VILLETTE, BY CIIRRER BELL..

Vtiazrrn is Brussels, and Currer Bell might have called her new novel " Passages from the Life of a Teacher in a Girls' School at Brussels, written by herself." Of plot, strictly taken as a series of coherent events all leading to a common result, there is none ; no more, at least, than there would be in two years of any per- son's life who had occupations and acquaintances, and tol& us about them. Of interesting scenes, and of well-drawn characters, there is, on the other hand, abundance ; and these, though they fail to stimulate the curiosity of the reader like a well-constructed plot, sustain the attention, and keep up a pleasant emotion, from the first page to the last. All the emotions excited by art are pleasant, even though their subject-matter be in itself painful; otherwise we should have hesi- tated in applying the term to the emotions caused by this book. For while the characters are various, happily conceived, and some of them painted with a truth of detail rarely surpassed, the centre figure—the girl who is supposed to write the book—is one who excites sympathies bitter-sweet, and in which there is little that is cheerful or consoling. Like Jane Eyre in her intense relish for affection, in heit true-heartedness, in her great devotion to the small duties of her daily life, there is nothing about her of the real inward strength that made Jane's duties something of a compensation for the affection denied her. If it were not too harsh a word to be used of so good a girl as Miss Lucy Snowe, one might almost say that she took a savage delight in refusing to be comforted, in a position indeed of isolation and hardship, but one still that a large experience of mankind and the miseries; incident to the lot of humanity would hardly pro- nounce to be by comparison either a miserable or a degraded lot. But this book, far more than Jane Eyre, sounds like a bitter com- ••t against the destiny of those women whom circumstances re- use to a necessity of working for their living by teaching, and who are debarred from the exercise of those affections which are indeed the crown of a woman's happiness, but which it is unwise and untrue to make indispensable to a calm enjoyment of life and to an honourable and useful employment of it. or do we think that the morbid sensibility attributed to Lucy Snowe is quite consistent with the strength of will, the daring resolution, the quiet power, the discretion and good sense, that are blended with it in Currer Bell's conception. Still less, perhaps, is such a quality, involving as it does a constant tormenting self-regard, to be found in common with clear insight into the characters and mo- tives of others, and with the habit of minute observation, which, resulting in admirable and clear delineation, makes Lucy Snowe's autobiography so pleasant a book in all respects except the spasms of heart-agony she is too fond of showing herself in—we will not venture to hint of showing herself off in, for there is a terrible feel- ing of reality about them, which seems to say that they are but fictitious in form, the transcripts of a morbid but no less real per- sonal experience. But for this one fault in the central character—and even this may be true to nature, though to that exceptional nature which would prevent many persons from recognizing its truth—we have nothing but praise to bestow upon the characterization of this book. Our great satirist has said that the only charaoter in his Vanity Fair that was taken direct from life was the one that persons ge- nerally fixed on as the most unnatural; and so it may be in this case. But there can be no question as to the other characters : Mrs. Bretton and her son Dr. John, Madame Beck the mistress of the pensionnat at Brussels, M. Paul Emmanuel professor of belles lettres, M. Home de Bassompierre and his charming little daughter, worthless pretty Ginevra Fanshawe,—we shall henceforth know them as if we had lived among them ; and, bad or good, they are people worth knowing, for the skill of the painter if not for their own qualities. But the curious thing is, that the morbid feeling so predominant in the writer—the hunger of the heart which can- not obtain its daily bread, and will not make-believe that a atone is bread—does not in the least reflect itself upon these characters. They are as distinctly drawn, as finely appreciated, as if the soul of the writer were in perfect harmony with itself and with the world, and saw men and things with the correct glance of science, only warmed and made more piercing by a genial sympathy. It may therefore be conjectured, that the mind of Miss Lucy Snowe in writing the book had changed from the mood in which she passed through the scenes described in it ; that a great calm had settled down upon the heart once so torn by storms ; that a deep satisfaction, based upon experience and faith, had succeeded to the longing and distress of those earlier days. Faith is indeed a very prominent feature in Miss Snowe's mind; more a religious than a theological faith; more a trust, a senti- ment, and a hope, than a clearly-defined belief that could be stated • Villette. By Currer Bell, Author of " Jane Eyre." In three volumes. Pub- lished by Smith, Elder, and Co.

in propositions. But truth is another feature, and she will not sacrifice truth to faith. When her experience is blank misery, she does not deny it, or slur it over, or belie it by shamming that she is happy. While her eyes turn upward with the agony that can. find no resting-place on earth, she indulges no Pagan or Atheistical despair—she does not arraign God as cruel or unmindful of his creatures--she still believes that the discipline of life is merciful ; but she does not pretend to solve God's providence—she rather with a stern sincerity cries aloud that her soul is crushed, and drinks the bitter cup with the full resolve not to sweeten the bitter- ness by delusion or fancy. She seems to think that the destiny of some human beings is to drink deep of this cup, and that no eva- sions, no attempts to make it out less bitter than it is, will turn aside the hand of the avenging angel, or cause that cup to be taken away one moment the sooner. We doubt the worldly phi- losophy of this view, as much as we are sure that it is not in any high sense Christian. It may, however, be a genuine effusion from an overstrained endurance—a sort of introverted Stoicism, which gives to the sufferer the strength of non-resistance and Lowing the worst.

