ecret plays,
they are very nice ones. All our plays are very strange ones. Their
nature I need not write on paper, for I think I shall always remember
them. The 'Young Men's' play took its rise from some wooden soldiers
Branwell had; 'Our Fellows' from 'Aesop's Fables'; and the 'Islanders'
from several events which happened. I will sketch out the origin of
our plays more explicitly if I can. First, 'Young Men.' Papa brought
Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds; when papa came home it was
night, and we were in bed, so next morning Branwell came to our door
with a box of soldiers. Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched
up one and exclaimed, 'This is the Duke of Wellington! This shall be
the Duke!' When I had said this Emily likewise took one up and said it
should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine
was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect
in every part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him
'Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we
called him 'Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose his, and called him
'Buonaparte.'"

The foregoing extract shows something of the kind of reading in which
the little Brontes were interested; but their desire for knowledge must
have been excited in many directions, for I find a "list of painters
whose works I wish to see," drawn up by Charlotte Bronte when she was
scarcely thirteen: "Guido Reni, Julio Romano Titian, Raphael, Michael
Angelo, Coreggio, Annibal Carracci, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo,
Carlo Cignani, Vandyke, Rubens, Bartolomeo Ramerghi."

Here is this little girl, in a remote Yorkshire parsonage, who has
probably never seen anything worthy the name of a painting in her life
studying the names and characteristics of the great old Italian and
Flemish masters, whose works she longs to see some time, in the dim
future that lies before her! There is a paper remaining which contains
minute studies of, and criticisms upon, the engravings in "Friendship's
Offering for 1829," showing how she had early formed those habits of
close observation and patient analysis of cause and effect, which
served so well in after-life as handmaids to her genius.

The way in which Mr. Bronte made his children sympathize with him in
his great interest in politics must have done much to lift them above
the chances of their minds being limited or tainted by petty local
gossip. I take the o