narola. The world, perhaps, has not lost We pay a great tribute to any writer of so much by her failure to carry out a plan such powers as hers, in saying that her once named to the writer, to give the teaching impresses on the mind the excelworld an ideal portrait of an actual char-lence of patient work, of simple duty, of acter in history, whom she did not name, cheerful unselfishness. So great that we but to whom she alluded as an object of can allow that she failed to inspire equal possible reverence unmingled with disap-sympathy with aspiration, that she painted pointment, as by some possible succes- reverence - sometimes consciously and sor of Mrs. Poyser or Caleb Garth. The sometimes, it seems to us, without intendsketch of Zarca seems to us, it is true, ing it as generally mistaken, and still one of her very finest creations, and un- feel our debt of gratitude to her immense. questionably it is that of an exceptional In a world where restless vanity is so and aspiring being. Still, her brightest active, and where we are all, more or less, coloring, on the whole, is kept for the tempted into the scramble for pre-emsimple, homely beings who seek to get inence, we owe much to one who taught honestly through the day's work and us, in unforgettable words, to prize the make those they love happy. Her genius lowly path of obscure duty. In words, is always most characteristically exer- we are obliged to say, for, in recalling her cised in discovering the pathos and gran- life, the recollection of what looks like a deur that lie hid in average humanity. claim either to exceptional immunity from The writer once felt vividly how, even the laws that bind ordinary human beings, among her peers, what she most valued or else to an exceptional right to form a was that which they shared with average judgment on their scope, forces itself on humanity, on hearing her say of one of the memory. But no plodding moralist her few contemporaries whose genius was could have more abhorred such a claim equal to her own, "I always think of him than she did. On one occasion she exas the husband of the dead wife." The pressed, almost with indignation, her distinction of eminent powers paled in sense of the evil of a doctrine which comher eyes before that of a faithful love pounded for moral deficiency in consideraprofound, indeed, and deathless, but not tion of intellectual wealth, and her hearer in this respect superior to many a one failed to make her concede even that that lurks behind the curtain of utter amount of truth in it which surely no dumbness, or even of trite words and deliberate view of human difficulties and humdrum reflections. In many ways the limitations could ultimately withhold, and speech recurs as especially characteristic which seems to us illustrated by her own of her, but most of all for the precedence life. She was no doubt responsible for which it gives the ordinary human bonds the fact that English public opinion, in its beyond all that is given to the élite of idolatry of her, left in abeyance some of mankind. We can recall no other writer its most cherished principles; but her who, with the needful power, has taken so reverence for human bonds and her ablittle pains to depict the life of genius. horrence of a self-pleasing choice as Both the sister spirits we should place by against a dutiful loyalty have been set her side, for instance, have spent their forth with such eloquent conviction and most elaborate efforts in depicting a varied force of illustration in her books woman of genius, but "Aurora Leigh" that we believe the testimony has outand "Consuelo" have no pendant in the weighed even the counteraction of what gallery of George Eliot (for the exquisite was adverse to it in her own career. She sketch of "Armgart" seems to us too was one of the few whose words are slight to be called one). We do not name mightier than their actions. this as any deficiency in her works; it seems to us, indeed, that art is not altogether a favorable subject for itself. But we note it neither for praise nor blame from a literary point of view, but as an important indication of the nature of her moral sympathies. They were rich and various, and no defining limits could be pointed out which would not probably suggest many exceptions; we have mentioned one, but on the whole they appear to us to embody all that is best, all that is purc, in the ideal of democracy.

And how much in her demeanor, her personal aspect, repeated the lesson of her books! Not quite all, but almost all that one memory, at all events, can gather up from the past. From one point of view she appeared as the humblest of human beings. "Do not, pray, think that I would dream of comparing myself to

," she once said, with unquestionable earnestness, mentioning an author whom most people would consider as infinitely her inferior. And the slow, careful articu lation and low voice suggested, at times,

