ieve that life
is an endless good; he is cheered and made stronger for what life offers
him.

Agnosticism may have its great and heroic incentives, it may impel men to a
nobler activity, but its literary effect, as a motive towards a more
inspiring life, has not been satisfactory in the hands of George Eliot.
Shakspere is not a teacher of philosophy or ethics, he has no doctrines to
preach, no theories to advocate. What he believed, it would be difficult to
ascertain from his writings; yet he is an effective teacher of morals, he
stimulates into activity all that is best in man, life widens and deepens
under the touch of his genius. So is it with Milton, Schiller, Moliere,
Calderon, Montaigne and Wordsworth. So is it with George Eliot in all that
concerns our duties, and even with our human sympathies. In the one
direction of trust she is wanting, and her books are devoid of it.
Shakspere makes us realize that God rules over the world; George Eliot
leaves us with the feeling that we know nothing, and can hope for but
little. That her theories really cast a shadow over the world, may be seen
in all her dealings with love. Love is with her a human passion, deep,
pure, blessed. It crowns some of her characters with joy and peace and
strength; it is never impure and base in her pages. Yet it is human, it is
a social force, it is to be made altruistic. It never gains that high
poetic influence and charm which glorifies it in the writings of Mrs.
Browning, Browning and Tennyson. Browning conceives of it as an eternal
passion, as one with all that is divinest in man, as a medium of his
spiritual development. In his pages it glows with moral promise, it
inspires and regenerates. The poet should deal with love, not as a thing
base and susceptible of abuse, but as an influence capable of the most
beneficent results in the uplifting of man's nature. If it degrades, it
also sweetens; and only that is love which makes life richer and more
worthy. The true artist can afford to deal with that which pleases, not
with that which saddens and disgusts. The real love is the pure love, not
the depraved. The natural is the noble, not the debased life.

George Eliot's originality of method has given rise to a new school in
fiction. Her imitators, even when at their best, are not her equals, and
they have degraded her methods oftentimes to paltry uses. They have tried
to take photographs of life, supposing that art has for its aim to copy
nat