Up
and down the house were to be found many standard works of a solid
kind. Sir Walter Scott's writings, Wadsworth's and Southey's poems
were among the lighter literature; while, as having a character of
their own--earnest, wild, and occasionally fanatical, may be named some
of the books which came from the Branwell side of the family--from the
Cornish followers of the saintly John Wesley--and which are touched on
in the account of the works to which Caroline Helstone had access in
"Shirley": "Some venerable Lady's Magazines, that had once performed a
voyage with their owner, and undergone a storm"--(possibly part of the
relics of Mrs. Bronte's possessions, contained in the ship wrecked on
the coast of Cornwall)--"and whose pages were stained with salt water;
some mad Methodist Magazines full of miracles and apparitions, and
preternatural warnings, ominous dreams, and frenzied fanaticism; and
the equally mad Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe from the Dead to the
Living."
Mr. Bronte encouraged a taste for reading in his girls; and though Miss
Branwell kept it in due bounds by the variety of household occupations,
in which she expected them not merely to take a part, but to become
proficients, thereby occupying regularly a good portion of every day,
they were allowed to get books from the circulating library at
Keighley; and many a happy walk up those long four miles must they have
had burdened with some new book into which they peeped as they hurried
home.
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