the choice of words. She herself in writing her books was solicitous on this point. One set of words was the truthful mirror of her thoughts; no others, however apparently identical in meaning, would do.—Mrs. Gaskell.

A person who, with great mental powers, combines a total ignorance of the habits of society, a great coarseness of taste, and a heathenish doctrine of religion.-Quarterly Review, 1849.

We take Currer Bell to be one of the most remarkable of female writers; and believe it is now scarcely a secret that Currer Bell is the pseudonyme of a woman. An eminent contemporary, indeed, has employed the sharp vivacity of a female pen to prove "upon irresistible evidence" that "Jane Eyre" must be the work of a man! But all that "irresistible evidence" is set aside by the simple fact that Currer Bell is a woman. We never, for our own parts, had a moment's doubt on the subject. That Jane herself was drawn by a woman's delicate hand, and that Rochester equally betrayed the sex of the artist, was to our minds so obvious, as absolutely to shut our ears to all the evidence which could be adduced by the erudition even of a marchande de modes; and that simply because we knew that there were women profoundly ignorant of the mysteries of the toilette, and the terminology of fashion (independent of the obvious solution, that such ignorance might be counterfeited, to mislead), and felt that there was no man who could so have delineated a woman-or would so have delineated a man. The fair and ingenious critic was misled by her own acuteness in the perception of details; and misled also in some other way, and more uncharitably, in concluding that the author of" Jane Eyre" was a heathen educated among heathens-the fact being, that the authoress is the daughter of a clergyman! This question of authorship, which was somewhat hotly debated a little while ago, helped to keep up the excitement about "Jane Eyre;" but, independently of that title to notoriety, it is certain that, for many years, there had been no work of such power, piquancy, and originality. Its very faults were faults on the side of vigour; and its beauties were all original. The grand secret of its success, however-as of all genuine and lasting success-was its reality. From out the depths of a sorrowing experience here was a voice speaking to the experience of thousands. The aspects of external nature, too, were painted with equal fidelity-the long cheerless winter days, chilled vth rolling mists occasionally gathering into the strength

K K

498

Charlotte Brontë-Emily Bronte.

of rains-the bright spring mornings-the clear solemn nights -were all painted to your soul as well as to your eye, by a pencil dipped into a soul's experience for its colours. Faults enough the book has undoubtedly faults of conception, faults of taste, faults of ignorance; but in spite of all, it remains a book of singular fascination. A more masculine book, in the sense of vigour, was never written. Indeed that vigour often amounts to coarseness-and is certainly the very antipode to "lady-like."—George Henry Lewes, Edinburgh Review, 1850.'

Emily Brontë.

1819-1848.

"Wuthering Heights" was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a solitary moor; gazing thereon he saw how from the crag might be elicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one element of grandeur, power. He wrought with a rude chisel, and from no model but the vision of his meditations. With time and labour the crag took human shape; and there it stands, colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rock; in the former sense terrible and goblinlike in the latter almost beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant's foot.-Charlotte Bronte.

It has been said of Shakspeare that he drew cases which the physician might study; Ellis Bell has done no less.-S. Dobell.

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:

I see heaven's glories shine,

And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

E. Bronte.

1 Mr. Lewes, I divine, with all his talents and honesty, must have some faults of manner; there must be a touch too much of dogmatism; a dash extra of confidence in him sometimes. This you think while you are reading the book; but when you have closed it and laid it down, and sat a few minutes collecting your thoughts and settling your impressions, you find the idea or feeling predominant in your mind to be pleasure at the fuller acquaintance you have made with a fine mind and a true heart, with high abilities and manly principles.-Charlotte Brontë.

Emily Bronte-James Russell Lowell.

499

Emily had a head for logic and a capability of argument unusual in a man, and rare indeed in a woman, according to M. Héger. Impairing the force of this gift was a stubborn tenacity . of will, which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes or her own sense of right was concerned. "She should have been a man—a great navigator," said M. Héger in speaking of her. "Her powerful reason would have deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty-never have given way but with life." And yet, moreover, her faculty of imagination was such that, if she had written a history, her view of scenes and characters would have been so vivid, and so powerfully expressed, and supported by such a show of argument, that it would have dominated over the reader, whatever might have been his previous opinions or his cooler perceptions of its truth. But she appeared egotistical and selfish compared to Charlotte.—Mrs. Gaskell, "Life of Charlotte Bronte."

James Russell Lowell.

1819.

Lowell unites in his most effective power the dreamy, suggestive character of the transcendental bard with the philosophic simplicity of Wordsworth.-H. T. Tuckerman.

He is the Hudibras of America.-Bungay's "Off-hand Takings."

The successive publications of Mr. Lowell show a marked progress, and encourage us to hope for a ripe harvest when the soil shall be cultivated to the utmost and the fruit has been allowed to reach its full maturity. The swift movement of Mr. Lowell's verses and the daring energy of his conceptions show that his genius inclines to the lyric form of poetry.A. R. Scoble.

1 To Emily Brontë's genius justice seems hardly to have been done. Her sister, indeed, recognised, and may be said to have adored it. Emily Bronte's mind was at once dark and luminous, like the eyes of an Indian. Her qualities were each and all splendid, but too massive and masculine for her frail frame, worn and worried by consumption. Wuthering Heights" is a noble work. Frequent passages haunt one like scenes from "Macbeth" or the "Cenci.” In some points her genius seems superior to her sister's.-Ed.

66

John Ruskin.

1819.

Mr. Ruskin seems to me one of the few genuine writers, as distinguished from bookmakers, of this age. His earnestness even amuses me in certain passages; for I cannot help laughing to think how utilitarians will fume and fret over his deep, serious (and as they will think) fanatical reverence for Art. That pure and severe mind you ascribed to him speaks in every line. He writes like a consecrated Priest of the Abstract and Ideal. -Charlotte Brontë.

I think it must be admitted by all unprejudiced minds that Mr. Ruskin's criticism on the theory of Sir Joshua's-which makes the essential characteristic of the grand style to be the avoidance of temporary and local circumstances and precise details-is sound and searching, and that his own definition of the grand style is as much superior to that of Sir Joshua in comprehensiveness and sound philosophy as it is in the eloquence of its expression.-C. R. Leslie.

After having made a fame by hanging to the skirts of a famous artist-after deluding those cravings for honesty into the belief that a dashing style must imply precious discoveries -after having met the humour of the time, by preaching the religion of architecture with a freedom in the use of sacred names and things from which a more reverential man would have shrunk-after having served as an eloquent though too flattering guide to the treasures of Venice-after having enriched the citizens of this Scottish metropolis with receipts how to amend the architecture of our city by patching Palladian squares, streets, and crescents with Gothic windows, balconies, and pinnacles after having lectured to decorators on the beauty and virtue of painting illegible letters on signboards and shop-fronts the wisdom of Mr. Ruskin has of late begun to cry in the streets. He attempts to erect the most extravagant paradoxes into new canons of taste; and the virulence of his personalities is only exceeded by the eccentricity of his judg ment.-Edinburgh Review, 1856.

INDEX.