And again, if we leave out of account the tragical romantic sentiment for M. Heger, how are we to solve the problem as these psychologists present it to us, and that states itself in this conviction: that the creator of 'Rochester' and 'Paul Emanuel' found her _own_ romance, only at forty years of age, in her marriage with the Rev. A.B. Nicholls, an event she announces thus:--'_I trust the demands of both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled by the step in contemplation_'; adding on to this the following description of the future bridegroom: '_Mr Nicholls is a kind, considerate fellow: with all his masculine faults, he enters into my wishes about having the thing done quietly_'? From the standpoint of the impression that the romance in Charlotte's life, was the marriage she speaks of as '_the thing_,' that she wishes '_may be done quietly_,'--and that the highest pitch of personal emotion she attained to, is expressed by her in the temperate confidence that by 'the step in contemplation'--'_the demands of both feeling and duty may in some measure be reconciled_,' (--only _in some measure_? Poor Charlotte!--But she died within a year)--from this standpoint, I say, one really cannot solve the problem of the 'dissonance' between Charlotte's personality and her books. But there is one conclusion we are bound to reach. The influences of Haworth, no doubt--the drab dreariness of everything; and then the desolation after Bramwell's death, and Emily's death, and Anne's death--and the father threatened with blindness--and also the mediocrity of all those dull, dull people, who represented her familiar friends and correspondents, so satisfied with themselves, all of them; so dissatisfied with life, and who saw it through the medium not of a romantic tragical sentiment, not of one great passion, but through the medium of small grievances of superior nursery governesses: the sort of people who dislike children, and want overdriven mothers to be always occupied with their governesses' sentiments, instead of with the baby who is cutting its teeth. No doubt the influences of Haworth and of Charlotte Brontë's 'Circle' there, before she became famous, _did_ help to plant in her the immense depression and fatigue of a spirit that had known the stress of great emotions, and _could bear no more_,--expressed in the letter announcing her decision to marry one of the curates she had laughed at in _Shirley_--who _with all his masculine faults_,' she says, 'is a _kind, considerate fellow_,' who doesn't expect her to pretend she thinks this marriage ('_the thing_')--a Festival. Well, but the conclusion we must form is this, that if it be at Haworth, and after 1846, that we must find the causes of the depression that brought about Charlotte's marriage with Mr. Nicholl, it is _not_ here that we must seek the '_Secret of Charlotte Brontë_';--the romance that broke her heart, true--but made her an immortal, whose claim to live for ever is