d at times
be on the alert, but disappointment knocked her down. I have not
heard a syllable, and cannot think of making inquiries at Cornhill.
Well, long suspense in any matter usually proves somewhat cankering,
but God orders all things for us, and to His Will we must submit. Be
sure to keep a calm mind; expect nothing.--Yours faithfully,

'C. BRONTE.'

When Mr. Taylor returned to England in 1856 Charlotte Bronte was dead.
His after-life was more successful than happy. He did not, it is true,
succeed in Bombay with the firm of Smith, Taylor & Co. That would seem
to have collapsed. But he made friends in Bombay and returned there in
1863 as editor of the _Bombay Gazette_ and the _Bombay Quarterly Review_.
A little later he became editor of the _Bombay Saturday Review_, which
had not, however, a long career. Mr. Taylor's successes were not
journalistic but mercantile. As Secretary of the Bombay Chamber of
Commerce, which appointment he obtained in 1865, he obtained much real
distinction. To this post he added that of Registrar of the University
of Bombay and many other offices. He was elected Sheriff in 1874, in
which year he died. An imposing funeral ceremony took place in the
Cathedral, and he was buried in the Bombay cemetery, where his tomb may
be found to the left of the entrance gates, inscribed--

JAMES TAYLOR. DIED APRIL 29, 1874, AGED 57.

He married during his visit to England, but the marriage was not a happy
one. That does not belong to the present story. Here, however, is a
cutting from the _Times_ marriage record in 1863:--

'On the 23rd inst., at the Church of St. John the Evangelist, St.
Pancras, by the Rev. James Moorhouse, M.A., James Taylor, Esq., of
Furnival's-inn, and Bombay, to Annie, widow of Adolph Ritter, of
Vienna, and stepdaughter of Thos. Harrison, Esq., of Birchanger
Place, Essex.'

CHAPTER XIII: LITERARY AMBITIONS

We have seen how Charlotte Bronte and her sisters wrote from their
earliest years those little books which embodied their vague aspirations
after literary fame. Now and again the effort is admirable, notably in
_The Adventures of Ernest Alembert_, but on the whole it amounts to as
little as did the juvenile productions of Shelley. That poet, it will be
remembered, wrote _Zastrozzi_ at nineteen, and much else that was bad,
some of which he printed