WOMEN OF HISTORY. (continued 5)

It is yellow July evening, we say, the 13th of the month. Marat sits, about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath, sore, afflicted, ill of Revolution fever—of what other malady this history had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man; with precisely elevenpence-half-penny in paper; with slipper-bath, strong three-footed stool for writing on the while, and a squalid—washerwoman, one may call her; that is his civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither and not elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of brotherhood and perfect felicity; yet surely on the way towards that. Hark! a rap again! A musical woman's voice, refusing to be rejected: it is the citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat, recognising from within, cries—Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted.

"Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen, the seat of rebellion, and wished to speak with you." "Be seated, mon enfant. Now what are the traitors doing at Caen—what deputies are at Caen?" Charlotte names some deputies. "Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the eager people's friend, clutching his tablets to write: Barbaroux, Pétion, writes he, with bare, shrunk arm, turning aside in the bath; Pétion and Louvet, and—Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart. "A moi, chère amie—Help, dear!" no more could the death-choked say or shriek. The helpful washerwoman running in—there is no friend of the people or friend of the washerwoman left; but his life with a groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below.

On Wednesday evening, about half-past seven o'clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a city all on tiptoe, the fatal cart issues; seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in red smock of murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life; journeying towards death—alone amid the world. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her neck; a blush of maidenly shame overspreads that fair face and neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly, for I saw it with my eyes."

MADAME DE STAEL.

[BORN 1766. DIED 1817.] JEFFREY.

HE most powerful writer that her country has produced since the time of Voltaire and Rousseau, and the greatest writer, of a woman, that any time or any country has produced. Her taste perhaps is not quite pure, and her style is too irregular and ambitious. These faults may even go deeper. Her passion for effect, and the tone of exaggeration which it naturally produces, have probably interfered occasionally with the soundness of her judgment, and given a suspicious colouring to some of her representations of fact. At all events, they have rendered her impatient of the humbler task of completing her explanatory details, or stating in their order all the premises of her reasonings. She gives her history in abstracts, and her theories in aphorisms; and the greater part of her works, in place of presenting that systematic unity, from which the highest degrees of strength and beauty and clearness must ever be derived, may be fairly described as a collection of striking fragments, in which a great deal of repetition does by no means diminish the effect of a good deal of inconsistency. In those same works, however, whether we consider them as fragments or as systems, we do not hesitate to say that there are more of original and profound observations, more new images, greater sagacity, combined with higher imagination, and more of the true philosophy of the passions, the politics, and the literature of her contemporaries, than in any other author we can now remember.

She has great eloquence on all subjects, and a singular pathos in representing those bitterest agonies of the spirit in which wretchedness is aggravated by remorse, or by regrets that partake of its character. Though it is difficult to resist her when she is in earnest, we cannot say that we agree in all her opinions, or approve of all her sentiments. She overrates the importance of literature, either in determining the character, or affecting the happiness of mankind; and she theorises too confidently on its past and its future history. On subjects like this, we have not yet facts enough for so much philosophy, and must be contented, we fear for a long time to come, to call many things accidental which it would be more satisfactory to refer to determinate causes. In her estimate of the happiness and her notions of the wisdom of private life, we think her both unfortunate and erroneous. She makes passions and high sensibilities a great deal too indispensable, and varnishes over all pictures too uniformly with the glue of an extravagant or affected enthusiasm. She represents men, in short, as a great deal more unhappy, more depraved, and more energetic than they are, and seems to respect them the more for it. In her politics, she is far more unexceptionable. She is everywhere the warm friend and animated advocate of liberty, and of liberal, practical, and philanthropic principles. On these subjects we cannot blame her enthusiasm, which has nothing in it vindictive or provoking, and are far more inclined to envy than to reprove that sanguine and buoyant temper of mind which, after all she has seen and suffered, still leads her to overrate, in our apprehension, both the merits of past attempts at political amelioration, and the chances of their success hereafter. It is in that futurity, we fear, and in the hopes that make it present, that the lovers of mankind must yet for a while console themselves for the disappointments which still seem to beset them. If Madame de Staël, however, predicts with too much confidence, it must be admitted that her labours have a powerful tendency to realise her predictions. Her writings are all full of the most animating views of the improvement of our social condition and the means by which it may be effected, the most striking refutations of prevailing errors on these great subjects, and the most persuasive expostulations with those who may think their interest or their honour concerned in maintaining them. Even they who are the least inclined to agree with her must admit that there is much to be learned from her writings; and we can give them no higher praise than to say that their tendency is not only to promote the interests of philanthropy and independence, but to soften rather than exasperate the prejudices to which they are opposed.

