best speeches when past the age of seventy. Only people with a wonderful
physique and unwasted mental forces can go on from conquering to
conquer,--people, moreover, who have reserved their strength, and lived
temperate and active lives.

Although "Daniel Deronda" is occasionally brilliant, and laboriously
elaborated, still it is regarded generally by the critics as a failure.
The long digression on the Jews is not artistic; and the subject itself
is uninteresting, especially to the English, who have inveterate
prejudices against the chosen people. The Hebrews, as they choose to
call themselves, are doubtless a remarkable people, and have
marvellously preserved their traditions and their customs. Some among
them have arisen to the foremost rank in scholarship, statesmanship, and
finance. They have entered, at different times, most of the cabinets of
Europe, and have held important chairs in its greatest universities. But
it was a Utopian dream that sent Daniel Deronda to the Orient to collect
together the scattered members of his race. Nor are enthusiasts and
proselytes often found among the Jews. We see talent, but not visionary
dreamers. To the English they appear as peculiarly practical,--bent on
making money, sensual in their pleasures, and only distinguished from
the people around them by an extravagant love of jewelry and a proud and
cynical rationalism. Yet in justice it must be confessed, that some of
the most interesting people in the world are Jews.

In "Daniel Deronda" the cheerless philosophy of George Eliot is fully
brought out. Mordecai, in his obscure and humble life, is a good
representative of a patient sufferer, but "in his views and aspirations
is a sort of Jewish Mazzini." The hero of the story is Mordecai's
disciple, who has discovered his Hebrew origin, of which he is as proud
as his aristocratic mother is ashamed The heroine is a spoiled woman of
fashion, who makes the usual mistake of most of George Eliot's heroines,
in violating conscience and duty. She marries a man whom she knows to be
inherently depraved and selfish; marries him for his money, and pays the
usual penalty,--a life of silent wretchedness and secret sorrow and
unavailing regret. But she is at last fortunately delivered by the
accidental death of her detested husband,--by drowning, of course.
Remorse in seeing her murderous wishes accomplished--though not by her
own hand, but by pursuing fate--awakens a new life in her soul, and