efforts of their few friends, they did not succeed in securing a single pupil. This was a bitter disappointment, but it was as nothing compared with a household sorrow that had been slowly coming upon them for a long time.
Their brother, Branwell Brontë, who should have been the comfort and support of the family, had become its burthen and disgrace. Always brilliant in conversation, pleasure-loving, and slight of character, he had easily fallen into dissipated ways, and had gone from bad to worse. After filling several situations, which he lost one after another through his incompetence and bad habits, he had been engaged as a tutor in the family where Anne held the position of governess. The master of this house was an invalid; his wife it is not necessary to characterize. Branwell fell in love with her, and she reciprocated his passion. For some time poor Anne suspected this miserable intrigue, and her health, always delicate, declined under such a weight of anxiety and sorrow. But, at length, everything was discovered, and Branwell was dismissed in disgrace. He returned to his home a desperate man. His dissipation, formerly secret, now became open and reckless; he drank and took opium; he was violent and childish by turns, raving of his lost mistress one moment and threatening suicide the next.
The shame and horror of this conduct fell with peculiar force upon such honorable, laborious, even austere women as these, accustomed to spare themselves nothing in the performance of their duty. Charlotte's affection did not survive the shock of the disclosure of her brother's treachery. It was afterward painful for her to be in the room with him, and "forced work" (her own words) for her to speak to him. Anne, gentler and weaker than her sister, still loved, but feared him. The stronger Emily pitied him, and did not shrink from giving him her assist-
