Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/77

 sphere of spiritual invention or of moral imagination.

All who have ever read it will remember the exquisite saying of Chateaubriand so exquisitely rendered by Mr. Arnold:—'The true tears are those which are called forth by the beauty of poetry; there must be as much admiration in them as sorrow.' The true tears are also those of a yet rarer kind, which are called up at least, if not called forth, by the beauty of goodness; and in such unshed tears as these are the thoughts as it were baptised, which attend upon our memory of some few among the imperishable shadows of men created by man's genius; phantoms more actual and vital than the creators they outlive, as mankind outlives the gods of its