Page:The life of Charlotte Brontë (IA lifeofcharlotteb01gaskrich).pdf/158

 grateful for your mindfulness of so obscure a person as myself, and I hope the pleasure is not altogether selfish; I trust it is partly derived from the consciousness that my friend's character is of a higher, a more steadfast order than I was once perfectly aware of. Few girls would have done as you have done—would have beheld the glare, and glitter, and dazzling display of London with dispositions so unchanged, heart so uncontaminated. I see no affectation in your letters, no trifling, no frivolous contempt of plain, and weak admiration of showy persons and things."

In these days of cheap railway trips, we may smile at the idea of a short visit to London having any great effect upon the character, whatever it may have upon the intellect. But her London—her great apocryphal city—was the "town" of a century before, to which giddy daughters dragged unwilling papas, or went with injudicious friends, to the detriment of all their better qualities, and sometimes to the ruin of their fortunes; it was the Vanity Fair of the "Pilgrim's Progress" to her.

But see the just and admirable sense with which she can treat a subject of which she is able to overlook all the bearings

"Haworth, July 4th, 1834.

"In your last, you request me to tell you of your faults. Now, really, how can you be so foolish! I won't tell you of your faults, because I don't know