he plain girls had the best
of it. There is a regular type of ideal young lady in women's novels, to
which we have at last become accustomed. She is not at all a perfect
beauty. Her features are not as finely chiseled as a Greek statue; she
is taller, we are invariably told, than the model height, her nose is
_retrousse_; and "in some lights" an unfavorable critic might affirm
that her hair was positively tawny. But there is a well of feeling in
her big brown eyes, which, when united to genius, invariably bowls over
the hero of the book. And the passion she excites is of that stirring
kind which eclipses all others.

Through the first two volumes the predestined lover flirts with the
beauties who despise her, dances with them under her eye, and wears
their colors in her presence. But at the end of the third an expressive
glance tells her that all is right, and that big eyes and a big soul
have won the race in a canter. Jane Eyre was perhaps the first
triumphant success of this particular school of art. And Jane Eyre
certainly opened the door to a long train of imitators. For many years
every woman's novel had got in it some dear and noble creature,
generally underrated, and as often as not in embarrassed circumstances,
who used to capture her husband by sheer force of genius, and by
pretending not to notice him when he came into the room. Some pleasant
womanly enthusiasts even went further, and invented heroines with
tangled hair and inky fingers. We do not feel perfectly certain that
Miss Yonge, for instance, has not married her inky Minervas to nicer and
more pious husbands, as a rule, than her uninky ones. The advantage of
the view that ugly heroines are the most charming is obvious, if only
the world could be brought to adopt it. It is a well-meant protest in
favor of what may be called, in these days of political excitement, the
"rights" of plain girls. It is very hard to think that a few more
freckles or a quarter of an inch of extra chin should make all the
difference in life to women, and those of them who are intellectually
fitted to play a shining part in society or literature may be excused
for rebelling against the masculine heresy of believing in beauty only.

Whenever such women write, the constant moral they preach to us is that
beauty is a delusion and a snare. This is the moral of Hetty in _Adam
Bede_, and it is in the unsympathetic and cold way in which Hetty is
described that one catches glimpses of