I mentioned having sent for my books, clothes, &c.

On Saturday evening, about the time when you were writing the description of your imaginary shipwreck, I was reading and feeling the effects of a real one, having then received a letter from my sister giving me an account of the vessel in which she had sent my box being stranded on the coast of Devonshire, in consequence of which the box was dashed to pieces with the violence of the sea, and all my little property, with the exception of a very few articles, being swallowed up in the mighty deep.

If this should not prove the prelude to something worse I shall think little of it, as it is the first disastrous circumstance which has occurred since I left my home." The last of these letters is dated December the 5th.

Miss Branwell and her cousin intended to set about making the wedding-cake in the following week, so the marriage could not be far off.

She had been learning by heart a "pretty little hymn" of Mr.Bronte's composing; and reading Lord Lyttelton's "Advice to a Lady," on which she makes some pertinent and just remarks, showing that she thought as well as read.