#0 EVIDENCE AND EXAMPLES. 



of the types to which they belong. There are 

 admirable men and women of the less impassioned class, 

 but the Dodsons were not quite admirable. There are 

 not unpleasing persons among the impassioned, but the 

 Tullivers had serious failings. In one of my readings 

 of the volume, undertaken at the time with no special 

 purpose, save perhaps that of obeying Carlyle's teaching 

 that we should keep ourselves in contact with powerful 

 minds, I was struck with the confirmation it gave to 

 the views put forward in these pages. The confirmation 

 is the more remarkable because George Eliot was 

 simply an artist she had no theories to air, she was 

 not an advocate, or a partisan, or a ' missioned (although 

 all these may write novels of instruction and interest). 

 The special value of the book is this : it gives, and gives 

 vividly, the bodily as well as the mental aspects of its 

 various characters. 



In bodily features the two families described were 

 strongly contrasted. The Dodsons were of plump 

 dimensions, they had pink skins, sparing hair growth, 

 and a not too aggressive straightness of spine. The 

 Tullivers were spare, spinally straight, pigmented in 

 skin, of massive hair growth. In character the con- 

 trast between the two families was no less striking. 

 The Dodsons were full of self- approval, but had 

 little approval of others. They had no opin- 

 ions and did no deeds which were not sanctioned 

 by usage, especially the usage of the Dodson ancestors. 

 They were also peevish, carping, frankly acrimonious 

 with each other, and especially so with the less suc- 

 cessful Tullivers. They, believing themselves to be the 

 salt of the earth, were surely its mustard and pepper 

 also. But they were not quite alike in less essential 

 matters. Mrs. Tulliver and Mrs. Pullet were feeble 



