erything but a vague sense of jam and idleness._

"'O, you greedy thing!' said Tom, when she had swallowed the last
morsel."

The portions of the story which bear upon the Dodson family are in their
way not unworthy of Balzac; only that, while our author has treated its
peculiarities humorously, Balzac would have treated them seriously,
almost solemnly. We are reminded of him by the attempt to classify the
Dodsons socially in a scientific manner, and to accumulate small
examples of their idiosyncrasies. I do not mean to say that the
resemblance is very deep. The chief defect--indeed, the only serious
one--in "The Mill on the Floss" is its conclusion. Such a conclusion is
in itself assuredly not illegitimate, and there is nothing in the fact
of the flood, to my knowledge, essentially unnatural: what I object to
is its relation to the preceding part of the story. The story is told as
if it were destined to have, if not a strictly happy termination, at
least one within ordinary probabilities. As it stands, the _denouement_
shocks the reader most painfully. Nothing has prepared him for it; the
story does not move towards it; it casts no shadow before it. Did such a
_denouement_ lie within the author's intentions from the first, or was
it a tardy expedient for the solution of Maggie's difficulties? This
question the reader asks himself, but of course he asks it in vain. For
my part, although, as long as humanity is subject to floods and
earthquakes, I have no objection to see them made use of in novels, I
would in this particular case have infinitely preferred that Maggie
should have been left to her own devices. I understand the author's
scruples, and to a certain degree I respect them. A lonely spinsterhood
seemed but a dismal consummation of her generous life; and yet, as the
author conceives, it was unlikely that she would return to Stephen
Guest. I respect Maggie profoundly; but nevertheless I ask, Was this
after all so unlikely? I will not try to answer the question. I have
shown enough courage in asking it. But one thing is certain: a
_denouement_ by which Maggie should have called Stephen back would have
been extremely interesting, and would have had far more in its favor
than can be put to confusion by a mere exclamation of horror.

I have come to the end of my space without speaking of "Romola," which,
as the most important of George Eliot's works, I had kept in reserve. I
have only room to say that on the whole