elves. He lived
chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was
fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots
when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself
under the orchard boughs at noon when the summer pears were falling. He
knew nothing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the
Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the
blessing--liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were
the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly
conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal
of beer or port wine--not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and
lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he
fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the
sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going
to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe
upon him and judge him by our modern standard; he never went to Exeter
Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or
_Sartor Resartus_." [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter LII.]

Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of
dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues
which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his
rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be
seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a
_chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people.
She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they
call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize,
as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and
rusticity of the life presented.

George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for
she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which
would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not
to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance
be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is
spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey,
dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy,