service during that protracted period. We must take into account the moral blight of which it was the occasion, the oppression and the wrong of which it was the instrument. From a centre thus poisoned proceeded what moral taint, what withering of public virtue, what wrong, what suffering! Is it only given to the philosopher to see, or does common experience evermore enjoin the lesson embodied in that fine saying of Mr. Mill's, that "the national institutions should place all things that are connected with themselves before the mind of the citizen in that light in which it is for his good that he should regard them"?

And right here another reflection. All our discussion has implied the belief that, under the rule of the democratic theory, the character of the civil service during this protracted period had been reversed. Certainly, we think this. At least, it would have reflected the average sagacity and morality of the time. Even in the rude age of the Plantagenets, when almost every office in the realm was a commodity which rich incompetency or rascality might purchase, men in their own affairs dealt honestly and wisely. Only for the misguidance of the theory that the offices were the king's to dispose of as he would, they might have been conducted in like manner. If any one assert the impossibility of applying such a theory under the forms of imperial government, we admit that here, indeed, is difficulty but not impossibility. At any rate, where imperialism gives way to constitutional royalty there is nothing in the forms of government that can obstruct such a theory. We can but believe that if, in the settlement of the government after the Revolution of 1688, it had entered into the minds of statesmen to provide against the debasement of public office as England now provides against it, the dark record of subsequent corruption we should have been spared the reading. We are aware that there seems to be a certain fatalism that presides over history whereby that only might have been which was; that what we are contemplating is the application in the seventeenth century of a principle which one nation only has attained to in the nineteenth; that it is like say

ing they might have had the telephone or the telegraph, things that in the forces of nature lay as near to the children of other days as to ourselves. What we mean to assert is that, could this theory have been applied, history would have presented another and a fairer record. Enough for us, however, and this is the practical end toward which all our thought has been tending,-if, regretting what might have been, we resolve that it shall be; if, citizens of this young Republic, taking warning from England's mistakes, we are instructed by England's wisdom, and gird ourselves bravely for a conflict in which she has so signally and so gloriously

won.

A. W. JACKSON.

THE RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES OF GEORGE
ELIOT'S WRITINGS.

(Concluded.)

Let us glance at some of the religious teachings to be found in George Eliot's writings. And by "religious” I do not mean the author's views of God or the nature of the soul or the probabilities of immortality, these great themes, indeed, may rightly enough be included in the view of the novelist, but I mean, taking a somewhat broader interpretation of religion, those more general ideas of human life, duty, moral purposes, and aims, that enter into the scope of every religion not based on merely sectarian creed and dogma.

The great lesson of Adam Bede seems to be this, enforced with tremendous power: a reckless, selfish life — one based on a man's desire for his own ease and comfort and happiness, without regard to other people's happiness — is a deeply injurious life. And it needs not a bad man, as the world reckons badness. Arthur Donnithorne is a pleasant, gentlemanly fellow. He thinks very well of himself,—it

would be unkind to think ill of so pleasing a personality,he would suppose himself quite incapable of meanness or baseness, and he likes amazingly to have other people think well of him. He is, one would say, a favorite of fortune,handsome, generous, lovable. How can this brave gentleman make shipwreck of life's chances? Simply, by being careless and ease-loving and thoughtless of others, by having no high ideal of virtue, no ardent conviction of the prime necessity of moral stability. Over and over again, while we read, occur to us those great words of the author of Ecce Homo: "No heart is pure that is not passionate, no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic." Yet "he did not like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the giver of pleasure. When a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse, not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but, on learning that sad fact, he took his silver pencil-case out of his pocket and offered it as a compensation. He had been the same Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits." But no writer, so well as George Eliot, has shown that the consequences of our sins cannot be shuffled over in that fashion; that, while "some men's sins are open beforehand, and some they follow after," yet, sooner or later, the far-reaching effects of those sins dog the sinner down, as inexorably as did the snake-wreathed Furies who pursued miserable Orestes. Wrong-doing must bring upon the doer, and not only upon him but upon all with whom he is related, untold and quite incalculable misery. Because the human race is a unit, an essential solidarity, no man can possibly live unto himself alone. Because Arthur Donnithorne is ease-loving and seeks only the egoistic pleasure of the moment, he ruins the poor silly girl who trusts in him, well-nigh spoils the life happiness of his friend, and in every way breeds untold wretchedness. In his indolent, unprincipled nature is fully illustrated the truth of Daniel Deronda's words to Gwendolen, "A reckless life is always an injurious life." Yet is it not quite hopeless. For George Eliot

