Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/45

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tion—though we may hardly see how this can be admitted to explain the remarkable reticence which reserves all acknowledgment and dissembles all consciousness of that sufficiently palpable and weighty and direct obligation—to Mrs. Gaskell's beautiful story of 'The Moorland Cottage'; in which not the identity of name alone, nor only their common singleness of heart and simplicity of spirit, must naturally recall the gentler memory of the less high-thoughted and high-reaching heroine to the warmest and the worthiest admirers of the later-born and loftier-minded Maggie; though the hardness and brutality of the baser brother through whom she suffers be the outcome in manhood as in childhood of mere greedy instinct and vulgar egotism, while the full