unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have
informed the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no
worldly wisdom; her powers were unadapted to the practical business
of life; she would fail to defend her most manifest rights, to
consult her most legitimate advantage. An interpreter ought always
to have stood between her and the world. Her will was not very
flexible, and it generally opposed her interest. Her temper was
magnanimous, but warm and sudden; her spirit altogether unbending.

Anne's character was milder and more subdued; she wanted the power,
the fire, the originality of her sister, but was well endowed with
quiet virtues of her own. Long-suffering, self-denying,
reflective, and intelligent, a constitutional reserve and
taciturnity placed and kept her in the shade, and covered her mind,
and especially her feelings, with a sort of nun-like veil, which
was rarely lifted. Neither Emily nor Anne was learned; they had no
thought of filling their pitchers at the well-spring of other
minds; they always wrote from the impulse of nature, the dictates
of intuition, and from such stores of observation as their limited
experience had enabled them to amass. I may sum up all by saying,
that for strangers they were nothing, for superficial observers
less than nothing; but for those who had known them all their lives
in the intimacy of close relationship, they were genuinely good and
truly great.

This notice has been written because I felt it a sacred duty to
wipe the dust off their gravestones, and leave their dear names
free from soil.

CURRER BELL