eaded, as
if it were a dwelling-place of lost souls, that dead anatomy of culture
which turns the universe into a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and
knows, not everything, but everything else about everything--as if one
should be ignorant of nothing concerning the scent of violets except
the scent itself, for which one had no nostril. But how and whence was
the needed event to come?--the influence that would justify partiality,
and make him what he longed to be, yet was unable to make himself--an
organic part of social life, instead of roaming in it like a yearning
disembodied spirit, stirred with a vague, social passion, but without
fixed local habitation to render fellowship real? To make a little
difference for the better was what he was not contented to live
without; but how make it? It is one thing to see your road, another to
cut it.

He rescues Mirah and sets out in search of her brother. He finds Mordecai,
and gradually a way is opened to him along which his yearning is satisfied.
Step by step the reader is permitted to trace the expansion of his mind. A
window is opened into his soul, and we see its every movement as Daniel is
led on to find the mission which was to be his. When that task is fully
accepted he says to Mordecai,--

Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some
ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a
multitude--some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty,
and not to be striven for as a personal prize.

In her strong tendency to psychologic analysis George Eliot much resembles
Robert Browning. It is the life of passion and ideas which both alike
delight to describe. They greatly differ, however, in their methods of
dissecting the inner life. Browning lays bare the soul in some startling
experience, George Eliot by the slow development of the mind through all
the stages of growth. He is impersonal, but she is always present to make
comments and to expound the causes of growth. Yet her characters are as
clear-cut, as individual, as his. His analysis is the more rapid, subtle
and complete in immediate expression; hers is the more penetrating,
vigorous and interesting. His lightning flash sees the soul through and
through in the present moment; her calmer and intenser gaze penetrates the
long succession of hidden causes by which the soul is shaped to its earthly
destiny.

A