the solidity of her work is the character of Savonarola. She possibly under-estimates the infusion of artifice in the prophecies, but no historian has held more firmly the not very evident answer to the question how a man who denounced the Pope as fiercely as Luther, who was excommunicated and consigned to death by Rome, should nevertheless have left such a reputation behind him that, within eleven years of his execution, Julius the Second declared him a true martyr, and was willing to canonise him ; that Paul the Third suspected any man who should venture to accuse him ; that he was honoured among the saints in the liturgy of his Order. The answer is that Savonarola assailed the intruder, not the institution. He was no reformer of the prerogative, and would have committed full powers to a pontiff of his choice. He upheld the Papal authority against the usurper of the Papacy. Three false Popes were once upon a time removed to make way for Clement the Third, for the same reason for which Savonarola deemed Alexander an illegitimate pretender, who ought to be made to yield his place to a better man.
The essential articles of George Eliot's creed were the fruit of so much preceding study that she impresses us less than some other writers by originality in the common sense of invention. She was anxious to make it known that her abiding opinions were formed before she settled in London. Mr. Spencer confirms the claim, and it is proved by her first paper in the Westminster Review. The doctrine that neither contrition nor sacrifice can appease Nemesis, or avert the consequences of our wrong-doing from ourselves and others, filled a very large space indeed in her scheme of life and literature. From the bare diagram of Brother Jacob to the profound and finished picture of Middlemarch, retribution is the constant theme and motive for her art. It helped to determine her religious attitude, for it is only partly true that want of evidence was her only objection to Christianity. She was firmly persuaded that the postponement of the reckoning blunts the edge of remorse, and that repentance,
