17954	----	CRITICAL MISCELLANIES BY JOHN MORLEY VOL. III. Essay 4: The Life of George Eliot London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1904 THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT On Literary Biography 93 As a mere letter-writer will not rank among the famous masters 96 Mr. Myers's Essay 100 Letter to Mr. Harrison 107 Hebrew her favourite study 112 Limitless persistency in application 113 Romola 114 Mr. R.W. Mackay's _Progress of the Intellect_ 120 The period of her productions, 1856-1876 124 Mr. Browning 125 An æsthetic not a doctrinal teacher 126 Disliked vehemence 130 Conclusion 131 THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT.[1] The illustrious woman who is the subject of these volumes makes a remark to her publisher which is at least as relevant now as it was then. Can nothing be done, she asks, by dispassionate criticism towards the reform of our national habits in the matter of literary biography? 'Is it anything short of odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk should be raked, and every insignificant memorandum which he never meant for the public be printed for the gossiping amusement of people too idle to reread his books?' Autobiography, she says, at least saves a man or a woman that the world is curious about, from the publication of a string of mistakes called Memoirs. Even to autobiography, however, she confesses her deep repugnance unless it can be written so as to involve neither self-glorification nor impeachment of others--a condition, by the way, with which hardly any, save Mill's, can be said to comply. 'I like,' she proceeds, 'that _He being dead yet speaketh_ should have quite another meaning than that' (iii. 226, 297, 307). She shows the same fastidious apprehension still more clearly in another way. 'I have destroyed almost all my friends' letters to me,' she says, 'because they were only intended for my eyes, and could only fall into the hands of persons who knew little of the writers if I allowed them to remain till after my death. In proportion as I love every form of piety--which is venerating love--I hate hard curiosity; and, unhappily, my experience has impressed me with the sense that hard curiosity is the more common temper of mind' (ii. 286). There is probably little difference among us in respect of such experience as that. [Footnote 1: _George Eliot's Life_. By J.W. Cross. Three volumes. Blackwood and Sons. 1885.] Much biography, perhaps we might say most, is hardly above the level of that 'personal talk,' to which Wordsworth sagely preferred long barren silence, the flapping of the flame of his cottage fire, and the under-song of the kettle on the hob. It would not, then, have much surprised us if George Eliot had insisted that her works should remain the only commemoration of her life. There be some who think that those who have enriched the world with great thoughts and fine creations, might best be content to rest unmarked 'where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,' leaving as little work to the literary executor, except of the purely crematory sort, as did Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, and some others whose names the world will not willingly let die. But this is a stoic's doctrine; the objector may easily retort that if it had been sternly acted on, we should have known very very little about Dr. Johnson, and nothing about Socrates. This is but an ungracious prelude to some remarks upon a book, which must be pronounced a striking success. There will be very little dispute as to the fact that the editor of these memorials of George Eliot has done his work with excellent taste, judgment, and sense. He found no autobiography nor fragment of one, but he has skilfully shaped a kind of autobiography by a plan which, so far as we know, he is justified in calling new, and which leaves her life to write itself in extracts from her letters and journals. With the least possible obtrusion from the biographer, the original pieces are formed into a connected whole 'that combines a narrative of day-to-day life with the play of light and shade which only letters written in serious moods can give.' The idea is a good one, and Mr. Cross deserves great credit for it. We may hope that its success will encourage imitators. Certainly there are drawbacks. We miss the animation of mixed narrative. There is, too, a touch of monotony in listening for so long to the voice of a single speaker addressing others who are silent behind a screen. But Mr. Cross could not, we think, have devised a better way of dealing with his material: it is simple, modest, and effective. George Eliot, after all, led the life of a studious recluse, with none of the bustle, variety, motion, and large communication with the outer world, that justified Lockhart and Moore in making a long story of the lives of Scott and Byron. Even here, among men of letters, who were also men of action and of great sociability, are not all biographies too long? Let any sensible reader turn to the shelf where his Lives repose; we shall be surprised if he does not find that nearly every one of them, taking the present century alone, and including such splendid and attractive subjects as Goethe, Hume, Romilly, Mackintosh, Horner, Chalmers, Arnold, Southey, Cowper, would not have been all the better for judicious curtailment. Lockhart, who wrote the longest, wrote also the shortest, the Life of Burns; and the shortest is the best, in spite of defects which would only have been worse if the book had been bigger. It is to be feared that, conscientious and honourable as his self-denial has been, even Mr. Cross has not wholly resisted the natural and besetting error of the biographer. Most people will think that the hundred pages of the Italian tour (vol. ii.), and some other not very remarkable impressions of travel, might as well or better have been left out. As a mere letter-writer, George Eliot will not rank among the famous masters of what is usually considered especially a woman's art. She was too busy in serious work to have leisure for that most delightful way of wasting time. Besides that, she had by nature none of that fluency, rapidity, abandonment, pleasant volubility, which make letters amusing, captivating, or piquant. What Mr. Cross says of her as the mistress of a _salon_, is true of her for the most part as a correspondent:--'Playing around many disconnected subjects, in talk, neither interested nor amused her much. She took things too seriously, and seldom found the effort of entertaining compensated by the gain' (iii. 335). There is the outpouring of ardent feeling for her friends, sobering down, as life goes on, into a crooning kindliness, affectionate and honest, but often tinged with considerable self-consciousness. It was said of some one that his epigrams did honour to his heart; in the reverse direction we occasionally feel that George Eliot's effusive playfulness does honour to her head. It lacks simplicity and _verve_. Even in an invitation to dinner, the words imply a grave sense of responsibility on both sides, and sense of responsibility is fatal to the charm of familiar correspondence. As was inevitable in one whose mind was so habitually turned to the deeper elements of life, she lets fall the pearls of wise speech even in short notes. Here are one or two:-- 'My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathise with individual suffering and individual joy.' 'If there is one attitude more odious to me than any other of the many attitudes of "knowingness," it is that air of lofty superiority to the vulgar. She will soon find out that I am a very commonplace woman.' 'It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.' The following is one of the best examples, one of the few examples, of her best manner:-- I have been made rather unhappy by my husband's impulsive proposal about Christmas. We are dull old persons, and your two sweet young ones ought to find each Christmas a new bright bead to string on their memory, whereas to spend the time with us would be to string on a dark shrivelled berry. They ought to have a group of young creatures to be joyful with. Our own children always spend their Christmas with Gertrude's family; and we have usually taken our sober merry-making with friends out of town. Illness among these will break our custom this year; and thus _mein Mann_, feeling that our Christmas was free, considered how very much he liked being with you, omitting the other side of the question--namely, our total lack of means to make a suitably joyous meeting, a real festival, for Phil and Margaret. I was conscious of this lack in the very moment of the proposal, and the consciousness has been pressing on me more and more painfully ever since. Even my husband's affectionate hopefulness cannot withstand my melancholy demonstration. So pray consider the kill-joy proposition as entirely retracted, and give us something of yourselves only on simple black-letter days, when the Herald Angels have not been raising expectations early in the morning. This is very pleasant, but such pieces are rare, and the infirmity of human nature has sometimes made us sigh over these pages at the recollection of the cordial cheeriness of Scott's letters, the high spirits of Macaulay, the graceful levity of Voltaire, the rattling dare-devilry of Byron. Epistolary stilts among men of letters went out of fashion with Pope, who, as was said, thought that unless every period finished with a conceit, the letter was not worth the postage. Poor spirits cannot be the explanation of the stiffness in George Eliot's case, for no letters in the English language are so full of playfulness and charm as those of Cowper, and he was habitually sunk in gulfs deeper and blacker than George Eliot's own. It was sometimes observed of her, that in her conversation, _elle s'écoutait quand elle parlait_--she seemed to be listening to her own voice while she spoke. It must be allowed that we are not always free from an impression of self-listening, even in the most caressing of the letters before us. This is not much better, however, than trifling. I daresay that if a lively Frenchman could have watched the inspired Pythia on the sublime tripod, he would have cried, _Elle s'écoute quand elle parle_. When everything of that kind has been said, we have the profound satisfaction, which is not quite a matter of course in the history of literature, of finding after all that the woman and the writer were one. The life does not belie the books, nor private conduct stultify public profession. We close the third volume of the biography, as we have so often closed the third volume of her novels, feeling to the very core that in spite of a style that the French call _alambiqué_, in spite of tiresome double and treble distillations of phraseology, in spite of fatiguing moralities, gravities, and ponderosities, we have still been in communion with a high and commanding intellect and a great nature. We are vexed by pedantries that recall the _précieuses_ of the Hôtel Rambouillet, but we know that she had the soul of the most heroic women in history. We crave more of the Olympian serenity that makes action natural and repose refreshing, but we cannot miss the edification of a life marked by indefatigable labour after generous purposes, by an unsparing struggle for duty, and by steadfast and devout fellowship with lofty thoughts. Those who know Mr. Myers's essay on George Eliot will not have forgotten its most imposing passage:-- I remember how at Cambridge, I waited with her once in the Fellows' Garden of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of men,--the words _God_, _Immortality_, _Duty_,--pronounced, with terrible earnestness, how inconceivable was the _first_, how unbelievable the _second_, and yet how peremptory and absolute the _third_. Never, perhaps, had sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecompensing law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic countenance turned toward me like a Sibyl's in the gloom; it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates. To many, the relation which was the most important event in George Eliot's life will seem one of those irretrievable errors which reduce all talk of duty to a mockery. It is inevitable that this should be so, and those who disregard a social law have little right to complain. Men and women whom in every other respect it would be monstrous to call bad, have taken this particular law into their own hands before now, and committed themselves to conduct of which 'magnanimity owes no account to prudence.' But if they had sense and knew what they were about, they have braced themselves to endure the disapproval of a majority fortunately more prudential than themselves. The world is busy, and its instruments are clumsy. It cannot know all the facts; it has neither time nor material for unravelling all the complexities of motive, or for distinguishing mere libertinage from grave and deliberate moral misjudgment; it is protecting itself as much as it is condemning the offenders. On all this, then, we need have neither sophistry nor cant. But those who seek something deeper than a verdict for the honest working purpose of leaving cards and inviting to dinner, may feel, as has been observed by a contemporary writer, that men and women are more fairly judged, if judge them we must, by the way in which they bear the burden of an error than by the decision that laid the burden on their lives. Some idea of this kind was in her own mind when she wrote to her most intimate friend in 1857, 'If I live five years longer, the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will outweigh the small negative good that would have consisted in my not doing anything to shock others' (i. 461). This urgent desire to balance the moral account may have had something to do with that laborious sense of responsibility which weighed so heavily on her soul, and had so equivocal an effect upon her art. Whatever else is to be said of this particular union, nobody can deny that the picture on which it left a mark was an exhibition of extraordinary self-denial, energy, and persistency in the cultivation and the use of great gifts and powers for what their possessor believed to be the highest objects for society and mankind. A more perfect companionship, one on a higher intellectual level, or of more sustained mental activity, is nowhere recorded. Lewes's mercurial temperament contributed as much as the powerful mind of his consort to prevent their seclusion from degenerating into an owlish stagnation. To the very last (1878) he retained his extraordinary buoyancy. 'Nothing but death could quench that bright flame. Even on his worst days he had always a good story to tell; and I remember on one occasion in the drawing-room at Witley, between two bouts of pain, he sang through with great _brio_, though without much voice, the greater portion of the tenor part in the _Barber of Seville_, George Eliot playing his accompaniment, and both of them thoroughly enjoying the fun' (iii. 334). All this gaiety, his inexhaustible vivacity, the facility of his transitions from brilliant levity to a keen seriousness, the readiness of his mental response, and the wide range of intellectual accomplishments that were much more than superficial, made him a source of incessant and varied stimulation. Even those, and there were some, who thought that his gaiety bordered on flippancy, that his genial self-content often came near to shockingly bad taste, and that his reminiscences of poor Mr. Fitzball and the green-room and all the rest of the Bohemia in which he had once dwelt, were too racy for his company, still found it hard to resist the alert intelligence with which he rose to every good topic, and the extraordinary heartiness and spontaneity with which the wholesome spring of human laughter was touched in him. Lewes had plenty of egotism, not to give it a more unamiable name, but it never mastered his intellectual sincerity. George Eliot describes him as one of the few human beings she has known who will, in the heat of an argument, see, and straightway confess, that he is in the wrong, instead of trying to shift his ground or use any other device of vanity. 'The intense happiness of our union,' she wrote to a friend, 'is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions. In this respect I know _no_ man so great as he--that difference of opinion rouses no egotistic irritation in him, and that he is ready to admit that another argument is the stronger the moment his intellect recognises it' (ii. 279). This will sound very easy to the dispassionate reader, because it is so obviously just and proper, but if the dispassionate reader ever tries, he may find the virtue not so easy as it looks. Finally, and above all, we can never forget in Lewes's case how much true elevation and stability of character was implied in the unceasing reverence, gratitude, and devotion with which for five-and-twenty years he treated her to whom he owed all his happiness, and who most truly, in his own words (ii. 76), had made his life a new birth. The reader will be mistaken if he should infer from such passages as abound in her letters that George Eliot had any particular weakness for domestic or any other kind of idolatry. George Sand, in _Lucrezia Floriani_, where she drew so unkind a picture of Chopin, has described her own life and character as marked by 'a great facility for illusions, a blind benevolence of judgment, a tenderness of heart that was inexhaustible; consequently great precipitancy, many mistakes, much weakness, fits of heroic devotion to unworthy objects, enormous force applied to an end that was wretched in truth and fact, but sublime in her thought.' George Eliot had none of this facility. Nor was general benignity in her at all of the poor kind that is incompatible with a great deal of particular censure. Universal benevolence never lulled an active critical faculty, nor did she conceive true humility as at all consisting in hiding from an impostor that you have found him out. Like Cardinal Newman, for whose beautiful passage at the end of the _Apologia_ she expresses such richly deserved admiration (ii. 387), she unites to the gift of unction and brotherly love a capacity for giving an extremely shrewd nip to a brother whom she does not love. Her passion for Thomas-a-Kempis did not prevent her, and there was no reason why it should, from dealing very faithfully with a friend, for instance (ii. 271); from describing Mr. Buckle as a conceited, ignorant man; or castigating Brougham and other people in slashing reviews; or otherwise from showing that great expansiveness of the affections went with a remarkably strong, hard, masculine, positive, judging head. The benefits that George Eliot gained from her exclusive companionship with a man of lively talents were not without some compensating drawbacks. The keen stimulation and incessant strain, unrelieved by variety of daily intercourse, and never diversified by participation in the external activities of the world, tended to bring about a loaded, over-conscious, over-anxious state of mind, which was not only not wholesome in itself, but was inconsistent with the full freshness and strength of artistic work. The presence of the real world in his life has, in all but one or two cases, been one element of the novelist's highest success in the world of imaginative creation. George Eliot had no greater favourite than Scott, and when a series of little books upon English men of letters was planned, she said that she thought that writer among us the happiest to whom it should fall to deal with Scott. But Scott lived full in the life of his fellow-men. Even of Wordsworth, her other favourite, though he was not a creative artist, we may say that he daily saturated himself in those natural elements and effects, which were the material, the suggestion, and the sustaining inspiration of his consoling and fortifying poetry. George Eliot did not live in the midst of her material, but aloof from it and outside of it. Heaven forbid that this should seem to be said by way of censure. Both her health and other considerations made all approach to busy sociability in any of its shapes both unwelcome and impossible. But in considering the relation of her manner of life to her work, her creations, her meditations, one cannot but see that when compared with some writers of her own sex and age, she is constantly bookish, artificial, and mannered. She is this because she fed her art too exclusively, first on the memories of her youth, and next from books, pictures, statues, instead of from the living model, as seen in its actual motion. It is direct calls and personal claims from without that make fiction alive. Jane Austen bore her part in the little world of the parlour that she described. The writer of _Sylvia's Lovers_, whose work George Eliot appreciated with unaffected generosity (i. 305), was the mother of children, and was surrounded by the wholesome actualities of the family. The authors of _Jane Eyre_ and _Wuthering Heights_ passed their days in one long succession of wild, stormy, squalid, anxious, and miserable scenes--almost as romantic, as poetic, and as tragic, to use George Eliot's words, as their own stories. George Sand eagerly shared, even to the pitch of passionate tumult and disorder, in the emotions, the aspirations, the ardour, the great conflicts and controversies of her time. In every one of these, their daily closeness to the real life of the world has given a vitality to their work which we hardly expect that even the next generation will find in more than one or two of the romances of George Eliot. It may even come to pass that their position will be to hers as that of Fielding is to Richardson in our own day. In a letter to Mr. Harrison, which is printed here (ii. 441), George Eliot describes her own method as 'the severe effort of trying to make certain ideas thoroughly incarnate, as if they had revealed themselves to me first in the flesh and not in the spirit.' The passage recalls a discussion one day at the Priory in 1877. She was speaking of the different methods of the poetic or creative art, and said that she began with moods, thoughts, passions, and then invented the story for their sake, and fitted it to them; Shakespeare, on the other hand, picked up a story that struck him, and then proceeded to work in the moods, thoughts, passions, as they came to him in the course of meditation on the story. We hardly need the result to convince us that Shakespeare chose the better part. The influence of her reserved fashion of daily life was heightened by the literary exclusiveness which of set purpose she imposed upon herself. 'The less an author hears about himself,' she says, in one place, 'the better.' 'It is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist, which ill-judged praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in us.' George Eliot pushed this repugnance to criticism beyond the personal reaction of it upon the artist, and more than disparaged its utility, even in the most competent and highly trained hands. She finds that the diseased spot in the literary culture of our time is touched with the finest point by the saying of La Bruyère, that 'the pleasure of criticism robs us of the pleasure of being keenly moved by very fine things' (iii. 327). 'It seems to me,' she writes (ii. 412), 'much better to read a man's own writings than to read what others say about him, especially when the man is first-rate and the others third-rate. As Goethe said long ago about Spinoza, "I always preferred to learn from the man himself what _he_ thought, rather than to hear from some one else what he ought to have thought."' As if the scholar will not always be glad to do both, to study his author and not to refuse the help of the rightly prepared commentator; as if even Goethe himself would not have been all the better acquainted with Spinoza if he could have read Mr. Pollock's book upon him. But on this question Mr. Arnold has fought a brilliant battle, and to him George Eliot's heresies may well be left. On the personal point whether an author should ever hear of himself, George Eliot oddly enough contradicts herself in a casual remark upon Bulwer. 'I have a great respect,' she says, 'for the energetic industry which has made the most of his powers. He has been writing diligently for more than thirty years, constantly improving his position, and profiting by the lessons of public opinion and of other writers' (ii. 322). But if it is true that the less an author hears about himself the better, how are these salutary 'lessons of public opinion' to penetrate to him? 'Rubens,' she says, writing from Munich in 1858 (ii. 28), 'gives me more pleasure than any other painter whether right or wrong. More than any one else he makes me feel that painting is a great art, and that he was a great artist. His are such real breathing men and women, moved by passions, not mincing, and grimacing, and posing in mere imitation of passion.' But Rubens did not concentrate his intellect on his own ponderings, nor shut out the wholesome chastenings of praise and blame, lest they should discourage his inspiration. Beethoven, another of the chief objects of George Eliot's veneration, bore all the rough stress of an active and troublesome calling, though of the musician, if of any, we may say, that his is the art of self-absorption. Hence, delightful and inspiring as it is to read this story of diligent and discriminating cultivation, of accurate truth and real erudition and beauty, not vaguely but methodically interpreted, one has some of the sensations of the moral and intellectual hothouse. Mental hygiene is apt to lead to mental valetudinarianism. 'The ignorant journalist,' may be left to the torment which George Eliot wished that she could inflict on one of those literary slovens whose manuscripts bring even the most philosophic editor to the point of exasperation: 'I should like to stick red-hot skewers through the writer, whose style is as sprawling as his handwriting.' By all means. But much that even the most sympathetic reader finds repellent in George Eliot's later work might perhaps never have been, if Mr. Lewes had not practised with more than Russian rigour a censorship of the press and the post-office which kept every disagreeable whisper scrupulously from her ear. To stop every draft with sandbags, screens, and curtains, and to limit one's exercise to a drive in a well-warmed brougham with the windows drawn up, may save a few annoying colds in the head, but the end of the process will be the manufacture of an invalid. Whatever view we may take of the precise connection between what she read, or abstained from reading, and what she wrote, no studious man or woman can look without admiration and envy on the breadth, variety, seriousness, and energy, with which she set herself her tasks and executed them. She says in one of her letters, 'there is something more piteous almost than soapless poverty in the application of feminine incapacity to literature' (ii. 16). Nobody has ever taken the responsibilities of literature more ardently in earnest. She was accustomed to read aloud to Mr. Lewes three hours a day, and her private reading, except when she was engaged in the actual stress of composition, must have filled as many more. His extraordinary alacrity and her brooding intensity of mind prevented these hours from being that leisurely process in slippers and easy-chair which passes with many for the practice of literary cultivation. Much of her reading was for the direct purposes of her own work. The young lady who begins to write historic novels out of her own head will find something much to her advantage if she will refer to the list of books read by George Eliot during the latter half of 1861, when she was meditating _Romola_ (ii. 325). Apart from immediate needs and uses, no student of our time has known better the solace, the delight, the guidance that abide in great writings. Nobody who did not share the scholar's enthusiasm could have described the blind scholar in his library in the adorable fifth chapter of _Romola_; and we feel that she must have copied out with keen gusto of her own those words of Petrarch which she puts into old Bardo's mouth--'_Libri medullitus delectant, colloquuntur, consulunt, et viva quadam nobis atque arguta familiaritate junguntur._' As for books that are not books, as Milton bade us do with 'neat repasts of wine,' she wisely spared to interpose them oft. Her standards of knowledge were those of the erudite and the savant, and even in the region of beauty she was never content with any but definite impressions. In one place in these volumes, by the way, she makes a remark curiously inconsistent with the usual scientific attitude of her mind. She has been reading Darwin's _Origin of Species_, on which she makes the truly astonishing criticism that it is 'sadly wanting in illustrative facts,' and that 'it is not impressive from want of luminous and orderly presentation' (ii. 43-48). Then she says that 'the development theory, and all other explanation of processes by which things came to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery that lies under processes.' This position it does not now concern us to discuss, but at least it is in singular discrepancy with her strong habitual preference for accurate and quantitative knowledge, over vague and misty moods in the region of the unknowable and the unreachable. George Eliot's means of access to books were very full. She knew French, German, Italian, and Spanish accurately. Greek and Latin, Mr. Cross tells us, she could read with thorough delight to herself; though after the appalling specimen of Mill's juvenile Latinity that Mr. Bain has disinterred, the fastidious collegian may be sceptical of the scholarship of prodigies. Hebrew was her favourite study to the end of her days. People commonly supposed that she had been inoculated with an artificial taste for science by her companion. We now learn that she took a decided interest in natural science long before she made Mr. Lewes's acquaintance, and many of the roundabout pedantries that displeased people in her latest writings, and were set down to his account, appeared in her composition before she had ever exchanged a word with him. All who knew her well enough were aware that she had what Mr. Cross describes as 'limitless persistency in application.' This is an old account of genius, but nobody illustrates more effectively the infinite capacity of taking pains. In reading, in looking at pictures, in playing difficult music, in talking, she was equally importunate in the search, and equally insistent on mastery. Her faculty of sustained concentration was part of her immense intellectual power. 'Continuous thought did not fatigue her. She could keep her mind on the stretch hour after hour; the body might give way, but the brain remained unwearied' (iii. 422). It is only a trifling illustration of the infection of her indefatigable quality of taking pains, that Lewes should have formed the important habit of rewriting every page of his work, even of short articles for Reviews, before letting it go to the press. The journal shows what sore pain and travail composition was to her. She wrote the last volume of _Adam Bede_ in six weeks; she 'could not help writing it fast, because it was written under the stress of emotion.' But what a prodigious contrast between her pace and Walter Scott's twelve volumes a year! Like many other people of powerful brains, she united strong and clear general retentiveness with a weak and untrustworthy verbal memory. 'She never could trust herself to write a quotation without verifying it.' 'What courage and patience,' she says of some one else, 'are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything,' and her own existence was one long and painful sermon on that text. Over few lives have the clouds of mental dejection hung in such heavy unmoving banks. Nearly every chapter is strewn with melancholy words. 'I cannot help thinking more of your illness than of the pleasure in prospect--according to my foolish nature, which is always prone to live in past pain.' The same sentiment is the mournful refrain that runs through all. Her first resounding triumph, the success of _Adam Bede_, instead of buoyancy and exultation, only adds a fresh sense of the weight upon her future life. 'The self-questioning whether my nature will be able to meet the heavy demands upon it, both of personal duty and intellectual production--presses upon me almost continually in a way that prevents me even from tasting the quiet joy I might have in the _work done_. I feel no regret that the fame, as such, brings no pleasure; but it _is_ a grief to me that I do not constantly feel strong in thankfulness that my past life has vindicated its uses.' _Romola_ seems to have been composed in constant gloom. 'I remember my wife telling me, at Witley,' says Mr. Cross, 'how cruelly she had suffered at Dorking from working under a leaden weight at this time. The writing of _Romola_ ploughed into her more than any of her other books. She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, "I began it a young woman--I finished it an old woman."' She calls upon herself to make 'greater efforts against indolence and the despondency that comes from too egoistic a dread of failure.' 'This is the last entry I mean to make in my old book in which I wrote for the first time at Geneva in 1849. What moments of despair I passed through after that--despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity; and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated' (ii. 307). One day the entry is: 'Horrible scepticism about all things paralysing my mind. Shall I ever be good for anything again? Ever do anything again?' On another, she describes herself to a trusted friend as 'a mind morbidly desponding, and a consciousness tending more and more to consist in memories of error and imperfection rather than in a strengthening sense of achievement.' We have to turn to such books as Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_ to find any parallel to such wretchedness. Times were not wanting when the sun strove to shine through the gloom, when the resistance to melancholy was not wholly a failure, and when, as she says, she felt that Dante was right in condemning to the Stygian marsh those who had been sad under the blessed sunlight. 'Sad were we in the sweet air that is gladdened by the sun, bearing sluggish smoke in our hearts; now lie we sadly here in the black ooze.' But still for the most part sad she remained in the sweet air, and the look of pain that haunted her eyes and brow even in her most genial and animated moments, only told too truly the story of her inner life. That from this central gloom a shadow should spread to her work was unavoidable. It would be rash to compare George Eliot with Tacitus, with Dante, with Pascal. A novelist--for as a poet, after trying hard to think otherwise, most of us find her magnificent but unreadable--as a novelist bound by the conditions of her art to deal in a thousand trivialities of human character and situation, she has none of their severity of form. But she alone of moderns has their note of sharp-cut melancholy, of sombre rumination, of brief disdain. Living in a time when humanity has been raised, whether formally or informally, into a religion, she draws a painted curtain of pity before the tragic scene. Still the attentive ear catches from time to time the accents of an unrelenting voice, that proves her kindred with those three mighty spirits and stern monitors of men. In George Eliot, a reader with a conscience may be reminded of the saying that when a man opens Tacitus he puts himself in the confessional. She was no vague dreamer over the folly and the weakness of men, and the cruelty and blindness of destiny. Hers is not the dejection of the poet who 'could lie down like a tired child, And weep away this life of care,' as Shelley at Naples; nor is it the despairing misery that moved Cowper in the awful verses of the _Castaway_. It was not such self-pity as wrung from Burns the cry to life, 'Thou art a galling load, Along a rough, a weary road, To wretches such as I;' nor such general sense of the woes of the race as made Keats think of the world as a place where men sit and hear each other groan, 'Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, And leaden-eyed despairs.' She was as far removed from the plangent reverie of Rousseau as from the savage truculence of Swift. Intellectual training had given her the spirit of order and proportion, of definiteness and measure, and this marks her alike from the great sentimentalists and the sweeping satirists. 'Pity and fairness,' as she beautifully says (iii. 317), 'are two little words which, carried out, would embrace the utmost delicacies of the moral life.' But hers is not seldom the severe fairness of the judge, and the pity that may go with putting on the black cap after a conviction for high treason. In the midst of many an easy flowing page, the reader is surprised by some bitter aside, some judgment of intense and concentrated irony with the flash of a blade in it, some biting sentence where lurks the stern disdain and the anger of Tacitus, and Dante, and Pascal. Souls like these are not born for happiness. * * * * * This is not the occasion for an elaborate discussion of George Eliot's place in the mental history of her time, but her biography shows that she travelled along the road that was trodden by not a few in her day. She started from that fervid evangelicalism which has made the base of many a powerful character in this century, from Cardinal Newman downwards. Then with curious rapidity she threw it all off, and embraced with equal zeal the rather harsh and crude negations which were then associated with the _Westminster Review_. The second stage did not last much longer than the first. 'Religious and moral sympathy with the historical life of man,' she said (ii. 363), 'is the larger half of culture;' and this sympathy, which was the fruit of her culture, had by the time she was thirty become the new seed of a positive faith and a semi-conservative creed. Here is a passage from a letter of 1862 (she had translated Strauss, we may remind ourselves, in 1845, and Feuerbach in 1854):-- Pray don't ask me ever again not to rob a man of his religious belief, as if you thought my mind tended to such robbery. I have too profound a conviction of the efficacy that lies in all sincere faith, and the spiritual blight that comes with no-faith, to have any negative propagandism in me. In fact, I have very little sympathy with Freethinkers as a class, and have lost all interest in mere antagonism to religious doctrines. I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine from the beginning till now (ii. 243). Eleven years later the same tendency had deepened and gone farther:-- All the great religions of the world, historically considered, are rightly the objects of deep reverence and sympathy--they are the record of spiritual struggles, which are the types of our own. This is to me preeminently true of Hebrewism and Christianity, on which my own youth was nourished. And in this sense I have no antagonism towards any religious belief, but a strong outflow of sympathy. Every community met to worship the highest Good (which is understood to be expressed by God) carries me along in its main current; and if there were not reasons against my following such an inclination, I should go to church or chapel, constantly, for the sake of the delightful emotions of fellowship which come over me in religious assemblies--the very nature of such assemblies being the recognition of a binding belief or spiritual law, which is to lift us into willing obedience and save us from the slavery of unregulated passion or impulse. And with regard to other people, it seems to me that those who have no definite conviction which constitutes a protesting faith, may often more beneficially cherish the good within them and be better members of society by a conformity based on the recognised good in the public belief, than by a nonconformity which has nothing but negatives to utter. _Not_, of course, if the conformity would be accompanied by a consciousness of hypocrisy. That is a question for the individual conscience to settle. But there is enough to be said on the different points of view from which conformity may be regarded, to hinder a ready judgment against those who continue to conform after ceasing to believe in the ordinary sense. But with the utmost largeness of allowance for the difficulty of deciding in special cases, it must remain true that the highest lot is to have definite beliefs about which you feel that 'necessity is laid upon you' to declare them, as something better which you are bound to try and give to those who have the worse (iii. 215-217). These volumes contain many passages in the same sense--as, of course, her books contain them too. She was a constant reader of the Bible, and the _Imitatio_ was never far from her hand. 'She particularly enjoyed reading aloud some of the finest chapters of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles. The Bible and our elder English poets best suited the organ-like tones of her voice, which required for their full effect a certain solemnity and majesty of rhythm.' She once expressed to a younger friend, who shared her opinions, her sense of the loss which they had in being unable to practise the old ordinances of family prayer. 'I hope,' she says, 'we are well out of that phase in which the most philosophic view of the past was held to be a smiling survey of human folly, and when the wisest man was supposed to be one who could sympathise with no age but the age to come' (ii. 308). For this wise reaction she was no doubt partially indebted, as so many others have been, to the teaching of Comte. Unquestionably the fundamental ideas had come into her mind at a much earlier period, when, for example, she was reading Mr. R.W. Mackay's _Progress of the Intellect_ (1850, i. 253). But it was Comte who enabled her to systematise these ideas, and to give them that 'definiteness,' which, as these pages show in a hundred places, was the quality that she sought before all others alike in men and their thoughts. She always remained at a respectful distance from complete adherence to Comte's scheme, but she was never tired of protesting that he was a really great thinker, that his famous survey of the Middle Ages in the fifth volume of the _Positive Philosophy_ was full of luminous ideas, and that she had thankfully learned much from it. Wordsworth, again, was dear to her in no small degree on the strength of such passages as that from the _Prelude_, which is the motto of one of the last chapters of her last novel:-- The human nature with which I felt That I belonged and reverenced with love, Was not a persistent presence, but a spirit Diffused through time and space, with aid derived Of evidence from monuments, erect, Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest In earth, _the widely scattered wreck sublime_ _Of vanished nations_. Or this again, also from the _Prelude_ (see iii. 389):-- There is One great society alone on earth: The noble Living and the noble Dead. Underneath this growth and diversity of opinion we see George Eliot's oneness of character, just, for that matter, as we see it in Mill's long and grave march from the uncompromising denials instilled into him by his father, then through Wordsworthian mysticism and Coleridgean conservatism, down to the pale belief and dim starlight faith of his posthumous volume. George Eliot was more austere, more unflinching, and of ruder intellectual constancy than Mill. She never withdrew from the position that she had taken up, of denying and rejecting; she stood to that to the end: what she did was to advance to the far higher perception that denial and rejection are not the aspects best worth attending to or dwelling upon. She had little patience with those who fear that the doctrine of protoplasm must dry up the springs of human effort. Any one who trembles at that catastrophe may profit by a powerful remonstrance of hers in the pages before us (iii. 245-250, also 228). The consideration of molecular physics is not the direct ground of human love and moral action, any more than it is the direct means of composing a noble picture or of enjoying great music. One might as well hope to dissect one's own body and be merry in doing it, as take molecular physics (in which you must banish from your field of view what is specifically human) to be your dominant guide, your determiner of motives, in what is solely human. That every study has its bearing on every other is true; but pain and relief, love and sorrow, have their peculiar history which make an experience and knowledge over and above the swing of atoms. With regard to the pains and limitations of one's personal lot, I suppose there is not a single man or woman who has not more or less need of that stoical resignation which is often a hidden heroism, or who, in considering his or her past history, is not aware that it has been cruelly affected by the ignorant or selfish action of some fellow-being in a more or less close relation of life. And to my mind there can be no stronger motive than this perception, to an energetic effort that the lives nearest to us shall not suffer in a like manner from _us_. As to duration and the way in which it affects your view of the human history, what is really the difference to your imagination between infinitude and billions when you have to consider the value of human experience? Will you say that since your life has a term of threescore years and ten, it was really a matter of indifference whether you were a cripple with a wretched skin disease, or an active creature with a mind at large for the enjoyment of knowledge, and with a nature which has attracted others to you? For herself, she remained in the position described in one of her letters in 1860 (ii. 283):--'I have faith in the working out of higher possibilities than the Catholic or any other Church has presented; and those who have strength to wait and endure are bound to accept no formula which their whole souls--their intellect, as well as their emotions--do not embrace with entire reverence. The highest calling and election is _to do without opium_, and live through all our pain with conscious, clear-eyed endurance.' She would never accept the common optimism. As she says here:--'Life, though a good to men on the whole, is a doubtful good to many, and to some not a good at all. To my thought it is a source of constant mental distortion to make the denial of this a part of religion--to go on pretending things are better than they are.' Of the afflicting dealings with the world of spirits, which in those days were comparatively limited to the untutored minds of America, but which since have come to exert so singular a fascination for some of the most brilliant of George Eliot's younger friends (see iii. 204), she thought as any sensible Philistine among us persists in thinking to this day:-- If it were another spirit aping Charlotte Brontë--if here and there at rare spots and among people of a certain temperament, or even at many spots and among people of all temperaments, tricksy spirits are liable to rise as a sort of earth-bubbles and set furniture in movement, and tell things which we either know already or should be as well without knowing--I must frankly confess that I have but a feeble interest in these doings, feeling my life very short for the supreme and awful revelations of a more orderly and intelligible kind which I shall die with an imperfect knowledge of. If there were miserable spirits whom we could help--then I think we should pause and have patience with their trivial-mindedness; but otherwise I don't feel bound to study them more than I am bound to study the special follies of a peculiar phase of human society. Others, who feel differently, and are attracted towards this study, are making an experiment for us as to whether anything better than bewilderment can come of it. At present it seems to me that to rest any fundamental part of religion on such a basis is a melancholy misguidance of men's minds from the true sources of high and pure emotion (iii. 161). The period of George Eliot's productions was from 1856, the date of her first stories, down to 1876, when she wrote, not under her brightest star, her last novel of _Daniel Deronda_. During this time the great literary influences of the epoch immediately preceding had not indeed fallen silent, but the most fruitful seed had been sown. Carlyle's _Sartor_ (1833-1834), and his _Miscellaneous Essays_ (collected, 1839), were in all hands; but he had fallen into the terrible slough of his Prussian history (1858-1865), and the last word of his evangel had gone forth to all whom it concerned. _In Memoriam_, whose noble music and deep-browed thought awoke such new and wide response in men's hearts, was published in 1850. The second volume of _Modern Painters_, of which I have heard George Eliot say, as of _In Memoriam_ too, that she owed much and very much to it, belongs to an earlier date still (1846), and when it appeared, though George Eliot was born in the same year as its author, she was still translating Strauss at Coventry. Mr. Browning, for whose genius she had such admiration, and who was always so good a friend, did indeed produce during this period some work which the adepts find as full of power and beauty as any that ever came from his pen. But Mr. Browning's genius has moved rather apart from the general currents of his time, creating character and working out motives from within, undisturbed by transient shadows from the passing questions and answers of the day. The romantic movement was then upon its fall. The great Oxford movement, which besides its purely ecclesiastical effects, had linked English religion once more to human history, and which was itself one of the unexpected outcomes of the romantic movement, had spent its original force, and no longer interested the stronger minds among the rising generation. The hour had sounded for the scientific movement. In 1859 was published the _Origin of Species_, undoubtedly the most far-reaching agency of the time, supported as it was by a volume of new knowledge which came pouring in from many sides. The same period saw the important speculations of Mr. Spencer, whose influence on George Eliot had from their first acquaintance been of a very decisive kind. Two years after the _Origin of Species_ came Maine's _Ancient Law_, and that was followed by the accumulations of Mr. Tylor and others, exhibiting order and fixed correlation among great sets of facts which had hitherto lain in that cheerful chaos of general knowledge which has been called general ignorance. The excitement was immense. Evolution, development, heredity, adaptation, variety, survival, natural selection, were so many patent pass-keys that were to open every chamber. George Eliot's novels, as they were the imaginative application of this great influx of new ideas, so they fitted in with the moods which those ideas had called up. 