he sight of these great
passions within the small frame, the small will, and, in a word, the
small nature. When a large and sombre fate befalls a little nature, and
the stage is too narrow for the action of a tragedy, the disproportion
has sometimes made a mute and unexpressed history of actual life or
sometimes a famous book; it is the manifest core of George Eliot's story
of _Adam Bede_, where the suffering of Hetty is, as it were, the eye of
the storm. All is expressive around her, but she is hardly articulate;
the book is full of words--preachings, speeches, daily talk, aphorisms,
but a space of silence remains about her in the midst of the story. And
the disproportion of passion--the inner disproportion--is at least as
tragic as that disproportion of fate and action; it is less intelligible,
and leads into the intricacies of nature which are more difficult than
the turn of events.

It seems, then, that this passionate play is acted within the narrow
limits of a child's nature far oftener than in those of an adult and
finally formed nature. And this, evidently, because there is unequal
force at work within a child, unequal growth and a jostling of powers and
energies that are hurrying to their development and pressing for exercise
and life. It is this helpless inequality--this untimeliness--that makes
the guileless comedy mingling with the tragedies of a poor child's day.
He knows thus much--that life is troubled around him and that the fates
are strong. He implicitly confesses "the strong hours" of antique song.
This same boy--the tempestuous child of passion and revolt--went out with
quiet cheerfulness for a walk lately, saying as his cap was put on, "Now,
mother, you are going to have a little peace." This way of accepting his
own conditions is shared by a sister, a very little older, who, being of
an equal and gentle temper, indisposed to violence of every kind and
tender to all without disquiet, observes the boy's brief frenzies as a
citizen observes the climate. She knows the signs quite well and can at
any time give the explanation of some particular outburst, but without
any attempt to go in search of further or more original causes. Still
less is she moved by the virtuous indignation that is the least charming
of the ways of some little girls. _Elle ne fait que constater_.
Her equanimity has never been overset by the wildest of his moments, and
she has witnessed them all. It is needless to say tha