s external circumstances have
contributed to bring about the result thus indicated; but on these it is
unnecessary to dwell. God's kingdom has lowered and narrowed itself into
his party. The spirit of the partisan has begun to overshadow the purity
of the patriot, to contract and abase the wide aim of the Christian; and
he has come to substitute a law of right modified to suit the interests
of the party, for that law which is absolute and unconditional. He whom
we listened to in the Duomo as the fervid proclaimer of God's justice,
stands now before us as the perverter of even human justice and human
law. The very nobleness of Bernardo del Nero strengthens the necessity
that he should die, that the Mediceans may be thus deprived of the
support of his stainless honour and high repute; though to compass this
death the law of mercy which Savonarola himself has instituted must be
put aside. As we listen to the miserable sophistries by which he strives
to justify himself--far less to Romola than before his own accusing
soul--we feel that the greatness of his strength has departed from him.
All thenceforth is deepening confusion without and within. Less and less
can he control the violences of his party, till these provoke all but
universal revolt, and the "Masque of the Furies" ends his public career.
The uncertainties and vacillations of the "Trial by Fire," the long
series of confessions and retractations, historically true, are still
more morally and spiritually significant. They tell of inward confusion
and perplexity, generated through that partial "self-pleasing" which,
under guise so insidious, had stolen into the inner life; of faith and
trust perturbed and obscured thereby; of dark doubts engendered whether
God had indeed ever spoken by him. We feel it is meet the great life
should close, not as that of the triumphant martyr, but amid the depths
of that self-renouncing penitence through which once more the soul
resumes its full relation to the divine.

* * * * *

We have now come to the one great poem George Eliot has as yet given to
the world, and which we have no hesitation in placing above every
poetical or poetico-dramatic work of the day--'The Spanish Gypsy.' Less
upon it than upon any of its predecessors can we attempt any general
criticism. Our attention must be confined mainly to two of the great
central figures of the drama--Fedalma herself, and Don Silva; the
representatives respectively of human