Not that Margaret Tulliver occupies the stage too exclusively. Here, as in the former work, the artist has studied carefully the harmonies of colour. The complement to this impulsive, imaginative, vigorous, but yielding nature is put in with equal care, and perhaps with equal success. The brother-with his resolute will, hard self-reliance, narrow inflexible justice, honest and true, but with only that "hard rind of truth, which is discerned by unsympathetic minds," -is probably as true to nature, and even more original in fiction, than the sister, who absorbs the larger share of our sympathies. He too has his trials and his struggles. If we hear less of them, it is only because, with a manful determination, he buries them in his own breast. If they fail to interest us, that may be not the hero's fault, but ours. something of the character of the volumes before us. But every word here written should be cancelled, if we thought it would prevent a single reader from seeking to know more. Let it not be supposed that the few passages here extracted are the best in the book. Such are not to be torn from their context merely for the sake of carrying away specimens. If we had to name the most powerful scenes in the story, perhaps we should point to those "in the Red Deeps," and the short passage with Stephen in the conservatory. But the whole working of those "Laws of Attraction is singularly well told. The descriptions of the quiet English scenery on the Floss are few, but very truthful. Not many eyes may be educated enough to see the charms of a mill-dam in February; yet, painted in these words, how exquisite it looks! "And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must charm to the trimly-kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnut that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, croft in front of the house. As I look at and half drowns the grassy fringe of the the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward Those who read the volumes before us with vivid recollections of Adam Bede (as who will not?) may notice stand a minute or two here on the bridge how much more strongly our sympa- and look at it, though the clouds are thies are roused by imperfect charac- threatening, and it is far on in the afterters. In that story the author design- noon. Even in this leafless time of deed, we may suppose, that we should parting February it is pleasant to look at be most interested (of the male cha--perhaps the chill damp season adds a racters) in Adam. And certainly, if a noble portrait of all that we profess to admire and love in the manly character, yet not too perfect to be human, could have effected this, we found it there. Yet it will scarcely be denied, that, to most readers, the heart all along went with the weaker brother, Seth. That Dinah cannot love him-though we know it to be impossible, and do not wish it-yet strikes the tenderest chord, we have always thought, in the whole story. In the Mill on the Floss none of the characters approach perfection; the heroine as little as any; yet we will venture to assert that Maggie's passionate and rebellious weakness has more interest for us, however undeservedly, than Adam's enduring strength. The true heroic struggles, which are silent and successful, are a spectacle for gods, not men. The indications of weakness and peril must be patent, to gain any deep sympathy from mortal lookers-on. Enough has been said to show appearance they make in the drier world above." Take the following passage again -one of quiet natural pathos, like that which charmed us so often in Adam Bede: There is no sense of ease like the ease we felt in those scenes where we were born, where objects became dear to us before we had known the labour of choice, and where the outer world seemed only an extension of our own personality: we accepted and loved it as we * See vol. iii. page 72. accepted our own sense of existence and our own limbs. Very commonplace, even ugly, that furniture of our early home might look if it were put up to auction; an improved taste in upholstery scorns it; and is not the striving after something better and better in our surroundings, the grand characteristic that distinguishes man from the brute-or, to satisfy a scrupulous accuracy of definition, that distinguishes the British man from the foreign brute? But heaven knows where that striving might lead us, if our affections had not a trick of twining round those old inferior things-if the loves and sanctities of our life had no deep immovable roots in memory." Nor, on the other hand, have we done much more than indicate, by such tempting illustrations as fell within the line of this notice, the pungent and yet playful humour which lights up the story throughout, especially in the chronicles of Tom and Maggie's early years. The division of the jam puff; Maggie's visit to the gypsies; the dialogues on Latin and Euclid between her and Tom; or, when we get amongst the aunts and uncles, the momentous conference on aunt Pullet's new bonnet, held in that awful best bed-room at Garum Firs -all, happily, much too long for extract are perhaps more irresistibly ludicrous than anything which we have quoted. It may possibly disgust some critics to find that, in spite of our rapid progress towards the intellectual, the most striking novel of the day is but "the old, old story." Love is still the life of fiction. And not that deliberate process which sometimes bears the name, when the marrying gentleman looks about him and chooses" his wife as he would his horse, and the lady weighs the advantages of a home and a position, but the strong force that seizes and binds its victims, whether they "choose" or no. Even the author seems, in one place, to tender half an apology; "the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history." We venture to question the new and the old aphorism, prettily as they are combined. All depends upon our definition of happiness, for the nation or for the individual. "Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." If absence of emotion be happiness, then the zoophyte's (with which Aristotle was not acquainted) is the beatific life. His "vapid vegetable loves" can seldom be highly tragic. The young people who walk into love cautiously, feeling their way by a process of courtship, are highly respectable and much to be commended; but in fiction, as in actual society, are apt to be tiresome. When Cœlebs sets out "In Search of a Wife," and goes the round of his eligible acquaintance"to select a deserving companion for life," as Mrs Hannah elegantly phrases it, who that has ever read the book (we have) does not long that he may get a brimstone? And after all, this quiet well-regulated life, of which reason and not passion has taken hold of the leading clue, may or may not be peaceful. Calm affections, a sense of mutual duties, may fill the vacant place in many hearts, or at least bar the door successfully against the master-passion; but woe to some natures, which have dared to satisfy themselves with such substitutes, if at any time, while man or woman's life is young, the rightful lord comes uninvited to the quiet banquet, and takes his place in that siege perilous." 