he described so vividly, and loved so well, I find myself celebrating
in my own way the hundredth anniversary of the birth of George Eliot.
Lying open beside me on the garden-seat is a very well-worn copy of
_Janet's Repentance_. It has been read many times, and must be read
again to-day. For even those who cannot go as far as Dr. Marcus Dods in
pronouncing it 'one of the greatest religious books ever written' will
at least agree that in religious feeling, spiritual insight and
evangelical intensity, it is among the most noble and most notable of
our English classics. The pity of it is that, long before the book was
written, its brilliant authoress had drifted away from that simple and
majestic faith which she so tenderly portrays. Indeed, I have sometimes
fancied that she wrote of Janet with a great wistfulness in her heart.
She seems to have felt that if, in the straits of her soul, she had
found her storm-tossed spirit in communion with personalities like those
by whom Janet was surrounded in the day of her distress, her spiritual
pilgrimage might have been a sunnier one. But she drifted. No other word
will describe the process. Some powerful but sensitive minds, like that
of Goethe--with whose works she was so familiar--have been driven or
torn from their anchorage by some sudden and desolating calamity; but
with George Eliot it was quite otherwise. She was a gentle English girl,
born on a farm, and passionately attached to the quiet beauty of the
countryside. She delighted in the village green, the rectory garden, the
fields waving with golden buttercups, and the shady woods in which the
primroses twinkled. She loved to watch the poppies tossing in the corn,
the wind sweeping over the red sea of clover, and the hyacinths nodding
on the banks of the silvery stream. The smell of the hay and the song of
the birds and the life of the fields were her ceaseless satisfaction and
refreshment. Perhaps, as she wandered about those winding lanes and
lonely bridle-paths, she became too contemplative, too introspective,
too much addicted to the analysis of frames and feelings. Perhaps,
dwelling so exclusively on the abstract and the ideal, her fresh young
spirit became unfitted for its rude impact with the actual and the real.
Perhaps, too, she was unfortunate in respect of the particular specimens
of the evangelical faith that came under her notice. Perhaps! At any
rate, she came at length into daily contact with men and women, a