ng mentally to her opinion all matters of that kind,
resolving to describe such and such things to her, until I start at the
recollection that I never shall."

This tribute to her influence was written eleven years after Mary had
seen Charlotte, nearly all those years having been passed by Mary at the
Antipodes.

"Her idea of self improvement," continues Mary, "was to cultivate her
tastes. She always said there was enough of useful knowledge forced on
us by necessity, and that the thing most needed was to soften and refine
our minds, and she picked up every scrap of information concerning
painting, sculpture and music, as if it were gold."

In spite of her unsociable habits, she was a favourite with her
schoolfellows, and an invaluable story-teller, frightening them almost
out of their lives as they lay in bed.

_III.--Her Life as a Governess_

After a year and a half's residence at Roe Head, beloved and respected
by all, laughed at occasionally by a few, but always to her face,
Charlotte returned home to educate her sisters, to practise household
work under the supervision of her somewhat exacting aunt, and to write
long letters to her girl friends, Mary and Ellen--Mary, the Rose Yorke,
and Ellen, the Caroline Helstone of "Shirley." Three years later she
returned to Roe Head as a teacher, in order that her brother Branwell
might be placed at the Royal Academy and her sister Emily at Roe Head.
Emily Bronte, however, only remained three months at school, her place
being taken there by her younger sister, Anne.

"My sister Emily loved the moors," wrote Charlotte, explaining the
change. "Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the
heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in the livid hillside her mind
could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many a dear delight;
and not the least and best loved was liberty. Without it she perished.
Her nature proved here too strong for her fortitude. In this struggle
her health was quickly broken. I felt in my heart that she would die if
she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained her recall."

Charlotte's own life at Miss Wooler's was a very happy one until her
health failed, and she became dispirited, and a prey to religious
despondency. During the summer holidays of 1836, all the members of the
family were occupied with thoughts of literature. Charlotte wrote to
Southey, and Branwell to Wordsworth, of their ambitions, and Southey
replied