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    NOTICES OF BOOKS. 847

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    ¦ ^* Reprin Sail Ts . . B Mrs Y Acton . ...

    her deduced strong new 1 imperious splieres of will discovery would from never the have knowled been ge daunted of the by old oppo ; and

    sition or difficulty ; never have given way but with life . " Another marked trait was her fondness for animals ; wonderful in a person

    "who manifested so little sign of fondness for human beings . " She never showed regard to any human creature ; all her love was

    reserved for animals , " said some one of her . The mad-dog adventure in " Shirley " happened literally as it is written to her ; she

    seared the wound with an Italian iron , and told no one till long after . Shirley ' s dog " Tartar " is her dog * Keeper ; and this Keeper ,

    a bull-dog -who would submit to no punishment , slie _dragged from a bed . ( where he had chosen to take up his quarters ) down stairs , and

    there punished him with her naked fist , at the risk of her life , until the dog was thoroughly cowed . Poor Keeper followed her to her

    grave , and slept ever after at the door of her empty room . In death as in life she snowed an indomitable energy . Terrible

    ' must have been that last illness of hers to her sisters . They could do nothing . She would not allow that she was ill , she would

    see no doctor , take no medicine , spare herself from no customary labor . On the _vexy morning of her death she got up , and sat sewing

    while the death-xattle was in her throat and the death-glaze over her eyes . Her sisters dare not remonstrate with her , dare not help her .

    _ISarly in this illness Charlotte writes , " Her reserved nature occasions me great uneasiness of mind . It is useless to question her ;

    you get no answers . It is still more useless to recommend remedies ; they are never adopted . " Again in her "biographic sketch

    of her sisters , she writes ; " Day by day when I saw with what a front she met suffering , I looked on her with an anguish of wonder

    and love . I have seen nothing like it ; but , indeed , I have never seen her parallel in anything . Stronger than a man , simpler than a

    child , her nature stood alone . " An anomaly was this "writer of " Wuthering Heights , " not to be fathomed by ordinary plumb-lines

    nor measured by common rules . Immediately after reading " Wuthering Heights" " Agnes Grey "

    , seems but a common-place book , as Anne seems a common-place person in comparison with . Emily . We cannot bring our thoughts

    down at once from those high wild moorlands and their half-human inhabitants , to a lower level and the quiet dwellers therein . Like

    certain Italian sculptors who had been at work on a colossus , we have lost 6 ( Agnes our Grey sense " of of course proportion presents for us subjects with a much of average more real magnitude picture of .

    outward life than the other book . Every circumstance is thoroughly probable , most of the circumstances are actual experiences . There

    is less of the coincidence and discovery mechanism of notion here than in almost any other novel we can recollect . The writer tells

    us quietly her own feelings in prqpria persona , they are natural and true , never sentimental and never exaggerated . All this is very

    _commendable , a . ncl falls in exactly with the present notions about

    Notices Of Books. 847

    NOTICES OF BOOKS . 847

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Jan. 1, 1860, page 347, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01011860/page/59/