7

something almost like diffidence. Never been set forth in lines which, although
theless, mingled with this diffidence was they seem to us rather fine rhetoric than
a great consciousness of power, and one poetry, have already become almost clas-
sometimes felt with her as if in the pres- sic. The wish to console and cheer was
ence of royalty, while of course there indeed rooted in the most vital part of her
were moments when one felt that exalted nature. The writer remembers her ask-
genius has some temptations in common ing a person whose society gave her no
with exalted rank. But they were only pleasure, and who was not unlikely to
moments. How strong was the current have abused the position thus accorded,
of her sympathy in the direction of all to come to her at any time that her society
humble effort, how reluctantly she checked might be felt as consolatory, at a time of
presumption! Possibly she may some- trouble. It was about the same time that
times have had to reproach herself with she spoke of the sense of a load of possi-
failing to check it. Surely the most ordi- ble achievement threatened by the short-
nary and uninteresting of her friends ening span of life with a deep sadness
must feel that had they known nothing of which, in recalling the conversation, seems
her but her rapid insight into and quick like a prophecy. Any one who knows the
response to their inmost feelings she wonderful unselfishness in the offer will
would still have been a memorable per- feel that we could hardly give a more
sonality to them. This sympathy was convincing example of her strong im-
extended to the sorrows most unlike any-pulse towards " binding up the broken
thing she could ever by any possibility in heart." And yet none of these recol-
have known the failures of life obtained lections recurs to the present writer with
as large a share of her compassion as its such a rush of pathos as a few words that
sorrows. A writer in the Spectator has any one might have spoken, describing
noted, as a sign of the greatness of her what she felt in disregarding an appeal
dramatic genius, that she portrayed the for alms in the street. She was much
characters most unlike her own with the distressed, and (if the writer may judge
utmost intellectual sympathy. We should from very slight indications) much sur-
hardly have singled out this power for prised to hear her works called depress-
special notice it surely takes the mini-ing. She almost invariably, we believe,
mum of dramatic power to bring out the
enjoyment that all feel in characters un-
like their own - but certainly the remark
sets one on the trace of what was felt re-
markable in personal intercourse with
her. It was not only those whose expe-
rience contained some germ of instruc-
tion for the dramatic painter who felt the
full glow of her sympathy. It was granted
in unstinted measure to those who could
not give in return even the contribution
by which an imagination is enriched.
Doubtless she was beset by many appeals
for encouragement and guidance, and her
response was necessarily brief. But it
was not contemptuous or impatient, even
where it must have been reluctant. Her
inherent respect for average humanity
made itself felt, perhaps somewhat exag-
gerated, where it was the only respect she
could feel. Few know how much is meant
in saying this. There are not many from
whom we could bear the humiliation of
confronting mere respect for the humanity
in each one of us, apart from all that is
personal. We say almost as much of her
heart as has ever been said of her genius
when we say that this was possible with
her.

Her aspirations to become a permanent source of joy and peace to mankind have

avoided reading any notices of them; but her rule could not have been quite invariable, for we recall a quaint and pathetic little outburst of disappointment that the result of perusing her works should produce on some critic or other "a tendency towards black despair (or some such expression, which, if our memory serves, she quoted with a touch of humorous exaggeration). Perhaps we shall appear merely to echo the judgment of this critic, when we give it as a record of the impression she produced that one of the greatest duties of life was that of resignation. Nothing in the intercourse here recalled was more impressive, as exhibiting the power of feelings to survive the convictions which gave them birth, than the earnestness with which she dwelt on this as the great and real remedy for all the ills of life. One instance in which she appeared to apply it to herself, in speaking of the short span of life that lay before her, and the large amount of achievement that must be laid aside as impossible to compress into it, has been mentioned—and the sad, gentle tones in which the word resignation was on that occasion uttered, still vibrate on the ear. Strange, that it should be thought possible to transfer all that belongs to alle

absolute non-conductor. But it is idle, and worse than idle, it is pernicious, to confuse sympathy with conviction. This is the temptation of genius; let it be left to those who take the gain with the loss. And let it not be thought that those who honestly mistake the sympathies for the convictions which they seem to imply are therefore sheltered from the influence of those convictions which they do imply. As water must carry with it whatever it holds in solution, so must influence.

giance to the Will that ordains our fate | one here and there the force which was except a belief in the existence of such a transmitted by her glowing sympathies, Will! Still more wonderful that the im- and to which her keen intellect was an agination of genius did actually achieve this transference to some extent. The prudent husbandry of desire, the selfcontrol that guards all openings for the escape of that moral energy which wastes itself in regret, may be as complete as the obedience of spirit that bows before a holy will. We believe, indeed, that this acceptance of the inevitable may be far more complete than resignation, for it is hard to creatures such as we are to conceive of will that is at once loving and inexorable; but to call these two things by the same name because they both prevent useless wishes, seems to us as irrational as it would be to confuse frost and fire because they are both foes to moisture. We regret the attempts made by some of the admirers of this noble woman to conceal, from themselves or others, the vacuum at the centre of her faith. There is this excuse for such confusion, that her works, more than any others of our day, though it is true of so many, embody the morality that centres in the faith of Christ, apart from this centre. She once said to the writer that in conversation with the narrowest and least cultivated Evangelical she could feel more sympathy than divergence; and it was impossible to doubt the fulness of meaning in her words. But there is no reason that those who reverenced her should try to veil or dilute her convictions. She made no secret of them, though the glow of feelings, always hitherto associated with their opposites, may have confused their outline to many of her disciples. She was, we believe, the greatest opponent to all belief in the true source of strength and elevation for the lowly that literature ever elicited, but among the multitude of her admirers there were many (as a critic in the Edinburgh Review has well shown) who never penetrated into the region where this opposition was manifest, and there was nothing wanting to her appreciation of the faith of the humble and the poor but a sense of its reasonableness. At least that was her account of the matter, and doubtless it was as true of her as it is of any one. Deism," she once said, "seems to me the most incoherent of all systems, but to Christianity I feel no objection but its want of evidence." Doubtless the writer who conveyed to so many unthinking minds the poetic beauty that lies in the faith of a Dinah impressed on

