ed; but he fell so early into
profligacy, that the idea of becoming an artist was given up, and he
took a place as a private tutor. He had formed his intemperate habits
when a mere boy, at the public house in Haworth village, where he was
esteemed royal company,--as no doubt he was, with his brilliant
conversational powers,--and was often sent for to entertain chance
guests, in whom he delighted, as they could tell him so much of that
distant world beyond the confining hills, for which he yearned. The
pity of it was infinite; for had he been kept in regular courses for a
few years longer, his own ambition and love of the good opinion of
others might have restrained him altogether from excess. As it was,
before his judgment was matured or he had any real knowledge of the
fatal effect of the habits he was forming, he was firmly fixed in the
chains of a degrading habit from which death alone could free him. His
struggles with this fatal fascination, and his sufferings, were cruel in
the extreme, and inflicted pangs bitterer than death on all who loved
him. He was rather weak of will, and had been allowed to grow up
self-indulgent, through the over-fondness of his family, who were almost
ascetic in their own habits, but could deny him nothing. He had great
power of attracting people and of attaching them to him,--a power almost
wanting in other members of the family, and which might have been of
great advantage to him through life, had he started on the right course.
As it was, it only helped to drag him down. He had enough of Irish blood
in him to make his manners frank and genial, with a kind of natural
gallantry about them. He was generally esteemed handsome. His forehead
was massive, his eyes good, his mouth pleasant though somewhat coarse,
his hair and complexion sandy. Mrs. Gaskell, in her life of Charlotte
Bronte, thus tells of the second great grief he caused his family:--

"Branwell, I have mentioned, had obtained a situation as a private
tutor. Full of available talent, a brilliant talker, a good writer,
apt at drawing, ready of appreciation, and with a not unhandsome
person, he took the fancy of a married woman twenty years older
than himself. It is no excuse for him to say that she began the
first advances, and 'made love' to him. She was so bold and
hardened that she did it in the very presence of her children, fast
approaching maturity; and they would threaten her that if