In the case of Don Silva and Fedalma there is a conflict between love and race.  The one is a Spanish nobleman, the other the daughter of a Zincala chief.  Yet they love, and feel that no outward circumstances are sufficient to separate them.  This verdict of their hearts is the verdict of mankind in all ages; but it is not the one arrived at by George Eliot in obedience to her philosophy.  The reasons why these two should not wed grew entirely out of the social circumstances of the time.  An English nobleman of to-day could marry such a woman as Fedalma without social or other loss.  The capacities of soul are superior to conditions of race.  Virtue and genius do not depend on social circumstances.  Yet The Spanish Gypsy has for its motive the attempt to prove that the life of tradition and inheritance is the one which provides all our moral and social and religious obligations.  In conformity with this theory the conflict of the poem arises, because Don Silva is not in intellectual harmony with his own character.  A thoughtful, fastidious, sensitive soul was his, not resolute and concentrated in purpose, He was no bigot, could not be content with any narrow aim, saw good on many sides.

  A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious
  In his acceptance, dreading all delight
  That speedy dies and turns to carrion: 
  His senses much exacting, deep instilled
  With keen imagination’s airy needs;—­
  Like strong-limbed monsters studded o’er with eyes,
  Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision,
  Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream
  Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed
  With a man’s thought-propelled relenting heart. 
  Silva was both the lion and the man;
  First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang,
  Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed
  And loosed the prize, paying his blood for naught. 
  A nature half-transformed, with qualities
  That oft betrayed each other, elements
  Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects,
  Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. 
  Haughty and generous, grave and passionate;
  With tidal moments of devoutest awe,
  Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt;
  Deliberating ever, till the sting
  Of a recurrent ardor made him rush
  Right against reasons that himself had drilled
  And marshalled painfully.  A spirit framed
  Too proudly special for obedience,
  Too subtly pondering for mastery: 
  Born of a goddess with a mortal sire,
  Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity,
  Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness
  And perilous heightening of the sentient soul.

Too noble and generous to accept the narrow views of his uncle, Don Silva insisted on marrying Fedalma, because he loved her and because she was a pure and true woman.  He had a poet’s nature, was sensitive to all beauty, and his heart vibrated to all ideal excellence.  His love became to him a thing apart, a sacred shrine; and Fedalma was made one with all joy and beauty.