Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/98

 and valiant life. But to us, knowing what we all now know of the designer, there seems a touch of pathos beyond all articulate expression in the contrast, when we turn from this to the ideal decoration of Shirley Keeldar's, and remember that here is the vision of the life she would fain have realized for her dead and best beloved and most dearly honoured sister; who had had in the days of her actual life as harsh and strange a time of it as her own. From the character of Shirley, as from the character of Lucy Snows, the artist has naturally as of necessity withdrawn the component element that in its effect and result at least was or is for us now the dominant and distinctive quality of Emily Brontë as of Charlotte—the special gift and application of her creative genius; and on the