Miss W—–­ was always anxious to afford Miss Bronte every opportunity of recreation in her power; but the difficulty often was to persuade her to avail herself of the invitations which came, urging her to spend Saturday and Sunday with “E.” and “Mary,” in their respective homes, that lay within the distance of a walk.  She was too apt to consider, that allowing herself a holiday was a dereliction of duty, and to refuse herself the necessary change, from something of an over-ascetic spirit, betokening a loss of healthy balance in either body or mind.  Indeed, it is clear that such was the case, from a passage, referring to this time, in the letter of “Mary” from which I have before given extracts.

“Three years after—­” (the period when they were at school together)—­“I heard that she had gone as teacher to Miss W—–­’s.  I went to see her, and asked how she could give so much for so little money, when she could live without it.  She owned that, after clothing herself and Anne, there was nothing left, though she had hoped to be able to save something.  She confessed it was not brilliant, but what could she do?  I had nothing to answer.  She seemed to have no interest or pleasure beyond the feeling of duty, and, when she could get, used to sit alone, and ‘make out.’  She told me afterwards, that one evening she had sat in the dressing-room until it was quite dark, and then observing it all at once, had taken sudden fright.”  No doubt she remembered this well when she described a similar terror getting hold upon Jane Eyre.  She says in the story, “I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls—­occasionally turning a fascinated eye towards the gleaming mirror—­I began to recall what I had heard of dead men troubled in their graves . . .  I endeavoured to be firm; shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly through the dark room; at this moment, a ray from the moon penetrated some aperture in the blind.  No! moon light was still, and this stirred . . . prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world.  My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears which I deemed the rustling of wings; something seemed near me.” {4}

“From that time,” Mary adds, “her imaginations became gloomy or frightful; she could not help it, nor help thinking.  She could not forget the gloom, could not sleep at night, nor attend in the day.

“She told me that one night, sitting alone, about this time, she heard a voice repeat these lines: 

   “’Come thou high and holy feeling,
   Shine o’er mountain, flit o’er wave,
   Gleam like light o’er dome and shielding.’

“There were eight or ten more lines which I forget.  She insisted that she had not made them, that she had heard a voice repeat them.  It is possible that she had read them, and unconsciously recalled them.  They are not in the volume of poems which the sisters published.  She repeated a verse of Isaiah, which she said had inspired them, and which I have forgotten.  Whether the lines were recollected or invented, the tale proves such habits of sedentary, monotonous solitude of thought as would have shaken a feebler mind.”