A GOOD many persons probably such is the vanity of human nature -would like to have written a novel which had such a high success as Adam Bede. Indeed, some portions of that book read so naturally and so easily the characters had so little of the grand and the heroic, and the talk was so entirely that of this everyday world, that it might have been pardonable in some readers, inexperienced in pen-craft, to think that they could have written it themselves, if they had been so fortunate as to seize the idea. One enthusiastic gentleman, we remember, went a step further than this: he persuaded himself, and persuaded his friends or his friends persuaded him, for the parts played by the different actors in the joke were never very satisfactorily explained that he had written it. It was denied, certainly, by those who had the best means of knowing; but they were politely assured that they were labouring under a hallucination. Some well-known initials took up the question in the Times' best type. At last the claimant's friends were satisfied-so, we believe, were the public. But the former rested their satisfaction on a proof which was soon to be forthcoming. Another work was to appear, which, by the indisputable authority of internal evidence, should establish an identity of authorship for ever.

It

Here, then, we have the book. does not, indeed, bear on its title-page the name which under those circumstances we had a right to expect-it professes to come from the same hand as the former. But there can be no doubt that, if the actual sword with which Balaam smote the ass be not forthcoming (for excellent reasons), here we have at least the very sword which the prophet wished for. We need no title-page to inform us that the Mill on the Floss is by the author of Adam Bede. It is scarcely possible that it should meet with a warmer welcome than its predecessor; it would be an ungrateful comparison to say that it deserves it. Yet if we are to treat it merely as a

novel, in point of dramatic interest it is incontestably superior. There is the same keen insight into nature, the same truth and force of description, the same bright and graceful humour; but the story, which in Adam Bede was subordinate to the other attractions of the book, is here one of its greatest charms. As before, the personages whom we are to accompany through some of their life-struggles are very carefully introduced to us at the outset, and we have to make their acquaintance thoroughly before the story is suffered to proceed; but the result is that we know them so intimately that they keep fast hold of our sympathies to the end. And the interest, when once fairly started, though not rapid, never flags. It is not of that intense and exciting kind which tempts the reader, unable to finish at a sitting, to turn over the last half-volume "to see the end;" but we lay the book aside thoughtfully, content to feel that there is so much enjoyment still behind.

One jewel alone Adam Bede contains which is still unmatched--there is no character in this new work which even aspires to a rivalry with Mrs Poyser. This we cannot altogether regret; and the author will perhaps, like ourselves, be well content to let the portrait of that inimitable woman hang alone, with the superscription, "Nihil simile aut secundum."

The date chosen for the present story, as in Adam Bede, is that of a past (or passing) generation. The Great Duke, whose

"Good grey head that all men knew," we have laid to its rest with sorrow as hearty as ever nation bestowed upon its dead-the free-will offering of men of all ranks and sympathies and parties-was then in the pride of his fame, alive and vigorous enough to give a zest to detraction. The farmers, after dinner, at Dorlcote Mill, decide that "by what they can make out, he was no better than he should It was in those elder days,

be"

"When ignorance was much more comfortable than at present, and was received with all the honours in very good society, without being obliged to dress itself in an elaborate costume of knowledge; a time when cheap periodi

cals were not, and when country sur

geons never thought of asking their female patients if they were fond of reading, but simply took it for granted that they preferred gossip."

We are glad to find the writer touching the failings of these bygone times with a loving hand-assuredly from no sympathy with their ignor ance-without feeling it a duty to bestow upon them that contemptuous pity which they usually receive from the critics of our terribly intellectual generation. The actors in the story are of the middle class-what we may call the lower middle class-even more exclusively than in Adam Bede. There is not a full-bred gentleman or lady (in the conventional sense of the words) in the whole of the three volumes; for even Mr Stephen Guest, the rich young banker, must be supposed to have risen from the ranks. Mr Tulliver, miller and maltster, owner and occupier of Dorlcote Mill, well to do in the world, and thought to be even more so than he is; his wife and family; his three sisters-in-law, who have respectively married a farmer, a wool-stapler, and a junior partner who has lately worked his way into the great mill and shipowning house of Guest & Co.; a lawyer and his son-all living in or about the provincial town of St Ogg's, -these are the very commonplace personages in whose sayings and doings we are asked to interest ourselves. This is not a picked sample of human life. Such materials require a true workman's hand to fashion them into an attractive shape; but it is done here with such a masterly ease of touch, and such a perfect result, that those who trace the process long to seize the tools, almost sure, for the moment, that they could do likewise.

