based upon no moderate well-balanced sentiment, where 'the demands of both feeling and duty will be in some measure reconciled'--but upon passionate emotions, compelling expression, and forming a new language almost; as M. Jules Lemaître has said 'introducing new ways of feeling, and as it were a new vibration into literature.' And in the place where the romance in Charlotte's life is found must we seek, also, the source of this power of emotion: creating powers of expression to which much more accomplished literary artists than Charlotte (Jane Austen and Mrs. Gaskell, for instance) never reached; and to an intimate knowledge of moods and ecstasies and raptures, that rule and torture and exalt human souls, that much more subtle and scientific psychologists than herself (George Eliot, for instance, and Mrs. Humphry Ward) never discovered. The supreme gift of the authoress of _Villette_ and _Jane Eyre_, as a painter of emotions, an interpreter of intimate moods, a witness in the cause of ideal sentiments, an incessant rebel against vulgarity and common worldliness, and the stupid tyranny of custom, an upholder of the sovereignty of romance, cannot be weighed against, nor judged by, the same standards as the accomplished literary gift of such finished artists as the authors of _Pride and Prejudice_ and _Cranford_, such subtle students of character as the authors of _Middlemarch_ and _Robert Elsmere_, such vigorous fighters for intellectual and moral ends as are represented by the author of the _Illustrations upon Political Economy_, and the _Atkinson Letters_. And it is because, as a result of judging her genius and her personality from the standpoint of false impressions, Charlotte Brontë has not been recognised in England as a painter of personal emotions, a Romantic in short, but has been judged as the advocate of a general doctrine--(one very agreeable to the convictions of the average man, but especially exasperating to the aspirations and principles of the superior woman)--I mean, the doctrine that _to obtain the love of a man whom she feels to be, and rejoices to recognise as, her 'Master,'--is the supreme desire and dream of every truly feminine heart_; it is because, I say, of this mistake, that Charlotte has become the idol of a class of critics least qualified perhaps to appreciate the merits of a romantic rebel against conventional domesticity; whilst amongst more naturally sympathetic judges, the peculiar perfume and power of these novels, steeped in and saturated with the passionate essence of a personal romance, has not been recognised either for what it really is,--the 'magic' of Charlotte Brontë; the special quality in her work that gives it originality and distinction; but this very quality--'the personal note' that makes her our only English Romantic Novelist, has been signalised by many sincere admirers of her books as a defect!