ever drawn, Dinah in 'Adam Bede,' was such a woman; but Dinah was left happy, while Fedalma's fate knows no relenting, and in obeying the deeper laws of her nature she sacrifices all which is the common happiness of woman. In this respect the drama differs, not only from the Greek tragedies but from those of Shakespeare. His Juliet is the victim of the strife of the rival houses, his Desdemona of Iago's villany, his Lady Macbeth of her own ambition and her choice of the wrong; but Fedalma by choosing the right, which she might have rejected, creates the circumstances which form the tragedy. It is remarkable, too, that the influences which most commonly lead to such a choice had no share here, for, though living in an age and country where religious fanaticism held full sway, she was of no religion except the religion of the conscience. The Zincalo creed is represented in the poem to be absolutely limited to what man finds of best in his own heart, without looking elsewhere for counsel, or reward, or punishment; and George Eliot implies in Fedalma that the heroism due to patriotic fervour or religious exaltation, is attainable by the simple inherent force of a noble heart. Going forth with her nurse from the seclusion in which she lives, Fedalma finds some jugglers and musicians in the square below the castle, and obeying the instinct of her southern blood, glides into the circle and dances to the music. The verses which describe the grace of her movements and their effect on the spectators are singularly vivid and picturesque. Across the skirts of the crowd pass in chains the Gypsy prisoners, returning from labour at a moment when Fedalma's dance is suddenly arrested by another incident : "Lo! with sound Stupendous throbbing, solemn as a voice It seems the light sinks awe-struck-'tis the note Of everlasting memories (the sign Of death that turned to more diffusive life) At this moment her eyes meet those of the Gypsy chief, "That seem to her the sadness of the world That evening Don Silva insists on the necessity of frustrating the Prior's designs of persecution by an immediate marriage. Fedalma consents, and is adorning herself with the jewels he has given her, when Zarca enters by the window. In a few words he proves to her that he is her father. Henceforth his part in the drama is that of the inexor able fate he is a man not inaccessible to, but yet absolutely uninfluenced by, sympathy with weaknesses or pity for suffering, whether his own or another's, when a great cause is in question; and the cause he has at heart is the gathering to gether of his despised and scattered tribe under his rule, and their settlement in African territory, where they may become the centre round which all the wandering Zincali tribes may collect and become a nation. His heroic aspect is thus described : : "As painters see the many in the one. His moral qualifications for rule and conquest correspond. He is of firmness as immovable as his purpose is lofty, and he does not for a moment hesitate to demand from his daughter the sacrifice of all her present hopes of happiness. She is to aid his great designs for the tribe, and to inherit them as his successor in the sovereignty; and he demands now that she shall not only guide him and his companions (who have found means to free themselves from their fetters) forth from the Castle by its secret passages, but that she shall accompany their flight. She tells him of the great destiny that awaits her, and that it will enable her at once to set the Gypsies free and send them forth with honour; but he treats the idea of such an alliance with scorn, and denounces her as false to her Zincala blood. The conflict is long between her strongly-rooted love for Don Silva and the new ideas of duty thus presented to her; but her father in the end prevails, and she flies with him and his companions, leaving for the Duke these lines "Silva, sole love-he came-my father came. Thus Fedalma, obeying her deeper nature, chooses harsh duty rather than love unapproved by conscience -the Duchess, the bride of the morrow, becomes the wandering Gypsy. It is now Don Silva's turn to abide the proof. He finds her fled; and must choose between following her and keeping his post in Bedmar. The Spanish noble fails where the Zincala girl has conquered he deserts his trust and follows her. Fedalma is in the Gypsy camp in Moorish territory. Her father appears before her fully armed, and tells her he is about to lead an enterprise, in concert with the Moors, which will earn the gratitude of the Moslem King, and entitle him to claim the fulfilment of the promise that he and his tribe shall be sent with rich spoil, honourably earned, to plant themselves in the land which the Infidel monarch is to bestow on them. As he leaves her, Silva, who has made his way hither in disguise, approaches. For a moment she yields to her delight at seeing her lover; but recollecting the hard conditions of her fate, she reminds him of the chasm that lies between them. Then her father reappears, and for answer to Don Silva's pleading and the rich offers with which he had hoped to bribe the Zincalo to compliance, commands Fedalma to choose between them. Firmly though despairingly she bids her lover farewell; but he vows never to leave her. Zarca offers him safe escort to his own frontier; but the faith of the Christian knight follows the lost honour of the Spanish noble, and, rather than face the thought of losing her, he elects to become a Zincalo. Meanwhile the preliminaries of Zarca's enterprise have made progress, and he goes to conduct it, leaving Silva, bound by an oath of fidelity, in the camp. The next scene shows us what this enterprise was, for it discovers Zarca master of Bedmar, amid the corpses of its Spanish defenders, the friends of the unfortunate Silva. The Gypsy band, five hundred strong, leagued with a Moorish force, and aided by partisans within the walls, have penetrated into the fortress by a secret path and overcome all resistance. Zarca, assembling the populace in the Plaça, where a gibbet and a stake are prepared, announces