His very power makes him the more dangerous.

His uncertainties, however

small, shake to their ruin hundreds of lesser minds, and

"When he falls, he falls like Lucifer, "Never to rise again."

If a mountebank at a fair mouths his antics of folly or foulness, we laugh, or pass by-he is but a mountebank: he can do little harm: but when a hierophant connives at a false miracle, or an eloquent, sincere apostle goes about preaching a bewildering lie, we shrink, we grieve, we tremble. By and by, we take courage openly to denounce, not the teacher but the teaching. "You are an earnest man-doubtless, a true man-but your doctrine is not true. We, who cannot speak, but only feelwe feel that it is not true. treading dangerous ground. You have raised a ghost you cannot lay, you have thrown down a city which you cannot rebuild. You are the very Promethefis, carrying the stolen fire. See that it does not slip from your unwary hands, and go blasting and devastating the world."

You are

Thoughts somewhat like these must have passed through the mind of many a reader of a novel, the readers of which have been millions. Probably the whole history of fiction does not present an instance of two such remarkable books following one another within so short a time as "Adam Bede," and "The Mill on the Floss." All the world has read them; and though some may prefer one, and some the other, and, in a moral point of view, some may admire and some condemn-all the world grants their wonderful intellectual power, and is so familiar with the details of them that literary analysis becomes unnecessary.

Nor do we desire to attempt it. The question which these books, and especially the latter, have suggested, is quite a different thing. It is a question with which literary merit has nothing to do. Nor, in one sense, literary morality,-the external morality which, thank heaven, our modern reading public both expects

and exacts, and here undoubtedly finds. Ours is more an appeal than a criticism -an appeal which any one of an audience has a right to make, if he thinks he sees what the speaker, in the midst of all his eloquence, does not see

"The little pitted speck in garnered fruit,

"That, rotting inward, slowly moulders all."

Of "The Mill on the Floss," in a literary point of view, there can be but one opinion-that, as a work of art, it is as perfect as the novel can well be made: superior even to "Adam Bede." For the impression it gives of power, evenly cultivated and clear sighted, the power of creation, amalgamating real materials into a foreplanned ideal scheme; the power of selection, able to distinguish at once the fit and the unfit, choosing the one and rejecting the other, so as to make every part not only complete as to itself, but as to its relation with a wellbalanced whole-the "Mill on the Floss" is one of the finest imaginative works in our language. In its diction, too: how magnificently rolls on that noble Saxon English-terse and clear, yet infinitely harmonious, keeping in its most simple common-place flow a certain majesty and solemnity which reminds one involuntarily of the deep waters of the Floss. The fatal Floss, which runs through the whole story like a Greek fate or a Gothic destiny-ay, from the very second chapter, when

"Maggie, Maggie," continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room, "where's the use o' my telling you to keep away from the water? You'll tumble in and be drownded some day, an' then you'll be sorry you didn't do as mother told you."

Another impression made strongly by the first work of "George Eliot," and repeated by "his" (we prefer to respect the pseudonym) second, is the earnestness, sincerity, and heart-nobility of the author. Though few books are freer from that morbid intrusion of self in which many writers of fiction indulge, no one can lay down "The Mill on the Floss" without a feeling of having held commune with a mind of rare individuality, with a judgment active and clear, and with a moral nature, conscientious, generous, religious, and pure. It is to this moral nature, this noblest half of all literary perfectness, in our author, as in all other authors, that we now make appeal.

"George Eliot," or any other conscientious novelist, needs not to be told that he who appropriates this strange phantasmagoria of human life, to repaint and re-arrange by the light of his own imagination, takes materials not his own, nor yet his reader's. He deals with mysteries which, in their entirety, belong alone to the Maker of the universe. By the force of his intellect, the quick sympathies of his heart, he may pierce into them a little way-farther, perhaps, than most people-but at best only a little way. He will be continually stopped by things he cannot understand -matters too hard for him, which make him feel, the more deeply and humbly as he grows more wise, how we are, at best,

"Like infants crying in the dark, "And with no language but a cry." If by his dimly-beheld, one-sided, fragmentary representations, which mimic. untruly the great picture of life, this cry, either in his own voice, or in the involuntary utterance of his readers, rises into an accusation against God, how awful is his responsibility, how tremendous the evil that he may origi

nate!

