no temptation of wit or humor, no impulse of sympathy or antipathy, is allowed to exaggerate or obscure a single trait of their natures; and the mirror the author holds up to them reflects their mental and moral lineaments so exactly that each of them would, in a moment of pleased or vexed surprise, wonderingly admit the accuracy of the likeness.

Should we, therefore, confine our attention merely to such persons as we have named, the book might properly be considered as a remarkable one; for characterization of such nicety, fairness, truth, and strength is an exceptional gift, and a more exceptional virtue, among the novelists of the time. But, in this praise, we have not touched the heart of the book, or named the characters which should justly give it a prominent position among the great novels of the century. Still, let us first quote a few examples of George Eliot's power in describing, characterizing, and satirizing some of the aspects of English life. The opening chapter of the book places us as spectators in one of the fashionable gambling-hells of Germany, one of those splendid resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared" for this species of pleasure "at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned color, and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy,- forming a suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion." Can anything exceed the penetrating force of this satire? The foul air of the gamblingroom, which makes those who breathe it physically sick, has still the grand recommendation of being the condensation of all the breaths of all the people of fashion therein congregated, and therefore gives a kind of gentility to every plebeian who has the good fortune to inhale it! Again, how many persons are hit in this description of Mr. Vandernoodt, a diner-out welcome in every society: "He was an industrious gleaner of personal details, and could probably tell everything about a great philosopher or physicist except his theories or discoveries." As to scholarship, this gentleman professes his contempt for those "Dryasdust fellows, who get a reputation by raking up some small scandal about Semiramis or Nitocris. . . I like to know the manners of my time, contemporary gossip, not antediluvian. . . . . I don't care a straw about the faux pas of the mummies." The picture of the Meyrick family is

probably as felicitous as anything that the author has ever done in what some people deem her limited sphere of characterization. Both the reality and the lovableness of the mother and her daughters are so startlingly true that we can hardly resist the impression, as we read, that they are among our valued personal friends and acquaintances. The account of their reception of Mirah, when Deronda, after rescuing her from suicide, brings her to their perfect home, and the scene in which Herr Klesmer appears to pass judgment on Mirah's musical capacity, are admirable illustrations of the writer's power of giving lifelike reality to what she sympathetically depicts. It is odd that such a mother, shrewd, kindhearted, and practical, should have for a son such an eccentric, tempestuous, and scatter-brained personage as Hans Meyrick,an artist of "irregular" genius, subject to fits of incalculable caprice, yet commonly held within bounds by his affectionateness, and distinguished from the Bohemian of Balzac by a restraining British constitution of nature. He is one of the most marked among the minor characters of the novel, radiant in humor, and good-humor, and never knowing what he will say or do a moment beforehand. Deronda objects to Agrippa's legs, in one of his historical pictures. Hans replies that they are good realistically. "But they are impossible legs," urges Deronda. "Then," Hans retorts, "they are good ideally. Agrippa's legs were possibly bad; I idealize that and make them impossibly bad. Art, my Eugenius, must intensify." It is hopeless to caution him against the effects of his sudden impulses. "Since," he says, "I got into the scrape of being born, everything I have liked best has been a scrape for myself or for somebody else. My painting is the last scrape; and I shall be all my life getting out of it." When Deronda assures him that Mirah can, under no conceivable circumstances, marry him, the half-grave, half-merry egotist is not a bit abashed. "I go," he declares, "to science and philosophy for my romance. Nature designed Mirah to fall in love with me. The amalgamation of races demands it, the mitigation of human ugliness demands it, the affinity of contrasts assures it. I am the utmost contrast to Mirah, -- a bleached Christian, who can't sing two notes in tune. Who has a chance against me?"

A character almost as picturesque as Hans is Herr Klesmer, "a felicitous combination of the German, the Sclave, and the Semite,

with grand features, brown hair floating in artistic fashion, and brown eyes in spectacles," one of those forcible men who hold their right rank in well-dressed, well-bred conventional society, though their clothes never fit them, and though their manners have a brusqueness which is ever in danger of violating the conventional rules of good breeding. As an artist who has identified himself with his art, his imperiousness of demeanor and emphasis of speech seem to spring from his feeling of the dignity of the art he represents, rather than from any arrogance of personal disposition. In all matters regarding music he speaks with that dogmatism which is based on certain knowledge; what Mrs. Gamp calls "the torters of the Imposition" could not wring from him a polite compliment to a mediocre performance; and Gwendolen's beauty, on his first introduction to her, only forced from his gallantry the equivocal praise, "It is always acceptable to see you sing!" Nothing can be better than his retort on Mr. Bult,—the "political platitudinarian," whose "monumental obtuseness" he hated as the awkward mimicry of the dignity of a gentleman, when that wooden politician patronizingly informed him that he was sure he had too much talent to be "a mere musician." "No man," replied Klesmer, "has too much talent to be a musician. Most men have too little. A creative artist is no more a mere musician than a great statesman is a mere politician. We are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box and look out on the world only when it is gaping for amusement. We help to rule the nations and make the age as much as any other public. We count ourselves on level benches with legislators. And a man who speaks effectively through music is compelled to something more difficult than parliamentary eloquence." Mr. Bult's only resource is to turn to Miss Arrowpoint, and, with undiminished gravity to remark, "Your pianist does not think small beer of himself." But the great musician's whole soul comes out only in his interview with Gwendolen, when she desires to learn his judgment as to her capacity to succeed in public as an actress and singer. The emotions which are stirred during the conversation give all the more emphasis to the thoughts which it elicits. The interview is strictly an event in the progress of the story, for Gwendolen's fate depends on Herr Klesmer's decision; but the principles of art announced in it apply to hundreds of other cases, which resemble Gwendolen's only

