Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/74

 such reservation on her behalf whose crowning title to men's honour is that she was the creator of Paul Emanuel. Had she none other than this only, yet this alone would place her among the highest of human rulers in 'the brightest heaven of invention'—

Most children, I suppose, who are at once given to dreaming and capable of devotion, must know the mood of loyal fancy and tender ardour so perfectly expressed in the wish of Mrs. Gaskell's little Maggie that she could have waited as a servant on Don Quixote; and the feeling is akin to this with which at a later age any one of kindred nature, on their first intimate acquaintance, and in a great degree ever after, is certain to regard M. Paul. Supreme as is the spiritual