'My function,' she said (iii. 330), 'is that of the æsthetic, not the doctrinal teacher--the rousing of the nobler emotions which make mankind desire the social right, not the prescribing of special measures, concerning which the artistic mind, however strongly moved by social sympathy, is often not the best judge.' Her influence in this direction over serious and impressionable minds was great indeed. The spirit of her art exactly harmonised with the new thoughts that were shaking the world of her contemporaries. Other artists had drawn their pictures with a strong ethical background, but she gave a finer colour and a more spacious air to her ethics by showing the individual passions and emotions of her characters, their adventures and their fortunes, as evolving themselves from long series of antecedent causes, and bound up with many widely operating forces and distant events. Here, too, we find ourselves in the full stream of evolution, heredity, survival, and fixed inexorable law. This scientific quality of her work may be considered to have stood in the way of her own aim. That the nobler emotions roused by her writings tend to 'make mankind desire the social right' is not to be doubted; but we are not sure that she imparts peculiar energy to the desire. What she kindles is not a very strenuous, aggressive, and operative desire. The sense of the iron limitations that are set to improvement in present and future by inexorable forces of the past, is stronger in her than any intrepid resolution to press on to whatever improvement may chance to be within reach if we only make the attempt. In energy, in inspiration, in the kindling of living faith in social effort, George Sand, not to speak of Mazzini, takes a far higher place. It was certainly not the business of an artist to form judgments in the sphere of practical politics, but George Eliot was far too humane a nature not to be deeply moved by momentous events as they passed. Yet her observations, at any rate after 1848, seldom show that energy of sympathy of which we have been speaking, and these observations illustrate our point. We can hardly think that anything was ever said about the great civil war in America, so curiously far-fetched as the following reflection:--'My best consolation is that an example on so tremendous a scale of the need for the education of mankind through the affections and sentiments, as a basis for true development, will have a strong influence on all thinkers, and be a check to the arid narrow antagonism which in some quarters is held to be the only form of liberal thought' (ii. 335). In 1848, as we have said, she felt the hopes of the hour in all their fulness. To a friend she writes (i. 179):--'You and Carlyle (have you seen his article in last week's _Examiner?_) are the only two people who feel just as I would have them--who can glory in what is actually great and beautiful without putting forth any cold reservations and incredulities to save their credit for wisdom. I am all the more delighted with your enthusiasm because I didn't expect it. I feared that you lacked revolutionary ardour. But no--you are just as _sans-culottish_ and rash as I would have you. You are not one of those sages whose reason keeps so tight a rein on their emotions that they are too constantly occupied in calculating consequences to rejoice in any great manifestation of the forces that underlie our everyday existence. 'I thought we had fallen on such evil days that we were to see no really great movement--that ours was what St. Simon calls a purely critical epoch, not at all an organic one; but I begin to be glad of my date. I would consent, however, to have a year clipt off my life for the sake of witnessing such a scene as that of the men of the barricades bowing to the image of Christ, 'who first taught fraternity to men.' One trembles to look into every fresh newspaper lest there should be something to mar the picture; but hitherto even the scoffing newspaper critics have been compelled into a tone of genuine respect for the French people and the Provisional Government. Lamartine can act a poem if he cannot write one of the very first order. I hope that beautiful face given to him in the pictorial newspaper is really his: it is worthy of an aureole. I have little patience with people who can find time to pity Louis Philippe and his moustachioed sons. Certainly our decayed monarchs should be pensioned off: we should have an hospital for them, or a sort of zoological garden, where these worn-out humbugs may be preserved. It is but justice that we should keep them, since we have spoiled them for any honest trade. Let them sit on soft cushions, and have their dinner regularly, but, for heaven's sake, preserve me from sentimentalising over a pampered old man when the earth has its millions of unfed souls and bodies. Surely he is not so Ahab-like as to wish that the revolution had been deferred till his son's days: and I think the shades of the Stuarts would have some reason to complain if the Bourbons, who are so little better than they, had been allowed to reign much longer.' The hopes of '48 were not very accurately fulfilled, and in George Eliot they never came to life again. Yet in social things we may be sure that undying hope is the secret of vision. There is a passage in Coleridge's _Friend_ which seems to represent the outcome of George Eliot's teaching on most, and not the worst, of her readers:--'The tangle of delusions,' says Coleridge, 'which stifled and distorted the growing tree of our well-being has been torn away; the parasite weeds that fed on its very roots have been plucked up with a salutary violence. To us there remain only quiet duties, the constant care, the gradual improvement, the cautious and unhazardous labours of the industrious though contented gardener--to prune, to strengthen, to engraft, and one by one to remove from its leaves and fresh shoots the slug and the caterpillar.' Coleridge goes farther than George Eliot, when he adds the exhortation--'Far be it from us to undervalue with light and senseless detraction the conscientious hardihood of our predecessors, or even to condemn in them that vehemence to which the blessings it won for us leave us now neither temptation nor pretext.' George Eliot disliked vehemence more and more as her work advanced. The word 'crudity,' so frequently on her lips, stood for all that was objectionable and distasteful. The conservatism of an artistic moral nature was shocked by the seeming peril to which priceless moral elements of human character were exposed by the energumens of progress. Their impatient hopes for the present appeared to her rather unscientific; their disregard of the past very irreverent and impious. Mill had the same feeling when he disgusted his father by standing up for Wordsworth, on the ground that Wordsworth was helping to keep alive in human nature elements which utilitarians and innovators would need when their present and particular work was done. Mill, being free from the exaltations that make the artist, kept a truer balance. His famous pair of essays on Bentham and Coleridge were published (for the first time, so far as our generation was concerned) in the same year as _Adam Bede_, and I can vividly remember how the 'Coleridge' first awoke in many of us, who were then youths at Oxford, that sense of truth having many mansions, and that desire and power of sympathy with the past, with the positive bases of the social fabric, and with the value of Permanence in States, which form the reputable side of all conservatisms. This sentiment and conviction never took richer or more mature form than in the best work of George Eliot, and her stories lighted up with a fervid glow the truths that minds of another type had just brought to the surface. It was this that made her a great moral force at that epoch, especially for all who were capable by intellectual training of standing at her point of view. We even, as I have said, tried hard to love her poetry, but the effort has ended less in love than in a very distant homage to the majestic in intention and the sonorous in execution. In fiction, too, as the years go by, we begin to crave more fancy, illusion, enchantment, than the quality of her genius allowed. But the loftiness of her character is abiding, and it passes nobly through the ordeal of an honest biography. 'For the lessons,' says the fine critic already quoted, 'most imperatively needed by the mass of men, the lessons of deliberate kindness, of careful truth, of unwavering endeavour,--for these plain themes one could not ask a more convincing teacher than she whom we are commemorating now. Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with the bent of her soul. The deeply-lined face, the too marked and massive features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed so entirely from within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence of a wise, benignant soul.' As a wise, benignant soul George Eliot will still remain for all right-judging men and women. 
17172	----	Transcribed from the 1884 William Blackwood and Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk THE ETHICS OF GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS BY THE LATE JOHN CROMBIE BROWN FOURTH EDITION WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXXIV _All Rights reserved_ PREFACE. The greater part of the following Essay was written several years ago. It was too long for any of the periodicals to which the author had been in the habit of occasionally contributing, and no thought was then entertained of publishing it in a separate form. One day, however, during his last illness, the talk happened to turn on George Eliot's Works, and he mentioned his long-forgotten paper. One of the friends then present--a competent critic and high literary authority--expressed a wish to see it, and his opinion was so favourable that its publication was determined on. The author then proposed to complete his work by taking up 'Middlemarch' and 'Deronda'; and if any trace of failing vigour is discernible in these latter pages, the reader will bear in mind that the greater portion of them was composed when the author was rapidly sinking under a painful disease, and that the concluding paragraphs were dictated to his daughter after the power of writing had failed him, only five days before his death. PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. It is a source of great gratification to the friends of the author that his little volume has already been so well received that the second edition has been out of print for some time. In now publishing a third, they have been influenced by two considerations,--the continued demand for the book, and the favourable opinion expressed of it by "George Eliot" herself, which, since her lamented death, delicacy no longer forbids them to make public. In a letter to her friend and publisher, the late Mr John Blackwood, received soon after the appearance of the first edition, she writes, with reference to certain passages: "They seemed to me more penetrating and finely felt than almost anything I have read in the way of printed comments on my own writings." Again, in a letter to a friend of the author, she says: "When I read the volume in the summer, I felt as if I had been deprived of something that should have fallen to my share in never having made his personal acquaintance. And it would have been a great benefit,--a great stimulus to me to have known some years earlier that my work was being sanctioned by the sympathy of a mind endowed with so much insight and delicate sensibility. It is difficult for me to speak of what others may regard as an excessive estimate of my own work, but I will venture to mention the keen perception shown in the note on page 29, as something that gave me peculiar satisfaction." Once more. In an article in the 'Contemporary Review' of last month, on "The Moral Influence of George Eliot," by "One who knew her," the writer says: "It happens that the only criticism which we have heard mentioned as giving her pleasure, was a little posthumous volume published by Messrs Blackwood." With such testimony in its favour, it is hoped a third edition will not be thought uncalled for. _March_ 1881. THE ETHICS OF GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS. "There is in man a higher than love of happiness: he can do without happiness, and instead thereof find blessedness." Such may be regarded as the fundamental lesson which one of the great teachers of our time has been labouring to impress upon the age. The truth, and the practical corollary from it, are not now first enunciated. Representing, as we believe it to do, the practical aspect of the noblest reality in man--that which most directly represents Him in whose image he is made--it has found doctrinal expression more or less perfect from the earliest times. The older Theosophies and Philosophies--Gymnosophist and Cynic, Chaldaic and Pythagorean, Epicurean and Stoic, Platonist and Eclectic--were all attempts to embody it in teaching, and to carry it out in life. They saw, indeed, but imperfectly, and their expressions of the truth are all one-sided and inadequate. But they did see, in direct antagonism alike to the popular view and to the natural instinct of the animal man, that what is ordinarily called happiness does not represent the highest capability in humanity, or meet its indefinite aspirations; and that in degree as it is consciously made so, life becomes animalised and degraded. The whole scheme of Judaism, as first promulgated in all the stern simplicity of its awful Theism, where the Divine is fundamentally and emphatically represented as the Omnipotent and the Avenger, was an emphatic protest against that self-isolation in which the man folds himself up like a chrysalid in its cocoon whenever his individual happiness--the so-called saving of his own soul--becomes the aim and aspiration of his life. In one sense the Jew of Moses had no individual as apart from a national existence. The secret sin of Achan, the vaunting pride of David, call forth less individual than national calamity. At last in the fulness of time there came forth One--whence and how we do not stop to inquire--who gathered up into Himself all these tangled, broken, often divergent threads; who gave to this truth, so far as one very brief human life could give--at once its perfect and exhaustive doctrinal expression, and its essentially perfect and exhaustive practical exemplification, by life and by death. Endless controversies have stormed and are still storming around that name which He so significantly and emphatically appropriated--the "Son of Man." But from amid all the controversy that veils it, one fact, clear, sharp, and unchallenged, stands out as the very life and seal of His human greatness--"He pleased not Himself." By every act He did, every word He spoke, and every pain He bore, He put away from Him happiness as the aim and end of man. He reduced it to its true position of a possible accessory and issue of man's highest fulfilment of life--an issue, the contemplation of which might be of some avail as the being first awoke to its nobler capabilities, but which, the more the life went on towards realisation, passed the more away from conscious regard. Thenceforth the Cross, as the typical representation of this truth, became a recognised power on the earth. Thenceforth every great teacher of humanity within the pale of nominal Christendom, whatever his apparent tenets or formal creed, has been, in degree as he was great and true, explicitly or implicitly the expounder of this truth; every great and worthy life, in degree as it assimilated to that ideal life, has been the practical embodiment of it. "Endure hardness," said one of its greatest apostles and martyrs, "as good soldiers of Christ." And to the endurance of hardness; to the recognition of something in humanity to which what we ordinarily call life and all its joys are of no account; to the abnegation of mere happiness as aim or end,--to this the world of Christendom thenceforth became pledged, if it would not deny its Head and trample on His cross. In no age has the truth been a popular one: when it becomes so, the triumph of the Cross--and in it the practical redemption of humanity--will be near at hand. Yet in no age--not the darkest and most corrupt Christendom has yet seen--have God and His Christ been without their witnesses to the higher truth,--witnesses, if not by speech and doctrine, yet by life and death. Even monasticism, harshly as we may now judge it, arose, in part at least, through the desire to "endure hardness;" only it turned aside from the hardness appointed in the world without, to choose, and ere long to make, a hardness of its own; and then, self-seeking, and therefore anti-Christian, it fell. Amid all its actual corruption the Church stands forth a living witness, by its ritual and its sacraments, to this fundamental truth of the Cross; and ever and anon from its deepest degradation there emerges clear and sharp some figure bending under this noblest burden of our doom--some Savonarola or St Francis charged with the one thought of truth and right, of the highest truth and right, to be followed, if need were, through the darkness of death and of hell. Perhaps few ages have needed more than our own to have this fundamental principle of Christian ethics--this doctrine of the Cross--sharply and strongly proclaimed to it. Our vast advances in physical science tend, in the first instance at least, to withdraw regard from the higher requirements of life. Even the progress of commerce and navigation, at once multiplying the means and extending the sphere of physical and aesthetic enjoyment, aids to intensify the appetite for these. Systems of so-called philosophy start undoubtingly with the axiom that happiness is the one aim of man: and with at least some of these happiness is simply coincident with physical well-being. Political Economy aims as undoubtingly to act on the principle, "the greatest possible happiness of the greatest possible number:" and perhaps, as Political Economy claims to deal with man in his physical life only, it were unreasonable to expect from it regard to aught above this. Our current and popular literature--Fiction, Poetry, Essays on social relations--is emphatically a literature of enjoyment, ministering to the various excitements of pleasure, wonder, suspense, or pain. And last, and in some respects most serious of all, our popular theology has largely conformed to the spirit of the age. Representative of a debased and emasculated Christianity, it attacks our humanity at its very core. It rings out to us, with wearisome iteration, as our one great concern, the saving of our own souls: degrades the religion of the Cross into a slightly-refined and long-sighted selfishness: and makes our following Him who "pleased not Himself" to consist in doing just enough to escape what it calls the pains of hell--to win what it calls the joys of heaven. This is the dark side of the picture; but it has its bright side too. These advances of science, these extensions of commerce, these philosophies, even where they are falsely so called, this Political Economy, which from its very nature must first "labour for the meat that perisheth,"--these are all God's servants and man's ministers still--the ministers of man's higher and nobler life. Consciously or unconsciously, they are working to raise from myriads burdens of poverty, care, ceaseless and fruitless toil, under the pressure of which all higher aspiration is wellnigh impossible. Sanitary reform in itself may mean nothing more than better drainage, fresher air, freer light, more abundant water: to the "Governor among the nations" it means lessened impossibility that men should live to Him. If in few ages the great bulk and the most popular portion of literature has more prostituted itself to purposes of sensational or at most aesthetic enjoyment, it is at least as doubtful if in any previous age our highest literature has more emphatically and persistently devoted itself to proclaiming this great doctrine of the Cross. Sometimes directly and explicitly, oftener by implication, this is the ultimate theme of those who are most deeply influencing the spirit of the time. Our finest and most widely recognised pulpit oratory is at home here, and only here: Maurice and Arnold, Trench and Vaughan, Robertson and Stanley, James Martineau and Seeley, Thirlwall and Wilberforce, Kingsley and Brooke, Caird and Tulloch, different in form, in much antagonistic in what is called opinion, are of one mind and heart on this. The thought underlying all their thoughts of man is that "higher than love of happiness" in humanity which expresses the true link between man and God. The practical doctrine that with them underlies all others is, "Love not pleasure--love God. Love Him not alone in the light and amid the calm, but through the blackness and the storm. Though He hide Himself in the thick darkness, yet" give thanks at remembrance of His holiness. "Though He slay thee, yet trust still in Him." The hope to which they call us is not, save secondarily and incidentally, the hope of a great exhaustless future. It is the hope of a true life _now_, struggling on and up through hardness and toil and battle, careless though its crown be the crown of thorns. Even evangelicism indirectly, in great degree unconsciously, bears witness to the truth through its demand of absolute self-abnegation before God: though the inversion of the very idea of Him fundamentally involved in its scheme makes the self-abnegation no longer that of the son, but of the slave; includes in it the denial of that law which Himself has written on our hearts; and would substitute our subjection to an arbitrary despotism for our being "made partakers of His holiness." One of the sternest and most consistent of Calvinistic theologians, Jonathan Edwards, in one of his works expresses his willingness to be damned for the glory of God, and to rejoice in his own damnation: with a strange, almost incredible, obliquity of moral and spiritual insight failing to perceive that in thus losing himself in the infinite of holy Love lies the very essence of human blessedness, that this and this alone is in very truth his "eternal life." Among what may be called Essayists, two by general consent stand out as most deeply penetrating and informing the spirit of the age--Carlyle and Ruskin. To the former, brief reference has already been made. In the work then quoted from, one truth has prominence above all others: that with the will's acceptance of happiness as the aim of life begins the true degradation of humanity; and that then alone true life dawns upon man when truth and right begin to stand out as the first objects of his regard. Never since has Carlyle's strong rough grasp relaxed its hold of this truth; and howsoever in later works, in what are intended as biographical illustrations of it, he may seem to confuse mere strength and energy with righteousness of will, and thence to confound outward and visible success with vital achievement, that strength and energy are always in his eyes, fighting or enduring against some phase of the many- headed hydra of wrong. Of Ruskin it seems almost superfluous to speak. They have read him to little purpose who have not felt that all his essays and criticisms in art, all his expositions in social and political science, are essentially unified by one animating and pervading truth: the truth that to man's moral relations, or, in other words, the developing and perfecting in him of that Divine image in which he is made,--all things else, joy, beauty, life itself, are of account only to the degree in which they are consciously used to subserve that higher life. His ultimate standard of value to which everything, alike in art and in social and political relations, is referred, is--not success, not enjoyment, whether sensuous, sentimental, or aesthetic, but--the measure in which may thereby be trained up that higher life of humanity. Art is to him God's minister, not when she is simply true to nature, but solely when true to nature in such forms and phases as shall tend to bring man nearer to moral truth, beauty, and purity. The Ios and Ariadnes of the debased Italian schools, the boors of Teniers, the Madonnas of Guido, are truer to one phase of nature than are Fra Angelico's angels, or Tintoret's Crucifixion. But that nature is humanity as degraded by sense; and therefore the measure of their truthfulness is for him also the measure of their debasement. In poetry, the key-note so firmly struck by Wordsworth in his noble "Ode to Duty" has been as firmly and more delicately caught up by other singers; who, moreover, have seen more clearly than Wordsworth did, that it is for faith, not for sight, that duty wears "The Godhead's most benignant grace;" for the path along which she leads is inevitably on earth steep, rugged, and toilsome. Take almost any one of Tennyson's more serious poems, and it will be found pervaded by the thought of life as to be fulfilled and perfected only through moral endurance and struggle. "Ulysses" is no restless aimless wanderer; he is driven forth from inaction and security by that necessity which impels the higher life, once begun within, to press on toward its perfecting this all-possible sorrow, peril, and fear. "The Lotos-eaters" are no mere legendary myth: they shadow forth what the lower instincts of our humanity are ever urging us all to seek--ease and release from the ceaseless struggle against wrong, the ceaseless straining on toward right. "In Memoriam" is the record of love "making perfect through suffering:" struggling on through the valley of the shadow of death toward the far-off, faith-seen light "behind the veil." "The Vision of Sin" portrays to us humanity choosing enjoyment as its only aim; and of necessity sinking into degradation so profound, that even the large heart and clear eye of the poet can but breathe out in sad bewilderment, "Is there any hope?"--can but dimly see, far off over the darkness, "God make Himself an awful rose of dawn." In one of the most profound of all His creations--"The Palace of Art"--we have presented to us the soul surrounding itself with everything fair and glad, and in itself pure, not primarily to the eye, but to the mind: attempting to achieve its destiny and to fulfil its life in the perfections of intellectual beauty and aesthetic delight. But the palace of art, _made the palace of the soul_, becomes its dungeon-house, self-generating and filling fast with all loathsome and deathly shapes; and the heaven of intellectual joy becomes at last a more penetrative and intenser hell. The "Idylls of the King" are but exquisite variations on the one note--that the only true and high life of humanity is the life of full and free obedience; and that such life on earth becomes of necessity one of struggle, sorrow, outward loss and apparent failure. In "Vivien"--the most remarkable of them all for the subtlety of its conception and the delicacy of its execution,--the picture is perhaps the darkest and saddest time can show--that of a nature rich to the utmost in all lower wisdom of the mind, struggling long and apparently truly against the flesh, yet all the while dallying with the foul temptation, till the flesh prevails; and in a moment, swift and sure as the lightning, moral and spiritual death swoops down, and we see the lost one no more. Many other illustrations might be given from our noblest and truest poetry--from the works of the Brownings, the "Saints' Tragedy" of Charles Kingsley, the dramatic poems of Henry Taylor--of the extent to which it is vitally, even where not formally Christian; the extent to which the truth of the Cross has transfused it, and become one chief source of its depth and power. But we must hasten on to our more immediate object in these remarks. Those who read works of fiction merely for amusement, may be surprised that it should be thought possible they could be vehicles for conveying to us the deepest practical truth of Christianity,--that the highest life of man only begins when he begins to accept and to bear the Cross; and that the conscious pursuit of happiness as his highest aim tends inevitably to degrade and enslave him. Even those who read novels more thoughtfully, who recognise in them a great moral force acting for good or evil on the age, may be startled to find George Eliot put forward as the representative of this higher-toned fiction, and as entitled to take place beside any of those we have named for the depth and force, the consistency and persistence, with which she has laboured to set before us the Christian, and therefore the only exhaustively true, ideal of life. Yet a careful examination will, we are satisfied, show that from her first appearance before the public, this thought, and the specific purpose of this teaching, have never been absent from the writer's mind; that it may be defined as the central aim of all her works: and that it gathers in force, condensation, and power throughout the series. Other qualities George Eliot has, that would of themselves entitle her to a very high place among the teachers of the time. In largeness of Christian charity, in breadth of human sympathy, in tenderness toward all human frailty that is not vitally base and self-seeking, in subtle power of finding "a soul of goodness even in things apparently evil," she has not many equals, certainly no superior, among the writers of the day. Throughout all her works we shall look in vain for one trace of the fierce self-opinionative arrogance of Carlyle, or the narrow dogmatic intolerance of Ruskin: though we shall look as vainly for one word or sign that shall, on the mere ground of intellectual power, energy, and ultimate success, condone the unprincipled ambition of a Frederick, so- called the Great, and exalt him into a hero; or find in the cold heart and mean sordid soul of a Turner an ideal, because one of those strange physiological freaks that now and then startle the world, the artist's temperament and artist's skill, were his beyond those of any man of his age. But as our object here is to attempt placing her before the reader as asserting and illustrating the highest life of humanity, as a true preacher of the doctrine of the Cross, even when least formally so, we leave these features, as well as her position as an artist, untouched on, the rather that they have all been already discussed by previous critics. The 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' delicately outlined as they are, still profess to be but sketches. In them, however, what we have assumed to be the great moral aim of the writer comes distinctly out; and even within the series itself gathers in clearness and power. Self-sacrifice as the Divine law of life, and its only true fulfilment; self-sacrifice, not in some ideal sphere sought out for ourselves in the vain spirit of self- pleasing, but wherever God has placed us, amid homely, petty anxieties, loves, and sorrows; the aiming at the highest attainable good in our own place, irrespective of all results of joy or sorrow, of apparent success or failure,--such is the lesson that begins to be conveyed to us in these "Scenes." The lesson comes to us in the quiet unselfish love, the sweet hourly self- devotion of the "Milly" of Amos Barton, so touchingly free and full that it never recognises itself as self-devotion at all. In "Mr Gilfil's Love- Story" we have it taught affirmatively through the deep unselfishness of Mr Gilfil's love to Tina, and his willingness to offer up even this, the one hope and joy of his life, upon the altar of duty; negatively, through the hard, cold, callous, self-pleasing of Captain Wybrow--a type of character which, never repeated, is reproduced with endless variations and modifications in nearly all the author's subsequent works. It is, however, in "Janet's Repentance" that the power of the author is put most strongly forth, and also that what we conceive to be the vital aim of her works is most definitely and firmly pronounced. Here also we have illustrated that breadth of nature, that power of discerning the true and good under whatsoever external form it may wear, which is almost a necessary adjunct of the author's true and large ideal of the Christian life. She goes, it might almost seem, out of her way to select, from that theological school with which her whole nature is most entirely at dissonance, one of her most touching illustrations of a life struggling on towards its highest through contempt, sorrow, and death. That narrowest of all sectarianisms, which arrogates to itself the name Evangelical, and which holds up as the first aim to every man the saving of his own individual soul, has furnished to her Mr Tryan, whose life is based on the principle laid down by the one great Evangelist, "He that loveth his soul shall lose it; he that hateth his soul shall keep it unto life eternal." {15} Mr Tryan, as first represented to us, is not an engaging figure. Narrow and sectarian, full of many uncharities, to a great extent vain and self- conscious, glad to be flattered and idolised by men and women by no means of large calibre or lofty standard--it might well seem impossible to invest such a figure with one heroic element. Yet it is before this man we are constrained to bow down in reverence, as before one truer, greater, nobler than ourselves; and as we stand with Janet Dempster beside the closing grave, we may well feel that one is gone from among us whose mere presence made it less hard to fight our battle against "the world, the flesh, and the devil." The explanation of the paradox is not far to seek. The principle which animated the life now withdrawn from sight--which raised it above all its littlenesses and made it a witness for God and His Christ, constraining even the scoffers to feel the presence of "Him who is invisible"--this principle was self-sacrifice. So at least the imperfections of human speech lead us to call that which stands in antagonism to self-pleasing; but before Him to whom all things are open, what we so call is the purification and exaltation of that self in us which is the highest created reflex of His image--the growing up of it into His likeness for ever. We may here, once for all, and very briefly, advert to one specialty of the author's works, which, if we are right in our interpretation of their central moral import, flows almost necessarily as a corollary from it. In each of these sketches one principal figure is blotted out just when our regards are fixed most strongly on it. Milly, Tina, and Mr Tryan all die, at what may well appear the crisis of life and destiny for themselves or others. There is in this--if not in specific intention, certainly in practical teaching--something deeper and more earnest than any mere artistic trick of pathos--far more real than the weary commonplace of suggesting to us any so-called immortality as the completion and elucidation of earthly life; far profounder and simpler, too, than the only less trite commonplace of hinting to us the mystery of God's ways in what we call untimely death. The true import of it we take to be the separation of all the world calls success or reward from the life that is thus seeking its highest fulfilment. In conformity with the average doctrine of "compensation," Amos Barton should have appeared before us at last installed in a comfortable living, much respected by his flock, and on good terms with his brethren and well-to-do neighbours around. With a truer and deeper wisdom, the author places him before us in that brief after-glimpse still a poor, care-worn, bowed-down man, and the sweet daughter-face by his side shows the premature lines of anxiety and sorrow. Love, anguish, and death, working their true fruits within, bring no success or achievement that the eye can note. By all the principles of "poetic justice," Mr Tryan ought to have recovered and married Janet; under the influence of her larger nature to have shaken off his narrownesses; to have lived down all contempt and opposition, and become the respected influential incumbent of the town; and in due time to have toned down from his "enthusiasm of humanity" into the simply earnest, hard-working, and rather commonplace town rector. Better, because truer, as it is. Only in the earlier dawn of this higher life of the soul, either in the race or in the individual man; only in the days of the Isaacs and Jacobs of our young humanity, though not with the Abrahams, the Moses', or the Joshuas even then; only when the soul first begins to apprehend that its true relation to God is to be realised only through the Cross--is there conscience and habitual "respect unto the recompense" of _any_ reward. In 'Adam Bede,' the first of George Eliot's more elaborate works, the illustrations of the great moral purpose we have assigned to her are so numerous and varied, that it is not easy to select from among them. On the one hand, Dinah Morris--one of the most exquisitely serene and beautiful creations of fiction--and Seth and Adam Bede present to us, variously modified, the aspect of that life which is aiming toward the highest good. On the other hand, Arthur Donnithorne and Hetty Sorrel--poor little vain and shallow-hearted Hetty--bring before us the meanness, the debasement, and, if unarrested, the spiritual and remediless death inevitably associated with and accruing from that "self- pleasing" which, under one form or other, is the essence of all evil and sin. Of these, Arthur Donnithorne and Adam Bede seem to us the two who are most sharply and subtilely contrasted; and to these we shall confine our remarks. In Arthur Donnithorne, the slight sketch placed before us in Captain Wybrow is elaborated into minute completeness, and at the same time freed from all that made Wybrow even superficially repellent. Handsome, accomplished, and gentlemanly; loving and lovable; finding his keenest enjoyment in the enjoyment of others; irreproachable in life, and free from everything bearing the semblance of vice,--what more could the most exacting fictionist desire to make up his ideal hero? Yet, without ceasing to be all thus portrayed, he scatters desolation and crime in his path. He does this, not through any revulsion of being in himself, but in virtue of that very principle of action from which his lovableness proceeds. Of duty simply as duty, of right solely as right, his knowledge is yet to come. Essentially, his ideal of life as yet is "self- pleasing." This impels him, constituted as he is, to strive that he shall stand well with all. This almost necessitates that he shall be kindly, genial, loving; enjoying the joy and well-being of all around him, and therefore lovable. But this also assures that his struggle against temptation shall be weak and vacillating; and that when, through his paltering with it, it culminates, he shall at once fall before it. The wood scene with Adam Bede still further illustrates the same characteristics. This man, so genial and kindly, rages fiercely in his heart against him whom he has unwittingly wronged. Frank and open, apparently the very soul of honour, he shuffles and lies like a coward and a knave; and this in no personal fear, but because he shrinks to lose utterly that goodwill and esteem of others,--of Adam in particular, because Adam constrains his own high esteem,--which are to him the reflection of his own self-worship. Repentance comes to him at last, because conscience has never in him been entirely overlaid and crushed. It comes when the whirlwind of anguish has swept over him, scattered all the flimsy mists of self-excuse in which self-love had sought to veil his wrong-doing, and bowed him to the dust; but who shall estimate the remediless and everlasting loss already sustained? We have spoken of Captain Wybrow as the prototype of Arthur. He is so in respect of both being swayed by that vital sin of self-pleasing to which all wrong-doing ultimately refers itself; but that in Arthur the corruption of life at its source is not complete, is shown throughout the whole story. The very form of action which self-love assumes in him, tells that self though dominant is not yet supreme. It refers itself to others. It absolutely requires human sympathy. So long as the man lives to some extent in the opinion and affections of his brother men,--so long as he is even uncomfortable under the sense of being shut out from these otherwise than as the being so shall affect his own _interests_,--we may be quite sure he is not wholly lost. The difference between the two men is still more clearly shown when they are brought face to face with the result of their wrong-doing. With each there is sorrow, but in Wybrow, and still more vividly as we shall see in Tito Melema, it is the sorrow of self-worship only. No thought of the wronged one otherwise than as an obstacle and embarrassment, no thought of the wrong simply as a wrong, can touch him. This sorrow is merely remorse, "the sorrow of the world which worketh death." Arthur, too, is suddenly called to confront the misery and ruin he has wrought; but in him, self then loses its ascendancy. There is no attempt to plead that he was the tempted as much as the tempter; and no care now as to what others shall think or say about him. All thought is for the wretched Hetty; and all energy is concentrated on the one present object, of arresting so far as it can be arrested the irremediable loss to her. The wrong stands up before him in its own nakedness as a wrong. This is repentance; and with repentance restoration becomes possible and begins. Adam Bede contrasts at nearly every point with Arthur Donnithorne. Lovable is nearly the last epithet we think of applying to him. Hard almost to cruelty toward his sinning father; hard almost to contemptuousness toward his fond, foolish mother; bitterly hard toward his young master and friend, on the first suspicion of personal wrong; savagely vindictive, long and fiercely unforgiving, when he knows that wrong accomplished;--these may well seem things irreconcilable with any true fulfilment of that Christian life whose great law is love. Yet, examined more narrowly, they approve themselves as nearly associated with the larger fulness of that life. They are born of the same spirit which said of old, "Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" fulfilments, howsoever imperfect, of that true and deep "law of resentment" which modern sentimentalism has all but expunged from the Christian code. The hardness is essentially against the wrong-doing, not against the doer of it; and against it rather as it affects others than as it burdens, worries, or overshadows his own life. It subsists in and springs from the intensity with which, in a nature robust and energetic in no ordinary degree, right and wrong have asserted themselves as the realities of existence. Even Seth can be more tolerant than Adam, because the gentle, placid moral beauty of his nature is, so far as this may ever be, the result of temperament; while in Adam whatever has been attained has been won through inward struggle and self-conquest. In the 'Mill on the Floss,' the moral interest of the whole drama is concentrated to a very great degree on Maggie Tulliver; and in her is also mainly concentrated the representative struggle between good and evil, the spirit of the Cross and that of the world; for Stephen Guest is little more than the objective form under which the latent evil of her own humanity assails her. Her life is the field upon which we see the great conflict waging between the elements of spiritual life and spiritual death; swaying amid heart-struggle and pain, now toward victory, now toward defeat, till at last all seems lost. Then at one rebound the strong brave spirit recovers itself, and takes up the full burden of its cross; sees and accepts the present right though the heart is breaking; and the end is victory crowned and sealed by death. From her first appearance as a child, those elements of humanity are most prominent in her which, unguided and uncontrolled, are most fraught with danger to the higher life; and for her there is no real outward guidance or control whatever. The passionate craving for human sympathy and love, which meets no fuller response than from the rude instinctive fondness of her father and the carefully-regulated affection of her brother, on the one hand prepares her for the storm of passion, and on the other, chilled and thrown back by neglect and refusal, threatens her with equal danger of hardness and self-inclusion. The strong artist temperament, the power of spontaneous and intense enjoyment in everything fair and glad to eye and ear, repressed by the uncongenial accessories around her, tends to concentrate her existence in a realm of mere imaginative life, where, if it be the only life, the diviner part of our being can find no sustenance. This danger is for her the greater and more insidious, because in her the sensuous, so strongly developed, is refined from all its grossness by the presence of imagination and thought. When at last, amid the desolation that has come upon her home, and the increasing bareness of all the accessories of her young life, its deeper needs and higher aspirations awaken to definite purpose and seek definite action, the direction they take is toward a hard stern asceticism, cramping up all life and energy within a narrow round of drudgeries and privations. She strives, as many an earnest impassioned nature like hers has done in similar circumstances, to fashion her own cross, and to make it as hard as may be to bear. She would deny to herself the very beauty of earth and sky, the music of birds and rippling waters, and everything sweet and glad, as temptations and snares. From all this she is brought back by Philip. But he, touching as he is in the humility and tender unselfishness of his love, is too exclusively of the artist temperament to give direction or sustainment to the deeper moral requirements of her being. He may win her back to the love of beauty and the sense of joy; but he is not the one to stand by her side when the stern conflict between pleasure and right, sense and soul, the world and God, is being fought out within her. With her introduction to Stephen Guest, that conflict assumes specific and tangible form; and it has emphatically to be fought out _alone_. All external circumstances are against her; even Lucy's sweet unjealous temper, and Tom's bitter hatred, combining with Philip's painful self- consciousness to keep the safeguard of his presence less constantly at her side. At last the crowning temptation comes. Without design, by a surprise on the part of both, the step has been taken which may well seem irretraceable. Going back from it is not merely going back from joy and hope, but going back to deeper loneliness than she has ever known; and going back also to misunderstanding, shame, and lifelong repentance. But conscience, the imperative requirements of the higher life within, have resumed their power. There is no paltering with that inward voice; no possibility but the acceptance of the present urgent right,--the instant fleeing from the wrong, though with it is bound up all of enjoyment life can know. It is thus she has to take up her cross, not the less hard to bear that her own hands have so far fashioned it. One grave criticism on the death-scene has been made, that at first sight seems unanswerable. It is said that no such full, swift recognition between the brother and sister, in those last moments of their long-severed lives, is possible; because there is no true point of contact through which such recognition, on the brother's part, could ensue. We think, however, there is something revealed to us in the brother which brings him nearer to what is noblest and deepest in the sister than at first appears. He also has his ideal of duty and right: it may not be a very broad or high one, but it is there; it is something without and above mere self; and it is resolutely adhered to at whatsoever cost of personal ease or pleasure. That such aim cannot be so followed on without, to some extent, ennobling the whole nature, is shown in his love for Lucy. It has come on him, and grown up with him, unconsciously, when there was no wrong connected with it; but with her engagement to Stephen all this is changed. Hard and stern as he is to others, he is thenceforth the harder and sterner still to self. There is no paltering with temptation, such as brings the sister so near to hopeless fall. Here the cold harsh brother rises to true nobility, and shows that upon him too life has established its higher claim than that of mere self-seeking enjoyment. There is, then, this point of contact between these two, that each has an ideal of duty and light, and to it each is content to sacrifice all things else. Through this, in that death-look, they recognise each other; and the author's motto in its full significance is justified, "In their death they were not divided." 