us, in "Mr.
Gilfil's Story," Tina is only prevented from committing murder by the
opportune death of her intended victim. In "Janet's Repentance," a
drunken husband beats his beautiful but drunken wife, turns her out of
doors at midnight in her night-dress, and dies of "_delirium tremens_
and _meningitis_." ...

So, in "Adam Bede" we have all the circumstances of Hetty's seduction
and the birth and murder of her illegitimate child; and in the "Mill on
the Floss" there are the almost indecent details of mere animal passion
in the loves of Stephen and Maggie. If these are, as the writer's more
thorough-going admirers would tell us, the depths of human nature, we do
not see what good can be expected from raking them up,--not for the
benefit of those whom the warnings may concern (for these are not likely
to heed any warnings which may be presented in such a form), but for the
amusement of ordinary readers in hours of idleness and relaxation.
Compare "Adam Bede" with that one of Scott's novels which has something
in common with it as to story--the "Heart of Midlothian." In each a
beautiful young woman of the peasant class is tried and condemned for
child-murder; but, although condemned on circumstancial evidence under a
law of peculiar severity, Effie Deans is really innocent, whereas Hetty
Sorrel is guilty. In the novel of the last generation we see little of
Effie, and our attention is chiefly drawn to the simple heroism of her
sister Jeanie. In the novel of the present day, everything about Hetty
is most elaborately described: her thoughts throughout the whole course
of the seduction, her misery on discovering that there is evidence of
her frailty, her sufferings on the journey to Windsor and back (for it
is the Edie and not the Jeanie of this tale that makes a long solitary
journey to the south), her despairing hardness in the prison, her
confession, her behaviour on the way to the gallows. That all this is
represented with extraordinary force we need not say; and doubtless the
partisans of "George Eliot" would tell us that Scott could not have
written the chapters in question. We do not think it necessary to
discuss that point, but we are sure that in any case he _would_ not have
written them, because his healthy judgment would have rejected such
matters as unfit for the novelist's art.

The boldness with which George Eliot chooses her subjects is very
remarkable. It is not that, like other writers, she fails in the a