own peculiar field, in which her great successes had been made, and
with which she was familiar; and yet even in her own field we miss now
the genial humanity and inimitable humor of her earlier novels. In
"Felix Holt" she deals with social and political problems in regard to
which there is great difference of opinion; for the difficult questions
of political economy have not yet been solved. Felix Holt is a political
economist, but not a vulgar radical filled with discontent and envy. He
is a mechanic, tolerably educated, and able to converse with
intelligence on the projected reforms of the day, in cultivated
language. He is high-minded and conscientious, but unpractical, and gets
himself into difficulties, escaping penal servitude almost by miracle,
for the crime of homicide. The heroine, Esther Lyon, is supposed to be
the daughter of a Dissenting minister, who talks theology after the
fashion of the divines of the seventeenth century; unknown to herself,
however, she is really the daughter of the heir of large estates, and
ultimately becomes acknowledged as such, but gives up wealth and social
position to marry Felix Holt, who had made a vow of perpetual poverty.
Such a self-renunciation is not common in England. Even a Paula would
hardly have accepted such a lot; only one inspired with the philosophy
of Marcus Aurelius would be capable of such a willing sacrifice,--very
noble, but very improbable.

The most powerful part of the story is the description of the remorse
which so often accompanies an illicit love, as painted in the proud,
stately, stern, unbending, aristocratic Mrs. Transome. "Though youth has
faded, and joy is dead, and love has turned to loathing, yet memory,
like a relentless fury, pursues the gray-haired woman who hides within
her breast a heavy load of shame and dread." Illicit love is a common
subject with George Eliot; and it is always represented as a mistake or
crime, followed by a terrible retribution, sooner or later,--if not
outwardly, at least inwardly, in the sorrows of a wounded and
heavy-laden soul.

No one of George Eliot's novels opens more beautifully than "Felix
Holt," though there is the usual disappointment of readers with the
close. And probably no description of a rural district in the Midland
Counties fifty years ago has ever been painted which equals in graphic
power the opening chapter. The old coach turnpike, the roadside inns
brilliant with polished tankards, the pretty ba