Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/82

 ever, and Vipsania for an hour to Tiberius. Before the breath of such a spirit as speaks in his transcendent words, the spirit of a loyal-minded man is bowed down as it were at a touch and melted into burning tears, to be again raised up by it and filled and kindled and expanded into something—or he dreams so—of a likeness for the moment to itself.

Some portion of a faculty such as this, some touch of the same godlike and wonder-working might of imperious moral quality, some flush of the same divine and plenary inspiration, there was likewise in the noble genius and heroic instinct of Charlotte Brontë. Some part of the power denied to many a writer of more keen and rare intelligence than even hers we feel 'to the finest fibre of our nature' at the slight strong touch