With our manners in society she is not quite well pleased, though she is kind enough to ascribe our deficiencies to the most honourable causes. In commiserating the comparative dulness of our social talk, however, has not this philosophic observer a little overlooked the effects of national tastes and habits? and is it not conceivable at least that we who are used to it may really have as much satisfaction in our own hum-drum way of seeing each other, as our more sprightly neighbours in their exquisite assemblies?

MADAME DE LA ROCHEJAQUELEIN.

[BORN 1772. DIED 1857.] JEFFREY.

HIS hard-fated woman was very young and newly married when she was thrown, by the adverse circumstances of the time, into the very heart of those deplorable contests [the war in La Vendée, during the first and maddest years of the French Republic]; and without pretending to any other information than she could draw from her own experience, and scarcely presuming to pass any judgment upon the merits or demerits of the cause, she has made up her memoirs of a clear and dramatic description of acts in which she was a sharer, or scenes of which she was an eye-witness, and of the characters and histories of the many distinguished individuals who partook with her of their glories and sufferings. The irregular and undisciplined wars which it was her business to describe were naturally far more prolific of extraordinary incidents, unexpected turns of fortune, and striking displays of individual talent, and vice and virtue, than the more solemn movements of national hostility, where everything is in a great measure provided and foreseen, and where the inflexible subordination of rank, and the severe exactions of a limited duty, not only take away the inducement, but the opportunity, for those exaltations of personal feeling and adventure which produce the most lively interest, and lead to the most animating results.

This lady had some right, in truth, to be delicate and royalist beyond the ordinary standard. Her father, the Marquis de Donnison, had an employment about the person of the king, in virtue of which he had apartments in the Palace of Versailles, in which splendid abode Madame de la Rochejaquelein was born, and continued constantly to reside in the very focus of royal influence and glory till the whole of its unfortunate inhabitants were compelled to leave it by the fury of that mob which escorted them to Paris in 1789. She had, like most French ladies of distinction, been destined from her infancy to be the wife of M. de Lescure, a near relation of her mother, and the representative of the ancient and noble family of Salgues in Poitou.

The picture of the war [in which Madame de la Rochejaquelein figured so prominently, and in which she lost her young husband] is shaded with deep horrors. The convention issued the barbarous decree that the country [La Vendée], which still continued its resistance, should be desolated, that the whole inhabitants should be exterminated without distinction of age or sex, the habitations consumed with fire, and the trees cut down by the axe. A multitude of sanguinary conflicts ensued, and the insurgents succeeded in resisting this desolating invasion. Among the slain in one of those engagements the republicans found the body of a young woman, which, Madame de la Rochejaquelein informs us, gave occasion to a number of idle reports, many giving it out that it was she herself, or a sister of M. de la Rochejaquelein, who had no sister, or a new Joan of Arc, who had kept up the spirit of the peasantry by her enthusiastic predictions. The truth was, that it was the body of an innocent peasant who had always lived a remarkably quiet and pious life till recently before this action, when she had been seized with an irresistible desire to take a part in the conflict. [She deserved to be "a woman of history," but her name has not been preserved.] She had discovered herself some time before to Madame de la Rochejaquelein, and begged of her a shift of a peculiar fabric. The night before the battle, she also revealed herself to M. de la Rochejaquelein, asking him to give her a pair of shoes, and promising to behave in such a manner in the morrow's fight that he would never think of parting with her. Accordingly, she kept near his person through the whole of the battle, and conducted herself with the most heroic bravery. Two or three times, in the very heat of the fight, she said to him: "No, mon general, you shall not get before me; I shall always be closer up to the enemy even than you." Early in the day she was hurt pretty severely in the hand, but held it up, laughing, to her general, and said, "It is nothing at all." In the end of the battle, she was surrounded in a charge, and fell fighting like a desperado. There were about ten other women who took up arms, Madame de la Rochejaquelein says, in this cause: two sisters under fifteen, and a tall beauty who wore the dress of an officer.

