re scenes of a natural gospel of redemption and
salvation,--Hetty reached in her misery by the Christian love of Dinah,
Silas Marner won back to happiness by the little child, Gwendolen saved
from her selfishness through dire disaster and a strong man's help.

The prevailing atmosphere of George Eliot's later books is sad, and the
sadness deepens as they go on. A labored, over-strenuous tone increases;
the style loses in simplicity and is overburdened with reflection. The
note of struggle is everywhere present, and shuts out repose, freedom,
joy. The sensitive reader can hardly escape an undertone of
suggestion,--yes, life must be made the best of, but it seems scarcely
worth the cost. Is it the entire absence of any outlook beyond this life
which makes the gloom of the later works? Yet this seems only partially
to explain. One seeks inevitably the clew to the writing in the life.
George Eliot's story as a woman is an open one. She took as her life
companion a man who was legally united to another woman. Her
justification apparently was that they were suited to each other, and
that with the support of this mutual tie they could best do their work.
Stated in plain terms, the moral question involved seems hardly to admit
of any debate. There is no more vital point in social morality than the
relation of the sexes, and George Eliot's own teaching reverts most often
to this topic, and always with its emphasis on restraint. Her actual
course assumed that the established and accepted law of society may be
set aside by a man and woman upon their own judgment that their need of
each other is paramount to the social law. A position more contradictory
to her avowed principles could hardly be stated. It was no new claim of
immunity; it had been professed and preached, especially on the
Continent, with results patent to all, of the subversion of social
foundations; it marks the especial danger-point of a time of swiftly
changing standards. It is impossible not to feel that her course was a
precedent and example in flat contradiction of the teaching she so
assiduously gave. Doubtless she persuaded herself she was right, but
such persuasion must have involved, the most dangerous sophistication
which besets man in his groping struggle,--a claim by a leader for
exemption from the common obligation on the plea that his welfare (that
is, his comfort) is especially necessary for the good of mankind. As one
reads George Eliot