Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/32

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CHARLOTTE BRONTË.

speare as a corresponding revolution or reversal of conditions among theirs.

If I turn again for contrast or comparison with their works to the work of George Eliot, it will be attributed by no one above the spiritual rank and type of Pope's representative dunces to irreverence or ingratitude for the large and_ liberal beneficence of her genius at its best. But she alone among our living writers is generally admitted or assumed as the rightful occupant, or at least as the legitimate claimant, of that foremost place in the front rank of artists in this kind which none can hold or claim without challenging such comparison or such contrast. And in some points it is undeniable that she may