforts must have failed.' 'He had classical attainments of the first
order, and, above all, his religious principles were sound and orthodox,'
concludes Mr. Bronte. Mr. Weightman was twenty-six years of age when he
died. His successor was Mr. Peter Augustus Smith, whom Charlotte Bronte
has made famous in _Shirley_ as Mr. Malone, curate of Briarfield. Mr.
Smith was Mr. A. B. Nicholls's predecessor at Haworth. Here is Charlotte
Bronte's vigorous treatment