a chapter which could hardly have been written at all by a woman, or for that matter by a man, of however kindly and noble a nature, in whom the instinct or nerve or organ of love for children was even of average natural strength and sensibility. Milton might have conceived such a thing, but certainly not Shakespeare; or Corneille, but assuredly not Hugo. Motherhood to Charlotte Brontë must have been a more vague and dim abstraction than his camel to the mythical sage of Germany or his seaport to the nautical king of Bohemia. In George Eliot it is the most vivid and vital impulse which lends to her large intelligence the utmost it ever has of the spiritual breath and living blood of genius; and never had any such a gift more plainly an immediately as from the very heart of heaven.
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CHARLOTTE BRONTË.
