to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in
subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there
comes a time when it will no longer consent to 'harrow the valleys,
or be bound with a band in the furrow'--when it 'laughs at the
multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver'--
when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer,
it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a
Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or
Inspiration direct. Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine,
you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you--
the nominal artist--your share in it has been to work passively
under dictates you neither delivered nor could question--that would
not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your
caprice. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you,
who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will
blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

'Wuthering Heights' was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools,
out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a
solitary moor; gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be
elicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at
least one element of grandeur--power. He wrought with a rude
chisel, and from no model but the vision of his meditations. With
time and labour, the crag took human shape; and there it stands
colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rock: in the
former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almost
beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss
clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance,
grows faithfully close to the giant's foot.