It was Charlotte’s visit to Brussels, first as pupil and afterwards as teacher in the school of Madame Héger, which was the turning-point in her life, which changed its currents, and gave to it a new purpose and a new meaning. Up to the moment of that visit she had been the simple, kindly, truthful Yorkshire girl, endowed with strange faculties, carried away at times by burning impulses, moved often by emotions the nature of which she could not fathom, but always hemmed in by her narrow experiences, her limited knowledge of life and the world. Until she went to Belgium, her sorest troubles had been associated with her dislike to the society of strangers, her heaviest burden had been the necessity under which she lay of tasting that “cup of life as it is mixed for governesses,” which she detested so heartily. Under the belief that they could qualify themselves to keep a school of their own if they had once mastered the delicacies of the French and German languages, she and Emily set off for this sojourn in Brussels. One may be forgiven for speculating as to her future lot had she accepted the offer of marriage she received in her early governess days, and settled down as the faithful wife of a sober English gentleman. In that case ‘Shirley’ perhaps might have been written, but ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Villette’ never. She learned much during her two years’ sojourn in the Belgian capital; but the greatest of all the lessons she mastered while there was that self-knowledge the taste of which is so bitter to the mouth, though so wholesome to the life. T. WEMYSS REID: ‘Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: The sisters’ life in Brussels.]