'Silas Marner,' though carefully finished, is of slighter character than any of the author's later works, and does not require lengthened notice. In Godfrey Cass we have again, though largely modified, the type of character in which self is the main object of regard, and in which, therefore, with much that is likeable, and even, for the circumstances in which it has grown up, estimable, there is little depth, truth, or steadfastness. Repentance, and, so far as it is possible, restoration, come to him mainly through the silent ministration of a purer and better nature than his own: but the self-pleasing of the past has brought about that which no repentance can fully reverse or restore. Even on the surface this is shown; for Eppie, unowned and neglected, can never become his daughter. But--far beyond and beneath this--we have here, and elsewhere throughout the author's works, indicated to us one of the most solemn, and, at the same time, most certain truths of our existence: that there are forms of accepted and fostered evil so vital that no repentance can fully blot them out from the present or the future of life. No turning away from the accursed thing, no discipline, no futurity near or far, can ever place Arthur Donnithorne or Godfrey Cass alongside Dinah Morris or Adam Bede. Their irreversible part of self-worship precludes them, by the very laws of our being, from the highest and broadest achievement of life and destiny. Leaving for the present 'Romola,' as in many respects more directly linking itself with George Eliot's great poetic effort, 'The Spanish Gypsy,' we turn for a little to 'Felix Holt,' the next of her English tales. It would be perhaps natural to select, from among the characters here presented to us, in illustration of life consciously attuning itself to the highest aim irrespective of any end save that aim itself, one or other of the two in whom this is most palpably presented to us--Felix himself or Esther Lyon. We prefer, however, selecting Harold Transome, certainly one of the most difficult and one of the most strikingly wrought out conceptions, not only in the works of George Eliot, but in modern fiction. Harold, we believe, is not a general favourite with the modern public, any more than he was with his own contemporaries. He has none of those lovablenesses which make Arthur Donnithorne so attractive; and at first sight nothing of that uncompromising sense of right which characterises Adam Bede. He comes before us apparently no more than a clearheaded, hard, shrewd, successful man of the world, greatly alive to his own interests and importance, and with no particular principles to boast of. How does it come that this man, when over and over again, in great things and in small, two paths lie before him to choose, always chooses the truer and better of the two? When Felix attempts to interfere in the conduct of his election, even while resenting the interference as impertinent, he sets himself honestly to attempt to arrest the wrong. He buys Christian's secret; but it is to reveal it to her whom it enables, if so she shall choose, to dislodge himself from the position which has been the great object of his desires and efforts. By simply allowing the trial and sentence of Felix to take their course, he would, to all appearance, strengthen the possibility that by marriage to Esther his position shall be maintained, with the further joy of having that "white new-winged dove" thenceforth by his side. He comes forward as witness on behalf of Felix, and gives his evidence fairly, truly, and in such guise as makes it tell most favourably for the accused, and at the same time against himself; and, last and most touching of all, it is after he knows the full depth of the humiliation in which his mother's sin has for life involved him, that his first exhibition of tenderness, sympathy, and confidence towards that poor stricken heart and blighted life comes forth. How comes it that this "well-tanned man of the world" thus always chooses the higher and more difficult right; and does this in no excitement or enthusiasm, but coolly, calculatingly, with clear forecasting of all the consequences, and fairly entitled to assume that these shall be to his own peril or detriment? We cannot assign this seeming anomaly to that undefinable something called the instinct of the gentleman, {29} so specially recognised in the elder and younger Debarry, as a reality and power in life. To say nothing of the fact that this instinct deals primarily with questions of feeling, and only indirectly and incidentally with questions of moral right, Harold Transome, alike congenitally and circumstantially, could scarcely by possibility have been animated by it even in slight degree, nor does it ever betray its presence in him through those slight but graceful courtesies of life which are pre-eminently the sphere of its manifestation. Equally untenable is the hypothesis which ascribes these manifestations of character wholly to the influence of a nature higher than his own appealing to him--that of Felix Holt, the glorious old Dissenter, or Esther Lyon. Such appeals can have any avail only when in the nature appealed to there remains the capability to recognise that right is greater than success or joy, and the moral power of will to act on that recognition. In the fact that Harold's nature does respond to these appeals we have the clue to the apparent anomaly his character presents. We see that, howsoever overlaid by temperament and restrained by circumstance, the noblest capability in man still survives and is active in him. He _can_ choose the right which imperils his own interests, because it _is_ the right; he _can_ set his back on the wrong which would advantage himself, because it _is_ the wrong. That he does this coolly, temperately, without enthusiasm, with full, clear forecasting of all the consequences, is only saying that he is Harold Transome still. That he does so choose when the forecast probabilities are all against those objects which the mere man of the world most desires, proves that under that hard external crust dwells as essential a nobleness as any we recognise in Felix Holt. There is an inherent strength and manliness in Harold Transome to which Arthur Donnithorne or Godfrey Cass can never attain. Few things in the literary history of the age are more puzzling than the reception given to 'Romola' by a novel-devouring public. That the lovers of mere sensationalism should not have appreciated it, was to be fully expected. But to probably the majority of readers, even of average intelligence and capability, it was, and still is, nothing but a weariness. With the more thoughtful, on the other hand, it took at once its rightful place, not merely as by far the finest and highest of all the author's works, but as perhaps the greatest and most perfect work of fiction of its class ever till then produced. Of its artistic merits we do not propose to speak in detail. But as a historical reproduction of an epoch and a life peculiarly difficult of reproduction, we do not for a moment hesitate to say that it has no rival, except, perhaps,--and even that at a distance,--Victor Hugo's incomparably greatest work, 'Notre Dame de Paris.' It is not that we _see_ as in a panorama the Florence of the Medicis and Savonarola,--we live, we move, we feel as if actors in it. Its turbulence, its struggles for freedom and independence, its factions with their complicated transitions and changes, its conspiracies and treasons, its classical jealousies and triumphs,--we feel ourselves mixed up with them all. Names historically immortal are made to us familiar presences and voices. Its nobles and its craftsmen alike become to us as friends or foes. Its very buildings--the Duomo and the Campanile, and many another--rise in their stateliness and their grace before those who have never been privileged to see them, clear and vivid as the rude northern houses that daily obtrude on our gaze. So distinct and all-pervading, in this great work, is what we are maintaining to be the central moral purpose of all the author's works, that it can scarcely escape the notice of the most superficial reader. Affirmatively and negatively, in Romola and Tito--the two forms of illustration to some extent combined in Savonarola--the constant, persistent, unfaltering utterance of the book is, that the only true worth and greatness of humanity lies in its pursuit of the highest truth, purity, and right, irrespective of every issue, and in exclusion of every meaner aim; and that the true debasement and hopeless loss of humanity lies in the path of self-pleasing. The form of this work, the time and country in which the scene is laid, and the selection of one of the three great actors in it, leads the author more definitely than in almost any of those which preceded it to connect her moral lesson, not merely with Christianity as a religious faith, but with that Church which, as called by the name of Christ, howsoever fallen away from its "first love," is still, in the very fact of its existence, a witness for Him. While, on the other hand, through many of its subordinate characters, we have the broad catholic truth kept ever before us, that, irrespective of all formal profession or creed, voluntary acceptance of a higher life-law than the seeking our own interests, pleasure, or will, is, according to its degree, life's best and highest fulfilment; and thus we trace Him who "pleased not Himself" as the life and the light of the world, even when that world may be least formally acknowledging Him. The three in whom this great lesson is most prominently illustrated in the work before us are, of course, Romola herself, Tito Melema, and Savonarola. And in each the illustration is so modified, and, through the three together, so almost exhaustively accomplished, that some examination of each seems necessary to our main object in this survey of George Eliot's works. Few, we think, can study the delineation of Romola without feeling that imagination has seldom placed before us a fairer, nobler, and completer female presence. Perfectly human and natural; unexaggerated, we might almost say unidealised, alike in her weaknesses and her nobleness; combining such deep womanly tenderness with such spotless purity; so transparent in her truthfulness; so clear in her perceptions of the true and good, so firm in her aspirations after these; so broad, gentle, and forbearing in her charity, yet so resolute against all that is mean and base;--everything fair, bright, and high in womanhood seems to combine in Romola. So true, also, is the process of her development to what is called nature--to the laws and principles that regulate human action and life--that, as it proceeds before us, we almost lose note that there is development. The fair young heathen first presented to us, linked on to classic times and moralities through all the surroundings of her life, passes on so imperceptibly into the "visible Madonna" of the after-time, that we scarcely observe the change till it is accomplished. From the first, we know that the mature is involved in the young Romola. The reason of this is, that from first to last the essential principle of life is in her the same. Equally, when she first comes before us, and in all the after-glory of her serene unconscious self-devotedness, she is living to others, not to herself. Her first devotion is to her father. Her one passion of life is to compensate to him all he has lost: the eyes, once so full of fire, now sightless; the son and brother, who, at the call of an enthusiasm with which their nobler natures refuse to sympathise--for it was, in the first instance, but the supposed need to save his own soul--has fled from his nearest duty of life. To this devotion she consecrates her fair young existence. For this she dismisses from it all thought of ease or pleasure, and chooses retirement and isolation; gives herself to uncongenial studies and endless labours, and accepts, in uncomplaining sadness, that which to such a nature is hardest of all to bear--her father's non-appreciation of all she would be and is to him. From the first, her life is one of entire self-consecration. The sphere of its activities expands as years flow on, but the principle is throughout the same. In the exquisite simplicity, purity, and tenderness of her young love, she is Romola still. There is no self-isolation included in it. Side by side with satisfying her own yearning heart, lies the thought that she is thus giving to her father a son to replace him who has forsaken him. Her first perception of the want of perfect oneness between Tito and herself dawns upon her through no change in him towards herself, but through his less sedulous attendance on her father. And when at last the conviction is borne in upon her that between him and her, seemingly so closely united, there lies the gulf that parts truth and falsehood, heaven and hell, it is no perceptible withdrawal of his love from her that forces on her this conviction. It is his falseness and treason to the dead. Then comes the crisis of her career; her flight from the unendurable burden of that divided life; her meeting with Savonarola; and her being through him brought face to face with the Christian aspect of that deepest of all moral truths,--the precedence of duty above all else. Savonarola's demand might well seem to one such as Romola laying on her a burden too heavy to be borne. It was not that it called her to return to hardness and pain; she was going forth unshrinking into the unknown with no certainty but that these would find her there; it called her to return to what, with her high ideal of love and life, could not but seem degradation and sin,--according in the living daily lie that they two, so hopelessly parted, were one. To any lower nature the appeal would have been addressed in vain. It prevails with her because it sets before her but the extension and more perfect fulfilment of the life law toward which she has been always aiming, even through the dim light of her all but heathen nurture. She goes back to reassume her cross: sadly, weariedly forecasting, as only such a nature can do, all its shame and pain; and even still only dimly assured that her true path lies here. The very nobleness which constrains her return makes that return the harder. The unknown into which she had thought to flee had no possibility of pain or fear for her, compared to the certain pain and difficulty of that life from which all reality of love is gone: where her earnest, truthful spirit must live in daily contact with baseness,--may even have, through virtue of her relation to Tito, tacitly to concur in treason. She goes back to what, constituted as she is, can be only a daily, lifelong crucifying, and she goes back to it knowing that such it must be. Thenceforth goes on in her that process which, far beyond all reasonings, makes the mystery of sorrow intelligible to us,--the "making perfect through suffering." It is not necessary we should trace the process step by step. It is scarcely possible to do so, for its stages are too subtle to be so traced. We see rather by result than in operation how her path of voluntary self-consecration--of care and thought for all save self--of patient, silent, solitary endurance of her crown of thorns, is brightening more and more toward the perfect day. In the streets of the faction-torn, plague-stricken, famine-wasted city; by the side of the outraged Baldassarre; in the room of the child-mistress Tessa; most of all in that home whence all other brightness has departed,--she moves and stands more and more before us the "visible Madonna." How sharply the sword has pierced her heart, how sorely the crown of thorns is pressing her fair young brow, we learn in part from her decisive interview with Tessa. She, the high-born lady, spotless in purity, shrinking back from the very shadow of degradation, questions the unconscious instrument of one of her many wrongs with the one anxiety and hope that she may prove to be no true wife after all; that the bond which binds her to living falsehood and baseness may be broken, though its breaking stamp her with outward dishonour and blot. Otherwise there is no obtrusion of her burning pain; no revolt of faith and trust, impeaching God of hardness and wrong toward her; no murmur in His ear, any more than in the ear of man. Meek, patient, steadfast, she devotes herself to every duty and right that life has left to her; and the dark- garmented Piagnone moves about the busy scene a white-robed ministrant of mercy and love. Ever and anon, indeed, the lonely anguish of her heart breaks forth, but in the form of expression it assumes she is emphatically herself. In those frequent touching appeals to Tito, deepening in their sweet earnestness with every failure, we may read the intensity of her ever-present inward pain. In them all the self-seeking of love has no place. The effort is always primarily directed, not toward winning back his love and confidence for herself, but toward winning him back to truth and right and loyalty of soul. Her pure high instinct knows that only so can love return between them--can the shattered bond be again taken up. She seeks to save _him_--him who will not be saved, who has already vitally placed himself out of the pale of possible salvation. One of the most touching manifestations in this most touching of all records of feminine nobleness and suffering, is the story of her relations to Tessa. It would seem as if in that large heart jealousy, the reaching self-love of love, could find no place. Her discovery of the relation in which Tessa stands to Tito awakens first that saddest of all sad hopes in one like Romola, that through the contadina she may be released from the marriage-bond that so galls and darkens her life. When that hope is gone, no thought of Tessa as a successful rival presents itself. She thinks of her only as another victim of Tito's wrong-doing--as a weak, simple, helpless child, innocent of all conscious fault, to be shielded and cared for in the hour of need. At last, after the foulest of Tito's treasons, which purchases safety and advancement for himself by the betrayal and death of her noble old godfather, her last living link to the past, the burden of her life becomes beyond her bearing, and again she attempts to lay it down by fleeing. There is no Savonarola now to meet and turn her back. Savonarola has lost the power, has forfeited the right, to do so. The pupil has outgrown the teacher; her self-renunciation has become simpler, purer, deeper, more entire than his. The last words exchanged between these two bring before us the change that has come over the spiritual relations between them. "The cause of my party," says Savonarola, "_is_ the cause of God's kingdom." "I do not believe it," is the reply of Romola's "passionate repugnance." "God's kingdom is something wider, else let me stand without it with the beings that I love." These words tell us the secret of Savonarola's gathering weakness and of Romola's strength. Self, under the subtle form of identifying truth and right with his own party--with his own personal judgment of the cause and the course of right--has so far led _him_ astray from the straight onward path. Right, in its clear, calm, direct simplicity, has become to her supreme above what is commonly called salvation itself. It is another agency than Savonarola's now that brings her back once more to take up the full burden of her cross. She goes forth not knowing or heeding whither she goes, "drifting away" unconscious before wind and wave. These bear her into the midst of terror, suffering, and death; and there, in self-devotedness to others, in patient ministrations of love amid poverty, ignorance, and superstition, the noble spirit rights itself once more, the weary fainting heart regains its quiet steadfastness. She knows once more that no amount of wrong-doing can dissolve the bond uniting her to Tito; that no degree of pain may lawfully drive her forth from that sphere of doing and suffering which is _hers_. She returns, not in joy or hope, but in that which is deeper than all joy and hope--in love; the one thought revealed to us being that it may be her blessedness to stand by him whose baseness drove her away when suffering and loss have come upon him. But Death--the mystery to which we look as the solver of all earthly mysteries--has resolved for her this darkest and saddest perplexity of her life. Tito is gone to his place: and his baseness shall vex her no more with antagonistic duties and a divided life. There is no joy, no expressed sense of relief and release; no reproach of him other than that implied one which springs out of the necessities of her being, the putting away from her, quietly and unobtrusively, the material gains of his treasons. The poor innocent wrong-doer, Tessa, is sought for, rescued, and cared for; and is never allowed to know the foul wrong to her rescuer of which she has been made the unconscious instrument. Even to her the language is that "Naldo will return no more, not because he is cruel, but because he is dead." One direct trial of her faith and patience remains, through the weakness and apparent apostasy of Savonarola. Has he, through whom first came to her definite guidance amid the dark perplexities of her life, been always untrue? has the light that seemed through him to dawn on her been therefore misleading and perverting? In almost agonised intentness she listens for some word, watches for some sign, which shall tell her it has not been so. She outrages all her womanly sensibilities by being present at the death-scene, in hope that something there, were it but the uplifting of the drooping head to the clear true light of heaven, shall reassure her that the prophet was a true prophet, and his voice to her the voice of God. But she watches in vain. Without word or sign that even her quick sure instinct can interpret, Savonarola passes into "the eternal silence." What measure of overshadowing darkness and sorrow then again fell over her life we are not told: we only know how that life passed from under this cloud also into purer and serener light. This perplexity also solves itself for her in the path of unquestioning acceptance of duty, human service, and human love; and as she treads this path, the mists clear away from around Savonarola too, and she sees him again at last as he really was, in the essential truthfulness, nobleness, and self-devotedness of his life. Of the after-life little is told us, but little needed to be told. We have followed Romola thus far with dulled intelligence of mind and soul if we cannot picture it clearly and certainly for ourselves. Love that never falters, patience that never questions, meekness that never fails, truth clear and still as the light of heaven, devotedness that knows no thought of self, a life flowing calmly on through whatever of sorrow and disappointment may remain toward the perfect purity and blessedness of heaven. Few, we think, can carefully study the character and development of Romola del Bardo and refuse to endorse the verdict that Imagination has given us no figure more rounded and complete in every grace and glory of feminine loveliness. The sensational fiction of the day has laboured hard in the production of great criminals; but it has produced no human being so vitally debased, no nature so utterly loathsome, no soul so hopelessly lost, as the handsome, smiling, accomplished, popular, viceless Greek, Tito Melema. Yet is he the very reverse of what is called a monster of iniquity. That which gives its deep and awful power to the picture is its simple, unstrained, unvarnished truthfulness. He knows little of himself who does not recognise as existent within himself, and as always battling for supremacy there, that principle of evil which, accepted by Tito as his life-law, and therefore consummating itself in him, "bringeth forth death;" death the most utter and, so far as it is possible to see, the most hopeless that can engulf the human soul. The conception of Tito as one great central figure in a work of art would scarcely, we think, have occurred to any one whose moral aim was other than that which it is the endeavour of these remarks to trace out in George Eliot's works. The working out of that conception, as it is here worked out, would, we believe, have been impossible to any one who had less strongly realised wherein all the true nobleness and all the true debasement of humanity lie. Outwardly, on his first appearance, there is not merely nothing repellent about Tito; in person and manner, in genial kindly temper, in those very forms of intelligence and accomplishment that specially suit the city and the time, there is superficially everything to conciliate and attract. It is almost impossible to define the subtle threads of indication through which, from the first, we are forced to distrust him. Superficially, it might seem at this time as if with Tito the probabilities were equal as regards good and evil; and that with Romola's love thrown into the scale, their preponderance on the side of good were all but irresistible. Yet from the first we feel that it is otherwise--that this light, genial, ease-loving nature has already, by its innate habitude of self-pleasing, foreordained itself to sink down into ever deeper and more utter debasement. With the "slight, almost imperceptible start," at the accidental words which connect the value of his jewels with "a man's ransom," we feel that some baseness is already within himself contemplated. With the transference of their price to the goldsmith's hands, we know that the baseness is in his heart resolved on. When the message through the monk tells him that the ransom may still be available, we never doubt what the decision will be. Present ease and enjoyment, the maintaining and improving the position he has won--in short, the "something that is due to himself," rather than a distant, dangerous, possibly fruitless duty, howsoever clear. The one purer feeling in that corrupt heart--his love for Romola--is almost from the first tainted by the same selfishness. From the first he recognises that his relation to her will give him a certain position in the city; and he feels that with his ready tact and Greek suppleness this is all that is needed to secure his further advancement. The vital antagonism between his nature and hers bars the possibility of his foreseeing how her truthfulness, nobleness, and purity shall become the thorn in his ease-loving life. In his earlier relations with Tessa, there is nothing more than seeking a present and passing amusement, and the desire to sun himself in her childish admiration and delight. He is as far as possible from the intentional seducer and betrayer. But his accidental encounters with her, cause him perplexity and annoyance; and at last it seems to him safer for his own position, especially in regard to Romola, that she should be secretly housed as she is, and taught to regard herself as his wife. Soon there comes to be more of ease for him with the bond-submissive child-mistress, than in the presence of the high-souled, pure-hearted wife. In the first and decisive encounter with Baldassarre, the words of repudiation which seal the whole after-character of his life, apparently escape from him unconsciously and by surprise. But it is the traitor-heart that speaks them. They could never even by surprise have escaped the lips, had not the baseness of their denial and desertion been already in the heart consummated. We need not follow him through all his subsequent and deepening treasons. They all, without exception, want every element that might make even treason impressive. They want even such factitious elevation as their being prompted by hatred or revenge might lend;--even such broader interest as their being done in the interest of a party, or for some wide end, could confer. They have no fuller or deeper import than the present ease, present safety, present or future advantage, of that object which fills up his universe,--Self. He would rather not have betrayed the trust reposed in him by Romola's father, if the end he thereby proposed to himself could have been attained otherwise than through such betrayal. His plot with Dolfo Spini for placing the great Monk-prophet in the hands of his enemies, has no darker motive than the getting out of the way an indirect obstacle to his own advancement, and a man whose labours tend to make life harder and more serious for all who come under his influence. Bernardo del Nero, with his stainless honour, has from the first taken up an attitude of tacit revulsion toward him; but there is no revenge prompting the part he plays towards the noble, true-hearted old man. He would rather that he and his fellow-victims were saved, if his own safety and ultimate gain could be secured otherwise than through their betrayal and death. There is no hardness or cruelty in him, save when its transient displays toward Romola are necessary for furthering some present end: he never indulges in the luxury of unnecessary and unprofitable sins. The sharp, steadfast, unwavering consistency of Tito is even more marked than that of Romola, for twice Romola falters, and turns to flee. The supple, flexible Greek follows out the law he has laid down as the law of his life,--worships the god he has set up as the god of his worship with an inexorable constancy that never for one chance moment falters. That god is self; that law is, in one word, self-pleasing. Long before the end comes, we feel that Tito Melema is a lost soul; that for him and in him there is no place for repentance; that to him we may without any uncharity apply the most fearful words human language has ever embodied;--he has sinned the "sin which _cannot_ be forgiven, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." "Justice," says the author, as the dead Tito is borne past still locked in the death-clutch of the human avenger--"justice is like the kingdom of God: it is not without us as a fact; it is within us as a great yearning." In these solemn truthful words we have suggested to us how feebly mere physical death can shadow forth that spiritual corruption, that "second death," which we have seen hour by hour consummating in him who has lived for self alone. Few of the great figures which stand up amid the dimness of medieval history are more perplexing to historian and biographer than Savonarola. On a first glance we seem shut up to one or other of two alternatives--regarding him as an apostle and martyr, or as a charlatan. And even more careful examination leaves in his character and life anomalies so extraordinary, contradictions so inextricable, that most historians have fallen back on the hypothesis of partial insanity--the insanity born of an honest and upright but extravagant fanaticism--as the only one adequate to explain the mystery. Whether George Eliot has in this work produced a more satisfactory solution, we do not attempt formally to determine. We are sure, however, that every thoughtful reader will recognise that the solution she offers is one in strict and deep consistency with all the laws of human action, and all the tendencies of human imperfection; and that the Savonarola she places before us is a being we can understand _by sympathy_--sympathy at once with the greatness of his aims, and still more fully with the weaknesses that lead him astray. The picture is a very impressive one, alike in its grandeur and in its sadness, speaking its true, deep, universal lesson home to us and to our life: alike when it shows us the strength and nobleness of life attuning itself to the highest good, and battling on toward the highest right; and when it shows us how self, under a form which does not seem self, may steal in to sap its strength and to abase its nobleness. The great Monk-prophet comes upon the scene a new "voice crying in the wilderness" of selfishness and wrong around him--an impassioned witness that "there is a God that judgeth in the earth," protesting by speech and by life against the self-seeking and self-pleasing he sees on every side. To the putting down of this, to the living his own life, to the rousing all men to live theirs, not to pleasure, but to God; merging all private interests in the public good, and that the best good; looking each one not to his own pleasures, ambition, or ease, but to that which shall best advance a reign of truth, justice, and love on earth,--to this end he has consecrated himself and all his powers. The path thus chosen is for himself a hard one; circumstanced as our humanity is, it never has been otherwise--never shall be so while these heavens and this earth remain. Mere personal self-denials, mere turning away from the outward pomps and vanities of the world, lie very lightly on a nature like Savonarola's, and such things scarcely enter into the pain and hardness of his chosen lot. It is the opposition,--active, in the intrigues and machinations of enemies both in Church and State--passive, in the dull cold hearts that respond so feebly and fitfully to his appeals; it is the constant wearing bitterness of hope deferred, the frequent still sterner bitterness of direct disappointment,--it is things like these that make his cross so heavy to bear. But they cannot turn him aside from his course--cannot win him to lower his aim to something short of the highest good conceivable by him. We may smile now in our days of so-called enlightenment at some of the measures he directs in pursuance of his great aim. His "Pyramid of Vanities" may be to our self-satisfied complacency itself a vanity. To him it represents a stern reality of reformation in character and life; and to the Florentine of his age it symbolises one form of vain self-pleasing offered up in solemn willing sacrifice to God. One trial of his faith and steadfastness, long expected, comes on him at last. The recognised head of that great organisation of which he is a vowed and consecrated member declares against him, and the papal sentence of excommunication goes forth. We, looking as we deem on the Papacy trembling to its fall, can very imperfectly enter into the awful gravity of this struggle. To us, the prohibition of an Alexander Borgia may seem of small account, and his anathema of small weight in the councils of the universe. But it was otherwise with Savonarola: the Monk-apostle, trained and vowed to unqualified obedience, has thus forced on him the most difficult problem of his time. This to him more than earthly authority, the visible embodiment of the Divine on earth, the direct and only representative of the one authority of God in Christ, has declared his course to be a course of error and sin. Shall he accept or reject the decision? To reject, is to break with the supposed tradition of fourteen centuries, and with all his own past training, predilections, and habits of thought; it is to nullify his own voluntary act of the past, accepting implicit obedience, and to go forth on a path which has thenceforth no outward guidance, light, or stay. To accept, is to break with all his own truest and deepest past, to abandon all that for him gives truth and reality to life, and to retire to his cell, and limit his attention thenceforth--if he can--to making the "salvation" of his own soul secure. We may safely esteem that this is the culminating struggle of his life. We may well understand the solemn pause that ensues, the retirement to solitude, there to review the position before the only court of appeal that remains to him,--that inward voice of conscience, that inward sense of right, which is the immediate presence of God within. But we never doubt what the decision will be. "I must obey God rather than man; I cannot recognise that this voice--even of God's vicegerent--is the voice of God. Necessity is laid on me, which I dare not gainsay, to preach this Gospel of God's kingdom, as, even on earth, a kingdom of righteousness, truth, and love." Such is one phase of the Savonarola here portrayed to us; and herein is placed before us the secret of his greatness and strength. This firm assertion of the highest right his consciousness recognises, amid all difficulty, hardness, and disappointment; this persistent endeavour by precept and example to rouse men to a truer and better life than their own varied self-seekings; this unflinching struggle against everything false, mean, and base,--these things make him a power in the State before which King and Pope are compelled to bow in respect or fear. Over even the larger nature of Romola his words at this time have sway,--the sway which more distinct perception of _all_ the relations of duty gives over a spirit equally earnest to seek the right alone. In time there comes a change, almost imperceptibly, working from within outwards, first clearly announced through the changed relations of others to him, though these are but symptomatic of change within himself. The political strength of his sway is broken, its moral strength is all but gone. The nature of the change in himself he unwittingly defines in those last words to Romola already quoted, "The cause of _my party_ is the cause of God's kingdom." Various external circumstances have contributed to bring about the result thus indicated; but on these it is unnecessary to dwell. God's kingdom has lowered and narrowed itself into his party. The spirit of the partisan has begun to overshadow the purity of the patriot, to contract and abase the wide aim of the Christian; and he has come to substitute a law of right modified to suit the interests of the party, for that law which is absolute and unconditional. He whom we listened to in the Duomo as the fervid proclaimer of God's justice, stands now before us as the perverter of even human justice and human law. The very nobleness of Bernardo del Nero strengthens the necessity that he should die, that the Mediceans may be thus deprived of the support of his stainless honour and high repute; though to compass this death the law of mercy which Savonarola himself has instituted must be put aside. As we listen to the miserable sophistries by which he strives to justify himself--far less to Romola than before his own accusing soul--we feel that the greatness of his strength has departed from him. All thenceforth is deepening confusion without and within. Less and less can he control the violences of his party, till these provoke all but universal revolt, and the "Masque of the Furies" ends his public career. The uncertainties and vacillations of the "Trial by Fire," the long series of confessions and retractations, historically true, are still more morally and spiritually significant. They tell of inward confusion and perplexity, generated through that partial "self-pleasing" which, under guise so insidious, had stolen into the inner life; of faith and trust perturbed and obscured thereby; of dark doubts engendered whether God had indeed ever spoken by him. We feel it is meet the great life should close, not as that of the triumphant martyr, but amid the depths of that self-renouncing penitence through which once more the soul resumes its full relation to the divine. * * * * * We have now come to the one great poem George Eliot has as yet given to the world, and which we have no hesitation in placing above every poetical or poetico-dramatic work of the day--'The Spanish Gypsy.' Less upon it than upon any of its predecessors can we attempt any general criticism. Our attention must be confined mainly to two of the great central figures of the drama--Fedalma herself, and Don Silva; the representatives respectively of humanity accepting the highest, noblest, most self-devoting life presented to it, simultaneously with life's deepest pain; and of humanity choosing something--in itself pure and noble, but--short of the highest. Fedalma is essentially a poetic Romola, but Romola so modified by circumstances and temperament as to be superficially contrasting. She is the Romola of a different race and clime, a different nurture, and an era which, chronologically nearly the same, is in reality far removed. For the warm and swift Italian we have the yet warmer and swifter Gypsy blood; for the long line of noble ancestry, descent from an outcast and degraded race; for the nurture amid the environments, almost in the creed of classicism, the upbringing under noble female charge in a household of that land where the Roman Church had just sealed its full supremacy by the establishment of the Inquisition; for the era when Italian subtleties of thought, policy, and action had attained their highest elaboration, the grander and simpler time when "Castilian gentlemen _Choose_ not their task--they choose _to do it well_." But howsoever modified through these and other accessories of existence are the more superficial aspects of character, and the whole outward form and course of life, the great vital principle is the same in both;--clearness to see, nobleness to choose, steadfastness to pursue, the highest good that life presents, through whatsoever anguish, darkness, and death of all joy and hope the path may lead. On Fedalma's first appearance on the wonderful scene upon the Placa, she presents herself as emphatically what her poet-worshipper Juan hymns her, the "child of light"--a creature so tremulously sensitive to all beauty, brightness, and joy, that it seems as if she could not co-exist with darkness and sorrow. But even then we have intimated to us that vital quality in her nature which makes all self-sacrifice possible; and which assures us that, whenever her life-choice shall come to lie between enjoyment and right, she shall choose the higher though the harder path. For her joy is essentially the joy of sympathy; mere self has no place in it. In her exquisite justification of the Placa scene to Don Silva, she herself defines it in one line better than all words of ours can do-- "_I_ was not, but joy was, and love and triumph." She is but a form and presence in which the joy, not merely of the fair sunset scene, but primarily and emphatically of the human hearts around her, enshrines itself. It has no free life in herself apart from others; it must inevitably die if shut out from this tremulousness of human sympathy. And we know it shall give place to a sorrow correspondingly sensitive, intense, and absorbing, whenever the young bright spirit is brought face to face with human sorrow. Even while we gaze on her as the embodied joy, and love, and triumph of the scene, the shadow begins to fall. The band of Gypsy prisoners passes by, and her eyes meet those eyes whose gaze, not to be so read by any nature lower and more superficial than hers-- "Seemed to say he bore The pain of those who never could be saved." Joy collapses at once within her; the light fades away from the scene; the very sunset glory becomes dull and cold. We are shown from the first that no life can satisfy this "child of light" which shall not be a life in the fullest and deepest unison to which circumstances shall call her with the life of humanity. That true greatness of our humanity is already active within her, which makes it impossible she should live or die to herself alone. Her destiny is already marked out by a force of which circumstance may determine the special manifestation, but which no force of circumstance can turn aside from its course; the force of a living spiritual power within herself which constrains that she shall be faithful to the highest good which life shall place before her. We would fain linger for a little over the scenes which follow between her and Don Silva; portraying as they do a love so intense in its virgin tenderness, and so spiritually pure and high. It is the same "child of light" that comes before us here; the same tremulous living in the light and joy of her love, but also the same impossibility of living even in its light and joy apart from those of her beloved. And not from his only: that passion which in more ordinary natures so almost inevitably contracts the sphere of the sympathies, in Fedalma expands and enlarges it. Amid all the intoxicating sweetness of her bright young joys, the loving heart turns again and again to the thought of human sorrow and wrong; and among all the hopes that gladden her future, one is never absent from her thoughts--"Oh! I shall have much power as well as joy;" power to redress the wrong and to assuage the suffering. Half playfully, half seriously, she asks the question-- "But is it _what_ we love, or _how_ we love, That makes true good?" Most seriously and solemnly is the question answered through her after- life. To love less wholly, purely, unselfishly--yet still holding the outward claims of that love subordinate to a possible still higher and more imperative claim--to such a nature as hers is no love and no true good at all. And this thirst for the highest alike in love and life includes her lover as well as herself. The darkest terror that overtakes her in all those after-scenes comes when he is about to abjure country, honour, and God on her account. To her, the Gypsy, without a country, without a faith save faithfulness to the highest right, without a God such as the Spaniards' God, this might be a small thing. But for him, Spanish noble and Christian knight, she knows it to be abnegation of nobleness, treason to duty, dishonour and shame. She is jealous for his truth, but the more that its breach might seem to secure her own happiness. The first and decisive scene with her Gypsy father is so true in conception, and so full of poetic force and grandeur throughout, that no analysis, nothing short of extracting the whole, can do justice to it. Seldom before has art in any guise placed the grand, heroic, self-devoting purpose of a grand, heroic, self-devoting nature more impressively before us than in the Gypsy chief. It is easy to think and speak of such an enterprise as Quixotic and impossible. There is a stage in every great enterprise humanity has ever undertaken when it might be so characterised: and the greatest of all enterprises, when an obscure Jew stood forth to become light and life, not to a tribe or a race, but to humanity, was to the judgers according to appearance of His day, the most Quixotic and impossible of all. It has been felt and urged as an objection to this scene, and consequently to the whole scheme of the drama, that such influence, so immediately exerted over Fedalma by a father whom till then she had never known, is unnatural if not impossible. If it were only as father and daughter they thus stand face to face, there might be force in the objection. But this very partially and inadequately expresses the relation between these two. It is the father possessed with a lofty, self-devoting purpose, who calls to share in, and to aid it, the daughter whose nature is strung to the same lofty, self-devoting pitch. It is the saviour of an oppressed, degraded, outcast race, who calls to share his mission her who could feel the brightness of her joy of love brightened still more by the hope of assuaging sorrow and redressing evil. It is the appeal through the father of that which is highest and noblest in humanity to that which is most deeply inwrought into the daughter's soul. To a narrower and meaner nature the appeal would have been addressed by any father in vain: for a narrower and meaner end, the appeal even by such a father would have been addressed to Fedalma in vain. With her it cannot but prevail, unless she is content to forego--not merely her father's love and trust, but--her own deepest and truest life. The "child of light," the embodied "joy and love and triumph" of the Placa, is called on to forego all outward and possible hope on behalf of that love which is for her the concentration of all light and joy and triumph. Very touching are those heart-wrung pleadings by which she strives to avert the sacrifice; and we are oppressed almost as by the presence of the calm, loveless, hateless Fate of the old Greek tragedy, as Zarca's inexorable logic puts them one by one aside, and leaves her as sole alternatives the offering up every hope, every present and possible joy of the love which is entwined with her life, or the turning away from that highest course to which he calls her. As her own young hopes die out under the pressure of that deepest energy of her nature to which he appeals, it can hardly be but that all hope should grow dull and cold within--hope even with regard to the issue of that mission to which she is called; and it is thus that she accepts the call:-- "Yes, say that we shall fail. I will not count On aught but being faithful. . . . I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified. They should have thrown themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain. The grandest death, to die in vain, for love Greater than rules the courses of the world. Such death shall be my bridegroom. . . . Oh love! you were my crown. No other crown Is aught but thorns on this poor woman's brow." In this spirit she goes forth to meet her doom, faithfulness thenceforth the one aim and struggle of her life--faithfulness to be maintained under the pressure of such anguish of blighted love and stricken hope as only natures so pure, tender, and deep can know--faithfulness clung to with but the calmer steadfastness when the last glimmer of mere hope is gone. The successive scenes in the Gypsy camp with Juan, with her father, and with the Gypsy girl Hinda, bring before us at once the intensity of her suffering and the depth of her steadfastness. Trembling beneath the burden laid upon her,--laid on her by no will of another, but by the earnestness of her own humanity,--we see her seeking through Juan whatever of possible comfort can come through tidings of him she has left; in the strong and noble nature of her father, the consolation of at least hoping that her sacrifice shall not be all in vain; and in Hinda's untutored, instinctive faithfulness to her name and race, support to her own resolve. But no pressure of her suffering, no despondency as to the result of all, no thought of the lonely life before her, filled evermore with those yearnings toward the past and the vanished, can turn her back from her chosen path. "Father, my soul is weak, . . . . . . . . But if I cannot plant resolve on hope, It will stand firm on certainty of woe. . . . Hopes have precarious life; But faithfulness can feed on suffering, And knows no disappointment. Trust in me. If it were needed, this poor trembling hand Should grasp the torch--strive not to let it fall, Though it were burning down close to my flesh. No beacon lighted yet. I still should hear Through the damp dark the cry of gasping swimmers. Father, I will be true." The scenes which follow, first with her lover, then with her lover and her father together, present the culmination at once of her trial and of her steadfastness. Hitherto she has made her choice, as it were, in the bodily absence of that love, the abnegation of whose every hope gives its sharpness to her crown of thorns. Now the light and the darkness, the joy and the sorrow, the love whose earthly life she is slaying, and the life of lonely, ceaseless, lingering pain before her, stand, as it were, visibly and tangibly side by side. On the one hand her father, with his noble presence, his calm unquestioning self-devotion, his fervid eloquence, and his withering scorn of everything false and base, represents that deepest in humanity--and in her--which impels to seek and to cling to the highest good. On the other her lover, associated with all the deeply-cherished life, joy, and hope of her past, pleads with his earnest, impassioned, almost despairing eloquence, for her return to _happiness_. More nobly beautiful by far in her sad steadfastness than when she glowed before us as the "child of light" upon the Placa,-- "Her choice was made. . . . . . . . Slowly she moved to choose sublimer pain, Yearning, yet shrinking: . . . . . . firm to slay her joy, That cut her heart with smiles beneath the knife, Like a sweet babe foredoomed by prophecy." To all the despairing pleadings and appeals of her lover she has but one answer:-- "You must forgive Fedalma all her debt. She is quite beggared. If she gave herself, 'Twould be a self corrupt with stifled thoughts Of a forsaken better. . . . Oh, all my bliss was in our love, but now I may not taste it; some deep energy Compels me to choose hunger." What that energy is, we surely do not need to ask. It is that deep principle of all true life which represents the affinity--latent, oppressed by circumstances, repressed by sin, but always there--between our human nature and the Divine, and through subjection to which we reassume our birthright as "the sons of God"; conscience to see and will to choose--not what shall please ourselves, but--the highest and purest aim that life presents to us. It is the same "deep energy," the same inexorable necessity of her nature, that she should put away from her all beneath the best and purest, which originates the sudden terror that smiles upon her when Don Silva, for her sake, breaks loose from country and faith, from honour and God. There is no triumph in the greatness of the love thus displayed; no rejoicing in prospect of the outward fulfilment of the love thus made possible; no room for any emotion but the dark chill foreboding of a separation thus begun, wider than all distance, and more profound and hopeless