on the Floss." It sustained the reputation which Adam Bede had won for her, but did not enhance it. The title first given to the work was "Sister Maggie," but this was afterwards discarded as not being sufficiently distinctive, and the title which it now bears was suggested by the editor of Blackwood.
In the description of Maggie Tulliver, and, more especially, in the awakening and development of her religious nature, George Eliot spoke from the heart. Many of Maggie's struggles, failures, and triumphs were her own. It is well known that, in her early youth, she was deeply religious, perhaps even morbidly so. She spent much of her time in prayer and tears; and she did not escape into a healthy clearness of view until she came under the influence of her friends, the Brays. The "Imitation of Christ" of Thomas à Kempis, which plays so important a part in the novel, was one of her own favorite books; and she has given us few more touching pictures than that of poor, untaught, passionate Maggie Tulliver poring over the little worn volume with the faded pen marks running along its leaves, where some one else before her had sought and found comfort; she now reading "where the quiet hand pointed."
"Silas Marner," which many consider the most perfect of all her works, and the noblest of all fictions, came after "The Mill on the Floss." Romola, that wonderful living picture of ancient Florence, followed; then, after three years, "Felix Holt;" then, after a longer pause of five years, "Middlemarch;" then Daniel Deronda, her last novel, and finally the little volume of sketches, entitled, "Theophrastus Such." The Spanish Gypsy and other poems, beside one or two short stories, formed an interlude between the periods of her more extended labors.
Among the few letters of George Eliot which have been printed since her death, there are two or three
