Works of fiction belong to the province of imagination; and this faculty was largely developed in Currer Bell, and has spread the unmistakable splendour of its embellishment over her pages. There are passages in her works, not only distinct from their general texture, but from anything we know in English literature. The personification of nature in “Shirley” is perhaps the finest. “I saw—I now see—a woman Titan; her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing, a veil, white as an avalanche, sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of lightning flame on its borders. Under her breast I see her zone, purple like the horizon; through its blush shines the star of evening. The steady eyes I cannot picture. They are clear, they are deep as lakes, they are lifted and full of worship, they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer. Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers; she reclines her bosom on the ridge of Stillbro’ Moor, her mighty hands are joined beneath it, so kneeling, face to face she speaks with God.” Apostrophic bursts are common enough in all our more imaginative prose writers; but the chiselling of the entire figure from the flameless marble, and the leaving it for ever in the loveliness of its beauty, is peculiar to the prose of Currer Bell. In the delineation of one absorbing and tyrannizing passion, Currer Bell, is altogether _sui generis_. With a bold and steady hand she depicts passion in all its stages; we may weep and tremble, but her nerves do not quiver, neither do her eyes film. “Villette,” commenced in the autumn of 1850, and brought to a conclusion in November, 1851, is a tale of the affections. A burning heart glows throughout its pages, and so true to nature is the delineation, that it is impossible to doubt that living hearts have actually throbbed with like passion. The eloquence and graphic description which mark the closing scenes of this tale, the authoress has not equalled elsewhere. There is much that is stirring and healthful in the works of Currer Bell. The idea of Johnson was that marriages might well enough be arranged by the chancellor! But although the Christian world very generally seems to be of the same opinion, she taught the sacredness of the natural affections in the formation of the marriage relationship—the absolute necessity of love. Poltroonery, pretentious feebleness, and cowardly falsehood, are crowned with the diadem of scorn; and all the stalwart virtues are signally honoured. _CHARACTER OF MRS. NICHOLLS._