was from 1856, the date of her
first stories, down to 1876, when she wrote, not under her brightest
star, her last novel of _Daniel Deronda_. During this time the great
literary influences of the epoch immediately preceding had not indeed
fallen silent, but the most fruitful seed had been sown. Carlyle's
_Sartor_ (1833-1834), and his _Miscellaneous Essays_ (collected, 1839),
were in all hands; but he had fallen into the terrible slough of his
Prussian history (1858-1865), and the last word of his evangel had gone
forth to all whom it concerned. _In Memoriam_, whose noble music and
deep-browed thought awoke such new and wide response in men's hearts,
was published in 1850. The second volume of _Modern Painters_, of which
I have heard George Eliot say, as of _In Memoriam_ too, that she owed
much and very much to it, belongs to an earlier date still (1846), and
when it appeared, though George Eliot was born in the same year as its
author, she was still translating Strauss at Coventry. Mr. Browning, for
whose genius she had such admiration, and who was always so good a
friend, did indeed produce during this period some work which the adepts
find as full of power and beauty as any that ever came from his pen. But
Mr. Browning's genius has moved rather apart from the general currents
of his time, creating character and working out motives from within,
undisturbed by transient shadows from the passing questions and answers
of the day.

The romantic movement was then upon its fall. The great Oxford movement,
which besides its purely ecclesiastical effects, had linked English
religion once more to human history, and which was itself one of the
unexpected outcomes of the romantic movement, had spent its original
force, and no longer interested the stronger minds among the rising
generation. The hour had sounded for the scientific movement. In 1859
was published the _Origin of Species_, undoubtedly the most far-reaching
agency of the time, supported as it was by a volume of new knowledge
which came pouring in from many sides. The same period saw the
important speculations of Mr. Spencer, whose influence on George Eliot
had from their first acquaintance been of a very decisive kind. Two
years after the _Origin of Species_ came Maine's _Ancient Law_, and that
was followed by the accumulations of Mr. Tylor and others, exhibiting
order and fixed correlation among great sets of facts which had hitherto
lain in that cheerful chaos of g