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422 NOTICES OP BOOKS. -
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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^».Reprints Hall. . B Mrs Y Ac . Graskel...
worship ; hence any extraordinary manifestations of nature , such as coxnetseclipsesand such likewere in _ag-es of less knowledge
thought _, to betoken , or to accompany , human ills . Novelists , particularly such as aim at tlie poetical , have thus dealt with nature ad
nauseam ;—clear skies and sudden storms , peaceful vallies and rugged hills , sunsets and twilights and moon risings , invariably herald or
enshrine analogous phases of the lives of hero and heroine . With Miss Bronte this use of nature is not infrequent , but it is delicately
to mere manag effects _jDrett _'ed , of y and ornamentation climate is an and adap atmosp tation . Perhaps here of lier as no own she one peculiar was was . ev The er feelings so winds sensitive , not and a
frosts and rains and still heats tyrannised over her , and worked upon her nerves till she suffered agony . Her " keening *
banslieewinds / ' forewarning * death , she heard oft-times with her own ears . - We come to Miss Bronte ' s last novel , _" Villette . " Between the
had publication elapsed of ; this a _jDeriod and the of publication wretched health of " Shirley and " wr a etched dreary _sjDirits period .
The uniform sadness of the book echoes the tone of its writer ' s mental state in a touching manner . "We are not to suppose that
aforethoug Lucy Snowe ht studied is an intentional her own image portrait as furrowed of reflected Miss Bronte feat in the , that line mirror she b
of her mind , and copied the pale grief-ures y line . She has cautioned us against such supposition with regard to Jane EStill the irit of her own letters is identical with that
yre . sp son of poor could Lucy have Snowe written 's confessions this joyless . book None . but At a this very time sorrowful , however per- ,
wher the grey eand Haworth some consequent life was chequered outward by antici visits pation to London in social and gaieties else- .
The effects , of this too we find in the novel ; in the criticism on Rachel and in minor articulars she is as true as ever to her
doctrine of realism many . The p p icture here is a truer picture than that in the _" Professor" of her Brussels experiences , because it is told
here by a again Lucy Snowe be superfluous , not by . a W One illiam remark Crinisworth only we . will Criticism make . would Her iness in this
should world theory is that peculiarl some Paul peop y Emanuel and le are by born nature and so not have her to meet own some . with sunset That happ to Lucy her sunless Snowe marry
day , was not to be : it would , have been , from her point of view , not streng only artisticall th that hopelessness y "but morall which y untrue was . at Herein the root _ajDpears of her character in all its ,
" which covered her life-tree with autumn leaves in spring time , and with withered fruit in summer . lifethe biht
that Happil she had y Miss never Bront dared e had to hop a sunset e it . With to her " ViHette own , " , however rg , her er
life for us closes .
J . A .
422 Notices Op Books. -
422 NOTICES OP BOOKS . -
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Feb. 1, 1860, page 422, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01021860/page/62/
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