BOOKS.
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS.* TILE new story by the author of Adam Bede is full of power—a vague word to use but, as far as any one word can stamp a whole work of art, it is the only word with any approach to fitness in it. The story is in the main the record of the struggle of a young girl towards a noble life—a life she can intensely feel to be alone worthy of a woman, but which she has not the simple strength of will and act to realize at once in its directness. Few persons in the novel-dramas which make so much of our literature now-a- clays are so distinctly embodied and vividly coloured as the Maggie Tulliver who has just been introduced as a new guest in so many thousand English homes. Her love for her brother— clinging, exacting in its excess of lovingness, but still thought- lessly unselfish, is painted with wonderful minuteness. Very few writers can enter into the thoughts of children, can follow out their little trains of half-reasonings, and detect the ways and methods by which they arrive at conclusions : and of those few, George Eliot seems to us, in the present day, to possess in the highest degree the gift of knowing the child-soul in those things which are common to all children. Charles Dickens has given portraits of odd children, very touching in their manner, and with a certain naturalness in the oddity, that, without knowing enough of the few exceptional originals, makes us feel that the pictures are true portraits. But George Eliot reminds us of what nearly all children are. Her children are healthy with flesh-and-blood rosiness, not sickly or queer. You seem to look into their blue eyes, pat their little heads, "sunning over with curls," or hear their voices saying such things as any bright-eyed little four-year old will say to the first comer. In Mr. 6tilfil's Love Story and Adam Bede there were a few touches giving hints what the 'author could do in this way, but such delightful hints that we could not wish to know more ; we were thankful that for us these little people were not "characters," would not grow up, would ever remain children, and that the little"flaxen-headed two-year-old" who "with admirable directness and simplicity," said to Mr. Gal, "What zoo dot in zoo pottet F" would never be reported as speaking better English.
In the new story, the author describes Maggie Tolliver from her childhood upwards, and traces the influence of all the home associations on the young girl's mind. Her active mind, her spirit sensitive to all things, her heart with a hunger and thirst to be loved, are analyzed with a wondrous instinctive knowledge of the inner workings of a child's mind. All the persons around her leave some kind of impression on her. Her father is a man of narrow culture, with that consciousness of its narrowness which indicates the power of a nature much broader, and which is shown most in his love for "his little wench "—the wayward child he clings to half-blindly, not understanding her mind but understanding that he loves her. His love for her keeps alive in her a most wholesome and healthy tenderness. But the very native limits of his mind still leave much of the depths of her feeling unsounded. Towards her brother, she is imperatively attracted. His boyhood is also drawn the lines are few, the touches seem but mere accidental tints left by the pencil, but the character is painted to the very life. The plain practical turn of the boy's mind, his involuntary contempt for imperfections he does not share his passive bewilderment as to things he cannot learn, and his quiet undemonstrative energy in going through with the work before him ; are the main characteristics of the portrait. The manner in which he meets his sister's love—frank and sincere in his amount of love when he shows it, equally frank and sincere when, by withholding it, he awards her what he considers deserved punishment—but which to her mind, morbidly sensitive, is an abyss of pain he can never by any possibility realize to his narrow solid mind—is a curious instance of the power the author has of tracing, with rare insight, not alone the inner workings of two very different natures, but the effect the two natures have upon one another. There is not much depth or variety in the brother's character, but the truth with which it is done indicates the richness of the artist's power who, in her second-rate characters, follows the firm outline her cunning hand has traced as conscientiously as in fulfilling the more gracious task of working out the leading figures of the great design.
The next influence on Maggie's character brings into light new revelations of the spirit within her. Philip Wakem, a deformed young man, son of her father's bitter enemy, a hard-griping so- licitor, has been partially known to her from childhood. He, thoughtful and perceptive, has watched her and been won by the strange beauty of her character, not inaptly expressed by deep wild eyes with wondrous power of expressing all her beauty and all her weakness—all her deep heart-wish to be noble, all her fitful- ness in striving to fulfil the high ideal she can so quickly conceive. He can see in her a beauty of soul not visible to herself. He can interpret her thoughts, better than she can, and detect in her inter- mittent asceticism a mere stunting of emotions that ought to have full play. The awakening of the girl's higher faculties under the influence of a mind of wider range and finer tone than her own is indicated, and the effect of the circumstances of her childhood and youth on her manners, speech, and actions, is shown so naturally, that one for a time quite forgets the artist and her art. Maggie is no exceptional girl in any way ; far, far removed from the " fault- • The Mill on the Floss. By George Eliot, Author of Adam Bede." Published by Blackwood.
