About a year after Mrs. Brontë’s death, an elder sister, as I have before mentioned, came from Penzance to superintend her brother-in-law’s household, and look after his children.  Miss Branwell was, I believe, a kindly¹ and conscientious² woman, with a good deal of character, but with the somewhat narrow ideas natural to one who had spent nearly all her life in the same place.  She had strong prejudices, and soon took a distaste to Yorkshire.  From Penzance, where plants which we in the north call greenhouse flowers grow in great profusion³, and without any shelter even in the winter, and where the soft warm climate allows the inhabitants, if so disposed, to live pretty constantly in the open air, it was a great change for a lady considerably⁴ past forty to come and take up her abode⁵ in a place where neither flowers nor vegetables would flourish, and where a tree of even moderate dimensions might be hunted for far and wide; where the snow lay long and late on the moors⁶, stretching bleakly⁷ and barely far up from the dwelling⁸ which was henceforward to be her home; and where often, on autumnal or winter nights, the four winds of heaven seemed to meet and rage together, tearing round the house as if they were wild beasts striving to find an entrance.  She missed the small round of cheerful, social visiting perpetually going on in a country town; she missed the friends she had known from her childhood, some of whom had been her parents’ friends before they were hers; she disliked many of the customs of the place, and particularly dreaded¹⁰ the cold damp arising from the flag floors in the passages and parlours of Haworth Parsonage.  The stairs, too, I believe, are made of stone; and no wonder, when stone

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