lents to
the English domestic novel, and by far the greatest female writer in
the language is undeniably George Eliot. Women almost invariably leave
the stamp of their sex upon their work. But George Eliot took and held
a man's position in literature from the outset of her career. It was
not that she was unfeminine. She brought to her work a woman's sympathy
and a woman's attention to detail. But in breadth of conception, in
comprehensiveness of thought, her mind was essentially masculine. Her
appreciation of varieties and shades of character was almost
Shakespearian. She could describe the self-indulgence of a Hetty Sorrel
leading to cruelty, and that of a Tito leading to treachery, with
perfect distinctness. She could enter into the generous aspirations of
a Savonarola, and the selfish desires of a Grandcourt, with equal
perspicuity. Her readers do not feel less familiar with the dull
barrenness of Casaubon than with the pregnant vivacity of Mrs. Poyser.
In the study of the inward workings of the human mind, George Eliot is
unsurpassed by any novelist. Thackeray alone can dispute her
pre-eminence in this respect. However much the reader may recoil from
the horror of Little Hetty's crime, he cannot deny that it follows as a
natural consequence. Although Dorothea's marriages are extremely
disappointing, the train of thought which led her to enter into them is
traced with unerring clearness.

An obstacle to the popularity of George Eliot's novels lies in the
slowness of their movement. The author's soliloquies, comments, and
reflections, which are so much valued by her especial admirers,
constantly interrupt the course of the narrative, and prove cumbersome
to such readers as enjoy a rapid, flowing story. But without these
interruptions, how much of George Eliot's best wisdom would be lost!
How many significant phrases would be lost from familiar language! The
commentaries of the authoress herself on the incidents of her tale give
her works a value which inclines us to take up her volumes again and
again, long after the stories themselves have become familiar. We never
weary of such sentences as the following from "Adam Bede": "There is no
despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our
first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have
suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope."
Not less beautiful and concentrated are those few words on woman's love
in "Mi