ssion. Of that her very nature is incapable. She is
influenced solely by resentment against her husband, and his failure to
fulfil her vain and self-absorbed dreams; by the hope that he will remove
her to a sphere which will give wider scope to her heartless selfishness,
and take her away from the social disappointments and humiliations into
which that selfishness has mainly plunged her. In every relation of life
near or far, important or trivial, amid all environments, under all
impulsion toward anything purer and better, Rosamond Vincy is ever the
same; as consistent and unvarying in her hard unwomanliness and
impenetrable, insistent self-seeking, as is Dorothea in every opposite
characteristic. And even while the picture in one way fascinates the
reader, it is the fascination of ever-increasing contempt and loathing
where the extremest charity can hardly even pity; and from it we ever
turn to that of St Theresa with the more intense refreshment alike of
mind and heart, and the deeper sense of its elevating and refining
influence.

Among the many clearly defined and vividly drawn portraits in this great
work, it would be easy, did space permit, to select others well worthy of
detailed examination, and illustrative of the salient aim and tendency of
all George Eliot's works. The homely yet beautiful family groups of the
Garths, Celia and Sir James Chettam, the Bulstrodes, {97} even the
wretched old Featherstone, and the crowd of vultures "waiting for death
around him," all more or less illustrate the fundamental principle of the
highest ethics--that self-abnegation is life, elevation, purity,
uplifting our humanity toward the Divine; that self-seeking and
self-isolation tend surely toward moral and spiritual death. Two,
however, stand out so delicately yet clearly defined and contrasting,
that they claim brief consideration before passing from this great
work--Lydgate and Farebrother.

The whole character and career of Lydgate are brought before us with the
skill of the consummate artist. At first he appears as a man of massive
and energetic proportions, of high professional impulses and aims,
resolute to carry these through against all difficulty and amid all
indifference and opposition, and apparently seeking through these aims
the general good of humanity--the alleviation of suffering, and the
arrestment, it may be, of death. But even then there are signs of
inherent weakness, and all but certain decline an