the question of sex. I think,
however, some woman must have assisted in the school scenes of _Jane
Eyre_, which have a striking air of truthfulness to me--an ignoramus,
I allow, on such points.

'I should say you might as well glance at the novels by Acton and
Ellis Bell--_Wuthering Heights_ is one of them. If you have any
friend about Manchester, it would, I suppose, be easy to learn
accurately as to the position of these men.' {349}

This was written in November, and it was not till December that the
article appeared. Apart from the offensive imputations upon the morals
of the author of _Jane Eyre_, which reduces itself to smart impertinence
when it is understood that Miss Rigby fully believed that the author was
a man, the review is not without its compensations for a new writer. The
'equal popularity' of _Jane Eyre_ and _Vanity Fair_ is referred to. 'A
very remarkable book,' the reviewer continues; 'we have no remembrance of
another containing such undoubted power with such horrid taste.' There
is droll irony, when Charlotte Bronte's strong conservative sentiments
and church environment are considered, in the following:--

'We do not hesitate to say that the tone of mind and thought which
has overthrown authority, and violated every code, human and divine,
abroad, and fostered chartism and rebellion at home, is the same
which has also written _Jane Eyre_.'

In another passage Miss Rigby, musing upon the masculinity of the author,
finally clinches her arguments by proofs of a kind.

'No woman _trusses game_, and garnishes dessert dishes with the same
hands, or talks of so doing in the same breath. Above all, no woman
attires another in such fancy dresses as Jane's ladies assume. Miss
Ingram coming down irresistible in a _morning_ robe of sky-blue
crape, a gauze azure scarf twisted in her hair!! No lady, we
understand, when suddenly roused in the night, would think of
hurrying on "a frock." They have garments more convenient for such
occasions, and more becoming too.'

_Wuthering Heights_ is described as 'too odiously and abominably pagan to
be palatable to the most vitiated class of English readers.' This no
doubt was Miss Rigby's interpolation in the proofs in reply to her
editor's suggestion that she should 'glance at the novels by Acton and
Ellis Bell.' It is a little difficult to understand the _Quarterly_
editor's meth