a tale,' they are certainly intended to 'point a moral.' Throughout George Eliot's literary career ethical interests have been predominant. With her the novel has been morality teaching by example. But hitherto she has been content with the subtle insinuation of the artist, and has left alone the direct assault of the preacher; she has given texts, not sermons. But in her last book there is rather too much direct preaching; it might be a little hard, but it would not be altogether untrue, to call the Impressions skeleton sermons. Even from the ethical point of view the result is unsatisfactory; how much less effective a lesson is taught by Mixtus than by Lydgate in Middlemarch, though this is partly due to necessarily lighter treatment. With the character of her teaching every one is now familiar. Subordinate yourself to the social organism, suppress self; this is her ever-recurring cry. All honour to the nobleness and purity of the teaching. After all, that is the characteristic which raises this book above all other descriptions of 'characters,' from the second book of Aristotle's Rhetoric to La Bruyère; but it comes too often to the surface, is pressed too markedly upon our notice.
Nowhere does the inferior effectiveness of the intellectual as compared with the artistic treatment of a subject come into greater