The characters that will most charm the readers of this book must be those of Miss de Bassompierre and M. Paul Emmanuel; though the former is nearly as perfect as mortals ever can be ; and the latter one of the oddest but most real mixtures of the good end disagreeable, of the generous and the little, that a hunter after human oddities could wish for his cabinet of curiosities. The re- lation between this M. Paul and Lucy Snowe will recall both Rochester and Jane Eyre and Louis and Shirley ; though the dif- ferences are striking, and the characters themselves have little re- semblance. But all three positions have those elements in com- mon which show them to be familiar to the writer, and favourable, in her opinion, for drawing out the characteristic points of her heroes and heroines. In all probability, they are three transcripts, varied by imagination, of the same observed facts. The scene we are going to quote occurs in the early part of the first volume, in a kind of introduction between which and the rest of the book an interval of eight years elapses. Miss de Bassom- pierre (Pauline Mary Home, or Polly, she is generally called) is a little child of six years old, and has been sent to Mrs. Bretton's during her widowed father's absence on the Continent, and has during her stay formed a child's passion for Graham Bretton, then a boy of sixteen. Her father has sent for her, and the time is the eve of her departure. "The weight and importance of these tidings kept her perfectly serious the whole day. In the evening, at the moment Graham's entrance was heard below, I found her at my side. She began to arrange a locket-riband about my neck, she displaced and replaced the comb in my hair : while thus busied, Graham entered.

"'Tell him by-and-by,' she whispered ; 'tell him I am going.' "In the course of tea-time I made the desired communication. Graham, it chanced, was at that time greatly preoccupied about some school-prize, for which he was competing. The news had to be told twice before it took proper hold of his attention ; and even then he dwelt on it but momently. " Polly going ? What a pity ! Dear little Monde, I shall be sorry to lose her : she must come to us again, mamma.' "And, hastily swallowing his tea, he took a oandle and a small table to himself and his books, and was soon buried in study. " Little Mousie ' crept to his side, and lay down on the carpet at his feet,. her face to the door : mute and motionless, she kept that post and position till bed-time. Once I saw Graham—wholly unconscious of her proximity— push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two. A minute after, one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless foot. When summoned by her nurse, she rose and departed very obediently, having bid us all a subdued good- night.

I will not say that I dreaded going to bed, an hoar later ; yet I certainly went with an unquietanticipation that I should find that child m no peaceful sleep. The forewarning of my instinct was but fulfilled, when I discovered her, all cold and vigilant, perched like a white bird on the outside of the bed. I scarcely knew how to accost her; she was not to be managed like another child. She, however, accosted me. As I closed the door, and put the light on the dressing-table, she turned to me with these words : " '1 cannot—cannot sleep ; and in this way I cannot--cannot live !' "I asked what ailed her.

" Dedful miz-er-y !' said she, with her piteous lisp. "'Shall I call Mrs. Bretton ?'

" That is downright silly,' was her impatient reply : and indeed, I well knew that if she had heard Mrs. Bretton's foot approach, she would have nestled quiet as a mouse under the bedclothes. While lavishing her eccentricities regardlessly before me—for whom she professed scarcely the semblance of affection—she never showed my godmother one glimpse of her inner self : for her, she was nothing but a docile, somewhat quaint little maiden. I ex- amined her : her cheek was crimson; dilated eye was both troubled and glowing, and painfully restless : in this state it was obvious she mast not be left till morning. I guessed how the case stood. " Would you like to bid Graham good-night again ?' I asked. 'He is not gone to his room yet.'

"She at once stretched out her little arms to be lifted. Folding a shawl round her, I carried her back to the drawingroom. Graham was just coming oat.

"'She cannot sleep without seeing and speaking to you once more,' I said. 'She does not like the thought of leaving you.' " I've spoilt her,' said he, taking her from me with good-humour, and kissing her little hot face and burning lips. ' Polly, you care for me more than for papa, now—' " 'I do care for you, but you care nothing for me,' was her whisper. "She was assured to the contrary, again kissed, restored to me, and I car. ried her away ; but, alas ! not soothed. " When I thought she could listen to me, I said—' Paulin, you should not grieve that Graham does not care for you so much as you care for him. It must be so.'