We doubt not, the author of the "Mill on the Floss" would shudder at the suspicion of this sort of involuntary blasphemy, and yet such is the tendency of the book and its story.

A very simple story. A girl of remarkable gifts-mentally, physically, and morally; born, like thousands more, of parents far inferior to herself-struggles through a repressed childhood, a hopeless youth: brought suddenly out of this darkness into the glow of a first passion for a man who, ignoble as he may be, is passionately in earnest with regard to her she is tempted to treachery, and sinks into a great error, her extrication out of which, without involving certain misery and certain wrong to most or all around her, is simply an impossibility. The author cuts the Gordian knot by creating a flood on the Floss, which wafts this poor child out of her troubles and difficulties into the other world.

Artistically speaking, this end is very fine. Towards it the tale has gradually climaxed. From such a childhood as that of Tom and Maggie Tulliver, nothing could have come but the youth Tom and the girl Maggie, as we find them throughout that marvellous third volume: changed indeed, but still keeping the childish images of little Tom and little Maggie, of Dorlcote Mill. Ay, even to the hour, when with that sense of the terrible exalted into the sublime, which only genius can make us feel—we see them go down to the deeps of the Floss "in an embrace never to be parted: "living through again, in one supreme moment, the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and "roamed through the daisied fields to"gether."

So far as exquisite literary skill, informed and vivified by the highest order of imaginative power, can go, this story is perfect. But take it from another point of view. Ask, what good will it do?-whether it will lighten any burdened heart, help any perplexed spirit, comfort the sorrowful, succour the tempted, or bring back the erring into the way of peace; and what is the answer? Silence.

Let us reconsider the story, not artistically, but morally.

Here is a human being, placed during her whole brief life-her hapless nineteen years-under circumstances the

hardest and most fatal that could befal one of her temperament. She has all the involuntary egotism and selfishness of a nature that, while eagerly craving for love, loves ardently and imaginatively rather than devotedly; and the only love that might have at once humbled and raised her, by showing her how far nobler it was than her own-Philip's -is taken from her in early girlhood. Her instincts of right, true as they are, have never risen into principles; her temptations to vanity, and many other faults, are wild and fierce; yet no human help ever comes near her to strengthen the one or subdue the other. This may be true to nature, and yet we think it is not. Few of us, calmly reviewing our past, can feel that we have ever been left so long and so utterly without either outward aid, or the inner voice-never silent in a heart like poor Maggie's. It is, in any case, a perilous doctrine to preach the doctrine of overpowering circumstances.

Again, notwithstanding the author's evident yearning over Maggie, and disdain for Tom, we cannot but feel that if people are to be judged by the only fair human judgment, of how far they act up to what they believe in, Tom, so far as his light goes, is a finer character than his sister. He alone has the self-denial to do what he does not like, for the sake of doing right; he alone has the self-command to smother his hopeless love, and live on, a brave, hardworking life; he, except in his injustice to poor Maggie, has at least the merit of having made no one else miserable. Perfectly true is what he says, though he says it in a Pharisaical way, "Yes, I "have had feelings to struggle with, but "I conquered them. I have had a "harder life than you have had, but "I have found my comfort in doing my "duty." Nay, though perhaps scarcely intended, Bob Jakin's picture of the solitary lad, "as close as an iron biler," who "sits by himself so glumpish, a"knittin' his brow, an' a-lookin' at the "fire of a night," is in its way as pathetic as Maggie's helpless cry to Dr. Kenn, at the bazaar, "O, I must go."

