No serious writer-and such George Eliot emphatically is— would have depicted the relation of Gwendolen and Deronda, would have exercised all the resources of her genius in drawing the picturesque, exciting scenes in which she brings them together, and further elaborately related their effect on the action and feeling of Gwendolen towards her husband, without a definite purpose, and that purpose to dispute certain generally received axioms, or rather doctrines, on the subject of the conjugal relation. As such the book touches more nearly the heart of Christian morality than George Sand's more daring defiance of social order. These two writers have lately been so frequently brought together that the comparison is natural and to be excused on our part, though the deeper nature of our English genius, her love of order and subjection to such law as she does acknowledge, must set her, in her own mind, leagues apart from her impetuous and unscrupulous sister genius, with whom satiety is the prevailing motive, impulse, inspiration, whatever we call it. The death of Madame Dudevant, bringing about a general notice of her works and powers, has naturally induced this comparison; and the principle of ignoring what the reviewer does not care to enter upon, issuing in much preposterous whitewashing of the great Frenchwoman's works and character, has made it possible. The apologies of her admirers take different forms, with, however, the general agreement that genius is not to be measured by ordinary rules. Our apology for George Sand, so far as we put one forward, lies in her training, which was almost worse than heathen, inasmuch as her childhood lived in sight of the desecration and in constant hearing of the denial of things sacred; lies in the fact that her grandmother se disait déiste, and her mother taught her the argument of which she made such use in after life-that she had never done any harm, because what might seem like it was done in spite of herself and she could not help it, and was sure God was too good to punish her for it. What can be more different from this (in spite of our ignorance, we must feel perfectly sure) than the first introduction to religious ideas of the author of Adam Bede, and the sympathiser in the ardent, self-denying, evangelical pastor, Mr. Tryan? Yet, in each, the one from the side of undisciplined passion, the other as the exponent of what she professes to regard as a higher morality, the same line may be discernible on the great question we have supposed to be under trial. Take, for example, George Sand's novel Jacques. Jacques, the reader may require to be informed, is le vieux Jacques, who at the age of thirty-five

encounters a great misfortune; he arrives at mon pauvre dernier amour. For a long time he informs his correspondent— 'Dieu m'a longtemps béni, longtemps il m'a donné la faculté de guérir et de renouveler mon cœur à cette flamme divine: mais j'ai fait mon temps, je suis arrivé à mon dernier tour de roue : je ne dois plus, je ne puis plus aimer.'

This dernier amour is a girl of seventeen, to whom he engages himself. She is devoted to him, and might under another régime have continued to be so for the term of her life, being a simple girl enough; but Jacques' magnanimity will not impose on the simplicity—on the adorablepuerility -of his future bride. He therefore addresses a letter to her, of which the following is the opening :

'La société va vous dicter une formule de serment. Vous allez jurer de m'être fidèle et de m'être soumise, c'est-à-dire de n'aimer jamais que moi et de m'obéir en tout. L'un de ces serments est une absurdité, l'autre une bassesse. Vous ne pouvez pas répondre de votre cœur, même quand je serais le plus grand et le plus parfait des hommes; vous ne devez pas me promettre de m'obéir parce que ce serait nous avilir l'un et l'autre. Ainsi, mon enfant, prononcez avec confiance les mots consacrés sans lesquels votre mère et le monde vous défendraient de m'appartenir; moi aussi, je dirai les paroles que le prêtre et le magistrat me dicteront, puisqu'à ce prix seulement il m'est permis de vous consacrer ma vie.'

The sequel of this story is, at any rate, entirely French, for a lover appearing upon the scene with whom Jacques would in no way interfere, he demands of this Octave if he will also consacrer sa vie to Fernande, and receiving a satisfactory answer, repairs by himself to Switzerland to disappear in a crevasse; his reason for this step being that Fernande is scrupulous, and cares for what the world says; therefore that this is the only way to make her thoroughly comfortable—

'Un homme moins malheureux que moi eût peut-être trouvé l'occasion de se sacrifier pour l'objet de son amour et d'en être recompensé à son dernière heure par les bénédictions des heureux qu'il eût faits: mais mon sort est tel qu'il faut que je me cache pour mourir. . . Car après tout Fernande est un ange de bonté, et son cœur sensible aux moindres atteintes pourrait se briser sous le poids d'un remords semblable. D'ailleurs le monde le maudirait, et après m'avoir poursuivi de ses féroces railleries pendant ma vie, il poursuivrait ma veuve de ses aveugles malédictions après ma mort.'

