Motive there was none why I should try to
recover or wish to live; and yet quite unendurable was the pitiless
and haughty voice in which Death challenged me to engage his
unknown terrors. When I tried to pray I could only utter these
words:--
"'From my youth up Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled
mind.'"
The deep interest of this experience is that it was endured by one
who was not only intellectually endowed beyond most women of her
time, but whose sanity, reasonableness, and moral force were
conspicuously strong. Charlotte Bronte was not one of those
impulsive and imaginative women who are the prey of every fancy.
Throughout the whole of her career, she was for ever compelling her
frail and sensitive temperament, with indomitable purpose, to
perform whatever she had undertaken to do. There never was anyone
who lived so sternly by principle and reason, or who so maintained
her self-control in the face of sorrow, disaster, unhappiness, and
bereavement. She never gave way to feeble or morbid self-
accusation, and therefore the fact that she could thus have
suffered is a sign that this unnamed terror can coexist with a
dauntless courage and an essential self-command.
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