the movement of her stories, at the too obvious preachments of her rather overspun comments. Her heroes are perhaps rather apt to be muffs; it is the way with heroes of novels generally. Her plots might develop at greater speed; your novel of character rarely travels express. 'Here the story halts a little' might be written over many a page of Richardson and Fielding, of Miss Austen and Thackeray, but it is a part of their method and a necessary part. And the comments and discussion which cause these frequent halts, have they not a special appeal of their own, even if the appeal be somewhat alien to the art of the novel? And if George Eliot preaches, what admirable sermons she writes! The realistic writer cannot describe the life around him or her without indicating the attitude they take towards it. That very attitude is a preachment: Zola in L'Assommoir, Flaubert in Madame Bovary, are as powerful sermons as I know.
That part then of George Eliot's work which appealed more especially to the Zeitgeist is ineffective now that the Zeitgeist has changed. But how much remains that can never lose its effectiveness because it appeals to the ewige Geist of humanity. Her admirable peasants and parsons, her charming children, her scenery and her interiors, her wit and her wisdom, these are surely a possession for aye in the realm of English fiction. Whatever
