copy with a frankness, a grace, a gusto, a persistency of egoism, which are merely enchanting. Berlioz, therefore, had good warrant for his work. It is more to the point, perhaps, that he would have taken it if he had not had it. And I hold that he would have done well; for (in any case) a great man's notion of himself is, _ipso facto_, better and more agreeable and convincing, especially as he presents it, than the idea of his inferiors and admirers, especially as presented by them. Berlioz, it is true, was prodigal in these _Memoires_ of his of wit and fun and devilry, of fine humanity and noble art, of good things said and great things dreamed and done and suffered; but he was prodigal of invention and suppression as well, and the result, while considerably less veracious, is all the more fascinating, therefor. One feels that for one thing he was too complete an artist to be merely literal and exact; that for another he saw and felt things for himself, as Milton did before him--Milton in the mind's eye of Milton the noblest of created things and to Mr. Saintsbury almost as unpleasing a spectacle as the gifted but abject Racine; and for a third that from his own point of view he was right, and there is an end of it. GEORGE ELIOT The Ideal. It was thought that with George Eliot the Novel-with-a-Purpose had really come to be an adequate instrument for the regeneration of humanity. It was understood that Passion only survived to point a moral or provide the materials of an awful tale, while Duty, Kinship, Faith, were so far paramount as to govern Destiny and mould the world. A vague, decided flavour of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity was felt to pervade the moral universe, a chill but seemly halo of Golden Age was seen to play soberly about things in general. And it was with confidence anticipated that those perfect days were on the march when men and women would propose--(from the austerest motives)--by the aid of scientific terminology. The Real.