NOTES BY THE WAY. 317
will be felt, at least, an equal fascination in this unconventionalized daughter of the Yorkshire moors."
This article so impressed Emily's father, Patrick Bronte, that he wrote to Mr. Macphail the following letter :
Haworth, nr. Keighley, Sept. 7th, 1859. DEAR SIR,
I take the liberty of troubling you with a few lines, in order Letter of to request that you will, at a convenient opportunity, thank for Patrick me the kind friend, should you know him, who sent me this month's Bronte, number of The Ecclesiastical Journal, in which there is an able and just article on the works of my late daughter Emily. In that article the writer has had sufficient learning, penetration, and grasp of mind to effect what some others before him either could not or would not do while she was living, and some adverse, incompetent and superficial reviews appeared. I told her not to be dis- heartened, as I doubted not there would one day arise a critic who would do ample justice to ' Wuthering Heights,' and all the works she might write or had written. In her upright and independent way she said, " That is all I desire." I thank the writer of the article in question for what he has done : he has fulfilled my prediction.
I remain, dear sir, your obedient servant,
P. BRONTE.
Myles Macphail, Esq., Edinburgh.
This letter was presented to Ebs worth by Macphail, and is now in my possession as his executor. It induced Ebsworth in the April of the following year to send to Patrick Bronte the Maga- zine for that month, which contained three articles by him. He evidently informed Bronte that he was about to proceed to Cam- bridge with a view to taking Holy Orders, and received the following letter, full of kind fatherly suggestion most delicately put :
Haworth, nr. Keighley, April 8th, 1860. DEAR SIR,
I thank you kindly for the Magazine containing your three articles ; they are very excellent, and give a sure earnest of still better things to come. Well, you have seen much about the world and much into it, and are soon about to see a little more of it in Cambridge, my Alma Mater, who will also be yours. She is, in many respects, kind and gentle, and watches over her children with maternal care, yet in some things her discipline is strict, almost rigorous. She requires those under her care to travel over the rough road of Mathematical Study, not in a smooth, rapid, railroad pace, in which objects below seem run into one ; but in a slow pace, where even the smallest pebbles of the way can, and must, be distinctly seen and described, to the satisfaction
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