daughter, met the challenge of the Bronte genius. It would not have been
wonderful--in those days--if the quiet Fox How household, with its
strong religious atmosphere, its daily psalms and lessons, its love for
_The Christian Year_, its belief in "discipline" (how that comes out in
all the letters!) had been repelled by the blunt strength of _Jane
Eyre_; just as it would not have been wonderful if they had held aloof
from Miss Martineau, in the days when it pleased that remarkable woman
to preach mesmeric atheism, or atheistic mesmerism, as we choose to put
it. But there was a lifelong friendship between them and Harriet
Martineau; and they recognized at once the sincerity and truth--the
literary rank, in fact--of _Jane Eyre_. Not long after her marriage,
Jane Forster with her husband went over to Haworth to see Charlotte
Bronte. My aunt's letter, describing the visit to the dismal parsonage
and church, is given without her name in Mrs. Gaskell's _Life_, and Mr.
Shorter, in reprinting it in the second of his large volumes, does not
seem to be aware of the identity of the writer.

Miss Bronte put me so in mind of her own Jane Eyre [wrote my
godmother]. She looked smaller than ever, and moved about so
quietly and noiselessly, just like a little bird, as Rochester
called her; except that all birds are joyous, and that joy can
never have entered that house since it was built. And yet, perhaps,
when that old man (Mr. Bronte) married and took home his bride,
and children's voices and feet were heard about the house, even
that desolate graveyard and biting blast could not quench
cheerfulness and hope. Now (i.e. since the deaths of Emily and
Anne) there is something touching in the sight of that little
creature entombed in such a place, and moving about herself there
like a spirit; especially when you think that the slight still
frame incloses a force of strong, fiery life, which nothing has