loser observation of the ways, or a more
perfect understanding of the heart of a child. Only little Maggie
Tulliver can stand beside little Polly in _Villette_. She is an answer
to every critic, from Mr. Swinburne downwards, who maintains that
Charlotte Bronte could not draw children.

But Lucy at fourteen is drawn with slight and grudging strokes,
sufficient for the minor part she is evidently to play. Lucy at Bretton
is a mere foil to little Polly. Charlotte Bronte distinctly stated in
her letters that she did not care for Miss Snowe. "Lucy must not marry
Dr. John; he is far too youthful, handsome, bright-spirited, and
sweet-tempered; he is a 'curled darling' of Nature and of fortune, and
must draw a prize in life's lottery. His wife must be young, rich,
pretty; he must be made very happy indeed. If Lucy marries anybody, it
must be the Professor--a man in whom there is much to forgive, much to
'put up with'. But I am not leniently disposed towards Miss Frost: from
the beginning I never meant to appoint her lines in pleasant places."
"As to the character of Lucy Snowe, my intention from the first was that
she should not occupy the pedestal to which Jane Eyre was raised by some
injudicious admirers. She is where I meant her to be, and where no
charge of self-laudation can touch her."

But Lucy is _not_ altogether where she was meant to be. When she
reappears at the Pensionnat it is with "flame in her soul and lightning
in her eyes". She reminds M. Paul "of a young she wild creature, new
caught, untamed, viewing with a mixture of fire and fear the first
entrance of the breaker-in".

"'You look,' said he, 'like one who would snatch at a draught of sweet
poison, and spurn wholesome bitters with disgust.'"

There is no inconsistency in this. Women before now have hidden a soul
like a furnace under coldness and unpleasantness, and smothered
shrieking nerves under an appearance of apathy. Lucy Snowe is one of
them. As far as she goes, Lucy at Bretton is profoundly consistent with
Lucy in _Villette_. It is not Lucy's volcanic outbreaks in the
Pensionnat that do violence to her creator's original intention. It is
the debasement of Polly and the exaltation of Lucy to her tragic role,
the endowment of Lucy with Polly's rarest qualities, to the utter
impoverishment of Pauline de Bassompierre. Polly in _Villette_ is a mere
foil to Lucy.

Having lavished such care and love on Polly, Charlotte Bronte could not
possibly have mea