woes cast upon the wonted cheerfulness of her spirit. "Now, mamma!", she says to Mrs. Davilow, when the latter begins to show signs of a relapse into that depression which was so distasteful to her daughter, "Don't begin to be melancholy here. It spoils all my pleasure." If she can manage to neutralize the effects of this lugubriousness on their part by a laugh at their misfortunes, so much the better, for this she counts as a noteworthy and estimable characteristic of her disposition, "valuing herself on her superior freedom in laughing when others might only see matter for seriousness."

Her girlish notion of happiness, too, which conveyed to her mind the idea of a purely personal preeminence, however complete in its truth to nature, never sinks to the commonplace. All her coquetry however daring is always lofty. There are no sentimental day-dreams of a love-sick or romantic maid in her; on the contrary, this very coquetry, though scarcely harmless, is always imbued with a queenly graciousness which couples well with her Amazonian aversion to anything like love making. And exactly here is shown Mrs. Lewes's originality of conception. For coquette as she seems there is about as much difference between Gwendolen and an ordinary belle as can easily be imagined.

That ready acquiescence with which she has been accustomed to meet has bred in her a desire for homage only of the most respectful and graceful sort; wherein lay Grandcourt's chief personal attraction for her.

This Henleigh Grandcourt, by the way, is to our mind the most original in conception and artistic in execution of all the characters in the drama. Cold, calm and dignified; well bred, and detesting a faux pas as a crime, Chesterfield himself would have seemed clothed with the finnikin graces of a dancing master, compared with this pale-handed Grandcourt in whom the national antipathy to being "bored" has developed an insolence all the more galling for its never offering a handle for reproach. A sort of one-sided development, the direct antithesis of that "honest or well-intended halfness" which Emerson calls the essence of humor, has exercised to an abnormal extent one set of his faculties, and so paralyzed the growth of others as to leave him utterly destitute of anything like moral perception while possessed of a power of physical observation "which could be surpassed by no sleepyeyed animal on the watch for prey."

So admirably, in the portrayal of his character, is the distinction

drawn between this wonderful acuteness of perception and his moral obtuseness, that while thoroughly detesting him for the latter trait, the reader is surprised to find himself stirred by an undoubted feeling of admiration for this power of silent observation which Grandcourt, in spite of his outward semblance of lassitude, and in strange contrast with his seeming indifference, is everywhere exerting. Henleigh Malinger Grandcourt, in short, is a character the study of which would be infinitely instructive to the English lady novelists of the Mrs. Alexander type with their insatiable itching for ennuied heroes with languid, or, as we believe they call it, "trainant" voices.

In spite, however, of the wonderful skill shown in the delineation of this character and that of the eccentric musician Klesmer, the work is, to our mind, inferior as a whole to at least three of its predecessors. As a story it lacks the interest and sweetness of The Mill on the Floss, while as a work of art, we are inclined to believe that most critics would pronounce it inferior to either Romola or Middlemarch, in both of which George Eliot reaches her height in the exercise of that capacity for searching analysis which is the most striking feature of her genius.

In "Daniel Deronda," her favorite method of introducing a chapter by an intricate sort of word-puzzle is practiced to excess. Take for example the heading to the first book commencing, "Man can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning-," which, instead of affording a clue to what is to follow, gives to the uninitiated the confused idea of a paraphrased quotation. Moreover her great power of analyzation seems to have been employed in this work to such an extent that the mind of the average reader, at least, is likely to weary of the incessant examination of motive-play which he is called upon to follow in the study of each of the prominent characters of the plot. Take, for instance, the delineation of Mordecai's aspirations, or the searching self-scrutiny which Deronda forces himself to undergo before venturing to yield to an apparently natural desire to accord Gwendolen the advice she asks for.

In almost all the scenes between these two the reader is apt to grow bewildered in an attempt to calculate the relative force of a multiplicity of influences which seem to be at work in the mind of each; so that one is apt to conclude that it will be impossible for Deronda to raise his hat without going into an interminable ratiocination to satisfy himself as to the propriety of the impulses which result in this apparently insignificant act.

It is, then, upon the strength of her other works, we think, that George Eliot's name will go down to posterity as a great writer of fiction. For "Daniel Deronda," while it cannot be said to diminish her reputation, will hardly be able to add anything to the distinction she has already won of being the greatest living novelist of the day.

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