Altogether not so pleasant a place as Hartshead, with its ample outlook over cloud-shadowed, sun-flecked plain, and hill rising beyond hill to form the distant horizon.
Here, at Thornton, Charlotte Bronte was born, on the 21st of April, 1816.
Fast on her heels followed Patrick Branwell, Emily Jane, and Anne.

After the birth of this last daughter, Mrs.Bronte's health began to decline.
It is hard work to provide for the little tender wants of many young children where the means are but limited.

The necessaries of food and clothing are much more easily supplied than the almost equal necessaries of attendance, care, soothing, amusement, and sympathy.

Maria Bronte, the eldest of six, could only have been a few months more than six years old, when Mr.Bronte removed to Haworth, on February the 25th, 1820.
Those who knew her then, describe her as grave, thoughtful, and quiet, to a degree far beyond her years.

Her childhood was no childhood; the cases are rare in which the possessors of great gifts have known the blessings of that careless happy time; _their_ unusual powers stir within them, and, instead of the natural life of perception--the objective, as the Germans call it--they begin the deeper life of reflection--the subjective.
Little Maria Bronte was delicate and small in appearance, which seemed to give greater effect to her wonderful precocity of intellect.