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the decisive question :-" Domine, ad quem ibimus?" Can George Eliot answer?

We trust we shall not seem to be writing bitterly—it is with no tincture, indeed, of unkindly feeling-against one of whom we read that she was "the greatest opponent ever elicited by literature to all belief in the true source of strength and elevation for the lowly;" that "she made her convictions no secret;" and that "her disbelief in Deity was absolute." Unhappy woman! Who can pity her in the measure of her need? Better for such a one, perchance, were that dismal saying of hers true

and could

The human sky

Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread for ever!

This, then, is why we feel that the soundest criticism of her. views, the most pregnant commentary upon them, would consist in a plain unvarnished history of what George Eliot was. That would enlighten us far more than winnowing and sifting her written words, though we should fan them to their utmost fineness. Such a history we never may read. But she did not write so many volumes without pouring out her peculiar feelings in them and a large number of her pages have been taken by the public as fragments of autobiography and personal disclosure, not as mere dramatic compositions which throw no light on the mind and spiritual make of their author. Especially in "Janet's Repentance," in "Adam Bede," and "The Mill on the Floss," and in certain passages of "Middlemarch," do we seem to recognize these welcome utterances. Her character and the tenor of her life, which, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, must have determined the centre whence her lights and shadows fell with their peculiar difference, are here but slightly disguised. Not, indeed, that we would dismiss George Eliot's creed as simply "her personal and private formula," which is the opposite extreme to that adopted by her unqualified eulogists, and is the refuge of men who have lost their hold on primary truths, whether of the conscience or the reason. A prophet that is bent on founding a religion must live up to his own standard: does it follow that his standard is but an algebraic symbol of his inclinations and appetites? George Eliot's history is the key to her religion doubtless: yet this is not an exact counterfeit of that, we may be sure. Some of her principles were better than her actions and we should be surprised to hear that many of her actions were not a denial in fact of her least defensible principles.

For we are happy to think it is not George Eliot's unbelief that has won her a world of readers; neither will she be

up

remembered merely as a female Atheist, foundress of an impossible religion and a great style in literature. Her growing fame, paradoxical as we may fancy it, is a reward of her loyalty to early impressions which were distinctly religious and ascetic. Had she never been a Christian, she would never have exercised the moral fascination, the heart-searching influence, which give her writings their permanent and peculiar worth: she would have been at a loss to comprehend the figures which will be thought her characteristic creations, Dinah Morris, Savonarola, Maggie Tulliver, Dorothea, and their speaking contrasts-for contrast is the chief instrument of an artist-Hetty Sorrel, Tito Melema, Rosamond Vincy. Her humour, we have seen, contradicts her assumed philosophy and could not survive the triumph of Altruism: so that we must claim, as grotesque or satire-loving foundlings of the ancient faith, certain figures which might seem alien to a sanctified place. But in the Gothic cathedral we dwell with only a delighted sense of incongruity upon the gargoyles, and satyrs, and impish heads, the stone spouts twisted into an immortal pleasantry of expressiveness, the comic forms of that medieval "Epic of the Beasts" which cannot be kept out of the sacred choir, and will laugh in sly corners at us when we look from our devotions. To jest with the objects we love is no sin but sometimes a prodigal tenderness, which would relieve itself in such quaint humour. For the soul's flights towards the Ideal that "loftiest star of unascended Heaven "-must needs be unequal. And so it is that, whether grave or humorous, George Eliot cannot help reminding us that she once was a believer. We strive in vain to recal one single passage of rare moral power and elevation in all her writings that may not be traced to its Christian source. She has translated into her own compressed and energetic speech certain axioms which have long been heard in church, but have not succeeded in keeping the congregation altogether wakeful. Charity-a word which seems to have fallen into universal disfavour, if we may judge by some recent liberties taken with it-she renders by a fresh word, itself of Greek origin, the word Sympathy, and thereby works miracles. But her most famous secret is to say an old thing with the most convinced air in the world that it never was said before. She is in the right of it: not the sentence has grown old and idle, but the hearers. Are not the good-tidings of Christianity "fresh as starlight's aged truth," in a world which can listen with admiring gratitude to George Eliot's moralities and resolve to think of them seriously? This, then, is her praise, that she declares her belief in "some divine power against evil-widening the skirts of light, and making the struggle with darkness narrower;" that she protests against winning by another's loss, against

gratifying our own need of affection by treachery towards a rival; that she feels a quick and willing sympathy (we will not mock the word) with every sweet human gladness and every throb of grief; that she is deeply convinced (alas!) that the sowing of sin is the reaping of sorrow; that she shows a tender forbearance with ignorant wrong-doing and unsightly goodness; that she has a large womanly heart, and, however misguided, has yet an unselfish devotion to the children of our Mother Earth :all this will explain, even if it cannot justify, the love and reverence which her death elicited from a mourning throng. But how could she have gained that vivid sense of joy in selfsacrifice, or that keen apprehension of unworldly motives, had she not been brought up in the hearing of saints and apostles, of the New Testament? Neither would she have shrunk from confessing it; for even her philosohy did not oblige her to repudiate the past. She dared to maintain, and felt it bitterly, that "every change upon this earth is bought with sacrifice." In her eyes to renounce the inherited religion of centuries was not possible; all that man could attempt was to blend it with newly discovered elements which might serve as a scientific basis to the structure of its morality, surer than the supernatural cloudwork which was dissolving into air. Of course the change took from her belief more than it left. Travestying the satiric line of Milton we may assure ourselves, once for all, that the denial of God and free-will is not Christianity for,

New Fatalism is not old Faith writ large.

We may hold, too, that as anti-Christian feeling grows into a fixed habit with her, George Eliot's books lose their charm. She preaches, indeed, in season and out of season, as the end draws nigh; beating the pulpit with painful vehemence, and becoming, as the Greek Grammar styles it, merely gnomic, a proser of proverbs and a tedious moralist. In the very blaze and culmination of her genius she never allowed us to forget that knowledge, scientific and abstract, informed her powers. But as she came more and more into the creed of Humanism, which has been exemplified most winningly, to an artist's feeling, in Goethe, she discovered a surprising affinity with that famous poet as he was in old age. A sustained gravity and balance, a highly-educated gentle reserve, an over-conscious arranging of thought and expression, a fondness for symbolic ideas, an anxiety to reach the rarest perfection of style with the formalism so often resulting from it-these are notes of "Daniel Deronda," no less than of the second part of "Wilhelm Meister," and the "Elective Attractions." How much study may George Eliot have spent on the fragmentary sayings in "Ottilie's Diary" and

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the "Maxims in Prose"? We cannot tell; but the likeness of her later style to Goethe's betrays some unconscious imitation. With the reigning fashion of "thinking in German," she became, as we might expect, more and more infected. But, to the last, her Christian childhood keeps a certain influence over her feeling. It is the ritual of the Church, with its vast underlying, encompassing mysteries, that wakes into life again the men and women of the fifteenth century, in "Romola and " The Spanish Gypsy." It is religious tenderness or indignation that creates Armgart and Agatha. It is the old loyalty to tradition, the self-renouncing love in the pursuit of an Ideal, "the hope of another self which may lift our aching affection into the divine rapture of an ever-springing, ever-satisfied want," it is the heart that feels broken for its disregard of human sympathies-it is still the hereditary religion and not the chill scepticism-from which we derive a diminished yet real interest in the story of Mordecai and Gwendolen Harleth, or the somewhat bitter-flavoured reflections of Theophrastus Such.

WILLIAM BARRY, D.D.

ART. VII.-PROSPECTS IN BELGIUM.

TWELVE months have barely elapsed since that memorable Allocution of the Holy Father was given to the world, in which the irreligious policy of the Belgian Government, and, above all, their crowning act of insolent injustice to the Holy See, in breaking off, on vain and unfounded pretexts, the friendly relations which had for half a century subsisted between the civil and spiritual power, were eloquently condemned. Ever vigilant for the welfare of those nations whose spiritual interests are imperilled, ever ready to send messages of encouragement and consolation to the pastors of the Church in their painful contest against organized revolution, the Holy Father has again had occasion to publicly address the sorely tried Catholics of Belgium. This time his words are not those of protest against injustice, but of praise and encouragement for victories gained over the enemies of God; coupled with warnings against possible dangers, counsels of charity, and gentle but firm rebuke of those who would act under the influence of an impetuous but misguided zeal, rather than in accordance with his own wiser exhortations to prudence and moderation. The following is the text of the document to which we allude-a letter addressed by

Leo XIII., on the 3rd of August last, to Cardinal Deschamps, Primate of Belgium, and to the other bishops.

LEO XIII., POPE.

Dear Son and Venerable Brethren, health and Apostolic Bene

diction!

During these last years the cause of Catholicism has undergone, in Belgium, multiplied trials. We have, however, found comfort and consolation in the tokens of persistent love and fidelity which Belgian Catholics have furnished us so abundantly whenever they have had an occasion. And, above all, what has strengthened us, and still gives us strength, is your signal attachment to our person, and the zeal which you exert in order that the Christian people confided to your care may persevere in the sincerity and unity of the Catholic Faith, and may progress each day in its love for the Church of Christ and his Vicar. It is pleasant for us to give special praise to your solicitude in encouraging by all the means possible a good education for the young, and in insuring to the children of the primary schools. a religious education established on broad foundations. Your zeal is applied with equal watchfulness to all that tends to the advantage of Christian education in the Colleges and Institutes, as well as to the Catholic University of Louvain.

On the other hand, we cannot remain indifferent, or at peace, in presence of events which would seem to imperil amongst Belgians the good understanding between Catholic citizens, and to divide them into opposing camps. It would be superfluous to recall here the causes and occasions of these differences, and the encouragement they have met with where it ought least to have been expected. All these details, Dear Son and Venerable Brethren, you know better than any one; and you deplore them with us, knowing perfectly that at no other epoch could the necessity of assuring and maintaining union amongst Catholics be so great as at this moment, when the enemies of the name of Christianity rage on all sides against the Church in an unanimous attack.

Full of solicitude for this union, we point out the dangers which threaten it arising from certain controversies concerning public law; a subject which, amongst you, engenders a strong difference of feeling. These controversies have for their object the necessity or opportuneness of conforming to the prescriptions of Catholic doctrine the existing forms of government, based on what is commonly called modern law. Most assuredly we, more than any one, ought heartily to desire that human society should be governed in a Christian manner, and that the divine influence of Christ should penetrate and completely impregnate all orders of the State. From the commencement of our Pontificate we manifested, without delay, that such was our settled opinion; and that by public documents, and especially by the Encyclical Letters we published against the errors of Socialism, and, quite recently, upon the Civil Power. Nevertheless, all Catholics, if they wish to exert themselves profitably for the common good,

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