the account she herself gives of the effect she produces, and
the means shown us by which she brings that effect about. We hear
nothing but self-eulogiums on the perfect tact and wondrous penetration
with which she is gifted, and yet almost every word she utters offends
us, not only with the absence of these qualities, but with the positive
contrasts of them, in either her pedantry, stupidity, or gross
vulgarity. She is one of those ladies who puts us in the unpleasant
predicament of undervaluing their very virtues for dislike of the person
in whom they are represented. One feels provoked as Jane Eyre stands
before us--for in the wonderful reality of her thoughts and
descriptions, she seems accountable for all done in her name--with
principles you must approve in the main, and yet with language and
manners that offend you in every particular. Even in that _chef-d'oeuvre_
of brilliant retrospective sketching, the description of her
early life, it is the childhood and not the child that interests you.
The little Jane, with her sharp eyes and dogmatic speeches, is a being
you neither could fondle nor love. There is a hardness in her infantine
earnestness, and a spiteful precocity in her reasoning, which repulses
all our sympathy. One sees that she is of a nature to dwell upon and
treasure up every slight and unkindness, real or fancied, and such
natures we know are surer than any others to meet with plenty of this
sort of thing. As the child, so also the woman--an uninteresting,
sententious, pedantic thing; with no experience of the world, and yet
with no simplicity or freshness in its stead. What are her first answers
to Mr. Rochester but such as would have quenched all interest, even for
a prettier woman, in any man of common knowledge of what was nature--and
especially in a _blase_ monster like him?

* * * * *

But the crowning scene is the offer--governesses are said to be sly on
such occasions, but Jane out-governesses them all--little Becky would
have blushed for her. They are sitting together at the foot of the old
chestnut tree, as we have already mentioned, towards the close of
evening, and Mr. Rochester is informing her, with his usual delicacy of
language, that he is engaged to Miss Ingram--"a strapper! Jane, a real
strapper!"--and that as soon as he brings home his bride to Thornfield,
she, the governess, must "trot forthwith"--but that he shall make it his
duty to look out for