The shadow of death that casts so deep a gloom over the story of the Brontë family, first fell on Maria and Elizabeth, the two elder children. The four girls—Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Emily—had been sent to a school, which was partly a charitable institution, at Cowan Bridge, in Westmoreland. The living at Haworth parsonage was the reverse of luxurious, but the food and the sanitary arrangements at Cowan Bridge were so bad that the health of the little Brontës was seriously injured by it. The food was repulsive from the want of cleanliness with which it was prepared and placed on the table. The children frequently refused food altogether, though sinking from the want of it, rather than drink the “bingy” milk, and eat unappetising scraps from a dirty larder, and puddings made with water taken from rain-tubs and impregnated with the smell of soot and dust. Besides the faulty domestic arrangements of the school, the discipline was harsh and tyrannical, and one teacher in particular was guilty of conduct towards Maria Brontë that can only be called brutal. Low fever broke out at the school, from which about forty of the pupils suffered, but the Brontës did not take the disease. It was evident that Maria was destined for another fate, that of consumption. She was removed from the school only a few days before her death, and Elizabeth followed her to the grave about six weeks later, in June 1825. Even after this Mr. Brontë’s eyes were not opened to the danger his children were in by their treatment at Cowan Bridge, and Charlotte and Emily were still allowed to remain at the school. It soon, however, became evident that they would not be long in following Maria and Elizabeth unless they were removed; and they returned home before the rigours of another winter set in. All the physical and mental tortures she endured at Cowan Bridge, Charlotte afterwards described in the account she gives of “Lowood” in _Jane Eyre_. It is not to be taken that the account of “Lowood” is as strictly an accurate description of Cowan Bridge as Charlotte Brontë would have given if she had been simply writing a history of the school. The facts are, perhaps, magnified by the lurid glow of passion and grief with which she recalled her sisters’ sufferings. She was only between nine and ten when she left Cowan Bridge, and in the account she wrote of it twenty years later we see rather the impression that was left on her imagination than a strictly accurate history; but there is no doubt that in her account of Maria Brontë’s angelic patience, and the cruel persecution to which she was subjected by one of the teachers, the Lowood of _Jane Eyre_ is a perfectly faithful transcript of what took place at Cowan Bridge. Mrs. Gaskell says, “Not a word of that part of _Jane Eyre_ but is a literal repetition of scenes between the pupil and the teacher. Those who had been pupils at the same time knew who must have written the book from