less monster" of the old romance, and still as far from the pale, clever, and sharp-spoken young woman whom Jane Byre made fashionable for a time. A woman's natural impulses; all the wild fancies and self-torturing thoughts of a young girl 'vivid in imagination, but not strong in any mental exercise, and obliged to live a life at first very narrow, and then very mean—are de- scribed exactly as they might happen, as they do happen, in thousands of English homes. The novelty and interest lie in the fact that in very few works of fiction has the interior of the mind been so keenly analyzed. We had such an analysis in Jane Eyre, powerful and distinct for evermore to all who read that great story ; but Jane Eyre was no ordinary young wo- man; she was exceptional in circumstances, exceptional in her own nature. Maggie Tulliver is not exceptional ; the wayward little child, "naughty" to the last degree, quick in her "ways," is natural enough, and the growth of her characteristics bears all the impress of the facts around her. Her mental conflicts are not alone analyzed in her childhood and youth and in re- lation to all her home ties. As life advances, two kinds of love contend for mastery within her ; she remembers her first awa- kening to higher things at the dawn of womanhood, and her first lover keeps a place in her thoughts which he never forfeits. It is almost impossible to those who have not read the book to de- scribe how delicately and clearly the author brings before us the distinction between Maggie loving Philip Wakem and Maggie loving Stephen Guest. The contending thoughts are so natural ; they seem inevitable, and through every weak word, every un- conscious betrayal, bringing complication and suffering into the story—keenly as one feels them, as if they were painful scenes we saw acted before our eyes—we still have an instinctive sense that they are unavoidable, that they could not be left unspoken, or undone. There are parts of the story where the style gives a kind of consciousness of reality, as if you heard the words spoken by a voice shaken with the emotions so well described ; there are pas- sages of dialogue where the love between men and women is ex- pressed more naturally and powerfully, we think, than in any novel we ever read. Rising fresh from the perusal, we may over- rate the power of these passages, and attribute to style or words what may be due to situations the interest of which is prepared by skilful construction ; but we think there can be no mistaking the wondrous human passion that animates the scenes between the two lovers—bound to others in honour, yet clinging together with such appealing love. Some parts of the story are likely to be misunderstood at first read- ing; some passages appeared to us out of harmony and some inci- dents forced, until the very last pages threw a light over the whole. It is the epic of a human soul, traced through childhood, develop- ment, and temptation. The sordid scenes at Dorlcote described with photographic truth and minute manner-painting worthy of Miss Austen—are still interesting only in their effect on Maggie ; her impatience is more natural, and her impetuous aspiration after something higher than her home-surroundings stands out more distinctly. The character of Mrs. Tulliver and her three sisters,—with all their family fretfulness and peculiari- ties, their idolatry of the " proprieties,"—supply not only a background dull and mean enough for the bright, bold, dark- eyed girl, but furnish an excuse for much that is erring in her "ways." You feel that, in such a home, a child like Maggie would inevitably grow up into a woman such as Maggie Tulliver is. Her native glow of love and sense of beauty lead her perforce into the path traced out. In this novel, therefore, we have reproduced the old grand element of interest which the Greek drama possessed, the effect of circumstances upon man ; but you have, in addition, that analysis of the inner mind, of which Hamlet stands in literature the greatest example. In the case of Maggie, we have a career regarded both from the inside and from the outside ; we feel the throbbing of her heart at each new sensation, and we see, as it were, from our own stand-point, the outward facts that awaken her to new life. On sweeps the river of life and of destiny ; the flood resistless, the waters strong : men and homes, and old associations of outer life, are swept away for miles, or engulphed ; all around drifts from its moorings ; and, as spectators, we watch the roll of the resistless tide. On comes one young girl, alone upon a raft, hardly saved from the flood ; she strives against the current, but is still swept along, and now we are made conscious of her thoughts and feelings. We see not alone the river of life, with its hard facts floated away, and its merciless waters, but we are conscious of every thought of the victim. We follow back to the heart the retreating blood that has left the cheek pale ; we know every gleam of hope and pang of despair that runs through mind and soul, as the familiar landmarks are passed, and she is drifted down with the flood. We do not remember any novel where the interest so clearly centres round the one character, where every fact—the smallest—is read with deep attention, because it may af- fect her—as in real life the very name of a town or street, or even shop, remembered in connexion with some one person much be- loved, has at once a new vivid life. Not that Maggie is made actually powerful in her influence on the other persons, but that everything she does, or anything done to her, is of interest, and thus the whole story takes a noble unity. Sterne eulogized critics who were pleased "they knew not why, and eared not wherefore." In the present day, we are perhaps un- happily too critical to be satisfied with that simple and gracious reception of great works of art. We cannot help analyzing the mechanism of this great story. It seems to us that the first idea was simply what we have indicated—the onward "storm and stress" of the soul, the outward rush and plash of the river of life on which it is swept along. It is with great joy that we recog- nize the consummate art with which this idea is worked out. The smallest details worked in help to make the idea real. There is even in the material facts a half-hidden symbolism indicating the idea of the story. When Maggie tells Philip Wakem why she loves her brother, she thinks that it was holding his hand she first saw the rushing water of the floss. The quarrsi about the water privileges affects her whole life. She is cairfed away by the flood out "to sea with the man she loves and must not love, and where her physical danger and her moral peril are brought close together. Finally, the asIastrophe comes as the river of life overwhelms her, and the symbolism is coniple.te. The beauty of this under-current of symbolism is that it is unexpressed, but the mere material facts of the river playing such a great part in Maggie's life, give one the feeling that she is swept along by a current of circumstances she can neither resist nor control.
We might dwell on minor beauties ; but we have lingered too long over our task. Inferior to Adam Bede in the varied interest of three or four good characters, it is superior as a work of art ; with a higher aim and that aim more artistically worked out.
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