To describe clerical life was doubtless the aim which Miss Evans had in view in this and the two other tales which soon followed.  In these, as indeed in all her novels, the clergy largely figure.  She seems to be profoundly acquainted with the theological views of the different sects, as well as with the social habits of the different ministers.  So far as we can detect her preference, it is for the Broad Church, or the “high-and-dry” clergy of the Church of England, especially those who were half squires and half parsons in districts where conservative opinions prevailed; for though she was a philosophical radical, she was reverential in her turn of mind, and clung to poetical and consecrated sentiments, always laying more stress on woman’s duties than on her rights.

The second of the Clerical series—­“Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story”—­is not so well told, nor is it so interesting as the first, besides being more after the fashion of ordinary stories.  We miss in it the humor of good Mrs. Patten; nor are we drawn to the gin-and-water-drinking parson, although the description of his early unfortunate love is done with a powerful hand.  The story throughout is sad and painful.

The last of the series, “Janet’s Repentance,” is, I think, the best.  The hero is again a clergyman, an evangelical, whose life is one long succession of protracted martyrdoms,—­an expiation to atone for the desertion of a girl whom he had loved and ruined while in college.  Here we see, for the first time in George Eliot’s writings, that inexorable fate which pursues wrong-doing, and which so prominently stands out in all her novels.  The singular thing is that she—­at this time an advanced liberal—­should have made the sinning young man, in the depth of his remorse, to find relief in that view of Christianity which is expounded by the Calvinists.  But here she is faithful and true to the teaching of those by whom she was educated; and it is remarkable that her art enables her apparently to enter into the spiritual experiences of an evangelical curate with which she had no sympathy.  She does not mock or deride, but seems to respect the religion which she had herself repudiated.

And the same truths which consoled the hard-working, self-denying curate are also made to redeem Janet herself, and secure for her a true repentance.  This heroine of the story is the wife of a drunken, brutal village doctor, who dies of delirium tremens; she also is the slave of the same degrading habit which destroys her husband, but, unlike him, is a victim of remorse and shame.  In her despair she seeks advice and consolation from the minister whom she had ridiculed and despised; and through him she is led to seek that divine aid which alone enables a confirmed drunkard to conquer what by mere force of will is an unconquerable habit.  And here George Eliot—­for that is the name she now goes by—­is in accord with the profound experience of many.