in the social system, and that his creed is not taken to be the source of his strength; whilst the few Methodists and the brethren in Lantern Yard are regarded as attaining a very imperfect and stammering version of truths capable of being very completely dissevered from their dogmatic teaching. In any case, her breach with the creed of her youth involved no breach of the ties formed by early reverence for its representatives. The change involved none of the bitterness which is sometimes generated by a spiritual revolt. Dickens—who is sometimes supposed to represent the version of modern Christianity—could apparently see nothing in a Dissenting preacher but an unctuous and sensual hypocrite—a vulgarised Tartufe such as Stiggins and Chadband. If George Eliot had been the mere didactic preacher of mere critics, she might have set before us mere portraits of spiritual pride or clerical charlatanism. But whatever her creed, she was too deep a humourist, too thoughtful and too tender, to fall into such an error. She never sinned against the 'natural piety' which should bind our days together. The tender regard which she had retained for all the surroundings of her youth did not fail towards those whose teaching had once roused her reverence, and which could never become the objects of indiscriminate antipathy. In this one may perhaps say George Eliot was a true woman. Women, indeed, can be fully as bitter in their resentment as the harsher sex; but their bitterness seems to be generated in the attempt to outdo their masculine rivals, and to imply perverted rather than deficient sensibility. They seldom exhibit pachydermatous indifference to their neighbour's emotions. The so-called masculine quality in George Eliot—her wide and calm intelligence—was certainly combined with a thoroughly feminine nature; and the more one reads her books and notes her real triumphs, the more strongly this comes out. The poetry and pathos which she seeks to reveal under commonplace surroundings is found chiefly in feminine hearts. Each of the early books is the record of an ordeal endured by some suffering woman. In the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' the interest really centres in the women whose fate is bound up with the acts of the clerical heroes; it is Janet and Molly Barton in whom we are really interested; and if poor little Tina is too weak to be a heroine, her vigorous struggle against the destinies is the pivot of the story. That George Eliot succeeded remarkably in some male portraits, and notably in Tom Tulliver, is undeniable. Yet the men were often simply women in disguise. The piquancy, for example, of the famous character of Tito is greatly due to the fact that he is the voluptuous, selfish, but sensitive character, not unfamiliar in the fiction which deals with social intrigues, but generally presented to us in feminine costume. We are told of Daniel Deronda, upon whose character an extraordinary amount