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Brown, John Crombie, -1879?

"The Ethics of George Eliot's Works"

The later scenes between them are characterised by a quiet
beauty, a suppressed power and pathos, compared to which most other love-
scenes in fiction appear dull and coarse. The tremulous yearning of her
love, as it awakens more and more to distinct consciousness within; the
new-born shyness blent with the old, trustful, frank simplicity,--bring
before us a picture of love, in its purest and most beautiful aspect,
such as cannot easily be paralleled in fiction.
Toward her late husband's parishioners there is the same wise instinctive
insight as to their true needs, the same thoughtful and provident
consideration that characterises her in every relation into which she is
brought. If she at once objects, on their behoof, to Mr Tyke's so-called
"apostolic" preaching, it is that she means by that, sermons about
"imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have
always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is
taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than
any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the
most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it.


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