Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/69

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breeches too—was ever exhibited by George Sand's very self, in the days when she refused or accorded the gift of a memorial button off her own to the soft petition of the suppliant Heine. Assuredly 'Louis Moore' would never have passed muster with the very stolidest of all Swiss as the one unmistakable young man in a masquerading party of questionably mingled sexes—as I suppose we are bound to take her word for it that the author of 'Lettres d'un Voyageur' did actually succeed in passing. Glorious words are given him to utter, but they come as from under a mask without eyesight or feature or native organ of speech. Miss Brontë has written nothing finer, nothing of more vivid and exquisite eloquence, than the best passages of his diary; than the sweet and sublime rhapsody on a