make

A struggle with the dark' for white light's sake,

Immortal stands, unanswered speaks. Shall they,

Of Her great hand the moulded, breathing clay,

Her fit, select, and proud survivors be?
Possess the life eternal, and not She?"

We now turn by a natural transition from George Eliot's religious thought to its necessary complement in her ethical system. This may also be summed up in one word-Duty. No novelist, and scarcely any professional moralist, has dwelt with more insistence or more varied force on this ennobling there. Her sense of duty includes in its imperious purview every relation of public and private life. The duty of the landowner, of the politician, of the parishpriest; the duty of parent to child, of brother to sister, of the young man to the woman of his choice, of wife to husband, of husband to wife-these are the favorite themes of each different tale. Each succeeding agony or sorrow in the long and often complicated chain of misfortune is traced home with relentless pertinacity to its source in some failure of moral duty. Nor are the

;

demands of duty satisfied and its con-
sequent blessings attained by a mere
discharge of mutual obligations. George
Eliot's sense of duty was that higher
and completer one which includes our
the foe within, the necessity of self-
Our warfare with
duty to ourselves.
mastery and self-control, the blessed-
ness of self-forgetfulness and self-sur-
render-these are her chosen themes.
Nor, again, is the ideal of duty attained
by abstinence from those glaring and
palpable breaches of it which grate upon
the common conscience, and only re-
quire to be stated in order to be con-
demned. George Eliot's special value
as a moral teacher lies in the stern in-
sistence with which she makes us see
our own bidden and less obvious vices
our pettinesses, our selfishnesses, our sins
of harshness, of coldness, of unsympa-
thy; and forces us to recognize in the
ruin of another's happiness the handi-
work of some little fault of character
or action which was concealed from all
outside, and, till she revealed it, only
half-known to ourselves. Of course, so
high an ideal of duty involved a corre-
spondingly high notion of the beauty
of sacrifice. To live for others in the
humble offices of common duty; to die
for others in the flames of martyrdom,
or the less heroic pangs of domestic
drudgery and unrequited love, forms
her ideal of the truly enviable fate.
The same absolute self-forgetfulness,
seeking no reward here or hereafter,
colors even her conception of that im-
personal immorality to which alone she
permitted herself to aspire-
"O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence :
live

In pulses stirred to generosity,
in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self."

Surely, even in this vulgar age of Mammon-worship and self-pleasing we may esteem the teacher of so sublime a créed at least as truly one of our great benefactors, as though she had invented new facilities of communication, or amplified, by a fresh discovery, our means of physical enjoyment.

In George Eliot's philosophy of life two or three ruling ideas are manifest. In the first place, she was as conspicu

Again, she had a melancholy conviction of the irreparable nature of human experience. She believed with all her heart the stern truth that in the physical world there is no forgiveness of sins. Again and again we have the same note of quiet sorrow over the irrevocable fixity of the past. For example:

"O the anguish of that thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God had given us to know!"

Or again, in a lighter fashion, though the same vein of thought, this motto: "It is a good and soothfast saw ;

Half roasted never will be raw :
No dough is dried once more to meal,
No crock new-shapen by the wheel:
You can't turn curds to milk again,
Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then ;
And having tasted stolen honey,

You can't buy innocence for money." Again, George Eliot saw with special keenness the unyielding connection of cause and effect in human life. See this in Adam Bede's indignation when he imagines that Arthur Donnithorne is proposing to set things straight, after the irreparable injury he has done to Hetty. He

life. Few, probably, who heard it will forget a sermon by Dr. Liddon in the University Church at Oxford, soon after the publication of " Middlemarch," when he concluded with the concluding words of that wonderful analysis of human character:

"The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs."

As a close observer of human life and its determining forces, George Eliot found an absorbing interest in the power and imperiousness of sexual passion. Every tale of hers, from the Scenes of Clerical Life" to Daniel Deronda," is suffused with

66

"The bloom of young desire and purple light of love."'

The sorrows, the joys, the mysteries, even the crimes which checker the career of her heroes and heroines, have their origin in the subtle and manifold influences of love. The love of Adam Bede for Hetty, of Hetty for Arthur Donnithorne, of Lydgate for Rosamond, of Dorothea for Ladislaw, of Philip Wakem for Maggie Tulliver; all these and countless others are instances of the penetration with which George Eliot regarded the love of man and woman, and its widely diverse issues in the good and evil of their lives. A real, though weak and selfish, love for Milly redeems from utter vulgarity the character of Amos Barton. sweet affection of Dinah Morris toward Adam Bede completes with a touch of human interest the almost angelic beauty of her ideal character. And the same profound master-passion of man's nature supplies some of the darker shades of pathos and even of criminality.

