The little ones were lifted on the bed to kiss her. Little Walter said, 'Mamma, mamma,' and stretched out his fat arms and smiled; and Chubby seemed gravely wondering; but Dickey, who had been looking fixedly at her, with lip hanging down, ever since he came into the room, now seemed suddenly pierced with the idea that mamma was going away somewhere; his little heart swelled and he cried aloud.

Then Mrs Hackit and Nanny took them all away. Patty at first begged to stay at home and not go to Mrs Bond's again; but when Nanny reminded her that she had better go to take care of the younger ones, she submitted at once, and they were all packed in the pony-carriage once more.

Milly kept her eyes shut for some time after the children were gone. Amos had sunk on his knees, and was holding her hand while he watched her face. Byand-by she opened her eyes, and, drawing him close to her, whispered slowly

'My dear-dear-husband-you have been-verygood to me. You-have-made me—very—happy.'

She spoke no more for many hours. They watched her breathing becoming more and more difficult, until evening deepened into night, and until midnight was past. About half-past twelve she seemed to be trying to speak, and they leaned to catch her words.

'Music-music-didn't you hear it?'

Amos knelt by the bed and held her hand in his. He did not believe in his sorrow. It was a bad dream. He did not know when she was gone. But Mr Brand, whom Mrs Hackit had sent for before twelve o'clock, thinking that Mr Barton might probably need his help, now came up to him, and said

'She feels no more pain now. Come, my dear sir, come with me.'

'She isn't dead?' shrieked the poor desolate man, struggling to shake off Mr Brand, who had taken him by the arm. But his weary, weakened frame was not equal to resistance, and he was dragged out of the room. (From The Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton.)

Mr Tulliver and the Uncles and Aunts. 'Why,' said Mr Tulliver, not looking at Mrs Glegg, but at the male part of his audience, 'you see, I've made up my mind not to bring Tom up to my own business. I've had my thoughts about it all along, and I made up my mind by what I saw with Garnett and his son. I mean to put him to some business, as he can go into without capital, and I want to give him an eddication as he'll be even wi' the lawyers and folks, and put me up to a notion now an' then.'

Mrs Glegg emitted a long sort of guttural sound with closed lips, that smiled in mingled pity and scorn.

'It 'ud be a fine deal better for some people,' she said after that introductory note, 'if they'd let the lawyers alone.'

Is he at the head of a grammar-school, then, this clergyman-such as that at Market Bewley?' said Mr

'But he'll want the more pay, I doubt,' said Mr Glegg. 'Ay, ay, a cool hundred a-year-that's all,' said Mr Tulliver, with some pride at his own spirited course. 'But then, you know, it's an investment; Tom's eddication 'ull be so much capital to him.'

'Ay, there's something in that,' said Mr Glegg. 'Well, well, neighbour Tulliver, you may be right, you may be right:

"When land is gone and money 's spent,

Then learning is most excellent."

I remember seeing those two lines wrote on a window at Buxton. But us that have got no learning had better keep our money, eh, neighbour Pullet?' Mr Glegg rubbed his knees and looked very pleasant.

'Mr Glegg, I wonder at you,' said his wife. 'It's very unbecoming in a man o' your age and belongings.' 'What's unbecoming, Mrs G.?' said Mr Glegg, winking pleasantly at the company. 'My new blue coat as I've got on?'

'I pity your weakness, Mr Glegg. I say it's unbecoming to be making a joke when you see your own kin going headlongs to ruin.'

'If you mean me by that,' said Mr Tulliver, considerably nettled, 'you needn't trouble yourself to fret about I can manage my own affairs without troubling

me.

other folks.'

'Bless me,' said Mr Deane, judiciously introducing a new idea, 'why, now I come to think of it, somebody said Wakem was going to send his son-the deformed lad-to a clergyman, didn't they, Susan?' (appealing to his wife).

'I can give no account of it, I'm sure,' said Mrs Deane, closing her lips very tightly again. Mrs Deane was not a woman to take part in a scene where missiles were flying.

'Well,' said Mr Tulliver, speaking all the more cheerfully, that Mrs Glegg might see he didn't mind her, 'if Wakem thinks o' sending his son to a clergyman, depend on it I shall make no mistake i' sending Tom to one. Wakem's as big a scoundrel as Old Harry ever made, but he knows the length of every man's foot he's got to deal with. Ay, ay, tell me who's Wakem's butcher, and I'll tell you where to get your meat.'

