The Sun.
London, England, 1859-02-14 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

Adam Bede. By George Eliot, author of " Scenes
of Clerical Life." 3 vols. Blackwood, Edinburgh.
This is an admirable work, presenting some
striking passages of human life, and pourtraying
persons as they really are in actual existence, and
not as they too often appear in the pages of fiction ;
of ideal excellence, or of unredeemed wickedness.
It is far more likely to impress the mind of the
reader to depict a character like Arthur Donni-
thorne's, in which good and evil seem to contend
for the mastery. This sketch is a very effective
one ; it is not so grand in its outlines as the deli-
neation of Adam Bede, who is a masterpiece in the
way of description, and than whom a bolder or
more finished character is hardly to be met with in
works of this class. He is not made distinguished
by the accident of birth, rendered remarkable by
any liberal gifts of fortune, neither does he shine
conspicuous for talents ; but he attracts from his
genuine nature, his straightforward conduct, and
his noble independence. He is a man of whom
any station might have been proud, and who was
yet quite unneedful' of the elevation, for, while be
exalted his lowly position, a higher place in the
social scale could not have ennobled him who was
of nature's nobility. It is of such as he is repre-
sented that the poet must have thought when he
exclaimed—
‘‘ A virtuous populace shall rise the while,
And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle."
The chief event in the story is the fatal attachment
that existed between Arthur Donnithorne and
Hetty Sorrel. He was the'young squire, the hero
of the neighbourhood; she the niece of a respect-
table farmer. In her, one takes but little interest,
she is merely a specimen of a young beauty in the
first flush of dawning vanity, and ignorant expec-
tation, and while the reader feels sorrow for her
fate it must be evident that she rushed wilfully into.
danger, disregarding the warning of friends, and
only seeking to gratify inordinate conceit. It is
otherwise with Captain Donnithorne, who was
naturally of a good disposition, though not a strong
one, and it is sad to mark his downward course
from the high esteem he had inspired in his pro-
mising youth, following the love that had watched
him through the bright days of his happy child-
hood. The consequences of crime could hardly
have been more powerfully showed forth than in
the record before us ; theawful circumstances which
followed the flight of Hetty from the village of
hich she had been the flower—the high import-
ance of her uncle in the place, and, above all, the
fact of her having been engaged to Adam Bede, the
pride of the community, all conspired to create a
sensation alike solemn and painful to a susceptible
nature like Arthur's. It is in this that the tone of
the story is just, and the moral effective. Had the
author described a mere seeker of pleasure, or reck-
less votary of a worldly life in the heir of the
smiling domain, no shockw ould have been given to the
feelings; and, on the other hand, no excuses are made
for Arthur, because his conscience reproached him
before, it did not justify him when time had
brought a consumation ten times more disastrous
than he could have surmised. It was natural that
the excited and injured Adam should have scorned
a society that gave to one offender ahard expiation,
and left the other free. But he need not have
inveighed, for an anvenging spirit followed on the,
path of the young squire. When overwhelmed at
the shame and confusion which surrounded him
inthe inheritance he had so longed to enter and to
diffuse happiness around him, he felt ready to call
on the surrounding hills to fall and hide his head,
which he could never more hold up in honour, the
sting was implanted that nothing could eradicate.
One of the most striking passages in the work is
the meeting of A dam and Arthur under the shade
of the grove at twilight. Some of the most dis-
tinguishing traits of the-two men's dispositions are
exemplified in that brief but decisive meeting ;
the courage and lofty spirit of the one, the fatal
hesitation of the other. With his shining prospects
for the future, what would the high-born heir
of wealth and power have given to change places
with the son of toil who stood beside him in his
peasant's garb ? The only weak point in the mind
of Adam was his affection for a worthless girl -like
Hetty Sorrel, yet he did not know much of her
disposition only seeing her at rare intervals until
he was so fascinated by her beauty that he
overlooked the want of any desirable qualities
She was also very artful, and contrived to appear
to the best advantage before strangers, even when
she despised them as beneath herattention. For
this folly of his fancy he paid a heavy penalty, and
too late discovered the hollowness of outward ap-
pearances. A great portion of the story relates to
Dinah Morris, who was a female preacher of the
Methodists, she is described as " not indeed of that
modern type which reads quarterly reviews, and
attends in chapels with pillared porticoes, but of a
very old-fashioned kind." While the author does
not sanction such theories by his approval, he so
describes the practice of Dinah, that all must look
on her with respect, for the forms and ceremonial
she adopted, and the fashions she followed were but
as shadows of a substance, while the light of real
religion that so evidently informed her mind, ani-
mated her spirit, and guided her actions, was so
pure and steady that it was impossible for her most
determined opponent to do other than regard her,
in a general view, as a Christian who adorned their
common profession of faith. Seth Bede, the brother
of Adam, was one of the society, and it was as much
veneration for his gifted teacher, as a personal feel-
ing that made him seek Dinah as his wife ; she re-
fused however, and it is a source of satisfaction to
those who have watched the weary years of the life
of Adam Bede, to find him at last united to so
worthy a woman as Dinah. The fearful scenes of
trial through which he had passed had left
an indelible impress on his mind as is well
expressed in these;words, for 16 Adam had not
outlived his sorrow—had not felt it slip from him
as a temporary burthen, and leave him the same
man again. Do any of us ? God forbid. It,
would be a poor result of all our anguish, and
our wrestling, if we were nothing but our old
selves at the end of it—if we could return to the
same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the
same light thoughts of human suffering, the same
feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we
have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness.
