The ideas of Rousseau and Mr. Day on education had filtered down through many classes, and spread themselves widely out.  I imagine, Mr. Bronte must have formed some of his opinions on the management of children from these two theorists.  His practice was not half so wild or extraordinary as that to which an aunt of mine was subjected by a disciple of Mr. Day’s.  She had been taken by this gentleman and his wife, to live with them as their adopted child, perhaps about five-and-twenty years before the time of which I am writing.  They were wealthy people and kind hearted, but her food and clothing were of the very simplest and rudest description, on Spartan principles.  A healthy, merry child, she did not much care for dress or eating; but the treatment which she felt as a real cruelty was this.  They had a carriage, in which she and the favourite dog were taken an airing on alternate days; the creature whose turn it was to be left at home being tossed in a blanket—­an operation which my aunt especially dreaded.  Her affright at the tossing was probably the reason why it was persevered in.  Dressed-up ghosts had become common, and she did not care for them, so the blanket exercise was to be the next mode of hardening her nerves.  It is well known that Mr. Day broke off his intention of marrying Sabrina, the girl whom he had educated for this purpose, because, within a few weeks of the time fixed for the wedding, she was guilty of the frivolity, while on a visit from home, of wearing thin sleeves.  Yet Mr. Day and my aunt’s relations were benevolent people, only strongly imbued with the crotchet that by a system of training might be educed the hardihood and simplicity of the ideal savage, forgetting the terrible isolation of feelings and habits which their pupils would experience in the future life which they must pass among the corruptions and refinements of civilization.

Mr. Bronte wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the pleasures of eating and dress.  In the latter he succeeded, as far as regarded his daughters.

His strong, passionate, Irish nature was, in general, compressed down with resolute stoicism; but it was there notwithstanding all his philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour; though he did not speak when he was annoyed or displeased.  Mrs. Bronte, whose sweet nature thought invariably of the bright side, would say, “Ought I not to be thankful that he never gave me an angry word?”

Mr. Bronte was an active walker, stretching away over the moors for many miles, noting in his mind all natural signs of wind and weather, and keenly observing all the wild creatures that came and went in the loneliest sweeps of the hills.  He has seen eagles stooping low in search of food for their young; no eagle is ever seen on those mountain slopes now.