On
the one hand, Dinah Morris--one of the most exquisitely serene and
beautiful creations of fiction--and Seth and Adam Bede present to us,
variously modified, the aspect of that life which is aiming toward the
highest good. On the other hand, Arthur Donnithorne and Hetty
Sorrel--poor little vain and shallow-hearted Hetty--bring before us the
meanness, the debasement, and, if unarrested, the spiritual and
remediless death inevitably associated with and accruing from that "self-
pleasing" which, under one form or other, is the essence of all evil and
sin. Of these, Arthur Donnithorne and Adam Bede seem to us the two who
are most sharply and subtilely contrasted; and to these we shall confine
our remarks.
In Arthur Donnithorne, the slight sketch placed before us in Captain
Wybrow is elaborated into minute completeness, and at the same time freed
from all that made Wybrow even superficially repellent. Handsome,
accomplished, and gentlemanly; loving and lovable; finding his keenest
enjoyment in the enjoyment of others; irreproachable in life, and free
from everything bearing the semblance of vice,--what more could the most
exacting fictionist desire to make up his ideal hero? Yet, without
ceasing to be all thus portrayed, he scatters desolation and crime in his
path.
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