creatures, and they, with that fine instinct so often noticed, were invariably attracted towards her.  The deep and exaggerated consciousness of her personal defects—­the constitutional absence of hope, which made her slow to trust in human affection, and, consequently, slow to respond to any manifestation of it—­made her manner shy and constrained to men and women, and even to children.  We have seen something of this trembling distrust of her own capability of inspiring affection, in the grateful surprise she expresses at the regret felt by her Belgian pupils at her departure.  But not merely were her actions kind, her words and tones were ever gentle and caressing, towards animals:  and she quickly noticed the least want of care or tenderness on the part of others towards any poor brute creature.  The readers of “Shirley” may remember that it is one of the tests which the heroine applies to her lover.

“Do you know what soothsayers I would consult?” . . .  “The little Irish beggar that comes barefoot to my door; the mouse that steals out of the cranny in my wainscot; the bird in frost and snow that pecks at my window for a crumb; the dog that licks my hand and sits beside my knee.  I know somebody to whose knee the black cat loves to climb, against whose shoulder and cheek it likes to purr.  The old dog always comes out of his kennel and wags his tail, and whines affectionately when somebody passes.” [For “somebody” and “he,” read “Charlotte Bronte” and “she.”] “He quietly strokes the cat, and lets her sit while he conveniently can; and when he must disturb her by rising, he puts her softly down, and never flings her from him roughly:  he always whistles to the dog, and gives him a caress.”

The feeling, which in Charlotte partook of something of the nature of an affection, was, with Emily, more of a passion.  Some one speaking of her to me, in a careless kind of strength of expression, said, “she never showed regard to any human creature; all her love was reserved for animals.”  The helplessness of an animal was its passport to Charlotte’s heart; the fierce, wild, intractability of its nature was what often recommended it to Emily.  Speaking of her dead sister, the former told me that from her many traits in Shirley’s character were taken; her way of sitting on the rug reading, with her arm round her rough bull-dog’s neck; her calling to a strange dog, running past, with hanging head and lolling tongue, to give it a merciful draught of water, its maddened snap at her, her nobly stern presence of mind, going right into the kitchen, and taking up one of Tabby’s red-hot Italian irons to sear the bitten place, and telling no one, till the danger was well-nigh over, for fear of the terrors that might beset their weaker minds.  All this, looked upon as a well-invented fiction in “Shirley,” was written down by Charlotte with streaming eyes; it was the literal true account of what Emily had done.  The same tawny bull-dog (with his “strangled