He goes on to deplore that "the heart newly awakened to love and happiness, and throbbing with maternal hope, had ceased to beat." He speaks of her "trembling little frame, the little hand, the great honest eyes." He speaks of his recollections of her in society, of "the impetuous honesty" which seemed the character of the woman-- I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc marching in upon us, and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals. She gave me the impression of being a very pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always. Such, in our brief interview, she appeared to me. As one thinks of that life so noble, so lonely,--of that passion for truth--of those nights and nights of eager study, swarming fancies, invention, depression, elation, prayer; as one reads the necessarily incomplete, though most touching and admirable history of the heart that throbbed in this one little frame--of this one amongst the myriads of souls that have lived and died on this great earth--this great earth?--this little speck in the infinite universe of God--with what wonder do we think of to-day, with what awe await to-morrow, when that which is now but darkly seen shall be clear! It is quite natural and right that Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, indeed all who have spoken of the author of _Jane Eyre_, should insist primarily on the personality of Charlotte Bronte. It is this intense personality which is the distinctive note of her books. They are not so much tales as imaginary autobiographies. They are not objective presentations of men and women in the world. They are subjective sketches of a Bronte under various conditions, and of the few men and women who occasionally cross the narrow circle of the Bronte world. Of the three stories she published, two are autobiographies, and the third is a fancy portrait of her sister Emily. Charlotte Bronte is herself Jane Eyre and Lucy Snowe, and Emily Bronte is Shirley Keeldar. So in _The Professor_, her earliest but posthumous tale, Frances Henri again is simply a little Swiss Bronte. That story also is told as an autobiography, but, though the narrator is supposed to be one William Crimsworth, it is a woman who speaks, sees, and dreams all through the book. The four tales, which together were the work of eight years, are all variations upon a Bronte and the two Bronte worlds in Yorkshire and Belgium. It is most significant (but quite natural) that Mrs. Gaskell in her _Life of Charlotte Bronte_ devotes more than half her book to the story of the family before the publication of _Jane Eyre_. The four tales are not so much romances as artistic and imaginative autobiographies.