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 II.

story of the Brontës is one of the saddest in the annals of literature. They were the children of a father who was both cold and violent, and of a gentle, sickly mother, early lost. They were reared amid surroundings the most gloomy and unhealthful, and cursed as they grew older with a brother who brought them shame and sorrow in return for the love they lavished upon him. Their very genius seemed a product of disease, and often their finest pages are marred by a bitter savor of its origin. Their stories deal with suffering, endurance, or rebellion against fate; with violence, with crime and its punishment. In treating such subjects, these three quiet, patient daughters of a country parson found themselves quite at home.

Their father was a clergyman of the Church of England, an Irishman by birth, who had had the good sense to change his original name of Prunty to the more pleasing appellation since made famous by his daughters. His father, Hugh Prunty, was a peasant proprietor of Ahaderg, county Down, the owner of a few acres of potato land, and the father of ten children, of whom the handsomest, strongest, and most intelligent was Patrick, afterward the Reverend Patrick Brontë. At the age of sixteen he left his father's house and went to the neighboring village of Drumgooland, where he taught school and spent his leisure hours in study.

He worked so hard to perfect himself in the necessary (28)