Page:George Eliot and Judaism.djvu/77

 violation of all probability; so we need not trouble ourselves to refute the conjectures which have been hazarded concerning the original from which Deronda is drawn. The lover of allegory might with greater justice regard him as typical of mankind in its relations to Judaism, for his story teaches us how the world is beginning to take notice of and admire that system more and more, after having for ages misapprehended and neglected it, till some day the discovery will be made that the Jews are flesh of its flesh, and bone of its bone.

If, in drawing Deronda, George Eliot has omitted to bring him near to us as a human being, and has preserved him in a certain, stately inaccessibility, on the other hand she has effected a miracle in setting before us a prophet, and in bringing a scarcely intelligible and wholly ethereal nature closely home to us. The life which runs