f composition, no discourse, or
essay, or series of independent sketches, however successful, could
succeed in bringing out character equal to the novel. Herein is at once
the justification of the power of fiction. "He spake a parable," with an
"end" in view which could not be so expeditiously attained by any other
form of address.

A story of the first-class, with the story as end in itself, and a story
of the first class told as a means to an end, has never been, and it is
not likely ever will be, found together. The novel with a purpose is
fatal to the novel written simply to excite by a plot, or divert by
pictures of scenery, or entertain as a mere panorama of social life. So
intense is George Eliot's desire to dissect the human heart and discover
its motives, that plot, diction, situations, and even consistency in the
vocabulary of the characters, are all made subservient to it. With her
it is not so much that the characters do thus and so, but why they do
thus and so. Dickens portrays the behavior, George Eliot dissects the
motive of the behavior. Here comes the human creature, says Dickens, now
let us see how he will behave. Here comes the human creature, says
George Eliot, now let us see why he behaves.

"Suppose," she says, "suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to
wonder with keener interest what is the report of his own consciousness
about his doings, with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily
labors, and with what spirit he wrestles against universal pressure,
which may one day be too heavy for him and bring his heart to a final
pause." The outside estimate is the work of Dickens and Thackeray, the
inside estimate is the work of George Eliot.

Observe in the opening pages of the great novel of "Middlemarch" how soon
we pass from the outside dress to the inside reasons for it, from the
costume to the motives which control it and color it. It was "only to
close observers that Celia's dress differed from her sister's," and had
"a shade of coquetry in its arrangements." Dorothea's "plain dressing
was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared." They
were both influenced by "the pride of being ladies," of belonging to a
stock not exactly aristocratic, but unquestionably "good." The very
quotation of the word good is significant and suggestive. There were "no
parcel-tying forefathers" in the Brooke pedigree. A Puritan forefather,
"who served under Cromwell, but af