“It is well that the thoughtless critics, who spoke of the sad and gloomy views of life presented by the Brontes in their tales, should know how such words were wrung out of them by the living recollection of the long agony they suffered. It is well, too, that they who have objected to the representation of _coarseness, and shrank from it with repugnance, as if such conception arose out of the writers, should learn, that not from the imagination, not from internal conception--but from the hard cruel facts, pressed down, by an external life upon their very senses, for long months and years together, did they write out what they saw, obeying the stern dictates of their consciences_. They might be mistaken. They might err in writing at all, when their afflictions were so great that they could not write otherwise than as they did of life. It is possible that it would have been better to have described good and pleasant people, doing only good and pleasant things (_in which case they could hardly have written at any time_): all I say is, that never, I believe, did women possessed of such wonderful gifts exercise them with a fuller feeling of responsibility for their use.” A friend of Miss Bronte says: “The world heartily, greedily enjoyed the fruits of Miss Bronte’s labors, _and then found out she was much to blame for possessing such faculties_.” Mrs. Gaskell says: “So utterly unconscious was Miss Bronte of what was by some esteemed ‘_coarse_’ in her writings, that on one occasion, when the conversation turned upon women’s writing fiction--she said, in her grave, earnest way, ‘I hope God will take away from me whatever power of invention, or expression I may have, before he lets me become blind to the sense of what is fitting, or unfitting to be said.’” Fanny Fern says: