The whole tale, though short, is a triumph of art and abounds with acute observations of human nature.  It is a perfect picture of village life, with its gossip, its jealousies, its enmities, and its religious quarrels, showing on the part of the author an extraordinary knowledge of theological controversies and the religious movements of the early part of the nineteenth century.  So vivid is her description of rural life, that the tale is really an historical painting, like the Dutch pictures of the seventeenth century, to be valued as an accurate delineation rather than a mere imaginary scene.  Madonnas, saints, and such like pictures which fill the churches of Italy and Spain, works of the old masters, are now chiefly prized for their grace of form and richness of coloring,—­exhibitions of ideal beauty, charming as creations, but not such as we see in real life; George Eliot’s novels, on the contrary, are not works of imagination, like the frescos in the Sistine Chapel, but copies of real life, like those of Wilkie and Teniers, which we value for their fidelity to Nature.  And in regard to the passion of love, she does not portray it, as in the old-fashioned novels, leading to fortunate marriages with squires and baronets; but she generally dissects it, unravels it, and attempts to penetrate its mysteries,—­a work decidedly more psychological than romantic or sentimental, and hence more interesting to scholars and thinkers than to ordinary readers, who delight in thrilling adventures and exciting narrations.

The “Scenes of Clerical Life” were followed the next year by “Adam Bede,” which created a great impression on the cultivated mind of England and America.  It did not create what is called a “sensation.”  I doubt if it was even popular with the generality of readers, nor was the sale rapid at first; but the critics saw that a new star of extraordinary brilliancy had arisen in the literary horizon.  The unknown author entered, as she did in “Janet’s Repentance,” an entirely new field, with wonderful insight into the common life of uninteresting people, with a peculiar humor, great power of description, rare felicity of dialogue, and a deep undertone of serious and earnest reflection.  And yet I confess, that when I first read “Adam Bede,” twenty-five years ago, I was not much interested, and I wondered why others were.  It was not dramatic enough to excite me.  Many parts of it were tedious.  It seemed to me to be too much spun out, and its minuteness of detail wearied me.  There was no great plot and no grand characters; nothing heroic, no rapidity of movement; nothing to keep me from laying the book down when the dinner-bell rang, or when the time came to go to bed.  I did not then see the great artistic excellence of the book, and I did not care for a description of obscure people in the Midland Counties of England,—­which, by the way, suggests a reason why “Adam Bede” cannot be appreciated by Americans as it is by the English people themselves, who every day see the characters