“Will you be kind enough to inform me of the number of performers in
   the King’s military band?”

And in something of the same strain she writes on

   “June 19th. 
   “My own Dear E.,

“I may rightfully and truly call you so now.  You have returned or are returning from London—­from the great city which is to me as apocryphal as Babylon, or Nineveh, or ancient Rome.  You are withdrawing from the world (as it is called), and bringing with you—­if your letters enable me to form a correct judgment—­a heart as unsophisticated, as natural, as true, as that you carried there.  I am slow, very slow, to believe the protestations of another; I know my own sentiments, I can read my own mind, but the minds of the rest of man and woman kind are to me sealed volumes, hieroglyphical scrolls, which I cannot easily either unseal or decipher.  Yet time, careful study, long acquaintance, overcome most difficulties; and, in your case, I think they have succeeded well in bringing to light and construing that hidden language, whose turnings, windings, inconsistencies, and obscurities, so frequently baffle the researches of the honest observer of human nature . . .  I am truly grateful for your mindfulness of so obscure a person as myself, and I hope the pleasure is not altogether selfish; I trust it is partly derived from the consciousness that my friend’s character is of a higher, a more steadfast order than I was once perfectly aware of.  Few girls would have done as you have done—­would have beheld the glare, and glitter, and dazzling display of London with dispositions so unchanged, heart so uncontaminated.  I see no affectation in your letters, no trifling, no frivolous contempt of plain, and weak admiration of showy persons and things.”

In these days of cheap railway trips, we may smile at the idea of a short visit to London having any great effect upon the character, whatever it may have upon the intellect.  But her London—­her great apocryphal city—­was the “town” of a century before, to which giddy daughters dragged unwilling papas, or went with injudicious friends, to the detriment of all their better qualities, and sometimes to the ruin of their fortunes; it was the Vanity Fair of the “Pilgrim’s Progress” to her.

But see the just and admirable sense with which she can treat a subject of which she is able to overlook all the bearings.

   “Haworth, July 4th, 1834.

“In your last, you request me to tell you of your faults.  Now, really, how can you be so foolish!  I won’t tell you of your faults, because I don’t know them.  What a creature would that be, who, after receiving an affectionate and kind letter from a beloved friend, should sit down and write a catalogue of defects by way of answer!  Imagine me doing so, and then consider what epithets you would bestow on me.  Conceited, dogmatical, hypocritical,