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Rh discreetness of an experienced theologian or learned scholiast; preferring to point his whip at some object which could raise no questions.”

Her portrayal of Bulstrode’s character and religion in “Middlemarch” is eminently characteristic of her charitable judgment, and of her keen insight into human nature. I give two or three extracts:

“There may be coarse hypocrites who consciously affect beliefs and emotions, but Bulstrode was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs. If this be hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all, to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future perfection of the race, or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the world; whether we regard the earth as a purifying nidus for a saved remnant, including ourselves,