tendency varied then, as they do now. While I write, I receive a
letter from a clergyman in America in which he says: "We have in
our sacred of sacreds a special shelf, highly adorned, as a place
we delight to honour, of novels which we recognise as having had
a good influence on character OUR character. Foremost is 'Jane
Eyre.'"

Nor do I deny the existence of a diametrically opposite judgment.
And so (as I trouble not myself about the reviewer's style of
composition) I leave his criticisms regarding the merits of the
work on one side. But when--forgetting the chivalrous spirit of
the good and noble Southey, who said: "In reviewing anonymous
works myself, when I have known the authors I have never
mentioned them, taking it for granted they had sufficient reasons
for avoiding the publicity"--the Quarterly reviewer goes on into
gossiping conjectures as to who Currer Bell really is, and
pretends to decide on what the writer may be from the book, I
protest with my whole soul against such want of Christian
charity. Not even the desire to write a "smart article," which
shall be talked about in London, when the faint mask of the
anonymous can be dropped at pleasure if the cleverness of the
review be admired--not even this temptation can excuse the
stabbing cruelty of the judgment. Who is he that should say of an
unknown woman: "She must be one who for some sufficient reason
has long forfeited the society of her sex"? Is he one who has led
a wild and struggling and isolated life,--seeing few but plain
and outspoken Northerns, unskilled in the euphuisms which assist
the polite world to skim over the mention of vice? Has he striven
through long weeping years to find excuses for the lapse of an
only brother; and through daily contact with a poor lost