natural
love-dream of a most imaginative and most ignorant young woman.

A consummate master of style has spoken, we have just seen, of the
"noble English" that Charlotte Bronte wrote. It is true that she never
reached the exquisite ease, culture, and raciness of Thackeray's
English. She lapsed now and then into provincial solecisms; she
"named" facts as well as persons; girls talk of a "beautiful man"; nor
did she know anything of the scientific elaboration of George Eliot or
the subtle grace of Stevenson. But the style is of high quality and
conscientious finish--terse, pure, picturesque, and sound. Like
everything she did, it was most scrupulously honest--the result of a
sincere and vivid soul, resolved to utter what it had most at heart in
the clearest tone. Very few writers of romance have ever been masters
of a style so effective, so nervous, so capable of rising into floods
of melody and pathos. There is a fine passage of the kind in one of
her least-known books, the earliest indeed of all, which no publisher
could be found in her lifetime to print. The "Professor" has just
proposed, has been accepted, and goes home to bed half-crazy and
fasting. A sudden reaction falls on his over-wrought nerves.

A horror of great darkness fell upon me; I felt my chamber invaded by
one I had known formerly, but had thought for ever departed. I was
temporarily a prey to hypochondria. She had been my acquaintance, nay,
my guest, once before in boyhood; I had entertained her at bed and
board for a year; for that space of time I had her to myself in secret;
she lay with me, she ate with me, she walked out with me, showing me
nooks in woods, hollows in hills, where we could sit together, and
where she could drop her drear veil over me, and so hide sky and sun,
grass and green tree; taking me entirely to her death-cold bosom, and
holding me with arms of bone. What tales she would tell me at such
hours! What songs she would recite in my ears! How she would
discourse to me of her own country--the grave--and again and again
promise to conduct me there ere long; and drawing me to the very brink
of a black, sullen river, show me, on the other side, shores unequal
with mound, monument, and tablet, standing up in a glimmer more hoary
than moonlight. "Necropolis!" she would whisper, pointing to the pale
piles, and add, "It contains a mansion prepared for you."

Finely imagined--finely said! It has the ring and weird mys