to have toned down from his "enthusiasm of humanity" into the simply
earnest, hard-working, and rather commonplace town rector. Better,
because truer, as it is. Only in the earlier dawn of this higher life of
the soul, either in the race or in the individual man; only in the days
of the Isaacs and Jacobs of our young humanity, though not with the
Abrahams, the Moses', or the Joshuas even then; only when the soul first
begins to apprehend that its true relation to God is to be realised only
through the Cross--is there conscience and habitual "respect unto the
recompense" of _any_ reward.

In 'Adam Bede,' the first of George Eliot's more elaborate works, the
illustrations of the great moral purpose we have assigned to her are so
numerous and varied, that it is not easy to select from among them. On
the one hand, Dinah Morris--one of the most exquisitely serene and
beautiful creations of fiction--and Seth and Adam Bede present to us,
variously modified, the aspect of that life which is aiming toward the
highest good. On the other hand, Arthur Donnithorne and Hetty
Sorrel--poor little vain and shallow-hearted Hetty--bring before us the
meanness, the debasement, and, if unarrested, the spiritual and
remediless death inevitably associated with and accruing from that "self-
pleasing" which, under one form or other, is the essence of all evil and
sin. Of these, Arthur Donnithorne and Adam Bede seem to us the two who
are most sharply and subtilely contrasted; and to these we shall confine
our remarks.

In Arthur Donnithorne, the slight sketch placed before us in Captain
Wybrow is elaborated into minute completeness, and at the same time freed
from all that made Wybrow even superficially repellent. Handsome,
accomplished, and gentlemanly; loving and lovable; finding his keenest
enjoyment in the enjoyment of others; irreproachable in life, and free