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GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE
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more in the presence of death ; and neither of them could be taxed with thraldom to the formulas of preceding divines. George Eliot disregards their existence. At Heidelberg she passes before Rothe's house without alluding to his name. Although she knew and highly valued M. Scherer, she did not remember that he was the friend of Vinet, or that the history of his opinions is as remarkable as anything to be found in the Apologia or told in her own biography.

There are marks of a wound inflicted by Warwickshire pride, which would not heal. She knew how to construct an unseen creature from scanty materials, but the divination is more true, the touch more sure in dealing with classes that subsist for profit than with the class that subsists for pleasure. Having met some friends of Cavour on the Lake of Geneva, she declares that there is nothing but their language and their geniality and politeness to distinguish them from the best English families. The lawyer who on the opening day of the Rugeley trial pronounced Palmer a dead man, "John Campbell was so infernally polite," used an argument of which the author of Romola would have admitted the force. Long retirement prepared her to suspect a snare in conventional gentility, as if company manners concealed a defect of genuine humanity and served to keep classes apart. She would not have assented to the definition of a gentleman that he is one who will bear pain rather than inflict it. This is the angle at which a faint echo of Carlyle strikes the ear. She pursues with implacable vengeance the easy and agreeable Tito. Her chosen hero goes bare-necked and treads on corns. She will not see that Harold Transome is a brute, and salves over his inconsiderate rudeness by asserting, in parabasis, his generosity and goodness of heart. Garth, who might have sent in his resignation by post, prefers an interview which compels a cruel explanation. No rumours preserved in a family of land agents could justify the picture of Grandcourt ; but his odiousness is requisite in order to contrast the wife's momentary flash of guilty delectation when he goes over-