In the whole history of this fascinating Maggie there is a picturesque piteousness which somehow confuses one's sense of right and wrong. Yet what we cannot help asking-what is to become of the hundreds of clever girls, born of uncongenial parents, hemmed in with unsympathising kindred of the Dodson sort, blest with no lover on whom to bestow their strong affections, no friend to whom to cling for guidance and support? They must fight their way, heaven help them! alone and unaided, through cloud and darkness, to the light. And, thank heaven, hundreds of them do, and live to hold out a helping hand afterwards to thousands more. "The "middle-aged" (says "George Eliot," in this very book), "who have lived "through their strongest emotions, but "are yet in the time when memory is "still half-passionate and not merely " contemplative, should surely be a sort "of natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the "refuge and rescue of early stumblers "and victims of self-despair."

Will it help these such a picture as Maggie, who, with all her high aspirations and generous qualities, is, throughout her poor young life, a stay and comfort to no human being, but, on the contrary, a source of grief and injury to every one connected with her? If we are to judge character by results-not by grand imperfect essays, but by humbler fulfilments-of how much more use in the world were even fond, shallow Lucy, and narrow-minded Tom, than this poor Maggie, who seems only just to have caught hold of the true meaning and beauty of existence in that last pathetic prayer, "If my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort," when she is swept away out of our sight and love for ever.

True this is, as we have said, a magnificent ending for the book; but is it for the life-the one human life which this author has created so vividly and powerfully, that we argue concerning it as if we had actually known it? Will it influence for good any other real lives— this passionately written presentment

of temptation never conquered, or just so far that we see its worst struggle as but beginning; of sorrows which teach nothing, or teach only bitterness; of love in its most delicious, most deadly phase; love blind, selfish, paramount, seeing no future but possession, and, that hope gone, no alternative but death -death, welcomed as the solution of all difficulties, the escape from all pain?

Is this right? Is it a creed worthy of an author who has pre-eminently what all novelists should have," the brain of a man and the heart of a woman," united with what we may call a sexless intelligence, clear and calm, able to observe, and reason, and guide mortal passions, as those may, who have come out of the turmoil of the flesh into the region of ministering spirits, "ayyeλo," messengers between God and man? What if the messenger testify falsely? What if the celestial trumpet give forth an uncertain sound?

Yet let us be just. There are those who argue that this-perhaps the finest ending, artistically, of any modern novel, is equally fine in a moral sense: that the death of Maggie and Tom is a glorious Euthanasia, showing that when even at the eleventh hour, temptation is conquered, error atoned, and love reconciled, the life is complete: its lesson has been learnt, its work done; there is nothing more needed but the vade in pacem to an immediate heaven. This, if the author so meant it, was an idea grand, noble, Christian: as Christian (be it said with reverence) as the doctrine preached by the Divine Pardoner of all sinners to the sinner beside whom He died-"To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise." But the conception ought to have been worked out so plainly that no reader could mistake it. We should not have been left to feel, as we do feel, undecided whether this death was a translation or an escape: whether if they had not died, Maggie would not have been again the same Maggie, always sinning and always repenting; and Tom the same Tom, hard and narrow-minded, though the least ray of love and happiness cast over his

woe.

gloomy life, might have softened and made a thoroughly good man of him. The author ought to have satisfied us entirely as to the radical change in both; else we fall back upon the same dreary creed of overpowering circumstances: of human beings struggling for ever in a great quagmire of unconquerable temptations, inevitable and hopeless A creed more fatal to every noble effort, and brave self-restraintabove all to that humble faith in the superior Will which alone should govern ours can hardly be conceived. It is true that there occur sometimes in life positions so complex and overwhelming, that plain right and wrong become confused; until the most righteous and religious man is hardly able to judge clearly or act fairly. But to meet such positions is one thing, to invent them is another. It becomes a serious question whether any author-who, great as his genius may be, sees no farther than mortal intelligence can-is justified in leading his readers into a labyrinth, the way out of which he does not, first, see clearly himself, and next, is able to make clear to them, so as to leave them mentally and morally at rest, free from all perplexity and uncertainty.