At the end, after the loss of her husband, Madame de la Rochejaquelein was told that it was impossible to resist the attack that was to be made next day, and was advised to seek her safety in flight and disguise, without the loss of an instant. She set out accordingly with her mother, on a gloomy day in December, under the conduct of a drunken peasant; and, after being out most of the night, at length obtained shelter in a dirty farm-house, from which, in the course of the day, she had the misery of seeing her unfortunate countrymen scattered over the whole open country, chased and butchered without mercy by the republicans, who now took a final vengeance for all the losses they had sustained. She had long been clothed in shreds and patches, and needed no disguise to conceal her quality. She was sometimes hidden in the mill when the troopers came to search for fugitives in her lonely retreat, and often sent in the midst of winter to herd the sheep or cattle of her faithful and compassionate host, along with his raw-boned daughter.

While skulking about in this state of peril and desolation, they had glimpses and occasional rencounters with some of their former companions, whom similar misfortunes had driven upon similar schemes of concealment. In this wretched condition, the time of Madame de la Rochejaquelein's confinement drew on; and after a thousand frights and disasters, she was delivered of two daughters, one of whom died within a fortnight. The result at length was, that Madame de la Rochejaquelein, after several struggles with pride and principle, was prevailed to repair to Nantes, to avail herself of an amnesty.

MADAME RECAMIER.

[BORN 1777. DIED 1849.] DAVENPORT ADAMS.

HE daughter of Monsieur Bernard, a notary of Lyons, born in 1777, and married at fifteen to Monsieur Récamier, a wealthy banker of forty-three. She was a beauty, and she knew it; the idol of that gay, irresistible French society which knows so well how to repay the devotion of its votaries; the theme of song, the goddess of la beau monde; very capable of love, but denied its natural exercise as wife and mother. If her path then ran among the flowers, not the less did she skirt the brink of the precipice; and her friends' advice and counsel were often needed and always welcome. She did not disdain the flatteries of her admirers; often she encouraged them to an extent that in England would have been considered criminal; but from the testimony of impartial witnesses, it seems clear that she never overstepped the bounds of virtue. She was the only woman, said Charles James Fox, "who united the attractions of pleasure to those of modesty;" but a woman who is always travelling on the verge of danger needs such a friend as Matthieu de Montmorency to counsel her in time.

Fox was in Paris in 1802 when Madame Récamier was at the zenith of her reputation. He almost divided with her the allegiance of the gay world. The Parisian beaux imitated his costume, and the Parisian shop-windows were crowded with his portraits. Between the statesman and the beauty so close an intimacy was established that scandal made busy with it. She called upon him one day to accompany her in a drive along the Boulevards. "Before you came," said she, "I was the fashion; it is a point of honour, therefore, that I should not seem jealous of you." When sitting with her in her box at the opera, a copy of an ode was placed in the hands of each, in which Fox was panegyrised as Jupiter, and Madame Récamier as Venus.

