'Buonaparte.'"


The foregoing extract shows something of the kind of reading in which
the little Brontës were interested; but their desire for knowledge must
have been excited in many directions, for I find a "list of painters
whose works I wish to see," drawn up by Charlotte Brontë when she was
scarcely thirteen: "Guido Reni, Julio Romano Titian, Raphael, Michael
Angelo, Coreggio, Annibal Carracci, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo,
Carlo Cignani, Vandyke, Rubens, Bartolomeo Ramerghi."

Here is this little girl, in a remote Yorkshire parsonage, who has
probably never seen anything worthy the name of a painting in her life
studying the names and characteristics of the great old Italian and
Flemish masters, whose works she longs to see some time, in the dim
future that lies before her! There is a paper remaining which contains
minute studies of, and criticisms upon, the engravings in "Friendship's
Offering for 1829," showing how she had early formed those habits of
close observation and patient analysis of cause and effect, which
served so well in after-life as handmaids to her genius.

The way in which Mr. Brontë made his children sympathize with him in
his great interest in politics must have done much to lift them above
the chances of their minds being limited or tainted by petty local
gossip. I take the only other remaining personal fragment out of
"Tales of the Islanders"; it is a sort of apology, contained in the
introduction to the second volume, for their not having been continued
before; the writers have been for a long time too busy and lately too
much absorbed in politics: