fortnight, before we received distinct intimation that it was necessary to prepare our minds to see the younger sister go after the elder. Accordingly, she followed in the same path with slower step, and with a patience that equalled the other's fortitude. I have said that she was religious, and it was by leaning on those Christian doctrines in which she firmly believed that she found support through her most painful journey. I witnessed their efficacy in her latest hour and greatest trial, and must bear my testimony to the calm triumph with which they brought her through. She died May 28, 1849. What more shall I say about them? I cannot and need not say much more. In externals, they were two unobtrusive women; a perfectly secluded life gave them retiring manners and habits." Though the above particulars be little more than the filling-up of an outline already clearly traced and constantly present whenever those characteristic tales recurred to us,--by those who have held other ideas with regard to the authorship of "Jane Eyre" they will be found at once curious and interesting from the plain and earnest sincerity of the writer. She subsequently enters on an analysis and discussion of "Wuthering Heights" as a work of art;--in the closing paragraph of her preface to that novel, insinuating an argument, if not a defence, the urgency of which is not sufficiently admitted by the bulk of the world of readers. Speaking of the fiendlike hero of her sister's work, she says:-- "Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is. But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master--something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent 'to harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow'--when it 'laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'--when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as fate or inspiration directs. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--the nominal artist--your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice."