e so far fashioned it.

One grave criticism on the death-scene has been made, that at first sight
seems unanswerable. It is said that no such full, swift recognition
between the brother and sister, in those last moments of their
long-severed lives, is possible; because there is no true point of
contact through which such recognition, on the brother's part, could
ensue. We think, however, there is something revealed to us in the
brother which brings him nearer to what is noblest and deepest in the
sister than at first appears. He also has his ideal of duty and right:
it may not be a very broad or high one, but it is there; it is something
without and above mere self; and it is resolutely adhered to at
whatsoever cost of personal ease or pleasure. That such aim cannot be so
followed on without, to some extent, ennobling the whole nature, is shown
in his love for Lucy. It has come on him, and grown up with him,
unconsciously, when there was no wrong connected with it; but with her
engagement to Stephen all this is changed. Hard and stern as he is to
others, he is thenceforth the harder and sterner still to self. There is
no paltering with temptation, such as brings the sister so near to
hopeless fall. Here the cold harsh brother rises to true nobility, and
shows that upon him too life has established its higher claim than that
of mere self-seeking enjoyment. There is, then, this point of contact
between these two, that each has an ideal of duty and light, and to it
each is content to sacrifice all things else. Through this, in that
death-look, they recognise each other; and the author's motto in its full
significance is justified, "In their death they were not divided."

'Silas Marner,' though carefully finished, is of slighter character than
any of the author's later works, and does not require lengthened notice.
In Godfrey Cass we have again, though largely modified, the type of
character in which self is the main object of regard, and in which,
therefore, with much that is likeable, and even, for the circumstances in
which it has grown up, estimable, there is little depth, truth, or
steadfastness. Repentance, and, so far as it is possible, restoration,
come to him mainly through the silent ministration of a purer and better
nature than his own: but the self-pleasing of the past has brought about
that which no repentance can fully reverse or restore. Even on the
surface this is shown; for Eppie, unowned and n