her wrongs, the 'stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and broadening around.' 'What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest centre of quivering life in the water drop—hidden and uncared for as the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought food, and has found the nest torn and empty.' It is this constant reference, tacit or express, suggested by pathetic touches, and by humorous exhibition of the incongruities and contrasts of the little drama of village life to the outer world beyond, and to the wider universe in which it too is an atom, that distinctly raises George Eliot above the level of many merely picturesque descriptions of similar scenes. We feel that the artist is at an intellectual elevation high enough to be beyond the illusions of the city fashion; but the singular charm springs out of the tender affection which reproduces the little world left so far behind and hallowed by the romance of early association. George Eliot's own view of the matter is given in more than one of these objectionable 'asides' of which we have had to speak. She entreats us to try to see the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, to be found in the experience of poor dingy Amos Barton. She rarely looks, she says, at 'a bent old man or a wizened old woman' without seeing 'the past of which they are the shrunken remnant; and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden scenes and fair perspectives overturned and thrust out of sight.' To reflect that we ought to see wizened old men and women with such eyes is of course easy enough; to have such eyes—really to see what we know that we ought to see—is to possess true genius. George Eliot is not laying down a philosophical maxim to be proved and illustrated, but is attempting to express the animating principle of a labour of love. Mr. Gilfil, the person who suggests this remark, is the embodiment of the abstract principle, and makes us feel that it is no empty profession. Everybody has noticed how admirably George Eliot has portrayed certain phases of religious feeling with which, in one sense, she had long ceased to sympathise. Amongst subsidiary actors in her stories, none are more tenderly and lovingly touched than the old-fashioned parsons and Dissenting preachers—Barton and Gilfil and Tryan, and Irwin and Dinah Morris in 'Adam Bede,' and Mr. Lyon in 'Felix Holt.' I do not know that they or their successors would have much call to be grateful. For, in truth, it is plain enough that the interest is in the kindly old-fashioned parson, considered as a valuable factor