Charlotte Bronté and her Sisters.

Three sisters, daughters of Rev. Patrick Bronté, rose suddenly to fame about the middle of the present century: CHARLOTTE, 18161855, known as "Currer Bell;" ANNE, 1820-1849, known as Acton Bell;" and EMILY, 1819-1848, known as "Ellis Bell."

66

"Averse to personal publicity, we veiled our names under those of Currer, Acton, and Ellis Bell, the ambiguous choice being dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because without at that time suspecting that our mode of writing and thinking was not what is called 'feminine'—we had a vague impression that authoresses are likely to be looked upon with prejudice; we had noticed how critics sometimes use for their chastisement the weapon of personality, and for their reward a flattery which is not true praise."

The first publication of the sisters was a joint affair, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.

Emily, besides her share in the volume just named, wrote Wuthering Heights, a novel of considerable, but very unequal power. Anne wrote also Agnes Grey, and The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall. None of these works, probably, would have attracted much attention, but for their association with those of the older sister.

Charlotte's first separate publication was Jane Eyre, an Autobiography, 1848. It was a work of wonderful power, and it gained immediate and universal popularity. It was followed, in 1849, by Shirley, not quite equal to the preceding, but still very able and very popular. In 1850, after the death of her sisters, she published a Selection of their Literary Remains, with a Biographical notice. Villette, her last and greatest work, came out in 1852, and was received with a universal burst of acclamation. In it she not only rose to the level of Jane Eyre, but even went above it. "No one in her time has grasped with such extraordinary force the scenes and circumstances through which her story moved, or thrown so strong an individual life into place and locality. Her passionate and fearless nature, her wild, warm heart, are transferred into the magic world she has created,—a world which no one can enter without yielding to the irresistible fascination of her personal influence."-Blackwood.

About the time of the appearance of Villette, Charlotte was married to her father's curate, Rev. Arthur B. Nicholls, but died after a brief period of domestic happiness. The biography of Charlotte Bronté by Mrs. Gaskell is itself a book of intense interest, and is the best commentary on her novels.

REV. PATRICK BRONTE, 1774-1861, the father of Charlotte, Anne, and Emily, published, in 1811, a volume, Cottage Poems.

III. WRITERS ON LITERATURE, POLITICS, AND

SCIENCE.

Sydney Smith.

Sydney Smith, 1771-1845, the witty Canon of St. Paul's, was on the whole the ablest and most effective of that small

band of writers who in the early part of this century made the Edinburgh Review a power in the world.

Sydney Smith studied at Winchester and at Oxford, took orders in the Church of England, and became finally Canon of St. Paul's. His name has become the synonym for wit and humor. It is not so generally known, however, that 'his more solid qualities of judgment and taste were equally prominent.

Smith's wit was of the highest order, the wit which results from a keen, intuitive perception of right and wrong, not degenerating into bitterness and rancor, but poised by strong good sense and healthy self-activity. He differs from Lamb in having less humor, and a less delicate play of fancy. Lamb's whimsicalities are those of a recluse who lives to himself and his books, and loiters through the world with halfclosed eyes; Smith walks briskly through the great Vanity Fair with eyes wide open and a jest at his tongue's end for every folly. Many of Smith's sayings and repartees have become proverbial, such as the one in which he characterizes Macaulay's conversation as enlivened by brilliant flashes of silence.

Sydney Smith was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review, and he wrote for that periodical many of its most brilliant articles on politics, literature, and philosophy.

His most celebrated series of writings was his Letters on the Subject of the Catholics, to my Brother Abraham who lives in the Country. These Letters, appearing during the times of agitation which preceded the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Bill, exhibited the author's full powers of wit, sarcasm, and solid reasoning, and summed up the case for Emancipation so ably as to leave nothing to be said on the other side.

Several volumes of his Sermons have been published; they show that Smith was no less able as a preacher than as a writer. Many of these sermons bear directly upon the Emancipation controversy.

His Letters on American Debts, written for the Morning Chronicle, were occasioned by his loss of money invested in Pennsylvania State loans. Their tone is somewhat unfair, and is deplorably bitter, the more so since Smith's loss was not heavy. As a matter of principle, however, the legislative repudiation of those days deserved all the scorn and denunciation that it received.

