which is by far the best feature of a good novel—thorough appreciation of the deeper meaning of human life, of the divine laws which underlie, and penetrate, and overshadow, human experience. It would not be easy to name anything written since Shakespeare and Milton more thoroughly alive with great moral passion, more instinct with the consciousness that righteousness is the soul of the Universe, than George Eliot's sketches of human life as we have them in her novels. She is a preacher greater than any in the Established pulpits of England, and will be remembered and read after men shall have ceased to preserve the recollections of the discussions and controversies which now fill the English ecclesiastical State.”
George Wm. Curtis says of her that, "for all the higher qualities of the story-teller; for sustained imagination, insight, knowledge, and exquisite skill of narration—the woman who writes under the name of George Eliot is the master of all living men.”
