3-003-694 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

"Dinah's Prayer", by J. Bostock, in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1861. Engraving from a painting. 'Mr. Bostock has in this little picture given an impressive rendering of one of the most striking and pathetic incidents in the able and popular romance of "Adam Bede," which cannot but be familiar to most of our readers. They will immediately recognise the scene where the high-purposed and pious Dinah comes to her friend Hetty in the midst of her trouble, and brings her to a proper feeling of her situation, The passage runs: "Hetty obeyed Dinah's movement, and sank on her knees. Then Dinah said, 'Hetty, we are now before God. He is waiting for you to tell the truth'. Still there was silence. At last Hetty spoke in a tone of beseeching, 'Dinah, help me; I can't feel anything like you: my heart is hard.' Dinah held the clinging hand, and all her soul went forth in her voice." The little group is full of fervour and passion - of dismal, heartrending grief and humiliation and of bright hope in heaven. The upturned gaze of the single-hearted, earnest Dinah is charming - none the less that the artist has adhered in it to the homely character of the author's creation'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.