Chapter 4 - Page 2

the Report for 1842, and I believe they had not been increased since the establishment of the schools in 1823) was as follows:--

"Rule II. The terms for clothing, lodging, boarding, andeducating, are £14 a year; half to be paid in advance, when the pupils are sent; and also £1 entrance-money, for the use of books, etc. The system of education comprehends history, geography, the use of the globes, grammar, writing and arithmetic, all kinds of needlework, and the nicer kinds of household work--such as getting up fine linen, ironing, etc. If accomplishments are required, an additional charge of £3 a year is made for music or drawing, each."

Rule three requests that the friends will state the line of education desired in the case of every pupil, having a prospective regard to her future prospects.

Rule four states the clothing and toilette articles which a girl is expected to bring with her; and thus concludes: "The pupils all appear in the same dress. They wear plain straw cottage bonnets, in summer white frocks on Sundays, and nankeen on other days; in winter, purple stuff frocks, and purple cloth cloaks. For the sake of uniformity, therefore, they are required to bring £3 in lieu of frocks, pelisse, bonnet, tippet, and frills; making the whole sum which each pupil brings with her to the school-- £7 half-year in advance. £1 entrance for books. £1 entrance for clothes.

The 8th rule is--"All letters and parcels are inspected by the superintendent;" but this is a very prevalent regulation in all young ladies' schools, where I think it is generally understood that the schoolmistress may exercise this privilege, although it is certainly unwise in her to insist too frequently upon it.

There is nothing at all remarkable in any of the other regulations, a copy of which was doubtless in Mr. Bronte's hands when he formed the determination to send his daughters to Cowan Bridge School;: and he accordingly took Maria and Elizabeth thither in July, 1824.

I now come to a part of my subject which I find great difficulty in treating, because the evidence relating to it on each side is so conflicting that it seems almost impossible to arrive at the truth. Miss Bronte more than once said to me, that she should not have written what she did of Lowood in Jane Eyre, if she had thought the place would have been so immediately identified with Cowan Bridge,, although there was not a word in her account of the institution but what was true at the time when she knew it; she also said that she had not considered it necessary, in a work of fiction, to state every particular with the impartiality that might be required in a court of justice, nor to seek out motives, and make allowances for human feelings, as she might have done, if dispassionately analysing the conduct of those who had the superintendence of the institution. I believe she herself would have been glad of