lfishness of
Beatrice and the great sacrifice of Esmond.

Space is lacking to take up Thackeray's other works, but it is safe to
say if you read the three novels here hastily sketched you cannot go
amiss among his minor works. Even his lighter sketches and his essays
will be found full of material that is so far above the ordinary level
that the similar work of to-day seems cheap and common. Happy is the
boy or girl who has made Thackeray a chosen companion from childhood.
Such a one has received unconsciously lessons in life and in culture
that can be gained from few of the great authors of the world.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND HER TWO GREAT NOVELS

"JANE EYRE" AND "VILLETTE" ARE TOUCHED WITH GENIUS--TRAGEDY OF
A WOMAN'S LIFE THAT RESULTED IN TWO STORIES OF PASSIONATE
REVOLT AGAINST FATE.

Charlotte Bronte is always linked in my memory with Thackeray because
of her visit to the author of _Vanity Fair_ and its humorous and
pathetic features. She went to London from her lonely Yorkshire home,
and the great world, with its many selfish and unlovely features, made
a painful impression on her. Even Thackeray, her idol, was found to
have feet of clay. But this "little Puritan," as the great man called
her, was endowed with the divine genius which was forced to seek
expression in fiction, and nowhere in all literature will one find an
author who shows more completely the compelling force of a powerful
creative imagination than this little, frail, self-educated woman,
who had none of the advantages of her fellow writers, but who
surpassed them all in a certain fierce, Celtic spirit which forces the
reader to follow its bidding.

[Illustration: CHARLOTTE BRONTE FROM THE EXQUISITELY SYMPATHETIC
CRAYON PORTRAIT BY GEORGE RICHMOND, R.A. NOW IN THE NATIONAL
PORTRAIT GALLERY OF LONDON]

He who would get a full realization of the importance of this Celtic
element in English literature cannot afford to neglect _Jane Eyre_ and
_Villette_, the best of Charlotte Bronte's works. Old-fashioned these
romances are in many ways, oversentimental, in parts poorly
constructed, but in all English fiction there is nothing to surpass
the opening chapters of _Jane Eyre_ for vividness and pathos, and few
things to equal the greater part of _Villette_, the tragedy of an
English woman's life in a Brussels boarding school.

Who can explain the mystery of the flowering of a great literary style
among the bleak and desolate m