the
excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a
range of gaunt thorns, all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving
alms of the sun."

See the finish of this landscape, framed in a window: "They sat together
in a window whose lattice lay back against the wall, and displayed,
beyond the garden trees and the wild green park, the valley of
Gimmerton, with a long line of mist winding nearly to its top (for very
soon after you pass the chapel, as you may have noticed, the sough that
runs from the marshes joins a beck which follows the bend of the glen).
Wuthering Heights rose above this silvery vapour; but our old house was
invisible; it rather dips down on the other side."

In six lines she can paint sound, and distance, and scenery, and the
turn of the seasons, and the two magics of two atmospheres. "Gimmerton
chapel bells were still ringing; and the full, mellow flow of the beck
in the valley came soothingly on the ear. It was a sweet substitute for
the yet absent murmur of the summer foliage, which drowned that music
about the Grange when the trees were in leaf. At Wuthering Heights it
always sounded on quiet days following a great thaw or a season of
steady rain."

That music is the prelude to Heathcliff's return, and to the passionate
scene that ends in Catherine's death.

And nothing could be more vivid, more concrete, than Emily Bronte's
method. Time is marked as a shepherd on the moors might mark it, by the
movement of the sun, the moon, and the stars; by weather, and the
passage of the seasons. Passions, emotions, are always presented in
bodily symbols, by means of the bodily acts and violences they inspire.
The passing of the invisible is made known in the same manner. And the
visible world moves and shines and darkens with an absolute illusion of
reality. Here is a road seen between sunset and moonrise: "... all that
remained of day was a beamless amber light along the west: but I could
see every pebble on the path, and every blade of grass, by the light of
that splendid moon".

The book has faults, many and glaring faults. You have to read it many
times before you can realize in the mass its amazing qualities. For it
is probably the worst-constructed tale that ever was written, this story
of two houses and of three generations that the man Lockwood is supposed
to tell. Not only has Lockwood to tell of things he could not possibly
have heard and seen, but sometimes you get