Sydney Smith's Memoirs, published by his daughter, Lady Holland, is a most interesting biography, revealing to us both the public and domestic life of one of the shrewdest and most admirable of writers, husbands, and fathers.

It may be said of Smith's wit that it is always good, and never vulgar. A collection of his sayings has been made, under the title of Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith. Among the hundreds of brilliant remarks here brought together, there is not one soiled by impurity, vulgarity, or profanity.

LADY HOLLAND. (Miss) Saba Smith, afterwards Lady Holland, 1867, eldest daughter of the Rev. Sydney Smith, was married, in 1834, to Henry Holland, who was physician-in-ordinary to Prince Albert and knighted in 1853 by Queen Victoria. Lady Holland has won for herself a lasting name by her one work, the Memoir of her father Sydney Smith, one of the most delightful and best-told personal narratives in the language.

Jeffrey.

Francis, Lord Jeffrey, 1773-1850, made for himself a world-wide celebrity as a leading writer for the Edinburgh Review, of which also, for more than the fourth of a century, he was the fearless and unequalled editor.

Jeffrey was a native of Edinburgh. He studied at the University of Glasgow and at Oxford, and practised law in Edinburgh, but with little success. While a young man in Edinburgh, he became intimate with Horner, Brougham, and Sydney Smith, and the result of this intimacy was the establishment of the celebrated Review. After the publication of the first three numbers, the editorship was transferred from Smith to Jeffrey, who retained it from 1803 to 1829.

In 1830, Jeffrey was appointed Lord Advocate. From 1831 to 1834 he sat in Parlia ment. In 1834 he succeeded Lord Craigie in the Court of Sessions, thereby acquiring the honorary title of Lord Jeffrey. After retiring from the post of editor, he contributed only four or five more articles to the Review.

Jeffrey's contributions number in all two hundred A selection, seventy-nine in number, has been published, in 4 vols., 8vo; the remaining articles still lie scattered throughout the numbers of the Review.

Jeffrey occupies undoubtedly the most prominent position among modern English reviewers. This prominence is due, however, fully as much to his success in editorship as to his own merits as a critic. Under his management the Edinburgh Review became a great literary and political power in the realm. Men of every rank and profession read and admired, dreaded or hated, its slashing tone and. its recklessness of fear or favor. Much, very much, of the political progress of England during the present century is due to the stimulus applied unsparingly to the body politic by the writers for this Review.

As to Lord Jeffrey's own writings, opinions are somewhat divided. There can be no question concerning the vigor and elegance of his style, the purity of his motives, and the general soundness of his principles of criticism. In matters of poetry, however, he made such grave blunders-failing, for instance, to appreciate the rising genius of poets like Scott, Byron, Coleridge, Moore, and others that it may be doubted whether he was not defective in true imagination and sympathy. On this point, the opinion of one who is himself a poet should be heard. "Our very ideas of what is poetry," says Scott, "differ so widely that we rarely talk upon the subject. There is something in his mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to doubt whether, notwithstanding the vivacity of his imagination, he really has any feeling of poetical genius, or whether he has worn it all off by perpetually sharpening his wit on the grindstone of criticism."

Brougham.

Henry, Lord Brougham, 1778-1868, was one of the great lights of the nineteenth century. He was an advocate, a jurist, a statesman, a political reformer, and a man of let

ters, and in each of these walks of mental activity stood among the foremost.

Brougham was a native of Edinburgh, and was educated there in its High-School and its University. Among his teachers in Edinburgh were men of great note, -Dr. Adam, Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and Black. He was of an old English family, but he intimates in his Autobiography that whatever genius he had came from his mother, who was a niece of Robertson the historian.

Brougham gave early indications of genius, and his first efforts were in the direction of science. He wrote, at the age of seventeen, a paper on the Refraction and Reflection of Light, which was printed in the Transactions of the Royal Society. Though he became a lawyer and a statesman, and rose to the highest professional eminence, the original bias and the essentially scientific character of his mind came out in nearly all his writings.

