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rest of the book hurries through nearly two years before Adam is united to Dinah. This attention to characterisation has exercised a somewhat deleterious effect on her plots; so long as we know what her characters are and have become,, it does not so much matter what becomes of them. Hence the frequent resource to the Deus ex machinâ of sudden death; it is astonishing how many of her characters are snatched from our view in this way. Death by drowning seems to be the favourite method: Dunstan Cass, Tom and Maggie Tulliver, Tito Melema, Grandcourt, all disappear in this abrupt way. It would be unjust to pass from this aspect of her work without a word of praise to her admirable range of power, and to the marvellous ability she possessed of giving life to her minor characters. The moral earnestness of her work is another prominent 'note.' With her the novel was morality teaching by example. And the teaching was of an unusually lofty character. Renunciation of self, subordination to the social life, were the great texts. Egoism is the canker of the soul: Hetty, Tito Melema, Grandcourt, are prominent examples. Still more noteworthy is the terrible example of the crippling of another's life by one's egoism, as in Rosamund Vincy and Lydgate, to whom Casaubon and Doro-