The failure of Monsieur Récamier in 1806 affected her health, and she went to spend the summer months of 1807 with Madame de Staël at Coppet. Among the illustrious residents at Geneva at the time was Prince Augustus of Prussia, a nephew of Frederick the Great, and a handsome young man of twenty-four. He fell violently in love with the Parisian beauty, who was by no means indifferent to the passion he openly displayed. He offered her his hand if she could obtain a divorce from her husband, whom half Paris [according to an old scandal] declared to be her father. Madame was not unwilling to be a princess, and she wrote to her husband proposing a divorce. Monsieur Récamier, in reply, expressed his willingness, but at the same time appealed to her better feelings. Years afterwards the love-suit dropped, and the prince, instead of a wife, received her portrait. Other lovers followed, and her career came near its close. In 1849 the cholera broke out in Paris. Madame Récamier was not afraid of dying, but she shrunk from death in so terrible a form. To avoid its ravages she removed to the Bibliothèque Nationale, but she could not escape from fate. On the 10th of May she was seized with the premonitory symptoms; on the 11th she was a corpse. She had completed nearly two-and-seventy years when she was removed from life by a death which of all others she most dreaded.

In her time she played a conspicuous part; was constantly upon the gay and glittering stage; the audience applauded her loudly, and illustrious hands flung at her garlands and bouquets. Now that the applause has died out, now that the lamps burn dimly, now that the silent stage is given up to shadows, we wonder what there was in her acting to secure her so wide a fame. We look in vain for a flash of genius, for a burst of noble emotion. Vain, greedy of admiration, an errant coquette, a somewhat frivolous intruder on the threshold of criminal passion,—what was she more? A beauty? Yes, but could beauty alone have secured her so wide a repute among her contemporaries? She did not even converse brilliantly, like a Du Deffand or a De Staël. She did not write charming epistles, like a De Sévigné, and yet she was assiduously courted by famous wits and accomplished men of letters. Partly we may suppose her celebrity to have arisen from her profession of liberal principles under the stern régime of a Bonaparte; partly it was owing to the tact with which she drew out the best qualities, and flattered the amour propre of her visitors.

MARY BRUNTON.

[BORN 1778. DIED 1818.] DR BRUNTON.

ARY Brunton, [authoress of the novels "Self-Control" and "Discipline," was the only daughter of Colonel Thomas Balfour of Elwick, and of Frances Ligonier, only daughter of Colonel Francis Ligonier, the brother of Field-Marshal the Earl of Ligonier. From her sixteenth year (although her mother is spoken of as still alive at a much later date), it is stated that the entire charge of her father's household devolved upon her, and left her very little time for anything else. Thus matters continued till she was nearly twenty. Meanwhile her future husband, Dr Brunton, and she had met, when or where we are not informed.] Dr Brunton merely says: "About this time, Viscountess Wentworth, who had formerly been the wife of Mrs Balfour's brother, the second Earl Ligonier, proposed that Mary, her god-daughter, should reside with her in London. What influence this alteration might have had on her after-life is left to be matter of conjecture. She preferred the quiet and privacy of a Scotch parsonage. We were married in her twentieth year, and went to reside at Bolton, near Haddington."

[A love of reading had been an early passion with her, but in her childhood it had spent itself mostly in poetry and fiction; and her want of leisure afterwards had withdrawn her to a great extent even from literature of that description.] "Her time," Dr Brunton continues, "was now much more at her own command. Her taste for reading returned in all its strength, and received rather a more methodical direction. Some hours of every forenoon were devoted by her to this employment; and in the evenings I was in the habit of reading aloud to her books chiefly of criticism and belles lettres. Among other subjects of her attention, the philosophy of the human mind became a favourite study with her, and she read Dr Reid's works with uncommon pleasure." After their removal to Edinburgh, their circle increased. "She mingled more with those whose talents and acquirements she had respected at a distance.... She had often urged me to undertake some literary work, and once she appealed to an intimate friend who was present whether he would not be my publisher. He consented readily, but added that he would at least as willingly publish a book of her own writing. This seemed at the time to strike her as something the possibility of which had never occurred to her before, and she asked more than once whether he was in earnest. A considerable part of the first volume of 'Self Control' was written before I knew anything of its existence. When she brought it to me, my pleasure was mingled with surprise. The beauty and correctness of the style, the acuteness of observation, and the loftiness of sentiment, were, each of them in its way, beyond what even I was prepared to expect from her."