'But lawyer Wakem's son's got a hump-back,' said Mrs Pullet, who felt as if the whole business had a funereal aspect; 'it's more nat'ral to send him to a clergyman.'

'Yes,' said Mr Glegg, interpreting Mrs Pullet's observation with erroneous plausibility, 'you must consider that, neighbour Tulliver; Wakem's son isn't likely to follow any business. Wakem 'ull make a gentleman of him, poor fellow.'

'Mr Glegg,' said Mrs G., in a tone which implied that her indignation would fizz and ooze a little, though she was determined to keep it corked up, 'you'd far better hold your tongue. Mr Tulliver doesn't want to know your opinion nor mine neither. There's folks in the world as know better than everybody else.'

'Why, I should think that's you, if we're to trust your own tale,' said Mr Tulliver, beginning to boil up again.

'O, I say nothing,' said Mrs Glegg sarcastically. 'My advice has never been asked, and I don't give it.' 'It'll be the first time, then,' said Mr Tulliver. 'It's the only thing you 're over-ready at giving.'

'I've been over-ready at lending, then, if I haven't been over-ready at giving,' said Mrs Glegg. 'There's folk I've lent money to, as perhaps I shall repent o'❘ lending money to kin.'

'Come, come, come,' said Mr Glegg soothingly. But Mr Tulliver was not to be hindered of his retort. 'You've got a bond for it, I reckon,' he said; ‘and you've had your five per cent., kin or no kin.'

'Sister,' said Mrs Tulliver pleadingly, 'drink your wine, and let me give you some almonds and raisins.'

'Bessy, I'm sorry for you,' said Mrs Glegg, very much with the feeling of a cur that seizes the opportunity of diverting his bark towards the man who carries no stick. 'It's poor work, talking o' almonds and raisins.'

'Lors, sister Glegg, don't be so quarrelsome,' said Mrs Pullet, beginning to cry a little. 'You may be struck with a fit, getting so red in the face after dinner, and we are but just out o' mourning, all of us-and all wi' gowns craped alike and just put by-it's very bad among sisters.'

'I should think it is bad,' said Mrs Glegg. "Things are come to a fine pass when one sister invites the other to her house o' purpose to quarrel with her and abuse her.'

'Softly, softly, Jane-be reasonable-be reasonable,' said Mr Glegg.

But while he was speaking, Mr Tulliver, who had by no means said enough to satisfy his anger, burst out again :

'Who wants to quarrel with you?' he said. 'It's you as can't let people alone, but must be gnawing at 'em for ever. I should never want to quarrel with any woman, if she kept her place.'

'My place, indeed!' said Mrs Glegg, getting rather more shrill. 'There's your betters, Mr Tulliver, as are dead and in their grave, treated me with a different sort o' respect to what you do-though I've got a husband as 'll sit by and see me abused by them as 'ud never ha' had the chance if there hadn't been them in our family as married worse than they might ha' done.'

'If you talk o' that,' said Mr Tulliver, my family's as good as yours-and better, for it hasn't got a damned ill-tempered woman in it.'

'Well!' said Mrs Glegg, rising from her chair, 'I don't know whether you think it's a fine thing to sit by and hear me swore at, Mr Glegg; but I'm not going to stay a minute longer in this house. You can stay behind, and come home with the gig-and I'll walk home.'

'Dear heart, dear heart!' said Mr Glegg in a melancholy tone, as he followed his wife out of the room.

'Mr Tulliver, how could you talk so?' said Mrs Tulliver, with the tears in her eyes.

'Let her go,' said Mr Tulliver, too hot to be damped by any amount of tears. 'Let her go, and the sooner the better she won't be trying to domineer over me again in a hurry.' (From The Mill on the Floss.)

A Conversation in the 'Rainbow.' The conversation, which was at a high pitch of animation when Silas approached the door of the 'Rainbow,' had, as usual, been slow and intermittent when the company first assembled. The pipes began to be puffed in a silence which had an air of severity; the more important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the

fire, staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked; while the beer-drinkers, chiefly men in fustian jackets and smock-frocks, kept their eyelids down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if their draughts of beer were a funereal duty attended with embarrassing sadness. At last Mr Snell, the landlord, a man of a neutral disposition, accustomed to stand aloof from human differences as those of beings who were all alike in need of liquor, broke silence, by saying in a doubtful tone to his cousin the butcher:

'Some folks 'ud say that was a fine beast you druv in yesterday, Bob?'

