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THE BRONTË SISTERS.
43

they had been in the hands of the publishers, were given to the world. "Agnes Grey" was a carefully written study oi the life of a governess, and was, perhaps, something above the average novel of the day. "Wuthering Heights" was far different. It is a tale of horror, violence and crime, relieved only by two brief love scenes at the end, brightly and delicately drawn and novel in conception. It is a book which, once taken up, it is not easy to lay down unfinished; which people sit up late at night to read, and which haunts them in their sleep, bringing them evil and fantastic dreams. It is a morbid book, real in its very unreality, but its power is incontestable. Emily has been blamed for choosing a subject so forbidding; but remembering her gloomy and wild environment, her solitary nature, and the drunken, desperate brother ever present in her home, we can scarcely wonder at her choice. Besides, as has been beautifully and truly said by Miss Robinson, a lady who has recently related the story of Emily's life with rare truth and insight:

"From the clear spirit which inspires the end of her work, we know that the storm is over; we know that her next tragedy would be less violent."

"Agnes Gray" and "Wuthering Heights" met with little favor from the public. Anne wrote one other novel, "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall," in which she attempted, with some success, to depict her brother Branwell; and this work succeeded better. But Emily, whose genius, though widely different, was scarcely less than that of her more famous sister Charlotte, wrote no more.

Trouble was coming again upon the patient sisters. Branwell grew worse and worse, his sufferings and paroxysms more and more terrible, until, in 1848, the end came. By a last strange exercise of will he insisted upon meeting his death standing. He died erect upon his feet, after a struggle of twenty minutes. Emily, whose health