wallflowers in the brief summer, the few fir-trees by Catherine's window-
bars, the early moon--I know not where are landscapes more exquisite and
natural. And among the signs of death where is any fresher than the
window seen from the garden to be swinging open in the morning, when
Heathcliff lay within, dead and drenched with rain?

None of these things are presented by images. Nor is that signal passage
wherewith the book comes to a close. Be it permitted to cite it here
again. It has taken its place, it is among the paragons of our
literature. Our language will not lapse or derogate while this prose
stands for appeal: "I lingered . . . under that benign sky; watched the
moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind
breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine
unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

Finally, of Emily Bronte's face the world holds only an obviously
unskilled reflection, and of her aspect no record worth having. Wild
fugitive, she vanished, she escaped, she broke away, exiled by the
neglect of her contemporaries, banished by their disrespect outlawed by
their contempt, dismissed by their indifference. And such an one was she
as might rather have pronounced upon these the sentence passed by
Coriolanus under sentence of expulsion; she might have driven the world
from before her face and cast it out from her presence as he condemned
his Romans: "_I_ banish you."




CHARMIAN