in your invitations.  You puzzle me.  I hardly know how to refuse, and it is still more embarrassing to accept.  At any rate, I cannot come this week, for we are in the very thickest melee of the Repetitions.  I was hearing the terrible fifth section when your note arrived.  But Miss Wooler says I must go to Mary next Friday, as she promised for me on Whit-Sunday; and on Sunday morning I will join you at church, if it be convenient, and stay till Monday.  There’s a free and easy proposal!  Miss W—–­ has driven me to it.  She says her character is implicated.”

Good, kind Miss W—–! however monotonous and trying were the duties Charlotte had to perform under her roof, there was always a genial and thoughtful friend watching over her, and urging her to partake of any little piece of innocent recreation that might come in her way.  And in those Midsummer holidays of 1836, her friend E. came to stay with her at Haworth, so there was one happy time secured.

Here follows a series of letters, not dated, but belonging to the latter portion of this year; and again we think of the gentle and melancholy Cowper.

   “My dear dear E.,

“I am at this moment trembling all over with excitement, after reading your note; it is what I never received before—­it is the unrestrained pouring out of a warm, gentle, generous heart . . .  I thank you with energy for this kindness.  I will no longer shrink from answering your questions.  I do wish to be better than I am.  I pray fervently sometimes to be made so.  I have stings of conscience, visitings of remorse, glimpses of holy, of inexpressible things, which formerly I used to be a stranger to; it may all die away, and I may be in utter midnight, but I implore a merciful Redeemer, that, if this be the dawn of the gospel, it may still brighten to perfect day.  Do not mistake me—­do not think I am good; I only wish to be so.  I only hate my former flippancy and forwardness.  Oh!  I am no better than ever I was.  I am in that state of horrid, gloomy uncertainty that, at this moment, I would submit to be old, grey-haired, to have passed all my youthful days of enjoyment, and to be settling on the verge of the grave, if I could only thereby ensure the prospect of reconciliation to God, and redemption through his Son’s merits.  I never was exactly careless of these matters, but I have always taken a clouded and repulsive view of them; and now, if possible, the clouds are gathering darker, and a more oppressive despondency weighs on my spirits.  You have cheered me, my darling; for one moment, for an atom of time, I thought I might call you my own sister in the spirit; but the excitement is past, and I am now as wretched and hopeless as ever.  This very night I will pray as you wish me.  May the Almighty hear me compassionately! and I humbly hope he will, for you will strengthen my polluted petitions with your own pure requests.  All is bustle and confusion