But though the material is drawn from a similar stratum of society to that which furnished the pictures for the previous story, it is distinct in kind. The good people of St Ogg's and its neighbourhood are very dif

ferent from the villagers of Hayslope. They are more decidedly and essentially vulgar-to use a much-abused comparatively little of what we unbut very expressive term. There is derstand by the term "vulgarity" in thoroughly rural life; amongst the peasantry it hardly exists at all. There may be rudeness, ignorance, boorishness, brutality-there is, too often; but of that indescribable compound of pride with meanness, grasping selfishness with ostentatious dis play, coarse familiarity with utter want of sympathy, intense ignorance with intense self-satisfaction - all which we include more or less in the term "vulgarity "-there can be but little, by the very nature of things, amongst the labouring classes; there is not much of it even amongst the farmers. There was not a tinge of it in Mrs Poyser of the Hall Farm, or her excellent husband, any more than in Lisbeth Bede and her two sons. We are bound to say it finds its most natural home in the breast of the thriving British tradesman. Let there be no offence to the merchantprinces of our people; nay, are we not "a nation of shopkeepers?" "By this craft we have our wealth." Yet the old Romans had a glimmering of the truth, when they denounced trade as "servile." It had elements in it which made those who engaged in it no longer "free." On some such hidden foundation of truth rests that prejudice which weighs with many a poor English gentleman, when he shrinks with a proud reluctance from bringing his son up to "trade;" pinches himself to give him a liberal education, and thrusts him, too often without abilities or interest, into the overcrowded ranks of a "profession." It is not always that he looks down upon mere buying and selling as unworthy of the gentleman;" he shrinks, perhaps unconsciously, from the something which, as the son of Sirach teaches, "sticks close between." It is not, or it ought not to be, the shopkeeper's apron and counter that alarm him, but the shop. keeping mind. With this feeling he, like the Roman, prefers the plough to the loom; he will make his boy a farm-bailiff rather than a grocer. With some such feeling too, let us

hope, the prosperous merchant gives to his own son that "liberal" school and university training which he perhaps never enjoyed in his own case, in order that the heir of his successful fortunes may take his place in due course in the firm, not to consider himself lowered by his business, but prepared, by taste, and habits, and associations, to maintain the honour and liberality of its deal ings at the level of his own.

Yet it is from that worst aspect of the money-making middle class their narrow-minded complacent selfishness, their money-worship, their petty schemes and jealousies that much, not only of the comedy, but even of the tragedy, of the Mill on the Floss is drawn. Mr Tulliver himself, indeed, is rather of the country-farmer type; but his wife's family, the Dodsons-who are richer people, and consider Mrs Tulliver's a poor match-have all the selfish hardness which the successful pursuit of small gains breeds in their class their very virtues are mean.

"The Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed-as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the

next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well-not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson' family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated: if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in

this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanour, and the only bitter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. when in 'strange houses,' always ate dry A female Dodson, bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others-that was admitted; but in so far as they were

The

kin,' they were of necessity better than those who were no kin.' And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively. feeblest member of a family-the one who has the least character is often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale."

They could honestly boast that, whatever disgrace might have happened in less-favoured families,

"No Dodson had ever been cut off with a shilling,' and no cousin of the Dodsons disowned; as, indeed, why should they be? for they had no cousins who had not money out at use, or some houses of their own, at the very least.

"The religion of the Dodsons consisted in revering whatever was customary and respectable; it was necessary to be baptised, else one could not be buried in the churchyard, and to take the sacra ment before death as a security against more dimly understood perils; but it was of equal necessity to have the proper pall-bearers and well-cured hams at one's funeral, and to leave an unimpeachable will.

"To be honest and poor was never a Dodson motto, still less to seem rich though being poor; rather, the family badge was to be honest and rich; and not only rich, but richer than was supposed. To live respected, and have the proper bearers at your funeral, was an achievement of the ends of existence that would be entirely nullified if, on the reading of your will, you sank in the opinion of your fellow-men, either by turning out to be poorer than they expected, or by leaving your money in a

Of this successful and affectionate family, two married sisters, Mrs Glegg and Mrs Pullet, play a very important part throughout the first two volumes. Their husbands-the first a retired woolstapler, the second a (so-called) gentleman-farmer-are naturally less prominent figures, being somewhat overshadowed by the Dodson majesty. But both (though perfectly distinct as individual characters) are men of the same hard money-worshipping class, and have chosen their partners in life from a heartfelt appreciation of the Dodson virtues. Mrs Glegg, at the period of our introduction, is a comely woman of fifty, majestic in person, and severely virtuous in character. Rich enough to afford everything of the best, she feels it due to herself and to society to have them-but not for use or wear, except on high and rare occasion. Her personal wardrobe lies preserved in layers in oak chests; whence they seldom come into the upper air of daily life until their fashion has passed away, and the rich silk is covered with "constellations of small yellow spots." The "primeval strata" are disposed of in gifts to poorer relations. When she quarrels with her husband, which is frequently, she retires to her room, has the blinds put down, and sulks for the rest of the day upon watergruel- studying Baxter's Saints' Everlasting Rest. Mrs Pullet is a thinner-shelled species of Dodson. She is a fountain of tears on all occasions, adopting this "compendious mode of expressing her views of life in general," which are of a gloomy character; seldom trying on a new bonnet without the solemn reflection that "perhaps she may never live to wear it twice." She is also a liberal patroness of "doctors' stuff," with great "experiences in pink mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles and weak stuff in large

bottles ;" an array of which bottles (empty) fills two of the long storeroom shelves already; but, as she adds tearfully-"it's well if they ever fill three "-she "may go" before she has "made up the dozen of these last firmly attached to the leading princisizes." Both sisters, however, are ples of the Dodson religion-that poverty is the one sin never to be forgiven unto men, and that to die the death of the righteous is, to die "leaving more money out at interest than other folks had reckoned."

