identify herself more with what people wished to do themselves than with what they thought somebody else ought to do for them.  Her indignation was vehement enough against dishonest or malicious oppression, but the instinct to make allowance for the other side made her a bad hater in politics, and there may easily have been some personal sympathy in her description of Deronda’s difficulty about the choice of a career.  She was not an inviting auditor for those somewhat pachydermatous philanthropists who dwell complacently upon ‘cases’ and statistics which represent appalling depths of individual suffering.  Her imagination realized these facts with a vividness that was physically unbearable, and unless she could give substantial help, she avoided the fruitless agitation.  At the same time, her interest in all rational good works was of the warmest, and she was inclined to exaggerate rather than undervalue the merits of their promoters, with one qualification only.  ‘Help the millions, by all means,’ she has written; ’I only want people not to scorn the narrower effect.’  Charity that did not begin at home repelled her as much as she was attracted by the unpretentious kindness which overlooked no near opportunity; and perhaps we should not be far wrong in guessing that she thought for most people the scrupulous discharge of all present and unavoidable duties was nearly occupation enough.  Not every one was called to the high but difficult vocation of setting the world to rights.  But on the other hand, it must be remembered that her standard of exactingness was ’high, and some of the things that in her eyes it was merely culpable to leave undone might be counted by others among virtues of supererogation.  Indeed, it is within the limits of possibility that a philanthropist wrapped in over-much conscious virtue might imagine her cold to the objects proposed, when she only failed to see uncommon merit in their pursuit.  No one, however, could recognize with more generous fervor, more delighted admiration, any genuine unobtrusive devotion in either friends or strangers, whether it were spent in making life easier to individuals, or in mending the conditions among which the masses live and labor.’  This writer gives us further insight into George Eliot’s character when we are told that ’she came as a very angel of consolation to those persons of sufficiently impartial mind to find comfort in the hint that the world might be less to blame than they were as to those points on which they found themselves in chronic disagreement with it.  But she had nothing welcome for those whose idea of consolation is the promise of a deus ex machina by whose help they may gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles.  She thought there was much needed doing in the world, and criticism of our neighbors and the natural order might wait at all events until the critic’s own character and conduct were free from blame.’  She had faith in ordinary lives, and these she earnestly desired to help and encourage.  Those who themselves struggle with difficulties are best capable, she thought, of helping others out of theirs.  In Daniel Deronda she said, ’Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless; as if those were not often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their mistakes.’”