EARLIER NOVELS.

The first four novels written by George Eliot form a group by themselves;
and while all similar to each other in their main characteristics, are in
important respects different from her later works. This group includes
_Clerical Scenes, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss_ and _Silas Marner_.
With these may also be classed "Brother Jacob." They are all alike novels
of memory, and they deal mainly with common life. Her own life and the
surroundings of her childhood, the memories and associations and
suggestions of her early life, are drawn upon. The simple surroundings and
ideas of the midland village are seldom strayed away from, and most of the
characters are farmers and their laborers, artisans or clergymen. _The Mill
on the Floss_ offers a partial exception to this statement, for in that
book we touch upon the border of a different form of society, but we
scarcely enter into it, and the leading characters are from the same class
as those in the other books of this group. "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" alone
enters wholly within the circle of aristocratic society. There is more of
the realism of actual life in these novels than in her later ones, greater
spontaneity and insight, a deeper sympathy and a more tender pathos. They
came more out of her heart and sympathies, are more impassioned and
pathetic.

Throughout the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ are descriptions of actual scenes
and incidents known to George Eliot in her girlhood. Mrs. Hackit is a
portrait of her own mother. In the first chapter of "Amos Barton,"
Shepperton Church is that at Chilvers Colon, which she attended throughout
her childhood. It is from memory, and with an accurate pen, she describes--

Shepperton Church as it was in the old days with its outer court of
rough stucco, its red-tiled roof, its heterogeneous windows patched
with desultory bits of painted glass, and its little flight of steps
with their wooden rail running up the outer wall, and leading to the
school-children's gallery. Then inside, what dear old quaintnesses!
which I began to look at with delight, even when I was so crude a
member of the congregation that my nurse found it necessary to
provide for the reinforcement of my devotional patience by smuggling
bread-and-butter into the sacred edifice. There was the chancel,
guarded by two little cherubims looking uncomfortably squeezed between
arch and wall, and adorned with the