of the novel-is very fertile. The pitch is thus somewhat shifted, but the comparative qualities are preserved.

South-west Derbyshire is by no means a stern rock-bound territory like the more northern Peakland. Wirksworth (or "Snowfield ") lies in a verdant basin. Ashbourne ("Oakburn ") rises amid a paradise of rolling woodland, possessing beauty enough to foster and stimulate the imagination of Tom Moore, who made the place his home while he wrote "Lalla Rookh." "Stonyshire" is undoubtedly very fine, but just across the Dove, that "princess of rivers," is Staffordshire, a name suggestive of Potteries and Black Countries, cinder roads and blasted herbage. But never could prejudice be more agreeably overmastered. For we are in a veritable land of Goshen. "Loamshire" would be a fitly appropriate name for East Stafford if it ever contrives to free itself from the name and reputation of its sordid hinterland. Patches of woodland abound; the hills lie out on a far distant horizon, not bleak, blue, and misty, but verdure-clad to their summits, and the ample foreground spreads away, thickly dotted with wide-branching trees and lined with deep. leafy hedgerows. It is this delicious domain which nurses "Hayslope" and "Norburne" and "Donnithorne Chase"; places suggestive of the fulness and joy of harvest-and sadly reminiscent, too, of the erring love of Arthur Donnithorne and poor Hetty.

Such is the landscape to-day; and it has changed but little since the horseman (why does George Eliot emulate G. P. R. James in the employment of "a horseman "?) noted its features in the second chapter. The landlord of the "Donnithorne Arms" has changed, for in these latter days mine host of the Bromley Arms is, for the better preservation of the unities, related to Adam Bede.

There is no doubt that the topographical licence in which George Eliot indulged could only have been exercised by a writer thoroughly familiar with the ground. Her geography is an amalgam, or rather, as we said before, a rearrangement. The places, like the names, are fictitious, in that they combine the characteristics of a whole neighbourhood rather than the peculiarities of a single town or village.. Take, for example, Adam's journey from Hayslope to Snowfield in search of Hetty. The distance of the former place from Oakburn is: given as ten miles; whereas Ellastone is only five miles from Ashbourne. After Oakburn the country is described as growing barer and barer, "grey stone walls intersecting the meagre pastures and dismal widescattered grey stone houses on broken lands, where mines had been and were no longer." Snowfield itself is described as "fellow to the country. The town lay grim, stony, and unsheltered up the side of

VOL. CCLXXXV. NO. 2011.

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a steep hill." This, as we have before remarked, is not an accurate description of Wirksworth, but it nevertheless faithfully portrays a village which lies not very far from Wirksworth, and which is in several ways associated with early Methodism. Au contraire, the account of Dinah's lodgings in Snowfield brings us back to Wirksworth. The "cottage outside the town a little way from the mill-an old cottage standing sideways to the road, with a little bit of potato-ground before it "is literally the house where Mrs. Samuel Evans, the aunt of the novelist, lived and died.

Wirksworth itself is a quiet, sleepy country town, renowned from the days of the Emperor Adrian, down to the early part of the present century, as the centre of a considerable lead mining industry. The lead mining has now, owing to foreign competition, fallen into decay. Dinah Morris is described in the novel as earning her living in the Snowfield mills: another anachronism, inasmuch as there are no mills at Wirksworth, yet true in point of fact, because Dinah at one time did work in the Nottingham lace mills. The earlier portion of her life is not connected with Wirksworth. Elizabeth Tomlinson (her real name) was born at Newbold, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, in 1775, and after living at Derby in domestic service, she removed to Nottingham, being then twenty-one years of age. At Nottingham she joined the Methodists. Six years after this the notable event which subsequently became known in George Eliot's circle as "My Aunt's Story" occurred. A girl named Mary Boce was convicted of child murder at Nottingham Assizes. Miss Tomlinson and a Miss Richards made it their pious duty to attend to the spiritual needs of the culprit, and the poor creature, after a prolonged and sullen reticence, broke down in the presence of their disinterested attentions, and, like Hetty Sorrel, confessed her crime. Unlike Hetty, however, she did not obtain a reprieve, and on the day of execution she was drawn to the gallows in a cart with a rope round her neck, her two devoted girl friends accompanying her.

Down to this period, and for some years afterwards, Elizabeth Tomlinson had not commenced, public preaching; she long and anxiously debated the "to be, or not to be," with her own conscience, before finally deciding that her mission lay in that direction. When at last she did begin the work she quitted Nottingham and returned to Derby, drawing large crowds wherever she preached. Afterwards she moved to Ashbourne, and there it was that Samuel Evans ("Seth Bede ") first saw his future wife. It was then and afterwards, from time to time, that the "Hayslope" preachings were held, and here the details of the novel coincide generally with the actual facts.

There is no suggestion in the book that "Seth Bede" owed his conversion to Dinah; his admiration for her is quite independent of his religious fervour. His prototype, in the same way, was already a Methodist from conviction when Miss Tomlinson first came to Ashbourne. Long before this time Samuel Evans had been influenced by the sermons of a Mr. Hicks, a "round preacher" or circuit minister, who came to do duty in the neighbourhood, and as a result he joined the class of Mr. Beresford, a farmer of Snelston. This Mr. Beresford on his death-bed nominated Samuel to be his successor as class-leader.

Fifteen years after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Evans came to live at Wirksworth, the intervening period having been spent at Derby and elsewhere. The reiterated assurances of "Seth Bede" that marriage should not interfere with Dinah's spiritual occupations were fully redeemed by Samuel, for at Derby the public labours of Mrs. Evans were so prominent as to attract the attention and elicit the encouragement of Elizabeth Fry, and later on, when her home was at Wirksworth, the wide country-side was her parish, and on Sundays she would range from village to village, preaching in the open air or in the chapel, according to circum

stances.

