of information and stimulus to the public mind generally.  If any man of sufficient moral and intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be vitiated by a foregone conclusion, or by a professional point of view, would devote himself to studying the natural history of our social classes, especially of the small shop-keepers, artisans and peasantry,—­the degree in which they are influenced by local conditions, their maxims and habits, the points of view from which they regard their religious teachers, and the degree in which they are influenced by religious doctrines, the interaction of the various classes on each other, and what are the tendencies in their position towards disintegration or towards development,—­and if, after all this study, he would give us the result of his observations in a book well nourished with specific facts, his work would be a valuable aid to the social and political reformer.

The estimates given in these essays of the writings of Jane Austen, George Sand, Charlotte Bronte and Thackeray, show the soundness of George Eliot’s critical judgment.  She fully appreciated Jane Austen’s artistic skill, as she did George Sand’s impassioned love of liberty and naturalness.  She also saw how tame are Miss Austen’s scenes, how humanly imperfect are Thackeray’s characters.  Her own work is wanting in Jane Austen’s artistic skill and finish, but there is far more of originality and character in her books, more of thought and purpose.  Miss Austen tells her story wonderfully well, but her books are all on the same level of social mediocrity and flatness.  No fresh, strong, natural, aspiring life is to be found in one of them.  George Eliot has not Jane Austen’s artistic skill, but she has thought, depth of purpose, originality of expression and conception, and a marvellous creative insight into character.  She is less passionate and bold than George Sand, not the same daring innovator, more rational and sensible.  She is not so much a poet, has little of George Sand’s power of improvisation, much less of eloquence and abandon.  She has more literary skill than Charlotte Bronte, less originality, but none of her crudeness.  She has not so much of the subtle element of genius, but more of solidity and thought.

Her theories concerning the novel place George Eliot fully in sympathy with what may very properly be called the British school of fiction.  The natural history of man is the subject matter used by this school; and to describe accurately, minutely, some portion of the human race, some social community, is its main object.  Richardson, Fielding, Miss Austen and Thackeray are the masters in this school, who have given direction to its aims and methods.  They have sought to accomplish in novel-writing somewhat the same results as those aimed at by Wordsworth and Browning in poetry, to follow the natural, to make much of the common, to describe things as they are.  They are realists both in method and philosophy, though