has lifted up from the obscurity in which it first appeared, and
laid high and safe on the everlasting hills of fame.

Before me lies a packet of extracts from newspapers and
periodicals, which Mr. Bronte has sent me. It is touching to look
them over, and see how there is hardly any notice, however short
and clumsily-worded, in any obscure provincial paper, but what
has been cut out and carefully ticketed with its date by the
poor, bereaved father,--so proud when he first read them--so
desolate now. For one and all are full of praise of this great,
unknown genius, which suddenly appeared amongst us. Conjecture as
to the authorship ran about like wild-fire. People in London,
smooth and polished as the Athenians of old, and like them
"spending their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to
hear some new thing," were astonished and delighted to find that
a fresh sensation, a new pleasure, was in reserve for them in the
uprising of an author, capable of depicting with accurate and
Titanic power the strong, self-reliant, racy, and individual
characters which were not, after all, extinct species, but
lingered still in existence in the North. They thought that there
was some exaggeration mixed with the peculiar force of
delineation. Those nearer to the spot, where the scene of the
story was apparently laid, were sure, from the very truth and
accuracy of the writing, that the writer was no Southeron; for
though "dark, and cold, and rugged is the North," the old
strength of the Scandinavian races yet abides there, and glowed
out in every character depicted in "Jane Eyre." Farther than
this, curiosity, both honourable and dishonourable, was at fault.

When the second edition appeared, in the January of the following