whether we will or no. In regard to his fate as set forth in the last paragraph, the meaning of which has been often disputed, we have now the confirmation of its tragic import from Miss Bronté's own lips. Indeed, the romance would have been imperfect without it, every stroke of the pen prepared us for it, and the author would have been false to "all the unities" had she forced a different dénouement. The oracular style of its announcement was merely out of deference to her father's request, that she would "make them happy at last."

From these three works we must make up our estimate of Currer Bell's genius; for "The Professor," written first, but not published till the halo of an assured reputation surrounded the name of its author, hardly influences our judgment either way. Its faults, which are many, were redeemed in her subsequent works; its crudeness, which is great, gave place to exquisite finish both of plot and of character; and its choice of material, which reminds us of her sisters rather than of herself as we now know her, was replaced by more genial and more natural specimens of humanity. Its best portions are developed in "Villette" with more power and richer charm, and, so far as Currer Bell is concerned, the publication of "The Professor" might still have been omitted; but viewed by itself, and compared with most of the romances issuing from the prolific and not over-fastidious press of the day, we confess some surprise that the occasional flashes of talent in its details, and the unquestionable strength of its conception, should not have won the attention of some one of the publishers to whose inspection it was submitted. One inference we may certainly draw from its perusal now; if "The Professor" was destined to be followed by such works as "Jane Eyre," "Shirley," and "Villette," we might fairly have expected a rich harvest from the minds that in their first efforts could originate "Wuthering Heights" and “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." Had the two sisters been spared, "the Bronté novels " might have become a long and illustrious list of noble fictions.

In one respect Currer Bell is not altogether unlike her favorite, Thackeray; for she selects for her dramatis persona

no impossible abstractions, but warm human hearts with a fair share of imperfections, and presents us with characters which neither awe nor astonish, but which we make welcome in our family circle. But she does not, like Thackeray, become jocosely bitter over the natures she evokes, nor abuse them till the reader is roused in their defence. Sarcasm with her does not dip its arrow in poison. There is more of good than of evil in her characters; and we feel confidence in their latent heroism, draw strength from the contemplation of their struggles, and rise from the perusal of her works without bitterness. The charge of coarseness has occasionally reappeared; but, after the vindication of Mrs. Gaskell, we think it must take rank with those suggestions which recommend a "Shakespeare for the use of private families" and a mantilla for the Venus de' Medici.

We have room for but a brief notice of Emily and Anne and their works, but the public is familiar with their history. Emily seems to have been a very Titaness with her imperious will and her uncompromising ways, though Charlotte declares, in her delineation of her as Shirley, her faith in her capacity for more genial development. The best criticism of her novel, "Wuthering Heights," is by Charlotte, and that is an explanation rather than a criticism; for it is only in the author that the key to such an extraordinary story can be found. She described human nature as it appeared to her distorted fancy, and it bore the same resemblance to healthful humanity, that a faithful description of an eclipse of the sun, as seen through smoked glass, would bear to the usual appearance of that luminary. Charlotte says:

"What her mind gathered of the real, was too exclusively confined to those tragic and terrible traits, of which, in listening to the secret annals of every rude vicinage, the memory is sometimes compelled to receive the impress. Her imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny, more powerful than sportive, found in such traits materials whence it wrought creations like Heathcliffe, like Earnshaw, like Catharine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done. If the auditor of her work, when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influences of natures so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen,-if it was complained that the

mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, - Ellis Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation."

This would naturally be the case with a mind capable of creating such monsters, and marshalling them coolly through all the movements of a romance; the shrinking from them must have been on their first appearance to the imagination, or not at all. The power of the creations is as great as it is grotesque, and there is, after all, a fearful fascination in turning over the pages of "Wuthering Heights." It calls for no harsh judgment as a moral utterance; for its monstrosity removes it from the range of moralities altogether, and can no more be reduced to any practical application than the fancies which perplex a brain in a paroxysm of nightmare.

Anne, the younger and more gentle sister, was of a different mould; yet some passages of her "Tenant of Wildfell Hall" would lead us to suppose that she was gentle chiefly through contrast with her Spartan sister, and that the savage elements about her found an occasional echo from within.

