urnishes a large part
of our pleasure in reading him.

MARY ANN EVANS, GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880)

In nearly all the writers of the Victorian Age we note, on the one hand, a
strong intellectual tendency to analyze the problems of life, and on the
other a tendency to teach, that is, to explain to men the method by which
these problems may be solved. The novels especially seem to lose sight of
the purely artistic ideal of writing, and to aim definitely at moral
instruction. In George Eliot both these tendencies reach a climax. She is
more obviously, more consciously a preacher and moralizer than any of her
great contemporaries. Though profoundly religious at heart, she was largely
occupied by the scientific spirit of the age; and finding no religious
creed or political system satisfactory, she fell back upon duty as the
supreme law of life. All her novels aim, first, to show in individuals the
play of universal moral forces, and second, to establish the moral law as
the basis of human society. Aside from this moral teaching, we look to
George Eliot for the reflection of country life in England, just as we look
to Dickens for pictures of the city streets, and to Thackeray for the
vanities of society. Of all the women writer's who have helped and are
still helping to place our English novels at the head of the world's
fiction, she holds at present unquestionably the highest rank.

LIFE. Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans, known to us by her pen name of George
Eliot, began to write late in life, when nearly forty years of age, and
attained the leading position among living English novelists in the ten
years between 1870 and 1880, after Thackeray and Dickens had passed away.
She was born at Arbury Farm, Warwickshire, some twenty miles from
Stratford-on-Avon, in 1819. Her parents were plain, honest folk, of the
farmer class, who brought her up in the somewhat strict religious manner of
those days. Her father seems to have been a man of sterling integrity and
of practical English sense,--one of those essentially noble characters who
do the world's work silently and well, and who by their solid worth obtain
a position of influence among their fellow-men.

A few months after George Eliot's birth the family moved to another home,
in the parish of Griff, where her childhood was largely passed. The scenery
of the Midland counties and many details of her own family life are
reflected in her earlier novels. Thus we find her and her brother,