ddlemarch":--"Those childlike caresses which are the bent of
every sweet woman, who has begun by showering kisses on the hard pate
of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within that woodenness from the
wealth of her own love."

A faculty which George Eliot possessed in common with Dickens and
Thackeray was that of making very ordinary people interesting. And this
is a talent characteristic of the best minds which have contributed to
fiction or the drama. Shakespeare possessed it in a high degree, and
the best creations of Scott are ordinary, unheroic persons. The faculty
arises from superior powers of observation. Some people will take a
walk through a picturesque country or a crowded city without having
seen any thing worthy of remark. Others will pass over the same
ground, and return overflowing with description. In the same manner,
the great number of men and women pass through life finding every thing
commonplace, and the observing sympathy of a Thackeray, a Miss Austen,
or a George Eliot is necessary to light up the unnoticed figures which
throng the path. George Eliot is particularly happy in drawing a really
ordinary person, especially when a little pretension is added. She must
have written Mr. Brooke's opinion of women with true enjoyment: "There
is a lightness about the feminine mind--a touch and go--music, the fine
arts, that kind of thing--they should study those up to a certain
point, women should; but in a light way, you know." But though Mrs.
Poyser be humble, she is far from ordinary. "Some folks' tongues," she
says, "are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time
o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside."

So long as George Eliot confined herself to her own sphere of action,
she exhibited the same remarkable powers. But even her great name could
not command admiration for "The Spanish Gypsy." Her limitations clearly
appeared in "Daniel Deronda." When describing the characters and
intercourse of Grandcourt and Gwendolen, when dealing with every thing
English in that variously estimated work, she remained the great author
of "Adam Bede" and "Silas Marner." But in undertaking the discussion of
the religion and social position of the Jews, she mistook her own
talents, and created in Daniel Deronda, an indefinite combination of
virtues unworthy of her genius.

We have now noticed fifteen women, from Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen
to George Eliot, who have contrib