chains of a degrading habit from which death alone could free him. His struggles with this fatal fascination, and his sufferings, were cruel in the extreme, and inflicted pangs bitterer than death on all who loved him. He was rather weak of will, and had been allowed to grow up self-indulgent, through the over-fondness of his family, who were almost ascetic in their own habits, but could deny him nothing. He had great power of attracting people and of attaching them to him,--a power almost wanting in other members of the family, and which might have been of great advantage to him through life, had he started on the right course. As it was, it only helped to drag him down. He had enough of Irish blood in him to make his manners frank and genial, with a kind of natural gallantry about them. He was generally esteemed handsome. His forehead was massive, his eyes good, his mouth pleasant though somewhat coarse, his hair and complexion sandy. Mrs. Gaskell, in her life of Charlotte Bronté, thus tells of the second great grief he caused his family:-- "Branwell, I have mentioned, had obtained a situation as a private tutor. Full of available talent, a brilliant talker, a good writer, apt at drawing, ready of appreciation, and with a not unhandsome person, he took the fancy of a married woman twenty years older than himself. It is no excuse for him to say that she began the first advances, and 'made love' to him. She was so bold and hardened that she did it in the very presence of her children, fast approaching maturity; and they would threaten her that if she did not grant them such and such indulgences, they would tell their bed-ridden father how she went on with Mr. Bronté. He was so beguiled by this mature and wicked woman that he went home for his holiday reluctantly, stayed there as short a time as possible, perplexing and distressing them all by his extraordinary conduct,--at one time in the highest spirits, at another in deepest depression,--accusing himself of blackest guilt and treachery, without specifying what they were; and altogether evincing an irritability of disposition bordering on insanity. Charlotte and her sister suffered acutely from his mysterious behavior. They began to lose all hope in his future career. He was no longer the family pride; an indistinct dread was creeping over their minds that he might turn out the family disgrace.