aversions, and headlong partialities of unlettered moorland hinds
and rugged moorland squires, who have grown up untaught and
unchecked, except by Mentors as harsh as themselves. A large class
of readers, likewise, will suffer greatly from the introduction
into the pages of this work of words printed with all their
letters, which it has become the custom to represent by the initial
and final letter only--a blank line filling the interval. I may as
well say at once that, for this circumstance, it is out of my power
to apologise; deeming it, myself, a rational plan to write words at
full length. The practice of hinting by single letters those
expletives with which profane and violent persons are wont to
garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however
well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does--
what feeling it spares--what horror it conceals.

With regard to the rusticity of 'Wuthering heights,' I admit the
charge, for I feel the quality. It is rustic all through. It is
moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Nor was it
natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a
native and nursling of the moors. Doubtless, had her lot been cast
in a town, her writings, if she had written at all, would have
possessed another character. Even had chance or taste led her to
choose a similar subject, she would have treated it otherwise. Had
Ellis Bell been a lady or a gentleman accustomed to what is called
'the world,' her view of a remote and unreclaimed region, as well
as of the dwellers therein, would have differed greatly from that
actually taken by the home-bred country girl. Doubtless it would
have been wider--more comprehensive: whether it would have been
more original or more truthful is not so certain. As far as the
scenery and locality are concerned, it could scarcely have been so