The butcher, a jolly, smiling, red-haired man, was not disposed to answer rashly. He gave a few puffs before he spat and replied, ‘And they wouldn't be fur wrong, John.'

After this feeble delusive thaw, the silence set in as severely as before.

'Was it a red Durham?' said the farrier, taking up the thread of discourse after the lapse of a few minutes. The farrier looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at the butcher, as the person who must take the responsibility of answering.

'Red it was,' said the butcher, in his good-humoured husky treble and a Durham it was.'

'Then you needn't tell me who you bought it of,' said the farrier, looking round with some triumph; 'I know who it is has got the red Durhams o' this country-side. And she'd a white star on her brow, I'll bet a penny?' The farrier leaned forward with his hands on his knees as he put this question, and his eyes twinkled knowingly. 'Well, yes she might,' said the butcher slowly, considering that he was giving a decided affirmative. 'I don't say contrairy.'

'I knew that very well,' said the farrier, throwing himself backward again, and speaking defiantly; 'if I don't know Mr Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who does-that's all. And as for the cow you've bought, bargain or no bargain, I've been at the drenching of her -contradick me who will.'

The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational spirit was roused a little.

'I'm not for contradicking no man,' he said; ‘I'm for peace and quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs— I'm for cutting 'em short myself; but I don't quarrel with 'em. All I say is, it's a lovely carkiss-and anybody as was reasonable, it 'ud bring tears into their eyes to look at it.'

'Well, it's the cow as I drenched, whatever it is,' pursued the farrier angrily; and it was Mr Lammeter's cow, else you told a lie when you said it was a red Durham.'

'I tell no lies,' said the butcher, with the same mild huskiness as before, and I contradick none-not if a man was to swear himself black: he's no meat o' mine, nor none o' my bargains. All say is, it's a lovely carkiss. And what I say I'll stick to; but I'll quarrel wi' no man.'

'No,' said the farrier, with bitter sarcasm, looking at the company generally; 'and p'rhaps you aren't pigheaded; and p'rhaps you didn't say the cow was a red Durham; and p'rhaps you didn't say she'd got a star on her brow-stick to that, now you 're at it.'

'Come, come,' said the landlord; let the cow alone. The truth lies atween you: you're both right and both wrong, as I allays say. And as for the cow's being Mr

Lammeter's, I say nothing to that; but this I say, as the "Rainbow" 's the "Rainbow." And for the matter o' that, if the talk is to be o' the Lammeters, you know the most upo' that head, eh, Mr Macey? You remember when first Mr Lammeter's father come into these parts, and took the Warrens?'

Mr Macey, tailor and parish-clerk, the latter of which functions rheumatism had of late obliged him to share with a small-featured young man who sat opposite him, held his white head on one side, and twirled his thumbs with an air of complacency, slightly seasoned with criticism. He smiled pityingly, in answer to the landlord's appeal, and said:

'Ay, ay; I know, I know; but I let other folks talk. I've laid by now, and gev up to the young uns. Ask them as have been to school at Tarley: they've learnt pernouncing; that's come up since my day.'

(From Silas Marner.)

O may I Join the Choir Invisible.

O may I join the choir invisible

Of those immortal dead who live again

In minds made better by their presence: live

In pulses stirred to generosity,

In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn

For miserable aims that end with self,

In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.

So to live is heaven:

To make undying music in the world,
Breathing as beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
This is life to come,

Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense.
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.

(1867.)

[The above article on George Eliot is abridged from that originally written for Chambers's Encyclopædia in 1889 by Richard Holt Hutton. See the Life of her edited by J. W. Cross (3 vols. 1885-86); the books on her by Miss Blind (1883), Mr Oscar Browning (1890), Joseph Jacobs (1891), and Sir Leslie Stephen ('Men of Letters, 1902); Essays, by F. W. H. Myers (1883); Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Jane Austen-Studies in their Works, by H. H. Bonnell (1903); R. H. Hutton's Essays (1871) and his Modern Guides of English Thought; and Scherer's Essays in English Literature. Scherer said George Eliot was inferior to no one of her sex except Madame de Staël (George Sand not being excepted) in depth, brilliancy, and flexibility of genius; and he endorsed Lord Acton's opinion that George Eliot was the most considerable literary personality that had till then appeared since the death of Goethe.]

Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901), the only daughter of a Hampshire squire and magistrate, was born at Otterbourne near Winchester; and when Keble came to Hursley vicarage (to which the living of Otterbourne was annexed) he found her an intellectual, impressionable, and welleducated girl of thirteen. When she began to write authorship was considered unladylike, and

a family council consented to the publication of Abbey Church only on condition that she should not accept the pecuniary returns for any personal end-a condition she then and afterwards cheerfully complied with. She gained a large constituency of readers by her Heir of Redclyffe (1853) and its successors; and her industry may be judged from the fact that within forty-four years (1848-92) she had published well over a hundred volumes (almost three annually), besides books translated and edited, and work done as editor of the Monthly Packet. Her novels are straightforward and natural, show not a little dramatic skill and literary grace, and inculcate a high and healthy morality, though they

have not the charm of works of genius. Many of them are made the vehicle of High Church opinions; for though Miss Yonge was bred in an evangelical household, the teaching of the Tractarians and her close personal friendship with Keble were the most outstanding influences in the formation of her life and thought. An unwonted element of chivalry was happily grafted on the realism of contemporary English domestic life. Charles Kingsley said Heartsease was the most wholesome and delightful novel he had ever read; and, singular to relate (as it seems to us now), William Morris, Burne Jones, and their group at Oxford adopted as their model the hero of the Heir of Redclyffe, Sir Guy Morville, a Crusader in modern life. The profits from the Heir of Redclyffe were largely devoted to fitting out a missionary schooner for Bishop Selwyn; as were the returns from the Daisy Chain

to building a missionary college in New Zealand. Miss Yonge published several historical works (including eight volumes of Cameos from English History); books on military commanders, good women, and golden deeds; a work on Christian Names (1863); a Life of Bishop Patteson (1873); and a monograph on Hannah More (1888), with whom she had so much in common. An illustrated edition of her more popular novels was issued in 1888-89 in thirty-five volumes. There is a Life of her by Miss Christabel Coleridge (1903).

Mrs Craik (1826-87) was better known by her maiden name of Dinah Maria Mulock, and better still as 'the author of John Halifax, Gentleman! The daughter of a Nonconformist minister of Irish extraction, she was born at Stoke-upon-Trent ;

MRS CRAIK.

From the Portrait by Hubert Herkomer, R.A., by permission of Mr G. L. Craik.

but, settling in London at twenty, she published in succession a series of stories for the young, of which Cola Monti was the best known, and then The Ogilvies (1849), Olive (1850), The Head of the Family (1851), and Agatha's Husband (1853). She never surpassed or even equalled her John Halifax, Gentleman (1857), a story of middle-class English life; her ideal, a generous, high-minded man, carried about with him an old Greek Testament, in which, after an ancestor's name, was the epitheton 'gentleman'-to John a motto, a talisman, a charter, imposing on him truth, honour, fidelity, and purity. The story was eminently popular at home, and. was erelong translated into French, German, Italian, Greek, and Russian. A pension (1864) of £60 she set aside for authors less fortunate than herself; in 1864 she married Mr George Lillie Craik, a partner in the publishing house of Macmillan, and spent the rest of her

life in quiet happiness and literary industry at Corner House, Shortlands, Kent. Much of Mrs Craik's verse is collected in Thirty Years Poems (1881). Avillion, and other Tales, contained some of her most imaginative work. She produced in all nearly fifty works-more than a score of novels, including A Life for a Life, Mistress and Maid, and Christian's Mistake; and several volumes of prose essays, such as A Woman's Thoughts about Women (1858) and Concerning Men, and other Papers (1888).

Eliza Lynn Linton (1822-98) was born at Keswick, a daughter of the Rev. James Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite. She did not get on with her family, and at the age of twenty-three left home and settled in London as a woman of letters, publishing her first novel, Azeth the Egyptian, in 1846. In 1858 she married william James Linton (1812-98), an eminent wood-engraver and zealous Chartist, and also something of a poet and man of letters, who edited Republican papers and wrote (besides many pamphlets and occasional verses) The Plaint of Freedom (a remarkable poem; 1852), Claribel, and other Poems (1865), an important work on The Masters of WoodEngraving (1890), and Lives of Tom Paine and J. G. Whittier. He prepared the illustrations for the volume on The Lake Country which she wrote, and published in 1864; but in 1867 they separated, Linton going to America and settling at New Haven in Connecticut, while his wife remained in England and made literature her career. She produced about a score of novels, of which the most notable are The True History of Joshua Davidson (1872), a daring and striking adaptation of the gospel story to modern conditions; Patricia Kemball (1874); Christopher Kirkland (1885); and The One Too Many (1894). She wrote much for the magazines and reviews, and her Girl of the Period' articles in the Saturday were collected in 1883. In her latter years she showed herself an equally caustic critic of the 'new woman.' A rather masculine temper, a strong confidence of opinion, and a faculty of vigorous utterance were among her characteristics.

