So the ancient gloom and terror
Of the ages fade away,
In the sunlight of the present,
Of our better, purer day!
THE HOME OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE.
A PASSAGE FROM A DIARY.
BY W. FRANCIS WILLIAMS.
"Such shrines as these are pilgrim shrines--
Shrines to no code or creed confined;
The Delphian vales, the Palestines,
The Meccas of the mind."
HALLECK.
The date is September 5, 1857. I am at Haworth, whither I had walked from
the Bradford Station, some ten or twelve miles distant. This Haworth--a
place but a few years since quite unknown to any but the few residing in
its immediate vicinity--is built upon the side of a hill, and, with its
long line of grey houses creeping up the slope, seems like a huge saurian
monster, sprawling along the hill-side, his head near the top and his tail
reaching nearly to the vale below. At the summit, in the very head of our
saurian, stands Haworth Parsonage, and the church near by, with the square
old tower rising above the houses that cluster about it. I well remember
my first view of this place. It was an autumn afternoon, and near sunset.
The sky had been cloudy, but as I stopped to take my first long look at
the little village, so hallowed by the memory of the Bronte sisters, the
declining sun sent through a breach in the clouds a few spears of dazzling
light, that played about the old church and parsonage with an ineffable
glory.
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