little vain and shallow-hearted Hetty—­bring before us the meanness, the debasement, and, if unarrested, the spiritual and remediless death inevitably associated with and accruing from that “self-pleasing” which, under one form or other, is the essence of all evil and sin.  Of these, Arthur Donnithorne and Adam Bede seem to us the two who are most sharply and subtilely contrasted; and to these we shall confine our remarks.

In Arthur Donnithorne, the slight sketch placed before us in Captain Wybrow is elaborated into minute completeness, and at the same time freed from all that made Wybrow even superficially repellent.  Handsome, accomplished, and gentlemanly; loving and lovable; finding his keenest enjoyment in the enjoyment of others; irreproachable in life, and free from everything bearing the semblance of vice,—­what more could the most exacting fictionist desire to make up his ideal hero?  Yet, without ceasing to be all thus portrayed, he scatters desolation and crime in his path.  He does this, not through any revulsion of being in himself, but in virtue of that very principle of action from which his lovableness proceeds.  Of duty simply as duty, of right solely as right, his knowledge is yet to come.  Essentially, his ideal of life as yet is “self-pleasing.”  This impels him, constituted as he is, to strive that he shall stand well with all.  This almost necessitates that he shall be kindly, genial, loving; enjoying the joy and well-being of all around him, and therefore lovable.  But this also assures that his struggle against temptation shall be weak and vacillating; and that when, through his paltering with it, it culminates, he shall at once fall before it.  The wood scene with Adam Bede still further illustrates the same characteristics.  This man, so genial and kindly, rages fiercely in his heart against him whom he has unwittingly wronged.  Frank and open, apparently the very soul of honour, he shuffles and lies like a coward and a knave; and this in no personal fear, but because he shrinks to lose utterly that goodwill and esteem of others,—­of Adam in particular, because Adam constrains his own high esteem,—­which are to him the reflection of his own self-worship.  Repentance comes to him at last, because conscience has never in him been entirely overlaid and crushed.  It comes when the whirlwind of anguish has swept over him, scattered all the flimsy mists of self-excuse in which self-love had sought to veil his wrong-doing, and bowed him to the dust; but who shall estimate the remediless and everlasting loss already sustained?

We have spoken of Captain Wybrow as the prototype of Arthur.  He is so in respect of both being swayed by that vital sin of self-pleasing to which all wrong-doing ultimately refers itself; but that in Arthur the corruption of life at its source is not complete, is shown throughout the whole story.  The very form of action which self-love assumes in him, tells that self though dominant is not yet supreme.