See her autobiography, My Literary Life (1899), and George Somes Layard's Eliza Lynn Linton: her Life, Letters, and Opinions (1901). Her husband wrote a volume of autobiographical Memories (1895).

Frances Power Cobbe was born at Newbridge near Dublin on the 4th December 1822, the daughter of a county gentleman and magistrate, and went to school at Brighton. Her interest being early aroused in theological questions, she found spiritual guidance in Theodore Parker's works and lost her faith in the Trinity, but said nothing of her heresies to vex her invalid mother. When after her mother's death she revealed her change of view to her father, he banished her from home for a time, and never till his death quite forgave her, even though she was allowed to keep house for him. Her first published work, in

1855, was an Essay on the Intuitive Theory of Morals, published anonymously, which created a good deal of controversy; but none of her critics suspected the author to be a woman. After her father's death in 1857 she travelled in Italy and the East, wrote Cities of the Past (1864) and Italics (1864), and engaged in philanthropic and reformatory work with Miss Carpenter at Bristol. She began to write for the magazines, and ere long was a busy journalist, being from 1868 to 1875 leader-writer for the Echo. A strong Theist, a supporter of women's rights, a strong social reformer in all directions, and a prominent antivivisectionist, she published more than thirty works, among them Friendless Girls (1861); Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors (1869); Darwinism in Morals (1872); The Hopes of the Human Race Hereafter and Here (1874); Re-echoes (1876); The Peak in Darien (1882); The Scientific Spirit of the Age (1888); and an Autobiography (1894). In spite of her many controversies, she had a happy life, being at all times optimist in her views of life and buoyant in temperament. She knew most of the people best worth knowing in her time, was on kindly terms with people of the most various faiths and political views, and was only irreconcilably bitter against vivisectionists of all shades of opinion. She bestowed more care on the substance of her arguments than on polishing her style, and thought more of the effect she could produce in abating social evils than in securing fame as an authoress. But she had the pen of a ready, copious, earnest, and effective writer.

Mrs Oliphant (1828-97), till her marriage. in 1852 Margaret Oliphant Wilson, was born at Wallyford near Musselburgh in Midlothian. Her father's business took him to Glasgow and ultimately to Liverpool, where he held a post in the Customs; and her education was in nowise specially adapted to a life of letters. But she early cherished literary ambitions and made literary experiments. In 1849 she published her first work, Passages in the Life of Mrs Margaret Maitland, which instantly won attention and approval by the tender humour and insight of its presentation of Scottish life and character on both their higher and lower levels. This work was followed by Caleb Field (1850), Merkland (1850), Adam Graeme (1852), Harry Muir (1853), Magdalen Hepburn (1854), Lilliesleaf, and Katie Stewart, which, like three others, appeared in succession in Blackwood's Magazine, with which the authoress had formed a life-long connection. These stories are of varying merit, but are all rich in the minute detail dear to the womanly mind, show nice and subtle apprehension of character, and have a flavour of quiet fun; they often display a charming delicacy in the treatment of the gentler emotions.

Meanwhile she had for a while been in London looking after a brother, and in 1852 she married a cousin, Francis Wilson Oliphant, a designer of

stained glass windows. His health was feeble; in 1859 he was far gone in consumption, and he died at Rome before the end of that year, leaving her not merely unprovided for but deep in debt. She addressed herself bravely to her life-workthenceforward a continuous embarrassed struggle, complicated by her generosity to an unfortunate brother and his children, and her amazing and reckless determination to give her sons the best (and most expensive) education Eton and Oxford could provide. She also considered it her duty or her privilege to live in something like luxury and to dispense an almost lavish hospitality; and

it was only on the posthumous publication of her autobiography that her friends and the public knew what anxious, monotonous toil was daily demanded from the gracious mistress of what seemed an affluent household. Her daughter died in 1864; her two sons, who lived on her labours, both predeceased her; but her last years still found her hard at work as ever, writing with almost undiminished vivacity and energy.

Her early novels had been well received, and had secured a market for all she wrote. But it was by the Chronicles of Carlingford (published in Blackwood's, 1861-65) that her reputation as a novelist was established; the most notable of the series, Salem Chapel, perhaps indicates a wider and more vigorous grasp than is to be found in any other of her works. Certain of the unlovelier