universe, but not exclusively so, nor are they the only critics of those subjects.
Two others besides George Eliot have made a single but notable contribution to this list, Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë. Rebecca Sharp is too well known to need more than appreciative mention. Shirley Keeldar is interesting as being what the author's "sister Emily might have been." She is a spicily sweet, lovable character, clearly presented both in action and in such touches of description as,[1]
"* * * ever ready to satirize her own or any other person's
enthusiasm, she would have given a farm of her best land for a
chance of rendering good service."
She converses with her friend Caroline about literature:[2]
"Milton was great; but was he good? His brain was right;
how was his heart? * * * Milton tried to see the first
woman; but, Cary, he saw her not. * * * It was his cook
that he saw; or it was Mrs. Gill, * * * preparing a cold
collation for the rectors. * * * I would beg to remind him
that the first men of the earth were Titans, and that Eve was
their mother."
In a spirited speech to Uncle Sympson, who craved to
get rid of the exasperating minx by disposing of her in respectable
matrimony, she baits and badgers him until his
feeble intellect is nearly shattered, ideas outraged, temper
twisted beyond repair. No Victorian young niece should
say to an elderly conventional guardian:[3]
"Your god, sir, is the World. * * * Your great Bel,
your fish-tailed Dagon. * * * See him busied at the work
he likes best—making marriages. He binds the young to the
