over: the end come and passed by. Trembling fearfully--as
consciousness returned--ready to cry out on some fellow-creature to
help me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near enough to
catch the wild summons--Goton in her far distant attic could not
hear--I rose on my knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over me;
indescribably was I torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the
horrors of that dream I think the worst lay here. Methought the
well-loved dead, who had loved ME well in life, met me elsewhere
alienated; galled was my inmost spirit with an unutterable sense of
despair about the future. Motive there was none why I should try to
recover or wish to live; and yet quite unendurable was the pitiless
and haughty voice in which Death challenged me to engage his
unknown terrors. When I tried to pray I could only utter these
words:--

"'From my youth up Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled
mind.'"


The deep interest of this experience is that it was endured by one
who was not only intellectually endowed beyond most women of her
time, but whose sanity, reasonableness, and moral force were
conspicuously strong. Charlotte Bronte was not one of those
impulsive and imaginative women who are the prey of every fancy.
Throughout the whole of her career, she was for ever compelling her
frail and sensitive temperament, with indomitable purpose, to
perform whatever she had undertaken to do. There never was anyone
who lived so sternly by principle and reason, or who so maintained
her self-control in the face of sorrow, disaster, unhappiness, and
bereavement. She never gave way to feeble or morbid self-