PREFACE. WISHES have often been expressed that the articles known to have been written by George Eliot in the "Westminster Review" before she had become famous under that pseudonym, should be republished. Those wishes are now gratified-as far, at any rate, as it is possible to gratify them. For it was not George Eliot's desire that the whole of those articles should be rescued from oblivion. And in order that there might be no doubt on the subject, she made some time before her death a collection of such of her fugitive writings as she considered deserving of a permanent form; carefully revised them for the press; and left them, in the order in which they here appear, with written injunctions that no other pieces written by her, of date prior to 1857, should be republished. It will thus be seen that the present collection of Essays has the weight of her sanction, and has had, moreover, the advantage of such corrections and alterations as a revision long subsequent to the period of writing may have suggested to her. The opportunity afforded by this republication seemed a suitable one for giving to the world some |