knows well with the wise poet that "sin itself may be but the cloudy porch oft opening on the sun." For Hetty Sorrel's childish, butterfly nature receives some partial development through her misery; and the simple, strong Adam Bede is uplifted through the stern discipline of pain into a fuller knowledge. And "it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life, which a sad experience has brought us, is worth our own personal share of pain.'

The great religious genius of Dinah Morris lifts this novel into the realm of high spiritual teaching. She is perhaps the most distinct embodiment of the religious sentiment that George Eliot has given us, though we remember Edgar Tryan, the noble clergyman of Janet's Repentance, and the high, flame-like soul of Savonarola. Yet is there a tenderness, a rare fineness of vision about this Methodist womanpreacher, quite unique in literature. She stands for what George Eliot feels to be the highest thing in life,― a human soul ready and able to help another human soul in its hour of supreme need. She is the personification of the Positivists' religion of humanity. "What do we live for," cries Dorothea Brooke, "but to make life less difficult for each other?" And to "make life less difficult" for some poor struggling souls is just what George Eliot's grandest creations would fain do. Edgar Tryan leads Janet Dempster into a calm acceptance of the bitter fact; Dinah stands as a rock of strength for the frivolous Hetty, shivering in the cart which is taking her to the gallows; Savonarola, in Romola's own words, "helped her when she was in great need"; Dorothea comes like an angel of light to the selfloving Rosamond Vincy, in her hour of trial; Daniel Deronda saves the reckless and almost hopeless Gwendolen from herself. If, as one of her critics has said, "George Eliot has no Saviour," she teaches us, like another great teacher whom her critics would do well to remember, to go out from ourselves to seek those who need us,-grandly forgetting to save our poor little private souls, if so we may save others. Through her own exalted faith, she leads us into a stronger belief in the eternal order of the universe, impart

ing some of her own so passionate desire to conform our lives to the deep revealings of that order. Any one who renders for us such high service is, in truth, a religious teacher.

There is, perhaps, less to be said of The Mill on the Floss. Not, of course, that deep spiritual teaching is wanting in it. It is a sad, sad story, because the great-hearted heroine's life is tragic by reason of its utter incompleteness. So strong, so magnanimous, so full of forever unfulfilled promise, must this great soul make shipwreck? Does George Eliot, then, teach that high aims, noble purposes, cannot achieve success in this world,- that only the shallower, lower-keyed natures can win what they desire? Sometimes, thinking of Maggie Tulliver and Dorothea and Romola, one would suppose that that was the end,— that the high heart, the far-looking spirit, were inevitably doomed to failure. But, assuredly, this is not so. Like all the great spiritual seers,— like Homer, like Shakespeare, like the Bible writers themselves,- George Eliot does not care to tell us that failure does not consist in the want of external success; that Maggie Tulliver does not fail because she never attains her ideal, is never even understood by those she loves most. "To be great," says Emerson, "is to be misunderstood." It is nothing that the story ends with a sad catastrophe. It is not sad, looked at rightly. Or it is sad only as the conclusion of "Hamlet" is sad, where all the chief actors, good and bad, die together. The real tragedy is not in that awful, oncoming death in the hurrying Floss, brother and sister clasped in one last embrace of reconciliation. The far deeper tragedy is in the total misconception, the utter hardness of men's hearts against that which they cannot clearly comprehend. The essential tragedy is in Tom Tulliver's blindness to his sister's nobility of soul, in her yearning after his love and receiving, instead of a warm human heart, a stone! Tom is, indeed, the "elder son" of the old parable, who was virtuous, who stayed at home, who spent not "his substance in riotous living,”. virtuous, indeed, that he has hardened his heart against his

SO