These characters are admirably developed in the successive scenes and dialogues which make up the first half of the story. Each figure is filled in by a series of minute touches, which are really the perfection of art; while the conversation between the speakers seems to the reader to flow as easily and readily as though it had been taken down from actual life. In this point, too, the present book seems to us superior to Adam Bede; exquisite as the dialogue was there, it sometimes bore the marks of the artist's hand; the reader felt, from time to time, that he was listening to the writer in his study-not to the speakers in the carpenter's shop. We hope the whole explanation does not lie in the humiliating truth, that the Gleggs and the Pullets represent such a much larger portion of the world around us than Seth or Adam.

So very natural, indeed, and therefore so very disagreeable, are these relations of Mrs Tulliver's, that we should feel we had too much of their company-that, like pictures of diseased organs in medical books, they were too accurately truthful to be pleasant-but that they are wholesomely relieved by two of the very best portraits of child-life that have ever been drawn. Not that Tom and Maggie, the children of Dorlcote Mill, are perfect ideals of any kind. They are quite different from those happy families of wingless cherubs that we hear of occasionally (in books), or those very disagreeable little girls and boys whom we also read of, and who are occasionally introduced to our admiration by fond parents. These are two real children, compounds of flesh and spirit, good and evil. They merely say and do

what children have said and done, with variations, a thousand times over, and yet it all reads to us fresh and new. Why is it so delightful to read what we have all known and felt so well already? Is it a confirmation of the assertion which some philosophers have hazarded, that all knowledge is nothing more than recollection? We have neither space nor inclination to discuss the principle; the fact remains. Tom and Maggie Tulliver delight us, because they say and do nothing more or less than either we remember to have said and done when children ourselves, or have known other children say and do. Tom is thirteen years old, and has just returned home from Mr Jacobs' Academy, where he has learnt very little indeed from that gentleman, but has taught himself a good many things. He "can't abide books," but is clever at fishing, and making whipcord, and throwing stones. He can fight, too, and is a boy of remarkable determination and obstinacy; showing very early in life a strong desire for "mastery over the inferior animals, wild and domestic, including cockchafers, neighbours' dogs, and small sisters;" with strong unconscious notions of strict justice, and little sympathy with weaknesses of any kind-especially in girls. These qualities serve him both for good and evil in his after-life; but it is in the history of his boyhood that he interests us most. His boyish tyranny over his sister, who is four years younger, and almost his sole companion in his holidays, alternating with an intention to be kind and protecting towards her- both founded on his sense of justice and of female inferiority; his troubles over the Latin Grammar, and his dealings with his familiar, Bob Jakin, are a perfect photograph of boyhood. Bob himself, the bird-keeping boy, with his "snub-nosed face and close-curled border of red hair,"-" his trousers always rolled up at the knee for the convenience of wading"-whose most aristocratic acquaintance, of which he makes proud boast, is " a chap as owns ferrets," and who would sooner be a rot-catcher nor anything -he would "-Bob is as true a bit of country life as ever was presented.

No wonder Tom fraternises with him cordially. Who, in the days of their boyhood, would not have been proud of a humble friend with such accomplishments, and such a circle of acquaintance? Who would not have felt all maternal warnings on the point of low company and torn trousers powerless as against the attractions of Bob Jakin?

"It must be owned that Tom was

fond of Bob's company. How could it be otherwise? Bob knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellowhammer's; he found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all sorts of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering incognito. Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Tom; and every holiday-time Maggie was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Bob.”

Maggie Tulliver, the sister, is a contrast to Tom physically and morally. Tom is fair and fresh-looking

66

quite a Dodson in appearance, his proud mother is glad to think, though the obstinacy in his disposition comes from the father's side; the girl has a brown skin, "gleaming black eyes," and "dark heavy locks" that refuse to curl, and which she tosses out of her line of vision with very much the air of a small Shetland pony." Aunt Pullet even fears that "the gell's being so brown" will "stand in her way i' life." Aunt Pullet, with her experience, should have known better. It is not poor Maggie's brownness and heavy dark hair that "stand in her way" in this 'puzzling world," as poor Mr Tulliver calls it, at least not in Mrs Pullet's sense. Nothing of the kind. These little brown gipsy-like girls grow up sometimes, as many of us know, into most distracting women. It is from something else, which beats already underneath the brown skin, that poor Maggie's trials in her womanhood will arise. This unhappy deviation, however, from the