For two such characters as Adam and Dinah it is
not necessary that they should be surrounded by
any imaginary halo of happiness, or endowed,
during the closing scene of our connection, with
the evanescent radiance of human joy, which,
„
however brightly it may glow in the pages a
fiction, we know cannot long remain undimmed ill
real life. His strength could have been exerted in
no nobler manner than to enable him to resist the
thoughts of vengeance, and to bear with fortitude
his heavy burden of trial, and her fervent spirit
could never have exercised itself more meekly, and
yet more triumphantly, than when she stood in the
condemned cell of the guilty maiden, and whir'
pered those sweet words of hope which should
enable the trembling sinner to look beyond this
world's justice to the mercy of another and a
better. Happily the fatal end was not so near, but
the lessons that Hetty then so fearfully learned
went with her across the sea, and in the lonely
hours of her sad existence, those words of blessed
significance must have risen up as angel visi,-
tants, to comfort her in the thorny road she had
made of her life, and to cheer her in the awful
moments, when she entered the valley of the sha'
dow of death. Among the many other persons met
with in the story, the clergyman, Mr. Irwine, is
deserving of mention, he is not represented as a
very zealous man, but his principles were strictly
honourable, and his conduct unexceptionable. In
the blight that fell upon his parish he was the true
friend of all the mourning and the guilty sufferers,
and he was mainly instrumental in things being at
all arranged satisfactorily after the fearful coda'
sions. In the details given of two of the chief
female inhabitants of the village, we find some
skill, Mrs. Bede, Adam's mother, and Mrs. Poyser,
the aunt of Hetty, they were very different, the
former fretful and repining, the latter bustling and
cheerful in her peculiar way. Mrs. Poyser was
happy in finding out the faults of the household ;
Mrs. Bede was miserable in summing up the
miseries, present and future, real and'imaginary, of
her lot. Taken as a whole, there is much to de-
serve favourable attention for this work, and the
talent
style
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characters, and its high standard of
parts to it the excellence that for ever belongs to
the pure and the true.

TRAMWAYS IN IRELAND.—A bill has been brow: h
in by Sir,
R. Ferguson, Mr. Sergeant Deasy, and C.' ..
Greville to facilitate internal communication in Ireland 11
means of tramways. Persons are authorised to promote
tramway companies, to subscribe capital therefor, and when
half the cost has bees subscribed to apply for leave to con-
struct works. Grand juries may also be memorialised 00
the subject.
OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE GRAND EIGHT-OAR
RACE understand the lovers of aquatics at both 'Uni-
versities 103 already preparing for this grand trial of skill/
which will take place either on Friday, April sth, or the
following Saturday. The Oxonians since their defeat last
term have organised a system of trial races, by which mono
they hope to keep their men in good training, and to have
plenty of "oars" to fall back upon in case of any of the creme
" shutting up." The Oxford crew, as at present existing,
comprises four only out of last year's boat—viz., Messrs.
Arkell, Risley, C. G. Lane, and E. Lane. The Oxonians
have since last season received a great acquisition in the
person of the Hon. Valentine Lawless, who has entered at
Balliol College, and who, it will be remembered, was ear
Min of the Eton crew. Numerous steamers have alreaa9
been engaged, among them one by Harvey, the Universiti
water liff, whose services on the river Isis should not be
forgotten.