gards the mere dearth of
event; but perhaps to each man there occurs vastly more than is needed
to satisfy the thirstiest, most indefatigable consciousness. I have at
this moment before me the history of a mighty and passionate soul, whom
every adventure that makes for the sorrow or gladness of man would seem
to have passed by with averted head. It is of Emily Bronte I speak,
than whom the first fifty years of this century produced no woman of
greater or more incontestable genius. She has left but one book behind
her, a novel, called "Wuthering Heights," a curious title, which seems
to suggest a storm on a mountain peak. She was the daughter of an
English clergyman, the Rev. Patrick Bronte, who was the most
insignificant, selfish, lethargic, pretentious creature the mind can
conceive. There were only two things in life that seemed of importance
to him--the purity of his Greek profile, and solicitude for his
digestion. As for Emily's unfortunate mother, her whole life would seem
to have been spent in admiring this Greek profile and in studying this
digestion. But there is scarcely need to dwell upon her existence, for
she died only two years after Emily's birth. It is of interest to note,
however--if only to prove once again that, in ordinary life, the woman
is usually superior to the man she has had to accept--that long after
the death of the patient wife a bundle of letters was found, wherein it
was clearly revealed that she who had always been silent was fully
alive to the indifference and fatuous self-love of her vain and
indolent husband. We may, it is true, be conscious of faults in others
from which we are ourselves not exempt; although to discover a virtue,
perhaps, we must needs have a germ of it in us. Such were Emily's
parents. Around her, four sisters and one brother gravely watched the
monotonous flight of the hours. The family dwelling, where Emily's
whole life was spent, was in the heart of the Yorkshire Moors, at a
place called Haworth, a gloomy, desolate village; barren, forsaken, and
lonely.

There can never have been a childhood and youth so friendless,
monotonous, and dreary as that of Emily and her sisters. There came to
them none of those happy little adventures, bright gleams from the
unexpected, which we broider and magnify as the years go by, and store
at last in our soul as the one inexhaustible treasure acquired by the
smiling memory of life. Each day was the same, from first to
last--lessons,