ups
is the word _respectable_. Adam Bede is pre-eminently a respectable
young man; so is Arthur Donnithorne; so, although he will persist in
going without a cravat, is Felix Holt. So, with perhaps the exception of
Maggie Tulliver and Stephen Guest, is every important character to be
found in our author's writings. They all share this fundamental
trait,--that in each of them passion proves itself feebler than
conscience.

The first work which made the name of George Eliot generally known,
contains, to my perception, only a small number of the germs of her
future power. From the "Scenes of Clerical Life" to "Adam Bede" she made
not so much a step as a leap. Of the three tales contained in the former
work, I think the first is much the best. It is short, broadly
descriptive, humorous, and exceedingly pathetic. "The Sad Fortunes of
the Reverend Amos Barton" are fortunes which clever storytellers with a
turn for pathos, from Oliver Goldsmith downward, have found of very good
account,--the fortunes of a hapless clergyman of the Church of England
in daily contention with the problem how upon eighty pounds a year to
support a wife and six children in all due ecclesiastical gentility.
"Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," the second of the tales in question, I cannot
hesitate to pronounce a failure. George Eliot's pictures of drawing-room
life are only interesting when they are linked or related to scenes in
the tavern parlor, the dairy, and the cottage. Mr. Gilfil's love-story
is enacted entirely in the drawing-room, and in consequence it is
singularly deficient in force and reality. Not that it is vulgar,--for
our author's good taste never forsakes her,--but it is thin, flat, and
trivial. But for a certain family likeness in the use of language and
the rhythm of the style, it would be hard to believe that these pages
are by the same hand as "Silas Marner." In "Janet's Repentance," the
last and longest of the three clerical stories, we return to middle
life,--the life represented by the Dodsons in "The Mill on the Floss."
The subject of this tale might almost be qualified by the French
epithet _scabreux_. It would be difficult for what is called _realism_,
to go further than in the adoption of a heroine stained with the vice of
intemperance. The theme is unpleasant; the author chose it at her peril.
It must be added, however, that Janet Dempster has many provocations.
Married to a brutal drunkard, she takes refuge in drink against his
il