skell. There is THE HISTORY OF THE YEAR 1829, beginning: "Once
Papa lent my sister Maria a book. It was an old geography book; she
wrote on its blank leaf, "Papa lent me this book." This book is a
hundred and twenty years old; it is at this moment lying before me.
While I write this I am in the kitchen of the Parsonage, Haworth; Tabby,
the servant, is washing up the breakfast things, and Anne, my youngest
sister (Maria was my eldest), is kneeling on a chair, looking at some
cakes, which Tabby has been baking for us." You cannot beat that for
pure simplicity of statement. There is another fragment that might have
come straight out of _Jane Eyre_. "One night, about the time when the
cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snowstorms
and high piercing night-winds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting
round the warm, blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel
with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she
came off victorious, no candle having been produced." And there is a
dream-story that Mr. Clement Shorter gives. She is in the "Mines of
Cracone", under the floor of the sea. "But in the midst of all this
magnificence I felt an indescribable sense of fear and terror, for the
sea raged above us, and by the awful and tumultuous noises of roaring
winds and dashing waves, it seemed as if the storm was violent. And now
the massy pillars groaned beneath the pressure of the ocean, and the
glittering arches seemed about to be overwhelmed. When I heard the
rushing waters and saw a mighty flood rolling towards me I gave a loud
shriek of terror." The dream changes: she is in a desert full of barren
rocks and high mountains, where she sees "by the light of his own fiery
eyes a royal lion rousing himself from his kingly slumbers. His terrible
eye was fixed upon me, and the desert rang, and the rocks echoed with
the tremendous roar of fierce delight which he uttered as he sprang
towards me." And there is her letter to the editor of one of their
_Little Magazines_: "Sir,--It is well known that the Genii have declared
that unless they perform certain arduous duties every year, of a
mysterious nature, all the worlds in the firmament will be burnt up, and
gathered together in one mighty globe, which will roll in solitary
splendour through the vast wilderness of space, inhabited only by the
four high princes of the Genii, till time shall be succeeded by
Eternity; and the impudence of