Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/107

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cases probably the design begun by means of the camera was transferred for completion to the canvass. The likeness of Mr. Helstone to Mr. Brontë, for example, was thus at once enlarged and subdued, heightened and modified, by the skilful and noble instinct which kept it always within the gracious and natural bounds prescribed and maintained by the fine tact of filial respect. No more lifelike or memorable portrait was ever wrought into the composition of an ideal or historic picture by the loftiest art of any Venetian painter. The man's hard, rigid, contemptuous, yet never quite unkindly or unrighteous force of character—his keen enjoyment of action and struggle, his fierce imperious relish of resistance—the fine soldierly quality of spirit,