Agnes Grey," which appeared with "Wuthering Heights," made little impression; her reputation rests upon her second and last work, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall." For a criticism of this, we turn again to Charlotte; for though different in scope and style from "Wuthering Heights," it is nearly as inexplicable at a first glance.

"She had," says her sister, "in the course of her life, been called on to contemplate near at hand, and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused; what she saw sunk very deeply into her mind. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every detail (of course with fictitious characters, incidents, and situations), as a warning to others. She hated her work, but would pursue it. She must be honest; she must not varnish, soften,

or conceal."

It must be owned that she did not "varnish" the horrors which she painted, and which her first readers did not suspect of causing the artist so much suffering. We can now trace the quiverings of a sister's heart through the hateful details of a vicious manhood; and if the book fail somewhat in its

attempt to become a warning, it may at least claim the merit of a well-meant effort.

The history of the Bronté family is a tragedy throughout. Seldom have we been allowed to unveil such peculiar natures acting upon each other in one home-circle, and emerging from profound isolation into brief but dazzling publicity. With the death of Charlotte ends the sad history, and we have now only the memory of what they were. The world will not soon forget them, and would gladly offer them a more kindly tribute than it could conscientiously have given while ignorant of so much which now reveals the virtues, the struggles, and the sufferings of the sisters in that desolate Haworth parsonage. We once more thank Mrs. Gaskell for her labor of love, so gracefully executed, and echo to the letter the indignant language with which she condemns the too hastily uttered comments of ignorant criticism.

"It is well that the thoughtless critics, who spoke of the sad and gloomy views of life presented by the Brontés in their tales, should know how such words were wrung out of them by the living recollection of the long agony they suffered. It is well, too, that they who have objected to the representation of coarseness, and shrank from it with repugnance, as if such conceptions arose out of the writers, should learn, that not from the imagination, not from internal conception, but from the hard, cruel facts, pressed down, by external life, upon their very senses, for long months and years together, did they write out what they saw, obeying the stern dictates of their consciences. They might be mistaken. They might err in writing at all, when their afflictions were so great that they could not write otherwise than they did of life. It is possible that it would have been better to have described only good and pleasant people, doing only good and pleasant things (in which case they could hardly have written at any time). All I say is, that never, I believe, did women, possessed of such wonderful gifts, exercise them with a fuller feeling of responsibility for their use. to mistakes, they stand now as authors as well as women - before the judgment-seat of God."

As

ART. II. History of Piedmont. By ANTONIO GALLENGA. London: Chapman and Hall. 1855. 3 vols. 12mo.

SOME of our readers may remember an Italian exile, whose course of lectures on the history and literature of his country, delivered to a select audience in Boston, nearly twenty years ago, were alike remarkable for their comprehensive scope, their authentic and minute details, and the command they evinced of our vernacular tongue. When afterwards published in England, they became one of the standard books illustrative of an apparently inexhaustible theme. For some years after his visit to the United States, the author contributed to the London periodicals; and, like Foscolo and Rufini, relieved the lot of an exile by the graceful labors of the pen. Having married in the land which thus afforded him an independent asylum, when the throes of revolution again convulsed the peninsula, he returned to become a representative from Sardinia to the German revolutionary diet at Frankfort. The sensitive and melancholy temperament of Mariotti, as he called himself while in exile, his thoughtfulness and reserve, not less than his personal appearance, bespoke the Northern Italian; and his career is a singular illustration of the modern vicissitudes of his country and the fate of her citizens. In the youthful fervor of his republican zeal, when a victim to Austrian despotism, which had driven him from Parma while yet a student, he became one of the ardent disciples of Mazzini, and left Switzerland for Turin with the purpose of a deliberate regicide in his heart. The aspirations of a patriot, and the exasperated blood of a youth made a penniless fugitive by the most subtle and cruel of all tyrannies, account for, if they do not palliate, this vindictive impulse. A fatal catastrophe was averted by accidental circumstances. The impetuous refugee was spared the ignominy of a Ravaillac and a Sand. The dagger, with its handle of lapis lazuli, consecrated to the bloody deed and sent by the head of the liberal party, reached Gallenga; but his heart appears to have shrunk, at last, from

*Italy, Past and Present, by L. Mariotti.