described, and hear their dialect, and know their sorrows, and sympathize with their privations and labors.  But after a closer and more critical study of the novel I have come to see merits that before escaped my eye.  It is a study, a picture of humble English life, painted by the hand of a master, to be enjoyed most by people of critical discernment, and to be valued for its rare fidelity to Nature.  It is of more true historical interest than many novels which are called historical,—­even as the paintings of Rembrandt are more truly historical than those of Horace Vernet, since the former painted life as it really was in his day.  Imaginative pictures are not those which are most prized by modern artists, or those pictures which make every woman look like an angel and every man like a hero,—­like those of Gainsborough or Reynolds,—­however flattering they may be to those who pay for them.

I need not dwell on characters so well known as those painted in “Adam Bede.”  The hero is a painstaking, faithful journeyman carpenter, desirous of doing good work.  Scotland and England abound in such men, and so did New England fifty years ago.  This honest mechanic falls in love with a pretty but vain, empty, silly, selfish girl of his own class; but she had already fallen under the spell of the young squire of the village,—­a good-natured fellow, of generous impulses, but essentially selfish and thoughtless, and utterly unable to cope with his duty.  The carpenter, when he finds it out, gives vent to his wrath and jealousy, as is natural, and picks a quarrel with the squire and knocks him down,—­an act of violence on the part of the inferior in rank not very common in England.  The squire abandons his victim after ruining her character,—­not an uncommon thing among young aristocrats,—­and the girl strangely accepts the renewed attentions of her first lover, until the logic of events compels her to run away from home and become a vagrant.  The tragic and interesting part of the novel is a vivid painting of the terrible sufferings of the ruined girl in her desolate wanderings, and of her trial for abandoning her infant child to death,—­the inexorable law of fate driving the sinner into the realms of darkness and shame.  The story closes with the prosaic marriage of Adam Bede to Dinah Morris,—­a Methodist preacher, who falls in love with him instead of his more pious brother Seth, who adores her.  But the love of Adam and Dinah for one another is more spiritualized than is common,—­is very beautiful, indeed, showing how love’s divine elements can animate the human soul in all conditions of life.  In the fervid spiritualism of Dinah’s love for Adam we are reminded of a Saint Theresa seeking to be united with her divine spouse.  Dinah is a religious rhapsodist, seeking wisdom and guidance in prayer; and the divine will is in accordance with her desires.  “My soul,” said she to Adam, “is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life if I live without you.”