all sunny and gay, and peopled with turkeys and their poults, peahens and their chicks, pearl-flecked Guinea fowls, and a bright variety of pure white and purple-necked, and blue and cinnamon-plumed pigeons.  Irresistible spectacle to Shirley!  She runs to the pantry for a roll, and she stands on the doorstep scattering crumbs:  around her throng her eager, plump, happy, feathered vassals....  There are perhaps some little calves, some little new-yeaned lambs—­it may be twins, whose mothers have rejected them:  Miss Keeldar ... must permit herself the treat of feeding them with her own hand.”

Like Emily she is impatient of rituals and creeds.  Like Emily she adores the Earth.  Not one of Charlotte’s women except Shirley could have chanted that great prose hymn of adoration in which Earth worships and is worshipped. “’Nature is now at her evening prayers; she is kneeling before those red hills.  I see her prostrate on the great steps of her altar, praying for a fair night for mariners at sea, for travellers in deserts, for lambs on moors, and unfledged birds in woods....  I see her, and I will tell you what she is like:  she is like what Eve was when she and Adam stood alone on earth.’  ‘And that is not Milton’s Eve, Shirley,’ says Caroline, and Shirley answers:  ’No, by the pure Mother of God, she is not.’  Shirley is half a Pagan.  She would beg to remind Milton ’that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was their mother:  from her sprang Saturn, Hyperion, Oceanus; she bore Prometheus....  I say, there were giants on the earth in those days, giants that strove to scale heaven.  The first woman’s breast that heaved with life on this world yielded daring which could contend with Omnipotence; the strength which could bear a thousand years of bondage—­the vitality which could feed that vulture death through uncounted ages—­the unexhausted life and uncorrupted excellence, sisters to immortality, which, after millenniums of crimes, struggles, and woes, could conceive and bring forth a Messiah.  The first woman was heaven-born:  vast was the heart whence gushed the well-spring of the blood of nations; and grand the undegenerate head where rested the consort-crown of creation.’...

“‘You have not yet told me what you saw kneeling on those hills.’

“’I saw—­I now see—­a woman-Titan; her robe of blue air spreads to the outskirts of the heath, where yonder flock is grazing; a veil, white as an avalanche, sweeps from her head to her feet, and arabesques of lightning flame on its borders.  Under her breast I see her zone, purple like that horizon:  through its blush shines the star of evening.  Her steady eyes I cannot picture; they are clear—­they are deep as lakes—­they are lifted and full of worship—­they tremble with the softness of love and the lustre of prayer.  Her forehead has the expanse of a cloud, and is paler than the early moon, risen long before dark gathers:  she reclines her bosom on the edge of Stilbro’ Moor; her mighty hands are joined beneath it.  So kneeling, face to face, she speaks with God.’”