Page:The life of Charlotte Brontë (IA lifeofcharlotteb01gaskrich).pdf/157

 of observation now, and, for a time a least, lay aside the spectacles with which authors would furnish us."

In a postscript she adds:—

"Will you be kind enough to inform me of the number of performers in the King's military band?"

And in something of the same strain she writes on

"June 19th.

" own E.,

I may rightfully and truly call you so now. You have returned or are returning from London—from the great city which is to me as apocryphal as Babylon, or Nineveh, or ancient Rome. You are withdrawing from the world (as it is called), and bringing with you—if your letters enable me to form a correct judgment—a heart as unsophisticated, as natural, as true, as that you carried there. I am slow, very slow, to believe the protestations of another; I know my own sentiments, I can read my own mind, but the minds of the rest of man and woman kind are to me sealed volumes, hieroglyphical scrolls, which I cannot easily either unseal or decipher. Yet time, careful study, long acquaintance, overcome most difficulties; and, in your case, I think they have succeeded well in bringing to light and construing that hidden language, whose turnings, windings, inconsistencies, and obscurities, so frequently baffle the researches of the honest observer of human nature I am truly