Now, uncertainty is the prevailing impression with which we close "the Mill on the Floss." We are never quite satisfied in our detestation of the Dodson family, the more odious because so dreadfully natural that we feel we all are haunted by some of the race, could name them among our own connections, perhaps have even received kindnesses from a Mrs. Pullet, a Mrs. Glegg, or a Mrs. Tulliver. We are vexed with ourselves for being so angry with stern, honest, upright, business-like Tom-so contemptuously indifferent to gentle unsuspicious Lucy, with her universal kindness, extending from "the more "familiar rodents" to her silly aunt Tulliver. We question much whether such a generous girl as Maggie would have fallen in love with Stephen at all; whether she would not from the first have regarded him simply as her cousin's lover, and if his passion won anything

from her, it would but have been the half-angry half-sorrowful disdain which a high-minded woman could not help feeling towards a man who forgot duty and honour in selfish love, even though the love were for herself. And, last and chief perplexity of all, we feel that, granting the case as our author puts it, the mischief done, the mutual passion mutually confessed, Stephen's piteous arguments have some justice on their side. The wrong done to him in Maggie's forsaking him was almost as great as the wrong previously done to Philip and Lucy-whom no self-sacrifice on her part or Stephen's could ever have made happy again.

And, to test the matter, what reader will not confess, with a vague sensation of uneasy surprise, to have taken far less interest in all the good injured personages of the story, than in this mad Stephen and treacherous Maggie? Who that is capable of understanding-as a thing which has been or is, or may one day be -the master-passion that furnishes the key to so many lives, will not start to find how vividly this book revives it, or wakens it, or places it before him as a future possibility? Who does not think with a horribly delicious feeling, of such a crisis, when right and wrong, bliss and bale, justice and conscience, seem swept from their boundaries, and a whole existence of Dodsons, Lucys, and Tom Tullivers, appears worth nothing compared to the ecstacy of that " one kissthe last" between Stephen and Maggie in the lane?

Is this right? The spell once broken -broken with the closing of the book -every high and pure and religious instinct within us answers unhesitatingly "No."

It is not right to paint Maggie only as she is in her strong, unsatisfied, erring youth and leave her there, her doubts unresolved, her passions unregulated, her faults unatoned and unforgiven: to cut her off ignobly and accidentally, leaving two acts, one her recoil of conscience with regard to Stephen, and the other her instinctive self-devotion in going to rescue Tom, as the sole noble

landmarks of a life that had in it every capability for good with which a woman could be blessed. It is not right to carry us on through these three marvellous volumes, and leave us at the last standing by the grave of the brother and sister, ready to lift up an accusatory cry, less to a beneficent Deity than to the humanly-invented Arimanes of the universe."Why should such things be? Why hast Thou made us thus ?"

But it may be urged, that fiction has its counterpart, and worse, in daily truth. How many perplexing histories do we not know of young lives blighted, apparently by no fault of their own; of blameless lives dragged into irresistible temptations; of high natures so meshed in by circumstances that they, as well as we, judging them from without, can hardly distinguish right from wrong, guilt from innocence; of living and loveable beings so broken down by unmerited afflictions, that when at last they come to an end, we look on the poor dead face with a sense of thankfulness that there at least,

"There is no other thing expressed "But long disquiet merged in rest.” All this is most true, so far as we see. But we never can see, not even the wisest and greatest of us, anything like the whole of even the meanest and briefest human life. We never can know through w at fiery trial of temptation, nay, even sin,for sin itself appears sometimes in the wonderful alchemy of the universe to be used as an agent for good,—a strong soul is being educated into a saintly minister to millions of weaker souls: coming to them with the authority of one whom suffering has taught how to heal suffering; nay, whom the very fact of having sinned once, has made more deeply to pity, so as more easily to rescue sinners. And, lastly, we never can comprehend, unless by experience, that exceeding peace-the "peace which passeth all understanding," which is oftentimes seen in those most heavily and hopelessly afflicted: those who have lost all, and gained their own souls: whereof they possess themselves in