than death. The separation of aims no longer single, of souls no longer one; of his life falling, though for her sake, from its best and highest, and therefore ceasing, inevitably and hopelessly, fully to respond to hers. "What the Zincala may not quit for you, I cannot joy that you should quit for her." The last temptation has now been met and conquered. Henceforth we see Fedalma only in her calm, sad, unwavering steadfastness, bearing, without moan or outward sign, the burden of her cross. Not even her father's dying charge is needed to confirm her purpose, to fix her life in a self- devotedness already fixed beyond all relaxing and all change. With his death, indeed, the last faint hope fades utterly away that his great purpose shall be achieved; and she thenceforth is "But as the funeral urn that bears The ashes of a leader." But necessity lies only the more upon her--that most imperious of all necessities which originates in her own innate nobleness--that she should be _true_. When first she accepted this burden of her nobleness and her sorrow, she had said-- "I will not count On aught but being faithful;" and faithfulness without hope--truthfulness without prospect, almost without possibility, of tangible fulfilment--is all that lies before her now. She accepts it in a mournful stillness, not of despair, and not of resignation, but simply as the only true accomplishment of her life that now remains. The last interview with Don Silva almost oppresses us with its deep severe solemnity. No bitterness of separation broods over it: the true bitterness of separation fell upon her when her lover became false to himself in the vain imagination that, so doing, he could by any possibility be fully true to her. "Our marriage rite"--thus she addresses the repentant and returning renegade-- "Our marriage rite Is our resolve that we will each be true To high allegiance, higher than our love;" and it is thus she answers for herself, and teaches him to answer, that question asked in the fullest and fairest flush of her love's joys and hopes-- "But is it what we love, or how we love, That makes true good?" The tremulous sensitiveness of her former life has now passed beyond all outward manifestation, lost in absorbing self-devotedness and absorbing sorrow; and every thought, feeling, and word is characterised by an ineffable depth of calm. Those closing lines, whose still, deep, melancholy cadence lingers upon ear and heart as do the concluding lines of 'Paradise Lost'-- "Straining he gazed, and knew not if he gazed On aught but blackness overhung with stars"-- tell us how Fedalma passes away from the sight, the life, and all but the heart of Don Silva. Not thus does she pass away from our gaze. One star overhanging the blackness, clear and calm beyond all material brightness of earth and firmament, for us marks out her course: the star of unwavering faith, unfaltering truth, self-devotion to the highest and holiest that knows no change for ever. "A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious In his acceptance, dreading all delight That speedy dies and turns to carrion. . . . . . . A nature half-transformed, with qualities That oft bewrayed each other, elements Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects. . . . . . A spirit framed Too proudly special for obedience, Too subtly pondering for mastery: Born of a goddess with a mortal sire; Heir of flesh-fettered weak divinity. . . . A nature quiveringly poised In reach of storms, whose qualities may turn To murdered virtues that still walk as ghosts Within the shuddering soul and shriek remorse." Such is Duke Silva: and in this portraiture is up-folded the dark and awful story of his life. Noble, generous, chivalrous; strong alike by mind and by heart to cast off the hard and cruel superstition of his age and country; capable of a love pure, deep, trustful, and to all appearance self-forgetting, beyond what men are usually capable of; trenching in every quality close on the true heroic: he yet falls as absolutely short of it as a man can do who has not, like Tito Melema, by his own will coalescing with the unchangeable laws of right, foreordained himself to utter and hopeless spiritual death. It was, perhaps, needful he should be portrayed as thus nearly approaching true nobility; otherwise such perfect love from such a nature as Fedalma's were inexplicable, almost impossible. But this was still more needful toward the fulfilment of the author's purpose: the showing how the one deadly plague-spot shall weaken the strongest and vitiate the purest life. Every element of the heroic is there except that one element without which the truly heroic is impossible: he cannot "deny himself." Superficially, indeed, it might seem that self was not the object of his regard, but Fedalma: and by much of the distorted, distorting, and radically immoral fiction of the day, his sacrifice of everything for her love's sake would have been held up to us as the crowning glory of his heroism, and the consummation of his claims upon our sympathy and admiration. George Eliot has seen with a different and a clearer eye: and in Duke Silva's placing--not his love, but--the earthly fulfilment of his love above honour and faith, she finds at the root the same vital corruption of self- pleasing which conducts Tito Melema through baseness on baseness, and treason after treason, to the lowest deep of perdition. Throughout the first wonderful love-scene with Fedalma, the vital difference, the essential antagonism between these two natures, is revealed to us through a hundred subtle and delicate touches, and we are made to feel that there is a depth in hers beyond the power of his to reach. Chivalrous, absorbing, tyrannising over his whole being, even pure as his love is, it far fails of the deeper and holier purity of hers. It shudders at the possibility of even outward soil upon her loveliness; but it does so primarily because such soil would react upon his self-love:-- "Have _I_ not made your place and dignity The very height of my ambition?" Her nobler nature recoils with chill foreboding terror from his first breach of trust, _because_ it is a fall from his truest and highest right. His answer to her question already quoted, reveals a love which the world's judgment may rank as the best and noblest, but reveals a principle which, applied to aught beneath the only and supremest good, makes love only a more insidious and deeply corrupting form of self-pleasing: "'Tis what I love determines how I love." Love is his "highest allegiance"; and it becomes ere long an allegiance before which truth, faith, and honour give way, and guidance and control of conscience are swept before the fierce storm of self-willed passion that brooks no interposition between itself and its aim. We are not attempting a formal review of this work; and as we have passed without notice the powerful embodiment in Father Isidor of whatever was true and earnest in the Inquisition, we must also pass very slightly over the interview with a still more remarkable creation--the Hebrew physician and astrologer Sephardo--except as we have in this interview further illustration of the character of Don Silva, and of the direction in which the self-love of passion is impelling him. We see conscience seeking from Sephardo--and seeking in vain--confirmation of the purpose already determined in his own heart; striving toward self-justification by every sophistry the passion-blinded intellect can suggest; struggling to transfer to another the wrong, if not the shame, of his own contemplated breach of trust; endeavouring to take refuge in stellar and fatalistic agencies from his own "nature quiveringly poised" between good and evil; and at last, merging all sophistries and all influences in the fierce resolve of the self-love which has made Fedalma the one aim, glory, and crown of his life. Throughout all the apparent struggle and uncertainty, we never doubt how all shall end. Amid all the appearances of vacillation, all the seeking external aid and furtherance, we see that the resolve is fixed, that the eager passionate self which identifies Fedalma as its inalienable right and property will prevail--prevail even to set aside every obstacle of duty and right which shall seem to interpose between it and realisation. Equally and profoundly characteristic is the position he mentally takes up with regard to the Gypsy chief, as well as Fedalma herself. Not simply or primarily from mere arrogance of rank does he assume it as a certainty that he has but to find Fedalma to win her back to his side; that he has but to lay before Zarca the offer of his rank, wealth, and influence on behalf of the outcast race, to win him to forego his purpose and to surrender the daughter whom he has called to the same lofty aim. It is because of the impossibility, swayed and tossed by the self-will of passion as he is, of his rising to the height of their nobleness; the impossibility of his realising natures so possessed by a great, heroic, self-devoting thought, that hope, joy, happiness become of little or no account in the scale, and even what is called success dwindles into insignificance, or fades away altogether from regard. The first betrayal of his trust, the first fall from truth and honour, has been accomplished. Conscience has begun to succumb to self--self under the guise of Fedalma and the overmastering self-will which refuses to resign his claim upon her. He has secretly deserted his post, transferring to another's hands the trust which was his, and only his. A slight offence it may appear--a mere error of judgment swayed by devoted love--to leave for a day or two when no danger seems specially impending, and to leave in the hands of the trusted and loving friend the charge committed to him. A slight offence, but it has been done in direct violation of conscience, and so in practical abnegation of God. Therefore the flood-gate is opened, and all sweeps swiftly, resistlessly, remedilessly on towards catastrophe. The tender beauty of the brief scene with Fedalma is for her overcast, and hope, the highest hope, dies out within her, when she knows that her lover, in apparent faithfulness to her, has been false to himself. From that hour for her, "Our joy is dead, and only smiles on us, A loving shade from out the place of tombs." Then comes the interposition of the Gypsy chief, Fedalma's sweet sad steadfastness to her "high allegiance, higher than our love;" the brief moment of suspense, when "His will was prisoner to the double grasp Of rage and hesitancy;"-- and then before the stormful revulsion of baffled and despairing passion all else is swept away, and there only survives in the self-clouded mind and soul the fixed resolve to secure that which for him has come to overmaster all allegiance. Strange and sad beyond all description are the sophistries under which the sinner strives to veil his sin,--by which to silence that still small voice which will not be hushed amid all that inward moil. Fedalma's earnest pleadings with his better self, Zarca's calm, pitying, almost sorrowful scorn-- "_Our_ poor faith Allows not rightful choice save of the right Our birth has made for us"-- fall unheeded amid that fierce tempest of aroused self-will; and the Spanish knight and noble of that very age when "Castilian gentlemen Choose not their task--they choose to do it well," becomes the renegade, abjuring and forswearing country, honour, and God. We have hitherto abstained from quotation, except where necessary to illustrate our remarks. But we cannot forbear extracting from this scene the most exquisite of the many beautiful lyrics scattered throughout the poem, expressing, as it does, with a mystic power and depth beyond what the most elaborate commentary could do, the all but hopelessness of return from such a fall as Don Silva's:-- "Push off the boat, Quit, quit the shore, The stars will guide us back:-- O gathering cloud, O wide, wide sea, O waves that keep no track! On through the pines! The pillared woods, Where silence breathes sweet breath:-- O labyrinth, O sunless gloom, The other side of death!" In the scenes which follow among the Gypsy guard, both that with Juan and the lonely night immediately preceding the march, the terrible reaction has already begun to set in. The "quivering" poise of Don Silva's nature makes it impossible he should rest quiet in this utterness of moral and spiritual fall. Already we hear and see the "murdered virtues" begin "To walk as ghosts Within the shuddering soul and shriek remorse." The past returns on him with tyrannous power,--early associations, the taking up of his knightly vows with all its grand religious and heroic accompaniments, the delegated and accepted trust which he has by forsaking betrayed-- "The life that made His full-formed self, as the impregnant sap Of years successive frames the full-branched tree"-- all come back with stern reproach and denunciation of the apostate who, in hope of the outward realisation of a human love, has cast off and forsworn them all. Fiercely he fronts and strives to silence the accusing throng. Still the same plea-- "My sin was made for me By men's perverseness:" still the same impulses of mad, despairing self-assertion-- "I have a _right_ to choose my good or ill, A right to damn myself!"-- still the same vain imagination that union is any longer possible between Fedalma's high self-abnegating truth and his self-seeking abnegation of all truth, coupled with the arrogant assumption that he, morally so weak and fallen, can sustain her steadfast and heroic strength--"I with my love will be her providence." When with the fearful Gypsy chant and curse "The newer oath Thrusts its loud presence on him," we feel that any madness of act the wild conflict within may dictate has become possible; and we follow to that presence of Fedalma which is now the only goal life has left to him, prepared for such outbreak of despair as shall be commensurate with a life called to such nobleness of deed and fallen to such a depth of ruin. We see the trust he has deserted in the hands of the foe against whom he had accepted commission to guard it; his friends slaughtered at the post he had forsaken; himself as the sworn Zincalo in alliance with the enemy and slaughterer, and associated with the havoc they have wrought. The "right to damn" himself which he had claimed is his in all its bitterness; and when he would charge the self damnation upon the Gypsy chief, the reply of calm withering scorn can but add keener pang to his awaking remorse: the self-damning "Deed was done Before you took your oath, or reached our camp, Done when you slipped in secret from the post 'Twas yours to keep, and not to meditate If others might not fill it." The climax of his revulsion, remorse, and despair is reached when the Prior, the man whom he has impeached as the true author of all his sin, is led forth to die. Then all sophistries are swept away, and the full import of his deed glares up before him, and its import as _his_, only and wholly his. Zarca, in his high self-possession of soul, almost pitying while he cannot but despise, presents a fitting object on which all the fierce conflicting passions of wrath, self-accusing remorse, and despair, may vent themselves; and the sudden and treacherous deed, which "Strangles one Whom ages watch for vainly," gives also to Don Silva himself to carry "For ever with him what he fled-- _Her_ murdered love--her love, a dear wronged ghost, Facing him, beauteous, 'mid the throngs of hell." Few authors or artists but George Eliot could have won us again to look on Don Silva except with revulsion or disgust; and it is characteristic of more than all ordinary power that through the deep impressive solemnity of the closing scene, he, the renegade and murderer, almost divides our interest and sympathy with Fedalma herself; and this by no condoning of his guilt, no extenuation of the depth of his fall, for these are here, most of all, kept ever before our eyes. But the better and nobler elements of his nature, throughout all his degradation revealed to us as never wholly overborne, as ever struggling to assert themselves, have begun to prevail, and to put down from supremacy that meaner self which has led him into such abysses of faithlessness, apostasy, and sin. The wild despair of remorse is giving way to the self- renunciation of repentance; the storm of conflicting passions and emotions is stilled; the fearful battle between good and evil through which he has passed has left him exhausted of every hope and aim save to die, repentant and absolved, for the country and faith he had abjured. The self-assertion, too, of love is gone, and only its deep purity and tenderness remain. Without murmur or remonstrance, he acquiesces in the doom of hopeless separation; accepting all that remains possible to him of that "high allegiance higher than our love," which is thenceforth the only bond of union between these two. In that last sad interview with her for whom he had so fearfully sinned, and so all but utterly fallen, we can regard Don Silva with a fuller and truer sympathy than we dare accord to him in all the height of his greatness, and all the wealth, beauty, and joy of his yet unshadowed love. * * * * * In the next of this series of great works, and the one which to many of her readers is and will remain the most fascinating--'Middlemarch'--George Eliot has stretched a broader and more crowded canvas, on which, however, every figure, to the least important that appears, is--not sketched or outlined, but--filled in with an intense and lifelike vividness and precision that makes each stand out as if it stood there alone. Quote but a few words from any one of the speakers, and we know in a moment who that speaker is. And each is the type or representative of a class; we have no monsters or unnatural creations among them. To a certain extent all are idealised for good or for evil,--it cannot be otherwise in fiction without its ceasing to be fiction; but the essential elements of character and life in all are not peculiar to them, but broad and universal as our humanity itself. Dorothea and her sister, Mr Brooke and Sir James Chettam, Rosamond Vincy and her brother, Mr Vincy and his wife, Casaubon and Lydgate, Farebrother and Ladislaw, Mary Garth and her parents, Bulstrode and Raffles, even Drs Sprague and Minchin, old Featherstone and his kindred--all are but representative men and women, with whose prototypes every reader, if gifted with the subtle power of penetration and analysis of George Eliot, might claim personal acquaintance. This richly-crowded canvas presents to us such variety of illustration of the two great antagonistic principles of human life--self-pleasing and self-abnegation, love of pleasure and the love of God more or less absolute and consummate--that it is no easy task to select from among them. But two figures stand out before us, each portrayed with such finished yet unlaboured art--living, moving, talking before us--contrasted with such exquisite yet unobtrusive delicacy, and so subtilely illustrating the two great phases of human inspiration and life--that which centres in self, and that which yearns and seeks to lose itself in the infinite of truth, purity, and love--that instinctively and irresistibly the mind fixes upon them. These are Dorothea and Rosamond Vincy. To not a few of George Eliot's readers, we believe that Dorothea is and will always be a fairer and more attractive form than Dinah Morris or Romola di Bardi, Fedalma or Mirah Cohen. In her sweet young enthusiasm, often unguided or misguided by its very intensity, but always struggling and tending on toward the highest good; in the touching maidenly simplicity with which she at once identifies and accepts Mr Casaubon as her guide and support toward a higher, less self-contained and self-pleasing, more inclusive and all-embracing life; in the yearning pain with which the first dread of possible disappointment dawns and darkens over her, and the meek humility of her repentance on the one faint betrayal--wrung from her by momentary anguish--of that disappointment; in the tender wifely patience, reticence, forbearance, with which she hides from all, the heart-gnawings of shattered and expiring hope; the sense which she can no longer veil from her own deepest consciousness that in Mr Casaubon there is no help or stay for her and the unwearied though too soon unhoping earnestness with which she labours to establish true relations between herself and her uncongenial mate; in the patient yet crushing anguish of that long night's heart-struggle which precedes the close--a struggle not against her own higher self, but whether she dare bind down that higher self to a lifelong, narrow, worthless task, and the aching consciousness of what--almost against conscience and right--her answer must be;--there is an inexpressible charm and loveliness in all this which no one, not utterly dead to all that is fairest and best in womanhood, can fail to recognise. Not less wonderfully depicted is the guileless frankness which, from first to last, characterises her whole relations to Ladislaw. If there is one flaw in this noble work, it is that Ladislaw on first examination is scarcely equal to this exquisite creation. Yet it might have been nearly as difficult even for George Eliot to satisfy our instinctive cravings in this particular with regard to Dorothea, as in respect to Romola or Fedalma. And when we study her portrait of Ladislaw more carefully, there is a latent beauty and nobleness about him; an innate and intense reverence for the highest and purest, and an unvarying aim and struggle toward it; an utter scorn and loathing of everything mean and base,--that almost makes us cancel the word flaw. We recognise this nobleness of nature almost on his first appearance, in the deep reverence with which he regards Dorothea, the fulness with which he penetrates the guileless candour of the relation she assumes to him, the entireness of his trust in the spotless purity of her whole nature. And in him we have presented all those essential and fundamental elements of nature which give assurance that, Dorothea by his side, he shall be no unfitting helpmeet to her, no drag or hindrance on her higher life; that he shall rise to the elevation and purity of her self-consecration, and shall stand by her side sustaining, guiding, expanding that life of ever-growing fulness and human helpfulness to which each is dedicated. But the essence of all this moral and spiritual loveliness is its unconsciousness. Self has no place in it. From the first the one absorbing life aim and action is toward others--toward aiding the toils, advancing the well-being, relieving the suffering, elevating the life, of all around her. And this in no spirit of self-satisfied and vainglorious self-estimation, but in that utter unconsciousness which is characteristic of her whole being. Of the social reformer, the purposed philanthropist, the benefactor of the poor, the wretched, and the fallen, there is no trace in Dorothea Brooke. Grant that, as she is first presented to us, that aim is for the time apparently concentrated in improved cottage accommodation for the poor; even here there is no thought of displaying the skill of the design and contriver: there is thought alone of the object she seeks--ameliorating the condition of those she yearns to benefit. In her very first interview with Casaubon, there is something inexpressibly touching in the humility of childlike trust with which she accepts him and his "great mind," and the innocent purity with which she allows herself to indulge the vision of a life passed by his side; a life which he, by his influence and guidance, is to make more full and free, and delivered from those conventionalities of custom and fashion which restrict it. At last his cold, formal proposal of marriage is made. She sees nothing of its true character--that he is but seeking, not an helpmeet for life and soul in all their higher requirements, but simply and solely a kind of superior, blindly submissive dependant and drudge. In the _impossibility_ of marriage presenting itself to her purity of maiden innocence as a mere establishment in life, or in any of those meaner aspects in which meaner natures regard it, she sees nothing of all this--nothing save that the yearning of her heart is fulfilled, and that henceforth her life shall pass under a higher guardianship, sustained by a holier strength, animated by a more self-expansive fulness, guided toward nobler and fuller aims. Picturing to some extent, in degree as we are capable of entering into a nature like hers, the anguish that such an awakening must be to her, it is exquisitely painful to follow in imagination the slow sure process of her awakening to what this man, who "has no good red blood in his body," really is--a cold, shallow pedant, whose entire existence is bound up in researches, with regard to which he even shrinks from inquiry as to whether all he has for years been vaguely attempting has not been anticipated, and whose intense and absorbing egoism makes the remotest hint of depreciation pierce like a dagger. The first faint dawn of discovery breaks on her almost immediately on their arrival at Rome. Conscious of her want of mere aesthetic culture--neglected in the past as a turning aside from life's highest aims--she has looked forward to his guidance and support for the supply of this want as enlarging her whole being; broadening and deepening, refining and elevating all its sympathies. For all shadow of aid or sympathy here, she finds herself as utterly alone as if she were in a trackless and uninhabited desert. Nay, more: he who sits by her side is as cold and dead to all sensations or emotions that art can enkindle, as the glorious marbles amid which they wander. Soon she finds herself relegated to the society and fellowship of her maid; her husband is less to her, is incapable of being other than less, amid those transcendant treasures of architecture, painting, and sculpture, than a hired guide or cicerone would be. Soon follows the scene where her timid offer of humble service is thrown back with all the irritation of that absorbing egoism which is the very essence and life-in-death of the man. For the first and only time, a faint cry of conscious irritation escapes her, followed by an anguish of repentance so deep, so meekly, humbly self-accusing, it reveals to us more of her truest and innermost life than pages of elaborate description could do. A single sentence descriptive of her mood even in that first irritation brings before us her deepest soul, and the utter absence of self isolation and self-insistence there:--"However just her indignation might be, her ideal was not _to claim justice_, but _to give tenderness_." She meets Ladislaw; and he more than hints to her that the dim, vague labours and accumulations of years which have constituted her husband's nearest approach to life have been labour in vain; that the "great mind" has been toiling, with feeble uncertain steps, in a path which has already been trodden into firmness and completeness; toiling in wilful and obdurate ignorance that other and abler natures have more than anticipated all he has been painfully and abortively labouring to accomplish. Again a cry bursts from the wounded heart, seemingly of anger against her informant, really of anguish--anguish, not for her own sinking hopes, but for the burden of disappointment and failure which she instinctively perceives must, sooner or later, fall on the husband who is thus throwing away life in vain. So it goes on, through all the ever-darkening problem of her married, yet unmated, life. Effort, always more earnest on the part of her yearning, unselfish tenderness, to establish true relations between them; to find in him something of that sweet support, that expansive and elevating force, silently entering into her own innermost life, which her first childlike trust inspired; to become to him, even if no more may be, that to which her childlike humility at first alone aspired--eyes to his weakness, and strength and freedom to his pen. So it goes on; ever-gnawing pain and anguish, as all her yearning love and pity is thrown back, and that dulled insensate heart and all-absorbing egoism can find only irritation in her timid attempts at sympathy, only dread of detection of the half-conscious futility of all his labours, in her humble proffers of even mechanical aid. Not easily can even the most fervid and penetrative imagination conceive what, to a nature like Dorothea's, such a life must be, with its never-ceasing, ever-gathering pain; its longing tenderness not even actively repelled, but simply ignored or misinterpreted; its humblest, equally with its highest yearnings, baffled and shattered against that triple mail of shallowest self-includedness. And all has to be borne in silence and alone. No word, no look, no sign, betrays to other eye the inward anguish, the deepening disappointment, the slow dying away of hope. Nay, for long, on indeed to the bitter close, failure seems to her to be almost wholly on her own side; and repentance and self-upbraiding leave no room for resentment. Ere long--indeed, very soon--another, and, if possible, a still deeper humiliation comes upon her,--another, and, in some respects, a keener pang, as showing more intensely how entirely she stands alone, is thrown into her life,--in her husband's jealousy of Ladislaw. Yet jealousy it cannot be called. Of any emotion so comparatively profound, any passion so comparatively elevated, that self-absorbed, self-tormenting nature is utterly incapable. Jealousy, in some degree, presupposes love; love not wholly absorbed in self, but capable to some extent of going forth from our own mean and sordid self-inclusion in sympathetic relation, dependence, and aid, towards another existence. In Mr Casaubon there is no capability, no possibility of this. What in him wears the aspect of jealousy is simply and solely self-love, callous irritation, that any one should--not stand above, but--approach himself in importance with the woman he has purchased as a kind of superior slave. For long her guileless innocence and purity, her utter inability to conceive such a feeling, leaves her only in doubt and perplexity before it; long after it has first betrayed itself, she reveals this incapability in the fullest extent, and in the way most intensely irritating to her husband's self- love--by her simple-hearted proposal that whatever of his property would devolve on her should be shared with Ladislaw. Then it is that Casaubon is roused to inflict on her the last long and bitter anguish; to lay on her for life--had not death intervened--the cold, soul-benumbing, life contracting clutch of "the Dead Hand." In the innocence of her entire relations with Ladislaw, not the faintest dawning of thought connects itself with him in her husband's cold, insistent demand on her blind obedience to his will. She thinks alone of his thus binding her to a lifelong task, not only hard and ungenial, but one that shall absorb and fetter all her energies, restrain all her faculties, impair and frustrate all her higher and broader aims, make impossible all that better and purer fulness of life for which she yearns. Then follows the long and painful struggle,--a struggle so agonising to such a nature, that only one nearly akin to her own can adequately conceive or picture it. For it is a struggle not primarily to forego any certain or fancied mere personal good. On one side is ranged tenderest pitifulness over her husband's wasted life and energies, even though she knows those energies have been wasted--that life has been thrown away--on an object in which there is no gain to humanity, no advancement of human well-being, no profit even to himself, save, perchance, a barren and useless notoriety at last; an object that has been already far more fully and ably achieved. On the other stands her clear undoubting _conscience_ of her own truest and highest course,--the course to which every prompting of the Divine within impels her,--that she shall not thus isolate herself within this narrowest sphere, shut herself out from all social sympathies and social outgoings, and sacrifice to the Dead Hand that holds her in its cold remorseless clutch every interest that may be intrusted to her. We instinctively shudder at the result; but we never doubt what the answer will be. We know that the tender, womanly, wifely pitifulness, the causeless remorse, will be the nearest and most urgent conscience, and will prevail. The agonised assent is to be given; but it falls on the ear of the dead. It is scarcely necessary to follow Dorothea minutely through all the details of her widowed relations to Mr Casaubon. Enough that these are all in touching and beautiful harmony with everything that has gone before. No resentment, no recalcitration against all the ever-gathering perplexity, pain, and anguish he has caused her--nothing but the sweet unfailing pitifulness, the uncalled-for repentance, almost remorse, over her own assumed shortcomings and deficiencies--her failures to be to him what in those first days of her childlike simplicity and innocence she had hoped she might become. Even on the discovery of the worse than treachery, of the mean insulting malignity with which, trusting to her confiding purity and truthfulness, he had sought to grasp her for life in his "Dead Hand" with regard to Ladislaw, and she only escaped the irrevocable bond her own blindly-given pledge would have fixed around her by his death,--the momentary and violent shock of revulsion from her dead husband, who had had hidden thoughts of her, perhaps perverting everything she said or did, _terrified her as if it had been a sin_. It is not alone, however, toward her husband that this simple, unconscious self-devotion and self-abnegation of Dorothea Brooke displays itself. Toward every one with whom she comes in contact, it steals out unobtrusively and silently, as the dew from heaven on the tender grass, to each and all according to the kind and nearness of that relation. Even for her "pulpy" uncle she has no supercilious contempt--no sense of isolation or separation; not even the consciousness of toleration toward him. Toward Celia, with her delicious commonplace of rather superficial yet _naive_ worldly wisdom, her half-conscious selfishness, her baby-worship, and her inimitable "staccato," she is more than tolerant. She looks up to her as in many respects a superior, even though her own far higher instincts and aims of life cannot accept her as an aid and guidance toward the realisation of these. Even at old Featherstone's funeral, her one emotion is of pitiful sorrow over that loveless mockery of all human pity and love; and for the "Frog-faced" there is no feeling but sympathetic compassion for his apparent loneliness amongst strangers, who all stand aloof and look askance on him. Into all Lydgate's plans, into the whole question of the hospital and all he hopes to achieve through means of it, she throws herself with swift intelligence, with active, eager sympathy, as a probable instrumentality by which at least one phase of suffering may be redressed or allayed. And in the hour of his deep humiliation, when all others have fallen away from his side, when the wife of his bosom forsakes him in callous and heartless resentment of what was done for her sake alone; when he stands out the mark of scorn and obloquy for all save Farebrother, and scans and all but loathes himself--she, with her artless trust in the best of humanity, in the strength of her instinctive recognition of the merest glimmering of whatever is true and right and high in others, comes to his side, yields him at once her fullest confidence, gives him with frank simplicity her aid, and enables him, so far as determined prejudice and uncharity will allow, to right himself before others. Reference has already been made to her whole relations, from first to last, with Ladislaw. It is not easy to conceive anything more touchingly beautiful than these, more perfectly in harmony with her whole nature. Of anything approaching either coquetry or prudery she is incapable. The utter absence of all self-consciousness, whether of external beauty or inward loveliness; the ethereal purity, the childlike trustfulness, the instinctive recognition of all that is true and earnest and high in Ladislaw, through all the surface appearance of indecision, of vague uncertain aim and purpose and limited object in life; no thought of what is ordinarily called love toward him, of love on his part toward her--ever dawns upon her guileless innocence. Through all her yearning to do justice to him as regards the property of her dead husband, which she looks upon as fairly and justly his, or at least to be shared with him, there arises before her the determination of her dead husband that it should not be so; and her sweet regretful pitifulness over that meagre wasted life prevails. Anon, when at last through the will she is made aware of the crowning act of that concentrated callousness of heart and soul, and of the true nature of the benumbing grasp it had sought to lay on her for life, and had so far succeeded in doing, then for the first time her "tremulous" maiden purity and simplicity awakens, and for the first time it enters her mind that Ladislaw could, under any circumstances, become her lover; that another had thought of them in that light, and that he himself had been conscious of such a possibility arising. The later scenes between them are characterised by a quiet beauty, a suppressed power and pathos, compared to which most other love- scenes in fiction appear dull and coarse. The tremulous yearning of her love, as it awakens more and more to distinct consciousness within; the new-born shyness blent with the old, trustful, frank simplicity,--bring before us a picture of love, in its purest and most beautiful aspect, such as cannot easily be paralleled in fiction. Toward her late husband's parishioners there is the same wise instinctive insight as to their true needs, the same thoughtful and provident consideration that characterises her in every relation into which she is brought. If she at once objects, on their behoof, to Mr Tyke's so-called "apostolic" preaching, it is that she means by that, sermons about "imputed righteousness and the prophecies in the Apocalypse. I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it." And in her final selection of Mr Farebrother, she is guided not alone by her sense of his general and essential fitness for the work assigned to him, but also in some degree by her desire to make whist-playing for money, and the comparatively inferior society into which it necessarily draws him, no longer a need of his outer life. Of all the less prominent relations into which Dorothea Brooke is brought, there is not one more touchingly tender, or in which her whole nature is drawn more beautifully out, than that to Rose Vincy. Between these two, at least on the side of the hard unpenetrable incarnation of self-inclusion and self-pleasing, any approach to harmony or sympathy is impossible. There is not even any true ground of womanhood on which Rosamond can meet Dorothea; for she is nearly as far removed from womanhood as Tito Melema is from manliness or manhood. Yet even here the tender pitifulness of Dorothea overpasses a barrier that to any other would be impassable. In her sweet, instinctive, universal sympathy for human sorrow and pain, she finds a common ground of union; and in no fancied sense of superiority--solely from the sense of common human need--she strives to console, to elevate, to lead back to hope and trust, with a gentle yet steadfast simplicity all her own. Such, as portrayed by unquestionably the greatest fictionist of the time--is it too much to say, the greatest genius of our English nineteenth century?--is the nineteenth century St Theresa. The question may be raised by some of George Eliot's readers whether it constitutes the best and completest ethical teaching that fiction can attain, to bring before its readers such high ideals of the possibilities of humanity--of the aim and purpose of life toward which it should ever aspire. Were the author's canvas occupied with such portraitures alone--with Romolas and Fedalmas, Dinah Morrises and Dorothea Brookes, Daniel Derondas and Adam Bedes, even Mr Tryans and Mr Gilfils--the question might call for full discussion, and a contrast might be unfavourably drawn between the author and him whose emphatic praise it is that he "holds the mirror up to nature." But the great artist for all time brings before us not only an Iago and an Edmund, an Angelo and an Iachimo, a Regan and a Goneril, but a Miranda and an Imogen, an Isabella and a Viola, a Cordelia and a Desdemona, with every conceivable intermediate shade of human character and life; and in George Eliot we have the same clearly-defined contrasts and endless variety. That a Becky Sharp and a Beatrix Castlewood are drawn with the consummate skill and force of the most perfect artist in his own special sphere our age has produced, few will be disposed to deny: and that they have momentous lessons to teach us all,--that they may by sheer antagonism rouse some from dreams of selfish vanity and corruption, and awaken within some germ of better and purer elements of life,--will scarcely be disputed. But it is not from these, or such as these, that the highest and noblest, the purest and most penetrative, the most extended and enduring teaching and elevation of the world has come. That has come emphatically from Him whose self-chosen name, "the Son of Man," designates Him the ideal of humanity on earth; Him who is at once the "Lamb of God" and "the Lion of the tribe of Judah," the "Good Shepherd," and the stern and fearless but ever-righteous Judge--the concentration of all tender and holy love, and of divinest scorn of, and revulsion from, everything mean and false in humanity; Him who for the repentant sinner has no harsher word of rebuke than "Go and sin no more," and who over the self-righteous, self-wrapt, all-despising Pharisees thundered back, to His own ultimate destruction, His terrible "Woe unto you _hypocrites_." He too stands out, not isolated or severed, but prominent, amid every conceivable phase and gradation of human character, from a John to a Judas; touches each and all at some point of living contact; meets them with tender sympathy, with gentle patience, and pitying love, over their weaknesses and falls. Can the true artist err in aiming, according to his nature or to the purity and elevation of his genius, to approach in his portraitures such ideals as this great typical exemplar of our humanity, whose influence has for eighteen centuries been stealing down into the hearts and souls of men to elevate and refine, and who is now, and who is more and more becoming, the paramount factor in individual character, and in social and political relations? Or can such ideals, presented before us, fail to arouse in some degree the better elements of our humanity, and to lead us to strive toward the realisation of these? In wonderfully drawn and finished yet never obtruded contrast to this beautiful creation comes before us Rosamond Vincy. Outwardly even more characterised by every personal charm, save that one living and crowning charm which outshines from the soul within; to the eye, therefore--such eyes as can penetrate no deeper than the surface--prettier, more graceful, more accomplished and fascinating, than Dorothea Brooke;--it is difficult to conceive a more utterly unlovable example of womanhood, whether as maiden or wife. Hard and callous of heart and dead of soul, incapable of one thought or emotion that rises above or extends beyond self, insistent on her own petty claims and ambitions to the exclusion of all others, ever aiming to achieve these, now by dogged sullen persistence, now by mean concealments and frauds, no more repellent portraiture of womanhood has ever been placed before us. The fundamental character of her entire home relations is, on her first appearance, drawn by a single delicate touch--her objecting to her brother's red herring, or rather to its presence after she enters the room, because its odour jars on her sense of pseudo-refinement. In her relation to her husband there is not from first to last one shadow of anything that can be called love, no approach to sympathy or harmony of life. She looks on him solely as a means for removing herself to what she considers a higher social circle, securing to her greater ease, freedom, and luxury of daily life, and ultimately withdrawing her to a wider sphere of petty and selfish enjoyment. Seeking these ends, she resorts to every mean device of deceit and concealment. Utterly callous and impenetrable to his feelings, to every manlier instinct within him, as she is utterly insensible of, and indeed incapable of, entering into his higher and wider professional aims, she not only ignores these, but in her dull and hard insensibility runs counter to, and tramples on them all. Even toward Mary Garth there is nothing approaching true friendship or affection; no power of recognising her honesty, unselfishness, and earnestness of nature. She is nothing to her but a tool and _confidante_, the recipient of her own petty hopes and desires, worries and cares. All Dorothea's gentle, unobtrusive attempts to soothe, to win her back to truer and better relations with her husband, and to awaken to active life and exercise the true womanhood, which she in her sweet instinct believes to be inherent in all her sex, are met by hard indifference or dull resistance. And in the one act of apparent friendliness or rather explanation toward Dorothea, she is actuated far less by sympathy or desire to clear away what has come between her and Ladislaw, than by sullen resentment against the latter for his rejection of her unseemly and unwifely advances to him. In the position she at last takes up toward Ladislaw, there is no approach to anything in the very least resembling love--even illicit and overmastering passion. Of that her very nature is incapable. She is influenced solely by resentment against her husband, and his failure to fulfil her vain and self-absorbed dreams; by the hope that he will remove her to a sphere which will give wider scope to her heartless selfishness, and take her away from the social disappointments and humiliations into which that selfishness has mainly plunged her. In every relation of life near or far, important or trivial, amid all environments, under all impulsion toward anything purer and better, Rosamond Vincy is ever the same; as consistent and unvarying in her hard unwomanliness and impenetrable, insistent self-seeking, as is Dorothea in every opposite characteristic. And even while the picture in one way fascinates the reader, it is the fascination of ever-increasing contempt and loathing where the extremest charity can hardly even pity; and from it we ever turn to that of St Theresa with the more intense refreshment alike of mind and heart, and the deeper sense of its elevating and refining influence. Among the many clearly defined and vividly drawn portraits in this great work, it would be easy, did space permit, to select others well worthy of detailed examination, and illustrative of the salient aim and tendency of all George Eliot's works. The homely yet beautiful family groups of the Garths, Celia and Sir James Chettam, the Bulstrodes, {97} even the wretched old Featherstone, and the crowd of vultures "waiting for death around him," all more or less illustrate the fundamental principle of the highest ethics--that self-abnegation is life, elevation, purity, uplifting our humanity toward the Divine; that self-seeking and self-isolation tend surely toward moral and spiritual death. Two, however, stand out so delicately yet clearly defined and contrasting, that they claim brief consideration before passing from this great work--Lydgate and Farebrother. The whole character and career of Lydgate are brought before us with the skill of the consummate artist. At first he appears as a man of massive and energetic proportions, of high professional impulses and aims, resolute to carry these through against all difficulty and amid all indifference and opposition, and apparently seeking through these aims the general good of humanity--the alleviation of suffering, and the arrestment, it may be, of death. But even then there are signs of inherent weakness, and all but certain decline and fall. There are indications of arrogant self sufficiency and supercilious contempt for others; of undue deference for Bulstrode, not from respect or esteem, but as a tool to further his views; and a tendency to treat patients not as human beings but as cases--objects to experiment on, and verify hypotheses regarding pathology and disease, all which betray a nature not attuned to the highest and noblest pitch, and that cannot be expected to stand in the hour of trial. His first direct lapse is when, against his secret conviction, he supports Tyke as hospital chaplain in opposition to Farebrother; but mainly in mere defiance and resentment of the general style of his reception at the Board meeting, and the opposition he encounters there. Anon comes his marriage to Rosamond Vincy,--a marriage prompted by no true affection, but solely by the fascination of her prettiness, her external grace and accomplishments. Led on mainly by his own taste for luxury and external show, he plunges into extravagances of every kind. Debt inevitably follows, crippling his resources, cramping his energies, fettering him as regards all his higher professional aims and efforts. To his wife he looks in vain for sympathy or aid. She only aggravates the difficulties and harassments of his life by her callous selfishness, her dull obdurate insistance on all her own claims, her mean deceits and concealments. Embarrassments of every kind thicken around him; and at last in the all but universal estimation of his fellows, and nearly in his own, in the hope of temporary relief he becomes accessory to murder. His end is as sad a one for his character, and in his circumstances, as can well be conceived: falling from all his high if somewhat arrogant professional aims, his hopes of elevating the general practitioner, and of raising medicine from an art to a science, into the fashionable London lady's doctor. Though Mr Farebrother occupies a somewhat less prominent place in the narrative, he is delineated with not less consummate skill. He comes before us at first a man of genial kindly sympathies, frankly alive to, and frankly acknowledging, his own deficiencies. There is an utter absence of pretence and affectation about him, a graceful and engaging simplicity and frankness of whole nature, that can hardly fail to win the heart. All his home relations--toward mother and sisters--are singularly touching. Feeling all his defects as a clergyman, half laughing, half apologetic over his devotion to his favourite Coleoptera, and admitting that which is so far a necessity to him, not of choice, but of actual external need in his narrow circumstances--admitting, too, the comparatively inferior and uncongenial society into