Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/69

 'Gwendolen Harleth,' or 'Ezra Mordecai Cohen'? We might reply in the old Biblical words, "Thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this," since 'Daniel Deronda' is the hero, the end, and the flower of the whole work. Remembering that the Jewish day begins in the evening, the authoress has chosen to delay her hero's sunrise, and has shown him to us first by the play of moonbeams. The plan of the work is fully justified in representing Gwendolen, viewed as Mirah's counterpart, under all phases of temper, and in revealing to us the most hidden recesses of her wayward and inconstant heart; but it is for Deronda that the development of her character has the deepest meaning. Accurate observation of the orbit which a planet describes throws much light upon the position of the centre of gravity, by which it is attracted and regulated; and we may call Deronda the centre of the path