was enveloped.  Somehow and sometime, he would have to turn to his home as a hiding place for shame; such was the sad foreboding of his sisters.  Then how could she be cheerful, when she was losing her dear and noble “Mary,” for such a length of time and distance of space that her heart might well prophesy that it was “for ever”?  Long before, she had written of Mary T., that she “was full of feelings noble, warm, generous, devoted, and profound.  God bless her!  I never hope to see in this world a character more truly noble.  She would die willingly for one she loved.  Her intellect and attainments are of the very highest standard.”  And this was the friend whom she was to lose!  Hear that friend’s account of their final interview:—­

“When I last saw Charlotte (Jan. 1845), she told me she had quite decided to stay at home.  She owned she did not like it.  Her health was weak.  She said she should like any change at first, as she had liked Brussels at first, and she thought that there must be some possibility for some people of having a life of more variety and more communion with human kind, but she saw none for her.  I told her very warmly, that she ought not to stay at home; that to spend the next five years at home, in solitude and weak health, would ruin her; that she would never recover it.  Such a dark shadow came over her face when I said, ’Think of what you’ll be five years hence!’ that I stopped, and said, ’Don’t cry, Charlotte!’ She did not cry, but went on walking up and down the room, and said in a little while, ‘But I intend to stay, Polly.’”

A few weeks after she parted from Mary, she gives this account of her days at Haworth.

“March 24th, 1845.

“I can hardly tell you how time gets on at Haworth.  There is no event whatever to mark its progress.  One day resembles another; and all have heavy, lifeless physiognomies.  Sunday, baking-day, and Saturday, are the only ones that have any distinctive mark.  Meantime, life wears away.  I shall soon be thirty; and I have done nothing yet.  Sometimes I get melancholy at the prospect before and behind me.  Yet it is wrong and foolish to repine.  Undoubtedly, my duty directs me to stay at home for the present.  There was a time when Haworth was a very pleasant place to me; it is not so now.  I feel as if we were all buried here.  I long to travel; to work; to live a life of action.  Excuse me, dear, for troubling you with my fruitless wishes.  I will put by the rest, and not trouble you with them.  You must write to me.  If you knew how welcome your letters are, you would write very often.  Your letters, and the French newspapers, are the only messengers that come to me from the outer world beyond our moors; and very welcome messengers they are.”