The local exactness of George Eliot's descriptions is another evidence of her realism. "It is not unlikely," suggests Mr. Kegan Paul, "that the time will come when with one or other of her books in their hand, people will wander among the scenes of George Eliot's early youth, and trace each allusion, as they are wont to do at Abbotsford or Newstead, and they will recognize the photographic minuteness and accuracy with which these scenes, so long unvisited, had stamped themselves on the mind of the observant girl." The historical setting of her novels is also faithful in even minute details. The time of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is at the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and it well describes the country customs of the earlier years of the present century. _Adam Bede_ describes the first decade of the present century, while _Silas Marner_ is a little later. With "Amos Barton," and _The Mill on the Floss_ we are in the second decade of the century, before hand-looms had gone out or railroads had come in. She has a fondness for these days of rustic simplicity, quiet habits and homely disingenuousness, and she more than once expresses a doubt if much has been gained by the introduction of machinery, suffrage and culture. She regrets that-- Human advancement has no moments when conservative reforming intellect takes a nap, while imagination does a little toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear old brown, crumbling, picturesque inefficiency is everywhere giving place to sick-and-span, new-painted, new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, elevations and sections; but, alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional tenderness for old abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades of vulgar errors. [Footnote: Amos Barton, chapter I.] In _Adam Bede_, when describing a leisurely walk home from church in the good old days, she bursts out again into enthusiastic praise of the time before there was so much advancement and culture.