The journey from Penzance to Leeds in those days was both very long and very expensive; the lovers had not much money to spend in unnecessary travelling, and, as Miss Branwell had neither father nor mother living, it appeared both a discreet and seemly arrangement that the marriage should take place from her uncle’s house.  There was no reason either why the engagement should be prolonged.  They were past their first youth; they had means sufficient for their unambitious wants; the living of Hartshead is rated in the Clergy List at 202_l_. per annum, and she was in the receipt of a small annuity (50_l_.  I have been told) by the will of her father.  So, at the end of September, the lovers began to talk about taking a house, for I suppose that Mr. Bronte up to that time had been in lodgings; and all went smoothly and successfully with a view to their marriage in the ensuing winter, until November, when a misfortune happened, which she thus patiently and prettily describes:—­

“I suppose you never expected to be much the richer for me, but I am sorry to inform you that I am still poorer than I thought myself.  I mentioned having sent for my books, clothes, &c.  On Saturday evening, about the time when you were writing the description of your imaginary shipwreck, I was reading and feeling the effects of a real one, having then received a letter from my sister giving me an account of the vessel in which she had sent my box being stranded on the coast of Devonshire, in consequence of which the box was dashed to pieces with the violence of the sea, and all my little property, with the exception of a very few articles, being swallowed up in the mighty deep.  If this should not prove the prelude to something worse I shall think little of it, as it is the first disastrous circumstance which has occurred since I left my home.”

The last of these letters is dated December the 5th.  Miss Branwell and her cousin intended to set about making the wedding-cake in the following week, so the marriage could not be far off.  She had been learning by heart a “pretty little hymn” of Mr. Bronte’s composing; and reading Lord Lyttelton’s “Advice to a Lady,” on which she makes some pertinent and just remarks, showing that she thought as well as read.  And so Maria Branwell fades out of sight; we have no more direct intercourse with her; we hear of her as Mrs. Bronte, but it is as an invalid, not far from death; still patient, cheerful, and pious.  The writing of these letters is elegant and neat; while there are allusions to household occupations—­such as making the wedding-cake; there are also allusions to the books she has read, or is reading, showing a well-cultivated mind.  Without having anything of her daughter’s rare talents, Mrs. Bronte must have been, I imagine, that unusual character, a well-balanced and consistent woman.  The style of the letters is easy and good; as is also that of a paper from the same hand, entitled “The Advantages of Poverty in Religious Concerns,” which was written rather later, with a view to publication in some periodical.