158 Mr. J. H. Balfour Browne [June 1, 



novel trivial in comparison with any of these received £10,000, we 

 must abandon money as a test of merit. How, then, if we cannot 

 tell the tastes of to-day, or the fashions of admiration of our own 

 time, are we to foretell the taste or fashions of our successors, when 

 we are asked of Charlotte and Emily Bronte's works, " AVill they 

 live ? " 



All I can say is that if these books die, it is not their fault, for 

 they are vital and ought to live ; but it will be your fault, and your 

 children's fault. If they are neglected, it will be because the 

 generations of the future have acquired the taste of a decadent for a 

 literature which is itself in decay. 



Far less has been said and written about Emily Bronte than 

 about the author of " Jane Eyre." There are many reasons for this 

 harsh neglect. Emily had more aloofness in her than Charlotte. 

 She was of all the oddities at Haworth Parsonage perhaps the 

 oddest. She had, says one accurate critic, " the eyes of a half -tamed 

 creature," but she had also the ways of a half-tamed creature. 



I have said little of her life because there is so little to say. She, 

 too, was one of the victims of Cowans Bridge School. She, too, 

 became a governess— a poor lot for a woman tamed like Anne, but 

 intolerable for a soaring eaglet like Emily. Charlotte tells us that 

 at the school near Halifax Emily was in " slavery." But think what 

 slavery must be to a woman who could write — 



Riches I hold in light esteem, 



And love I laugh to scorn, 

 And lust of fame is but a dream, 



That vanished with the morn. 



And if I pray, the only prayer 



That moves my lips for me, 

 Is " Leave the heart that now I bear, 



And give me liberty " ! 



Yes, as my swift days near their goal, 



'Tis all that I implore. 

 In life and death a chainiess soul, 



With courage to endure. 



She was a pupil, too, at the pens ionjiat at Brussels, and one more 

 ingenious than wise writer has, in the search for origins, suggested 

 that not only was M. Heger the Rochester and Paul Emanuel of 

 Charlotte's books, but that he was also the Heathcliff of that wither- 

 ing literature " Wuthering Heights." AVe have seen that some have 

 told us it was a "great secret" that Charlotte was in love with 

 M. Heger, although she had told us so herself ; but under the dire 

 necessity of accumulating mystery where there is none, each new 

 writer has tried to iiud a new secret with which to whet the blunting 

 curiosity of the public. So we find that ^Irs. Cbadwick, in her book 

 " In the Footsteps of the Brontes," hints that Emily too was in love 

 with the little, black, fiery and kind Professor of the Brussels Athenee, 



