the stress of great emotions, and could bear no more,—expressed in the letter announcing her decision to marry one of the curates she had laughed at in Shirley—who with all his masculine faults,' she says, 'is a kind, considerate fellow,' who doesn't expect her to pretend she thinks this marriage ('the thing')—a Festival. Well, but the conclusion we must form is this, that if it be at Haworth, and after 1846, that we must find the causes of the depression that brought about Charlotte's marriage with Mr. Nicholl, it is not here that we must seek the 'Secret of Charlotte Brontë';—the romance that broke her heart, true—but made her an immortal, whose claim to live for ever is based upon no moderate well-balanced sentiment, where 'the demands of both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled'—but upon passionate emotions, compelling expression, and forming a new language almost; as M. Jules Lemaître has said 'introducing new ways of feeling, and as it were a new vibration into literature.'

And in the place where the romance in Charlotte's life is found must we seek, also, the source of this power of emotion: creating powers of expression to which much more accomplished literary artists than Charlotte (Jane Austen and Mrs. Gaskell, for instance) never reached; and to an intimate knowledge of moods and ecstasies and raptures, that rule and torture and exalt human souls, that much more subtle and scientific psychologists than herself (George Eliot, for instance, and Mrs. Humphry Ward) never discovered.

The supreme gift of the authoress of Villette and Jane Eyre, as a painter of emotions, an interpreter of intimate moods, a witness in the cause of ideal sentiments, an incessant rebel against vulgarity and common worldliness, and the stupid tyranny of custom, an upholder of the sovereignty of romance, cannot be weighed against, nor judged by, the same standards as the accomplished literary gift of such finished artists as the authors of Pride and Prejudice and Cranford, such subtle students of character as the authors of Middlemarch and Robert Elsmere, such vigorous fighters for intellectual and moral ends as are represented by the author of the Illustrations upon Political Economy, and the Atkinson Letters. And it is because, as a result of judging her genius and her personality from the standpoint of false impressions, Charlotte Brontë has not been recognised in England as a painter of personal emotions, a Romantic in short, but has been judged as the advocate of a general doctrine—(one very agreeable to the convictions of the average man, but especially exasperating to the aspirations and principles of the superior woman)—I mean, the doctrine that to obtain the love of a man whom she feels to be, and rejoices to recognise as, her 'Master,'—is the supreme desire and dream of every truly feminine heart; it is because, I say, of this mistake, that Charlotte has become the idol of a class of critics least qualified perhaps to appreciate the merits of a romantic rebel against conventional domesticity; whilst amongst more naturally sympathetic judges, the peculiar perfume and power of these novels, steeped in and saturated with the passionate essence of a personal romance, has not been recognised either for what it really is,—the 'magic' of Charlotte Brontë; the special quality in her work that gives it originality and distinction; but this very quality—'the personal note' that makes her our only English Romantic Novelist, has been signalised by many sincere admirers of her books as a defect!

I have already mentioned the judgment passed upon Villette by an admirable woman of letters, Charlotte Brontë's personal friend, and a critic whose good faith, and honest desire to serve the interests of this sister-authoress with whom she found fault it is quite impossible to doubt.

When Villette appeared, Charlotte Brontë had been for some little time on very friendly terms with Harriet Martineau: and she did not fear to incur the risk—always a perilous one to friendship—of asking Harriet to tell her, quite frankly, what she thought of her book. Harriet responded with perfect frankness to the invitation; and the almost inevitable result followed. The event wrecked their friendship. And no one was to blame: Harriet Martineau, without disguise, but without malice, said what she thought was true. But neither was Charlotte in the wrong, for she felt herself unjustly judged; and her feeling was right, because Harriet used false standards.

'As for the matter which you so desire to know,' wrote the frank Harriet; 'I have but one thing to say: but it is not a small one. I do not like the love—either the kind or the degree of it—and its prevalence in the book, and effect on the action of it, help to explain the passages in the reviews which you consulted me about, and seem to afford some foundation for the criticism they afford.'

Charlotte was deeply offended: 'I protest against this passage,' she wrote; 'I know what love is as I understand it, and if man or woman should be ashamed of feeling such love, then there is nothing right, noble, faithful, truthful, unselfish in this earth, as I comprehend rectitude, nobleness, fidelity, truth and disinterestedness.'

Here spoke the Romantic. But Harriet Martineau was not a Romantic but an Intellectual, and she judged Charlotte's books and her genius through her own temperament, and by intellectual standards. She followed up the private rebuke to her friend for making too much of love, in a review of Villette, contributed to the Daily News.

'All the female characters,' she wrote, 'in all their thoughts and lives, are full of one thing, or are regarded in the light of that one thought, love! It begins with the child of six years old, of the opening (a charming picture), and closes with it at the last page. And so dominant is this idea, so incessant is the writer's tendency to describe the need of being loved, that the heroine, who tells her own story, leaves the reader at last under the uncomfortable impression of her having either entertained a double love, or allowed one to supersede another, without notification of the transition. It is not thus in real life. There are substantial, heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and, under ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love; there is an absence of introspection, an unconsciousness, a repose, in women's lives, unless under peculiarly unfortunate circumstances, of which we find no admission in this book; and to the absence of it may be attributed some of the criticism which the book will meet with from readers who are no prudes, but whose reason and taste will regret the assumption that events and characters are to be regarded through the medium of one passion only.'

The critical blunder in this judgment is that here the authoress of the Illustrations in Political Economy and of the Atkinson Letters sees the authoress of Villette through her own temperament, as an intellectual like herself:—a humane sociologist, and a philosophical freethinker, whose literary purpose is to use her talent as a writer in the service of her ideas and principles. Judging Villette and its authoress from this point of view and by these standards, Harriet Martineau decides that because 'all events and characters in Villette are regarded through the medium of one passion, love,' therefore the literary motive and purpose of the authoress must have been to deny—or at any rate to ignore—that 'there are substantial heartfelt interests for women of all ages, and in ordinary circumstances, quite apart from love.'

The mistake lay in assuming that Charlotte Brontë was an intellectual, instead of an imaginative genius; and that her literary purpose was to affirm, or deny, or ignore deliberately, any principle; or in any way to make her genius the servant of her