made much of and tended, begged to consult her own wishes and make, her own arrangements.  But Charlotte Bronte hated notoriety, and took her fame with a shrinking and modest amazement.  She never gave herself airs, or displayed any affectation, or caught at any flattery.  She just went back to her tragic home, and carried the burden of housekeeping on her frail shoulders.  The simplicity, the delicacy, the humility of it all is above praise.  If ever there was a human being who might have pleaded to be excused from any gallant battling with life because of her bleak, comfortless, unhappy surroundings, and her own sensitive temperament, it was Charlotte Bronte.  But instead of that she fought silently with disaster and unhappiness, neither pitying herself for her destiny, nor taking the smallest credit for her tough resistance.  It does not necessarily prove that all can wage so equal a fight with fears and sorrows; but it shows at least that an indomitable resolution can make a noble thing out of a life from which every circumstance of romance and dignity seems to be purposely withdrawn.

I do not think that there is in literature a more inspiring and heartening book than Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Bronte.  The book was written with a fine frankness and a daring indiscretion which cost Mrs. Gaskell very dear.  It remains as one of the most matchless and splendid presentments of duty and passion and genius, waging a perfectly undaunted fight with life and temperament, and carrying off the spoils not only of undying fame, but the far more supreme crown of moral force.  Charlotte Bronte never doubted that she had been set in the forefront of the battle, and that her first concern was with the issues of life and sorrow and death.  She died at thirty-eight, at a time when many men and women have hardly got a firm hold of life at all, or have parted with weak illusions.  Yet years before she had said sternly to a friend who was meditating a flight from hard conditions of life:  “The right course is that which necessitates the greatest sacrifice of self-interest.”  Many people could have said that, but I know no figure who more relentlessly and loyally carried out the principle than Charlotte Bronte, or who waged a more vigorous and tenacious battle with every onset of fear.  “My conscience tells me,” she once wrote about an anxious decision, “that it would be the act of a moral poltroon to let the fear of suffering stand in the way of improvement.  But suffer I shall.  No matter!”

XIV

JOHN STERLING

I believe that the most affecting, beautiful, and grave message ever written from a death-bed is John Sterling’s last letter to Carlyle.  It reflects, perhaps, something of Carlyle’s own fine manner, but then Sterling had long been Carlyle’s friend and confidant.