The first-named of these stories has revolted many readers by the
power with which wicked and exceptional characters are depicted.
Others, again, have felt the attraction of remarkable genius,
even when displayed on grim and terrible criminals. Miss Bronte
herself says, with regard to this tale, "Where delineation of
human character is concerned, the case is different. I am bound
to avow that she had scarcely more practical knowledge of the
peasantry amongst whom she lived, than a nun has of the
country-people that pass her convent gates. My sister's
disposition was not naturally gregarious: circumstances favoured
and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church,
or take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of
home. Though the feeling for the people around her was
benevolent, intercourse with them she never sought, nor, with
very few exceptions, ever experienced and yet she knew them, knew
their ways, their language, and their family histories; she could
hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail minute,
graphic, and accurate; but WITH them she rarely exchanged a word.
Hence it ensued, that what her mind has gathered of the real
concerning them, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and
terrible traits, of which, in listening to the secret annals of
every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive
the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than
sunny--more powerful than sportive--found in such traits material
whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like
Catherine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she
had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript,
shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless
and implacable--of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was
complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful