ARTICLE VI.

The Life of Charlotte Brontë, author of "Jane Eyre," "Shirley," "Villette," &c. By E. C. GASKELL, author of "Mary Burton," "Ruth," &c. In two Volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1857. pp. 285, 269.

It seems to be pretty well settled now, that works of fiction must be tried on their own merits, and that any such sweeping rule as was formerly laid down, that all fictitious writing is per se bad, must be abandoned. The reason does not lie in the fact that the world has grown wiser than formerly in its judgments, but in this other fact that the extraordinary merit of many works of fiction during the last half century, will not allow the rule to remain. The question cannot now be, Shall I read any novels? but, What novels may be read?

But, it may be asked, are we not in this, lowering the standard of morality? To which we are constrained to reply in the negative. The genius and virtue of many men and women have passed into this class of books, and there can hardly be fine culture without them. We must here as elsewhere, accept our appointed condition. This world is a place of trial. We must choose the good and reject the evil. Our faculties are to be exercised by reason of use. We are to form a character amidst innumerable difficulties. In no other way can it become either fine or strong.

If one element of genius be more certain than any other, it is that it is inevitable. It will have its way and its own way. Its force is from within. The form is moulded by the spirit. Such a development may never have been known. Such writing may never have been recognized by any critic. It matters not. The Almighty makes genius, and within the circle of the Omnipotent there is room for innumerable forms never yet seen or known among creatures.

That CHARLOTTE BRONTE is one of those new and mighty life-forces that we call genius, all men are coming to believe. It would be as vain to warn the young, impulsive mind off from

such a book as Shirley, as to build a wall around Cologne Cathedral, because some ill lesson might be learned from the soul of man working in Gothic architecture, or to forbid the sight of the Mississippi, because some mischief might come to the heart from drinking in the sense of boundless power.

It is not only coming to be believed, that Charlotte Brontë was a genius in some high sense; it is making itself felt that she was a heroine, not only great but good, and good as great. This is the verdict of those who hesitated at Jane Eyre, but who, after reading all that has been written by that vivid, nervous pen, have followed earnestly Mrs. Gaskell's narrative of a real but yet most strange life.

In youth we delight in the fine frost-work of fancy, but as we grow older we change in this, that we inquire with eagerness, not what the loftiest imagination can do in bringing together the wonderful, but what has actually been, what the Almighty has actually done or permitted. And so it comes to pass, that not only is truth stranger than fiction, but to the real thinker, far more interesting. An actual event is a decree of the Infinite, accomplished and irrevocable. Hence, of all studies, history and biography are the most absorbing.

And, of course it follows, that as common principles are illustrated by common samples of working, there are sometimes in human character-as in those gems of scenery and those crises of history which are scarcely ever reproduced-some specialities so unique that they are hardly seen more than once. In genius of this order we have an experimentum crucis, a specimen truly priceless, a 'anas youévor of the Divine Speech. It is scarcely saying too much when we thus characterize Charlotte Brontë. Laying aside the case of Sappho, in regard to whom there is so little that is reliable, we can think of but two women, both quite modern, that we should be at all inclined to compare with her in point of genius. They are Madame de Stäel and Mrs. Browning.

Her story is becoming as familiar as the traditions of our own families, but we must glance at it as the only fitting means of enabling us to understand her character.

Miss Brontë lived in the little village of Haworth in Yorkshire, where her father, the Rev. Patrick Brontë is Rector.

Mrs. Gaskell gives the following graphic picture of the locality, which is becoming impressed upon a multitude of minds, as if they had personally seen it:

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For two miles the road passes over tolerably level ground, distant hills on the left, a "beck" flowing through meadows on the right, and furnishing water power, at certain points, to the factories built on its banks. The air is dim and lightless with the smoke from all these habitations and places of business. The soil in the valley (or bottom," to use the local term,) is rich; but, as the road begins to ascend, the vegetation becomes poorer; it does not flourish, it merely exists; and, instead of trees, there are only bushes and shrubs about the dwellings. Stone dykes are every where used in place of hedges; and what crops there are, on the patches of arable land, consist of pale, hungry-looking, grey-green oats. Right before the traveller on this road rises Haworth village; he can see it for two miles before he arrives, for it is situated on the side of a pretty steep hill, with a background of dun and purple moors, rising and sweeping away yet higher than the church, which is built at the very summit of the long narrow street. All round the horizon there is this same line of sinuous wave-like hills; the scoops into which they fall only revealing other hills beyond, of similar color and shape, crowned with wild, bleak moors-grand, from the ideas of solitude and loneliness which they suggest, or oppressive from the feeling which they give of being pent-up by some monotonous and illimitable barrier, according to the mood of mind in which the spectator may be.

For a short distance the road appears to turn away from Haworth, as it winds round the base of the shoulder of a hill; but then it crosses a bridge over the "beck," and the ascent through the village begins. The flag-stones with which it is paved are placed end-ways, in order to give a better hold to the horse's feet; and, even with this help, they seem to be in constant danger of slipping backwards. The old stone houses are high compared to the width of the street, which makes an abrupt turn before reaching the more level ground at the head of the village, so that the steep aspect of the place, in one part, is almost like that of a wall. But this surmounted, the church lies a little off the main road on the left; a hundred yards, or so, and the driver relaxes his care, and the horse breathes more easily, as they pass into the quiet little by-street that leads to Haworth Parsonage. The churchyard is on one side of this lane, the school-house and the sexton's dwelling (where the curate formerly lodged) on the other.