" Her lifted and questioning eyes asked why ? "'Because he is a boy, and you are a girl ; he is sixteen, and you arc only six ; his nature is strong and gay, and yours is otherwise. "'But I love him so much ; he should love me a little.'

" 'He does. He is fond of you. You are his favourite.'

" ' Am I Graham:5 favourite?'

"'Yes, more than any little child I know.' "The assurance soothed her ; she smiled in her anguish. "'But,' I continued, 'don't fret, and don't expect too much of him, or else he will feel you to be troublesome, and then it is all over.'

"'All over!' she echoed softly, 'then I'll be good. I'll try to be good, Lucy Snowe.'

"I put her to bed.

" ' Will he forgive me this one time ?' she asked, as I undressed myself. I assured her that he would ; that as yet he was by no means alienated ; that she had only to be careful for the future.

"'There is no future,' said she : 'I am going. Shall I ever—ever—see him again, after I leave England ?' "I returned an encouraging response. The candle being extinguished, a still half-hour elapsed. I thought her asleep, when the little white shape once more lifted itself in the crib, and the small voice asked—' Do you like Graham Miss 8nowe ?'

"'Like him ! Yes, a little.' " Only a little ! Do you like him as I do ?' " 'Mink not. No. Not as you do.'

"'Do you like him much ?'

" told you I liked him a little. Where is the use of caring for him so

very much : he is full of faults.' " 'Is he ?'

" All boys are.' "'More than girls ?' "'Very likely. Wise people say it is folly to think anybody perfect; and as to likes and dislike; we should be friendly to all, and worship none.'

"'Are you a wise person ?' " I mean to try to be so. Go to sleep.'

" I cannot go to sleep. Have you no pain just here' (laying her elfish hand on her elfish breast) ' when you think you shall have to leave Gra- ham ; for your home is not here ?'

"'Surely, Polly,' said I, 'you should not feel so much pain when you are very soon going to rejoin your father. Have you forgotten him ? Do you no longer wish to be his little companion?' "Dead silence succeeded this question. "'Child, lie down and sleep,' I urged. " My bed is cold,' said she. I can't warm it.' "I saw the little thing shiver. 'Come to me,' I said, wishing, yet scarcely hoping, that she would comply : for she was a most strange, capricious lit- tle creature, and especially whimsical with me. She came, however, in- stantly, like a small ghost gliding over the carpet. I took her in. She was chill ; I warmed her in my arms. She trembled nervously ; I soothed her. Thus tranquillized and cherished she at last slumbered.

"'A very unique child,' thought I as I viewed her sleeping countenance by the fitful moonlight, and cautiously and softly wiped her glittering eye- lids and her wet cheeks with my handkerchief. 'How will she get through this world, or battle with this life ? How will she bear the shocks and re- pulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, and my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh.'

"She departed the next day ; trembling like a leaf when she took leave, but exercising self-command."

We would rather exhibit M. Paul in one of the many long scenes in which he is actor and speaker; but the necessities of space cm; pel us to have recourse to a description of him instead. " Yet the reader is advised not to be in any hurry with his kindly conclu- gone, or to suppose, with an over-hasty charity, that from that day M. Paul became a changed character—easy to live with, and no longer apt to flash danger and discomfort round him. " No; he was naturally a little man of unreasonable moods. When over- wrought, which he often was, he became acutely irritable; and, besides, his veins were dark with a livid belladonna tincture, the essence of jealousy. I do not mean merely the tender jealousy of the heart, but that sterner, nar- rower sentiment, whose seat is in the head.

" I used to think, as I sat looking at M. Paul, while he was knitting his brow or protruding his lip over some exercise of mine, which had not as many faults as he wished, (for he liked me to commit faults ; a knot of blunders was sweet to him as a cluster of nuts,) that he had points of re- semblance to Napoleon Bonaparte. I think so still. "In a shameless disregard of magnanimity he resembled the great Em- peror. M. Paul would have quarrelled with twenty learned women—would have unblushingly carried on a system of petty bickering and recrimination with a whole capital of coteries, never troubling himself about loss or lack of dignity. He would have exiled fifty Madame de Steels, if they had annoyed, offended, outrivalled, or opposed him.

