of The Mill on the Floss destroys the almost perfect 'artistry' of the story of Tom and Maggie Tulliver. Middlemarch remains, and as 'a study in provincial life' is complete; yet the deficiencies in the plot and a certain undercurrent of social protest counterbalance its other advantages, and the palm is left to George Eliot's first and probably greatest work. The subject of Adam Bede required extreme delicacy of treatment; but all such requirements are satisfied. The shallowness of Hetty's character removes from her that sympathy which would otherwise render her fate too sad for the imagination; but her history illustrates the lesson which all these novels were consciously made to teach. They aided the great work of Wordsworth in educating the emotions to sympathise with the fundamental joys and sorrows of human life in all social spheres. And in the fine words of Wordsworth about his own works, 'They will co-operate with the benign tendencies in nature and society, and will, in their degree, be efficacious in making men wiser, better, and happier.'
The remaining novels, Romola, The Spanish Gypsy (apart from its unfortunate form), and Daniel Deronda, deal with an entirely different range of interests. They are romances of the historic imagination, consciously creative in-
