The narratives of the ‘Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton,’ of ‘Janet’s Repentance,’ and of ‘Mr. Gilfil’s Love-Story’--the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, in other words--impressed certain readers, and deserved to impress them; but not even the pathos of Mrs. Barton’s death would have given the writer lasting reputation had the book continued to stand alone. On re-perusal, the imperfections of its mechanism are too apparent; the novelist had not learned the art of proportion, nor the art of selection and rejection. Some little books, no bigger than the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, have been enough to secure for their authors an enduring fame. Nothing more than the _Vicar of Wakefield_ could have been required to keep Goldsmith’s memory green. Sterne, desiring to be immortal, was under no obligation to write anything more, after he had written the _Sentimental Journey_. But the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, admirably fresh and spontaneous as they were, gave no such position to their author. It was not a young woman, but it was a woman young in her art, who was at work in them. With _Adam Bede_ it was otherwise. _Adam Bede_, published about the beginning of 1859, was seen at once to be more than a touching, and more than a popular, story. It was an achievement of complete art, and had the power of complete art, ‘to teach a truth obliquely,’ nor ‘wrong the thought’--as Mr. Browning has subtly put it--‘nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word.’ It was at bottom a work of noble teaching. In it the novelist described with fidelity, but with poetic fidelity, scenes and characters the like of which she thoroughly knew; and the world recognised both the truth and the charm of the portrayal, and if it did not take to the young Squire, it took about equally to the two most strongly contrasted heroines that ever figured in one volume--to the preaching woman, Dinah Morris, with her exalted and patient spirit, and to the giddy Hetty, who had no virtue but the virtue of fascination.