n easy solution for the difficulties
of the case at an earlier stage by marrying Stephen to Maggie, and
handing over Lucy (who is far too amiable to object to such a transfer)
to her admiring cousin Tom; while Philip, left in celibacy, might either
have been invested with a pathetic interest, or represented as justly
punished for the offence of forestalling. But George Eliot has higher
aims than ordinary novelists, and to her the transfer which we have
suggested would appear as a profanation. Her characters, therefore,
plunge into all manner of sacrifices of reputation and happiness; and it
is not until Maggie and Tom have been drowned, and Philip's whole life
embittered, that we catch a final view of Mr. Stephen Guest visiting the
grave of the brother and sister in company with the amiable wife, _nee_
Lucy Deane. If we are to accept the natural moral of this story, it
shows how coarse and immoral a very fastidious and ultra-refined
morality may become.

It is with reluctance that we go on to notice the religion of these
books; but since religion appears so largely in them, we must not
decline the task. To us, at least, the theory of the writer's "High-Church
tendencies" could never have appeared plausible; for even in the
"Scenes of Clerical Life" the chief religious personage is the
"evangelical" curate Mr. Tryan, and whatever good there is in his parish
is confined to the circle of his partisans and converts; while in "Adam
Bede" the Methodess preacheress, Dinah Morris, is intended to shine with
spotless and incomparable lustre. Yet, although the highest characters,
in a religious view, are drawn from "evangelicism" and Methodism, we
find that neither of these systems is set forth as enough to secure the
perfection of everybody who may choose to profess it....

Mr. Parry, although agreeing with Mr. Tryan in opinion, is represented
as no less unpopular and inefficient than Mr. Tryan was the reverse; and
the Reverend Amos Barton is a hopeless specimen of that variety of
"evangelical" clergymen to which the late Mr. Conybeare gave the name of
"low and slow,"--a variety which, we believe, flourishes chiefly in the
midland counties. On the other hand, Mr. Gilfil and Mr. Irwine,
clergymen of the "old school," are held up as objects for our respect
and love; and Mr. Irwine is not only vindicated by Adam Bede in his old
age, in comparison with his evangelical successor Mr. Ryde, but the
question between high and low church,