seeing nobody, could have conceived such scenes, or couched her conceptions in such language. With this fresh scent, as it were, we can pursue the story to the end, not without amusement, for the language is vigorous, and the scenes energetic.

If the respectable bull-dog Keeper could have been endowed with the ambition and the power to describe graphically the passions of his race-if you could put a pen in his hand and tell him to delineate the springs and impulses which prompt the displays of dog nature, with the outer workings of which we are alone familiar-if he could tell us the secret causes of every yelp, bark, and snarl, and spring, and bite, which we know now only in their effects-he would write precisely such a book as 'Wuthering Heights;' and as 'Life in the Kennel,' it would be a very striking and clever performance. Just such instinctive, soulless, savage creatures as compose a pack of hounds, form the dramatis personce of this unique story. A vicious dog, if he were endowed with human organs, would no doubt swear as well as growl, and shoot and stab as well as bite, if he understood the use of weapons. And because they are called men and women, and are invested with human attributes, these accomplishments are added in the story to their canine powers of offence and annoyance. But the disguise of humanity is, after all, but feebly assumed, and constantly disappears altogether; the whole company drop on all fours as the authoress warms with her subject. Her heroines scratch, and tear, and bite, and slap; their likings are merely instinctive, without a thought of reason or moral feeling; their mutual rivalries and triumphs, antipathies and hatreds, are brutal (we use the word in its merely literal sense) in the most extreme degree; that is, they are impossible in human nature, and natural to brutes. The men are even more furious and inhuman in their dog-nature. We see that it is in them all; the idea of change or reform is out of the question; they roll, and grapple, and struggle, and throttle, and clutch, and tear, and trample, not metaphorically, but with hands, and feet, and teeth. The thought of murder is habitual to them, the idea of conscience never interferes with their revenges. Their love is as vicious and cruel as their hate, they will strike the objects of their affection, and the spaniels do not resent it, and curse them in life and in death, and are savage in their grief. Their terrors and fears are animal shudderings; they say of themselves that they have no pity; the one solitary deed of kindness in the book is the cutting down a dog that is being hanged; they liken one another to dogs; they act the dog in the manger;' they turn tail. We meet with such phrases as his mouth watered to tear him with his teeth'-' she ground her teeth into splinters'-not here and

there, but in every chapter. Finally, their meals are dog-meals; if they begin with the thin disguise of tea and cake, they degenerate quickly into porridge and bones. They spill, and scatter, and slobber,' and snarl over their food, and grudge if they be not satisfied.

Our reader will think this a strong picture; let him read for himself if he will, and judge if we have not furnished the key to this phenomenon. Inasmuch as our interpretation throws the bad language into the background, the oaths and execrations, we have given only too favourable a report, and misjudged the animal creation, in representing the soul of a dog as possessing this turbid and sullen human nature, and using its gifts to his own purposes. Glancing over Emily's poems after the perusal of this monstrous performance, we the more regret that this phase of her nature should ever have found expression. Verse was her real utterance; here we find her clothed and in her right mind.' If she were our main subject, we would give our readers the opportunity of judging of what we cannot but think their unusual merit. Daring and questionable thoughts there are, but alleviated by tender human feeling, and set off by clear vivid imagery, in flowing harmonious numbers.

This singular young woman, the object of her sister's devoted and somewhat unaccountable attachment, had no sooner passed away, than the youngest, Anne, began to show symptoms of disease, which rapidly developed into consumption. Here, however, there was the comfort of nursing and tender attention. Anne was not unnatural; the whole history of her illness is interesting, and impresses us most favourably. Charlotte divided her cares between her father and the sinking invalid, and showed the highest qualities of her nature-all its love, intensity, and scrupulous sacrifice of inclination to duty-in those few months of anguish which preceded the laying her last sister in the grave, not beside Emily, but at Scarborough, where she went actually dying, without either Charlotte or herself being aware how near the end was. It was illuminated by the Christian's peace and hope; a remarkable calm pervaded her last hours; she would have nothing go on differently because she was dying. She urged upon her kind attendants that they should attend divine service as usual. She wished, if it had been possible, to go herself. She placed her full, deliberate trust in her Redeemer's merits, and bade her weeping sister 'take courage,' and commended her to the kind offices of her faithful friend.