in the one particular need of converting a means of elegant amusement into a source of income. Fortune enables a great number of young women to acquire sufficient training in music to sing and play acceptably in drawing-rooms, and sufficient training in elocution to win applause in private theatricals; and when a reverse of fortune occurs they are commonly smitten with Gwendolen's ambition to be singers in public concert-rooms and actresses on the public stage. It seems to them easy to win applause from the sensitive, vulgar public, after the fastidious critics of the drawingroom, persons notoriously existing in a constant state of semiboredom, have condescended to confess, in that fashionable drawl which is the happiest of all developments from the imbecility of the baby's drool, that they have been quickened and inspired by what they have listlessly seen or yawningly heard. But the moment the public is faced, the amateur is made cruelly conscious of the difference between the criticism of parlors and the criticism of theatres. The very persons who would have considered an invitation to the private entertainment as a compliment deserving of any number of compliments in return, become the bitterest critics of the public exhibition; and those fashionable friends who delighted in the performances of the opulent amateur are not wont to buy tickets for the benefit night of the unsuccessful actress. Herr Klesmer unveils to Gwendolen the austere facts of the profession which her self-confidence impels her to choose as a means of recovering fortune. The gods," he declares, “have a curse for him who willingly tells another the wrong road"; and then, full of remorseful pity and tenderness for the beautiful creature whose expectations he must disappoint, proceeds to unfold those inexorable laws by which alone success in any of the fine arts can be attained. In the course of a hurried conversation, broken now by pauses and now by outbursts of passion, a true philosophy of art is evolved. That conversation, indeed, is a text-book for all amateurs who aspire to be artists; and if diligently studied will serve both as a guard against the delusions of self-esteem, and as a guide in the paths which lead to excellence.

"

It would be easy to go on enumerating the minor details of incident, character, and reflection which contribute to make the appearance of this book a literary event. But there are four characters which stand out from the rest with such a stamp of power and

originality on them that they impress the least thoughtful reader as altogether beyond the ken and grasp even of such novelists as Dickens and Thackeray. These are Gwendolen Harleth, Daniel Deronda, Mirah, and Mordecai.

Gwendolen is a masterpiece of characterization. The conception, delineation, and development of this specimen of haughty maidenhood are alike admirable. Many novelists create characters; but few, like George Eliot, create souls as well as characters; and the soul which she creates, embodies, and calls by the name of Gwendolen Harleth, she also constantly watches, so that the reader is allowed to note all that throng of interior emotions, thoughts, volitions, and events which precede outward acts, whether the acts be comparatively unimportant or absolutely momentous. As the beholder as well as creator of this soul, she never seems to lose sight of it, either by day in its conscious feeling and thinking, or by night in its vague fears and perturbing dreams. The scrutiny is as relentless as that of a naturalist who has a jelly-fish under his microscope, and as tenderly considerate as that of a mother who holds her new-born babe in her arms. While freely handling this palpitating mass of spiritual life, her touch is so delicate as never to inflict a bruise. And during all the time that the soul is subjected to this intense imaginative observation and analysis, the bodily presence animated by the soul is as vividly apparent to the external eye as is the invisible, mysterious essence within it to the eye of the mind. This is assuredly masterly characterization; but the statement still does not cover the whole ground. Gwendolen is not only thus made spiritually and physically alive, but the outlying social and spiritual laws she obeys or violates are discerned with the same sureness of insight which penetrates into the depths and records all the changes of her individual being.

It is an indication of George Eliot's skill that from the first she connects Gwendolen's self-assertion and self-confidence with perfect bodily health. Nature teaches humility by deranging digestion as well as by heaping up impediments to the schemes of pride; in both cases humility comes from the perception that the inward power is weak before the outward obstacle; but up to the time that a banker's knavery had made wreck of her mother's fortune, Gwendolen had encountered nothing that was stronger than her own determination. Exulting in her health, her beauty,