I shall always remember them.  The ‘Young Men’s’ play took its rise from some wooden soldiers Branwell had:  ‘Our Fellows’ from ‘AEsop’s Fables;’ and the ‘Islanders’ from several events which happened.  I will sketch out the origin of our plays more explicitly if I can.  First, ‘Young Men.’  Papa bought Branwell some wooden soldiers at Leeds; when Papa came home it was night, and we were in bed, so next morning Branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers.  Emily and I jumped out of bed, and I snatched up one and exclaimed, ‘This is the Duke of Wellington!  This shall be the Duke!’ When I had said this, Emily likewise took up one and said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers.  Mine was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part.  Emily’s was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him ‘Gravey.’  Anne’s was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him ‘Waiting-Boy.’  Branwell chose his, and called him ‘Buonaparte.’”

The foregoing extract shows something of the kind of reading in which the little Brontes 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 when she was scarcely thirteen:—­

“Guido Reni, Julio Romano, Titian, Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio, Annibal Caracci, 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. Bronte made his children sympathise 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 had been for a long time too busy, and latterly too much absorbed in politics.