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wise in council, who every day feasted in their hall more hundreds than thou canst number individual followers; whose names have been sung by minstrels, and their laws recorded by Wittenagemotes; whose bones were interred amid the prayers of saints, and over whose tombs minsters have been builded." There can be no doubt that Saxons as far-descended as Scott represents Athelstane to have been were treated worse than he, and that Saxon ladies of the highest birth and greatest wealth experienced the fate of the conquered in much severer measure than it became known to Rowena. Scott has been accused of exaggerating the effects of the Conquest, but his glowing picture is by no means overcharged, if we look at the effect of that change on the higher classes of the vanquished people. The Saxons were very wealthy, and the invaders obtained an amount of spoil that astonished them, the accounts of which remind the reader of what was told of the extraordinary acquisitions made by the ruffians who formed the force of Pizarro in Peru. Years after the day of Hastings, we are told, William "bore back with him, to his eager and hungry country, the plunder of England, which was so varied in kind, so prodigious in amount, that the awe-stricken chroniclers maintain that all the Gauls, if ransacked from end to end, would have failed to supply treasures worthy to be

compared with it. The silver, the gold, the vases, vestments, and crucifixes crested with jewels, the silken garments for men and women, the rings, necklaces, bracelets, wrought delicately in gold and resplendent in gems, inspired the Continental barbarians with rapture, and in their imaginations made England appear the Dorado of those times." One of the writers of that day states that “incredible treasures in gold and silver were sent from the plunder of England to the Pope, together with costly ornaments, which would have been held in the highest estimation even at Byzantium, then universally regarded as the most opulent city in the world." All this implies that the Saxon aristocracy were very rich, and it is far from unlikely that it was the desire to preserve their property that led them to offer so little resistance to William, a fatally mistaken course, for the invading adventurers had entered England in search of other men's property, and were not to be kept quiet by the quietness of the owners thereof. The aristocracy alone could afford such plunder as that described, and that so much of it was obtained shows how extensive must have been the spoliation, and how thoroughly Saxon nobles were stripped of their possessions by the low-born ragamuffins who were induced by William's recruiting sergeants to enlist under his black banner.

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by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward, and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any æsthetic rules which shall banish from the region of art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pothouse, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world, those homes with their tin cans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common, coarse people, who have no picturesque, sentimental wretchedness. It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. . . . . . There are few prophets in the world,-few sublimely beautiful women, - few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities; I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellowmen, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy..... I herewith discharge my conscience," our author continues, "and declare that I have had quite enthusiastic movements of admiration toward old gentlemen who spoke the worst English, who were occasionally fretful in their temper, and who had never moved in a higher sphere of influence than that of parish overseer; and that the way in which I have come to the conclusion that human nature is lovable the way I have learnt something of its deep pathos, its sublime mysteries has been by living a great deal among people more or less commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhaps hear nothing very surprising if you were to inquire about them in the neighborhoods where they dwelt."

But even in the absence of any such

avowed predilections as these, a brief glance over the principal figures of her different works would assure us that our author's sympathies are with common people. Silas Marner is a linenweaver, Adam Bede is a carpenter, Maggie Tulliver is a miller's daughter, Felix Holt is a watchmaker, Dinah Morris works in a factory, and Hetty Sorrel is a dairy-maid. Esther Lyon, indeed, is a daily governess; but Tito Melema alone is a scholar. In the "Scenes of Clerical Life," the author is constantly slipping down from the clergymen, her heroes, to the most ignorant and obscure of their parishionEven in "Romola" she consecrates page after page to the conversation of the Florentine populace. She is as unmistakably a painter of bourgeois life as Thackeray was a painter of the life of drawing-rooms.

ers.

Her opportunities for the study of the manners of the solid lower classes have evidently been very great. We have her word for it that she has lived much among the farmers, mechanics, and small traders of that central region of England which she has made known to us under the name of Loamshire. The conditions of the popular life in this district in that already distant period to which she refers the action of most of her stories-the end of the last century and the beginning of the present- were so different from any that have been seen in America, that an American, in treating of her books, must be satisfied not to touch upon the question of their accuracy and fidelity as pictures of manners and customs. He can only say that they bear strong internal evidence of truthfulness. If he is a great admirer of George Eliot, he will indeed be tempted to affirm that they must be true.

They offer a completeness, a rich density of detail, which could be the fruit only of a long term of conscious contact, such as would make it much more difficult for the author to fall into the perversion and suppression of facts, than to set them down literally. It is very probable

that her colors are a little too bright, and her shadows of too mild a gray, that the sky of her landscapes is too sunny, and their atmosphere too redolent of peace and abundance. Local affection may be accountable for half of this excess of brilliancy; the author's native optimism is accountable for the other half. I do not remember, in all her novels, an instance of gross misery of any kind not directly caused by the folly of the sufferer. There are no pictures of vice or poverty or squalor. There are no rags, no gin, no brutal passions. That average humanity which she favors is very borné in intellect, but very genial in heart, as a glance at its representatives in her pages will convince us. In "Adam Bede," there is Mr. Irwine, the vicar, with avowedly no qualification for his profession, placidly playing chess with his mother, stroking his dogs, and dipping into Greek tragedies; there is the excellent Martin Poyser at the Farm, good-natured and rubicund; there is his wife, somewhat too sharply voluble, but only in behalf of cleanliness and honesty and order; there is Captain Donnithorne at the Hall, who does a poor girl a mortal wrong, but who is, after all, such a nice, good-looking fellow; there are Adam and Seth Bede, the carpenter's sons, the strongest, purest, most discreet of young rustics. The same broad felicity prevails in "The Mill on the Floss." Mr. Tulliver, indeed, fails in business; but his failure only serves as an offset to the general integrity and prosperity. His son is obstinate and wilful; but it is all on the side of virtue. His daughter is somewhat sentimental and erratic; but she is more conscientious yet. Conscience, in the classes from which George Eliot recruits her figures, is a universal gift. Decency and plenty and good-humor follow contentedly in its train. The word which sums up the common traits of our author's various groups is the word respectable. Adam Bede is pre-eminently a respectable young man; so is Arthur VOL. XVIII. - NO. 108.

