THEIR AUTHORS AND ORIGIN. 893
talented authoresses who have so soon passed away from us. In giving a brief sketch of her sisters after their death, Charlotte has also supplied this and several other beautiful spiritual hymns by Anne. This hymn is headed " Confidence." It is given in the "New Congregational Hymn Book" with the omission of a fourth verse. Charlotte has added the following note to it : " My sister had to taste the cup of life as it is mixed for the class termed Governesses. "
Charlotte, with all her psychological discernment, does not seem to have appreciated the real and affecting elements of the Christian history of her sister. Of her, she says, " She was a very sincere and practical Christian, but the tinge of religious melancholy communicated a sad shade to her brief blameless life. She wanted the power, the fun, the originality of her sister Emily, but was well-endowed with quiet virtues of her own. Long-suffering, self-denying, reflective and intelligent, a constitu tional reserve and taciturnity placed and kept her in the shade and covered her mind, and especially her feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil, which was rarely lifted."
Anne Bronte was the youngest daughter of the Kev. Patrick Bronte, B.A. She was born at Thornton, near Bradford, not long before her father removed, in 1820, to enter upon the living of Haworth. Her mother, whose maiden name was Maria Branwell, died September 15th, 1821, in her thirty-ninth year, leaving her children in helpless infancy and childhood. Their father was a recluse man, partly on account of his health and partly from choice even taking some of his meals alone. And when at length his children s powers expanded, they found themselves treated by him rather as^ adults than as children, and he dis coursed to them earnestly upon the leading persons and politics of the time. Such training of persons endowed as they were, and left usually to one another s company in the solitudes of a lonely northern parsonage, produced characters unique in the age. A strange contest was long carried on between fieir sense of capacity for public service through the press, and the modesty that shrank
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