which he is drawn--the full revelation of his nobler and higher nature begins. His true and deep appreciation of Mary Garth, and tender, devoted, and unselfish love for her, more clearly reveal his innate manliness, self-denial, and simplicity of character. This revelation is still further unfolded before us in his entire relations with Fred Vincy. That firm persistent interview in the billiard-room, is actuated by the one absorbing and self- abnegating desire that he may still be saved from the moral and spiritual decay impending over him: and when, in answer to Fred's appeal for his intercession, we discover the blighting of his own hopes, the shattering of his love, the tender heart stricken to the core should Fred prove, as he suspects, his successful rival, we discern in him a nature of the finest capabilities, and surely tending on and up toward the noblest ends; and we part from him as from a dear and valued friend, whose society has cheered and elevated us, whose pure simplicity of nature has refuted our vain pretensions, and whose memory clings to us as a fragrance and refreshment. There now only remains the last yet published, and in the estimation of many, the greatest, of George Eliot's works--'Daniel Deronda.' In it the author takes up--not a new scope, but extends one that has all along been present, and that indeed was inevitably associated with her great ethical principle,--the bringing of that principle definitely and directly to bear upon not only every domestic but every social and political relation of human life. This tendency may be briefly expressed in the old and profound words: "No man liveth to himself; no man dieth to himself." As we aim toward the true and good and pure, or surrender ourselves the slaves of self and sense, we live or die to God or to the devil. Before, however, proceeding to detailed examination of this remarkable work, it seems necessary to draw attention to one objection which has been urged against it--the prominent introduction of the Jewish element into its scheme. Such objection could scarcely have been put forward by any one who considers what the Jew has been in the past--what an enormous factor his past and present have been and are, in the development and progress of our highest civilisation. Historically, we first meet him coming forth from the Arabian desert, a rude unlettered herdsman, in intelligence, cultivation, and morality far below the tribes among whom he is thrown. A terrible weapon arms him--a theism stern, hard, and pitiless, beyond, perhaps, all the world has ever seen. To the bravest and best of his race--a Moses and a Joshua, a Deborah and a Jephtha--this presents ruthless massacre, the vilest treachery, offering up a sacrifice the dearest and most loved, not as mere permissible acts, but as deeds of religious homage solemnly enjoined by his Most High. This theism has one central thought in which it practically stands alone, and which it was the aim of all its supposed heads and legislators to keep inviolate amid all surrounding antagonisms--the intense assertion of the Divine unity. "Hear, O Israel! the Lord thy God is _one_ Lord." In these brief words lies the very core of Judaism. So long as he holds fast by this central truth, the Jew is exhibited to us as practically omnipotent. Seas and floods divide before him; hosts numberless as the sands are scattered at his appearance; cyclopean walls fall prone at his trumpet-blast. And this thought of the Divine unity, thus intensely pervading the national life, upfolds within capacity of indefinite development. No long time in the life of a nation elapses ere "The Lord thy God is a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children," became "As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him." "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, she _may_ forget; yet will not _I_ forget thee." In no sense of the word was the Jew a creature of imagination. The stern and hard realities of his life would seem to have crushed out every trace of the aesthetic element within him. Yet from among these people arose a literature, especially a hymnology, which has never been approached elsewhere; and it arose emphatically and distinctly out of the great central and animating thought of the Divine unity. To the Psalms so-called of David, the glorious outbursts of sacred song in their mythico-historical books, as in Isaiah {103} and some of the minor prophets, the finest of the Vedic or Orphic hymns or the Homeric ballads are cold and spiritless. These address themselves to scholars alone, or chiefly to a cultivated few, and address themselves to them eloquently and gloriously. The hymns of the Jews have so interpenetrated the very heart of humanity, so identified themselves with the best longings, the noblest aspirations, the purest hopes, and the deepest sorrows of man, that still, after more than twenty centuries, that wonderful hymnology breathes up day after day, week after week, from millions of households and hearts. They outbreathe its fervid aspirations toward a purer and diviner life. They give expression to its profound wailings over degradation and fall. They give utterance on all the inscrutable mysteries of existence; and ever and anon as the clouds and darkness break away from the Infinite Love,--they burst forth into the exultant cry, "God reigneth, let the earth be glad. . . . Give thanks at remembrance of His _holiness_." But important as is this factor of Judaism, there is another generally considered which has perhaps exercised a still more profound and cumulative influence on the civilisation especially of the West. This lies in the intense indestructible nationality of the race. Eighteen centuries have passed since they became a people, "scattered and peeled," their "holy and beautiful house" a ruin, their capital a desolation, their land proscribed to the exile's foot. During these centuries deluge after deluge of so-called barbarians has swept over Asia and Europe: Hun and Tartar, Alan and Goth, Suev and Vandal,--we attach certain vague meanings to the names, but can the most learned scholar identify one individual of the true unmingled blood? All have disappeared, merged in the race they overran, in the kingdoms they conquered and devastated. The Jew alone, through these centuries, has remained the Jew: proscribed, persecuted, hunted as never was tiger or wolf, he is as vividly defined, as unchangeably national, as when he stood alone, everywhere without and beyond the despised and hated Gentile. And this intense and conservative nationality springs essentially out of the central conception of Judaism, "God is _one_." Be He the incarnation of pitiless vengeance, hardening Pharaoh's heart that He may execute sevenfold wrath on him and his people; be He the Good Shepherd, who "gathers the lambs in His arms," and for their sakes "tempers His rough wind in the day of His east wind;"--to the Jew He has been and is, "I am the Lord; that is My name; and My glory will I not give to another." Through those long ages of darkness, devil-worship, and polytheism (in its grossest forms all around), the Jew stood up in unfaltering protest against all. Persecutions, proscriptions, tortures in every form, were of no avail. On the gibbet, on the rack, amid the flames, his last words embodied the central confession of Judaism, "O Israel, the Lord _thy_ God is one Lord." Christianity, the appointed custodier of the still more central truth, "God is love," had to all appearance failed of its mission; had not only merged its higher message in a theistic presentation, dark and terroristic as that of Judaism at its dawn, but had absorbed into its scheme, under other names, the gods many who swarm all around it; till nowhere and never, save by some soul upborne by its own fervour above these dense fogs and mists, could individual man meet his God face to face, and realise that higher life of the soul which is His free gift to all who seek it. Between this heathenised Christianity and Judaism, the contrast was the sharpest, the contest the most embittered and unvarying. Elsewhere we hear of times of toleration and indulgence even for the hunted Monotheist,--in medieval Christendom, never. The Inquisition plied its rack for the Jews with a more fiendish zeal than even for the hated Morisco. The mob held him responsible for plague and famine; and kings and nobles hounded the mob on to indiscriminate massacre. The Jew lived on through it all,--lived, multiplied, and prospered, and became more and more emphatically the Jew. Is it too much to say that in the West in particular, where this contrast and contest were keenest, Judaism was, during these long ages of terror and darkness, the great conservator of the vital truth of the Divine unity, under whatever forms science or philosophy may now attempt to define this; and in being so, became the conservator of that thought, without the vivifying power of which, howsoever imperfectly apprehended, all human advance is impossible? Is it exaggerating the importance of the Jew and his intense nationality, based on such a truth, to say that, but for his presence, "scattered and peeled," among all nations, the Europe we now know could not have been? And this indestructible nationality, for whose existence miracle has been called into account--has it no significance in the future equal to what it has had in the past? There seems an impression that the Jew is being absorbed by other races. We hear much of relaxing Judaisms; of rituals and beliefs assimilating to those around them; of peculiarities being laid aside, that have withstood the wear and tear of centuries. The inference is sought to be drawn that the Jew is beginning to feel his isolation, and to sink his own national life amid that among which he dwells. We accept all the facts; but can only see in them that, under the influence of the profound thought and research of its great leaders, Judaism is shaking off the dust of ages, and is more vividly awaking to its mission upon earth. We believe it is coming forth from all this superficial change, more intensely and powerfully Judaical, more penetrated and vivified by that thought which for untold centuries has been the life of its life. What is to be its specific future as a leader in the advancement and redemption of humanity, none can foresee. But it seems the reverse of strange that a genius like George Eliot's should have been powerfully attracted by this problem; and that, in one of her noblest works, she should have very prominently addressed herself to at least a partial solution of it. That the solution she suggests is a noble one, few who carefully consider the subject will, we think, deny. The establishment of a Jewish polity, in the true sense of the word a theocracy, where the Infinite Holiness is supreme, and in its supremacy is included a reign of justice, purity, and love;--the establishment of such a polity locally between the materialistic proclivities of the West and the psychological subtleties of the East, mediative between them, communicating from each to each of those essentials to human life in which the other is deficient, is a conception worthy of her genius. Another minor and very trivial objection to the presence of this Jewish element need be no more than adverted to. It is the presence of such different types as the mean-souled scoundrel Lapidoth; the shrewd self- approving trader Cohen, with the inimitable picture of a home-life so pleasant and kindly; the vague intense enthusiasm, the ardent aspirations and fervent hopes of Mordecai; the absorbing Judaism of the Physician; the fierce revulsion of his daughter against her race and name; the meek, delicate, ethereal purity of Mirah; the innate Jewish yearnings and aspirations of Deronda, expanded by all the breadth that could be given by the highest Anglo-Saxon culture and training. To those who take exception to this, it is answer more than sufficient that, as an artist, it was necessary to present every typical phase of Jewish character and life; and we confess there are other passages in the work we could better spare than these delicious pictures of a London-Jewish pawnbroker at home. Of all the characters portrayed in fiction, there is perhaps not one so difficult to analyse and define as that which stands out so prominently in this wonderful work, Gwendolen Harleth. At once attractive and repellent--fascinating in no ordinary degree, and yet, in the estimation of all around her, hard, cold, and worldly-minded--bewitching, alike from her beauty, grace, and accomplishments, yet a superficial and seemingly heartless coquette,--she presents a combination of at once some of the finest and some of the meanest qualities of woman. Her hardness towards her fond, doting mother, and her contempt for her sisters, are conspicuous almost from her first appearance. Her arrogant defiance of Deronda in the gambling-house, and the fierce revulsion of pride with which she received the return of her necklace, are entirely in keeping with these characteristics. And the news of the reduction of her family to utter poverty awakens no emotion save on her own behalf alone. Yet, ever and anon, faint gleams of tenderness towards her gentle mother break forth, though soon obscured by the bitter insistance with which her own claims to station, wealth, and luxury assert themselves. Her first acceptance of Grandcourt represents this phase of her twofold nature; her rejection of him and flight from him, after her interview with Mrs Glasher, are equally characteristic of the second. That rejection is actuated much more by resentment against Mrs Glasher, that she should have dared to anticipate her in anything resembling affection he had to give, and against him, that he should have presumed to offer to her a heart already sealed to anything resembling love, than by the faintest approach to it in her own. The leap, as it were, by which she ultimately accepts him, is merely a quick, half-conscious instinct to secure her own deliverance from poverty, and the attainment of those higher external enjoyments of life for which she conceived herself formed; and if, in addition, a thought of relieving the wants of her mother and sisters obtrudes, it holds only a very secondary place in her mind. Deeming herself born for dominion over every male heart, in her utter childish ignorance of human character, she deems that Grandcourt also shall be her slave. But through all her relations with that magnificent incarnation of self- isolation and self-love, she is compelled to cower before him. Again and again she attempts to turn, only to be crushed under his heel as ruthlessly as a worm. During the yachting voyage it is the same; intense inward revulsion on the one side--cold, inexorable despotism on the other. The drowning scene first begins to stir the better nature within her. The intensity of terror with which she regards the involuntary murderous thought, and which prompted her leap into the water, the fervour of remorse which followed, all begin to indicate a nature which may yet be attuned to the highest qualities. On the other hand, the sweet clinging trust with which she hangs on Deronda, looks up to him, feels that for her every possibility of good lies in association with him, are those of a guileless, artless child. She has been called a hard-hearted, callous woman of the world: her worldliness is on the surface alone. Her first cry to Deronda is the piteous wail of a forsaken child; the letter with which their relations close is the fond yearning of a child towards one whom she looks up to as protector and saviour. Grandcourt is portrayed before us in more massive and simple proportions as a type of concentrated selfishness. We dare not despise him, we cannot loathe him--we stand bowed and awe-stricken before him. He never for a moment falls from that calm dignity of pride and self-isolation--never for a moment softens into respect for anything without himself. Without a moment's exception he is ever consistent, imperturbable in his self-containedness, ruthlessly crushing all things from dog to wife, under his calm, cold, slighting contempt. He stands up before us, not so much indomitable as simply unassailable. We cannot conceive the boldest approaching or encroaching on him--all equally shiver and quail before that embodiment of the devil as represented by human self-love. Fain would we linger over the Jewish girl, Mirah. She has been spoken of as characterless; to us it seems as if few characters of more exquisite loveliness have ever been portrayed. From her first appearance robed in her meek despair, through all her subsequent relations with Deronda, her brother, and Gwendolen, there is the same delicate purity, the same tender meekness, the same full acceptance of the life of a Jewess as--in harmony with the life of her race--one of "sufferance." Even as her spirits gladden in that sunny Meyrick home, with its delicious interiors, and brighten under the noble-hearted musician Klesmer's encouragement, the brightness refers to something entirely without herself. In one sense far more acquainted with the evil that is in the world than Gwendolen with all her alleged worldliness, it is her shrinking from the least approach to this that prompts her strange, apparently hopeless flight in search of the mother she had loved so dearly. Her sad, humble complaints that she has not been a good Jewess, because she has been inevitably cut off from the use of Jewish books, and restrained by her scoundrel father from attendance at Jewish worship, find their answer in her deep unfailing sense of her share in the national doom of suffering. We feel with Mrs Meyrick "that she is a pearl, and the mud has only washed her." In her startling interview with Gwendolen, the sudden indignant protest which the inquiry of the latter calls out is a protest against even a hint of evil being directed towards that which has been best and highest to her. Her love for Deronda steals into the maiden purity of her soul with an unconscious delicacy which cannot be surpassed; and as she parts from us by his side, we feel that she is no Judith or Esther, but the meek Mary of the annunciation, going forth on her unknown mission of love with the words, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Beside the exquisitely meek child-figure, with the small delicate head faintly drooping under the sorrow which is the heritage of her race, stands up Deronda in his calm dignity. As he lies on the grass, and the first faint glimmering of the possible origin of his life breaks upon him, even the first inevitable risings of resentment against Sir Hugo are softened and toned down by the old yearning affection; and the longings for the unknown mother, intense as they are, yet shrink from full discovery of what she may have been or may still be. He and he alone, in unconscious dignity, stands up uncowering before Grandcourt. His whole relations to Mordecai are characterised by a deep suppressed enthusiasm, that fully responds to the enthusiast's soul. Towards Gwendolen every word he speaks, every act he does, is marked by the fervour of his whole nature; but it is beside the fair head drooping under its burden of hereditary sorrow that Deronda passes from our sight, the fitting type of him who shall yet, sooner or later, re-establish that great Jewish theocracy so long dreamt of, and reaffirm that Judaism yet holds a great place in human life and civilisation. We have throughout had no intention of dealing with George Eliot merely as the artist; but if we have succeeded in showing this unity of moral purpose and aim as pervading all her works, as giving rise to their variety by reason of the varieties and modifications it necessitates in order to its full illustration, and as ministered to, directly or indirectly, by all the accessory characters and incidents of these creations,--the question naturally arises, whether this does not constitute her an artist of the highest possible order. But the true worth of George Eliot's works rests, we think, on higher grounds than any mere perfection of artistic finish; on this ground, specially, that among all our fictionists she stands out as the deepest, broadest, and most catholic illustrator of the true ethics of Christianity; the most earnest and persistent expositor of the true doctrine of the Cross, that we are born and should live to something higher than the love of happiness; the most subtle and profound commentator on the solemn words, "He that loveth his soul shall lose it: he that hateth his soul shall keep it unto life eternal." Footnotes: {15} The translators of our English Bible, possibly perplexed by the seeming paradox involved in these remarkable words, have taken an unwarrantable freedom with the original, in rendering the Greek [Greek text], invariably the synonym of the soul, the spiritual and undying element in man, by "life"--the [Greek text] of all Greek literature so- called, sacred and profane alike; the synonym of that life which is his in common with the beast of the field and the tree of the forest. {29} Perhaps no finer and more subtle illustration of this "instinct of the gentleman" can be found in literature than when, at the moment of Harold Transome's deepest humiliation, where Jermyn claims him as his son, good old Sir Marmaduke, not only his political opponent but personally disliking him, for the first and only time in all their intercourse addresses him by his Christian name, "Come, _Harold_." {97} In connection with Bulstrode occurs one of those delicate indications of character, condensed into a few words, which others would expand into pages, peculiar to George Eliot. It occurs in the depth of his humiliation, when his wife, hitherto comparatively characterless, in full token of her acceptance of their fallen lot, "takes off all her ornaments, and puts on a plain gown, and instead of wearing her much adorned-cap and large bows of hair, brushes down her hair, and puts on a plain bonnet-cap, which makes her look like an early Methodist." {103} Does all poetry ancient or modern, so-called sacred or profane, contain an image more impressive and majestic than that in the "doom of Babylon," as the great incarnation of pride and luxury descends to its place: "Hades from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations." 
12933	----	LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF THE GREAT Elbert Hubbard Memorial Edition Printed and made into a Book by The Roycrofters, who are in East Aurora, Erie County, New York Wm. H. Wise & Co. New York 1916 PUBLISHER'S PREFACE Elbert Hubbard is dead, or should we say, has gone on his last Little Journey to the Great Beyond. But the children of his fertile brain still live and will continue to live and keep fresh the memory of their illustrious forebear. Fourteen years were consumed in the preparation of the work that ranks today as Elbert Hubbard's masterpiece. In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, the series of Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great was begun, and once a month for fourteen years, without a break, one of these little pilgrimages was given to the world. These little gems have been accepted as classics and will live. In all there are one hundred eighty Little Journeys that take us to the homes of the men and women who transformed the thought of their time, changed the course of empire, and marked the destiny of civilization. Through him, the ideas, the deeds, the achievements of these immortals have been given to the living present and will be sent echoing down the centuries. Hubbard's Little Journeys to the homes of these men and women have not been equaled since Plutarch wrote his forty-six parallel lives of the Greeks and Romans. And these were given to the world before the first rosy dawn of modern civilization had risen to the horizon. Without dwelling upon their achievements, Plutarch, with a trifling incident, a simple word or an innocent jest, showed the virtues and failings of his subject. As a result, no other books from classical literature have come down through the ages to us with so great an influence upon the lives of the leading men of the world. Who can recount the innumerable biographies that begin thus: "In his youth, our subject had for his constant reading, Plutarch's Lives, etc."? Emerson must have had in mind this silent, irresistible force that shaped the lives of the great men of these twenty centuries when he declared, "All history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons." Plutarch lived in the time of Saint Paul, and wrote of the early Greeks and Romans. After two thousand years Hubbard appeared, to bridge the centuries from Athens, in the golden age of Pericles, to America, in the wondrous age of Edison. With the magic wand of genius he touched the buried mummies of all time, and from each tomb gushed forth a geyser of inspiration. Hugh Chalmers once remarked that, if he were getting out a Blue Book of America, he would publish Elbert Hubbard's subscription-lists. Whether we accept this authoritative statement or not, there is no doubt that the pen of this immortal did more to stimulate the best minds of the country than any other American writer, living or dead. Eminent writers study Hubbard for style, while at the same time thousands of the tired men and women who do the world's work read him for inspiration. Truly, this man wielded his pen like an archangel. Not only as a writer does this many-sided genius command our admiration, but in many chosen fields, in all of which he excelled. As an institution, the Roycroft Shops would reflect credit upon the business acumen of the ablest men that America has produced in the field of achievement. The industry, it would seem, was launched to demonstrate the practicality of the high principles and philosophy preached by its founder, not only by the printed page, but from the platform. Right here let it be noted that, as a public speaker, Hubbard appeared before more audiences than any other lecturer of his time who gave the platform his undivided attention. Where, one asks in amazement, did this remarkable man find the inspiration for carrying forward his great work? It is no secret. It was drawn from his own little pilgrimages to the haunts of the great. Again like Plutarch, these miniature biographies were composed for the personal benefit of the writer. It was his own satisfaction and moral improvement that inspired the work. Following Hubbard's tragic death, the announcement was made from East Aurora that "The Philistine" Magazine would be discontinued--Hubbard had gone on a long journey and might need his "Philistine." Besides, who was there to take up his pen? It was also a beautiful tribute to the father from the son. The same spirit of devotion has prompted The Roycrofters to issue their Memorial Edition of the "Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great." In no other way could they so fittingly perpetuate the memory of the founder of their institution as to liberate the influence that was such an important factor in molding the career of his genius. If he should cast a backward glance, he would nod his approval. If there is to be a memorial, certainly let it be a service to mankind. He would have us all tap the same source from which he drew his inspiration. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is in love, laughter and work. --_Elbert Hubbard_ I have been asked to write an article about myself and the work in which I am engaged. I think I am honest enough to sink self, to stand outside my own personality, and answer the proposition. Let me begin by telling what I am not, and thus reach the vital issue by elimination. First, I am not popular in "Society," and those who champion _my cause in my own town_ are plain, unpretentious people. Second, I am not a popular writer, since my name has never been mentioned in the "Atlantic," "Scribner's," "Harper's," "The Century" or the "Ladies' Home Journal." But as a matter of truth, it may not be amiss for me to say that I have waited long hours in the entryway of each of the magazines just named, in days agone, and then been handed the frappe. Third, I am not rich, as the world counts wealth. Fourth, as an orator I am without the graces, and do scant justice to the double-breasted Prince Albert. Fifth, the Roycroft Shop, to the welfare of which my life is dedicated, is not so large as to be conspicuous on account of size. Sixth, personally, I am no ten-thousand-dollar beauty: the glass of fashion and the mold of form are far from mine. Then what have I done concerning which the public wishes to know? Simply this: In one obscure country village I have had something to do with stopping the mad desire on the part of the young people to get out of the country and flock to the cities. In this town and vicinity the tide has been turned from city to country. We have made one country village an attractive place for growing youth by supplying congenial employment, opportunity for education and healthful recreation, and an outlook into the world of art and beauty. All boys and girls want to make things with their hands, and they want to make beautiful things, they want to "get along," and I've simply given them a chance to get along here, instead of seeking their fortunes in Buffalo, New York or Chicago. They have helped me and I have helped them; and through this mutual help we have made head, gained ground upon the whole. By myself I could have done nothing, and if I have succeeded, it is simply because I have had the aid and co-operation of cheerful, willing, loyal and loving helpers. Even now as I am writing this in my cabin in the woods, four miles from the village, they are down there at the Shop, quietly, patiently, cheerfully doing my work--which work is also theirs. No man liveth unto himself alone: our interests are all bound up together, and there is no such thing as a man going off by himself and corraling the good. When I came to this town there was not a house in the place that had a lavatory with hot and cold water attachments. Those who bathed, swam in the creek in the Summer or used the family wash tub in the kitchen in Winter. My good old partner, Ali Baba, has always prided himself on his personal cleanliness He is arrayed in rags, but underneath, his hide is clean, and better still, his heart is right. Yet when he first became a member of my household, he was obliged to take his Saturday-night tub out in the orchard, from Spring until Autumn came with withered leaves. He used to make quite an ado in the kitchen, heating the water in the wash-boiler. Six pails of cistern-water, a gourd of soft soap, and a gunny-sack for friction were required in the operation. Of course, the Baba waited until after dark before performing his ablutions. But finally his plans were more or less disturbed by certain rising youth, who timed his habits and awaited his disrobing with o'erripe tomatoes. The bombardment, and the inability to pursue the enemy, turned the genial current of the Baba's life awry until I put a bathroom in my house, with a lock on the door. This bit of history I have mentioned for the dual purpose of shedding light on former bathing facilities in East Aurora, and more especially to show that once we had the hoodlum with us. Hoodlumism is born of idleness; it is useful energy gone to seed. In small towns hoodlumism is rife, and the hoodlums are usually the children of the best citizens. Hoodlumism is the first step in the direction of crime. The hoodlum is very often a good boy who does not know what to do; and so he does the wrong thing. He bombards with tomatoes a good man taking a bath, puts ticktacks on windows, ties a tin can to the dog's tail, takes the burs off your carriage-wheels, steals your chickens, annexes your horse-blankets, and scares old ladies into fits by appearing at windows wrapped in a white sheet. To wear a mask, walk in and demand the money in the family ginger-jar is the next and natural evolution. To a great degree the Roycroft Shop has done away with hoodlumism in this village, and a stranger wearing a silk hat, or an artist with a white umbrella, is now quite safe upon our streets. Very naturally, the Oldest Inhabitant will deny what I have said about East Aurora--he will tell you that the order, cleanliness and beauty of the place have always existed. The change has come about so naturally, and so entirely without his assistance, that he knows nothing about it. Truth when first presented is always denied, but later there comes a stage when the man says, "I always believed it." And so the good old citizens are induced to say that these things have always been, or else they gently pooh-pooh them. However, the truth remains that I introduced the first heating-furnace into the town; bought the first lawn-mower; was among the first to use electricity for lights and natural gas for fuel; and so far, am the only one in town to use natural gas for power. Until the starting of the Roycroft Shop, there were no industries here, aside from the regulation country store, grocery, tavern, blacksmith-shop and sawmill--none of which enterprises attempted to supply more than local wants. There was Hamlin's stock-farm, devoted to raising trotting-horses, that gave employment to some of the boys; but for the girls there was nothing. They got married at the first chance; some became "hired girls," or, if they had ambitions, fixed their hearts on the Buffalo Normal School, raised turkeys, picked berries, and turned every honest penny towards the desire to get an education so as to become teachers. Comparatively, this class was small in number. Most of the others simply followed that undefined desire to get away out of the dull, monotonous, gossiping village; and so, craving excitement, they went away to the cities, and the cities swallowed them. A wise man has said that God made the country, man the city, and the devil the small towns. The country supplies the city its best and its worst. We hear of the few who succeed, but of the many who are lost in the maelstrom we know nothing. Sometimes in country homes it is even forbidden to mention certain names. "She went to the city," you are told--and there the history abruptly stops. And so, to swing back to the place of beginning, I think the chief reason many good folks are interested in the Roycroft Shop is because here country boys and girls are given work at which they not only earn their living, but can get an education while doing it. Next to this is the natural curiosity to know how a large and successful business can be built up in a plain, humdrum village by simply using the talent and materials that are at hand, and so I am going to tell now how the Roycroft Shop came to start; a little about what it has done; what it is trying to do; and what it hopes to become. And since modesty is only egotism turned wrong side out, I will make no special endeavor to conceal the fact that I have had something to do with the venture. In London, from about Sixteen Hundred Fifty to Sixteen Hundred Ninety, Samuel and Thomas Roycroft printed and made very beautiful books. In choosing the name "Roycroft" for our Shop we had these men in mind, but beyond this the word has a special significance, meaning King's Craft--King's craftsmen being a term used in the Guilds of the olden times for men who had achieved a high degree of skill--men who made things for the King. So a Roycrofter is a person who makes beautiful things, and makes them as well as he can. "The Roycrofters" is the legal name of our institution. It is a corporation, and the shares are distributed among the workers. No shares are held by any one but Roycrofters, and it is agreed that any worker who quits the Shop shall sell his shares back to the concern. This co-operative plan, it has been found, begets a high degree of personal diligence, a loyalty to the institution, a sentiment of fraternity and a feeling of permanency among the workers that is very beneficial to all concerned. Each worker, even the most humble, calls it "Our Shop," and feels that he is an integral and necessary part of the Whole. Possibly there are a few who consider themselves more than necessary. Ali Baba, for instance, it is said, has referred to himself, at times, as the Whole Thing. And this is all right, too--I would never chide an excess of zeal: the pride of a worker in his worth and work is a thing to foster. It's the man who "doesn't give a damn" who is really troublesome. The artistic big-head is not half so bad as apathy. * * * * * In the month of December, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, I printed the first "Little Journeys" in booklet form, at the local printing-office, having become discouraged in trying to find a publisher. But before offering the publication to the public, I decided to lay the matter again before G.P. Putnam's Sons, although they had declined the matter in manuscript form. Mr. George H. Putnam rather liked the matter, and was induced to issue the periodical as a venture for one year. The scheme seemed to meet with success, the novel form of the publication being in its favor. The subscription reached nearly a thousand in six months; the newspapers were kind, and the success of the plan suggested printing a pamphlet modeled on similar lines, telling what we thought about things in general, and publishers and magazine-editors in particular. There was no intention at first of issuing more than one number of this pamphlet, but to get it through the mails at magazine rates we made up a little subscription list and asked that it be entered at the post office at East Aurora as second-class matter. The postmaster adjusted his brass-rimmed spectacles, read the pamphlet, and decided that it surely was second class matter. We called it "The Philistine" because we were going after the "Chosen People" in literature. It was Leslie Stephen who said, "The term Philistine is a word used by prigs to designate people they do not like." When you call a man a bad name, you are that thing--not he. The Smug and Snugly Ensconced Denizens of Union Square called me a Philistine, and I said, "Yes, I am one, if a Philistine is something different from you." My helpers, the printers, were about to go away to pastures new; they were in debt, the town was small, they could not make a living. So they offered me their outfit for a thousand dollars. I accepted the proposition. I decided to run "The Philistine" Magazine for a year--to keep faith with the misguided and hopeful parties who had subscribed--and then quit. To fill in the time, we printed a book: we printed it like a William Morris book--printed it just as well as we could. It was cold in the old barn where we first set up "The Philistine," so I built a little building like an old English chapel right alongside of my house. There was one basement and a room upstairs. I wanted it to be comfortable and pretty, and so we furnished our little shop cozily. We had four girls and three boys working for us then. The Shop was never locked, and the boys and girls used to come around evenings. It was really more pleasant than at home. I brought over a shelf of books from the library. Then I brought the piano, because the youngsters wanted to dance. The girls brought flowers and birds, and the boys put up curtains at the windows. We were having a lot o' fun, with new subscriptions coming in almost every day, and once in a while an order for a book. The place got too small when we began to bind books, so we built a wing on one side; then a wing on the other side. To keep the three carpenters busy who had been building the wings, I set them to making furniture for the place. They made the furniture as good as they could--folks came along and bought it. The boys picked up field-stones and built a great, splendid fireplace and chimney at one end of the Shop. The work came out so well that I said, "Boys, here is a great scheme--these hardheads are splendid building material." So I advertised we would pay a dollar a load for niggerheads. The farmers began to haul stones; they hauled more stones, and at last they had hauled four thousand loads. We bought all the stone in the dollar limit, bulling the market on boulders. Three stone buildings have been built, another is in progress, and our plans are made to build an art-gallery of the same material--the stones that the builders rejected. An artist blew in on the way to Nowhere, his baggage a tomato-can. He thought he would stop over for a day or two--he is with us yet, and three years have gone by since he came, and now we could not do without him. Then we have a few Remittance-Men, sent to us from a distance, without return-tickets. Some of these men were willing to do anything but work--they offered to run things, to preach, to advise, to make love to the girls. We bought them tickets to Chicago, and without violence conducted them to the Four-o'Clock train. We have boys who have been expelled from school, blind people, deaf people, old people, jailbirds and mental defectives, and have managed to set them all at useful work; but the Remittance-Man of Good Family who smokes cigarettes in bed has proved too much for us--so we have given him the Four-o'Clock without ruth. We do not encourage people from a distance who want work to come on--they are apt to expect too much. They look for Utopia, when work is work, here as elsewhere. There is just as much need for patience, gentleness, loyalty and love here as anywhere. Application, desire to do the right thing, a willingness to help, and a well-curbed tongue are as necessary in East Aurora as in Tuskegee. We do our work as well as we can, live one day at a time, and try to be kind. * * * * * The village of East Aurora, Erie County, New York, the home of The Roycrofters, is eighteen miles southeast of the city of Buffalo. The place has a population of about three thousand people. There is no wealth in the town and no poverty. In East Aurora there are six churches, with pastors' salaries varying from three hundred to one thousand dollars a year; and we have a most excellent school. The place is not especially picturesque or attractive, being simply a representative New York State village. Lake Erie is ten miles distant, and Cazenovia Creek winds its lazy way along by the village. The land around East Aurora is poor, and so reduced in purse are the farmers that no insurance-company will insure farm property in Erie County under any conditions unless the farmer has some business outside of agriculture--the experience of the underwriters being that when a man is poor enough, he is also dishonest; insure a farmer's barn in New York State, and there is a strong probability that he will soon invest in kerosene. However, there is no real destitution, for a farmer can always raise enough produce to feed his family, and in a wooded country he can get fuel, even if he has to lift it between the dawn and the day. Most of the workers in the Roycroft Shop are children of farming folk, and it is needless to add that they are not college-bred, nor have they had the advantages of foreign travel. One of our best helpers, Uncle Billy Bushnell, has never been to Niagara Falls, and does not care to go. Uncle Billy says if you stay at home and do your work well enough, the world will come to you; which aphorism the old man backs up with another, probably derived from experience, to the effect that a man is a fool to chase after women, because, if he doesn't, the women will chase after him. The wisdom of this hard-headed old son of the soil--who abandoned agriculture for art at seventy--is exemplified in the fact that during the year just past, over twenty-eight thousand pilgrims have visited the Roycroft Shop--representing every State and Territory of the Union and every civilized country on the globe, even far-off Iceland, New Zealand and the Isle of Guam. Three hundred ten people are on the payroll at the present writing. The principal work is printing, illuminating and binding books. We also have a furniture shop, where Mission furniture of the highest grade is made; a modeled-leather shop, where the most wonderful creations in calfskin are to be seen; and a smithy, where copper utensils of great beauty are hammered out by hand. Quite as important as the printing and binding is the illuminating of initials and title-pages. This is a revival of a lost art, gone with so much of the artistic work done by the monks of the olden time. Yet there is a demand for such work; and so far as I know, we are the first concern in America to take up the hand-illumination of books as a business. Of course we have had to train our helpers, and from very crude attempts at decoration we have attained to a point where the British Museum and the "Bibliotheke" at The Hague have deigned to order and pay good golden guineas for specimens of our handicraft. Very naturally we want to do the best work possible, and so self-interest prompts us to be on the lookout for budding genius. The Roycroft is a quest for talent. There is a market for the best, and the surest way, we think, to get away from competition is to do your work a little better than the other fellow. The old tendency to make things cheaper, instead of better, in the book line is a fallacy, as shown in the fact that within ten years there have been a dozen failures of big publishing-houses in the United States. The liabilities of these bankrupt concerns footed the fine total of fourteen million dollars. The man who made more books and cheaper books than any one concern ever made, had the felicity to fail very shortly, with liabilities of something over a million dollars. He overdid the thing in matter of cheapness--mistook his market. Our motto is, "Not How Cheap, But How Good." This is the richest country the world has ever known, far richer per capita than England--lending money to Europe. Once Americans were all shoddy--pioneers have to be, I'm told--but now only a part of us are shoddy. As men and women increase in culture and refinement, they want fewer things, and they want better things. The cheap article, I will admit, ministers to a certain grade of intellect; but if the man grows, there will come a time when, instead of a great many cheap and shoddy things, he will want a few good things. He will want things that symbol solidity, truth, genuineness and beauty. The Roycrofters have many opportunities for improvement not the least of which is the seeing, hearing and meeting distinguished people. We have a public dining-room, and not a day passes but men and women of note sit at meat with us. At the evening meal, if our visitors are so inclined, and are of the right fiber, I ask them to talk. And if there is no one else to speak, I sometimes read a little from William Morris, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman or Ruskin. David Bispham has sung for us. Maude Adams and Minnie Maddern Fiske have also favored us with a taste of their quality. Judge Lindsey, Alfred Henry Lewis, Richard Le Gallienne, Robert Barr, have visited us; but to give a list of all the eminent men and women who have spoken, sung or played for us would lay me liable for infringement in printing "Who's Who." However, let me name one typical incident. The Boston Ideal Opera Company was playing in Buffalo, and Henry Clay Barnabee and half a dozen of his players took a run out to East Aurora. They were shown through the Shop by one of the girls whose work it is to receive visitors. A young woman of the company sat down at one of the pianos and played. I chanced to be near and asked Mr. Barnabee if he would not sing, and graciously he answered, "Fra Elbertus, I'll do anything that you say." I gave the signal that all the workers should quit their tasks and meet at the Chapel. In five minutes we had an audience of three hundred--men in blouses and overalls, girls in big aprons--a very jolly, kindly, receptive company. Mr. Barnabee was at his best--I never saw him so funny. He sang, danced, recited, and told stories for forty minutes. The Roycrofters were, of course, delighted. One girl whispered to me as she went out, "I wonder what great sorrow is gnawing at Barnabee's heart, that he is so wondrous gay!" Need I say that the girl who made the remark just quoted had drunk of life's cup to the very lees? We have a few such with us--and several of them are among our most loyal helpers. * * * * * One fortuitous event that has worked to our decided advantage was "A Message to Garcia." This article, not much more than a paragraph, covering only fifteen hundred words, was written one evening after supper in a single hour. It was the Twenty-second of February, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-Nine, Washington's Birthday, and we were just going to press with the March "Philistine." The thing leaped hot from my heart, written after a rather trying day, when I had been endeavoring to train some rather delinquent helpers in the way they should go. The immediate suggestion, though, came from a little argument over the teacups when my son Bert suggested that Rowan was the real hero of the Cuban war. Rowan had gone alone and done the thing--carried the message to Garcia. It came to me like a flash! Yes, the boy is right, the hero is the man who does the thing--does his work--carries the message. I got up from the table and wrote "A Message to Garcia." I thought so little of it that we ran it in without a heading. The edition went out, and soon orders began to come for extra March "Philistines," a dozen, fifty, a hundred; and when the American News Company ordered a thousand I asked one of my helpers which article it was that had stirred things up. "It's that stuff about Garcia," he said. The next day a telegram came from George H. Daniels, of the New York Central Railroad, thus: "Give price on one hundred thousand Rowan article in pamphlet form--Empire State Express advertisement on back--also state how soon can ship." I replied giving price and stated we could supply the pamphlets in two years. Our facilities were small, and a hundred thousand pamphlets looked like an awful undertaking. The result was that I gave Mr. Daniels permission to reprint the article in his own way. He issued it in booklet form in editions of one hundred thousand each. Five editions were sent out, and then he got out an edition of half a million. Two or three of these half-million lots were sent out by Mr. Daniels, and in addition the article was reprinted in over two hundred magazines and newspapers. It has been translated into eleven languages, and been given a total circulation of over twenty-two million copies. It has attained, I believe, a larger circulation in the same length of time than any written article has ever before reached. Of course, we can not tell just how much good "A Message to Garcia" has done the Shop, but it probably doubled the circulation of "The Philistine." I do not consider it by any means my best piece of writing; but it was opportune--the time was ripe. Truth demands a certain expression, and too much had been said on the other side about the downtrodden, honest man, looking for work and not being able to find it. The article in question states the other side. Men are needed--loyal, honest men who will do their work. "The