seen and heard, and what they have _not_ seen
and heard, with equal faithfulness.

What is simple, natural, unaffected, she pleads for as the true material of
fiction. How she would apply this idea may be seen in her condemnation of a
novelist who devoted her pages to a defence of Evangelicalism. This writer
is "tame and feeble" because she attempts to depict a form of society with
which she is not familiar. That the common phases of religious life are
capable of affording the richest material for the novelist, George Eliot
has abundantly shown, and what she says of their value in this discussion
of "Silly Novelists" is of great interest in view of her own success in
this kind of portraiture. What she suggested as a fine field for the
novelist was to be the one she herself was so well to occupy. Her success
proved how clearly she comprehended the nature of novel-writing, and how
well she understood the character of the material with which the best
results can be attained.

It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist than any other,
gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and carriages. The real
drama of Evangelicalism--and it has abundance of fine drama for any one
who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it--lies among the
middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood
to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather
than in the mighty? Why, then, cannot our Evangelical novelists show
us the operation of their religious views among people (there really
are many such in the world) who keep no carriage, "not so much as a
brass-bound gig," who even manage to eat their dinner without a silver
fork, and in whose mouths the authoress's questionable English would be
strictly consistent? Why can we not have pictures of religious life
among the industrial classes in England as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's
pictures of religious life among the negroes?

Was this question a prophecy? It indicates that the writer's attention
had already been directed to the richness of this material for the purposes
of the novelist. After reading these words we see why she took up the
common life of the English village as she had herself been familiar with
it from childhood. In order to be true to her own conception of the novel,
there was no other field she could occupy. That she understood the
picturesqueness of this form of lif