Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/94

 and of rapture, far alike from the conventions of vulgar piety and the complacencies of scientific limitation; as utterly disdainful of doctrine as of doubt, as contemptuous of hearsay as reverent of itself, as wholly stripped and cleared and lightened from all burdens and all bandages and all incrustations of creed as it is utterly pervaded and possessed by the sublime and irrefutable passion of belief.

The praise of Emily Brontë can be no alien or discursive episode in the briefest and most cursory notice, the least adequate or exhaustive panegyric of her sister; and far less would it have seemed less than indispensable to that most faithful and devoted spirit of indomitable love which kept such constant