the living in the hearts and
minds of men, not personally hereafter among the redeemed To quote her
own fine thought,--

"Oh, may I join the choir invisible
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end in self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And, with their mild persistence, urge man's search
To vaster issues!"

Tito is a more natural character, good-natured, kind-hearted, with
generous impulses. He is interesting in spite of his faults; he is
accomplished, versatile, and brilliant. But he is inherently selfish,
and has no moral courage. He gradually, in his egotism, becomes utterly
false and treacherous, though not an ordinary villain. He is the
creature of circumstances. His weakness leads to falsehood, and
falsehood ends in crime; which crime pursues him with unrelenting
vengeance,--not the agonies of remorse, for he has no conscience, but
the vindictive and persevering hatred of his foster father, whom he
robbed. The vengeance of Baldassare is almost preternatural; it
surpasses the wrath of Achilles and the malignity of Shylock. It is the
wrath of a demon, from which there is no escape; it would be tragical if
the subject of it were greater. Though Tito perishes in an improbable
way, he is yet the victim of the inexorable law of human souls.

But if "Romola" has faults, it has remarkable excellences. In this book
George Eliot aspires to be a teacher of ethics and philosophy. She is
not humorous, but intensely serious and thoughtful. She sometimes
discourses like Epictetus:--

"And so, my Lillo," says she at the conclusion, "if you mean to act
nobly, and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of man,
you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen
to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something
lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and
escape what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it
would be a calamity falling on a base mind,--which is the one form of
sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It
would have been better for me if I had never been born.'"

Three years elapsed between the publication of "Romola" and that of
"Felix Holt," which shows to what a strain the mind of George Eliot had
been subjected in elaborating an historical novel. She now returns to
her