20 



of the watcher by twihght on the cHff — full of mystery and 

 mourning and fear and faith — the unspeakably sweet song of the 

 daisy that smiles at coming wiiater, the star that smiles at coming 

 night, the soul that smiles at coming death." 



Great efforts have been made to identify the various places 

 named in the Bronte novels, and in some instances these attempts 

 have been successful. Extreme accuracy of detail in these 

 matters was of subordinate value in a novel. The mill in 

 " Shirley " where Robert Moore confronted with so much bold- 

 ness the twelve men who came to protest against the employment 

 of machinery in place of hand-labour is still to be seen. Any 

 reader of that book visiting the millyard will recall the dream of 

 Robert Moore at the close of the story: "I can line yonder 

 barren Hollow with lines of cottages . . . the copse shall 

 be firewood ere five years elapse, the beautiful wild ravine shall 

 be a smooth descent . . . the rough pebbly track shall be 

 an even, firm, broad, black, sooty road, bedded with the cinders 

 from my mill, and my mill shall fill its present yard. I will 

 pour the waters of Pactolus throixgh tlie valley." Roe Head, 

 where Charlotte was sent to school, was within walking distance 

 of this mill. The tales of the riots of 1812 were often repeated 

 to the school-girls, and they made an indelible impression on the 

 mind of the little girl from Haworth. She left school in 1832. 

 Seventeen years afterwards she founded her story of " Shirley " 

 on the incidents of 1812. Her account of the Luddite riots 

 given in this novel is historically true. In historical novels — 

 those that purport to reproduce some incident in the life of a 

 nation or of a particular individual — the representation of facts 

 should be strictly correct. The imaginative part of the book — 

 the dialogues, the soliloquies, the plot — may be left to the play 

 of the fancy, but the historical part should be true to fact. In 

 some conspicuous instances this principle has been carefully 

 adhered to. And the result has been that oftentimes wben in 

 search of fact we go to fiction. Some of the characters in the 

 Bronte novels were drawn from actual life, others were clearly 

 the offspring of the writer's imagination, and were at once the 

 production and the proof of genius. 



There are many marks of similarity running through the novels 

 written by the three sisters. When "Jane Eyre " was published, 

 there was a general unanimity amongst the reviewers that the 

 work was a genuine autobiography. To a certain extent the 

 critics were right. Each of Charlotte's novels was in reality 

 " a double romance — there was one meaning for the world, but 

 a hidden meaning was present to the writer's mind." Maiiy of 

 the most effective scenes in the novels are reproductions of actual 

 events in the author's life. 



