and quite as truly realized.
Both Mr. Lyon and his daughter are capitally drawn and the
motive of the novel--to teach Felix that he can be quite as true
to his cause if he be less rough and eccentric in dress and
deportment, is a good one handled with success. To which may be
added that the encircling theme of Mrs. Transome's mystery,
grips the attention from the start and there is pleasure when it
is seen to involve Esther, leading her to make a choice which
reveals that she has awakened to a truer valuation of life--and
of Felix. With all these things in its favor, why has
appreciation been so scant?

Is it not that continually in the narrative you lose its broader
human interest because of the narrower political and social
questions that are raised? They are vital questions, but still,
more specific, technical, of the time. Nor is their weaving into
the more permanent theme altogether skilful: you feel like
exclaiming to the novelist: "O, let Kingsley handle chartism,
but do you stick to your last--love and its criss-cross, family
sin and its outcome, character changed as life comes to be more
vitally realized." George Eliot in this fine story falls into
this mistake, as does Mrs. Humphry Ward in her well-remembered
"Robert Elsmere," and as she has again in the novel which
happens to be her latest as these words are written, "Marriage a
la Mode." The thesis has a way of sticking out obtrusively in
such efforts.

Many readers may not feel this in "Felix Holt," which, whatever
its shortcomings, remains an extremely able and interesting
novel, often underestimated. Still, I imagine a genuine
distinction has been made with regard to it.

The difference is more definitely felt in "Middlemarch," not
infrequently called Eliot's masterpiece. It appeared five years
later and the author was over fifty when the book was published
serially during 1871 and 1872. Nearly four years were spent in
the work of composition: for it the sum of $60,000 was paid.

"Middlemarch," which resembles Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" in
telling two stories not closely related, seems less a Novel than
a chronicle-history of two families. It is important to remember
that its two parts were conceived as independent; their welding,
to call it such, was an afterthought. The tempo again, suiting
the style of fiction, is leisurely: character study, character
contrast, is the principal aim. More definitely, the marriage
problem, illustrated by Dorothea'