mediatory intervention of a comparative
stranger. By this method, and also by the crafty manner in which she
makes the old devoted servant of the house of Earnshaw utter a sort
of Sophoclean commentary upon the events which take place, we
are permitted to feel the magnitude of the thing in true relief and
perspective.

By these devices we have borne in upon us, as in no other way could
be done, the convincing sense which we require, to give weight and
mass to the story, of the real continuity of life in those savage places.

By this method of narration we have the illusion of being suddenly
initiated into a stream of events which are not merely imaginary. We
have the illusion that these Earnshaws and Lintons are really,
actually, palpably, undeniably, living--living somewhere, in their
terrible isolation, as they have always lived--and that it is only by
some lucky chance of casual discovery that we have been plunged
into the mystery of their days.

One cannot help feeling aware, as we follow the story of Heathcliff,
how Emily Bronte has torn and rent at her own soul in the creation
of this appalling figure. Heathcliff, without father or mother, without
even a Christian name, becomes for us a sort of personal
embodiment of the suppressed fury of Emily Bronte's own soul. The
cautious prudence and hypocritical reserves of the discreet world of
timid, kindly, compromising human beings has got upon the nerves
of this formidable girl, and, as she goes tearing and rending at all the
masks which cover our loves and our hates, she seems to utter wild
discordant cries, cries like those of some she-wolf rushing through
the herd of normal human sheep.

Heathcliff and Cathy, what a pair they are! What terrifying lovers!
They seem to have arisen from some remote unfathomed past of the
world's earlier and less civilised passions. And yet, one occasionally
catches, as one goes through the world, the Heathcliff look upon the
face of a man and the Cathy look upon the face of a woman.

In a writer of less genius than Emily Bronte Heathcliff would never
have found his match; would never have found his mate, his equal,
his twin-soul.

It needed the imagination of one who had both Heathcliff and Cathy
in her to dig them both out of the same granite rock, covered with
yellow gorse and purple ling, and to hurl them into one another's
arms.

From the moment when they inscribed their initials upon the walls
of that melancholy room, t