As a lawyer, Brougham soon rose to distinction in London; and being employed as counsel for the defence of Queen Caroline, he had an occasion for the display of his talents such as has rarely happened. He was for many years a member of the House of Commons, where he had no superior in debate, and no equal except perhaps Canning. He was at length elevated to the Peerage and made Lord Chancellor. One of his most celebrated speeches was that delivered in the House of Lords on the passage of the Reform Bill. As Chancellor, he displayed amazing activity, and on retiring from the office he left not a single case in arrear of judgment,,-a fact without precedent in the history of that court. His last years were spent in rural retirement, at Cannes, in France.

Lord Brougham was through life an earnest advocate of popular education, cheap publications, and of political and social reform. He was one of the founders of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and its first chairman. He wrote for it a treatise on The Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science. He took an active part also in the Social Science Association.

men.

Of all his labors, however, none probably produced a more immediate and widespread influence than those connected with the Edinburgh Review. This celebrated journal was begun in 1802 by Brougham, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Horner, all young In the first 20 numbers, Horner contributed 14 articles, Smith 23, Jeffrey 75, Broughan 80. Brougham continued for twenty-five years to be a regular contributor to its pages. This Review exerted a powerful influence wherever the English language was spoken, and on almost every topic of public interest; and Brougham, Smith, and Jeffrey were for many years the great triumvirs who wielded, without dispute, the mighty sceptre.

A complete edition of Brougham's works was published under his own supervision, in 1857, in 10 vols., 8vo. Vol. 1. Lives of Philosophers of the Time of George III.; Vol. 2. Lives of Men of Letters, of the same time; Vols. 3, 4, 5. Sketches of Eminent Statesmen, of the same time; Vol. 6. Natural Theology; Vol. 7. Rhetorical and Literary Dissertations and Addresses; Vol. 8. Historical and Political Dissertations; Vols. 9, 10. Speeches on Social and Political Subjects. Since his death, his autobiography, written when he was almost ninety, has made its appearance; Life and Times of Lord Brougham, written by himself, 3 vols.

FRANCIS HORNER, 1778-1817, is known as one of the originators of the Edinburgh Review. He died comparatively young, and did not live to achieve that greatness to which he seemed destined. In talents and promise he was the acknowledged compeer of Brougham and Jeffrey.

Horner was a native of Edinburgh; he was educated at the High-School and the University of that city; and was elected to Parliament, where he distinguished himself by his knowledge of political economy and finance. His excessive labors as a member of the Bullion Committee broke down his health, and led ultimately to his death.

As a man of letters, Horner is chiefly known by reason of his connection with the Edinburgh Review, he being one of its originators and early contributors. As a statesman, he was, during his lifetime, the most conspicuous member of the then rising Whig party, and as much loved for his moral qualities as he was respected for his intellectual. Nothing but his early death prevented him from rising to the highest political eminence.

"He died at the age of thirty-eight; possessed of greater public influence than any other private man, and admired, trusted, beloved, and deplored by all except the heartless or the base. No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member."- Lord Cockburn.

Wilson.

John Wilson, 1785-1854, better known as Christopher North, did for Blackwood's Magazine what Brougham, Jeffrey, and Smith did for the Edinburgh Review. He was equally, though somewhat later, and in a different way, a potentate in the world of opinion.

Wilson was the son of a wealthy manufacturer of Paisley. His studies were finished at the University of Glasgow and at Oxford, where he earned great reputation both as an athlete and a scholar. Left by the death of his father in possession of a handsome fortune, he purchased a fine estate in Cumberland, and enjoyed for many years the society of the so-called lake poets.

In 1812, Wilson published his poem, The Isle of Palms, and, in 1816, The City of the Plague. In 1815, having lost much of his property by the mismanagement of a relative, he returned to Scotland, settled in Edinburgh, and began the practice of the law. It is not probable, however, that he would in any case have gained glory at the bar. What decided his career, however, was the starting of Blackwood's Magazine in 1817. The publisher recognized immediately the talents of Wilson and of Lockhart, and they became the life of the magazine. After Lockhart's removal to London to take charge of the Quarterly Review, Wilson became the sole editor in fact, although Blackwood always exercised a decided and direct control as publisher and nominal editor.

In 1820 Wilson was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of