o write
the life of Charlotte Bronte and not of her sister Emily; and as a result
there is little enough of Emily in Mrs. Gaskell's book--no record of the
Halifax and Brussels life as seen through Emily's eyes. Time, however,
has brought its revenge. The cult which started with Mr. Sydney Dobell,
and found poetic expression in Mr. Matthew Arnold's fine lines on her,

'Whose soul
Knew no fellow for might,
Passion, vehemence, grief,
Daring, since Byron died,' {145b}

culminated in an enthusiastic eulogy by Mr. Swinburne, who placed her in
the very forefront of English women of genius.

We have said that Emily Bronte is a sphinx whose riddle no amount of
research will enable us to read; and this chapter, it may be admitted,
adds but little to the longed-for knowledge of an interesting
personality. One scrap of Emily's handwriting, of a personal character,
has indeed come to me--overlooked, I doubt not, by Charlotte when she
burnt her sister's effects. I have before me a little tin box about two
inches long, which one day last year Mr. Nicholls turned out from the
bottom of a desk. It is of a kind in which one might keep pins or beads,
certainly of no value whatever apart from its associations. Within were
four little pieces of paper neatly folded to the size of a sixpence.
These papers were covered with handwriting, two of them by Emily, and two
by Anne Bronte. They revealed a pleasant if eccentric arrangement on the
part of the sisters, which appears to have been settled upon even after
they had passed their twentieth year. They had agreed to write a kind of
reminiscence every four years, to be opened by Emily on her birthday.
The papers, however, tell their own story, and I give first the two which
were written in 1841. Emily writes at Haworth, and Anne from her
situation as governess to Mr. Robinson's children at Thorp Green. At
this time, at any rate, Emily was fairly happy and in excellent health;
and although it is five years from the publication of the volume of
poems, she is full of literary projects, as is also her sister Anne. The
_Gondaland Chronicles_, to which reference is made, must remain a mystery
for us. They were doubtless destroyed, with abundant other memorials of
Emily, by the heart-broken sister who survived her. We have plentiful
material in the way of childish effort by Charlotte and by Branwell, but
there is hardly a scrap in the early handwriting o