Owing to some illness of the digestive organs, Mr. Bronte was obliged to be very careful about his diet; and, in order to avoid temptation, and possibly to have the quiet necessary for digestion, he had begun, before his wife’s death, to take his dinner alone—­a habit which he always retained.  He did not require companionship, therefore he did not seek it, either in his walks, or in his daily life.  The quiet regularity of his domestic hours was only broken in upon by church-wardens, and visitors on parochial business; and sometimes by a neighbouring clergyman, who came down the hills, across the moors, to mount up again to Haworth Parsonage, and spend an evening there.  But, owing to Mrs. Bronte’s death so soon after her husband had removed into the district, and also to the distances, and the bleak country to be traversed, the wives of these clerical friends did not accompany their husbands; and the daughters grew up out of childhood into girlhood bereft, in a singular manner, of all such society as would have been natural to their age, sex, and station.

But the children did not want society.  To small infantine gaieties they were unaccustomed.  They were all in all to each other.  I do not suppose that there ever was a family more tenderly bound to each other.  Maria read the newspapers, and reported intelligence to her younger sisters which it is wonderful they could take an interest in.  But I suspect that they had no “children’s books,” and that their eager minds “browzed undisturbed among the wholesome pasturage of English literature,” as Charles Lamb expresses it.  The servants of the household appear to have been much impressed with the little Brontes’ extraordinary cleverness.  In a letter which I had from him on this subject, their father writes:—­“The servants often said that they had never seen such a clever little child” (as Charlotte), “and that they were obliged to be on their guard as to what they said and did before her.  Yet she and the servants always lived on good terms with each other.”

These servants are yet alive; elderly women residing in Bradford.  They retain a faithful and fond recollection of Charlotte, and speak of her unvarying kindness from the “time when she was ever such a little child!” when she would not rest till she had got the old disused cradle sent from the parsonage to the house where the parents of one of them lived, to serve for a little infant sister.  They tell of one long series of kind and thoughtful actions from this early period to the last weeks of Charlotte Bronte’s life; and, though she had left her place many years ago, one of these former servants went over from Bradford to Haworth on purpose to see Mr. Bronte, and offer him her true sympathy, when his last child died.  I may add a little anecdote as a testimony to the admirable character of the likeness of Miss Bronte prefixed to this volume.  A gentleman who had kindly interested himself in the preparation