The "beck" that was audible beyond the hills after rain, the
"heath on the top of Wuthering Heights" whereon, in her dream of Heaven,
Catherine, flung out by angry angels, awoke sobbing for joy; the bird
whose feathers she--delirious creature--plucks from the pillow of her
deathbed ("This--I should know it among a thousand--it's a lapwing's.
Bonny bird; wheeling over our heads in the middle of the moor. It wanted
to get to its nest, for the clouds had touched the swells and it felt
rain coming"); the only two white spots of snow left on all the moors,
and the brooks brim-full; the old apple-trees, the smell of stocks and
wallflowers in the brief summer, the few fir-trees by Catherine's window-
bars, the early moon--I know not where are landscapes more exquisite and
natural. And among the signs of death where is any fresher than the
window seen from the garden to be swinging open in the morning, when
Heathcliff lay within, dead and drenched with rain?
None of these things are presented by images. Nor is that signal passage
wherewith the book comes to a close. Be it permitted to cite it here
again. It has taken its place, it is among the paragons of our
literature. Our language will not lapse or derogate while this prose
stands for appeal: "I lingered . . . under that benign sky; watched the
moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind
breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine
unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.
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