In her novel of _Daniel Deronda_, the large part of the interest hangs on which way the heroine's character will develop itself; and this interest, in the opinion of the authoress, is of a very intense kind.

Why should it be?
she asks explicitly.

And she gives her answer in the following very remarkable and very instructive passage: '_Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread,_' she says, '_in human history, than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small inferences of the way in which she could make her life pleasant?
in a time too, when ideas were with fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely: when women on the other side of the world would not mourn for the husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause; and men, stinted of bread, on one side of the world, heard of that willing loss and were patient; a time when the soul of man was waking the pulses which had for centuries been beating in him unheard, until their full sense made a new life of terror or of joy._ '_What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and their blind visions?
They are the Yea or Nay of that good for which men are enduring and fighting.

In these delicate vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections._' Now here we come to solid ground at last.

Here is an emphatic and frank admission of all that I was urging in the last chapter; and the required end of action and test of conduct is brought to a focus and localized.
It is not described, it is true; but a narrow circle is drawn round it, and our future search for it becomes a matter of comparative ease.