Her

As to personal characteristics, the author of "Adam Bede" herself admits that she has diverged from the original. The tall, quiescent, Methodist Madonna is a striking creation of the novelist. Mrs. Evans herself was short, and her manner rather partook of the stringendo e fortissimo vehemence of Mrs. Poyser. portrait, which lies before us as we write, is that of a keen-eyed, livelytempered little woman of sixty, wearing a Quakerish poke-bonnet and white shoulder wrap. She had given up preaching when George Eliot knew her, but there are persons yet living who, along with "Chad's Bess" and "Timothy's Bess," listened to her exhortations at Hayslope. Their impressions of the "woman preacher" are distinct, the reason for this probably being because she was a woman preacher. The present little Wesleyan chapel at Ellastone is one of the practical results of her efforts. Her religious endeavours at Wirksworth are perpetuated in the Beeley Croft Chapel by a monument inscribed "To the memory of Elizabeth Evans, known to the world as 'Dinah Bede,' who during many years proclaimed alike in the open air, the sanctuary, and from house to house the love of Christ. She died in the Lord November 9, 1849, aged 74 years." It was thus nearly ten years after Mrs. Evans was laid by that her gifted niece immortalised her personality, in a romance which is

more likely to perpetuate the memories of early Methodism than any other book which has ever been written.

It was the lament of George Eliot that the "afterglow" had faded and that "the picture we are apt to make of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills, or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores." She (fortunately or unfortunately) had passed through a period of spiritual doubts and conflicts; since her early life in the Midlands she had gone through the complicated existence inseparable from her position. But at Hayslope and in the inaccessible hamlets of Stonyshire simple Methodism of the Dinah Morris type was still fresh and unperverted while she was despondently penning her doubts. Even now, after the lapse of another half century, Adam Bede's country remains practically the same primitive locality it was in pre-railway days. A pedestrian may start from Snowfield and walk all day without crossing the track of the locomotive, and (if it happens to be Sunday) he will also have frequent opportunity of hearing-if not a Dinah Morris-at least. some Seth Bede, making the hamlet ring with his lusty tones. And, just as Mr. Rann and the other notabilities of Hayslope refrained from pressing to the front while Dinah was speaking, these modern villagers exhibit the same peculiarity. They listen from afar. The preacher stands solitary and delivers his message like the town crier ; the folks lounge in their doorways and gardens to listen. In summer time they have their camp meetings and love feasts, red letter days of public worship under the blue sky, akin in spirit to those meetings of the Cameronian hill-folk so well described by Crockett.

The fragmentary treatment of Seth is a circumstance much to be regretted. On the other hand, had the author carried out her original intention of adhering to the true facts and married Dinah to Seth, we should have missed those pretty touches of feminine weakness which make the reality of Dinah so convincing. It seemed easy enough for her to pay severe attention to the dictates of the inward monitor while poor Seth pleaded his suit. But the task of objecting to the appeal of practical, church-going Adam was uphill work-no doubt just because he wasn't a Methodist and because he was, in his clumsy way, so masterful.

The real Dinah did, of course, marry Seth, and the real Seth possessed most of the characteristics of his fictitious counterpart. He was a kind-hearted, unsophisticated soul, easily "taken in" by the hypocritical appeals of the unprincipled, and with an absentminded tendency, figuratively speaking, to make doors without panels. One pious witticism of his is especially remembered at

Wirksworth. We give it in borrowed words. Arguing with a Calvinist upon the doctrine of "election," he cross-examined his adversary as follows: "My friend, I presume you would like to be saved yourself?" "Yes." "And you would like your father and mother and brothers and sisters to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with you?" "Certainly." "Would you not like all your townsmen to be saved also?" "Yes." "Now, I would ask you further: if it were in your power would you not save the whole world?” "Of course I would," replied the other. "Then," rejoined Seth, according to your own showing you have more mercy than Christ Jesus had Himself, and ought to have been the Redeemer of the world." The story is characteristic.

Samuel Evans survived his wife seven years. Just before his death he is said to have sent for a joiner and handed him written measurements for his coffin, together with directions as to the best way of moving it about in his strait little cottage on the day of the funeral. He rests with his wife at Wirksworth, and an inscription, under that of Dinah, in the Beeley Croft Chapel, describes him as a "faithful local preacher and class-leader in the Methodist Society."

In her journal George Eliot explains that "the character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father's early life." Much may be gathered from her early journals and correspondence as to the character of Robert Evans, the much occupied, self-made man of business, who was constantly driving up and down the Midland counties and taking his daughter with him. To his reminiscences of bygone days that daughter was mainly indebted for her incidents and local colour. How much or how little of family gossip "Adam Bede" contains no outsider can tell, but the assertion of Mr. Isaac Evans that "there are things in it about my father" is an expression which is significant.

Robert Evans was born in 1773 at Roston, a hamlet lying close to Ellastone. He was thus two years older than his brother Samuel, a detail worth noting, inasmuch as Adam was two years older than Seth. In 1796, Robert being twenty-three years of age, a gentleman named Mr. Francis Newdigate came to reside temporarily at Wootton Hall, near Ellastone, pending settlement upon a prospective inheritance at Kirk Hallam in Derbyshire. About this time Robert moved from Roston to Ellastone, and there opened a carpenter's shop on his own account. His industry and sound common sense attracted the attention of Mr. Newdigate, and when the latter went to Kirk Hallam in 1799 he appointed Robert his agent. In "George Eliot's Life" this three years' acquaintanceship