Certainly nothing in manner can be more opposed than this farrago of nonsensical, blasé passion and the grave didactic tone for which George Eliot is distinguished; but there is more affinity in aim than in mode of treatment, how

ever, much that aim may be regulated by the purer, more chastened fancy of the English authoress. And when a comparison is drawn between the two, the fact that each believes herself a reformer cannot be left out. The Frenchwoman, who threw herself mind and body into the masculine form, sympathises equally with man and woman under the tyranny of a lasting tie; George Eliot sympathises with woman, and mainly writhes under her grievances, and this concentrates her powers. Both are ready to resort to ideas of violence, self-destruction, and murder; but George Eliot, instigated by the alleged wrongs of her sex, puts a force and sting into her desperation of revenge which make George Sand's conceptions in the same line seem child's play. Take, for example, her Jacques repairing to his crevasse, pen in hand, with all his maundering reasons, and Gwendolen, in a state of moral repulsion and cowed resistance, sitting opposite her husband in the boat, afraid of her own hatred as she felt it gathering a fierce intensity under the cold clutch of his iron will; with images of evil passing quick, quick before her like furies, and placing all her reliance against herself on Deronda, who she was sure would not leave her neighbourhood while she was there and needed his help. Each author, however, represents all these miseries as working their tremendous issues under apparently happy lots, under a mask of smiling, unalloyed, enviable prosperity, and thus offers parallels to living prosperous discontent. Angry women may easily see Grandcourt in a good sort of husband with provoking ways, and men and women who have outlived illusions see themselves in the long series of the brilliant Frenchwoman's works. If it were our business here to enter into the literary merits, or even the finer moralities of either authoress, we might enlarge on the further ground of admiring comparison presented by their keen appreciation of country life, and the religious simplicity and purity of manners with which each invests a life of wholesome rustic labour. But faith and religion, as we understand them, in either case are provincial virtues, incompatible with high cultivation whether of the feelings or the intellect. In fact in Daniel Deronda we do not observe a single character actuated by religion as a motive. All the old spiritual sentiments and affections are not indeed disowned, but a new basis is assigned them. Mirah wishes to conform to the practices of her race; with Deronda 'to be in a state of suspense, which was also one of emotive activity and scruple, was a familiar attitude of his conscience; Gwendolen of course is perfectly dead on this point,

the clergy are not Christians, but members of the establish ment; and so on. Furthermore, we cannot but connect with this wiping out of the idea of faith in the unseen, the growing appreciation not only of art, but of display and performance, which we notice in Daniel Deronda of a sort of stage success. Everybody has more or less to do with the stage. Mirah was brought up on it; Gwendolen wants to become an actress when she has to think of getting her own living; Deronda's mother is a kind of Rachel, who describes the life of a successful singer and actress as altogether imperial and glorious; Klesmer embodies in his own person the ideas of composer, manager, conductor, performer. Art with him is

the highest business of life, and when he marries the heiress, it is Deronda's opinion that if there is a mésalliance in the case, he should say it was on Klesmer's side. Here, however, it must be allowed that a lingering English prejudice so far hampers the author's tone and style, that she cannot help conveying to the reader a sense the reverse of this. Her truth of observation betrays her into a portrait of which the image left on the reader is rather ridiculous than impressive.

The strong feeling for art now astir is no doubt a highly cultivating influence, but as all things have their weak side, the side of devotion to art is probably its inducing some touch of vanity and love of display. While this is recognised in the picture of life before us, it is treated with a marked indulgence. There is sympathy with the temper that is determined to be somebody in the world, to make a figure and a name; in fact, to get what you can out of life. The belief that this world is a scene of probation runs counter to such aspirations, at least puts a strong check upon them; and we feel that there must be such differences of view where the present life is assumed the only theatre of action of which we have any certainty. Such a theatre is a need of all active thought, a sphere somewhere is the universal hope; and we regard it as an evidence that the belief in immortality is natural to man that this hope reconciles him to the obscurity and insignificance in the world's eye which is the lot of the large majority. We are far from asserting that this hope is systematically denied in these volumes. No change of opinion, assuming such a change, can eradicate in a mind of large intelligence and keen imagination the idea of an indefinite future; and we have noted the evident struggle to construct out of time and death an eternal future, and a linked chain of unending spiritual life.

If we have felt it a duty to protest against views which

have passed with too little comment in the general critique of Daniel Deronda, we cannot do so without expressing our deep regret at such a necessity, at having to put ourselves in opposition to the implied teaching,-on a subject of such supreme importance to the interests of society,—of an author not only of remarkable genius, but who has shown in the course of her works both veneration for the sanctities of home life and a sense of the purifying and ennobling influences of religion. If in the religion she has there pictured we may now trace some differences from the religion necessarily in the mind of the simple characters she has set before us, this difference would be hidden from the large majority of her readers, who naturally do not look, in the fiction of an authoress whose power lies in delineation of character and perception of motive, for any exposition of doctrine; much less for a new creed under the disguise of the old :-if we must indeed pass such a suspicion upon it. The veil, however, becomes thinner as new opinion overrides the old; and while we grieve over the necessity of our protest, we also feel that but for the general elevation of sentiment and tone the protest need not have been made. We, at least, should not have felt called upon to make it.

ART. V.-JOHN WYCLIF AT OXFORD, . 1. Fasciculi Zizaniorum. Edited by W. W. SHIRLEY for the Master of the Rolls' Series of Chronicles. (London, 1858.)

2. Second and Fourth Reports of the Royal Historical Commission.

3. Fohann von Wiclif. Von GOTTHARD LECHLER. 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1873.)

IT often happens that the traditional facts of the lives of historical personages are called in question and reconstructed to suit new conceptions of their character and importance. Especially is this the case when the integrity of a man's motives are impugned by hostile criticism, and what once appeared as a noble striving after truth is traced to the promptings of self-interest or wounded pride. In the case of those who in ecclesiastical matters were the pioneers of