of the old censure, and has abandoned some of the old arguments. It was reserved for Madame de Staël, who, in a youthful work upon the Passions, had commended suicide, to reconstruct this department of ethics, which had been somewhat disturbed at the Revolution, and she did so in a little treatise which is a model of calm, candid, and philosophic piety. Frankly abandoning the old theological notions that the deed was of the nature of murder, that it was the worst of crimes, and that it was always, or even generally, the offspring of cowardice; abandoning, too, all attempts to scare men by religious terrorism, she proceeded, not so much to meet in detail the isolated arguments of its defenders, as to sketch the ideal of a truly virtuous man, and to show how such a character would secure men against all temptation to suicide. . . . Sentiments of this kind have, through the influence of Christianity, thoroughly pervaded European society, and suicide, in modern times, is almost always found to have sprung either from absolute insanity, from diseases which, though not amounting to insanity, are yet sufficient to discolour our judgments, o from that last excess of sorrow, when resignation and hope are both extinct. Considering it in this light, I know few things more fitted to qualify the optimism we so often hear, than the fact that statistics show it to be rapidly increasing, and to be peculiarly characteristic of those nations which rank most high in intellectual development and in general civilization. In one or two countries, strong religious feeling has counteracted the tendency, but the comparison of town and country, of different countries, of different provinces of the same country, and of different periods of history, proves conclusively its reality.

History of European Morals, Vol. ii. Chap. iv.

GEORGE ELIOT,

is the nom de plume of Miss Marian C. Evans, and Mrs. Lewes, the widow of George Henry Lewes, born in the north of England about 1820. As a novelist she stands in the first rank.

Scenes of Clerical Life, Lond., 1858; Adam Bede, 1859; The Mill on the Floss, 1860; Silas Marner, 1861; Romola, 1863; Felix Holt, Radical. 1866; The Spanish Gipsy, a Poem, in Five Books, 1868, new edit., 1875, 12mo; Middlemarch, 1871-72; The Legend of Jubal, and other Poems, 1875, 12mo; Daniel Deronda, 1876; Novels, new editions, 1870, 7 vols. in 6, p. 8vo; Select Passages from George Eliot, Edin. and

Lond., 1879; Theophrastus Such, 1879. She translated Strauss's Life of Jesus, 1846. and Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, 1853, and has contributed to the Westminster Review, etc.

revival of the taste and beauty and freedom of "Romola is a marvellously able story of the Hellenic manners and letters under Lorenzo di Medici and the scholars of his Court, side by side with the revival of Roman virtue, and more than the ancient austerity and piety, under the great Dominican, Savonarola. The period of history is one which of all others may well have engrossing in. terest for George Eliot."-(Lond.) Quart. Rev., Oct. 1860. See also Westm. Rev., April, 1859, Blackw. Mag., April, 1859, May, 1860; Edin. Rev., July, 1859; Brit. Quart. Rev., Oct. 1863, Oct. 1868; Atlantic Mon., Oct. 1866; Essays, by R. H. Hutton

MRS. POYSER AND THE SQUIRE.

"Ah, now this I like," said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp temple of cleanliness (Mrs. Poyser's dairy) but keeping near the door. "I'm sure I should like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp; I'll sit down in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful dairy,-the best manager in the parish, is she not?"

Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirtsleeves and open waistcoat, with a face a shade redder than usual from the exertion of "pitching." As he stood-red, rotund, and radiant before the small wiry, cool old gentleman-he looked like a prize-apple by the side of a withered crab.

"Will you please to take this chair, sir ?” he said, lifting his father's arm-chair forward a little; "you'll find it easy."

"No, thank you, I never sit in easychairs," said the old gentleman, seating himself on a small chair near the door. "Do you know, Mrs. Poyser,-sit down, pray, both of you,-I've been far from contented for some time with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a good method, as you have."

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Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hard voice, rolling and unrolling her knitting, and looking icily out of the window, as she continued to stand opposite the Squire. Poyser might sit down if he liked, she thought: she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.

"And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up,

I am intending to let the Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my own hands,-nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser, and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage."

"Ah," said Mr. Poyser, with a good natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrangement.

"If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said | Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness, "you know better than me; but I don't see what the Chase Farm is tus,-we've cumber enough w' our own farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on i' that character." "You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure you. Such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little plan I'm going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much to your advantage as his."

"Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as take advantage that get advantage i' this world, I think; folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em."

The fact is, Poyser," said the Squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser's theory of worldly prosperity, there is too much dairy land, and too little plough land, on the Chase Farm, to suit Thurle's purpose,-indeed, he will only take the farm on condition of some change in it; his wife, it appears, is not a clever dairy-woman like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your wife's management: and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges, which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you. There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land."

Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head on one side and his mouth screwed up,-apparently absorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers.

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Unless it was on a point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel any day; and after all it mattered more to his wife than to him. So after a few moments' silence he looked up to her, and said mildly, "What dost say?"

Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands.

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Say? Why I say you may do as you like about giving up any of your corn land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands either for love or money, and there's nayther love nor money here, as I can see, only other folks's love o' themselves, and the money as is to go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own the land, and them as is born t' sweat on't,"--here Mrs. Poyser paused to gasp a little,"and I know it's christened folks's duty to

་་

submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it; but I'll not make a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in it, for no landlord in England, not if he was King George himself."

'No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not," said the Squire, still confident in his own powers of persuasion; "you must not overwork yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way? There is so much milk re quired at the Abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter-making from the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?"

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'Ay, that's true," said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case a purely abstract question.

"I dare say," said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half way towards her husband, and looking at the vacant arm-chair,— "I dare say it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. How do I know whether the milk 'll be wanted constant? What's to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty gallons o' milk on my mind,-and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs

till we're obliged to beg the butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles. And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work for a man an' hoss,-that's to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water."