[The work was published in two large volumes, which were afterwards distributed into three post octavos in January or early in February 1811 anonymously, and after considerable precautions had been taken to preserve the secret of the authorship, which actually was, we are told, for a little time so well kept that she had frequent opportunities of hearing her work commented on.

Mrs Brunton commenced a new novel, "Discipline;" but before it was completed "Waverley" appeared. It came into her hands, her husband says, while she was in the country, and when she had heard nothing of its reputation; but she at once discerned its high merit, and was so fascinated by it, that she could not go to bed till she had read it through. It happened that a scene of a part of her own work too was laid in the Highlands, about which a universal interest had been for some years before this awakened by Scott's "Lady of the Lake," and other poems; and her first impulse was to cancel the Highland portion of her story altogether; but to this sacrifice her husband strongly objected. Writing to one of her female friends in December, a few days before her new work was to appear, she says: "It is very unfortunate in coming after 'Waverley,' by far the most splendid exhibition of talent in novel-writing which has appeared since the days of Fielding and Smollett. There seems little doubt that it comes from the pen of Scott. What a competitor for poor little me!" When "Discipline" at length came out, however, its success was far greater than she anticipated. "But she was by no means gratified by it," we are told, "to the same extent she had been by the reception of 'Self-Control.' She was now well known to be the author, and therefore she was not so sure that the applause which reached her was all sincere." The silence of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, too, annoyed and discouraged her.

All this indisposed her to attempt a third novel. Yet she commenced some other works, in which she proceeded slowly. But the end of all was at hand. After being married for twenty years, she had at last the prospect of becoming a mother. Her husband's interesting narrative proceeds:] "She was strongly impressed, indeed, with the belief that her confinement was to prove fatal, not in vague presentiment, but on grounds of which I could not entirely remove the force, though I obstinately refused to join in the inference which she drew from them. Under this belief, she completed every, the most minute, preparation for her great change, with the same tranquillity as if she had been making arrangements for one of those short absences which only endeared her home the more to her. The clothes with which she was laid in her grave had been selected by herself; she herself had chosen and labelled some tokens of remembrance for her more intimate friends; and the intimations of her death were sent round from a list in her own handwriting. But these anticipations, though so deeply fixed, neither shook her fortitude nor diminished her cheerfulness. They neither altered her wish to live, nor the ardour with which she prepared to meet the duties of returning health, if returning health were to be her portion. After giving birth to a still-born son on the 7th December, and recovering for a few days with a rapidity beyond the hopes of her medical friends, she was attacked with fever. It advanced with fatal violence, till it closed her earthly life on the morning of Saturday, December 19, 1818."

FELICIA HEMANS.

[BORN 1794. DIED 1835.] JEFFREY.

HE business of women being with actual or social life, and the colours it receives from the conduct and dispositions of individuals, they unconsciously acquire, at a very early age, the finest perception of characters and manners, and are almost as soon instinctively schooled in the deep and dangerous learning of feeling and emotion; while the very minuteness with which they make and meditate on these interesting observations, and the finer shades and variations of sentiment which are thus treasured and recorded, trains their whole faculties to a nicety and precision of operation which often discloses itself to advantage in their application to studies of a different character. When women accordingly have turned their minds, as they have done but too seldom, to the exposition or arrangement of any branch of knowledge, they have commonly exhibited, we think, a more beautiful accuracy, and a more uniform and complete justness of thinking, than their less discriminating brethren. There is a finish and completeness, in short, about everything they put out of their hands, which indicates not only an inherent taste for elegance and neatness, but a habit of nice observation, and singular exactness of judgment.

