seem to them our wrong deeds in the loving memories which follow the dead. Over the grave men forget all that separated them from others, and the living are reconciled to those who can offend them no more. All that was good and pure and loving is then made to appear, and memory glorifies the one who in life was neglected or hated. Through death Maggie was restored to her brother, and over her grave came perfect reconciliation with those others from whom she had been alienated. That renunciation may lead to cruel martyrdoms is what George Eliot means; but she would say it has its lofty recompense in that restoration which death brings, when the individual becomes a part of the spiritual influence which surrounds and guides us all. For those who can accept such a conclusion as this the unity of the novel may seem complete.

The poetry of Maggie's nature found itself constantly dragged down to conditions of vulgar prose by the life about her. That life was prosy and hard because those ideal aims which come from a recognition of the past and its traditions were absent from it. Maggie tried to overcome them by renunciation, but by renunciation which did not rest on any genuine sorrow and pain. At last these came, and the real meaning of renunciation was made clear to her. Her bitter sorrow taught her the great lesson which George Eliot ever strives to inculcate, that what is hard, sorrowful and painful in the world should move us to more and more of compassion and help for our fellows who also find life sad and burdensome. At the last Maggie learned this greatest of all lessons which life can give us.

She sat quite still far on into the night, with no impulse to change her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer-only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It came with the memories that no passion could long quench: the long past came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was

quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against the window, and the loud moan and roar of the wind: "I have received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me."

But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob: "Forgive me, Stephen. It will pass away. You will come back to her.

She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of parting.

"I will bear it, and bear it till death. . . . But how long it will be before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall, and repent again? Has life other trials as hard for me still?" With that cry of self-despair Maggie fell on her knees against the table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught her by this experience of great need, and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering that the less erring could hardly know. “O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort—”

Then the flood came, and death. Maggie could repent, she could acquire the true spirit of renunciation, she could even give herself to a life of altruism; but death only could restore her to the world. Death, says George Eliot, is the great reconciler.

Silas Marner is the only one of these earlier novels in which there is a continuous unity of purpose and action. Its several parts are thoroughly wrought into each other, the aim of the narrative is adhered to throughout, and there are no superfluous incidents. The plot is simple, cause and effect flow on steadily to the end in the unfoldment of character and action, and the design of the author is easily grasped. One of her critics, himself a novelist of a high order, has said that in its unity of purpose and dramatic expression Silas Marner is more nearly a masterpiece than any other of George Eliot's novels; "it has more of that simple, rounded, consummate aspect, that absence of loose ends and gaping issues, which marks a classical work." In this novel, too, her humor flows out with a richer fulness, a racier delight and a more sparkling variety of

1 Henry James, Jr.

1

expression than in any other book of hers, not except ing Adam Bede. She has here reached the very height of her qualities as a humorist, for in Silas Marner her humor is constantly genial and delightful.

Certain ethical ideas appear very distinctly in this novel. It illustrates man's need of social ties and connections. Silas forsook his old life, the life of his childhood and youth, and the world was a blank for him in consequence. With the sundering of the ties which bound him to the traditional environment amidst which he was reared, all the purpose and meaning of his life was gone. The old ties, obligations and associations gone, his life was without anchorage, its ideal aims perished, and he lived a selfish and worthless creature. When new social ties were formed by the young child he found then his life opened up to a larger meaning again, and he recovered the better things in his nature. He was then led back again into his relations to society, he became once more a man, a fresh life was opened to him. This brought a new confidence in religion, a new trust in the moral motives of life. In this way George Eliot presents the social basis of the higher life in man, and her theory that it cannot be broken off from its traditional surroundings without grave injury to the finer elements of our nature. The law of retribution mani

fests itself clearly in these pages. Godfrey deserts wife and child. In after years he would fain restore the child to its rightful place, but he finds it has grown up under conditions which alienate it from any sympathy with him. He pronounces his own condemnation :

"There's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting off, the trees have been growing-it's too late now. Marner was in the right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless once, Nancy — I shall pass for childless now against my wish."

A pure moral tone, a keen ethical instinct, mark all these earlier novels by George Eliot. Quite as notice

able is their spiritual atmosphere and their high place assigned to the religious life. Their teaching in these directions has a conservative tendency, and it is based on the most vigorous convictions.

W

XIV.

ROMOLA.

HATEVER differences there may exist between George Eliot's earlier and later books are due rather to the materials used than to any change in purpose, methods or beliefs. In writing of the distinction drawn between her earlier and later books, she said,

Though I trust there is some growth in my appreciation of others and in my self-distrust, there has been no change in the point of view from which I regard our life since I wrote my first fiction, the Scenes of Clerical Life. Any apparent change of spirit must be due to something of which I am unconscious. The principles which are at the root of my effort to paint Dinah Morris are equally at the root of my effort to paint Mordecai.

Her later books grow more out of conscious effort and deliberate study than the earlier, are more carefully wrought out, and contain less of spontaneity. The spiritual and ethical purpose, however, is not more distinct and conscious in Daniel Deronda than in The Mill on the Floss, in Romola than in Adam Bede. The ethical purpose may be more apparent in Daniel Deronda than in Adam Bede, more on the surface, and clearer to the view of the general reader, but this is because it takes an unusual form, rather than because it is really any more distinctly present. In The Mill on the Floss her teaching first became known to her readers, and in Romola this purpose to use the novel as the vehicle for propagating ideas became fully appar

Her aim having once come clearly to view, it was not difficult to see how large an element it was in her earlier books, where it had not been seen before.