"Such unions do not do," we say; "they land people in such awkward
situations." Hazlitt's _Liber Amoris_ is read with disgust, because the
girl was a lodging-house servant; but if Hazlitt had abandoned himself
to a passion for a girl of noble birth, the story would have been
deemed romantic enough. Thus it would seem that below the
transcendentalism of modern love lies a rich vein of snobbishness. With
Charlotte Brontë the triumph over social conditions in _Jane Eyre_, and
even in _Shirley_, is one of the things that makes the story glow and
thrill; but the glow of the peerage has to be cast in _Prisoners_ over
the detestable Lossiemouth, that one may feel that after all the
heroine has done well for herself from a social point of view. If
social conditions are indeed a barrier, let them be treated with a sort
of noble shame, as the love of the keeper Tregarva for the squire's
daughter Honoria is treated in _Yeast_; let them not be fastidiously
ignored over the tea-cups at the Hall.

Love is a mighty thing, a deep secret; but if we dare to write of it,
let us face the truth about it; let us confess boldly that it is
limited by physical and social conditions, even though that involves a
loss of its transcendent might. But let us not meekly accept these
narrowing axioms, and while we dig a neat canal for the emotion with
one hand, claim with the other that the peaceful current has all the
splendour and volume of the resistless river foaming from rock to rock,
and leaping from the sheltered valley to the boundless sea.




III