We have not as yet much female poetry. That of Mrs Hemans is a fine exemplification. It may not be the best imaginable poetry, and may not indicate the very highest or most commanding genius; but it embraces a great deal of that which gives the very best poetry its chief power of pleasing, and would strike us perhaps as more impassioned and exalted, if it were not regulated and harmonised by the most beautiful taste. It is singularly sweet, elegant, and tender; touching, perhaps, and contemplative, rather than vehement and overpowering; and not only finished throughout with an exquisite delicacy and even severity of execution, but informed with a purity and loftiness of feeling, and a certain sober and humble tone of indulgence and piety, which must satisfy all judgments, and allay the apprehensions of those who are most afraid of the passionate exaggerations of poetry. Almost all her poems are rich with fine descriptions, and studded over with images of visible beauty. But these are never idle ornaments; all her pomps have a meaning, and her flowers and her gems are arranged, as they are said to be among Eastern lovers, so as to speak the language of truth or of passion. This is peculiarly remarkable in some little pieces, which seem at first sight to be purely descriptive, but are soon found to tell upon the heart with a deep, moral, and pathetic impression. But it is in truth nearly as conspicuous in the greater part of her productions, where we scarcely meet with any striking sentiment that is not ushered in by some such symphony of external nature, and scarcely a lovely picture that does not serve as an appropriate foreground to some deep or lofty emotion.

AUGUSTINA ZARAGOZA.

[BORN 1786. DIED 1826.] ALISON.

HEY were happy who [in the siege of Saragossa] expired amidst that scene of unutterable woe. Yet even they bequeathed with their last breath to the survivors the most solemn injunctions to continue to the last the unparalleled struggle; and from the dens of the living and the dead issued daily crowds of warriors, attenuated indeed and livid, but who maintained with unconquerable resolution a desperate resistance. But human nature, even in its most exalted mood, cannot go beyond a certain point. Saragossa was about to fall; but, like Numantia and Saguntum, she was to leave a name immortal in the annals of mankind.

Such was the heroic spirit which animated the inhabitants, that it inspired even the softer sex to deeds of valour. Amongst these, Augustina Zaragoza was peculiarly distinguished. She had served with unshaken courage a cannon near the gate of Portillo, at the former siege, and she again took her station there when the enemy returned. "See, General," said she to Palafox, when he visited that quarter, "I am again with my old friend." Her husband being struck with a cannon-ball as he served the battery, she calmly stepped into his place, and pointed the gun as he lay bleeding at her side. Frequently she was to be seen at the head of an assaulting party, wrapped in her cloak, sword in hand, cheering on the soldiers to the discharge of their duty. She was at length taken prisoner; but being taken dangerously ill, and carried to the French hospital, she contrived to escape. A female corps was formed to carry provisions and water to the combatants, and remove the wounded, at the head of which was Donna Benita, a lady of rank. Several hundred women and children perished during the siege, not by bombs or cannon-shot, but in actual combat.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE.

[BORN 1816. DIED 1855.] MRS GASKELL.

HE authoress of "Jane Eyre" and other works is, as she calls herself [August 1850], undeveloped then, and more than half a head shorter than I am. Soft brown hair, not very dark; eyes very good and expressive, looking straight and open at you, of the same colour as her hair; a large mouth; the forehead square, broad, and rather overhanging. She has a very sweet voice; rather hesitates in choosing her expressions, but when chosen they seem without an effort admirable, and just befitting the occasion; there is nothing overstrained, but perfectly simple. Her nerves were severely taxed by the effort of going among strangers. On one occasion, though the number of the party could not exceed twelve, she suffered the whole day from acute headache, brought on by apprehension of the evening.

