Temptation.

CALMLY they rest beneath the churchyard trees,
Friends, fellows, lovers, of youth's brilliant season;
Wilt thou, fair mortal, wilt thou be of these,
And quit for aye this ugly haunt of treason?
One bitter cup the more-a simple draught
From nature's vintage culled-one more of many
Thou hast, poor soul, already deeply quaffed?
"No, thanks. Not any."

Come where is heard the tender ring-dove's moan
And ceaseless sighing of the wind-woo'd willow,
Where golden tints bedeck the mossy stone,
And emerald turf affords a fragrant pillow;
Hast not a wish to lay thy heavy load

Here, in seclusion from the world thou fightest,
Down once for all upon life's weary road?
"No, not the slightest."

Behold yon river where the night winds rise,
Rippling the moonshine into golden motion
Over the restless, rolling tide that flies,

Fierce, swift, and flashing, to a boundless ocean.
Deep lies its bed beneath the rush and roar.
Safely, O sinner, from life's feverish worry,
One leap will franchise thee for evermore.
"Thanks, there's no hurry."

He loves another! Dainty feet he still
Leads to the rustic dell of thy first passion,
Whose shady nooks woodbine and rose yet fill
With scent and colour in the same old fashion!
Life's riddle has but one solution. One!

And this small mechanism can bestow it.
A sigh, a touch, a flash, and it is done!
"Not if I know it."

VOL. LXXXI.

J. M. FLEMING. 20

'Wuthering Heights.'

"1801.-I have just returned from a visit to my landlord, the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.”

Such is the opening sentence of one of the most remarkable books ever written, but a book which, like many other remarkable works, finds not many readers now. Its concluding paragraph sums up in a few words a whole history of buried hopes, fears and passions which have been in the course of the narrative depicted by a master hand.

"I lingered round them 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 any one could imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

At the risk of appearing to deal in truisms or plagiarisms—for much, both wise and foolish, has already been written upon this subject-a few words may perhaps not inappropriately be said upon this, the most powerful, and in some few respects the most beautiful, romance of the present century.

'Wuthering Heights' never has been and never will be a popular book, in the sense in which 'Jane Eyre,' 'Shirley,' and 'Villette' are popular, though it has far more power, even far more originality, than any or all of them. It is undoubtedly too grim and terrific ever to make its way to popularity. And yet it seems to the writer that the critics of 'Wuthering Heights' have insisted too exclusively upon its gloom, and the horror which undeniably does envelop it like a cloak, and too little upon the tenderness and loveliness which, if they appear but seldom, do nevertheless shine in their brightest beauty when we are permitted to see them. Had a writer of inferior calibre endeavoured to mould the materials of which this story is composed, the result must have been disastrous. As it happened, not only did a great genius light upon them, but the right genius-the sympathetic, harmonious, appreciative genius, possessed herself of them, took and fashioned them; breathed the breath of life into them, and the result is grim, even overwhelming, but grand in no ordinary degree.

The plot of Wuthering Heights' is not complicated, despite the appearance of confusion which one might infer from the peculiar construction of its first chapters. The elements of the tragedy are simple, and may be briefly recounted.

Ellen Dean, the elderly housekeeper of Thrushcross Grange, relates the story of Mr. Lockwood, its tenant, during his temporary confinement to the house by a fit of illness.

He has shortly before rented the house from one Mr. Heathcliff, whose acquaintance he has already made, together with that of the other members of his family, as is related in a couple of chapters not easily to be forgotten. Nelly Dean begins her narrative at the time when she herself was a child, and used to go and play as a treat with Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw, whose father was a well-to-do yeoman, and the owner of Wuthering Heights. Late one evening, returning from a journey to Liverpool, he opens his coat, and discloses to the discomfited gaze of wife, children, and Nelly Dean, "a dirty, ragged, black-looking child," whom he had picked up in a Liverpool street, starving and unable to speak a word of English. He had brought it home. Whether child of Lascar or Gypsy-of what race or parentage, none ever knew. This apparition was destined to develop into Heathcliff.

As time went on, Heathcliff became the favourite of the old man, and the cherished companion of Catherine. Between him and Hindley the son existed a hearty hatred. Hindley went away to college. The mistress died, and Nelly Dean was promoted to the post of housekeeper and confidante. The master too died; and Hindley came home, bringing a wife with him. He takes the opportunity of reducing Heathcliff to the position of a farmservant, and heaps degradations and indignities upon him. Catherine still held to him until she was thrown into the society of Edgar and Isabella Linton, the children of Thrushcross Grange, and, without yielding an inch of her preference for Heathcliff, inevitably saw less of him.

