nterest the characters have for us. This
exquisite picture of rural life is not merely a piece of fine painting; but
the deepest problems, the largest human interests, ever appear as a
perpetual background of spiritual reality, giving a sublimity to the whole
that truly dignifies it. The thoughtful reader soon finds this inweaving of
a larger purpose adding greatly to the idyllic loveliness of these scenes.
The moral tone is clear and earnest, and the religious element gives a
charm and nobility to this delightful picture of rustic simplicity.

_Adam Bede_ has probably delighted a larger number of her readers than any
other of George Eliot's books, and even a majority of her critics prefer it
to any other. It at once arrests and fixes the attention of the reader. The
first chapter has an immediate interest in its wonderful picture of Adam,
and its most vivid description of the workshop. The second chapter, with
its account of Dinah Morris and her preaching, leaves no possibility of
doubt about the genius and power of the book. The reader is brought at once
face to face with scenes and persons that act as enchantment on him; and
this complete absorption of interest never flags to the end. The elements
of this fascination, which is in itself so simple, natural and human, have
been pointed out by various critics. They are to be found in the
homeliness, pathos and naturalness of the whole story from beginning to
end. Little as the critics have noted it, however, much of this fascination
comes of the high and pure moral tone of the story, its grasp on the higher
motives and interests of life, and its undertone of yearning after a
religious motive and ideal adequate to all the problems of human destiny.
This religious motive is indeed more than a yearning, for it is a fixed and
self-contained confidence in altruism, expressed in sympathy and feeling
and pathos most tender and passionate. This novel is full of an eager
desire to realize to men their need of each other, and of longing to show
them how much better and happier the world would be if we were more
sympathetic and had more of fellow-feeling. Life is full of suffering, and
this can be lessened only as we help and love each other, only as we can
make our feelings so truly tender as to feel the sorrows of others as our
own, causing us to live for the good of those who suffer. It is said of
Adam Bede that--

He had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs