here was something being taught
her by this experience of great need, and she must be learning a secret
of human tenderness and long-suffering that the less erring could
hardly know. "O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and
comfort--"

Then the flood came, and death. Maggie could repent, she could acquire the
true spirit of renunciation, she could even give herself to a life of
altruism; but death only could restore her to the world. Death, says George
Eliot, is the great reconciler.

_Silas Marner_ is the only one of these earlier novels in which there is a
continuous unity of purpose and action. Its several parts are thoroughly
wrought into each other, the aim of the narrative is adhered to throughout,
and there are no superfluous incidents. The plot is simple, cause and
effect flow on steadily to the end in the unfoldment of character and
action, and the design of the author is easily grasped. One of her critics,
himself a novelist of a high order, has said that in its unity of purpose
and dramatic expression _Silas Marner_ is more nearly a masterpiece than
any other of George Eliot's novels; "it has more of that simple, rounded,
consummate aspect, that absence of loose ends and gaping issues, which
marks a classical work." [Footnote: Henry James, Jr.] In this novel, too,
her humor flows out with a richer fulness, a racier delight and a more
sparkling variety of expression than in any other book of hers, not
excepting _Adam Bede_. She has here reached the very height of her
qualities as a humorist, for in _Silas Marner_ her humor is constantly
genial and delightful.

Certain ethical ideas appear very distinctly in this novel. It illustrates
man's need of social ties and connections. Silas forsook his old life, the
life of his childhood and youth, and the world was a blank for him in
consequence. With the sundering of the ties which bound him to the
traditional environment amidst which he was reared, all the purpose and
meaning of his life was gone. The old ties, obligations and associations
gone, his life was without anchorage, its ideal aims perished, and he lived
a selfish and worthless creature. When new social ties were formed by the
young child he found then his life opened up to a larger meaning again, and
he recovered the better things in his nature. He was then led back again
into his relations to society, he became once more a man, a fresh life was
opened to him. This brou