SILAS MARNER'S TREASURE.

BY GEORGE ELIOT.

[Marian Evans ("George Eliot "), with the publication of Adam Bede, secured universal recognition as one of the foremost English novelists of the day. Thackeray, in one of his gossiping papers in an early number of the Cornhill Magazine, mentioning the chief writers of fiction by their initials, referred to "E" as a "star of the first magnitude just risen on the horizon." Yet Miss Evans had written much and well before she won the crown

of success with Adam Bede. Her literary career began with several translations of German metaphysical works. She became a contributor to the Westminster Review, and afterwards assistant-editor of that periodical under Dr. John Chapman. The Scenes of Clerical Life is her first acknowledged work of fiction; the others are, The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe (the shortest and, artistically, the finest of all her works); Romola; Felix Holt, the Radical; and Middlemarch. Latterly Miss Evans has devoted herself to poetry, and the result has been the publication of the Spanish Gypsy, the Legend of Jubal, and Armgart. The follow

ing selection is from Silas Marner.]

SILAS

ILAS MARNER'S determination to keep the "tramp's child" was matter of hardly less surprise and iterated talk in the village than the robbery of his money. That softening of feeling towards him which dated from his misfortune, that merging of suspicion and dislike in a rather contemptuous pity for him as lone and crazy, was now accompanied with a more active sympathy, especially amongst the women. Notable mothers, who knew what it was to keep children whole and sweet;" lazy mothers, who knew what it was to be interrupted in folding their arms and scratching their elbows by the mischievous propensities of children just firm on their legs, were equally interested in conjecturing how a lone man would manage with a two-year-old child on his hands, and were equally ready with their suggestions: the

1 This long poem was generally regarded by the critics as possessed of fine poetic elements, although they did not place it so high in artistic rank as the best of the author's prose writings.

VOL. II.

notable chiefly telling him what he had better do, and the lazy ones being emphatic in telling him what he would never be able to do.

Among the notable mothers, Dolly Winthrop was the one whose neighbourly offices were the most acceptable to Marner, for they were rendered without any show of bustling instruction. Silas had shown her the half-guinea given to him by Godfrey, and had asked her what he should do about getting some clothes for the child.

"Eh, Master Marner," said Dolly, "there's no call to buy no more nor a pair o' shoes; for I've got the little petticoats as Aaron wore five years ago, and it's ill spending the money on them baby-clothes, for the child 'ull grow like grass i' May, bless it-that it will."

And the same day Dolly brought her bundle, and displayed to Marner, one by one, the tiny garments in their due order of succession, most of them patched and darned, but clean and neat as fresh-sprung herbs. This was the introduction to a great ceremony with soap and water, from which baby came out in new beauty, and sat on Dolly's knee, handling her toes and chuckling and patting her palms together with an air of having made several discoveries about herself, which she communicated by alternate sounds of " gug-gug-gug," and "mammy." The "mammy was not a cry of need or uneasiness: baby had been used to utter it without expecting either tender sound or touch to follow.