The parsonage stands at right angles to the road, facing down upon the church; so that, in fact, parsonage, church, and belfried school-house, form three sides of an irregular oblong, of which the fourth is open to the fields and the moors that lie beyond. The area of this oblong is filled up by a crowded churchyard, and a small garden or court in front of the clergyman's house. As the entrance to this from the road is at the side, the path goes round the corner into the little plot of ground. Underneath the windows is a narrow flower-border, carefully tended in days of yore, although only the most hardy plants could be made to grow there. Within the stone wall, which keeps out the surrounding churchyard, are bushes of elder and lilac; the rest of the ground is occupied by a square grass plot and a gravel walk. The house is of grey stone, two stories high, heavily roofed with flags, in order to resist the winds that might strip off a lighter covering. It appears to have been built about a hundred years

ago, and to consist of four rooms on each story; the two windows on the right (as the visitor stands, with his back to the church, ready to enter in at the front door,) belonging to Mr. Brontë's study, the two on the left to the family sitting-room. Everything about the place tells of the most dainty order, the most exquisite cleanliness. The door-steps are spotless; the small old-fashioned window-panes glitter like looking-glass. Inside and outside of that house cleanliness goes up into its essence, purity.

The little church lies, as I mentioned, above most of the houses in the village; and the graveyard rises above the church, and is terribly full of upright tombstones. The chapel or church claims greater antiquity than any other in that part of the kingdom; but there is no appearance of this in the external aspect of the present edifice, unless it be in the two eastern windows, which remain unmodernized, and in the lower part of the steeple. Inside, the character of the pillars shows that they were constructed before the reign of Henry VII. It is probable that there existed on this ground a field-kirk," or oratory, in the earliest times; and, from the archbishop's registry at York, it is ascertained that there was a chapel at Haworth in 1317.

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Mr. Brontë buried his wife in 1831. His daughters Maria and Elizabeth died in 1825, in their 12th and 11th years. No breach was then made in the circle until 1848, when the only son, Branwell Brontë and the daughters, Emily, the author of "Wuthering Heights," and Anne, the author of " Agnes Grey," died within less than a year of each other. Their ages were 30, 29, 27. One only now remained of "six motherless children"-Charlotte. She lived on until 1855, when she died in her 39th year. The father still survives. Of all these children, Charlotte alone was married, and she but for nine months.

The reader will perceive in this statement alone, a record of sorrow. Nothing, however, but the perusal of the whole of these sad pages, one by one, could make the requisite impression upon him of a life strange beyond anything he has ever known.

The loneliness of the village of Haworth and of the parsonage, surrounded on three sides by graves, is described as something portentous. "No one comes to the house; nothing disturbs the deep repose; hardly a voice is heard; you catch the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, or the buzzing of a fly in the parlor, all over the house." But, in addition to this, the road rises for several miles between wave-like hills where the prevailing color every where is grey; the traveller arrives at Haworth, a village built of grey stone; at the top of the street are the church and parsonage, on the hill-side, and then stretch

ing far, far away, wide and lonely, on every side are the apparently endless moors. "I accompanied her in her walks on the sweeping moors; the heather-bloom had been blighted by a thunder-storm a day or two before, and was all of a livid brown color, instead of the blaze of purple glory it ought to have been. Oh! those high, wild, desolate moors, up above the whole world, and the very realms of silence!"

The neighborhood seems to have been singularly destitute of that society which is found almost every where in the country in England. The Yorkshiremen are descended from the old Scandinavians and a strange rudeness such as is described in Wuthering Heights and in Shirley is still to be found amongst them. We copy an anecdote or two illustrative of this:

A solitary life cherishes mere fancies until they become mania. And the powerful Yorkshire character which was scarcely tamed into subjection by all the contact it met with in "busy town or crowded mart," has before now broken out into strange wilfulness in the remoter districts. A singular account was recently given me of a landowner (living it is true, on the Lancashire side of the hills, but of the same blood and nature as the dwellers on the other) who was supposed to be in the receipt of seven or eight hundred a year, and whose house bore marks of handsome antiquity, as if his forefathers had been for a long time people of consideration. My informant was struck with the appearance of the place, and proposed to the countryman who was accompanying him, to go up to it and take a nearer inspection. The reply was, Yo'd better not; he'd threap yo down th' loan. He's let fly at some folks' legs, and let shot lodge in 'em afore now, for going too near to his house." And finding, on closer inquiry, that such was really the inhospitable custom of this moorland squire, the gentleman gave up his purpose. I believe that the savage yeoman is still living.

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Another squire, of more distinguished family and larger property-one is thence led to imagine of better education, but that does not always follow-died at his house, not many miles from Haworth, only a few years ago. His great amusement and occupation had been cock-fighting. When he was confined to his chamber with what he knew would be his last illness, he had his cocks brought up there, and watched the bloody battle from his bed. As his mortal disease increased, and it became impossible for him to turn so as to follow the combat, he had looking-glasses arranged in such a manner around and above him, as he lay, that he could still see the cocks fighting. And in this manner he died.

These are merely instances of eccentricity compared to the tales of positive violence and crime that have occurred in these isolated dwellings, which still linger in the memories of the old people of the district, and some of which were doubtless familiar to the authors of Wuthering Heights" and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall."

The amusements of the lower classes could hardly be expected to be more humane than those of the wealthy and better educated. The gentleman who has kindly furnished me with some of the particulars I have VOL. VI.-19