The

As we have seen before, one leading article of George Eliot's belief was that even the most commonplace lives are underlaid with tragedy. On occasion she can heighten the interest of a dramatic scene by invoking the more sublimely tragic powers-the destructive energy of angry Nature, or the even deadlier wrath of human hatred. But these situations are rare. The major

ity of her tales derived their tragedy from the hidden sufferings of wounded hearts; from the fruitless pangs of unrequited love, or the gnawing remorse which dogs successful sin. Her genius combines the powers of the telescope and microscope; it sweeps the wide horizon of events and forces which have moved the world; it directs our gaze to the teeming life beneath our daily feet, and reveals the microcosm of a single water-drop. George Eliot has taught us to sympathize with the great movements of humanity which have upheaved empires, and changed the face of religions, and have raised up generations of heroes for their accomplishment, and have scattered abroad their seed in the blood of martyrs. But even more faithfully and beneficially has she led us to recognize the unnoticed tragedy which lies around our every-day path, which is the product of events not strikingly impressive, but insignificant and even vulgar: and to which each day we live we may perhaps be unconsciously contributing. Let us quote her words on the flight of Hetty from home :

"What will be the end?-the end of her objectless wandering, apart from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it? God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery.'

the

It is partly owing to this conviction that the tragedy of life lies in its com. mon things, that George Eliot assigns such prominent place in her writings to the action of pain, illness, and death. But other causes contributed to the same result. One was that her delicate health made her keenly conscious of the mysterious influence which physical organization exercises over thought, and even action. Another was guidance of Mr. G. H. Lewes, whose own studies had been very much concerned with medicine, and who stimulated in her a physiological curiosity which was evidently inborn. Another Another and deeper cause lay in the Positivism which gradually became the sole residuum of her religious faith. However uncertain and unknowable were the nature and destinies of the human soul, the functions of the body were at any rate certain, tangible, and vitally

important. But, from whatever cause it sprang, we find in all her writings a singularly clear and vivid interest in the nature and powers of the human frame; a close and scientific acquaintance with its pathology; and a keen eye for the subtle effects which it produces in the complicated issues of existence. The death of Captain Wybrow in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story;" the awfully vivid description of angina pectoris in "The Lifted Veil;" Mr. Tulliver's apoplectic seizure; Mr. Casaubon's slow decay and sudden dissolution by fatty degeneration of the heart; the ravages of consumption in Mordecai and Mr. Tryan-all these are instances of the accuracy and force with which she employs these melancholy mechanisms.

A great part of the fun which we find among the comfortable farmers' wives and dear old ladies of the various tales lies in their childlike reliance on thirdrate doctoring, and their pathetic interest in their own and their neighbors' disorders. How true to life is the following description of an old woman's researches in religious literature !

"On taking up the biography of a celebrated preacher, she immediately turned to the end to see what disease he died of; and if his legs swelled, as her own occasionally did, she felt a stronger interest in ascertainiug any earlier facts in the history of the dropsical divine."

And then take, in marked contrast to this, a sample of George Eliot's grave handling of the same kind of theme. Lydgate has just informed Mr. Casaubon that he is suffering from a mortal disease, which must terminate soon, and suddenly:

"When the commonplace 'We must all die' transforms itself suddenly into the acute

consciousness, 'I must die-and soon,' then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterward, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. To Mr. Casaubon now it was as if he suddenly found himself on the dark river-brink, and heard the plash of the on-coming oar, not discerning the forms, but expecting the sum.

ties with satisfactory accuracy is a notoriously difficult task. But if we regard the essence of wit as lying in the conciseness and point of expression, as much as in any juxtaposition of ideas, we must at once admit that George Eliot had comparatively little of it. There are indeed numbers of sentences which cling to the memory, as terse and vigorous expressions of profound truths; but they lack that perfect symmetry of form which is so delightful in the really epigrammatic writers, like Lord Beaconsfield and Rochefoucauld ; and they generally require, if I may so say, more room to turn round in than the dimensions of the true epigram permit. I will quote a few samples of what

I mean:

"Ignorance [says Ajax] is a painless evil ; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

Hatred is like fire-it makes even light rubbish deadly.

"It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under thedear deceit' of beauty.

"We cannot reform our forefathers.

and her sisters, of Bob Jakin, of Mr. Trumbull, and of Mrs. Cadwallader, are instances, taken almost at random, of her skill in depicting various forms of conscious and unconscious comedy. The proverbs and maxims in which several of these characters so freely indulge are full of point, and practical wisdom; and with their shrewd experience of country life fairly reek of the soil from which George Eliot sprang. Of these Mrs. Poyser's are the most famous

"It is poor work allays settin' the dead above the livin'. We shall all on us be dead some time, I reckon - it 'ad be better if folks 'ud make much on us beforeband, istid o' It's but little

beginning when we're gone.

good you'll do a-watering the last year's crops. "It's poor eating where the flavor o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's folks as make bad butter, and trusten to the salt to hide it. 'There's folks 'd stand on their heads, and

then say the fault was i' their boots.

half its applause.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.