31

Donnithorne; so, although he will persist in going without a cravat, is Felix Holt. So, with perhaps the exception of Maggie Tulliver and Stephen Guest, is every important character to be found in our author's writings. They all share this fundamental trait, — that in each of them passion proves itself feebler than conscience.

The first work which made the name of George Eliot generally known, contains, to my perception, only a small number of the germs of her future power. From the "Scenes of Clerical Life" to "Adam Bede" she made not so much a step as a leap. Of the three tales contained in the former work, I think the first is much the best. It is short, broadly descriptive, humorous, and exceedingly pathetic. "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton" are fortunes, which clever storytellers with a turn for pathos, from Oliver Goldsmith downward, have found of very good account, - the fortunes of a hapless clergyman of the Church of England in daily contention with the problem how upon eighty pounds a year to support a wife and six children in all due ecclesiastical gen tility.

--

"Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," the second of the tales in question, I cannot hesitate to pronounce a failure. George Eliot's pictures of drawing - room life are only interesting when they are linked or related to scenes in the tavern parlor, the dairy, and the cottage. Mr. Gilfil's love-story is enacted entirely in the drawing-room, and in consequence it is singularly deficient in force and reality. Not that it is vulgar,- for our author's good taste never forsakes her, but it is thin, flat, and trivial. But for a certain family likeness in the use of language and the rhythm of the style, it would be hard to believe that these pages are by the same hand as "Silas Marner." In "Janet's Repentance," the last and longest of the three clerical stories, we return to middle life, — the life represented by the Dodsons in "The Mill on the Floss." The subject of this tale might almost be qualified by the

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Was it a red Durham: sci farrier, taking up the threat at de course after the lapse of a few nutes.

"The farrier looked at the indiar and the landlord looked at the buncher, as the person who must take the responsibility of answering.

"Red it was,' said the butcher, in his good-humored husky treble. — ‘and a Durham it was.'

"Then you need n't tell me who you bought it of,' said the farrier, looking round with some triumph; I know who it is has got the red Durhams o'

this country-side. And she 'd a white star on her brow, I 'll bet a penny?'

"Well; yes she might,' said the butcher, slowly, considering that he was giving a decided affirmation. 'I don't say contrairy.'

"I knew that very well,' said the farrier, throwing himself back defiantly; if I don't know Mr. Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who does, that's all. And as for the cow you bought, bargain or no bargain, I've been at the drenching of her, - contradick me who will.'

"The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational spirit was roused a little.

"I'm not for contradicking no man,' he said; 'I'm for peace and quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs. I'm for cutting 'em short myself; but I don't quarrel with 'em. All I say is, its a lovely carkiss, — and anybody as was reasonable, it'ud bring tears into their eyes to look at it.'

"Well, its the cow as I drenched, whatever it is,' pursued the farrier, angrily; and it was Mr. Lammeter's cow, else you told a lie when you said it was a red Durham.'

"I tell no lies,' said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as before; and I contradick none, - not if a man was to swear himself black; he's no meat of mine, nor none of my bargains. All I say is, its a lovely carkiss. And what I say I'll stick to; but I'll quarrel wi' no man.'

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ay; I know, I know: but I let other folks talk. I 've laid by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been to school at Tarley: they 've learn't pernouncing; that 's came up since my day.'

Mr. Macey is nevertheless persuaded to dribble out his narrative; proceeding by instalments, and questioned from point to point, in a kind of Socratic manner, by the landlord. He at last arrives at Mr. Lammeter's marriage, and how the clergyman, when he came to put the questions, inadvertently transposed the position of the two essential names, and asked, "Wilt thou have this man to be thy wedded wife?" etc.

"But the partic'larest thing of all,' pursues Mr. Macey, 'is, as nobody took any notice on it but me, and they answered straight off "Yes," like as if it had been me saying "Amen" ' the right place, without listening to what went before.'

"But you knew what was going on well enough, did n't you, Mr. Macey? You were live enough, eh?' said the butcher.

"Yes, bless you!' said Mr. Macey, pausing, and smiling in pity at the impatience of his hearer's imagination, —

why, I was all of a tremble; it was as if I'd been a coat pulled by two tails, like; for I couldn't stop the parson, I could n't take upon me to do that; and yet I said to myself, I says, “Suppose they should n't be fast married," 'cause the words are contrairy, and my head went working like a mill, for I was always uncommon for turning things over and seeing all round 'em ; and I says to myself, "Is 't the meaning or the words as makes folks fast i' wedlock?" For the parson meant right, and the bride and bridegroom meant right. But then, when I came to think on it, meaning goes but a little way i' most things, for you may mean to stick things together and your glue may be bad, and then where are you?'"

Mr. Macey's doubts, however, are set at rest by the parson after the service, who assures him that what

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