on,--is very
beautiful, indeed, showing how love's divine elements can animate the
human soul in all conditions of life. In the fervid spiritualism of
Dinah's love for Adam we are reminded of a Saint Theresa seeking to be
united with her divine spouse. Dinah is a religious rhapsodist, seeking
wisdom and guidance in prayer; and the divine will is in accordance with
her desires. "My soul," said she to Adam, "is so knit to yours that it
is but a divided life if I live without you."

The most amusing and finely-drawn character in this novel is a secondary
one,--Mrs. Poyser,--but painted with a vividness which Scott never
excelled, and with a wealth of humor which Fielding never equalled. It
is the wit and humor which George Eliot has presented in this inimitable
character which make the book so attractive to the English, who enjoy
these more than the Americans,--the latter delighting rather in what is
grotesque and extravagant, like the elaborate absurdities of "Mark
Twain." But this humor is more than that of a shrewd and thrifty
English farmer's wife; it belongs to human nature. We have seen such
voluble sharp, sagacious, ironical, and worldly women among the
farm-houses of New England, and heard them use language, when excited or
indignant, equally idiomatic, though not particularly choice. Strike out
the humor of this novel and the interest we are made to feel in
commonplace people, and the story would not be a remarkable one.

"Adam Bede" was followed in a year by "The Mill on the Floss," the scene
of which is also laid in a country village, where are some well-to-do
people, mostly vulgar and uninteresting. This novel is to me more
powerful than the one which preceded it,--having more faults, perhaps,
but presenting more striking characters. As usual with George Eliot, her
plot in this story is poor, involving improbable incidents and
catastrophes. She is always unfortunate in her attempts to extricate her
heroes and heroines from entangling difficulties. Invention is not her
forte; she is weak when she departs from realistic figures. She is
strongest in what she has seen, not in what she imagines; and here she
is the opposite of Dickens, who paints from imagination. There was never
such a man as Pickwick or Barnaby Rudge. Sir Walter Scott created
characters,--like Jeannie Deans,--but they are as true to life as Sir
John Falstaff.

Maggie Tulliver is the heroine of this story, in whose intellectual
developments Geor