Page:A note on Charlotte Brontë (IA note00swinoncharlottebrich).pdf/62

 right to pronounce with authority how a novel ought not to be written. But the transfiguration of spirit and power revealed by the marvellous advent of the English masterpiece has in it a more splendid sign of miracle than the fiery daybreak of George Sand's.

There is yet a third point of contrast which could not be passed over without such gross and grievous injustice to the very loveliest quality of George Eliot's work as might deservedly expose me to the disgraceful danger of a niche in the temple of ill-fame by the side of those reserved for the representative successors of Messrs. Gifford and Croker. No man or woman, as far as I can recollect, outside the order of poets, has ever written of children with such adorable