tector, her guide, philosopher, and friend—but her husband he can never be. Poor psychologists are they who are so little able to follow the subtle development of these two characters, as to feel disappointed when they are not united at the end. For while Gwendolen is the prototype of that more harmless form of egotism which loves to fancy that the universe revolves around itself, and which is sadly disconcerted when that self is at all roughly handled by fate; Deronda's whole being is love and resignation, and he has been knitted to all that is great too early to imagine that life contains nothing more desirable or valuable than his own existence. And although unselfishness may sometimes succeed in bettering and ennobling selfishness, the two are not the less contradictories, which can never be entirely reconciled. The meditative reader