66 The moral of these volumes is not obtrusive. The reader will probably draw it for himself according as he is predisposed. But he will gather nothing but good from it, read it how he will. On one point only, we think, the writer has shown an undue severity-though, even here, it is a severity in the cause of charity. The little provincial world of St Ogg's is of course highly censorious, has little of that charity that thinks no evil, and punishes, with all the emphasis of such a small Rhadamanthus, an aberration from the recognised proprieties. In several pages of brilliant sarcasm, we are drawn to infer that the world of St Ogg's is very mean and wrong. But we have been watching the struggle of which St Ogg's sees only the apparent end. It is quite true that the world judges harshly and uncharitably often, because it judges from appearances and from results; it belongs to a higher Power to look at the heart and the motives. If society were to claim this "discerning of spirits," its judgments would be erroneous oftener still, and infinitely more mischievous than now. In the present instance, Dr Kenn, the rector, alone judges by a larger and more charitable standard. He braves in this quarrel-not quite successfully public opinion at St Ogg's. Dr Kenn was right-grandly, heroically right; does it follow so certainly that society at St Ogg's was wrong? That Higher Authority whose example he pleads, is indeed the great court of appeal from every human judgment. Even he could do, as the recognised exponent of that Authority, what others could scarcely venture upon. For society cannot shift its landmarks; they may be arbitrary, but they are well known; it is at our peril if of our own will, to our sad cost if by force of circumstances, we overstep them. For there is a large floating mass of weak morality for which such definite restrictions are the best safeguard. Society sits as a court of law, and gives judgment according to its written statutes; in the main it does justice. Those on whom it presses hardly-and they are many-must be content with that other Court of last appeal. If " their own hearts condemn them not," they may find their judgment reversed there. But we have closed the book. Only in striving to right what seems a wrong, does even satire in these hands wear its common bitterness. Alike in power, but how very different in its use, is George Eliot in this point from another of our great novelists; he, with the same keen perception, and knowledge of the universal disease, slashes remorselessly through the fair skin, and shows us, as with a fierce professional satisfaction, the lurking evil within; here we watch a hand not less steady or less skilful, which, if it cuts deeply through the cancerous growth, does so in confidence that there is wholesome life beneath. After all the hard words of truth dealt against our neighbours on the Floss side, it is as if the author-like Maggie in the storycould not part even from the most narrow-minded of them without a word of forgiveness. Mr and Mrs Stelling (with the last half-year's bills never likely to be paid) dismiss poor Tom with a blessing and a basket; even Lawyer Wakem was doing something which he meant for kindness, when we saw him last; and aunt Glegg-that Dodson of Dodsons - when circumstances which are quite out of the line of the Dodson experience, and to which the rules of the Dodson religion no longer apply-astonishes the reader as much as the world at St Ogg's. It is remarkable, indeed, that neither here nor in Adam Bede are any of the characters esteemed so evil in their author's sight, as to stand in need of the usual penalties of poetic retribution. : occur Retribution may come from any voice the hardest, cruelest, most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can inflict it surely help and pity are rarer things-more needful for the righteous to bestow."-(Vol. iii. p. 257.) : 2 s VOL. LXXXVII.-NO. DXXXV. NARCISSUS. LIKE as some solitary woodland flower, Far out of reach, upon a perilous ledge, Flaunts its rich colours in a maiden's eyes, And seems more fair because desired in vain,— So he, a stream-god's son, more beautiful Than all his peers, serene and passionless, Lived whole of heart, in scornful self-delight Vacant for ever. Love, that comes to all, Sought not nor found him. Many raving words, The multiplied despair of aching hearts, Thickened around him, and he heeded not ;Ay, though enamoured Echo, woodland nymph, Pursuing him with love, filled the deep air, The caves, and the bleak rocks, valleys and hills, With murmurs meaningless to none save him, Wasting away till she became a voice, Vague, incorporeal.—And thus it went, Till one who also loved him all in vain Uttered this dying curse :-"So let him love "A fiery love, and, loving, not enjoy!" And the suns travelled till there came a day, When, heated from the chase and tired with toil, Whether of chance, or by some envious Fate Misguided, he bore on with flagging steps Unto a pure cold fount, where never bird Made welcome for the weary flocks at noon; Kept haunt for ever on those flowery floors, Which water could not quench. For, as he drank, The phantom of himself clear as the life, O Love! thou art the theme of many songs; And sharp winds sang around thy couch of snow, Till, to wear out the languid summer hours, Or whencesoever or of whom thou art— That the twin shafts, whose piercing should create Thou without pity at one single breast Ah! there and then hot hope, with eager eye, Sprung from that first fierce hunger in his blood, Flashed change upon his face, and o'er his soul Rolled moments like to years. Ah! then and there Were passionate strivings with extended arms To fold a shadow; and he sought not rest |