"I well remember a hot episode of his with a certain Madame Panache— a lady temporarily employed by Madame Beck to give lessons in history. She was clever—that is, she knew a good deal ; and, besides, thoroughly the art of making the most of what she knew; of words and con- Eccresne:Itesegslhe held unlimited command. Her personal appearance was far from destitute of advantages; I believe many people would have pronounced her 4a fine woman' : and yet there were points in her robust and ample attrac- tions, as well as in her bustling and demonstrative presence, which, it appeared, the nice and capricious tastes of M. Paul could not away with. The sound of her voice, echoing through the carre, would put him into a strange taking; her long, free step—almost stride—along the corridor, would often make him snatch up his papers and decamp on the instant. " With malicious intent he bethought himself, one day, to intrude on her class: as quick as lightning he gathered her method of instruction ; it differed from a pet plan of his own. With little ceremony, and less courtesy, he pointed out what he termed her errors. Whether he expected submission and attention I know not; he met an acrid opposition, accompa- nied by a round reprimand for his certainly unjustifiable interference. " Instead of withdrawing with dignity, as he might still have done, he threw down the gauntlet of defiance. Madame Panache, bellicose as a Pen- thesilea, picked it uip in a minute. She snapped her fingers in the intermed- dler's face ; she rushed upon him with a storm of words. M. Emanuel was eloquent, but Madame Panache was voluble. A system of fierce antagonism ensued. Instead of laughing in his sleeve at his fair foe with all her sore amour propre and loud self-assertion, M. Paul detested her with intense seriousness; he honoured her with his earnest fury ; he pursued her vindic- tively and implacably ; refusing to rest peaceably in his bed, to derive due benefit from his meals, or even serenely to relish his cigar, till she was fairly rooted out of the establishment. The professor conquered, but I cannot say that the laurels of this victory shadowed gracefully his temples. Once I ventured to hint as much. To my great surprise, he allowed that I might be right, but averred, that when brought into contact with either men or women of the coarse, self-complacent quality, whereof Madame Panache Was a specimen, he had no control over his own passions ; an unspeakeable and active aversion impelled him to a war of extermination. "Three months afterwards, hearing that his vanquished foe had met with reverses, and was likely to be really distressed for want of employment., be forgot his hatred, and, alike active in good and evil, he moved heaven and earth till he found her a place. Upon her coming to make up former dif- ferences and thank him for his recent kindness, the old voice—a little loud, the old manner—a little forward, so acted upon him, that in ten minutes he started up and bowed her, or rather himself, out of the room, in a trans- port of nervous irritation. " To pursue a somewhat audacious parallel : in a love of power, in an eager grasp after supremacy, M. Emanuel was like Bonaparte. He was a man not always lo be submitted to. Sometimes it was needful to resist ; it was right to std still, to look up into his eyes and tell him that his require- ments went beyond reason—that his absolutism verged on tyranny.

"The dawning; the first developments of peculiar talent appearing with- in his range, and under his rule, curiously excited, even disturbed him. Re watched its struggle into life with a scowl ; he held back his hand—perhaps said, Come on if you have strength,' but would not aid the birth. " When the pang and peril of the first conflict were over, when the breath of life was drawn, when he saw the lungs expand and contract, when he felt the heart beat and discovered life in the eye, he did not yet offer to foster. " Prove yourself true ere I cherish you, was his ordinance ; and how diffi- cult he made that proof! What thorns and briars, what flints, he strewed in the path of feet not inured to rough travel ! He watched tearlessly or- deals that he exacted should be passed through fearlessly. He followed footprints that, as they approached the bourne, were sometimes marked in blood—followed them grimly, holding the austerest police-watch over the pain-pressed pilgrim. And when at last he allowed a rest, before slumber might close the eyelid; he opened those same lids wide, with pitiless finger and thumb, and gazed deep through the pupil and the irids into the brain, into the heart, to search if Vanity, or Pride, or Falsehood, in any of its sub- West forms, was discoverable in the furthest recess of existence. If, at last, he let the neophyte sleep, it was but a moment; he woke him suddenly up to apply new tests ; he sent him on irksome errands when he was staggering with weariness; he tried the temper, the sense, and the health ; and it was only when every severest test had been applied and endured, when the moat corrosive aquafortis had been used, and failed to tarnish the ore, that he ad- mitted it genuine, and, still in clouded silence, stamped it with his deep brand of approval. "I speak not ignorant of these evils."

The style of Vilktte has the same characteristics that distin- guished Currer Bell's previous novels,—that clearness and power which are the result of mastery over the thoughts and feelings to be expressed, over the persons and scenes to be described. When the style becomes less pleasing, it is from an attempt to paint by highly figurative language the violent emotions of the heart. This is sometimes done at such length, and with so much obscurity from straining after figure and allusion, as to become tedious and to induce skipping.