'Jane Eyre' or 'Wuthering Heights'! It was, indeed, the sharp
practice connected with this astonishing judgment which led to the
sisters' hurried journey to London in 1848--the famous journey when the
two little ladies in black revealed themselves to Mr. Smith, and proved
to him that they were not one Currer Bell, but two Miss Brontes. It was
Anne's sole journey to London--her only contact with a world that was not
Haworth, except that supplied by her school-life at Roehead and her two
teaching engagements.

And there was and is a considerable narrative ability, a sheer moral
energy in 'Wildfell Hall,' which would not be enough, indeed, to keep it
alive if it were not the work of a Bronte, but still betray its kinship
and source. The scenes of Huntingdon's wickedness are less interesting
but less improbable than the country-house scenes of 'Jane Eyre'; the
story of his death has many true and touching passages; the last
love-scene is well, even in parts admirably, written. But the book's
truth, so far as it is true, is scarcely the truth of imagination; it is
rather the truth of a tract or a report. There can be little doubt that
many of the pages are close transcripts from Branwell's conduct and
language,--so far as Anne's slighter personality enabled her to render
her brother's temperament, which was more akin to Emily's than to her
own. The same material might have been used by Emily or Charlotte;
Emily, as we know, did make use of it in 'Wuthering Heights'; but only
after it had passed through that ineffable transformation, that
mysterious, incommunicable heightening which makes and gives rank in
literature. Some subtle, innate correspondence between eye and brain,
between brain and hand, was present in Emily and Charlotte, and absent in
Anne. There is no other account to be given of this or any other case of
difference between serviceable talent and the high gifts of 'Delos' and
Patara's own Apollo.'

The same world of difference appears between her poems and those of her
playfellow and comrade, Emily. If ever our descendants should establish
the schools for writers which are even now threatened or attempted, they
will hardly know perhaps any better than we what genius is, nor how it
can be produced. But if they try to teach by example, then Anne and
Emily Bronte are ready to their hand. Take the verses written by Emily
at Roehead which contain the lovely lines which I have already quoted in
an earlier