in us which is the highest created reflex of His image--the growing up of
it into His likeness for ever.

We may here, once for all, and very briefly, advert to one specialty of
the author's works, which, if we are right in our interpretation of their
central moral import, flows almost necessarily as a corollary from it. In
each of these sketches one principal figure is blotted out just when our
regards are fixed most strongly on it. Milly, Tina, and Mr Tryan all
die, at what may well appear the crisis of life and destiny for
themselves or others. There is in this--if not in specific intention,
certainly in practical teaching--something deeper and more earnest than
any mere artistic trick of pathos--far more real than the weary
commonplace of suggesting to us any so-called immortality as the
completion and elucidation of earthly life; far profounder and simpler,
too, than the only less trite commonplace of hinting to us the mystery of
God's ways in what we call untimely death. The true import of it we take
to be the separation of all the world calls success or reward from the
life that is thus seeking its highest fulfilment. In conformity with the
average doctrine of "compensation," Amos Barton should have appeared
before us at last installed in a comfortable living, much respected by
his flock, and on good terms with his brethren and well-to-do neighbours
around. With a truer and deeper wisdom, the author places him before us
in that brief after-glimpse still a poor, care-worn, bowed-down man, and
the sweet daughter-face by his side shows the premature lines of anxiety
and sorrow. Love, anguish, and death, working their true fruits within,
bring no success or achievement that the eye can note. By all the
principles of "poetic justice," Mr Tryan ought to have recovered and
married Janet; under the influence of her larger nature to have shaken
off his narrownesses; to have lived down all contempt and opposition, and
become the respected influential incumbent of the town; and in due time