It was now [1853] two or three years since I had witnessed a similar effect produced on her, in anticipation of a quiet evening at a friend's home; and since then she had seen many and various people in London; but the physical sensations produced by shyness were still the same, and on the following day she laboured under severe headache. I had several opportunities of perceiving how this nervousness was ingrained in her constitution, and how acutely she suffered in trying to overcome it. One evening we had, among other guests, two sisters who sung Scotch ballads exquisitely. Miss Brontë had been sitting quiet and constrained, till they began "The Bonnie House of Airlie;" but the effect of that, and "Carlyle Yetts" which followed, was as irresistible as the playing of the piper of Hamelin. The beautiful clear light came into her eyes; her lips quivered with emotion; she forgot herself, rose and crossed the room to the piano, where she asked eagerly for song after song. The sisters begged her to come and see them next morning, when they would sing as long as ever she liked, and she promised gladly and thankfully. But on reaching the house her courage failed. We walked some time up and down the street, she upbraiding herself all the while for her folly, and trying to dwell on the sweet echoes in her memory, rather than on the thought of a third sister who would have to be faced if we went in. But it was of no use; and dreading lest this struggle with herself might bring on one of her trying headaches, I entered at last, and made the best apology I could for her non-appearance.

Much of this nervous dread of encountering strangers I ascribed to the idea of her personal ugliness, which had been strongly impressed upon her imagination early in life, and which she exaggerated to herself in a remarkable manner. "I notice," said she, "that after a stranger has once looked at my face, he is careful not to let his eyes wander to that part of the room again." A more untrue idea never entered into any one's head. Two gentlemen who saw her during this visit, without knowing at the time who she was, were singularly attracted by her appearance; and this feeling of attraction towards a pleasant countenance, sweet voice, and gentle, timid manners, was so strong in one as to conquer a dislike he had previously entertained to her works.

There was another circumstance that came to my knowledge at this period, which told secrets about the finely-strung frame. One night I was on the point of narrating some dismal ghost-story, just before bed-time. She shrank from hearing it, and confessed she was superstitious, and prone at all times to the involuntary recurrence of any thoughts of ominous gloom which might have been suggested to her. She said that in first coming to us, she had found a letter on her dressing-table from a friend in Yorkshire, containing a story which had impressed her vividly ever since; that it mingled with her dreams at night, and made her sleep restless and unrefreshing.

[There was a peculiarity about Charlotte Brontë's death.] Not long after her marriage with the Rev. Mr Nicholls, she was attacked by new sensations of perpetual nausea and ever-recurring faintness. "A wren would have starved on what she ate during these last six weeks." Long days and long nights went by; still the same relentless nausea and faintness, and still borne on in patient trust. About the third week in March [1856], there was a change; a low wandering delirium came on, and in it she begged constantly for food, and even for stimulants; she swallowed eagerly now, but it was too late. Wakening for an instant from this stupor of intelligence, she saw her husband's woe-worn face, and caught the sound of some murmured words of prayer that God would spare her. "Oh," she whispered forth, "I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy." Early on Saturday morning, March 31, the solemn tolling of Haworth Church bell spoke forth the fact of her death to the villagers who had known her from a child, and whose hearts shivered within them as they thought of the two sitting together [the father and husband] in the old grey house.

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Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation in the original document have been preserved.

The following changes were made to repair apparently typographical errors:

p.41 "incantations to recal her spirit" recal changed to recall

p.67 "seducing Althelwold into a" Althelwold changed to Athelwold

p.195 "her, and did not like it.["]" closing quotation mark in [] added

p.211 "discriminative in the extinct eulogies" extinct changed to extant

p.227 "than two hundred Scotticisms.["]" closing quotation mark added

p.227 "compositions of Metastasio.["]" closing quotation mark added

p.233 "anyrate no common phenomenon" anyrate changed to any rate

p.236 "BORN 1750. DIED 1728." 1728 changed to 1828

p.238 "n[h?]ighest admiration for the refined" text unclear; highest used

p.240 "BORN 1758. DIED 1848." 1758 changed to 1750

p.240 "ninty-seventh anniversary of her" ninty changed to ninety

p.270 "in 1709, after a visit the poetess" 1709 changed to 1809

p.303 "what she eat during these last six weeks" eat changed to ate

p.6, ads "Author of 'The King's Highway,[']" closing quotation mark added

The biography of Jane Shore refers to Edward the Fifth. This should probably be Edward the Fourth.