Eyre" is mere Pamela for the nineteenth century. What man would like to hear his sister describe an incident during a morning drive in an open carriage in the following terms:- I ventured once more to meet my lover's eye, which most pertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze. He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a Sultan might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched : I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously and thrust it back to him, red with the passionate pressure?" But with all its defects, though the incidents are many of them improbable (for what gentleman would think of keeping an insane wife, in such a hell-cat state of madness, in an upper chamber of his country residence, when he especially needed privacy with regard to his misfortune, and private asylums abounded in the neighbourhood of London ?) and though all the interest is wiped out of the hero by a stroke of blindness (as is not the case with Romney Leigh) it is beyond comparison the best modern novel that has proceeded from the pen of a female writer.

She was thirty-one years of age when "Jane Eyre" was published. At length fame and a certain degree of pecuniary prosperity were gained;-and then stepped in death to remove the entire family, with the exception of Mr. Brontë, just as brighter days seemed to have dawned upon them.

On September 24th, 1848, Patrick Branwell Brontë died, aged 30 years. Emily Brontë died, December 19th, 1848, aged 29 years. The fierceness of the girl, who when a child in age conquered an angry bull-dog, displayed itself in her dying illness. Her malady was a lingering consumption, attended with acute pain; but she refused to see any physicians-no poisoning doctors should come near her and she would not allow any person to help her or nurse her, and she insisted on rising and attempting with the

death-rattle in her throat to sew, on the very morning before her dissolution, which took place at two o'clock in the afternoon. Anne Brontë died on the 28th of May, 1849, and Charlotte Brontë died on the 31st of March, 1855, in the 39th year of her age, a few months after her marriage to her father's curate-the Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls, A.B.

CHAPTER XV.

CHARLES DICKENS.

THAT the biographies even of obscure persons are interesting, and that the biographies of great men are instructive, are two somewhat trite propositions we are all of us ready to maintain, and never more zealously than when in the memoirs of illustrious individuals we seek the means of gratifying a love of petty scandal and mean detraction. The histories of men distinguished for genius contain a large part of the history of the human race, and are the key by which alone we can understand that portion of history that lies apart from them. A hero's acts, a legislator's decrees, a philosopher's reasonings, a painter's pictures, a poet's imaginings are the true memorial and likeness of his mind; but if we want to know how far they express the sentiment of his epoch we must turn to his written life. Illustrated by such a record they proclaim both the genius of the man and of his time. It is common to hear it stated that the mental power that distinguishes the leader from the herd is the product of surrounding circumstances, and is the representative of intellectual vigour and tastes common to the multitude. But it is possible for a thinker to be no reflection of his generation, to be altogether before his day, and to know literally and in the sternness of truth how bitter a thing it is to live alone. The classical condition and polite arts of the cloisters in the dark ages, however they aroused the wonderment of the stupid, were no picture of the ignorance and violence that ruled everywhere save within the walls of religious houses. Before the diffusion

of letters, of course the distinction between the teacher and the taught was wider than it is now; but even in times or classes of some intellectual culture and refinement, we find the great artist neglected and the paltry imitator applauded, the poet despised and the jester caressed. By the "Paradise Lost" we are enabled to form some conception-weak and inadequate, indeed, but still not otherwise faulty-of the colossal dignity of Milton's genius, in the same manner that we learn from the songs and plays of the wits of the Restoration, the flippancy and obscenity of their ape-like minds. But if we want to arrive at the tastes and sympathies and ambitions-the heart and inmost life of that memorable period, we must turn from the works of these men, and inquire what treatment they received at the hands of society ?-by whom they were protected and by whom opposed? - with whom they dwelt, the wealthy and high-born, or the obscure?-in what estimation they were held ?-how they were honoured or dishonoured in their lives?-how consigned to the grave? And when we do so we find the high-souled poet merely obtained a decent interment, while the ashes of buffoons were deemed worthy of burial in the great Abbey amongst the noblest of England's departed sons; and we learn that "Paradise Lost" was sold by its writer for a sum scarce sufficient to pay for the pens, ink, and paper consumed in its production, while an immoral poem could win "a place" and wealth at court, and an indecent comedy was rewarded with hundreds of gold pieces. This is the money testthe vulgar test-but it is well to use it when inquiring after the affections of the vulgar.

These reflections naturally arise when, after reviewing the novelists from the first rise of their art in England, we at length come to the greatest, the most successful, in every sense the best living writer of prose fiction. In the course of our long journey the art has passed through many phases,

and the artist, not less numerous changes in position, influence, character, and social esteem. The art is no longer a despised one; it is not devoted to the fabrication of indelicate and dangerous love-stories, capable only of amusing silly women, and tickling the sensuality of vicious men; and no longer is it given over to the guardianship of the meanest writers of sterile imaginations and gross instincts; but it takes under its cognizance every subject that interests the intelligence or arouses the affections of man. It has had a hard battle to fight, and is not yet without its enemies, but even its bitterest foes are indebted to it for happy hours and mental guidance. No one now can affect to disdain the novel as a light and pernicious form of literature fit only for the frivolous; for it treats with masterly strength and lucidity the most important topics. The wisest thinkers, the most laborious scholars, and the most adroit politicians combine to use it as the best means of appealing to the intelligence of their fellow-men. It is most catholic aud engrossing, appealing to every variety of mental conformation, and attracting to itself authors of every school of thought, and style. No one is left unconsidered. Statesmen avail themselves of it to propound their theories on government, moralists to illustrate their opinions, churchmen and no-churchmen to bring into the field the forces of polemical contention, classical students to paint the deeds of fallen empires and the manners of peoples long since swept from the family of nations, and cities long since buried in the earth. The pedant can no longer growl at "the lightness" of "trashy fiction," for in the productions of novelists are works pedantic, and dull, and heavy enough to please the stupidest and most pompous Doctor of Divinity to be found in Oxford. Nor can the sluggish blockhead any longer conceal his shame at his indolence in not perusing the literature of his age under an assumed contempt for the minds that produce it, for the writers of