the triple identity was jealously kept, until a vexatious tangle of their names, and a claim from certain publishers that the three authors of the three books were one person and that all the novels were by the author of “Jane Eyre,” roused Charlotte and Anne Bronte to the point of setting off for London to show Smith and Elder that they were honest and fair.  Up to this time the publishers had not known whether they were women or men.  “On reaching Mr. Smith’s,” writes Mrs. Gaskell, “Charlotte put his own letter into his hands,—­the same letter which had excited so much disturbance at Haworth Parsonage only twenty-four hours before.  ‘Where did you get this?’ said he, as if he could not believe that the two young ladies dressed in black, of slight figures, looking pleased yet agitated, could be the embodied Currer and Acton Bell for whom curiosity had been hunting so eagerly in vain.”  The secret, however, was not disclosed, except to the publishers.  Until “Shirley” was published, opinion was much divided as to the probable sex of Currer Bell, but “Shirley” was declared to be written by a woman; and, this suggestion once started, questions of identity soon settled themselves.  Charlotte went to London again, and this time was introduced to all the literary people in the town.  It was not until her third visit, however, that she attended a lecture of Thackeray’s, and at the close found that the audience, instead of withdrawing, had formed themselves into two lines and drawn back to see the famous authoress as she passed out.  “During this passage through the ‘cream of society,’ Miss Bronte’s hand trembled to such a degree that her companion feared lest she should turn faint and be unable to proceed.”  Ellis and Acton Bell were in their early graves, and all the splendor of her fame could hardly lighten by a breath the weight of that lonely sorrow of Charlotte.

The story of George Eliot’s pseudonyme has been too recently told to require allusion, except to point out its practical value to herself, shielding as it did her susceptibilities,—­in fact, guarding like a chrysalis the first strivings, the flutter into full life, of that immortal winged thing it concealed.

Several of our own female writers have chosen a masculine nom de plume, and guarded it consistently, like Saxe Holm, etc.  Miss Murfree is, we believe, the first whose disguise editors as well as the general public failed to pierce.  Now that the critical faculty begins to play more surely upon the works of Charles Egbert Craddock, it may be said that a woman’s love of romance and picturesqueness shades off into haze and unreality some of the pictures of life which a man’s experience and surer knowledge would have made vivid by fewer and more vigorous strokes.  However, as long as she chose, Miss Murfree held her secret beyond the reach of discovery, because nobody questioned it; her disclosure was piquant, and the state of surprise into which she threw her admirers was so utter that the full story of it ought to be told, although we are not empowered to tell it here.