Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on her mistakes, it was never said in the neighbourhood of Middlemarch that such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which she was born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly man to a girl less than half his own age-on modes of education which make a woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance-on rules of conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly asserted beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life, where great feelings will take the aspect of error and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial: the medium in which their ardent deeds took shape is for ever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know.

Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;

and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

'Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian :
We are but mortals, and must sing of man.'

Was never true love loved in vain,
For truest love is highest gain.
No art can make it: it must spring
Where elements are fostering.
So in heaven's spot and hour
Springs the little native flower,
Downward root and upward eye,
Shapen by the earth and sky.

Full souls are double mirrors, making still
An endless vista of fair things before
Repeating things behind.

'1st Gent.-All times are good to seek your wedded

2d Gent.

home

Bringing a mutual delight.

Why, true.
The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling

waves

While they two clasped each other, and foresaw

No life apart.'

I would not creep along the coast, but steer
Out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

'The clerkly person smiled and said,
Promise was a pretty maid,

But being poor she died unwed.'

-0-

'Oh, sir, the loftiest hopes on earth

Draw lots with meaner hopes: heroic breasts,
Breathing bad air, run risk of pestilence;

Or, lacking lime-juice when they cross the Line,
May languish with the scurvy.'

Our deeds still travel with us from afar,

And what we have been makes us what we are.

-0

'Ist Gent. Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves. 2d Gent.-Ay, truly but I think it is the world That brings the iron.'

1st Gent.-How class your man?-as better than the most,

Or, seeming better, worse beneath that cloak?

As saint or knave, pilgrim or hypocrite?

2d Gent.-Nay, tell me how you class your wealth of

books,

The drifted relics of all time. As well

Sort them at once by size and livery:
Vellum, tall copies, and the common calf
Will hardly cover more diversity

Than all your labels cunningly devised

To class your unread authors.

Wise in his daily work was he:

To fruits of diligence,

And not to faiths or polity,

He plied his utmost sense.
These perfect in their little parts,
Whose work is all their prize—
Without them how could laws, or arts,
Or towered cities rise?

Ist Gent.-An ancient land in ancient oracles

Is called 'law-thirsty:' all the struggle there
Was after order and a perfect rule.

Pray, where lie such lands now?

2d Gent.-Why, where they lay of oldIn human souls.

It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from what outsiders call inconsistency-putting a dead mechanism of 'ifs' and 'therefores' for the living myriad of hidden suckers whereby the belief and the conduct are wrought into mutual sustainment.

Named Idleness, which many eat
By preference, and call it sweet:

First watch for morsels, like a hound,
Mix well with buffets, stir them round,
With good thick oil of flatteries,
And froth with mean self-lauding lies.
Serve warm: the vessels you must choose
To keep it in are dead men's shoes.'

-0

'Black eyes you have left, you say,
Blue eyes fail to draw you;
Yet you seem more rapt to-day,
Than of old we saw you.

Oh I track the fairest fair

Through new haunts of pleasure;
Footprints here and echoes there
Guide me to my treasure:
Lo! she turns-immortal youth
Wrought to mortal stature,
Fresh as starlight's aged truth-
Many-named Nature!'

How will you know the pitch of that great bell
Too large for you to stir? Let but a flute
Play 'neath the fine-mixed metal: listen close
Till the right note flows forth, a silvery rill :
Then shall the huge bell tremble-then the mass
With myriad waves concurrent shall respond
In low soft unison.

Pity the laden one; this wandering woe
May visit you and me.