that he is about to execute justice on the persecutor and inquisitor, Prior Isidor; but that, more merciful than the prelate, he awards him the speedy death of the gibbet before giving his body to the flames. It is at this moment that Silva, who has been summoned from the camp, and who is driven to frenzy at the capture of his fortress, and the destruction of his friends, appears on the scene. Isidor, on his way to the gallows, denounces him as a traitor and deserter; but he makes nevertheless a frantic appeal to Zarca for the Prior's life. It is sternly disregarded the crowd flock round the gallows, the form of Isidor in the last struggle appears in the air, and Don Silva, in uncontrollable fury, casts himself on the unguarded Gypsy chief and stabs him. He falls, crying for his daughter, and spends his last breath, after ordering that Silva shall be dismissed unharmed, in bequeathing to her the sovereignty of the tribe and the conduct of the great cause to which he had devoted her. The last scene is on the Spanish coast, whither the Gypsies have borne the body of their leader for embarkation. Fedalma, standing above the quay, and meditating on her own apparent want of power to bind the Gypsies to her, sees, apart from the crowd on the strand, a tall and grey-clad pilgrim," recognises Silva, and moves to meet him. In that last interview he tells her that he goes to Rome to obtain the right again to use his sword in the service of Spain. "He did not say 'Farewell.' But neither knew that he was silent. She, As with their soul's full speech forbade their hands He saw from the shore the coffin of the Gypsy chief carried to the 66 boat, and watched Fedalma follow Fresh Night emergent in her clearness, lit Straining he gazed and knew not if he gazed This story is simple and easily traced, and no secondary plot is interwoven with it. But it is as grand and massive as it is simple, and amply supports the skilfullywoven work, the incidents, characters, and scenery which lend it or nament. All the minor personages, and there are many, are sharply chiselled and full of life; the landscapes are magnificent; the wise reflections and apt illustrations incessant, lavishly enriching every page. The tone of thought is, we think, throughout, of our own time, and not of that of the Moors in Spain; the philosophy is that of an age of introversion, of liberalism, of free speculation, rather than of intense but narrow passions. Don Silva is centuries in advance of his time; the men about him could never have understood him, nor could he have ruled them; he is a modern philosophic gentleman, of warm impulses, but weak convictions, fretted to nothing by perpetual doubts and hearing of the other side of the question. The astrologer, laying his horoscope before him, says : "You are so mixed, my lord, that each to-day The intellectual Spanish cavalier of the time of Ferdinand was subtle indeed, but his subtlety lay on the side, not of philosophy, but of policy and worldly wisdom -he was a mixture of astuteness and superstition, boldness and craft, cruelty and polish. European diplomacy or Indian cunning found it difficult to impose on him, yet he would easily believe that St James, on a white horse, had led the troops in a recent battle. He could accommodate his honour to any subterfuge to deceive an enemy, or meet him in open fight with indomitable valour. He could preserve a lofty courtesy while directing the torture of a Jew or the pillage of a town. And we may be sure that if philosophic doubts ever occurred to him, he committed them to the holy keeping of the Church, and never let them embarrass his career. The astrologer just mentioned explains away his own science, referring it to reason and natural laws. But Faraday was not possible in the fifteenth century. This we do not state as objecting to it: had the author narrowed herself to what we can know of an age so long past, her airy thoughts would have been "cabined, cribbed, confined," and much of her characteristic quality would of necessity have been lost; as it is, the sweep of her horizon is immensely widened by surveying the long ago from the stand-point of to-day. What is perhaps a more real objection is, that her common people talk too well as Sheridan could not help making all his characters witty, so she cannot help making hers wise : the host, the troubadour, the very juggler, are brilliant. There is even a monkey of the name of Annibal, belonging to the juggler, who is a most finished character, and is monkeys. Originally endowed with all the inventive genius of his tribe, he has learned to suppress its ebullitions, lest they should increase the number of his compulsory performances; like many a veteran actor he has grown Grave and disgusted with all merriment," Until years, in bringing the philosophic mind, have made him "A serious ape whom none take seriously, Obliged in this fool's world to earn his nuts By hard buffoonery." The gloomy sage, thus compelled to exercise his calling of comedian, is alluded to as "Mournful professor of high drollery," and must have infused extraordin- in imitating the actions of his masary humour into that part of his ter the juggler,— public performances which consisted "Dancing, and throwing nought and catching it, Poor Annibal! would we had known him, and might have had the privilege of alleviating his lot with finer fruit and fewer public exhibitions! But no doubt the melancholy comedian was known and esteemed throughout the country of Cervantes, the wonder of its youth, and, like Mrs Jarley, the delight of its nobility and gentry. It is on surveying this remarkable work as a whole that we become most fully impressed with the power of the mind which has conceived and executed it. What most remains with the reader is, as it should be, the great central conception, illuminated and enriched by the picturesque variety and abun- "You hear the trumpet? There's old Ramon's blast; He takes his trumpeting as solemnly As angel charged to wake the dead; thinks war Silva has "A true hidalgo's smile That gives much favour but beseeches none." |