sophy George Eliot is not of much
account. We question the richness of any moral wisdom which is not in
harmony with the truths that Christian people regard as fundamental, and
which they believe will save the world. In some respects she has taught
important lessons. She has illustrated the power of conscience and the
sacredness of duty. She was a great preacher of the doctrine that
"whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." She showed that
those who do not check and control the first departure from virtue will,
in nine cases out of ten, hopelessly fall.

These are great certitudes. But there are others which console and
encourage as well as intimidate. The _Te Domine Speravi_ of the dying
Xavier on the desolate island of Sancian, pierced through the clouds of
dreary blackness which enveloped the nations he sought to save.
Christianity is full of promises of exultant joy, and its firmest
believers are those whose lives are gilded with its divine radiance.
Surely, it is not intellectual or religious narrowness which causes us
to regret that so gifted a woman as George Eliot--so justly regarded as
one of the greatest ornaments of modern literature--should have drifted
away from the Rock which has resisted the storms and tempests of nearly
two thousand years, and abandoned, if she did not scorn, the faith which
has animated the great masters of thought from Augustine to Bossuet.
"The stern mournfulness which is produced by most of her novels gives us
the idea of one who does not know, or who has forgotten, that the stone
was rolled away from the heart of the world on the morning when Christ
arose from the tomb."

AUTHORITIES.

Miss Blind's Life of George Eliot. Mr. Cross's Life of George Eliot, I
regret to say, did not reach me until after the foregoing pages had gone
to press. But as this lecture is criticism rather than history, the few
additional facts that might have been gained would not be important;
while, after tracing in that _quasi_-autobiography the development of
her mental and moral nature, I see no reason to change my conclusions
based on the outward facts of her life and on her works. The Nineteenth
Century, ix.; London Quarterly Review, lvii. 40; Contemporary Review,
xx. 29, 39; The National Review, xxxi. 23, 16; Blackwood's Magazine,
cxxix. 85-100, 112, 116, 103; Edinburgh Review, ex. 144, 124, 137, 150;
Westminster Review, lxxi. 110, lxxxvi. 74, 80, 90, 112; Dublin Review,
xlvii. 88, 89; Cornh