"One must be poor to know the luxury of giving.

"The wit of a family is best received among strangers.

"Those who trust us, educate us.

"The depths of middle-aged gentlemen's ignorance will never be known, for want of public examinations in this branch."

And this, which has been erroneously attributed to Lord Beaconsfield, perhaps as high a compliment as could be paid to a would-be epigram

Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous."

But if she is deficient in that perfection of form which is essential to wit, among humorists George Eliot stands very high. She appreciated very keenly the humor of characters, of situations, and of dialogues. The admirable picture of Mr. Brooke on the hustings is one of the best extant illustrations of electioneering on the old system. The scene at the reading of Mr. Featherstone's will has all the significaut fun of a painting by Hogarth. The characters of Mrs. Poyser, of Mrs. Tulliver

ton"

And Adam Bede himself

"If you get hold of a chap that's got no shame nor conscience to stop him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up." Mr. Lammeter

"Breed is stronger than pasture." Mrs. Denner

"When I awake at cock-crow, I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty think one's going to be murdered." false. It's better to know one's robbed, than

A word ought to have been said about George Eliot's minute eye for Nature, her love of animals, her scientific knowledge of music; but the sub

ject expands before us, and we must hasten to a close.

It is only George Eliot's genius as expressed in her writings that I have endeavored to discuss. Her life, and its governing incident, and its influence on the ethical standard of her time, I have left untouched, as lying outside my present province.

Again, I have dealt as sparingly as possible in hostile criticism. I have written with the egotism of a lively gratitude, and I have preferred to suggest rather than to elaborate the faults, whether of substance or of form, which, in my judgment, place her work in a rank beneath that of perfection.

But if, as an artist, she is "a little lower than the angels," I still hold that George Eliot has higher claims upon our admiration than those which belong to her as a keen analyst of human nature, or a masterly painter of English scenery and manners. I submit that, as far as her writing is concerned, she is entitled to rank with those best benefactors of mankind who, by preaching a pure and exalted morality, and by making the sublime creeds of duty and self-sacrifice lovely and attractive, have conspicuously helped the civilization of the race, and have enriched the treasury of the common good. Contemporary Review.

OUT of the thousands who have daily seen the sun set all their lives, there are some who have seldom, or perhaps never, at least in midsummer, seen it rise. I am not, of course, thinking of those who toil with their hands for their daily bread, but of the comfortable people who do not get up till the day is well alight," and find the winter fire burning brightly in the grate, the breakfast table duly set, and their morning letters laid upon its cloth. Had one of them perchance looked out into the street at five o'clock, he might have seen a postman hurrying along toward his district office, where the first correspondence of the day had been already sorted and tied up in bundles for distribution. If he cared for a new view of the town, he would find it in the "awakening of London."

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One of the first things which would strike him in the empty streets would be their hilliness. When full by day they look flat, but he would be surprised to see what ups and downs there are between (say) the Oxford Circus and Piccadilly, and perceive that cattle often have to pull against the collar in what appears to be a level piece of road. The

cleaning" of London and its belongings might next draw his attention. Dickens was an early walker, and one does not wonder at his recording the dusty wealth of Mr. Boffin when one sees, in the rich city, baskets

or boxes, stuffed with the sweepings of every shop and office, set outside their doors waiting to be carted off. The pavement must be cleared of this (possibly precious) "litter" betimes.

Our early riser, though, would meet many who had obviously not washed that morning, and were having their first breakfast off a "clay." Perhaps the question might cross his mind, "Where had they slept ?" and, if he should happen to be a philanthropist, some fresh thoughts about the lodgment of the million would occur to him. The morning toilette of many men and women is little realized by one who has his "tub," finds shaving water set ready in his dressing-room, clothes himself with deliberation, brushes his hair, sniffs the pleasant smell of coffee as he saunters downstairs, and seats himself at a well-ordered table, while Mary Ann, who has laid it, makes his tumbled bed, empties his bath, and tidies his deserted room. Had he got up betimes, as I have suggested, he would have seen London at its early work, though at its first exploration, in summer, barring a few houseless wanderers or belated pleasure-seekers returning home, he might fancy that the population consisted of policemen and cats, which last creep stealthily about in pursuit of feline enjoyment. I saw a constable unsuccessfully trying to arrest one at rosy dawn this morning in my