_Jane Eyre_ is a romantic, extravagant story of a girl who was a governess, and of the strange people she met. The story is not even always well-written; yet it is exciting and thrilling. Few novels had such depth of feeling, passion and elevated thought. No one can read Charlotte Brontë's novels without tingling with a {161} feeling that here one has met an extraordinary personality. Emily Brontë was more highly gifted even than her sister Charlotte. Everything that is true of _Jane Eyre_ is more true of _Wuthering Heights_. It is a stranger, and more romantic story. At times, one would even say that there is something hard and cruel in _Wuthering Heights_. But there is also natural genius. Emily wrote a few remarkable poems which are more highly esteemed now than they were when she died. One does not say that these two sisters were possessed of the highest creative power. But Charlotte and Emily Brontë are among the most interesting and unforgettable of English novelists. Barrie said not long ago of Emily Brontë that she was our greatest woman, meaning that he believed her to be the greatest among English-speaking women writers. This sense of greatness you will experience for yourselves in the words which end _Wuthering Heights_. The story is tragic; but the ending is happy and tranquil, although at first it may seem sad. "I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." {163} PART VI HISTORY, POLITICS, BIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL {165} CHAPTER XXIV WHAT IS HISTORY! Most of us like true stories. Often, when we listen to a story which seems interesting and surprising, perhaps even delightful, we say when the story is ended, "But, is it true?" If the answer is no, or even that the story is not all true, we are disappointed. This feeling of wishing to know the truth about people and events, about what the world is really like and what it used to be like, belongs to human nature. It is born in our hearts when we are born. From the beginning of the world, people have cared for true stories. As you know, knowledge of remarkable events and people at first was repeated by one generation to another by word of mouth. But tradition, although interesting, is often inaccurate. It does not tell the whole, exact true story. So people were willing to spend a great deal of time, and to work very hard, to find out the truth about past events and about people who lived in the past.