world cries out for him--the man who can carry a message to Garcia." The man who sent the message and the man who received it are dead. The man who carried it is still carrying other messages. The combination of theme, condition of the country, and method of circulation was so favorable that their conjunction will probably never occur again. Other men will write better articles, but they may go a-begging for lack of a Daniels to bring them to judgment. * * * * * Concerning my own personal history, I'll not tarry long to tell. It has been too much like the career of many another born in the semi-pioneer times of the Middle West, to attract much attention, unless one should go into the psychology of the thing with intent to show the evolution of a soul. But that will require a book--and some day I'll write it, after the manner of Saint Augustine or Jean Jacques. But just now I 'll only say that I was born in Illinois, June Nineteenth, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-six. My father was a country doctor, whose income never exceeded five hundred dollars a year. I left school at fifteen, with a fair hold on the three R's, and beyond this my education in "manual training" had been good. I knew all the forest-trees, all wild animals thereabout, every kind of fish, frog, fowl or bird that swam, ran or flew. I knew every kind of grain or vegetable, and its comparative value. I knew the different breeds of cattle, horses, sheep and swine. I could teach wild cows to stand while being milked; break horses to saddle or harness; could sow, plow and reap; knew the mysteries of apple-butter, pumpkin pie pickled beef, smoked side-meat, and could make lye at a leach and formulate soft soap. That is to say, I was a bright, strong, active country boy who had been brought up to help his father and mother get a living for a large family. I was not so densely ignorant--don't feel sorry for country boys: God is often on their side. At fifteen I worked on a farm and did a man's work for a boy's pay. I did not like it and told the man so. He replied, "You know what you can do." And I replied, "Yes." I went westward like the course of empire and became a cowboy; tired of this and went to Chicago; worked in a printing-office; peddled soap from house to house; shoved lumber on the docks; read all the books I could find; wrote letters back to country newspapers and became a reporter; next got a job as traveling salesman; taught in a district school; read Emerson, Carlyle and Macaulay; worked in a soap factory; read Shakespeare and committed most of "Hamlet" to memory with an eye on the stage; became manager of the soap-factory, then partner; evolved an Idea for the concern and put it on the track of making millions--knew it was going to make millions--did not want them; sold out my interest for seventy-five thousand dollars and went to Harvard College; tramped through Europe; wrote for sundry newspapers; penned two books (couldn't find a publisher); taught night school in Buffalo; tramped through Europe some more and met William Morris (caught it); came back to East Aurora and started "Chautauqua Circles"; studied Greek and Latin with a local clergyman; raised trotting-horses; wrote "Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great." So that is how I got my education, such as it is. I am a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, and I've taken several postgraduate courses. I have worked at five different trades enough to be familiar with the tools. In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, Tufts College bestowed on me the degree of Master of Arts; but since I did not earn the degree, it really does not count. I have never been sick a day, never lost a meal through disinclination to eat, never consulted a doctor, never used tobacco or intoxicants. My work has never been regulated by the eight-hour clause. Horses have been my only extravagance, and I ride horseback daily now: a horse that I broke myself, that has never been saddled by another, and that has never been harnessed. My best friends have been workingmen, homely women and children. My father and mother are members of my household, and they work in the Shop when they are so inclined. My mother's business now is mostly to care for the flowers, and my father we call "Physician to The Roycrofters," as he gives free advice and attendance to all who desire his services. Needless to say, his medicine is mostly a matter of the mind. Unfortunately for him, we do not enjoy poor health, so there is very seldom any one sick to be cured. Fresh air is free, and outdoor exercise is not discouraged. * * * * * The Roycroft Shop and belongings represent an investment of about three hundred thousand dollars. We have no liabilities, making it a strict business policy to sign no notes or other instruments of debt that may in the future prove inopportune and tend to disturb digestion. Fortune has favored us. First, the country has grown tired of soft platitude, silly truism and undisputed things said in such a solemn way. So when "The Philistine" stepped into the ring and voiced in no uncertain tones what its editor thought, thinking men and women stopped and listened. Editors of magazines refused my manuscript because they said it was too plain, too blunt, sometimes indelicate--it would give offense, subscribers would cancel, et cetera. To get my thoughts published I had to publish them myself; and people bought for the very reason for which the editors said they would cancel. The readers wanted brevity and plain statement--the editors said they didn't. The editors were wrong. They failed to properly diagnose a demand. I saw the demand and supplied it--for a consideration. Next I believed the American public. A portion of it, at least, wanted a few good and beautiful books instead of a great many cheap books. The truth came to me in the early Nineties, when John B. Alden and half a dozen other publishers of cheap books went to the wall. I read the R.G. Dun & Company bulletin and I said, "The publishers have mistaken their public--we want better books, not cheaper." In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two, I met William Morris, and after that I was sure I was right. Again I had gauged the public correctly--the publishers were wrong, as wrong as the editors. There was a market for the best, and the problem was to supply it. At first I bound my books in paper covers and simple boards. Men wrote to me wanting fine bindings. I said, "There is a market in America for the best--cheap boards, covered with cloth, stamped by machinery in gaudy tinsel and gilt, are not enough." I discovered that nearly all the bookbinders were dead. I found five hundred people in a book-factory in Chicago binding books, but not a bookbinder among them. They simply fed the books into hoppers and shot them out of chutes, and said they were bound. Next the public wanted to know about this thing--"What are you folks doing out there in that buckwheat town?" Since my twentieth year I have had one eye on the histrionic stage. I could talk in public a bit, had made political speeches, given entertainments in crossroads schoolhouses, made temperance harangues, was always called upon to introduce the speaker of the evening, and several times had given readings from my own amusing works for the modest stipend of ten dollars and keep. I would have taken the lecture platform had it not been nailed down. In Eighteen Hundred Ninety-eight, my friend Major Pond wanted to book me on a partnership deal at the Waldorf-Astoria. I didn't want to speak there--I had been saying unkind things in "The Philistine" about the Waldorf-Astoria folks. But the Major went ahead and made arrangements. I expected to be mobbed. But Mr. Boldt, the manager of the hotel, had placed a suite of rooms at my disposal without money and without price. He treated me most cordially; never referred to the outrageous things I had said about his tavern; assured me that he enjoyed my writings, and told me of the pleasure he had in welcoming me. Thus did he heap hot cinders upon my occiput. The Astor gallery seats eight hundred people. Major Pond had packed in nine hundred at one dollar each--three hundred were turned away. After the lecture the Major awaited me in the anteroom, fell on my neck and rained Pond's Extract down my back, crying: "Oh! Oh! Oh! Why didn't we charge them two dollars apiece!" The next move was to make a tour of the principal cities under Major Pond's management. Neither of us lost money--the Major surely did not. Last season I gave eighty-one lectures, with a net profit to myself of a little over ten thousand dollars. I spoke at Tremont Temple in Boston, to twenty-two hundred people; at Carnegie Hall, New York; at Central Music Hall, Chicago. I spoke to all the house would hold; at Chautauqua, my audience was five thousand people. It will be noted by the Discerning that my lectures have been of double importance, in that they have given an income and at the same time advertised the Roycroft Wares. The success of the Roycroft Shop has not been brought about by any one scheme or plan. The business is really a combination of several ideas, any one of which would make a paying enterprise in itself. So it stands about thus: First, the printing and publication of three magazines. Second, the printing of books (it being well known that some of the largest publishers in America--Scribner and Appleton, for instance--have no printing-plants, but have the work done for them). Third, the publication of books. Fourth, the artistic binding of books. Fifth, authorship. Since I began printing my own manuscript, there is quite an eager demand for my writing, so I do a little of Class B for various publishers and editors. Sixth, the Lecture Lyceum. Seventh, blacksmithing, carpenter-work and basket-weaving. These industries have sprung up under the Roycroft care as a necessity. Men and women in the village came to us and wanted work, and we simply gave them opportunity to do the things they could do best. We have found a market for all our wares, so no line of work has ever been a bill of expense. I want no better clothing, no better food, no more comforts and conveniences than my helpers and fellow-workers have. I would be ashamed to monopolize a luxury--to take a beautiful work of art, say a painting or a marble statue, and keep it for my own pleasure and for the select few I might invite to see my beautiful things. Art is for all--beauty is for all. Harmony in all of its manifold forms should be like a sunset--free to all who can drink it in. The Roycroft Shop is for The Roycrofters, and each is limited only by his capacity to absorb. * * * * * Art is the expression of man's joy in his work, and all the joy and love that you can weave into a fabric comes out again and belongs to the individual who has the soul to appreciate it. Art is beauty; and beauty is a gratification, a peace and a solace to every normal man and woman. Beautiful sounds, beautiful colors, beautiful proportions, beautiful thoughts--how our souls hunger for them! Matter is only mind in an opaque condition; and all beauty is but a symbol of spirit. You can not get joy from feeding things all day into a machine. You must let the man work with hand and brain, and then out of the joy of this marriage of hand and brain, beauty will be born. It tells of a desire for harmony, peace, beauty, wholeness--holiness. Art is the expression of man's joy in his work. When you read a beautiful poem that makes your heart throb with gladness and gratitude, you are simply partaking of the emotion that the author felt when he wrote it. To possess a piece of work that the workman made in joyous animation is a source of joy to the possessor. And this love of the work done by the marriage of hand and brain can never quite go out of fashion--for we are men and women, and our hopes and aims and final destiny are at last one. Where one enjoys, all enjoy; where one suffers, all suffer. Say what you will of the coldness and selfishness of men, at the last we long for companionship and the fellowship of our kind. We are lost children, and when alone and the darkness gathers, we long for the close relationship of the brothers and sisters we knew in our childhood, and cry for the gentle arms that once rocked us to sleep. Men are homesick amid this sad, mad rush for wealth and place and power. The calm of the country invites, and we would fain do with less things, and go back to simplicity, and rest our tired heads in the lap of Mother Nature. Life is expression. Life is a movement outward, an unfolding, a development. To be tied down, pinned to a task that is repugnant, and to have the shrill voice of Necessity whistling eternally in your ears, "Do this or starve," is to starve; for it starves the heart, the soul, and all the higher aspirations of your being pine away and die. At the Roycroft Shop the workers are getting an education by doing things. Work should be the spontaneous expression of a man's best impulses. We grow only through exercise, and every faculty that is exercised becomes strong, and those not used atrophy and die. Thus how necessary it is that we should exercise our highest and best! To develop the brain we have to exercise the body. Every muscle, every organ, has its corresponding convolution in the brain. To develop the mind, we must use the body. Manual training is essentially moral training; and physical work is, at its best, mental, moral and spiritual--and these are truths so great and yet so simple that until yesterday many wise men did not recognize them. At the Roycroft Shop we are reaching out for an all-round development through work and right living. And we have found it a good expedient--a wise business policy. Sweat-shop methods can never succeed in producing beautiful things. And so the management of the Roycroft Shop surrounds the workers with beauty, allows many liberties, encourages cheerfulness and tries to promote kind thoughts, simply because it has been found that these things are transmuted into good, and come out again at the finger-tips of the workers in beautiful results. So we have pictures, statuary, flowers, ferns, palms, birds, and a piano in every room. We have the best sanitary appliances that money can buy; we have bathrooms, shower-baths, library, rest-rooms. Every week we have concerts, dances, lectures. Besides being a workshop, the Roycroft is a School. We are following out a dozen distinct lines of study, and every worker in the place is enrolled as a member of one or more classes. There are no fees to pupils, but each pupil purchases his own books--the care of his books and belongings being considered a part of one's education. All the teachers are workers in the Shop, and are volunteers, teaching without pay, beyond what each receives for his regular labor. The idea of teaching we have found is a great benefit--to the teacher. The teacher gets most out of the lessons. Once a week there is a faculty meeting, when each teacher gives in a verbal report of his stewardship. It is responsibility that develops one, and to know that your pupils expect you to know is a great incentive to study. Then teaching demands that you shall give--give yourself--and he who gives most receives most. We deepen our impressions by recounting them, and he who teaches others teaches himself. I am never quite so proud as when some one addresses me as "teacher." We try to find out what each person can do best, what he wants to do, and then we encourage him to put his best into it--also to do something else besides his specialty, finding rest in change. The thing that pays should be the expedient thing, and the expedient thing should be the proper and right thing. That which began with us as a matter of expediency is often referred to as a "philanthropy." I do not like the word, and wish to state here that the Roycroft is in no sense a charity--I do not believe in giving any man something for nothing. You give a man a dollar and the man will think less of you because he thinks less of himself; but if you give him a chance to earn a dollar, he will think more of himself and more of you. The only way to help people is to give them a chance to help themselves. So the Roycroft Idea is one of reciprocity--you help me and I'll help you. We will not be here forever, anyway; soon Death, the kind old Nurse, will come and rock us all to sleep, and we had better help one another while we may: we are going the same way--let's go hand in hand! CONTENTS PUBLISHER'S PREFACE v AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL xi GEORGE ELIOT 47 THOMAS CARLYLE 65 JOHN RUSKIN 85 WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE 101 J.M.W. TURNER 121 JONATHAN SWIFT 141 WALT WHITMAN 161 VICTOR HUGO 183 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 209 WILLIAM M. THACKERAY 227 CHARLES DICKENS 245 OLIVER GOLDSMITH 271 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 299 THOMAS A. EDISON 319 GEORGE ELIOT "May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-- Be the good presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense. So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world." [Illustration: GEORGE ELIOT] Warwickshire gave to the world William Shakespeare. It also gave Mary Ann Evans. No one will question that Shakespeare's is the greatest name in English literature; and among writers living or dead, in England or out of it, no woman has ever shown us power equal to that of George Eliot, in the subtle clairvoyance which divines the inmost play of passions, the experience that shows human capacity for contradiction, and the indulgence that is merciful because it understands. Shakespeare lived three hundred years ago. According to the records, his father, in Fifteen Hundred Sixty-three, owned a certain house in Henley Street, Stratford-on-Avon. Hence we infer that William Shakespeare was born there. And in all our knowledge of Shakespeare's early life (or later) we prefix the words, "Hence we infer." That the man knew all the sciences of his day, and had such a knowledge of each of the learned professions that all have claimed him as their own, we realize. He evidently was acquainted with five different languages, and the range of his intellect was worldwide; but where did he get this vast erudition? We do not know, and we excuse ourselves by saying that he lived three hundred years ago. George Eliot lived--yesterday, and we know no more about her youthful days than we do of that other child of Warwickshire. One biographer tells us that she was born in Eighteen Hundred Nineteen, another in Eighteen Hundred Twenty, and neither state the day; whereas a recent writer in the "Pall Mall Budget" graciously bestows on us the useful information that "William Shakespeare was born on the Twenty-first day of April, Fifteen Hundred Sixty-three, at fifteen minutes of two on a stormy morning." Concise statements of facts are always valuable, but we have none such concerning the early life of George Eliot. There is even a shadow over her parentage, for no less an authority than the "American Cyclopedia Annual," for Eighteen Hundred Eighty, boldly proclaims that she was not a foundling and, moreover, that she was not adopted by a rich retired clergyman who gave her a splendid schooling. Then the writer dives into obscurity, but presently reappears and adds that he does not know where she got her education. For all of which we are very grateful. Shakespeare left five signatures, each written in a different way, and now there is a goodly crew who spell it "Bacon." And likewise we do not know whether it is Mary Ann Evans, Mary Anne Evans or Marian Evans, for she herself is said to have used each form at various times. William Winter--gentle critic, poet, scholar--tells us that the Sonnets show a dark spot in Shakespeare's moral record. And if I remember rightly, similar things have been hinted at in sewing-circles concerning George Eliot. Then they each found the dew and sunshine in London that caused the flowers of genius to blossom. The early productions of both were published anonymously, and lastly they both knew how to transmute thought into gold, for they died rich. Lady Godiva rode through the streets of Coventry, but I walked--walked all the way from Stratford, by way of Warwick (call it Warrick, please) and Kenilworth Castle. I stopped overnight at that quaint and curious little inn just across from the castle entrance. The good landlady gave me the same apartment that was occupied by Sir Walter Scott when he came here and wrote the first chapter of "Kenilworth." The little room had pretty, white chintz curtains tied with blue ribbon, and similar stuff draped the mirror. The bed was a big canopy affair--I had to stand on a chair in order to dive off into its feathery depths--everything was very neat and clean, and the dainty linen had a sweet smell of lavender. I took one parting look out through the open window at the ivy-mantled towers of the old castle, which were all sprinkled with silver by the rising moon, and then I fell into gentlest sleep. I dreamed of playing "I-spy" through Kenilworth Castle with Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Mary Ann Evans and a youth I used to know in boyhood by the name of Bill Hursey. We chased each other across the drawbridge, through the portcullis, down the slippery stones into the donjon-keep, around the moat, and up the stone steps to the topmost turret of the towers. Finally Shakespeare was "it," but he got mad and refused to play. Walter Scott said it was "no fair," and Bill Hursey thrust out the knuckle of one middle finger in a very threatening way and offered to "do" the boy from Stratford. Then Mary Ann rushed in to still the tempest. There's no telling what would have happened had not the landlady just then rapped at my door and asked if I had called. I awoke with a start and with the guilty feeling that I had been shouting in my sleep. I saw it was morning. "No--that is, yes; my shaving-water, please." After breakfast the landlady's boy offered for five shillings to take me in his donkey-cart to the birthplace of George Eliot. He explained that the house was just seven miles north; but Baalam's express is always slow, so I concluded to walk. At Coventry a cab-owner proposed to show me the house, which he declared was near Kenilworth, for twelve shillings. The advantages of seeing Kenilworth at the same time were dwelt upon at great length by cabby, but I harkened not to the voice of the siren. I got a good lunch at the hotel, and asked the innkeeper if he could tell me where George Eliot was born. He did not know, but said he could show me a house around the corner where a family of Eliots lived. Then I walked on to Nuneaton. A charming walk it was; past quaint old houses, some with straw-thatched roofs, others tile--roses clambering over the doors and flowering hedgerows white with hawthorn-flowers. Occasionally, I met a farmer's cart drawn by one of those great, fat, gentle Shire horses that George Eliot has described so well. All spoke of peace and plenty, quiet and rest. The green fields and the flowers, the lark-song and the sunshine, the dipping willows by the stream, and the arch of the old stone bridge as I approached the village--all these I had seen and known and felt before from "Mill on the Floss." I found the house where they say the novelist was born. A plain, whitewashed, stone structure, built two hundred years ago; two stories, the upper chambers low, with gable-windows; a little garden at the side bright with flowers, where sweet marjoram vied with onions and beets; all spoke of humble thrift and homely cares. In front was a great chestnut-tree, and in the roadway near were two ancient elms where saucy crows were building a nest. Here, after her mother died, Mary Ann Evans was housekeeper. Little more than a child--tall, timid, and far from strong--she cooked and scrubbed and washed, and was herself the mother to brothers and sisters. Her father was a carpenter by trade and agent for a rich landowner. He was a stern man--orderly, earnest, industrious, studious. On rides about the country he would take the tall, hollow-eyed girl with him, and at such times he would talk to her of the great outside world where wondrous things were done. The child toiled hard, but found time to read and question--and there is always time to think. Soon she had outgrown some of her good father's beliefs, and this grieved him greatly; so much, indeed, that her extra-loving attention to his needs, in a hope to neutralize his displeasure, only irritated him the more. And if there is soft, subdued sadness in much of George Eliot's writing we can guess the reason. The onward and upward march ever means sad separation. When Mary Ann was blossoming into womanhood her father moved over near Coventry, and here the ambitious girl first found companionship in her intellectual desires. Here she met men and women, older than herself, who were animated, earnest thinkers. They read and then they discussed, and then they spoke the things that they felt were true. Those eight years at Coventry transformed the awkward country girl into a woman of intellect and purpose. She knew somewhat of all sciences, all philosophies, and she had become a proficient scholar in German and French. How did she acquire this knowledge? How is any education acquired if not through effort prompted by desire? She had already translated Strauss's "Life of Jesus" in a manner that was acceptable to the author. When Ralph Waldo Emerson came to Coventry to lecture, he was entertained at the same house where Miss Evans was stopping. Her brilliant conversation pleased him, and when she questioned the wisdom of a certain passage in one of his essays the gentle philosopher turned, smiled, and said that he had not seen it in that light before; perhaps she was right. "What is your favorite book?" asked Emerson. "Rousseau's 'Confessions,'" answered Mary instantly. It was Emerson's favorite, too; but such honesty from a young woman! It was queer. Mr. Emerson never forgot Miss Evans of Coventry, and ten years after, when a zealous reviewer proclaimed her the greatest novelist in England, the sage of Concord said something that sounded like "I told you so." Miss Evans had made visits to London from time to time with her Coventry friends. When twenty-eight years old, after one such visit to London, she came back to the country tired and weary, and wrote this most womanly wish: "My only ardent desire is to find some feminine task to discharge; some possibility of devoting myself to some one and making that one purely and calmly happy." But now her father was dead and her income was very scanty. She did translating, and tried the magazines with articles that generally came back respectfully declined. Then an offer came as sub-editor of the "Westminster Review." It was steady work and plenty of it, and this was what she desired. She went to London and lived in the household of her employer, Mr. Chapman. Here she had the opportunity of meeting many brilliant people: Carlyle and his "Jeannie Welsh," the Martineaus, Grote, Mr. and Mrs. Mill, Huxley, Mazzini, Louis Blanc. Besides these were two young men who must not be left out when we sum up the influences that evolved this woman's genius. She was attracted to Herbert Spencer at once. He was about her age, and their admiration for each other was mutual. Miss Evans, writing to a friend in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-two, says, "Spencer is kind, he is delightful, and I always feel better after being with him, and we have agreed together that there is no reason why we should not see each other as often as we wish." And then later she again writes: "The bright side of my life, after the affection for my old friends, is the new and delightful friendship which I have found in Herbert Spencer. We see each other every day, and in everything we enjoy a delightful comradeship. If it were not for him my life would be singularly arid." But about this time another man appeared on the scene, and were it not for this other man, who was introduced to Miss Evans by Spencer, the author of "Synthetic Philosophy" might not now be spoken of in the biographical dictionaries as having been "wedded to science." It was not love at first sight, for George Henry Lewes made a decidedly unfavorable impression on Miss Evans at their first meeting. He was small, his features were insignificant, he had whiskers like an anarchist and a mouthful of crooked teeth; his personal habits were far from pleasant. It was this sort of thing, Dickens said, that caused his first wife to desert him and finally drove her into insanity. But Lewes had a brilliant mind. He was a linguist, a scientist, a novelist, a poet and a wit. He had written biography, philosophy and a play. He had been a journalist, a lecturer and even an actor. Thackeray declared that if he should see Lewes perched on a white elephant in Piccadilly he should not be in the least surprised. After having met Miss Evans several times, Mr. Lewes saw the calm depths of her mind and he asked her to correct proofs for him. She did so and discovered that there was merit in his work. She corrected more proofs, and when a woman begins to assist a man the danger-line is being approached. Close observers noted that a change was coming over the bohemian Lewes. He had his whiskers trimmed, his hair was combed, and the bright yellow necktie had been discarded for a clean one of modest brown, and, sometimes, his boots were blacked. In July, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-four, Mr. Chapman received a letter from his sub-editor resigning her position, and Miss Evans notified some of her closest friends that hereafter she wished to be considered the wife of Mr. Lewes. She was then in her thirty-sixth year. The couple disappeared, having gone to Germany. Many people were shocked. Some said, "We knew it all the time," and when Herbert Spencer was informed of the fact he exclaimed, "Goodness me!" and said--nothing. After six months spent at Weimar and other literary centers, Mr. and Mrs. Lewes returned to England and began housekeeping at Richmond. Any one who views their old quarters there will see how very plainly and economically they were forced to live. But they worked hard, and at this time the future novelist's desire seemed only to assist her husband. That she developed the manly side of his nature none can deny. They were very happy, these two, as they wrote, and copied, and studied, and toiled. Three years passed, and Mrs. Lewes wrote to a friend: "I am very happy; happy with the greatest happiness that life can give--the complete sympathy and affection of a man whose mind stimulates mine and keeps up in me a wholesome activity." Mr. Lewes knew the greatness of his helpmeet. She herself did not. He urged her to write a story; she hesitated, and at last attempted it. They read the first chapter together and cried over it. Then she wrote more and always read her husband the chapters as they were turned off. He corrected, encouraged, and found a publisher. But why should I tell about it here? It's all in the "Britannica"--how the gentle beauty and sympathetic insight of her work touched the hearts of great and lowly alike, and of how riches began flowing in upon her. For one book she received forty thousand dollars, and her income after fortune smiled upon her was never less than ten thousand dollars a year. Lewes was her secretary, her protector, her slave and her inspiration. He kept at bay the public that would steal her time, and put out of her reach, at her request, all reviews, good or bad, and shielded her from the interviewer, the curiosity-seeker, and the greedy financier. The reason why she at first wrote under a nom de plume is plain. To the great, wallowing world she was neither Miss Evans nor Mrs. Lewes, so she dropped both names as far as title-pages were concerned and used a man's name instead--hoping better to elude the pack. When "Adam Bede" came out, a resident of Nuneaton purchased a copy and at once discovered local earmarks. The scenes described, the flowers, the stone walls, the bridges, the barns, the people--all was Nuneaton. Who wrote it? No one knew, but it was surely some one in Nuneaton. So they picked out a Mr. Liggins, a solemn-faced preacher, who was always about to do something great, and they said "Liggins." Soon all London said "Liggins." As for Liggins, he looked wise and smiled knowingly. Then articles began to appear in the periodicals purporting to have been written by the author of "Adam Bede." A book came out called "Adam Bede, Jr.," and to protect her publisher, the public and herself, George Eliot had to reveal her identity. Many men have written good books and never tasted fame; but few, like Liggins of Nuneaton, have become famous by doing nothing. It only proves that some things can be done as well as others. This breed of men has long dwelt in Warwickshire; Shakespeare had them in mind when he wrote, "There be men who do a wilful stillness entertain with purpose to be dressed in an opinion of wisdom, gravity and profound conceit." Lord Acton in an able article in the "Nineteenth Century" makes this statement: "George Eliot paid high for happiness with Lewes. She forfeited freedom of speech, the first place among English women, and a tomb in Westminster Abbey." The original dedication in "Adam Bede" reads thus: "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the manuscript of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life." Lord Acton of course assumes that this book would have been written, dedication and all, just the same had Miss Evans never met Mr. Lewes. Once there was a child called Romola. She said to her father one day, as she sat on his knee: "Papa, who would take care of me--give me my bath and put me to bed nights--if you had never happened to meet Mamma?" * * * * * The days I spent in Warwickshire were very pleasant. The serene beauty of the country and the kindly courtesy of the people impressed me greatly. Having beheld the scenes of George Eliot's childhood, I desired to view the place where her last days were spent. It was a fine May day when I took the little steamer from London Bridge for Chelsea. A bird-call from the dingy brick building where Turner died, and two blocks from the old home of Carlyle, is Cheyne Walk--a broad avenue facing the river. The houses are old, but they have a look of gracious gentility that speaks of ease and plenty. High iron fences are in front, but they do not shut off from view the climbing clematis and clusters of roses that gather over the windows and doors. I stood at the gate of Number 4 Cheyne Walk and admired the pretty flowers, planted in such artistic carelessness as to beds and rows; then I rang the bell--an old pull-out affair with polished knob. Presently a butler opened the door--a pompous, tall and awful butler in serious black and with side-whiskers. He approached; came down the walk swinging a bunch of keys, looking me over as he came, to see what sort of wares I had to sell. "Did George Eliot live here?" I asked through the bars. "Mrs. Cross lived 'ere and died 'ere, sir," came the solemn and rebuking answer. "I mean Mrs. Cross," I added meekly; "I only wished to see the little garden where she worked." Jeemes was softened. As he unlocked the gate he said: "We 'ave many wisiters, sir; a great bother, sir; still, I always knows a gentleman when I sees one. P'r'aps you would like to see the 'ouse, too, sir. The missus does not like it much, but I will take 'er your card, sir." I gave him the card and slipped a shilling into his hand as he gave me a seat in the hallway. He disappeared upstairs and soon returned with the pleasing information that I was to be shown the whole house and garden. So I pardoned him the myth about the missus, happening to know that at that particular moment she was at Brighton, sixty miles away. A goodly, comfortable house, four stories, well kept, and much fine old carved oak in the dining-room and hallways; fantastic ancient balusters, and a peculiar bay window in the second-story rear that looked out over the little garden. Off to the north could be seen the green of Kensington Gardens and wavy suggestions of Hyde Park. This was George Eliot's workshop. There was a table in the center of the room and three low bookcases with pretty ornaments above. In the bay window was the most conspicuous object in the room--a fine marble bust of Goethe. This, I was assured, had been the property of Mrs. Cross, as well as all the books and furniture in the room. In one corner was a revolving case containing a set of the "Century Dictionary" which Jeemes assured me had been purchased by Mr. Cross as a present for his wife a short time before she died. This caused my faith to waver a trifle and put to flight a fine bit of literary frenzy that might have found form soon in a sonnet. In the front parlor, I saw a portrait of the former occupant that showed "the face that looked like a horse." But that is better than to have the face of any other animal of which I know. Surely one would not want to look like a dog! Shakespeare hated dogs, but spoke forty-eight times in his plays in terms of respect and affection for a horse. Who would not resent the imputation that one's face was like that of a sheep or a goat or an ox, and much gore has been shed because men have referred to other men as asses--but a horse! God bless you, yes! No one has ever accused George Eliot of being handsome, but this portrait tells of a woman of fifty: calm, gentle, and the strong features speak of a soul in which to confide. At Highgate, by the side of the grave of Lewes, rests the dust of this great and loving woman. As the pilgrim enters that famous old cemetery, the first imposing monument seen is a pyramid of rare, costly porphyry. As you draw near, you read this inscription: To the memory of ANN JEWSON CRISP Who departed this life Deeply lamented, Jan. 20, 1889. Also, Her dog, Emperor. Beneath these tender lines is a bas-relief of as vicious-looking a cur as ever evaded the dog-tax. Continuing up the avenue, past this monument just noted, the kind old gardener will show you another that stands amid others much more pretentious--a small gray-granite column, and on it, carved in small letters, you read: "Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence." Here rests the body of "GEORGE ELIOT" (MARY ANN CROSS) Born 22 November, 1819. Died 22 December, 1880. THOMAS CARLYLE One comfort is that great men taken up in any way are profitable company. We can not look, however imperfectly, upon a great man without gaining something by it. He is the living fountain of life, which it is pleasant to be near. On any terms whatsoever you will not grudge to wander in his neighborhood for a while. --_Heroes and Hero-Worship_ [Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE] While on my way to Dumfries I stopped overnight at Gretna Green, which, as all fair maidens know, is in Scotland just over the border from England. To my delight I found that the coming of runaway couples to Gretna Green was not entirely a matter of the past, for the very evening I arrived a blushing pair came to the inn and inquired for a "meenister." The ladye faire was a little stout and the worthy swain several years older than my fancy might have wished, but still I did not complain. The landlord's boy was dispatched to the rectory around the corner and soon returned with the reverend gentleman. I was an uninvited guest in the little parlor, but no one observed that my wedding-garment was only a cycling costume, and I was not challenged. After the ceremony, the several other witnesses filed past the happy couple, congratulating them and kissing the bride. I did likewise, and was greeted with a resounding smack which surprised me a bit, but I managed to ask, "Did you run away?" "Noo," said the groom; "noo, her was a widdie--we just coom over fram Ecclefechan"; then, lowering his voice to a confidential whisper, "We're goin' baack on the morrow. It's cheaper thaan to ha' a big, spread weddin'." This answer banished all tender sentiment from me and made useless my plans for a dainty love-story, but I seized upon the name of the place whence they came. "Ecclefechan! Ecclefechan! Why that's where Carlyle was born!" "Aye, sir, and he's buried there; a great mon he was--but an infideel." Ten miles beyond Gretna Green is Ecclefechan--a little village of stucco houses all stretched out on one street. Plain, homely, rocky and unromantic is the country round about, and plain, homely and unromantic is the little house where Carlyle was born. The place is shown the visitor by a good old dame who takes one from room to room, giving a little lecture meanwhile in a mixture of Gaelic and English which was quite beyond my ken. Several relics of interest are shown, and although the house is almost precisely like all others in the vicinity, imagination throws round it all a roseate wreath of fancies. It has been left on record that up to the year when Carlyle was married, his "most pleasurable times were those when he enjoyed a quiet pipe with his mother." To few men indeed is this felicity vouchsafed. But for those who have eaten oatmeal porridge in the wayside cottages of bonny Scotland, or who love to linger over "The Cotter's Saturday Night," there is a touch of tender pathos in the picture. The stone floor, the bare, whitewashed walls, the peat smoldering on the hearth, sending out long, fitful streaks that dance among the rafters overhead, and the mother and son sitting there watching the coal--silent. The woman takes a small twig from a bundle of sticks, reaches over, lights it, applies it to her pipe, takes a few whiffs and passes the light to her son. Then they talk in low, earnest tones of man's duty to man and man's duty to God. And it was this mother who first applied the spark that fired Carlyle's ambition; it was from her that he got the germ of those talents which have made his name illustrious. Yet this woman could barely read and did not learn to write until her firstborn had gone away from the home nest. Then it was that she sharpened a gray goose-quill and labored long and patiently, practising with this instrument (said to be mightier than the sword) and with ink she herself had mixed--all that she might write a letter to her boy; and how sweetly, tenderly homely, and loving are these letters as we read them today! James Carlyle with his own hands built, in Seventeen Hundred Ninety, this house at Ecclefechan. The same year he married an excellent woman, a second cousin, by name Janet Carlyle. She lived but a year. The poor husband was heartbroken, and declared, as many men under like conditions had done before and have done since, that his sorrow was inconsolable. And he vowed that he would walk through life and down to his death alone. But it is a matter for congratulation that he broke his vow. In two years he married Margaret Aitken--a serving-woman. She bore nine children. Thomas was the eldest and the only one who proved recreant to the religious faith of his fathers. One of the brothers moved to Shiawassee County, Michigan, where I had the pleasure of calling on him, some years ago. A hard-headed man, he was: sensible, earnest, honest, with a stubby beard and a rich brogue. He held the office of school trustee, also that of pound-master, and I was told that he served his township loyally and well. This worthy man looked with small favor on the literary pretensions of his brother Tammas, and twice wrote him long letters expostulating with him on his religious vagaries. "I knew no good could come of it," sorrowfully said he, and so I left him. But I inquired of several of the neighbors what they thought of Thomas Carlyle, and I found that they did not think of him at all. And I mounted my beast and rode away. Thomas Carlyle was educated for the Kirk, and it was a cause of much sorrow to his parents that he could not accept its beliefs. He has been spoken of as England's chief philosopher, yet he subscribed to no creed, nor did he formulate one. However, in "Latter-Day Pamphlets" he partially prepares a catechism for a part of the brute creation. He supposes that all swine of superior logical powers have a "belief," and as they are unable to express it he essays the task for them. The following are a few of the postulates in this creed of The Brotherhood of Latter-Day Swine: "Question. Who made the Pig? "Answer. The Pork-Butcher. "Question. What is the Whole Duty of Pigs? "Answer. It is the mission of Universal Pighood; and the duty of all Pigs, at all times, is to diminish the quantity of attainable swill and increase the unattainable. This is the Whole Duty of Pigs. "Question. What is Pig Poetry? "Answer. It is the universal recognition of Pig's wash and ground barley, and the felicity of Pigs whose trough has been set in order and who have enough. "Question, What is justice in Pigdom? "Answer. It is the sentiment in Pig nature sometimes called revenge, indignation, etc., which if one Pig provoke, another comes out in more or less destructive manner; hence laws are necessary--amazing quantities of laws--defining what Pigs shall not do. "Question. What do you mean by equity? "Answer. Equity consists in getting your share from the Universal Swine-Trough, and part of another's. "Question. What is meant by 'your share'?" "Answer. My share is getting whatever I can contrive to seize without being made up into Side-Meat." I have slightly abridged this little extract and inserted it here to show the sympathy which Mr. Carlyle had for the dumb brute. One of America's great men, in a speech delivered not long ago, said, "From Scotch manners, Scotch religion and Scotch whisky, good Lord deliver us!" My experience with these three articles has been somewhat limited; but Scotch manners remind me of chestnut-burs--not handsome without, but good within. For when you have gotten beyond the rough exterior of Sandy you generally find a heart warm, tender and generous. Scotch religion is only another chestnut-bur, but then you need not eat the shuck if you fear it will not agree with your inward state. Nevertheless, if the example of royalty is of value, the fact can be stated that Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Empress of India, is a Presbyterian. That is, she is a Presbyterian about one-half the time--when she is in Scotland, for she is the head of the Scottish Kirk. When in England, of course she is an Episcopalian. We have often been told that religion is largely a matter of geography, and here is a bit of something that looks like proof. Of Scotch whisky I am not competent to speak, so that subject must be left to the experts. But a Kentucky colonel at my elbow declares that it can not be compared with the Blue-Grass article; though I trust that no one will be prejudiced against it on that account. Scotch intellect, however, is worthy of our serious consideration. It is a bold, rocky headland, standing out into the tossing sea of the Unknown. Assertive? Yes. Stubborn? Most surely. Proud? By all means. Twice as many pilgrims visit the grave of Burns as that of Shakespeare. Buckle declares Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" has had a greater influence on civilization than any other book ever writ--save none; and the average Scotchman knows his Carlyle a deal better than the average American knows his Emerson: in fact, four times as many of Carlyle's books have been printed. When Carlyle took time to bring the ponderous machinery of his intellect to bear on a theme, he saw it through and through. The vividness of his imagination gives us a true insight into times long since gone by; it shows virtue her own feature, vice her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. In history he goes beyond the political and conventional--showing us the thought, the hope, the fear, the passion of the soul. His was the masculine mind. The divination and subtle intuitions which are to be found scattered through his pages, like violets growing among the rank swale of the prairies--all these sweet, odorous things came from his wife. She gave him of her best thought, and he greedily absorbed it and unconsciously wrote it down as his own. There are those who blame and berate; volumes have been written to show the inconsiderateness of this man toward the gentle lady who was his intellectual comrade. But they know not life who do this thing. It is a fact that Carlyle never rushed to pick up Jeannie's handkerchief. I admit that he could not bow gracefully; that he could not sing tenor, nor waltz, nor tell funny stories, nor play the mandolin; and if I had been his neighbor I would not have attempted to teach him any of these accomplishments. Once he took his wife to the theater; and after the performance he accidentally became separated from her in the crowd and trudged off home alone and went to bed forgetting all about her---but even for this I do not indict him. Mrs. Carlyle never upbraided him for this forgetfulness, neither did she relate the incident to any one, and for these things I to her now reverently lift my hat. Jeannie Welsh Carlyle had capacity for pain, as it seems all great souls have. She suffered--but then suffering is not all suffering and pain is not all pain. Life is often dark, but then there are rifts in the clouds when we behold the glorious deep blue of the sky. Not a day passes but that the birds sing in the branches, and the tree-tops poise backward and forward in restful, rhythmic harmony, and never an hour goes by but that hope bears us up on her wings as the eagle does her young. And ever just before the year dies and the frost comes, the leaves take on a gorgeous hue and the color of the flowers then puts to shame for brilliancy all the plainer petals of Springtime. And I know Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle were happy, so happy, at times, that they laughed and cried for joy. Jeannie gave all, and she saw her best thought used--carried further, written out and given to the world as that of another--but she uttered no protest. Xantippe lives in history only because she sought to worry a great philosopher; we remember the daughter of Herodias because she demanded the head (not the heart) of a good man; Goneril and Regan because they trod upon the withered soul of their sire; Lady Macbeth because she lured her liege to murder; Charlotte Corday for her dagger-thrust; Lucrezia Borgia for her poison; Sapphira for her untruth; Jael because she pierced the brain of Sisera with a rusty nail (instead of an idea); Delilah for the reason that she deprived Samson of his source of strength; and in the "Westminster Review" for May, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, Ouida makes the flat statement that for every man of genius who has been helped by a woman, ten have been dragged down. But Jeannie Welsh Carlyle lives in the hearts of all who reverence the sweet, the gentle, the patient, the earnest, the loving spirit of the womanly woman: lives because she ministered to the needs of a great man. She was ever a frail body. Several long illnesses kept her to her bed for weeks, but she recovered from these, even in spite of the doctors, who