66

To the present writer this influence appears to tell on her art. She sympathizes with the love of man to man, we should say, in proportion as it is unlike the love of man to God. There was much in her writings - there must be much in the utterance of all lofty and imaginative spirits which tells against this description. In the relation of the human spirit to the Father of spirits lies hid the germ of every human relation; there is none which does not, dimly and feebly, foreshadow that which lies at the root of all. And least inadequately, least vaguely is this foreshadowed in that love which gathers up the whole being-that love which, while it is felt in some sense by the whole animal creation, is yet that which, in its highest form, most opens to man the true meaning of a spiritual world. The love of man to woman, and woman to man, is the one profound and agitating emotion which is known to ordinary human hearts, and its portraiture, therefore, attempted by a thousand ineffectual chroniclers, is the most trite and commonplace of all themes of fiction. But when a writer arises who can hold up a mirror to this part of our being, he or she opens to us something of the infinite; for the most shallow and borné nature, so far as it has partaken in this great human experience, has a window whence it may gaze towards all that is eternal. And it must always seem false to speak of one who has the power of recalling an emotion in which man is lifted above and beyond the limits of his individual being as wanting in sympathy with that impulse which lifts him above those limits most completely. This reservation we would make most fully, but the very gradation of interest in George Eliot's painting of human love seems to us explained and completed by that vacuum which it surrounds. There is no grade of this emotion that she has not touched more or less slightly-the strange stir

T

E

Such of us as are wise are prepared for the inevitable loss in all change, even if the change is gain on the whole; such of us as are schooled by long experience know that the loss is only temporary.

rings of heart at a first glimpse of the | George Eliot paints it. That devotion of
goal; the wondrous sudden flooding of which all such is a feeble prophecy and
life with joy that comes of its certainty; type, must therefore take the very centre
the quiet conjugal repose of two hearts and focus of error.
that have added long familiarity to the first Must one who feels this severance of
vivid love without dimming it; the irre- love of man from faith in God, the great
sistible rush of a guilty passion and the misfortune of our time, yet allow that the
strange delights that are hidden in its thing that is left acquires, for the moment,
horror all these she has so painted that a sudden influx of new energy by the very
her imagination has interpreted to many fact of its severance? It would not be
a loving heart its own experience. But looking facts fairly in the face to deny that
we think most of her readers will agree the genius of George Eliot seems to show
with us in the conclusion that, with few such a result. Nor is there any real diffi-
exceptions, human love is interesting in culty in making the concession. A bud
her pages in inverse proportion as it bears may open more quickly in water in a
the impress of what is divine. We linger warm room than on its parent stem, al-
over the relation between a heartless and though thus the seed will never ripen.
shallow girl and an enthusiastic stndent We may transfer conviction to a more
of science whose life she spoils, with ab- genial atmosphere at the very moment we
sorbing interest, and we yawn over the sever it from its root, and we must wait
courtship of a shadowy hero and heroine long to discover that the life that is quick-
who seem each to have been intended as ened in it is also threatened. The love of
a type of all that is worthy of reverence. God has often seemed opposed to the love
We are riveted. by the description of a of man. There is no love that may not
wife's anguish as she recognizes the false oppose any or every other for a time. We
heart behind the fair face, or the cold all see conjugal set itself against filial
heart behind the seeming profundity of affection; a new passion drain off the en-
thought, but we find the love of the grace-ergy from old and familiar attachments.
ful maiden for the virtuous Radical not
greatly above the level of ordinary circu-
lating library interest. Almost always
where love looks downwards, whether for
good or for evil, her power is at its high-
est. Where it looks upwards, with few
exceptions, her power seems to ebb, and
sometimes (so we at least feel in the love
of Deronda and Myra) altogether to de-
part. With few exceptions we have said,
we mean in fact with one exception, but
that is certainly a significant one. If
there is an emotion which brings the heart
into close neighborhood with that region
where man finds intercourse with God, it
is that which unites man and woman by a
love that lacks nothing of passion but its
exclusiveness. This love is a commoner
thing than is supposed, but its delineation
is rarer, we believe, than itself, and two
passages in George Eliot's novels contain
more adequate suggestion of what some
have found the most elevating of human
communion than we know in the whole of
fiction besides. One of these is the de-
scription of the last conversation between
Gwendoline and Deronda, the other is
the intercourse between the broken-heart-
ed heroine and the consumptive clergy-
man, in "Janet's Repentance." Still on
the whole we may say (and even these
pictures are not altogether exceptions to
the rule) that something of mistake mixes
in most upward-looking devotion as

The love of one, from which there doth not
The love of all, is but a worthless thing,
spring

sang the only Englishwoman who could be compared to George Eliot in genius, and who in the love of which she sings was more fortunate. The mother who bends over the cradle for the first time feels all other love chilled for the moment by the sudden rush towards this mighty magnet, but the seed of a deeper love than she has ever yet known for those who bent over hers lies hid in that which seems to crush it. But a seed takes long to develop. What we feel most at the moment, perhaps at all events if we are the losers by it is the "expulsive power of a new affection.' And conversely what may be most apparent at the moment that faith in God expires may be the sudden release of a mystic fervor which has all to be employed in the service of man. This, we believe, is what was felt, oftenest unconsciously, in the writings of George Eliot. "What I look to," she once said, "is a time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be as immediate and as irresistible as that which I feel to grasp