"Ere long the restlessness of approaching death appeared, and she was borne to the sofa. On being asked if she were easier, she looked gratefully at her questioner, and said, 'It is not you who can give me ease, but soon NO. XCVII.-N.S.

K

all will be well, through the merits of our Redeemer.' Shortly after this, seeing that her sister could hardly restrain her grief, she said, 'Take courage, Charlotte; take courage.' Her faith never failed, and her eye never dimmed till about two o'clock, when she calmly and without a sigh passed from the temporal to the eternal. So still and so hallowed were her last hours and moments. There was no thought of assistance or of dread. The doctor came and went two or three times. The hostess knew that death was near, yet so little was the house disturbed by the presence of the dying, and the sorrow of those so nearly bereaved, that dinner was announced as ready, through the half-opened door, as the living sister was closing the eyes of the dead one. She could now no more stay the welledup grief of her sister with her emphatic and dying 'Take courage,' and it burst forth in brief but agonizing strength."-Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 109, 110.

It is quite fitting that we should dwell on details like these, and find comfort in them, and contemplate them in juxtaposition with the eccentricities of her authorship, which would be very astounding indeed, if Emily's was not more so. Not that the 'Tenant of Windfell Hall' suggests the same ideas as her sister's; we are amongst men and women, such as they are-but such a set! Anne set it before her as a conscientious duty, to represent the progress from bad to worse of vice. Nothing should deter her from this mission, which she seemed to think her own circumstances imposed upon her. The book is not so clever as 'Wuthering Heights;' there is not the same force or swing; but, instead, a deliberate, careful, step by step delineation of what only a very morbid conscience could think it to the interests of society to delineate. We are led by Mrs. Gaskell, who has something to do to reconcile these rough, coarse details of her subject with the refined tone-the shadow of interesting melancholy-she would willingly throw over her picture, to understand that this book does really represent Anne's experience of life, particularly of life seen in her brother Branwell's. And such a record of ruffianism surely no woman ever undertook to chronicle. The coarseness of manners and unfathomable vulgarity of tone, the brutality of the men and general offensiveness of the women, the atmosphere of low society that pervades every scene, make the story unique as a moral one. On this point it forms a marked distinction from Emily's, who sets no such task before her: but here there is a very serious and moral strain maintained throughout. All the villanies are recorded with the good intention of disgusting us with vice, and showing sin in its native deformity. If we wanted an argument against the fancied duty of keeping such a fellow as Branwell in free intercourse with his unhappy sisters, we should find it in the evidence of stain and contamination this book furnishes. Anne Brontë grew used to the idea of men, as such, being vain and unfeeling in their manner, and insolent and unblushing in their vices. We presume she means her reader to feel interest in the two principal personages of her

