It was not believed at the time, by some, that, because Mrs. Gaskell had been obliged to withdraw the statements complained of, in the later editions of her work, they were necessarily untrue. Mr. Thackeray had said that the life was 'necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable,' and the original edition was still in circulation, and was pirated abroad. The friends of Branwell Brontë, those who from actual acquaintance knew his mental power and real disposition, resented greatly the wrong that had been done to his memory; and several representations were made in his favour. One of these was in an article entitled: 'A Winter's Day at Haworth,' published in 'Chambers's Journal,' 1869. Mr. George Searle Phillips, in the 'Mirror,' of 1872, also published some valuable reminiscences which tended to show Branwell's true elevation of character and gentleness of disposition. The publication of Mr. Wemyss Reid's 'Charlotte Brontë, a Monograph,' in the year 1877, while it called attention to the original view of Branwell's life and character, did not aim to remove it. Mr. Reid repudiated, with success, the idea that the effect of Branwell's career upon Charlotte and Emily was what Mrs. Gaskell represented it to have been, without expressing any dissent from the story itself. This writer does not, indeed, appear to have suspected that the explanation was to be found in the fact that Branwell was not so bad as he had been made to appear, or that Mrs. Gaskell had fallen into other errors besides those of the letters which he corrected. But, though Mr. Reid carefully avoided the reproduction of the details of Mrs. Gaskell's account of Branwell's life, what reference is made to him in the 'Monograph,' after the period of his youth, is always in terms of reprobation, which have done nothing to discourage belief in the suppressed scandal. Moreover, Mr. Reid revived some of the charges against Mr. Brontë, and painted a sinister portrait of him. It was under these circumstances that Mr. F. H. Grundy, C.E., another friend of Branwell's, in his 'Pictures of the Past' (1879), endeavoured to do some justice to his memory, and declared, notwithstanding his great failings, that his abilities were of a very high order, and his disposition one that should be admired. I have found Mr. Grundy's materials of use in this work. But, unfortunately, this friend of Branwell's wrote from recollection, and made such great mistakes in the chronology of his life that his account did not give a true interpretation of actual circumstances. Mr. Grundy, too, had evidently refreshed his memory with a perusal of Mrs. Gaskell's volume, and so his information was considerably tinctured with that writer's misconceptions. This notice had the very opposite effect to that which was intended, and has since been largely used by writers whose purpose has led them to rank Branwell with the fallen.