Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-05-11

Force in the world, from one end of them to
the other. Their personages lean upon
themselves, upon each other, upon science,
upon race beliefs and family missions; but
upon what England calls the Christian S God,
never. So far from that if there is a char
acter to be drawn disobedient OF disloyal to
its convictions. shallow and superficial in
feeling, worldly wise and polite in action,
that character is Christian. The keenest-
eyed woman that ever lived, can find nothing
IN the aspirations of educated womanhood,
III the devotion of Christian manhood, to
sustain or cheer; but she goes out of her way
to hold up to admiration the earnestness of
Jews and Gypsies, But this perversity is
avenging the cause she Sights. Could au-
thors SIT III Judgment on their own work, it
might startle her to observe that i'll her last
novel she has better drawn the evil than
what she meant to be the good. Gwendolen
and Grandcourt and the Princess must be
ranked among her chief successes. Deron-
da and Mirah and Mordecai are her only sig
nal failures and think that worse blunder
In the ethics of matrimony could hardly have
been committed than the proposition of the
expectant bridegroom, Deronda, to the cap
tivating young creature so desperately in
love with him, to keep up their exciting
friendship by Il correspondence Surely george
tive relation between two called 'rmarriage,"
the presence of third element, on any basis
OF sentiment whatever not equally shared by
both, is almost sure to prove fatal to it, and
this all the more, if, like Dsronda's, the mar
riage was an attempt in the first place at that
ideal thing-a purely Glove match"
1t may be true OF men that 'there is more
faith in honest doubt than in half the
creeds"; but it is not true for women. The
sex lives but by religion. 1t owes everything
to the C,riSiim religion; and woman who
forgets the obligations of women to Jesus
Christ, and who has allowed the prestige of
scientific thought to override her spiritual
perceptions, must be fundamentally wanting
somewhere. There is an insight of the soul
as well as of the mind, and in her earlier
days George Eliot seemed to possess it. Then
there was yet God in the heavens, and an
Immortality with Him as compensation for
human agonles and failures. Her most per-
feet novels were written then, and then | all
but adored her as one whose very existence
WAS semi-miraculous. But confess that her
latest books have much diminished my rever-
ence, and that rose from the perusai of
'Daniel Deronda" with almost asieep resent
ment against this great genius who under
takes to be great moralst, and to expound
and guide the human heart, and yet who ig-
nores the only forces which have ever regu-
lated or ever can regulate that heart,-itS
sense of responsibility to its Maker, and its
living human love for its $50 believedl Divine
Redeemer. To ignore the existence and the
power and the necessity of this love in human
affairs is simply to be false to the facts. Men
and women are not regenerated by falling in
love with each other as George Eliot would
fain make out. If they were, there would
indeed be no need of a GOD in our moral uni
verse. But We cannot, even when we try,
find our gcds and goddesses in our fellow
mertals; and happily We are not left to do So
Still there is no God but God" even if
George Eliot is not His prophet. l only hope
she may never hear from any of her confid-
ing readers the cry of Mary, They have
taken away my Lord, and know not where
they have laid Him"
10 sum up, George Eliot is not the equal
of the greatest, because she is not poet;
and she is not a poet because her imagina-
uon has always been controlled by her head
rather than inspired by her heart. In short,
she has not dared. or she has not cared, to
be simply woman. Instead of wearing her
womanhood as a crown, she has tried to make
men forget it, and for fear OF being womanish
she has discarded, instead of reverencing,
the traditions of her sex. But in conforming
thus anxiously to the masculine philosophi- |
cal pattern, she has thrown away the volcanic
force that goes with the passion and abandon
natural TO women, and 50 her genius has fail |
ed to rush up into the blue in that snowy |
pinnacle of absolute glory TO which COM
plote surrender to the pure feminine type |
would undoubtedly have carried it.
Cambridge, Jan. ., 1877. Z.F. PEILcE.
Since writing the above. see from a report Of a |
lecture upon George Eliot by Miss Phelps that |
George Eliot calls herself mirror" / was not |
aware of II when made the comparison.