to find a woman, George Eliot, departing utterly out of that mood of hate or even of acidulous satire in which Thackeray so often worked, and in which, one may add, the world is seldom benefited, however skillful the work may be, departing from all that, deftly painting for us these pathetic Milly Bartons, and Mr. Gilfils, and Janet Dempsters, and Rev. Tryans, and arranging the whole into a picture which becomes epic because it is filled with the struggles of human personalities, dressed in whatever russet garb of clothing or of circumstances. Those who were at my first lecture on George Eliot will remember that we found the editor of _Blackwood's Magazine_ on a certain autumn night in 1856, reading part of the MS. of _Amos Barton_, in his drawing-room to Thackeray, and remarking to Thackeray, who had just come in late from dinner, that he had come upon a new author who seemed uncommonly like a first-class passenger; it is significantly related that Thackeray said nothing, and evinced no further interest in it than civilly to say, sometime afterward, that he would have liked to hear more of it. In the light of the contrast I have just drawn, Thackeray's failure to be impressed seems natural enough, and becomes indeed all the more impressive, when we compare it with the enthusiastic praise which Charles Dickens lavished upon this same work in the letter which you will remember I read from him. And here I come upon a further contrast between George Eliot and Dickens which I should be glad now to bring out as clearly appearing in these first three _Scenes from Clerical Life_ before _Adam Bede_ was written. This is her exquisite modernness in that intense feeling for personality, which I developed with so much care in my first six lectures, and her exquisite scientific precision in placing the personalities or characters of her works before the reader.