ghout all the
excitement that her books produced, she was almost indifferent. Brought
up as she had been to regard literary work as something beyond the
proper limits of her sex, she never could quite rid herself of the
belief that in writing successfully, she had made of herself not so much
a literary figure as a sort of social curiosity. Nor was that idea
wholly foreign to her time.

Personally Charlotte Bronte was not unattractive. Though somewhat too
slender and pale, and plain of feature, she had a pleasant expression,
and her homelier features were redeemed by a strong massive forehead,
luxuriant glossy hair, and handsome eyes. Though she had little faith in
her powers of inspiring affection, she attracted people strongly and was
well beloved by her friends. That she could stir romantic sentiment too
was attested by the fact that she received and rejected three proposals
of marriage from as many suitors, before her acceptance of Mr. Nicholls.

Allusion has been made to the work of Charlotte's two sisters, Emily and
Anne. Of the two Emily is by far the more remarkable, revealing in the
single novel we have from her pen a genius as distinct and individual as
that of her more celebrated sister. Had she lived, it is more than
likely that her literary achievements would have rivaled Charlotte's.

Emily Bronte has always been something of a puzzle to biographers. She
was eccentric, an odd mixture of bashful reserve and unexpected spells
of frankness, sweet, gentle, and retiring in disposition, but possessed
of great courage. She was two years younger than Charlotte, but taller.
She was slender, though well formed, and was pale in complexion, with
great gray eyes of remarkable beauty. Emily's literary work is to be
found in the volume of "Poems" of her sisters, her share in that work
being considered superior in imaginative quality and in finish to that
of the others; and in the novel "Wuthering Heights," a weird, horrid
story of astonishing power, written when she was twenty-eight years of
age. Considered purely as an imaginative work, "Wuthering Heights" is
one of the most remarkable stories in English literature, and is worthy
to be ranked with the works of Edgar A. Poe. Many will say that it might
better not have been written, so utterly repulsive is it, but others
will value it as a striking, though distorted, expression of
unmistakable genius. It is a ghastly and gruesome creation. Not one
bright ray redeems it.