story-we will not call them hero and heroine-the latter of whom, by her imprudent marriage, furnishes the lesson of the book. This young woman is positively represented as listening before marriage to her brutal lover's stories of his past dissipation, told not in sorrow, but in triumph, and with an accumulation of aggravating circumstances which it is a wonder a woman could become acquainted with. The author has apparently no taste-at any rate no conception of a man of decent behaviour and principles-for the young farmer who succeeds to this monster in the lady's affections is hardly more to our taste than himself. Violent in his temper, rude in his impulses, fickle in his attachments, ungrateful, sullen, vain, and loutish-this picture of what she thinks attractive gives us a more dreary picture of the destitution of all things lovely and of good report in which she lived, than even the more glowing atrocities to which these qualities form a contrast. She clearly thinks it an interesting trait, an example of noble, vigorous nature, that in a fit of unreasonable and impertinent jealousy he should strike his friend with the butt end of his whip, and leave him for dead on the road, and not even be moved or softened by the sight of the mischief he had done; while the way he treats a poor girl whom he had flirted into a liking of himself, would constitute him the villain of any well-trained young lady's novel. Her gentle imagination could hardly have conceived anything so bad as Anne Brontë's best. Not that anything will make us believe that any state of English society is represented by such unmixed repulsiveness. But it needs imagination, which Anne had not, to reproduce the world a writer lives in. A mere matter of fact transcript of certain errors and crimes and a certain false tone of morals, is sure to make things worse than they are, for all the redeeming points are forgotten, and the deformities stand out as they can hardly do in real life. But these sisters seem to have had an eye for defects. Great sins had a sort of fascination for them, not from the smallest desire to participate, but because activity and vigour in wrong doing offered an exciting contrast to their own existence. It cannot but be wished that they had sometimes seen a gentleman (we speak more especially of Emily and Anne), though how far they would have been accessible to his refining influence, or appreciated his refinement, we cannot guess. They never seem to have been sensible of a want in this respect. There are no elegant disguises in their novels; they speak of life exactly as they see it. The kitchen is the scene of half the events. Very comfortable its homely cheerfulness feels in Shirley;' we do not at all object to it there; but somehow Anne's and Emily's kitchens are low, and tell a tale. It is no wonder to find afterwards that Charlotte felt the task of revising these tales for

another edition exquisitely painful and depressing,' and that there is a hint of regret, in vague language-all, no doubt, that she dare express even then-that nothing would make Emily conscious that every page was surcharged with a sort of moral electricity.' But we ought to apologise for having dwelt so long on what only indirectly concerns our main subject.

After her sisters' deaths, Charlotte's life assumes a new aspect; it becomes a literary, and as such, a public one. That is, her interests were mainly with her books, and, following on their progress and success, with the friendships into which this publicity led her. Not that her own nature or habits changed. She lived with her father, haunted by fears for his health and her own, in a solitude which sometimes became frightful to her, but which she could seldom be prevailed on to leave. It was some relief to tell these feelings to her friend, it made them more endurable. She thus pathetically describes her first return to her desolate home. It is sad to find that vigorous pen expressing as forcibly her own keen anguish as the scenes of her imagination.

""July, 1849.

"I intended to have written a line to you to-day, if I had not received yours. We did indeed part suddenly; it made my heart ache that we were severed without the time to exchange a word; and yet perhaps it was better. I got here a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright, waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well; and all received me with an affection which should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange ecstasy. I am certain they regarded me as the harbinger of others. The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so long absent were not far behind.

"I left Papa soon, and went into the dining-room: I shut the door-I tried to be glad that I was come home. I have always been glad beforeexcept once-even then I was cheered. But this time joy was not to be the sensation. I felt that the house was all silent-the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were laid-in what narrow dark dwellings-never more to reappear on earth. So the sense of desolation and bitterness took possession of me. The agony that was to be undergone, and was not to be avoided, came on. I underwent it, and passed a dreary evening and night, and a mournful morrow; to-day I am better.

"I do not know how life will pass, but I certainly do feel confidence in Him who has upheld me hitherto. Solitude may be cheered, and made endurable beyond what I can believe. The great trial is when evening closes and night approaches. At that hour, we used to assemble in the dining-room- -we used to talk. Now I sit by myself-necessarily I am silent. I cannot help thinking of their last days, remembering their sufferings, and what they said and did, and how they looked in mortal affliction. Perhaps all this will become less poignant in time."'—Ibid. vol. ii. pp. 111, 112.

And, soon after, she writes:

666

My life is what I expected it to be. Sometimes when I wake in the morning, and know that Solitude, Remembrance, and Longing are to be almost my sole companions all day through-that at night I shall go to bed with them, that they will long keep me sleepless-that next morning I shall wake to them again,-sometimes, Nell, I have a heavy heart of it.