ADAM BEDE.1

THE reign of romance is an extending one. It gains ground in spite of the perpetual protests of utilitarianism, useful knowledge, and Puritanism. The number of those who never read novels diminishes season by season, or those who make the complacent profession have to qualify it by an ever-increasing list of exceptions; for, in fact, every man's own favourite field of thought falls by turns under the illuminating ray of the magician. Fancy and invention grow bold in their experiments, taught by success that there are very few scenes in the world which skill cannot turn into a good picture: so one by one the strongholds of commonplace, actual life yield to their invasion. Having long expatiated in flights of heroism, startling incidents, violent contrasts, and all extremes of character and fortune till their legitimate vein is exhausted, they have sought a fresh one, and found themselves

1 Reprinted from 'Bentley's Quarterly Review,' by kind permission of Messrs Richard Bentley & Sons.

as potent in extracting interest and wonder out of the everyday externally uniform life which the many must lead, as they were of old in the exceptional careers and incidents to which we still attach the title of romance, which fall to the lot of few indeed, and which have delighted because of their strangeness and the novelty of the ideas and impressions they awake in us. There is a grave class of minds who cannot give their sympathy but through their experience: to such the efforts of imagination, and the description of scenes and modes of life of which they have no personal knowledge, will tell nothing, will be slighted as frivolities beneath the regard of men engaged in the actual business of life. But let one of this class be a real observer, and find his immediate field of speculation illustrated by a keener observation and clearer insight than his own, and he will no longer be insensible to the charm of invention. All that goes to a good novel will not be thrown away upon him, and to his surprise he will feel himself stirred by as keen an interest in fancied sorrows, as engrossed in the fortunes of imaginary persons and mere shadows, as any novelreader he ever despised.

In this way, one by one, they fall into the train. Thus persons who had resisted Walter Scott, because they had no old-world sympathies, were subdued by Sam Weller and Mrs Gamp; those who could not condescend to these vulgar wits found Vanity Fair' to reproduce what they knew of the world; the harsh, unattractive, but vivid nature of Jane Eyre' and

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Shirley' caught some not to be snared by smoother blandishments. Mrs Gaskell's pictures of mechanic life, amid whirling wheels and smoking chimneys, were accepted by others as an embodiment, for which they could vouch, of the mode of existence of the masses; so utilising fiction, elsewhere a barren, unprofitable pleasure. The 'Heir of Redclyffe' brought to their allegiance many who never fancied before that they could get through a novel. The Caxtons' won a more precise class, who had pronounced all previous romance vain and demoralising; and Mr Kingsley's amusing doubt and dramatised paradox struck others who rejoiced in a freedom from prejudice, and found their favourite calling of propounding knotty questions all the pleasanter, and not less puzzling for being wrapped in a seductive veil of allegory: and now, in contrast with all these, we conclude our brief enumeration with Adam Bede,' a story which we believe has found its way into hands indifferent to all previous fiction, to readers who welcome it as the voice of their own experience in a sense no other book has ever been.

Certainly Adam Bede' has a voice of its own which chimes in a telling, because natural and simple way, with associations and thoughts which have been lying half developed and struggling for expression in many minds. It is remarkable, too, for a steady protest against exclusiveness, a characteristic of our time, as prevalent in our literature as in society, and as marked in the high-toned religious fiction of the day

as in its more natural home, the fashionable novel; but from which a large number must always revolt, either from personal feelings or a sense of injury to the claims and rights of humanity. In another point the notices of the press show an undesigned coincidence of response-and that is the tone of the author on religious matters; orthodox and serious, but viewed rather in their moral than doctrinal aspect, as more within the scope of his subject and turn of thought. It strikes us that the laity, unconsciously to themselves, recognise a champion: here is a religious utterance which somehow differs a good deal from the general tone of the pulpit utterances we have been used to. Conscience takes a higher stand than has been sometimes found compatible with the war of doctrine waged in this polemical age. With all the force of wit, humour, common-sense, and pathos, some home questions have been put which sermon-hearers think it will not be easy for their pastors to answer; and, above all, Mrs Poyser's immortal illustration has avenged much irritation, discontent, and weariness, which the sufferer did not know before could be defended and justified. Do any two people ever talk three minutes over this story without quoting, with a particularly sly relish, the definition of Mr Ryde's style of preaching, as though it met some case very near home, which, out of respect or delicacy, they will not further indicate? No names may be mentioned, the subject may be treated as a general one, but not the less does it go home to each individual's business

and bosom; and the next time he hears a cold, harsh, controversial sermon- which may very likely be next Sunday-not only does the joke soothe at the time, answering to the marbles the Master Poysers carried to church, with the prospect of "handling them a little secretly during the sermon," but he feels armed with a reason for his repugnance which before seemed to need an apology: for whatever views this writer expresses, they are clearly arrived at by a process of thought; the weight of calm conviction gives value to every sentiment, whether we agree or not; and we feel that in this story we have the experience of a life.

'Adam Bede' has the difficulty, as it is commonly considered, of a prominent moral, too often an impediment to the natural development of a story; but owing to its simplicity and breadth, and its appeal to universal assent and sympathy, in this instance it gains a support, as assisting to develop character, and to work out and give verisimilitude to the plot, if the simple structure of incidents can be so denominated. Its moral is, that the past cannot be blotted out, that evil cannot be undone. This conviction is expressed with a strength and persistency that turns into a sort of inspiration the author's motive for the labour of composition; which, if a delight, is assuredly in this case also a labour, from the conscientious adherence to truth, or what seems to him truth, which marks the whole. This, we feel, is no young genius writing from a teeming imagination full of airy shapes, but one