stories. So that the stories themselves come to us, not like other stories, but steeped in this strange perfume thrilled through with the magical life belonging to flowers of remembrance, gathered from the grave of a tragical romance. And this explains why the stories are themselves romantic: and why, as Harriet Martineau complained, Villette, especially, has this quality, which, to the authoress of Illustrations in Political Economy, appeared a defect, that 'all events and personages are regarded through the medium of one passion only—the passion of unrequited love.'

To return to Mrs. Gaskell and her criticism of Charlotte Brontë. The question of whether she, like Harriet Martineau, committed a critical blunder, as a result of studying Charlotte's character and genius by wrong methods, or whether out of loyalty she endeavoured to cover in her friend's life the secret romance that Charlotte herself never revealed, does not need to trouble us much, because the answer does not greatly matter. However laudatory Mrs. Gaskell's motive may have been, the fact remains, that, as a result of her endeavour rather to turn attention away from, than to examine, the true circumstances of Charlotte's relationships with Monsieur and Madame Heger, an inadequate, or else a false, criticism was inaugurated by her influence of the most popular in Europe of our distinguished women novelists, and who, outside of England, is judged by right standards as a 'Romantic,' but who, in her own country, has been criticised from 1857 down to 1913, in the light of one of two contradictory impressions—both of which we now know were historical mistakes.

The first of these impressions is that Charlotte Brontë has painted, not only her own emotions, but her own actual experiences, in Villette; and that Lucy Snowe, Paul Emanuel, and Madame Beck, are pseudonyms, under which we ought to recognise Charlotte herself, and the Director and Directress of the Pensionnat in the Rue d'Isabelle.

The second, and almost equally mischievous impression is that no romantic nor tragical sentiment whatever characterises the relationships between Charlotte Brontë and her Bruxelles Professor in literature; and that she derived her inspirations as a writer solely from the drab dreariness and the desolation of disease and death, of her life in the shadow of Haworth churchyard. It is impossible from the standpoint of either of these impressions to form right opinions about Charlotte Brontë, either as a distinguished personality, or as a writer of genius, whose place in English literature is that amongst our prose writers she is the representative 'Romantic' who counts with George Sand; but differs from her, as an English and not a French exponent of the sentiment of romantic love.

Judged both as a distinguished personality and as a writer of genius from the standpoint of the impression that Villette is an autobiographical story, Charlotte Brontë suffers injustice, both as a woman of fine character, and as an imaginative painter of emotions rather than an observer of events, or a critic of manners. Accepted as a realistic picture of her own adventures in Brussels, the book does not testify to her accuracy or skill in portraiture, from the purely literary point of view. And from the moral and personal standpoint, she remains convicted (if she be held to be telling her own story) of the baseness of a half-confession;—and of a dishonourable and a successful, not a romantic and tragical, love for a married man. And of the treacherous wrong done a sister-woman, who threw open her home to her, when she was a friendless alien in a foreign city. And, if this were so, this traitress would have further aggravated the dishonest betrayal of her protectress, by holding up the woman she had wronged to the world's detestation, either as the contemptible and scheming Mlle. Zoraïde Reuter, of the Professor:—or the less contemptible but more hateful Madame Beck, in Villette.

If, then, Charlotte did mean, or even suppose, that others could be induced to believe that she meant, to paint her own relationships to Monsieur and Madame Heger in the story, she would stand convicted, not only as a woman of bad character, but as one who had a wicked and vindictive heart.

Nor yet does the second impression, patronised by devotees of Charlotte Brontë (who seem to imagine that the revelation of an entirely innocent and indeed beautiful, though tragical, romantic attachment in the life of this romantic writer, is the disclosure of a sin), help us to find any solution of the 'problem' as psychological critics present it to us, of the 'dissonance' between her personality and dull existence, and her literary distinction, as our chief English Romantic, and the authoress of those amazing masterpieces Jane Eyre and Villette. What a contrast, in effect, between the characteristics of these masterpieces and the characteristics of her circumstances at Haworth and of the circle of her familiar acquaintances! The characteristics of Charlotte's books are—emotional force, the exaltation of passion over all the commonplace proprieties, the low-toned feelings, the semi-educated pedantries that are the characteristics of the people who surround Charlotte; who are her correspondents and her friends; and whose mediocrity weighs on the poor original woman's spirit (and even on her literary style) like lead:—so that the letters she writes to them are, really, nearly as dull as the letters they write to her; and one finds it hard to believe that some of the letters, to Ellen Nussey, for instance, come from the same pen that wrote Villette: or even that wrote from Bruxelles some of her letters to Emily.

And again, if we leave out of account the tragical romantic sentiment for M. Heger, how are we to solve the problem as these psychologists present it to us, and that states itself in this conviction: that the creator of 'Rochester' and 'Paul Emanuel' found her own romance, only at forty years of age, in her marriage with the Rev. A.B. Nicholls, an event she announces thus:—'I trust the demands of both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled by the step in contemplation'; adding on to this the following description of the future bridegroom: 'Mr Nicholls is a kind, considerate fellow: with all his masculine faults, he enters into my wishes about having the thing done quietly'?

From the standpoint of the impression that the romance in Charlotte's life, was the marriage she speaks of as 'the thing,' that she wishes 'may be done quietly,'—and that the highest pitch of personal emotion she attained to, is expressed by her in the temperate confidence that by 'the step in contemplation'—'the demands of both feeling and duty may in some measure be reconciled,' (—only in some measure? Poor Charlotte!—But she died within a year)—from this standpoint, I say, one really cannot solve the problem of the 'dissonance' between Charlotte's personality and her books.

But there is one conclusion we are bound to reach. The influences of Haworth, no doubt—the drab dreariness of everything; and then the desolation after Bramwell's death, and Emily's death, and Anne's death—and the father threatened with blindness—and also the mediocrity of all those dull, dull people, who represented her familiar friends and correspondents, so satisfied with themselves, all of them; so dissatisfied with life, and who saw it through the medium not of a romantic tragical sentiment, not of one great passion, but through the medium of small grievances of superior nursery governesses: the sort of people who dislike children, and want overdriven mothers to be always occupied with their governesses' sentiments, instead of with the baby who is cutting its teeth. No doubt the influences of Haworth and of Charlotte Brontë's 'Circle' there, before she became famous, did help to plant in her the immense depression and fatigue of a spirit that had known