, in desolate and forlorn integrity, of the individual
human will, which is the deepest element in Emily Bronte's genius.
Upon this all depends, and to this all returns. Between the will and
the spirit deep and strange nuptials are celebrated; and from the
immortality of the spirit a certain breath of life passes over into the
mortality of the will, drawing it up into the celestial and invisible
region which is beyond chance and change.

From this abysmal fusion of the "creator spiritus" with the human
will rises that adamantine courage with which Emily Bronte was
able to face the jagged edges of that crushing wheel of destiny
which the malign powers of nature drive remorselessly over our
poor flesh and blood. The uttermost spirit of the universe became in
this manner _her_ spirit, and the integral identity of the soul within
her breast hardened into an undying resistance to all that would
undermine it.

Thus she was able to endure tragedy upon tragedy without flinching.
Thus she was able to assert herself against the power of pain as one
wrestling invincibly with an exhausted giant.

Calamity after calamity fell upon her house, and the stark desolation
of those melancholy Yorkshire hills became a suitable and
congruous background for the loneliness of her strange life; but
against all the pain which came upon her, against all the aching
pangs of remorseless fate, this indomitable girl held grimly to her
supreme vision.

No poet, no novelist who has ever lived has been so profoundly
affected by the conditions of his life as was this invincible woman.
But the conditions of her life--the scenery of sombre terror which
surrounded her--only touched and affected the outward colour and
rhythm of her unique style. In her deepest soul, in the courage of her
tremendous vision, she possessed something that was not bounded
by Yorkshire hills, or any other hills; something that was inhuman,
eternal and universal, something that was outside the power of both
time and space.

By that singular and forlorn scenery--the scenery of the Yorkshire
moors round about her home--she was, however, in the more
flexible portion of her curious nature inveterately influenced. She
does not precisely describe this scenery--not at any rate at any
length--either in her poems or in "Wuthering Heights"; but it sank so
deeply into her that whatever she wrote was affected by it and bears
its desolate and imaginative imprint.

It is impossible to r