uld see how
wide a one it was, and how far and how long and variously it affected
the politics of Continental Europe as well as those of England, should
read the chapter on the subject in Miss Cooper's "Life and Letters of
Arabella Stuart," a learned and lively work, and not the least
meritorious of those admirable historical productions which we owe to
the genius, the industry, and the honesty of Englishwomen,--Agnes
Strickland, Caroline A. Halsted, Lucy Aiken, Mrs. Everett Green,
Elizabeth Cooper, and others,--whose writings do honor to the sex, and
fairly entitle their authors to be ranked with those accomplished ladies
of the sixteenth century whose solid attainments have so long been
matter of despairing admiration.

[N] _Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angleterre par les Normans_, Tom. I.
pp. 237, 238.

THE NOVELS OF GEORGE ELIOT.

The critic's first duty in the presence of an author's collective works
is to seek out some key to his method, some utterance of his literary
convictions, some indication of his ruling theory. The amount of labor
involved in an inquiry of this kind will depend very much upon the
author. In some cases the critic will find express declarations; in
other cases he will have to content himself with conscientious
inductions. In a writer so fond of digressions as George Eliot, he has
reason to expect that broad evidences of artistic faith will not be
wanting. He finds in "Adam Bede" the following passage:--

"Paint us an angel if you can, with a floating violet robe and a face
paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning
her mild face upward, and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory;
but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the
region of art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn
hands,--those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house,--those
rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the
spade and done the rough work of the world,--those homes with their tin
cans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of
onions. In this world there are so many of these common, coarse people,
who have no picturesque, sentimental wretchedness. It is so needful we
should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite
out of our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only
fit a world of extremes.... There are few prophets in the world,--few
subl