To Hindley's wife, whom her husband adores, a son is born, but the mother dies. Frantic with grief, he gives himself up to dissipation and excess, and proceeds deliberately to drink himself into a demon. Nelly is the presiding genius of the house, with Joseph, a crabbed old puritan man-servant, as coadjutor. Catherine grows up "the queen of the country side; she had no fear-a headstrong, haughty creature"-remaining doggedly true to Heathcliff, despite his degradation.

Edgar Linton becomes her suitor. One evening she informs Nelly Dean that he has proposed to her. They are sitting in the kitchen. Unaware of the presence of Heathcliff, who, weary with

his day's labour, reposes on a settle in the background, she lays bare all her heart to Nelly, and a strange revelation it is. She has accepted Edgar. She proceeds to give her reasons for so doing. Amongst others is the one that "it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now." This he hears, and slips away, unperceived except by Nelly, while Catherine goes on with her strange avowal.

"My great miseries in the world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning. My great thought in living is himself ... my love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods-time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath; a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again."

From this time Heathcliff is seen no more until three years and six months have passed away; and Catherine for half a year has been Mrs. Linton of Thrushcross Grange, whither Nelly has accompanied her as housekeeper.

One evening-one calm, sweet summer evening-Heathcliff returns, and happiness and peace are slain on the spot. His love for Catherine is unalterable, as hers for him. One scene succeeds another of wild altercation, fury, despair. Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton, obtains her fortune, and breaks her heart. Then there is a wild and mad scene of passion and recrimination between him and Catherine, in which she defies him to leave her. During the night succeeding it, her child, the second Catherine, is born, and the mother dies. Isabella escapes from her husband, and to her too a son is born. Heathcliff becomes master where he was once a servant, and reduces Hareton, the son of Hindley, to his own former degraded position. The second Catherine grows up. Mrs. Heathcliff dies; her son, Linton, a pettish, consumptive boy, comes to Wuthering Heights. By Heathcliff's machinations, Catherine is entrapped into a marriage with her cousin while they are yet both children. Edgar Linton dies, and Heathcliff possesses himself of his property. Young Heathcliff dies, and Catherine is a widow and an orphan at eighteen. Heathcliff himself is at last seized" with a very strange illness," but not before he sees that Hareton and Catherine are learning to love one another. Nelly Dean finds him one morning dead in his bed. Lighted by a gleam of sunshine and tenderness the story closes, leaving Catherine and Hareton about to be united, with Nelly Dean as factotum.

It would be very easy to hold up the dark blots, the inconsistencies, the strange ignorance of practical life, the amazing deficiencies of

this book-deficiencies which the merest scribbler at all accustomed to real life would successfully avoid-to hold them up and cry out, "Look! See this dreadful mistake! Who could believe in such ignorance of the bien seances?" Very easy-and remarkably stupid as well. These blots and inconsistencies are inevitable as the concomitants of the great abstracted, untrained genius which produced the book. They are the "deep shadow" which, as Goethe says, "all strong light must cast." They vanish into insignificance in the grandeur of the whole. The tragedy to which we are here introduced is real tragedy and no sham; the strength is constitutional, not derived from passing stimulants-the passion is kindled at the primal spark of all passion, at the very interior fire of primitive nature; and she who has dared these flights to heaven, these descents to hell, has not failed in her purpose-she has accomplished both journeys in safety, and has told us what she found there in words worthy the themes.

It will almost certainly be conceded that, within the sphere of English fiction (to which this work most essentially belongs) Heathcliff stands alone, whether regarded as the embodied ill-luck of a sheltering house, as a psychological mystery, as lover, as villain, or as all three characters combined in his proper person. The oft-quoted objections that he is "unreal," fantastic, improbable -nay, impossible-must fall through except when discussing the book from afar, as it were, and with that giant figure looming spectre-like in the distance. But the characters of a book, like those in real life, must usually be judged of by the effect they produce on those with whom they come in contact, and whoever sits down to read about Heathcliff will find him not at all unreal -no chimera, but a very present and very astounding reality. We do not understand him—it is highly probable we were never intended to do so. Let us try to realise and accept the fact that there may be just one or two things yet left in heaven and earth not dreamt of by our philosophy. Heathcliff is by no means an impossibility to our minds; he is in complete harmony with his surroundings; no supernatural machinery is called in to cheat and disgust us; as we read we accept him, because we must; we feel that the brain which developed him was as sound as the genius which conceived him was extraordinary. Of course he could not be permitted in any other book-even if there were any other romancer capable of producing him; he is no society hero; he is too tremendous for any stage but one, and that one is contained

These remarks had been written before the author had read Mr. Wemyss Reid's 'Charlotte Brontë,' in which somewhat similar opinions are expressed with regard to Heathcliff.