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She was trying to decide whether or not she ought even to intimate to the tall, matter-of-fact girl, whom she already liked, that Kathleen West was likely to prove a disappointment in the way of a roommate. But the decision was not left to her, for Patience Eliot said with calm amusement in her tones: "I have a better idea of what you are thinking than you know.
With her it is not so much that the characters do thus and so, but why they do thus and so. Dickens portrays the behavior, George Eliot dissects the motive of the behavior. Here comes the human creature, says Dickens, now let us see how he will behave. Here comes the human creature, says George Eliot, now let us see why he behaves.
In the summer of 1869 there was a pleasant home at St. John's Wood, in London, which possessed peculiar attractions. Other houses were as comfortable to look at, other hedges were as green, other drawing rooms were gayer, but this was the home of George Eliot, and on Sunday afternoons the resort of those who desired the best that London had to give.
The author is having such a good time in telling his tale that he gives us necessarily a good time in reading it. But many of the novelists who have had great things to say about human life have been singularly deficient in this native sense of narrative. George Eliot and Anthony Trollope, for example, almost never evidence the joy of telling tales.
As an indirect worker, she has lightened her husband's labors as a missionary, has softened the fierce temper of the pagan tribes, and by her kind and placid ministrations has prepared their minds for the reception of Gospel truth. As an example of such a worker, Mrs. Ann Eliot, the wife of the Rev. John Eliot, surnamed the "Apostle," stands conspicuous among a host.
From the first the vehemence and passion of his words had contrasted with the grave, colourless reasoning of older speakers. His opponents complained that Eliot aimed to "stir up affections."
George Eliot and Ruskin, for instance, whose centenaries fall in this year, suffer the dark reproach of having been "Victorians." The centenaries of Hawthorne and Longfellow and Whittier were celebrated at a period of comparative indifference to their significance.
When George Eliot uttered surprise at seeing no lines on his forehead, his reply was: "I suppose it is because I am never puzzled." "It has never been my way," he continues, "to set before myself a problem and puzzle out an answer.
One of the characteristics of the central Victorian spirit was a tendency to substitute a certain more or less satisfied seriousness for the extremes of tragedy and comedy. This is marked by a certain change in George Eliot; as it is marked by a certain limitation or moderation in Dickens.
Now, Eliot was full of love for them; and therefore so full of faith and hope that he spent the labor of a lifetime in their behalf." "I would have conquered them first, and then converted them," said Charley. "Ah, Charley, there spoke the very spirit of our forefathers." replied Grandfather. "But Mr. Eliot a better spirit. He looked upon them as his brethren.
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