isolated in the
midst of numbers. Yet I think I am never unhappy; my present life is so
delightful, so congenial to my own nature, compared with that of a
governess," was Charlotte's further description.

The sisters were so successful with their study of French that Madame
Heger proposed that both should stay another half year, Charlotte to
teach English, and Emily music; but from Brussels the girls were brought
hastily home by the illness and death of their aunt, who left to each of
them independently a share of her savings--enough to enable them to make
whatever alterations were needed to turn the parsonage into a school.
Emily now stayed at home, and Charlotte (January, 1843) returned to
Brussels to teach English to Belgian pupils, under a constant sense of
solitude and depression, while she learned German. A year later she
returned to Haworth, on receiving news of the distressing conduct of her
brother Branwell and the rapid failure of her father's sight. On leaving
Brussels, she took with her a diploma certifying that she was perfectly
capable of teaching the French language, and her pupils showed for her,
at parting, an affection which she observed with grateful surprise.

_IV.--The Sisters' Book of Poems_

The attempt to secure pupils at Haworth failed. At this time the conduct
of the now dissipated brother Branwell--conduct bordering on
insanity--caused the family the most terrible anxiety; their father was
nearly blind with cataract, and Charlotte herself lived under the dread
of blindness. It was now that she paid a visit to her friends the
Nusseys, at Hathersage, in Derbyshire, the scene of the later chapters
of "Jane Eyre." On her return she found her brother dismissed from his
employment, a slave to opium, and to drink whenever he could get it, and
for some time before he died he had attacks of delirium tremens of the
most frightful character.

In the course of this sad autumn of 1845 a new interest came into the
lives of the sisters through the publication, at their own expense, of
"Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell," as explained in the
biographical notice of her sisters, which Charlotte prefaced to the
edition of "Wuthering Heights" and "Agnes Grey," that was published in
1850.

"One day in the autumn of 1845 I accidentally lighted on a manuscript
volume of verses in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course I was not
surprised, knowing that she could and did write verses. I looked it
ove