"That difficulty-about the fetching and carrying you will not have, Mrs. Poyser," said the Squire, who thought that this entrance into particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs. Poyser's part," Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony."

"Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to both the gells at once, and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna' be wi' having our back kitchen turned into a public."

"Well, Poyser," said the Squire, shifting his tactics, and looking as if he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and left the room, "you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall not forget your readiness to accommodate your landford as well as a neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three years when the present one expires, otherwise I dare say Thurle, who is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old tenant like you."

To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to complete Mrs. Poyser's exasperation, even without the final threat. Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old place where he had been bred and born, for he believed the old Squire had small spite enough for anything,-was beginning a mild remonstrance explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and sell more stock, with

Mr. Thurle's so ready to take farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if he likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't,-wi' the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by dozens,—and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect 'em to eat us up alive,as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long ago. I should like to see if there's another tenant besides Poyser as 'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles down,-and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying, and having to pay half, and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as that; a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon. You may run away from my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following the old Squire beyond the door,-for after the first moments of stunned surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile, had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard, and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned.

"You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin' underhand ways o doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Ilarry to your friend, though nobody else is; but I tell you for once as we're not dumb creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha' got the lash i' their hands, for want of knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th' only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty of the same way o' thinkin i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a brimstone match in everybody's nose,-if it isna two or three old folks as you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all your scrapin'."

"Then, sir, if I may speak,-as for all I'm a woman, and there's folks as thinks a woman's a fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the rent, and save the other quarter,—I say, if

aware that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him,-which was also the fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's heels, carried

who was not a Piagnone would give a shrug at the sight of her, and the men would accost her as if she were their grandmother. Whereas, at fifty-five a woman was not so very old, she only required making up a little. So the rouge and the braids and the embroidered berretta went on again, and Monna Brigida was satisfied with the accustomed effect: as for her neck, if she covered it up people might suppose it was too old to show, and on the contrary, with the necklaces round it, it looked better than Monna Berta's. This very day, when she was preparing for the Piagnone Carnival, such a struggle had occurred, and the conflicting fears and longings which caused the struggle caused her to turn back and seek refuge in the druggist's shop rather than encounter the collectors of the Anathema when Romola was not by her side.

But Monna Brigida was not quite rapid enough in her retreat. She had been descried even before she turned away, by the white-robed boys in the rear of those who wheeled round towards Tessa, and the willingness with which Tessa was given up was, perhaps, slightly due to the fact that part of the troop had already accosted a personage carrying more markedly upon her the dangerous weight of the Anathema. It happened that several of this troop were at the youngest age taken into peculiar training; and a small fellow of ten, his olive wreath resting above cherubic cheeks and wide brown eyes, his imagination really possessed with a hovering awe at existence as something in which great consequences impended on being good or bad, his longings nevertheless running in the direction of mastery and mischief, was the first to reach Monna Brigida and place himself across her path. She felt angry, and looked for an open door, but there was not one at hand, and by attempting to escape now she would only make matters worse. But it was not the cherubic-faced young one who first addressed her; it was a youth of fifteen who held one handle of a wide basket.

"Venerable mother!" he began, "the blessed Jesus commands you to give up the Anathema which you carry upon you. That cap embroidered with pearls, those jewels that fasten up your false hair,-let them be given up and sold for the poor; and cast the hair itself away from you, as a lie that is only fit for burning. Doubtless, too, you have other jewels under your silk mantle." "Yes, lady," said the youth at the other handle, who had many of Fra Girolamo's phrases by heart, "they are too heavy for you: they are heavier than a millstone, and are weighting you for perdition. Will you adorn yourself with the hunger of the poor,

"In truth you are old, buona madre," said the cherubic boy, in a sweet soprano. • You look very ugly with the red on your cheeks and that black glistening hair, and those fine things. It is only Satan who can like to see you. Your Angel is sorry. He wants you to rub away the red."

The little fellow snatched a soft silk scarf from the basket, and held it towards Monna Brigida, that she might use it as her guardian angel desired. Her anger and mortification were fast giving way to spiritual alarm. Monna Berta, and that cloud of witnesses, highly-dressed society in general, were not looking at her, and she was surrounded by young monitors, whose white robes, and wreaths, and red crosses, and dreadful candour, had something awful in their unusualness. Her Franciscan confessor, Fra Cristoforo, of Santa Croce, was not at hand to reinforce her distrust of Dominican teaching, and she was helplessly possessed and shaken by a vague sense that a supreme warning was come to her. Unvisited by the least suggestion of any other course that was open to her, she took the scarf that was held out, and rubbed her cheeks with trembling submissiveness.

"It is well, madonna," said the second youth. "It is a holy beginning. And when you have taken those vanities from your head, the dew of heavenly grace will descend on it." The infusion of mischief was getting stronger, and putting his hand to one of the jewelled pins that fastened her braids to the berretta, he drew it out. The heavy black plait fell down over Monna Brigida's face, and dragged the rest of the head-gear forward. It was a new reason for not hesitating: she put up her hands hastily, undid the other fastenings, and flung down into the basket of doom her beloved crimson velvet berretta, with all its unsurpassed embroidery of seed-pearls, and stood an unrouged woman, with gray hair pushed backward from a face where certain deep lines of age had triumphed over embonpoint.

But the berretta was not allowed to lie in the basket. With impish zeal the youngsters lifted it up, and held it pitilessly with the false hair dangling.

"See, venerable mother," said the taller youth, "what ugly lies you have delivered yourself from! And now you look like the blessed Saint Anna, the mother of the Holy Virgin."

Thoughts of going into a convent forthwith, and never showing herself in the world again, were rushing through Monna Brigida's mind. There was nothing pussible for her but to take care of her soul. Of