thin sleeves. Yet Mr. Day and my aunt's relations were benevolent
people, only strongly imbued with the crotchet that by a system of
training might be educed the hardihood and simplicity of the ideal
savage, forgetting the terrible isolation of feelings and habits which
their pupils would experience in the future life which they must pass
among the corruptions and refinements of civilization.

Mr. Bronte wished to make his children hardy, and indifferent to the
pleasures of eating and dress. In the latter he succeeded, as far as
regarded his daughters.

His strong, passionate, Irish nature was, in general, compressed down
with resolute stoicism; but it was there notwithstanding all his
philosophic calm and dignity of demeanour; though he did not speak when
he was annoyed or displeased. Mrs. Bronte, whose sweet nature thought
invariably of the bright side, would say, "Ought I not to be thankful
that he never gave me an angry word?"

Mr. Bronte was an active walker, stretching away over the moors for many
miles, noting in his mind all natural signs of wind and weather, and
keenly observing all the wild creatures that came and went in the
loneliest sweeps of the hills. He has seen eagles stooping low in search
of food for their young; no eagle is ever seen on those mountain slopes
now.

He fearlessly took whatever side in local or national politics appeared
to him right. In the days of the Luddites, he had been for the
peremptory interference of the law, at a time when no magistrate could be
found to act, and all the property of the West Riding was in terrible
danger. He became unpopular then among the millworkers, and he esteemed