thoroughly impressed both herself and her husband with the thought of her frailty. On April the Twenty-first, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-six, she called her carriage, as was her custom, and directed the driver to go through the park. She carried a book in her hands, and smiled a greeting to a friend as the brougham moved away from the little street where they lived. The driver drove slowly--drove for an hour--two. He got down from his box to receive the orders of his mistress, touched his hat as he opened the carriage-door, but no kindly eyes looked into his. She sat back in the corner as if resting; the shapely head a little thrown forward, the book held gently in the delicate hands, but the fingers were cold and stiff--Jeannie Welsh was dead--and Thomas Carlyle was alone. * * * * * Along the Thames, at Chelsea, opposite the rows of quiet and well-kept houses of Cheyne Walk, is the "Embankment." A parkway it is of narrow green, with graveled walks, bushes and trees, that here and there grow lush and lusty as if to hide the unsightly river from the good people who live across the street. Following this pleasant bit of breathing space, with its walks that wind in and out among the bushes, one comes unexpectedly upon a bronze statue. You need not read the inscription: a glance at that shaggy head, the grave, sober, earnest look, and you exclaim under your breath, "Carlyle!" In this statue the artist has caught with rare skill the look of reverie and repose. One can imagine that on a certain night, as the mists and shadows of evening were gathering along the dark river, the gaunt form, wrapped in its accustomed cloak, came stalking down the little street to the park, just as he did thousands of times, and taking his seat in the big chair fell asleep. In the morning the children that came to play along the river found the form in cold, enduring bronze. At the play we have seen the marble transformed by love into beauteous life. How much easier the reverse--here where souls stay only a day! Cheyne Row is a little, alley-like street, running only a block, with fifteen houses on one side, and twelve on the other. These houses are all brick and built right up to the sidewalk. On the north side they are all in one block, and one at first sees no touch of individuality in any of them. They are old, and solid, and plain--built for revenue only. On closer view I thought one or two had been painted, and on one there was a cornice that set it off from the rest. As I stood on the opposite side and looked at this row of houses, I observed that Number Five was the dingiest and plainest of them all. For there were dark shutters instead of blinds, and these shutters were closed, all save one rebel that swung and creaked in the breeze. Over the doorway, sparrows had made their nests and were fighting and scolding. Swallows hovered above the chimney; dust, cobwebs, neglect were all about. And as I looked there came to me the words of Ursa Thomas: "Brief, brawling day, with its noisy phantoms, its paper crowns, tinsel-gilt, is gone; and divine, everlasting night, with her star diadems, with her silences and her verities, is come." Here walked Thomas and Jeannie one fair May morning in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four. Thomas was thirty-nine, tall and swarthy, strong; with set mouth and three wrinkles on his forehead that told of care and dyspepsia. Jeannie was younger; her face winsome, just a trifle anxious, with luminous, gentle eyes, suggestive of patience, truth and loyalty. They looked like country folks, did these two. They examined the surroundings, consulted together--sixty pounds rent a year seemed very high! But they took the house, and T. Carlyle, son of James Carlyle, stone-mason, paid rent for it every month for half a century, lacking three years. I walked across the street and read the inscription on the marble tablet inserted in the front of the house above the lower windows. It informs the stranger that Thomas Carlyle lived here from Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four to Eighteen Hundred Eighty-one, and that the tablet was erected by the Carlyle Society of London. I ascended the stone steps and scraped my boots on the well-worn scraper, made long, long ago by a blacksmith who is now dust, and who must have been a very awkward mechanic, for I saw where he had made a misstroke with his hammer, probably as he discussed theology with a caller. Then I rang the bell and plied the knocker and waited there on the steps for Jeannie Welsh to come bid me welcome, just as she did Emerson when he, too, used the scraper and plied the knocker and stood where I did then. And my knock was answered--answered by a very sour and peevish woman next door, who thrust her head out of the window, and exclaimed in a shrill voice: "Look 'ere, sir, you might as well go rap on the curb-stone, don't you know; there's nobody livin' there, sir, don't you know!" "Yes, madam, that is why I knocked!" "Beggin' your pardon, sir, if you use your heyes you'll see there's nobody livin' there, don't you know!" "I knocked lest offense be given. How can I get in?" "You might go in through the keyhole, sir, or down the chimney. You seem to be a little daft, sir, don't you know! But if you must get in, perhaps it would be as well to go over to Mrs. Brown's and brang the key," and she slammed down the window. Across the street Mrs. Brown's sign smiled at me. Mrs. Brown keeps a little grocery and bakeshop and was very willing to show me the house. She fumbled in a black bag for the keys, all the time telling me of three Americans who came last week to see Carlyle's house, and "as how" they each gave her a shilling. I took the hint. "Only Americans care now for Mr. Carlyle," plaintively added the old lady as she fished out the keys; "soon we will all be forgot." We walked across the street and after several ineffectual attempts the rusty lock was made to turn. I entered. Cold, bare and bleak was the sight of those empty rooms. The old lady had a touch of rheumatism, so she waited for me on the doorstep as I climbed the stairs to the third floor. The noise-proof back room where "The French Revolution" was writ, twice over, was so dark that I had to grope my way across to the window. The sash stuck and seemed to have a will of its own, like him who so often had raised it. But at last it gave way and I flung wide the shutter and looked down at the little arbor where Teufelsdrockh sat so often and wooed wisdom with the weed brought from Virginia. Then I stood before the fireplace, where he of the Eternities had so often sat and watched the flickering embers. Here he lived in his loneliness and cursed curses that were prayers, and here for near five decades he read and thought and dreamed and wrote. Here the spirits of Cromwell and Frederick hovered; here that pitiful and pitiable long line of ghostly partakers in the Revolution answered to his roll-call. The wind whistled down the chimney gruesomely as my footfalls echoed through the silent chambers, and I thought I heard a sepulchral voice say: "Thy future life! Thy fate is it, indeed! Whilst thou makest that thy chief question, thy life to me and to thyself and to thy God is worthless. What is incredible to thee thou shalt not, at thy soul's peril, pretend to believe. Elsewhither for a refuge! Away! Go to perdition if thou wilt, but not with a lie in thy mouth--by the Eternal Maker, No!!" I was startled at first, but stood still listening; then I thought I saw a faint blue cloud of mist curling up in the fireplace. Watching this smoke and sitting before it in gloomy abstraction was the form of an old man. I swept my hand through the apparition, but still it stayed. My lips moved in spite of myself and I said: "Hail! hard-headed man of granite outcrop and heather, of fen and crag, of moor and mountain, and of bleak East wind, hail! Eighty-six years didst thou live. One hundred years lacking fourteen didst thou suffer, enjoy, weep, dream, groan, pray and strike thy rugged breast! And yet methinks that in those years there was much quiet peace and sweet content; for constant pain benumbs, and worry destroys, and vain unrest summons the grim messenger of death. But thou didst live and work and love; howbeit, thy touch was not always gentle, nor thy voice low; but on thy lips was no lie, in thy thought no concealment, in thy heart no pollution. But mark! thou didst come out of poverty and obscurity: on thy battered shield there was no crest and thou didst leave all to follow truth. And verily she did lead thee a merry chase! "Thou hadst no Past, but thou hast a Future. Thou didst say: 'Bury me in Westminster, never! where the mob surges, cursed with idle curiosity to see the graves of kings and nobodies? No! Take me back to rugged Scotland and lay my tired form to rest by the side of an honest man--my father.' "Thou didst refuse the Knighthood offered thee by royalty, saying, 'I am not the founder of the house of Carlyle and I have no sons to be pauperized by a title,' True, thou didst leave no sons after the flesh to mourn thy loss, nor fair daughters to bedeck thy grave with garlands, but thou didst reproduce thyself in thought, and on the minds of men thou didst leave thy impress. And thy ten thousand sons will keep thy memory green so long as men shall work, and toil, and strive, and hope." The wind still howled. I looked out and saw watery clouds scudding athwart the face of the murky sky. The shutters banged, and shut me in the dark. I made haste to find the door, reached the stairway--slid down the banisters to where Mrs. Brown was waiting for me at the threshold. We locked the door. She went across to her little bakeshop and I stopped a passing policeman to ask the way to Westminster. He told me. "Did you visit Carlyle's 'ouse?" he asked. "Yes." "With old Mrs. Brown?" "Yes, she waited for me in the doorway--she had the rheumatism so she could not climb the stairs." "Rheumatism? Huh!--you couldn't 'ire 'er to go inside. Why, don't you know? They say the 'ouse is 'aunted!" JOHN RUSKIN Put roses in their hair, put precious stones on their breasts; see that they are clothed in purple and scarlet, with other delights; that they also learn to read the gilded heraldry of the sky; and upon the earth be taught not only the labors of it but the loveliness. --_Deucalion_ [Illustration: JOHN RUSKIN] At Windermere, a good friend, told me that I must abandon all hope of seeing Mr. Ruskin; for I had no special business with him, no letters of introduction, and then the fact that I am an American made it final. Americans in England are supposed to pick flowers in private gardens, cut their names on trees, laugh boisterously at trifles, and often to make invidious comparisons. Very properly, Mr. Ruskin does not admire these things. Then Mr. Ruskin is a very busy man. Occasionally he issues a printed manifesto to his friends requesting them to give him peace. A copy of one such circular was shown to me. It runs, "Mr. J. Ruskin is about to begin a work of great importance, and therefore begs that in reference to calls and correspondence you will consider him dead for the next two months." A similar notice is reproduced in "Arrows of the Chace," and this one thing, I think, illustrates as forcibly as anything in Mr. Ruskin's work the self-contained characteristics of the man himself. Surely if a man is pleased to be considered "dead" occasionally, even to his kinsmen and friends, he should not be expected to receive with open arms an enemy to steal away his time. This is assuming, of course, that all individuals who pick flowers in other folks' gardens, cut their names on trees, and laugh boisterously at trifles, are enemies. I therefore decided that I would simply walk over to Brantwood, view it from a distance, tramp over its hills, row across the lake, and at nightfall take a swim in its waters. Then I would rest at the Inn for a space and go my way. Lake Coniston is ten miles from Grasmere, and even alone the walk is not long. If, however, you are delightfully attended by "King's Daughters" with whom you sit and commune now and then on the bankside, the distance will seem to be much less. Then there is a pleasant little break in the journey at Hawkshead. Here one may see the quaint old schoolhouse where Wordsworth when a boy dangled his feet from a bench and proved his humanity by carving his initials on the seat. The Inn at the head of Coniston Water appeared very inviting and restful when I saw it that afternoon. Built in sections from generation to generation, half-covered with ivy and embowered in climbing roses, it is an institution entirely different from the "Grand Palace Hotel" at Oshkosh. In America we have gongs that are fiercely beaten at stated times by gentlemen of color, just as they are supposed to do in their native Congo jungles. This din proclaims to the "guests" and to the public at large that it is time to come in and be fed. But this refinement of civilization is not yet in Coniston, and the Inn is quiet and homelike. You may go to bed when you are tired, get up when you choose, and eat when you are hungry. There were no visitors about when I arrived, and I thought I would have the coffeeroom all to myself at luncheon-time; but presently there came in a pleasant-faced old gentleman in knickerbockers. He bowed to me and then took a place at the table. He said that it was a fine day and I agreed with him, adding that the mountains were very beautiful. He assented, putting in a codicil to the effect that the lake was very pretty. Then the waiter came for our orders. "Together, I s'pose?" remarked Thomas, inquiringly, as he halted at the door and balanced the tray on his finger-tips. "Yes, serve lunch for us together," said the ruddy old gentleman as he looked at me and smiled; "to eat alone is bad for the digestion." I nodded assent. "Can you tell me how far it is to Brantwood?" I asked. "Oh, not far--just across the lake." He arose and flung the shutter open so I could see the old, yellow house about a mile across the water, nestling in its wealth of green on the hillside. Soon the waiter brought our lunch, and while we discussed the chops and new potatoes we talked Ruskiniana. The old gentleman knew a deal more of "Stones of Venice" and "Modern Painters" than I; but I told him how Thoreau introduced Ruskin to America and how Concord was the first place in the New World to recognize this star in the East. And upon my saying this, the old gentleman brought his knife-handle down on the table, declaring that Thoreau and Whitman were the only two men of genius that America had produced. I begged him to make it three and include Emerson, which he finally consented to do. By and by the waiter cleared the table preparatory to bringing in the coffee. The old gentleman pushed his chair back, took the napkin from under his double chin, brushed the crumbs from his goodly front, and remarked: "I'm going over to Brantwood this afternoon to call on Mr. Ruskin--just to pay my respects to him, as I always do when I come here. Can't you go with me?" I think this was about the most pleasing question I ever had asked me. I was going to request him to "come again" just for the joy of hearing the words, but I pulled my dignity together, straightened up, swallowed my coffee red-hot, pushed my chair back, flourished my napkin, and said, "I shall be very pleased to go." So we went--we two--he in his knickerbockers and I in my checks and outing-shirt. I congratulated myself on looking no worse than he, and as for him, he never seemed to think that our costumes were not exactly what they should be; and after all it matters little how you dress when you call on one of Nature's noblemen--they demand no livery. We walked around the northern end of Coniston Water, along the eastern edge, past Tent House, where Tennyson once lived (and found it "outrageous quiet"), and a mile farther on we came to Brantwood. The road curves in to the back of the house--which, by the way, is the front--and the driveway is lined with great trees that form a complete archway. There is no lodge-keeper, no flowerbeds laid out with square and compass, no trees trimmed to appear like elephants, no cast-iron dogs, nor terra-cotta deer, and, strangest of all, no sign of the lawn-mower. There is nothing, in fact, to give forth a sign that the great Apostle of Beauty lives in this very old-fashioned spot. Big boulders are to be seen here and there where Nature left them, tangles of vines running over old stumps, part of the meadow cut close with a scythe, and part growing up as if the owner knew the price of hay. Then there are flowerbeds, where grow clusters of poppies and hollyhocks (purple, and scarlet, and white), prosaic gooseberry-bushes, plain Yankee pieplant (from which the English make tarts), rue and sweet marjoram, with patches of fennel, sage, thyme and catnip, all lined off with boxwood, making me think of my grandmother's garden at Roxbury. On the hillside above the garden we saw the entrance to the cave that Mr. Ruskin once filled with ice, just to show the world how to keep its head cool at small expense. He even wrote a letter to the papers giving the bright idea to humanity--that the way to utilize caves was to fill them with ice. Then he forgot all about the matter. But the following June, when the cook, wishing to make some ice-cream as a glad surprise for the Sunday dinner, opened the natural ice-chest, she found only a pool of muddy water, and exclaimed, "Botheration!" Then they had custard instead of ice-cream. We walked up the steps, and my friend let the brass knocker drop just once, for only Americans give a rat-a-tat-tat, and the door was opened by a white-whiskered butler, who took our cards and ushered us into the library. My heart beat a trifle fast as I took inventory of the room; for I never before had called on a man who was believed to have refused the poet-laureateship. A dimly lighted room was this library--walls painted brown, running up to mellow yellow at the ceiling, high bookshelves, with a stepladder, and only five pictures on the walls, and of these three were etchings, and two water-colors of a very simple sort; leather-covered chairs; a long table in the center, on which were strewn sundry magazines and papers, also several photographs; and at one end of the room a big fireplace, where a yew log smoldered. Here my inventory was cut short by a cheery voice behind: "Ah! now, gentlemen, I am glad to see you." There was no time nor necessity for a formal introduction. The great man took my hand as if he had always known me, as perhaps he thought he had. Then he greeted my friend in the same way, stirred up the fire, for it was a North of England summer day, and took a seat by the table. We were all silent for a space--a silence without embarrassment. "You are looking at the etching over the fireplace--it was sent to me by a young lady in America," said Mr. Ruskin, "and I placed it there to get acquainted with it. I like it more and more. Do you know the scene?" I knew the scene and explained somewhat about it. Mr. Ruskin has the faculty of making his interviewer do most of the talking. He is a rare listener, and leans forward, putting a hand behind his right ear to get each word you say. He was particularly interested in the industrial conditions of America, and I soon found myself "occupying the time," while an occasional word of interrogation from Mr. Ruskin gave me no chance to stop. I came to hear him, not to defend our "republican experiment," as he was pleased to call the United States of America. Yet Mr. Ruskin was so gentle and respectful in his manner, and so complimentary in his attitude of listener, that my impatience at his want of sympathy for our "experiment" only caused me to feel a little heated. "The fact of women being elected to mayoralties in Kansas makes me think of certain African tribes that exalt their women into warriors--you want your women to fight your political battles!" "You evidently hold the same opinion on the subject of equal rights that you expressed some years ago," interposed my companion. "What did I say--really I have forgotten?" "You replied to a correspondent, saying: 'You are certainly right as to my views respecting the female franchise. So far from wishing to give votes to women, I would fain take them away from most men.'" "Surely that was a sensible answer. My respect for woman is too great to force on her increased responsibilities. Then as for restricting the franchise with men, I am of the firm conviction that no man should be allowed to vote who does not own property, or who can not do considerably more than read and write. The voter makes the laws, and why should the laws regulating the holding of property be made by a man who has no interest in property beyond a covetous desire; or why should he legislate on education when he possesses none! Then again, women do not bear arms to protect the State." "But what do you say to Mrs. Carlock, who answers that inasmuch as men do not bear children, they have no right to vote: going to war possibly being necessary and possibly not, but the perpetuity of the State demanding that some one bear children?" "The lady's argument is ingenious, but lacks force when we consider that the bearing of arms is a matter relating to statecraft, while the baby question is Dame Nature's own, and is not to be regulated even by the sovereign." Then Mr. Ruskin talked for nearly fifteen minutes on the duty of the State to the individual--talked very deliberately, but with the clearness and force of a man who believes what he says and says what he believes. Thus, my friend, by a gentle thrust under the fifth rib of Mr. Ruskin's logic, caused him to come to the rescue of his previously expressed opinions, and we had the satisfaction of hearing him discourse earnestly and eloquently. Maiden ladies usually have an opinion ready on the subject of masculine methods, and, conversely, much of the world's logic on the "woman question" has come from the bachelor brain. Mr. Ruskin went quite out of his way on several occasions in times past to attack John Stuart Mill for heresy "in opening up careers for women other than that of wife and mother." When Mill did not answer Mr. Ruskin's newspaper letters, the author of "Sesame and Lilies" called him a "cretinous wretch" and referred to him as "the man of no imagination." Mr. Mill may have been a cretinous wretch (I do not exactly understand the phrase), but the preface to "On Liberty" is at once the tenderest, highest and most sincere compliment paid to a woman, of which I know. The life of Mr. and Mrs. John Stuart Mill shows that perfect mating is possible; yet Mr. Ruskin has only scorn for the opinions of Mr. Mill on a subject which Mill came as near personally solving in a matrimonial "experiment" as any other public man of modern times, not excepting even Robert Browning. Therefore we might suppose Mr. Mill entitled to speak on the woman question, and I intimated as much to Mr. Ruskin. "He might know all about one woman, and if he should regard her as a sample of all womankind, would he not make a great mistake?" I was silenced. In "Fors Clavigera," Letter LIX, the author says: "I never wrote a letter in my life which all the world is not welcome to read." From this one might imagine that Mr. Ruskin never loved--no pressed flowers in books; no passages of poetry double-marked and scored; no bundles of letters faded and yellow, sacred for his own eye, tied with white or dainty blue ribbon; no little nothings hidden away in the bottom of a trunk. And yet Mr. Ruskin has his ideas on the woman question, and very positive ideas they are too--often sweetly sympathetic and wisely helpful. I see that one of the encyclopedias mentions Ruskin as a bachelor, which is giving rather an extended meaning to the word, for although Mr. Ruskin married, he was not mated. According to Collingwood's account, this marriage was a quiet arrangement between parents. Anyway, the genius is like the profligate in this: when he marries he generally makes a woman miserable. And misery is reactionary as well as infectious. Ruskin is a genius. Genius is unique. No satisfactory analysis of it has yet been given. We know a few of its indications--that's all. First among these is ability to concentrate. No seed can sow genius; no soil can grow it: its quality is inborn and defies both cultivation and extermination. To be surpassed is never pleasant; to feel your inferiority is to feel a pang. Seldom is there a person great enough to find satisfaction in the success of a friend. The pleasure that excellence gives is oft tainted by resentment; and so the woman who marries a genius is usually unhappy. Genius is excess: it is obstructive to little plans. It is difficult to warm yourself at a conflagration; the tempest may blow you away; the sun dazzles; lightning seldom strikes gently; the Nile overflows. Genius has its times of straying off into the infinite--and then what is the good wife to do for companionship? Does she protest, and find fault? It could not be otherwise, for genius is dictatorial without knowing it, obstructive without wishing to be, intolerant unawares, and unsocial because it can not help it. The wife of a genius sometimes takes his fits of abstraction for stupidity, and having the man's interests at heart she endeavors to arouse him from his lethargy by chiding him. Occasionally he arouses enough to chide back; and so it has become an axiom that genius is not domestic. A short period of mismated life told the wife of Ruskin their mistake, and she told him. But Mrs. Grundy was at the keyhole, ready to tell the world, and so Mr. and Mrs. Ruskin sought to deceive society by pretending to live together. They kept up this appearance for six sorrowful years, and then the lady simplified the situation by packing her trunks and deliberately leaving her genius to his chimeras; her soul doubtless softened by the knowledge that she was bestowing a benefit on him by going away. The lady afterwards became the happy wife and helpmeet of a great artist. Ruskin's father was a prosperous importer of wines. He left his son a fortune equal to a little more than one million dollars. But that vast fortune has gone---principal and interest--gone in bequests, gifts and experiments; and today Mr. Ruskin has no income save that derived from the sale of his books. Talk about "Distribution of Wealth"! Here we have it. The bread-and-butter question has never troubled John Ruskin except in his ever-ardent desire that others should be fed. His days have been given to study and writing from his very boyhood; he has made money, but he has had no time to save it. He has expressed himself on every theme that interests mankind, except perhaps "housemaid's knee." He has written more letters to the newspapers than "Old Subscriber," "Fiat Justitia," "Indignant Reader" and "Veritas" combined. His opinions have carried much weight and directed attention into necessary lines; but perhaps his success as an inspirer of thought lies in the fact that his sense of humor exists only as a trace, as the chemist might say. Men who perceive the ridiculous would never have voiced many of the things which he has said. Surely those Sioux Indians who stretched a hay lariat across the Union Pacific Railroad in order to stop the running of trains had small sense of the ridiculous. But it looks as if they were apostles of Ruskin, every one. Some one has said that no man can appreciate the beautiful who has not a keen sense of humor. For the beautiful is the harmonious, and the laughable is the absence of fit adjustment. Mr. Ruskin disproves the maxim. But let no hasty soul imagine that John Ruskin's opinions on practical themes are not useful. He brings to bear an energy on every subject he touches (and what subject has he not touched?) that is sure to make the sparks of thought fly. His independent and fearless attitude awakens from slumber a deal of dozing intellect, and out of this strife of opinion comes truth. On account of Mr. Ruskin's refusing at times to see visitors, reports have gone abroad that his mind was giving way. Not so, for although he is seventy-four he is as serenely stubborn as he ever was. His opposition to new inventions in machinery has not relaxed a single pulley's turn. You grant his premises and in his conclusions you will find that his belt never slips, and that his logic never jumps a cog. His life is as regular and exact as the trains on the Great Western, and his days are more peaceful than ever before. He has regular hours for writing, study, walking, reading, eating, and working out of doors, superintending the cultivation of his hundred acres. He told me that he had not varied a half-hour in two years from a certain time of going to bed or getting up in the morning. Although his form is bowed, this regularity of life has borne fruit in the rich russet of his complexion, the mild, clear eye, and the pleasure in living in spite of occasional pain, which you know the man feels. His hair is thick and nearly white; the beard is now worn quite long and gives a patriarchal appearance to the fine face. When we arose to take our leave, Mr. Ruskin took a white felt hat from the elk-antlers in the hallway and a stout stick from the corner, and offered to show us a nearer way back to the village. We walked down a footpath through the tall grass to the lake, where he called our attention to various varieties of ferns that he had transplanted there. We shook hands with the old gentleman and thanked him for the pleasure he had given us. He was still examining the ferns when we lifted our hats and bade him good-day. He evidently did not hear us, for I heard him mutter: "I verily believe those miserable Cook's tourists that were down here yesterday picked some of my ferns." WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE As the aloe is said to flower only once in a hundred years, so it seems to be but once in a thousand years that Nature blossoms into this unrivaled product and produces such a man as we have here. --_Gladstone, "Lecture on Homer_" [Illustration: WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE] American travelers in England are said to accumulate sometimes large and unique assortments of lisps, drawls and other very peculiar things. Of the value of these acquirements as regards their use and beauty, I have not room here to speak. But there is one adjunct which England has that we positively need, and that is "Boots." It may be that Boots is indigenous to England's soil, and that when transplanted he withers and dies; perhaps there is a quality in our atmosphere that kills him. Anyway, we have no Boots. When trouble, adversity or bewilderment comes to the homesick traveler in an American hotel, to whom can he turn for consolation? Alas, the porter is afraid of the "guest," and all guests are afraid of the clerk, and the proprietor is never seen, and the Afro-Americans in the dining-room are stupid, and the chambermaid does not answer the ring, and at last the weary wanderer hies him to the barroom and soon discovers that the worthy "barkeep" has nothing to recommend him but his diamond-pin. How different, yes, how different, this would all be if Boots were only here! At the quaint old city of Chester I was met at the "sti-shun" by the Boots of that excellent though modest hotel which stands only a block away. Boots picked out my baggage without my looking for it, took me across to the Inn, and showed me to the daintiest, most homelike little room I had seen for weeks. On the table was a tastefully decorated "jug," evidently just placed there in anticipation of my arrival, and in this jug was a large bunch of gorgeous roses, the morning dew still on them. When Boots had brought me hot water for shaving he disappeared and did not come back until, by the use of telepathy (for Boots is always psychic), I had sent him a message that he was needed. In the afternoon he went with me to get a draft cashed, then he identified me at the post-office, and introduced me to a dignitary at the cathedral whose courtesy added greatly to my enjoyment of the visit. The next morning after breakfast, when I returned to my room, everything was put to rights and a fresh bouquet of cut flowers was on the mantel. A good breakfast adds much to one's inward peace: I sat down before the open window and looked out at the great oaks dotting the green meadows that stretched away to the north, and listened to the drowsy tinkle of sheep-bells as the sound came floating in on the perfumed breeze. I was thinking how good it was to be here, when the step of Boots was heard in the doorway. I turned and saw that mine own familiar friend had lost a little of his calm self-reliance--in fact, he was a bit agitated, but he soon recovered his breath. "Mr. Gladstone and 'is Lady 'ave just arrived, sir--they will be 'ere for an hour before taking the train for Lunnon, sir. I told 'is clark there was a party of Americans 'ere that were very anxious to meet 'im, and he will receive you in the parlor in fifteen minutes, sir." Then it was my turn to be agitated. But Boots reassured me by explaining that the Grand Old Man was just the plainest, most unpretentious gentleman one could imagine; that it was not at all necessary that I should change my suit; that I should pronounce it Gladstun, not Glad-stone, and that it was Harden, not Ha-war-den. Then he stood me up, looked me over, and declared that I was all right. On going downstairs I found that Boots had gotten together five Americans who happened to be in the hotel. He introduced us to a bright little man who seemed to be the companion or secretary of the Prime Minister; he, in turn, took us into the parlor where Mr. Gladstone sat reading the morning paper, and presented us one by one to the great man. We were each greeted with a pleasant word and a firm grasp of the hand, and then the old gentleman turned and with a courtly flourish said, "Gentlemen, allow me to present you to Mrs. Gladstone." Mr. Gladstone was wise: he remained standing; this was sure to shorten the interview. A clergyman in our party who had an impressive cough and bushy whiskers, acted as spokesman, and said several pleasant things, closing his little speech by informing Mr. Gladstone that Americans held him in great esteem, and that we only regretted that Fate had not decreed that he should have been born in the United States. Mr. Gladstone replied, "Fate is often unkind." Then he asked if we were going to London. On being told that we were, he spoke for five minutes about the things we should see in the Metropolis. His style was not conversational, but after the manner of a man who was much used to speaking in public or to receiving delegations. The sentences were stately, the voice rather loud and declamatory. His closing words were: "Yes, gentlemen, the way to see London is from the top of a 'bus--from the top of a 'bus, gentlemen." Then there was an almost imperceptible wave of the hand, and we knew that the interview was ended. In a moment we were outside and the door was closed. The five Americans who made up our little company had never met before, but now we were as brothers; we adjourned to a side-room to talk it over and tell of the things we intended to say but didn't. We all talked and talked at once, just as people do who have recently preserved an enforced silence. "How ill-fitting was that gray suit!" "Yes, the sleeves too long." "Did you notice the absence of the forefinger of his left hand--shot off in Eighteen Hundred Forty-five while hunting, they say." "But how strong his voice is!" "He looks like a farmer." "Eighty-five years of age! Think of it, and how vigorous!" Then the preacher spoke and his voice was sorrowful: "Oh, but I made a botch of it--was it sarcasm or was it not?" "Was what sarcasm?" "When Mr. Gladstone said that Fate was unkind in not having him born in the United States!" And we were all silent. Then Boots came in, and we put the question to Boots, who decided it was not sarcasm. The next day, when we went away, we rewarded Boots bountifully. * * * * * William Gladstone is England's glory. Yet there is no English blood in his veins; his parents were Scotch. Aside from Lord Brougham, he is the only Scotchman who has ever taken a prominent part in British statecraft. The name as we first find it is Gled-stane, "gled" being a hawk--literally, a hawk that lives among the stones. Surely the hawk is fully as respectable a bird as the eagle, and a goodly amount of granite in the clay that is used to make a man is no disadvantage. The name fits. There are deep-rooted theories in the minds of many men (and still more women) that bad boys make good men, and that a dash of the pirate, even in a prelate, does not disqualify. But I wish to come to the defense of the Sunday-school story-books and show that their very prominent moral is right after all: it pays to be "good." William Ewart Gladstone was sent to Eton when twelve years of age. From the first, his conduct was a model of propriety. He attended every chapel service, and said his prayers in the morning and before going to bed at night; he could repeat the catechism backwards or forwards, and recite more verses of Scripture than any other boy in school. He always spoke the truth. He never played "hookey"; nor, as he grew older, would he tell stories of doubtful flavor, or allow others to relate such in his presence. His influence was for good, and Cardinal Manning has said that there was less wine drunk at Oxford during the Forties than would have been the case if Gladstone had not been there in the Thirties. He graduated from Christchurch with the highest possible honors the college could bestow, and at twenty-two he seemed like one who had sprung into life full-armed. At that time he had magnificent health, a fine form, vast and varied knowledge, and a command of language so great that he was a master of forensics. His speeches were fully equal to his later splendid efforts. In feature he was handsome: the face bold and masculine; eyes of piercing luster; and hair, which he tossed when in debate, like a lion's mane. He could speak five languages, sing tenor, dance gracefully, and was on more than speaking terms with many of the best and greatest men in England. Besides all this he was rich in British gold. Now, here is a combination of good things that would send most young men straight to perdition--not so Gladstone. He took the best care of his health, systematized his time as a miser might, listened not to the flatterers, and used his money only for good purposes. His intention was to enter the Church, but his father said, "Not yet," and half-forced him into politics. So, at this early age of twenty-two, he ran for Parliament, was elected, and has practically never been out of the shadow of Westminster Palace during these sixty-odd years. At thirty-three, he was a member of the Cabinet. At thirty-six, his absolute honesty compelled him for conscience' sake to resign from the Ministry. His opponents then said, "Gladstone is an extinct volcano," and they have said this again and again; but somehow the volcano always breaks out in a new place, stronger and brighter than ever. It is difficult to subdue a volcano. When twenty-nine, he married Catherine Glynne, sister and heir of Sir Stephen Glynne, Baronet. The marriage was most fortunate in every way. For over fifty years this most excellent woman has been his comrade, counselor, consolation, friend--his wife. "How can any adversity come to him who hath a wife?" said Chaucer. If this splendid woman had died, then his opponents might truthfully have said, "Gladstone is an extinct volcano"; but she is still with him, and a short time ago, when he had to undergo an operation for cataract, this woman of eighty was his only nurse. The influence of Gladstone has been of untold value to England. His ideals for national action have been high. To the material prosperity of the country he has added millions upon millions; he has made education popular, and schooling easy; his policy in the main has been such as to command the admiration of the good and great. But there are spots on the sun. On reading Mr. Gladstone's books I find he has vigorously defended certain measures that seem unworthy of his genius. He has palliated human slavery as a "necessary evil"; has maintained the visibility and divine authority of the Church; has asserted the mathematical certainty of the historic episcopate, the mystical efficacy of the sacraments; and has vindicated the Church of England as the God-appointed guardian of truth. He has fought bitterly any attempt to improve the divorce-laws of England. Much has been done in this line, even in spite of his earnest opposition, but we now owe it to Mr. Gladstone that there is on England's law-books a statute providing that if a wife leaves her husband he can invoke a magistrate, whose duty it will then be to issue a writ and give it to an officer, who will bring her back. More than this, when the officer has returned the woman, the loving husband has the legal right to "reprove" her. Just what reprove means the courts have not yet determined; for, in a recent decision, when a costermonger admitted having given his lady "a taste of the cat," the prisoner was discharged on the ground that it was only needed reproof. I would not complain of this law if it worked both ways; but no wife can demand that the State shall return her "man" willy-nilly. And if she administers reproof to her mate, she does it without the sanction of the Sovereign. However, in justice to Englishmen, it should be stated that while this unique law still stands on the statute-books, it is very seldom that a man in recent years has stooped to invoke it. On all the questions I have named, from slavery to divorce, Mr. Gladstone has used the "Bible argument." But as the years have gone by, his mind has become liberalized, and on many points where he was before zealous he is now silent. In Eighteen Hundred Forty-one, he argued with much skill and ingenuity that Jews were not entitled to full rights of citizenship, but in Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven, acknowledging his error, he took the other side. During the War of Secession the sympathies of England's Chancellor of the Exchequer were with the South. Speaking at Newcastle on October Ninth, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, he said, "Jefferson Davis has undoubtedly founded a new nation." But five years passed, and he publicly confessed that he was wrong. Here is a man who, if he should err deeply, is yet so great that, like Cotton Mather, he might not hesitate to stand uncovered on the street-corners and ask the forgiveness of mankind. Such men are saved by their enemies. Their own good and the good of humanity require that their balance of power shall not be too great. Had the North gone down, Gladstone might never have seen his mistake. In this instance and in many others, he has not been the leader of progress, but its echo: truth has been forced upon him. His passionate earnestness, his intense volition, his insensibility to moral perspective, his blindness to the sense of proportion, might have led him into dangerous excess and frightful fanatical error, if it were not for the fact that such men create an opposition that is their salvation. To analyze a character so complex as Mr. Gladstone's requires the grasp of genius. We speak of "the duality of the human mind," but here are half a dozen spirits in one. They rule in turn, and occasionally several of them struggle for the mastery. When the Fisk Jubilee Singers visited England, we find Gladstone dropping the affairs of State to hear their music. He invited them to Hawarden, where he sang with them. So impressed was he with the negro melodies that he anticipated that idea which has since been materialized: the founding of a national school of music that would seek to perfect in a scientific way these soul-stirring strains. He might have made a poet of no mean order; for his devotion to spiritual and physical beauty has made him a lifelong admirer of Homer and Dante. Those who have met him when the mood was upon him have heard him recite by the hour from the "Iliad" in the original. And yet the theology of Homer belongs to the realm of natural religion with which Mr. Gladstone has little patience. A prominent member of the House of Commons once said, "The only two things that the Prime Minister really cares for are religion and finance." The statement comes near truth; for the chief element in Mr. Gladstone's character is his devotion to religion; and his signal successes have been in the line of economics. He believes in Free Trade as the gospel of social salvation. He revels in figures; he has price, value, consumption, distribution, import, export, fluctuation, all at his tongue's end, ready to hurl at any one who ventures on a hasty generalization. And it is a significant fact that in his strong appeal for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the stress of his argument was put on the point that the Irish Church was not in the line of the apostolic succession. Mr. Gladstone is grave, sober, earnest, proud, passionate, and at times romantic to a rare degree. He rebukes, refutes, contradicts, defies, and has a magnificent capacity for indignation. He will roar you like a lion, his eyes will flash, and his clenched fist will shake as he denounces that which he believes to be error. And yet among inferiors he will consult, defer, inquire, and show a humility, a forced suavity, that has given the caricaturist excuse. In his home he is gentle, amiable, always kind, social and hospitable. He loves deeply, and his friends revere him to a point that is but little this side of idolatry. And surely their affection is not misplaced. Some day a Plutarch without a Plutarch's prejudice will arise, and with malice toward none, but with charity for all, he will write the life of the statesman, Gladstone. Over against this he will write the life of an American statesman. The name he will choose will be that of one born in a log hut in the forest; who was rocked by the foot of a mother whose hands meanwhile were busy at her wheel; who had no schooling, no wise and influential friends; who had few books and little time to read; who knew no formal religion; who never traveled out of his own country; who had no helpmeet, but who walked solitary--alone, a man of sorrows; down whose homely, furrowed face the tears of pity often ran, and yet whose name, strange paradox! stands in many minds as a symbol of mirth. And when the master comes, who has the power to portray with absolute fidelity the greatness of these two men, will it be to the disadvantage of the American? * * * * * The village of Hawarden is in Flintshire, North Wales. It is seven miles from Chester. I walked the distance one fine June morning--out across the battlefield where Cromwell's army crushed that of Charles; and on past old stone walls and stately elms. There had been a shower the night before, but the morning sun came out bright and warm and made the raindrops glisten like beads as they clung to each leaf and flower. Larks sang and soared, and great flocks of crows called and cawed as they flew lazily across the sky. It was a time for silent peace, and quiet joy, and serene thankfulness for life and health. I walked leisurely, and in a little over two hours reached Hawarden--a cluster of plain stone houses with climbing vines and flowers and gardens, which told of homely thrift and simple tastes. I went straight to the old stone church, which is always open, and rested for half an hour, listening to the organ on which a young girl was practising, instructed by a white-haired old gentleman. The church is dingy and stained inside and out by time. The pews are irregular, some curiously carved, and all stiff and uncomfortable. I walked around and read the inscriptions on the walls, and all the time the young girl played and the old gentleman beat time, and neither noticed my presence. One brass tablet I saw was to a woman "who for long years was a faithful servant at Hawarden Castle--erected in gratitude by W.E.G." Near this was a memorial to W.H. Gladstone, son of the Premier, who died in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-one. Then there were inscriptions to various Glynnes and several others whose names appear in English history. I stood at the reading-desk, where the great man has so often read, and marked the spot where William Ewart Gladstone and Catherine Glynne knelt when they were married here in July, Eighteen Hundred Thirty-nine. A short distance from the church is the entrance to Hawarden Park. This fine property was the inheritance of Mrs. Gladstone; the park itself seems to belong to the public. If Mr. Gladstone were a plain citizen, people, of course, would not come by hundreds and picnic on his preserve, but serving the State, he and his possessions belong to the people, and this democratic familiarity is rather pleasing than otherwise. So great has been the throng in times past, that an iron fence had to be placed about the ivy-covered ruins of the ancient castle, to protect it from those who threatened to carry it away by the pocketful. A wall has also been put around the present "castle" (more properly, house). This was done some years ago, I was told by the butler, after a torchlight procession of a thousand enthusiastic admirers had come down from Liverpool and trampled Mrs. Gladstone's flowers into "smithereens." The park contains many hundred acres, and is as beautiful as an English park can be, and this is praise superlative. Flocks of sheep wander over the soft, green turf, and beneath the spreading trees are sleek cows which seem used to visitors, and with big, open eyes come up to be petted. Occasional signs are seen: "Please spare the trees." Some people suppose that this is an injunction which Mr. Gladstone himself has never observed. But when in his tree-cutting days, no monarch of the forest was ever felled without its case being fully tried by the entire household. Ruskin, once, visiting at Hawarden, sat as judge, and after listening to the evidence gave sentence against several trees that were rotten at the core or overshadowing their betters. Then the Prime Minister shouldered his faithful "snickersnee" and went forth as executioner. I looked in vain for stumps, and on inquiry was told that they were all dug out, and the ground leveled so no trace was left of the offender. The "lady of the house" at Hawarden is the second daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. All accounts agree that she is a most capable and excellent woman. She is her father's "home secretary" and confidante, and in his absence takes full charge of the mail and looks after important business affairs. Her husband, the Reverend Harry Drew, is rector of Hawarden Church. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Drew and found him very cordial and perfectly willing to talk about the great man who is grandfather to his baby. We also talked of America, and I soon surmised that Mr. Drew's ideas of "The States" were largely derived from a visit to the Wild West Show. So I put the question to him direct: "Did you see Buffalo Bill?" "Oh, yes." "And did Mr. Gladstone go?" "Not only once, but three times, and he cheered as loudly as any boy." The Gladstone residence is a great, rambling, stone structure to which additions have been made from one generation to another. The towers and battlements are merely architectural appendiculæ, but the effect of the whole, when viewed from a distance, rising out of its wealth of green and backed by the forest, is very imposing. I entered only the spacious front hallway and one room--the library. Bookshelves and books and more books were everywhere; several desks of different designs (one an American roll-top), as if the owner transacted business at one, translated Homer at another, and wrote social letters from a third. Then there were several large Japanese vases, a tiger-skin, beautiful rugs, a few large paintings, and in a rack a full dozen axes and twice as many "sticks." The whole place has an air of easy luxury that speaks of peace and plenty, of quiet and rest, of gentle thoughts and calm desires. As I walked across toward the village, the church-bell slowly pealed the hour; over the distant valley, night hovered; a streak of white mist, trailing like a thin veil, marked the passage of the murmuring brook. I thought of the grand old man over whose domain I was now treading, and my wonder was, not that one should live so long and still be vigorous, but that a man should live in such an idyllic spot, with love and books to keep him company, and yet grow old. J.M.W. TURNER I believe that these works of Turner's are at their first appearing as perfect as those of Phidias or Leonardo, that is to say, incapable of any improvement conceivable by human mind. --_John Ruskin_ [Illustration: J.M.W. TURNER] The beauty of the upper Thames with its fairy house-boats and green banks has been sung by poets, but rash is the minstrel who tunes his lyre to sound the praises of this muddy stream in the vicinity of Chelsea. As yellow as the Tiber and thick as the Missouri after a flood, it comes twice a day bearing upon its tossing tide a unique assortment of uncanny sights and sickening smells from the swarming city of men below. Chelsea was once a country village six miles from London Bridge. Now the far-reaching arms of the metropolis have taken it as her own. Chelsea may be likened to some rare spinster, grown old with years and good works, and now having a safe home with a rich and powerful benefactress. Yet Chelsea is not handsome in her old age, and Chelsea was not pretty in youth, nor fair to view in middle life; but Chelsea has been the foster-mother of several of the rarest and fairest souls who have ever made the earth pilgrimage. And the greatness of genius still rests upon Chelsea. As we walk slowly through its winding ways, by the edge of its troubled waters, among dark and crooked turns, through curious courts, by old gateways and piles of steepled stone, where flocks of pigeons wheel, and bells chime, and organs peal, and winds sigh, we know that all has been sanctified by their presence. And their spirits abide with us, and the splendid beauty of their visions is about us. For the stones beneath our feet have been hallowed by their tread, and the walls have borne their shadows; so all mean things are transfigured and over all these plain and narrow streets their glory gleams. And it is the great men and they alone that can render a place sacred. Chelsea is now to the lovers of the Beautiful a sacred name, a sacred soil; a place of pilgrimage where certain gods of Art once lived, and loved, and worked, and died. Sir Thomas More lived here and had for a frequent guest Erasmus. Hans Sloane began in Chelsea the collection of curiosities which has now developed into the British Museum. Bishop Atterbury (who claimed that Dryden was a greater poet than Shakespeare), Dean Swift and Doctor Arbuthnot, all lived in Church Street; Richard Steele just around the corner and Leigh Hunt in Cheyne Row; but it was from another name that the little street was to be immortalized. If France constantly has forty Immortals in the flesh, surely it is a modest claim to say that Chelsea has three for all time: Thomas Carlyle, George Eliot and Joseph Mallord William Turner. Turner's father was a barber. His youth was passed in poverty and his advantages for education were very slight. And all this in the crowded city of London, where merit may knock long and still not be heard, and in a country where wealth and title count for much. When a boy, barefoot and ragged, he would wander away alone on the banks of the river and dream dreams about wonderful palaces and beautiful scenes; and then he would trace with a stick in the sands, endeavoring, with mud, to make plain to the eye the things that his soul saw. His mother was quite sure that no good could come from this vagabondish nature, and she did not spare the rod, for she feared that the desire to scrawl and daub would spoil the child. But he was a stubborn lad, with a pug-nose and big, dreamy, wondering eyes, and a heavy jaw; and when parents see that they have such a son, they had better hang up the rod behind the kitchen-door and lay aside force and cease scolding. For love is better than a cat-o'-nine-tails, and sympathy saves more souls than threats. The elder Turner considered that the proper use of a brush was to lather chins. But the boy thought differently, and once surreptitiously took one of his father's brushes to paint a picture; the brush on being returned to its cup was used the next day upon a worthy haberdasher, whose cheeks were shortly colored a vermilion that matched his nose. This lost the barber a customer and secured the boy a thrashing. Young Turner did not always wash his father's shop-windows well, nor sweep off the sidewalk properly. Like all boys he would rather work for some one else than for "his folks." He used to run errands for an engraver by the name of Smith--John Raphael Smith. Once, when Smith sent the barber's boy with a letter to a certain art-gallery with orders to "get the answer and hurry back, mind you!" the boy forgot to get the answer and to hurry back. Then another boy was dispatched after the first, and boy Number Two found boy Number One sitting, with staring eyes and open mouth, in the art-gallery before a painting of Claude Lorraine's. When boy Number One was at last forcibly dragged away, and reached the shop of his master, he got his ears well cuffed for his forgetfulness. But from that day forth he was not the same being that he had been before his eyes fell on that Claude Lorraine. He was transformed, as much so as was Lazarus after he was called from beyond the portals of death and had come back to earth, bearing in his heart the secrets of the grave. From that time Turner thought of Claude Lorraine during the day and dreamed of him at night, and he stole his way into every exhibition where a Claude was to be seen. And now I wish that Claude Lorraine was the subject of this sketch, as well as Turner, for his life is a picture full of sweetest poetry, framed in a world of dullest prose. The eyes of this boy, whom they had thought dreamy, dull and listless, now shone with a different light. He thirsted to achieve, to do, to become--yes, to become a greater painter than Claude Lorraine. His employer saw the change and smiled at it, but he allowed the lad to put in backgrounds and add the skies to cheap prints, just because the youngster teased to do it. Then one day a certain patron of the shop came and looked over the shoulder of the Turner boy, and he said, "He has skill--perhaps talent." And I think the recording angel should give this man a separate page in the Book of Remembrance and write his name in illuminated colors, for he gave young Turner access to his own collection and to his library, and he never cuffed him nor kicked him nor called him dunce--whereat the boy was much surprised. But he encouraged the youth to sketch a picture in water-colors and then he bought the picture and paid him ten shillings for it; and the name of this man was Doctor Munro. The next year, when young Turner was fourteen, Doctor Munro had him admitted to the Royal Academy as a student, and in Seventeen Hundred Ninety he exhibited a water-color of the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth. The picture took no prize, and doubtless was not worthy of one, but from now on Joseph M.W. Turner was an artist, and other hands had to sweep the barber-shop. But he sold few pictures--they were not popular. Other artists scorned him, possibly intuitively fearing him, for mediocrity always fears when the ghost of genius does not down at its bidding. Then Turner was accounted unsociable; besides, he was ragged, uncouth, independent, and did not conform to the ways of society; so the select circle cast him out--more properly speaking, did not let him in. Still he worked on, and exhibited at every Academy Exhibition, yet he was often hungry, and the London fog crept cold and damp through his threadbare clothes. But he toiled on, for Claude Lorraine was ever before him. In Eighteen Hundred Two, when twenty-seven years of age, he visited France and made a tour through Switzerland, tramping over many long miles with his painting-kit on his back, and he brought back rich treasures in way of sketches and quickened imagination. In the years following he took many such trips, and came to know Venice, Rome, Florence and Paris as perfectly as his own London. When thirty-three years of age he was still worshiping at the shrine of Claude Lorraine. His pictures painted at this time are evidence of his ideal, and his book, "Liber Studiorum," issued in Eighteen Hundred Eight, is modeled after the "Liber Veritatis." But the book surpasses Claude's, and Turner knew it, and this may have led him to burst his shackles and cast loose from his idol. For, in Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, we find him working according to his own ideas, showing an originality and audacity in conception and execution that made him the butt of the critics, and caused consternation to rage through the studios of competitors. Gradually, it dawned upon a few scattered collectors that things so strongly condemned must have merit, for why should the pack bay so loudly if there were no quarry! So to have a Turner was at least something for your friends to discuss. Then carriages began to stop before the dingy building at Forty-seven Queen Anne Street, and broadcloth and satin mounted the creaking stairs to the studio. It happened about this time that Turner's prices began to increase. Like the sibyl of old, if a customer said, "I do not want it," the painter put an extra ten pounds on the price. For "Dido Building Carthage," Turner's original price was five hundred pounds. People came to see the picture and they said, "The price is too high." Next day Turner's price for the "Carthage" was one thousand pounds. Finally, Sir Robert Peel offered the painter five thousand pounds for the picture, but Turner said he had decided to keep it for himself, and he did. In the forepart of his career he sold few pictures--for the simple reason that no one wanted them. And he sold few pictures during the latter years of his life, for the reason that his prices were so high that none but the very rich could buy. First, the public scorned Turner. Next, Turner scorned the public. In the beginning it would not buy his pictures, and later it could not. A frivolous public and a shallow press, from his first exhibition, when fifteen years of age, to his last, when seventy, made sport of his originalities. But for merit there is a recompense in sneers, and a benefit in sarcasms, and a compensation in hate; for when these things get too pronounced a champion appears. And so it was with Turner. Next to having a Boswell write one's life, what is better than a Ruskin to uphold one's cause! Success came slowly; his wants were few, but his ambition never slackened, and finally the dreams of his youth became the realities of his manhood. At twenty, Turner loved a beautiful girl--they became engaged. He went away on a tramp sketching-tour and wrote his ladylove just one short letter each month. He believed that "absence only makes the heart grow fonder," not knowing that this statement is only the vagary of a poet. When he returned the lady was betrothed to another. He gave the pair his blessing, and remained a bachelor--a very confirmed bachelor. Perhaps, however, the reason his fiancee proved untrue was not through lack of the epistles he wrote her, but on account of them. In the British Museum I examined several letters written by Turner. They appeared very much like copy for a Josh Billings Almanac. Such originality in spelling, punctuation and use of capitals! It was admirable in its uniqueness. Turner did not think in words--he could only think in paint. But the young lady did not know this, and when a letter came from her homely little lover she was shocked, then she laughed, then she showed these letters to a nice young man who was clerk to a fishmonger and he laughed, then they both laughed. Then this nice young man and this beautiful young lady became engaged, and they were married at Saint Andrew's on a lovely May morning. And they lived happily ever afterward. Turner was small, and in appearance plain. Yet he was big enough to paint a big picture, and he was not so homely as to frighten away all beautiful women. But Philip Gilbert Hamerton tells us, "Fortunate in many things, Turner was lamentably unfortunate in this: that throughout his whole life he never came under the ennobling and refining influence of a good woman." Like Plato, Michelangelo, Sir Isaac Newton and his own Claude Lorraine, he was wedded to his art. But at sixty-five his genius suddenly burst forth afresh, and his work, Mr. Ruskin says, at that time exceeded in daring brilliancy and in the rich flowering of imagination, anything that he had previously done. Mr. Ruskin could give no reason, but rumor says, "A woman." The one weakness of our hero, that hung to him for life, was the idea that he could write poetry. The tragedian always thinks he can succeed in comedy; the comedian spends hours in his garret rehearsing tragedy; most preachers have an idea that they could have made a quick fortune in business, and many businessmen are very sure that if they had taken to the pulpit there would now be fewer empty pews. So the greatest landscape-painter of recent times imagined himself a poet. Hamerton says that for remarkable specimens of grammar, spelling and construction Turner's verse would serve well to be given to little boys to correct. One spot in Turner's life over which I like to linger is his friendship with Sir Walter Scott. They collaborated in the production of "Provincial Antiquities," and spent many happy hours together tramping over Scottish moors and mountains. Sir Walter lived out his days in happy ignorance concerning the art of painting, and although he liked the society of Turner, he confessed that it was quite beyond his ken why people bought his pictures. "And as for your books," said Turner, "the covers of some are certainly very pretty." Yet these men took a satisfaction in each other's society, such as brothers might enjoy, but without either man appreciating the greatness of the other. Turner's temperament was audacious, self-centered, self-reliant, eager for success and fame, yet at the same time scorning public opinion--a paradox often found in the artistic mind of the first class; silent always--with a bitter silence, disdaining to tell his meaning when the critics could not perceive it. He was above all things always the artist, never the realist. The realist pictures the things he sees; the artist expresses that which he feels. Children, and all simple folk who use pen, pencil or brush, describe the things they behold. As intellect develops and goes more in partnership with hand, imagination soars, and things are outlined that no man can see except he be able to perceive the invisible. To appreciate a work of art you must feel as the artist felt. Now, it is very plain that the vast majority of people are not capable of this high sense of sublimity which the creative artist feels; and therefore they do not understand, and not understanding, they wax merry, or cynical, or sarcastic, or wrathful, or envious; or they pass by unmoved. And I maintain that those who pass by unmoved are more righteous than they who scoff. If I should attempt to explain to my little girl the awe I feel when I contemplate the miracle of maternity, she would probably change the subject by prattling to me about a kitten she saw lapping milk from a blue saucer. If I should attempt to explain to some men what I feel when I contemplate the miracle of maternity, they would smile and turn it all into an unspeakable jest. Is not the child nearer to God than the man? We thus see why to many Browning is only a joke, Whitman an eccentric, Dante insane and Turner a pretender. These have all sought to express things which the many can not feel, and consequently they have been, and are, the butt of jokes and jibes innumerable. "Except ye become as little children," etc.--and yet the scoffers are often people of worth. Nothing so shows the limitation of humanity as this: genius often does not appreciate genius. The inspired, strangely enough, are like the fools, they do not recognize inspiration. An Englishman called on Voltaire and found him in bed reading Shakespeare. "What are you reading?" asked the visitor. "Your Shakespeare!" said the philosopher; and as he answered he flung the book across the room. "He's not my Shakespeare," said the Englishman. Greene, Rymer, Dryden, Warburton and Doctor Johnson used collectively or individually the following expressions in describing the work of the author of "Hamlet": conceit, overreach, word-play, extravagance, overdone, absurdity, obscurity, puerility, bombast, idiocy, untruth, improbability, drivel. Byron wrote from Florence to Murray: "I know nothing of painting, and I abhor and spit upon all saints and so-called spiritual subjects that I see portrayed in these churches." But the past is so crowded with vituperation that it is difficult to select--besides that, we do not wish to--but let us take a sample of arrogance from yesterday to prove our point, and then drop the theme for something pleasanter. Pew and pulpit have fallen over each other for the privilege of hitting Darwin; a Bishop warns his congregation that Emerson is "dangerous"; Spurgeon calls Shelley a sensualist; Doctor Buckley speaks of Susan B. Anthony as the leader of "the short-haired"; Talmage cracks jokes about evolution, referring feelingly to "monkey ancestry"; and a prominent divine of England writes the World's Congress of Religions down as "pious waxworks." These things being true, and all the sentiments quoted coming from "good" but blindly zealous men, is it a wonder that the Artist is not understood? A brilliant picture, called "Cologne--Evening," attracted much attention at the Academy Exhibition of Eighteen Hundred Twenty-six. One day the people who so often collected around Turner's work were shocked to see that the beautiful canvas had lost its brilliancy, and evidently had been tampered with by some miscreant. A friend ran to inform Turner of the bad news. "Don't say anything. I only smirched it with lampblack. It was spoiling the effect of Laurence's picture that hung next to it. The black will all wash off after the Exhibition." And his tender treatment of his aged father shows the gentle side of his nature. The old barber, whose trembling hand could no longer hold a razor, wished to remain under his son's roof in guise of a servant; but the son said, "No; we fought the world together, and now that it seeks to do me honor, you shall share all the benefits." And Turner never smiled when the little, wizened, old man would whisper to some visitor, "Yes, yes; Joseph is the greatest artist in England, and I am his father." Turner had a way of sending ten-pound notes in blank envelopes to artists in distress, and he did this so frequently that the news got out finally, but never through Turner's telling, and then he had to adopt other methods of doing good by stealth. I do not contend that Turner's character was immaculate, but still it is very probable that worldlings do not appreciate what a small part of this great genius touched the mire. To prove the sordidness of the man, one critic tells, with visage awfully solemn, how Turner once gave an engraving to a friend and then, after a year, sent demanding it back. But to a person with a groat's worth of wit the matter is plain: the dreamy, abstracted artist, who bumped into his next-door neighbors on the street and never knew them, forgot he had given the picture and believed he had only loaned it. This is made still more apparent by the fact that, when he sent for the engraving in question, he administered a rebuke to the man for keeping it so long. The poor dullard who received the note flew into a rage--returned the picture--sent his compliments and begged the great artist to "take your picture and go to the devil." Then certain scribblers, who through mental disease had lost the capacity for mirth, dipped their pen in aqua fortis and wrote of the "innate meanness," the "malice prepense" and the "Old Adam" which dwelt in the heart of Turner. No one laughed except a few Irishmen, and an American or two, who chanced to hear of the story. Of Turner's many pictures I will mention in detail but two, both of which are to be seen on the walls of the National Gallery. First, "The Old Temeraire." This warship had been sold out of service and was being towed away to be broken up. The scene was photographed on Turner's brain, and he immortalized it on canvas. We can not do better than borrow the words of Mr. Ruskin: "Of all pictures not visibly involving human pain, this is the most pathetic ever painted. "The utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin, but no ruin was ever so affecting as the gliding of this ship to her grave. This particular ship, crowned in the Trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory--surely, if ever anything without a soul deserved honor or affection we owe them here. Surely, some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts for her; some quiet space amid the lapse of English waters! Nay, not so. We have stern keepers to trust her glory to--the fire and the worm. Nevermore shall sunset lay golden robe upon her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. Perhaps where the low gate opens to some cottage garden, the tired traveler may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on the rugged wood; and even the sailor's child may not know that the night dew lies deep in the warrents of the old Temeraire." "The Burial of Sir David Wilkie at Sea" has brought tears to many eyes. Yet there is no burial. The ship is far away in the gloom of the offing; you can not distinguish a single figure on her decks; but you behold her great sails standing out against the leaden blackness of the night and you feel that out there a certain scene is being enacted. And if you listen closely you can hear the solemn voice of the captain as he reads the burial service. Then there is a pause--a swift, sliding sound--a splash, and all is over. Turner left to the British Nation by his will nineteen thousand pencil and water-color sketches and one hundred large canvases. These pictures are now to be seen in the National Gallery in rooms set apart and sacred to Turner's work. For fear it may be thought that the number of sketches mentioned above is a misprint, let us say that if he had produced one picture a day for fifty years it would not equal the number of pieces bestowed by his will on the Nation. This of course takes no account of the pictures sold during his lifetime, and, as he left a fortune of one hundred forty-four thousand pounds (seven hundred twenty thousand dollars), we may infer that not all his pictures were given away. At Chelsea I stood in the little room where he breathed his last, that bleak day in Eighteen-Hundred Fifty-one. The unlettered but motherly old woman who took care of him in those last days never guessed his greatness; none in the house or the neighborhood knew. To them he was only Mr. Booth, an eccentric old man of moderate means, who liked to muse, read, and play with children. He had no callers, no friends; he went to the city every day and came back at night. He talked but little, he was absent-minded, he smoked and thought and smiled and muttered to himself. He never went to church; but once one of the lodgers asked him what he thought of God. "God, God--what do I know of God, what does any one! He is our life--He is the All, but we need not fear Him--all we can do is to speak the truth and do our work. Tomorrow we go--where? I know not, but I am not afraid." Of art, to these strangers he would never speak. Once they urged him to go with them to an exhibition at Kensington, but he smiled feebly as he lit his pipe and said, "An Art Exhibition? No, no; a man can show on a canvas so little of what he feels, it is not worth the while." At last he died--passed peacefully away--and his attorney came and took charge of his remains. Many are the hard words that have been flung off by heedless tongues about Turner's taking an assumed name and living in obscurity, but "what you call fault I call accent." Surely, if a great man and world-famous desires to escape the flatterers and the silken mesh of so-called society and live the life of simplicity, he has a right to do so. Again, Turner was a very rich man in his old age; he did much for struggling artists and assisted aspiring merit in many ways. So it came about that his mail was burdened with begging letters, and his life made miserable by appeals from impecunious persons, good and bad, and from churches, societies and associations without number. He decided to flee them all; and he did. The "Carthage" already mentioned is one of his finest works, and he esteemed it so highly that he requested that when death came, his body should be buried, wrapped in its magnificent folds. But the wish was disregarded. His remains rest in the crypt of Saint Paul's, beside the dust of Reynolds. His statue, in marble, adorns a niche in the great cathedral, and his name is secure high on the roll of honor. And if for no other reason, the name and fame of Chelsea should be deathless as the home of Turner. JONATHAN SWIFT They are but few and meanspirited that live in peace with all men. --_Tale of a Tub_ [Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT] Birrell, the great English essayist, remarks that, "Of writing books about Dean Swift there is no end." The reason is plain: of no other prominent writer who has lived during the past two hundred years do we know so much. His life lies open to us in many books. Boswell did not write his biography, but Johnson did. Then followed whole schools of little fishes, some of whom wrote like whales. But among the works of genuine worth and merit, with Swift for a subject, we have Sir Walter Scott's nineteen volumes, and lives by Craik, Mitford, Forster, Collins and Leslie Stephen. The positive elements in Swift's character make him a most interesting subject to men and women who are yet on earth, for he was essentially of the earth, earthy. And until we are shown that the earth is wholly bad, we shall find much to amuse, much to instruct, much to admire--aye, much to pity--in the life of Jonathan Swift. His father married at twenty. His income matched his years--it was just twenty pounds per annum. His wife was a young girl, bright, animated, intelligent. In a few short months this girl carried in her arms a baby. This baby was wrapped in a tattered shawl and cried piteously from hunger, for the mother had not enough to eat. She was cold, and sick, and in disgrace. Her husband, too, was ill, and sorely in debt. It was Midwinter. When Spring came, and the flowers blossomed, and the birds mated, and warm breezes came whispering softly from the South, and all the earth was glad, the husband of this child-wife was in his grave, and she was alone. Alone? No; she carried in her tired arms the hungry babe, and beneath her heart she felt the faint flutter of another life. But to be in trouble and in Ireland is not so bad after all, for the Irish people have great and tender hearts; and even if they have not much to bestow in a material way, they can give sympathy, and they do. So the girl was cared for by kind kindred, and on November Thirtieth, Sixteen Hundred Sixty-seven, at Number Seven, Hoey's Court, Dublin, the second baby was born. Only a little way from Hoey's Court is Saint Patrick's Cathedral. On that November day, as the tones from the clanging chimes fell on the weary senses of the young mother, there in her darkened room, little did she think that the puny bantling she held to her breast would yet be the Dean of the great church whose bells she heard; and how could she anticipate a whisper coming to her from the far-off future: "Of writing books about your babe there is no end!" * * * * * The man-child was given to an old woman to care for, and he had the ability, even then, it seems, to win affection. The foster-mother loved him and she stole him away, carrying him off to England. Charity ministered to his needs; charity gave him his education. When Swift was twenty-one years old he went to see his mother. Her means were scanty to the point of hardship, but so buoyant was her mind that she used to declare that she was both rich and happy--and being happy she was certainly rich. She was a rare woman. Her spirit was independent, her mind cultivated, her manner gentle and refined, and she was endowed with a keen sense of humor. From her, the son derived those qualities which have made him famous. No man is greater than his mother; but the sons of brave women do not always make brave men. In one quality Swift was lamentably inferior to his mother--he did not have her capacity for happiness. He had wit; she had humor. We have seen how Swift's father sickened and died. The world was too severe for him, its buffets too abrupt, its burden too heavy, and he gave up the fight before the battle had really begun. This lack of courage and extreme sensitiveness are seen in the son. But so peculiar, complex and wonderful is this web of life, that our very blunders, weaknesses and mistakes are woven in and make the fabric stronger. If Swift had possessed only his mother's merits, without his father's faults, he would never have shaken the world with laughter, and we should never have heard of him. In her lowliness and simplicity the mother of Swift was content. She did her work in her own little way. She smiled at folly, and each day she thanked Heaven that her lot was no worse. Not so her son. He brooded in sullen silence; he cursed Fate for making him a dependent, and even in his youth he scorned those who benefited him. This was a very human proceeding. Many hate, but few have a fine capacity for scorn. Their hate is so vehement that when hurled it falls short. Swift's scorn was a beautifully winged arrow, with a poisoned tip. Some who were struck did not at the time know it. His misanthropy defeated his purpose, thwarted his ambition, ruined his aims, and--made his name illustrious. Swift wished for churchly preferment, but he had not the patience to wait. He imagined that others were standing in his way, and of course they were; for under the calm exterior of things ecclesiastic, there is often a strife, a jealousy and a competition more rabid than in commerce. To succeed in winning a bishopric requires a sagacity as keen as that required to become a Senator of Massachusetts or the Governor of New York. The man bides his time, makes himself popular, secures advocates, lubricates the way, pulls the wires, and slides noiselessly into place. Swift lacked diplomacy. When matters did not seem to progress he grew wrathful, seized his pen and stabbed with it. But as he wrote, the ludicrousness of the whole situation came over him and, instead of cursing plain curses, he held his adversary up to ridicule! And this ridicule is so active, the scorn so mixed with wit, the shafts so finely feathered with truth, that it is the admiration of mankind. Vitriol mixed with ink is volatile. Then what? We just run Swift through a coarse sieve to take out the lumps of Seventeenth Century refuse, and then we give him to children to make them laugh. Surely no better use can be made of pessimists. Verily, the author of Gulliver wrote for one purpose, and we use his work for another. He wished for office, he got contempt; he tried to subdue his enemies, they subdued him; he worked for the present, and he won immortality. Said Heinrich Heine, prone on his bed in Paris: "The wittiest sarcasms of mortals are only an attempt at jesting when compared with those of the great Author of the Universe--the Aristophanes of Heaven!" Wise men over and over have wasted good ink and paper in bewailing Swift's malice and coarseness. But without these very elements which the wise men bemoan, Swift would be for us a cipher. Yet love is life and hate is death, so how can spite benefit? The answer is that, in certain forms of germination, frost is as necessary as sunshine: so some men have qualities that lie dormant until the coldness of hate bursts the coarse husk of indifference. But while hate may animate, only love inspires. Swift might have stood at the head of the Church of England; but even so, he would be only a unit in a long list of names, and as it is, there is only one Swift. Mr. Talmage averred that not ten men in America knew the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury until his son wrote a certain book entitled "Dodo." In putting out this volume, young Benson not only gave us the strongest possible argument favoring the celibacy of the clergy, but at the same time, if Talmage's statement is correct, he made known his father's name. In all Swift's work, save "The Journal to Stella," the animating motive seems to have been to confound his enemies; and according to the well-known line in that hymn sung wherever the Union Jack flies, we must believe this to be a perfectly justifiable ambition. But occasionally on his pages we find gentle words of wisdom that were meant evidently for love's eyes alone. There is much that is pure boyish frolic, and again and again there are clever strokes directed at folly. He has shot certain superstitions through with doubt, and in his manner of dealing with error he has proved to us a thing it were well not to forget: that pleasantry is more efficacious than vehemence. Let me name one incident by way of proof--the well-known one of Partridge, the almanac-maker. This worthy cobbler was an astrologer of no mean repute. He foretold events with much discretion. The ignorant bought his almanacs, and many believed in them as a Bible--in fact, astrology was enjoying a "boom." Swift came to London and found that Partridge's predictions were the theme at the coffeehouses. He saw men argue and wax wroth, grow red in the face as they talked loud and long about nothing--just nothing. The whole thing struck Swift as being very funny; and he wrote an announcement of his intention to publish a rival almanac. He explained that he, too, was an astrologer, but an honest one, while Partridge was an impostor and a cheat; in fact, Partridge foretold only things which every one knew would come true. As for himself, he could discern the future with absolute certainty, and to prove to the world his power he would now make a prophecy. In substance, it was as follows: "My first prediction is but a trifle; it relates to Partridge, the almanac-maker. I have consulted the star of his nativity, and find that he will die on the Twenty-ninth day of March, next." This was signed, "Isaac Bickerstaff," and duly issued in pamphlet form. It had such an air of sincerity that both the believers and the scoffers read it with interest. The Thirtieth of March came, and another pamphlet from "Isaac Bickerstaff" appeared, announcing the fulfilment of the prophecy. It related how toward the end of March Partridge began to languish; how he grew ill and at last took to his bed, and, his conscience then smiting him, he confessed to the world that he was a fraud and a rogue, that all his prophecies were impositions; he then passed away. Partridge was wild with rage, and immediately replied in a manifesto declaring that he was alive and well, and moreover was alive on March Twenty-ninth. To this "Bickerstaff" replied in a pamphlet more seriously humorous than ever, reaffirming that Partridge was dead, and closing with the statement that, "If an uninformed carcass still walks about calling itself Partridge, I do not in any way consider myself responsible for that." The joke set all London on a grin. Wherever Partridge went he was met with smiles and jeers, and astrology became only a jest to a vast number of people who had formerly believed in it seriously. When Benjamin Franklin started his "Poor Richard's Almanac," twenty-five years later, in the first issue he prophesied the death of one Dart who set the pace at that time as almanac-maker in America. The man was to expire on the afternoon of October Seventeenth, Seventeen Hundred Thirty-eight, at three twenty-nine o'clock. Dart, being somewhat of a joker himself, came out with an announcement that he, too, had consulted the oracle, and found he would live until October Twenty-sixth, and possibly longer. On October Eighteenth, Franklin announced Dart's death, and explained that it occurred promptly on time, all as prophesied. Yet Dart lived to publish many almanacs; but Poor Richard got his advertisement, and many staid, broad-brimmed Philadelphians smiled who had never smiled before--not only smiled but subscribed. Benjamin Franklin was a great and good man, as any man must be who fathers another's jokes, introducing these orphaned children to the world as his own. Perhaps no one who has written of Swift knew him so well as Delany. And this writer, who seems to have possessed a judicial quality far beyond most men, has told us that Swift was moral in conduct to the point of asceticism. His deportment was grave and dignified, and his duties as a priest were always performed with exemplary diligence. He visited the sick, regularly administered the sacraments, and was never known to absent himself from morning prayers. When Harley was Lord Treasurer, Swift seems to have been on the topmost crest of the wave of popularity. Invitations from nobility flowed in upon him, beautiful women deigned to go in search of his society, royalty recognized him. And yet all this time he was only a country priest with a liking for literature. Collins tells us that the reason for his popularity is plain: "Swift was one of the kings of the earth. Like Pope Innocent the Third, like Chatham, he was one to whom the world involuntarily pays tribute." His will was a will of adamant; his intellect so keen that it impressed every one who approached him; his temper singularly stern, dauntless and haughty. But his wit was never filled with gaiety: he was never known to laugh. Amid the wildest uproar that his sallies caused, he would sit with face austere--unmoved. Personally, Swift was a gentleman. When he was scurrilous, abusive, ribald, malicious, it was anonymously. Is this to his credit? I should not say so, but if a man is indecent and he hides behind a "nom de plume," it is at least presumptive proof that he is not dead to shame. Leslie Stephen tells us that Swift was a Churchman to the backbone. No man who is a "Churchman to the backbone" is ever very pious: the spirit maketh alive, but the letter killeth. One looks in vain for traces of spirituality in the Dean. His sermons are models of churchly commonplace and full of the stock phrases of a formal religion. He never bursts into flame. Yet he most thoroughly and sincerely believed in religion. "I believe in religion, it keeps the masses in check. And then I uphold Christianity because if it is abolished the stability of the Church might be endangered," he said. Philip asked the eunuch a needless question when he inquired, "Understandest thou what thou readest?" No one so poorly sexed as Swift can comprehend spiritual truth: spirituality and sexuality are elements that are never separated. Swift was as incapable of spirituality as he was of the "grand passion." The Dean had affection; he was a warm friend; he was capable even of a degree of love, but his sexual and spiritual nature was so cold and calculating that he did not hesitate to sacrifice love to churchly ambition. He argued that the celibacy of the Catholic clergy is a wise expediency. The bachelor physician and the unmarried priest have an influence among gentle womankind, young or old, married or single, that a benedict can never hope for. Why this is so might be difficult to explain, but discerning men know the fact. In truth, when a priest marries he should at once take a new charge, for if he remains with his old flock a goodly number of his "lady parishioners," in ages varying from seventeen to seventy, will with fierce indignation rend his reputation. Swift was as wise as a serpent, but not always as harmless as a dove. He was making every effort to secure his miter and crosier: he had many women friends in London and elsewhere who had influence. Rather than run the risk of losing this influence he never acknowledged Stella as his wife. Choosing fame rather than love, he withered at the heart, then died at the top. The life of every man is a seamless garment--its woof his thoughts, its warp his deeds. When for him the roaring loom of time stops and the thread is broken, foolish people sometimes point to certain spots in the robe and say, "Oh, why did he not leave that out!" not knowing that every action of man is a sequence from off Fate's spindle. Let us accept the work of genius as we find it; not bemoaning because it is not better, but giving thanks because it is so good. * * * * * Well-fed, rollicking priest is Father O'Toole of Dublin, with a big, round face, a double chin, and a brogue that you can cut with a knife. My letter of introduction from Monseigneur Satolli caused him at once to bring in a large, suspicious, black bottle and two glasses. Then we talked--talked of Ireland's wrongs and woman's rights, and of all the Irishmen in America whom I was supposed to know. We spoke of the illustrious Irishmen who had passed on, and I mentioned a name that caused the holy father to spring from his chair in indignation. "Shwift is it! Shwift! No, me lad, don't go near him! He was the divil's own, the very worsht that ever followed the swish of a petticoat. No, no; if ye go to his grave it'll bring ye bad luck for a year. It's Tom Moore ye want--Tom was the bye. Arrah! now, and it's meself phat'll go wid ye." And so the reverend father put on a long, black coat and his Saint Patrick's Day hat, and we started. We were met at the gate by a delegation of "shpalpeens" that had located me on the inside of the house and were lying in wait. All American travelers in Ireland are supposed to be millionaires, and this may possibly explain the lavish attention that is often tendered them. At any rate, various members of the delegation wished "long life to the iligant 'merican gintleman," and hinted in terms unmistakable that pence would be acceptable. The holy father applied his cane vigorously to the ragged rears of the more presumptuous, and bade them begone, but still they followed and pressed close about. "Here, I'll show you how to get rid of the dirty gang," said his holiness. "Have ye a penny, I don't know?" I produced a handful of small change, which the father immediately took and tossed into the street. Instantly there was a heterogeneous mass of young Hibernians piled up in the dirt in a grand struggle for spoils. It reminded me of football incidents I had seen at fair Harvard. In the meantime, we escaped down a convenient alley and crossed the River Liffey to Old Dublin; inside the walls of the old city, through crooked lanes and winding streets that here and there showed signs of departed gentility, where now was only squalor, want and vice, until we came to Number Twelve Angier Street, a quaint, three-story brick building now used as a "public." In the wall above the door is a marble slab with this inscription: "Here was born Thomas Moore, on the Twenty-eighth day of May, Seventeen Hundred Seventy-eight." Above this in a niche is a bust of the poet. Tom's father was a worthy greengrocer who, according to the author of "Lalla Rookh," always gave good measure and full count. It was ever a cause of regret to the elder Moore that his son did not show sufficient capacity to be trusted safely with the business. The upper rooms of the house were shown to us by an obliging landlady. Father O'Toole had been here before, and led the way to a snug little chamber and explained that in this room the future poet of Ireland was found under one of his father's cabbage-leaves. We descended to the neat little barroom with its sanded floor and polished glassware and shining brass. The holy father ordered 'arf-and-'arf at my expense and recited one of Moore's ballads. The landlady then gave us Byron's "Here's a Health to Thee, Tom Moore." A neighbor came in. Then we had more ballads, more 'arf-and-'arf, a selection from "Lalla Rookh," and various tales of the poet's early life, which possibly would be hard to verify. And as the tumult raged, the smoke of battle gave me opportunity to slip away. I crossed the street, turned down one block, and entered Saint Patrick's Cathedral. Great, roomy, gloomy, solemn temple, where the rumble of city traffic is deadened to a faint hum: "Without, the world's unceasing noises rise, Turmoil, disquietude and busy fears; Within, there are the sounds of other years, Thoughts full of prayer and solemn harmonies Which imitate on earth the peaceful skies." Other worshipers were there. Standing beside a great stone pillar I could make them out kneeling on the tiled floor. Gradually, my eyes became accustomed to the subdued light, and right at my feet I saw a large brass plate set in the floor and on it only this: Swift Died Oct. 19, 1745 Aged 78 On the wall near is a bronze tablet, the inscription of which, in Latin, was dictated by Swift himself: "Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral, where fierce indignation can no longer rend his heart. Go! wayfarer, and imitate, if thou canst, one who, as far as in him lay, was an earnest champion of liberty----" Above this is a fine bust of the Dean, and to the right is another tablet: "Underneath lie interred the mortal remains of Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world as 'Stella,' under which she is celebrated in the writings of Doctor Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral. She was a person of extraordinary endowments and accomplishments, in body, mind and behavior; justly admired and respected by all who knew her, on account of her eminent virtues as well as for her great natural and acquired perfections." These were suffering souls and great. Would they have been so great had they not suffered? Who can tell? Were the waters troubled in order that they might heal the people? Did Swift misuse this excellent woman, is a question that has been asked and answered again and again. A great author has written: "A woman, a tender, noble, excellent woman, has a dog's heart. She licks the hand that strikes her. And wrong nor cruelty nor injustice nor disloyalty can cause her to turn." Death in pity took Stella first; took her in the loyalty of love and the fulness of faith from a world which for love has little recompense, and for faith small fulfilment. Stella was buried by torchlight, at midnight, on the Thirtieth day of January, Seventeen Hundred Twenty-eight. Swift was sick at the time, and wrote in his journal: "This is the night of her funeral, and I am removed to another apartment that I may not see the light in the church which is just over against my window." But in his imagination he saw the gleaming torches as their dull light shone through the colored windows, and he said, "They will soon do as much for me." But seventeen years came crawling by before the torches flared, smoked and gleamed as the mourners chanted a requiem, and the clods fell on the coffin, and their echoes intermingled with the solemn voice of the priest as he said, "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes." In Eighteen Hundred Thirty-five, the graves were opened and casts taken of the skulls. The top of Swift's skull had been sawed off at the autopsy, and a bottle in which was a parchment setting forth the facts was inserted in the head that had conceived "Gulliver's Travels." I examined the casts. The woman's head is square and shapely. Swift's head is a refutation of phrenology, being small, sloping and ordinary. The bones of Swift and Stella were placed in one coffin, and now rest under three feet of concrete, beneath the floor of Saint Patrick's. So sleep the lovers joined in death. WALT WHITMAN All seems beautiful to me. I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me I would do the same to you, I will recruit for myself and you as I go. I will scatter myself among men and women as I go, I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them. --_Song of the Open Road_ [Illustration: WALT WHITMAN] Max Nordau wrote a book--wrote it with his tongue in his cheek, a dash of vitriol in the ink, and with a pen that scratched. And the first critic who seemed to place a just estimate on the work was Mr. Zangwill (he who has no Christian name). Mr. Zangwill made an attempt to swear out a "writ de lunatico inquirendo" against his Jewish brother, on the ground that the first symptom of insanity is often the delusion that others are insane; and this being so, Doctor Nordau was not a safe subject to be at large. But the Assize of Public Opinion denied the petition, and the dear people bought the book at from three to five dollars a copy. Printed in several languages, its sales have mounted to a hundred thousand volumes, and the author's net profit is full forty thousand dollars. No wonder is it that, with pockets full to bursting, Doctor Nordau goes out behind the house and laughs uproariously whenever he thinks of how he has worked the world! If Doctor Talmage is the Barnum of Theology, surely we may call Doctor Nordau the Barnum of Science. His agility in manipulating facts is equal to Hermann's now-you-see-it and now-you-don't, with pocket-handkerchiefs. Yet Hermann's exhibition is worth the admittance fee, and Nordau's book (seemingly written in collaboration with Jules Verne and Mark Twain) would be cheap for a dollar. But what I object to is Professor Hermann's disciples posing as Sure-Enough Materializing Mediums, and Professor Lombroso's followers calling themselves Scientists, when each goes forth without scrip or purse with no other purpose than to supply themselves with both. Yet it was Barnum himself who said that the public delights in being humbugged, and strange it is that we will not allow ourselves to be thimblerigged without paying for the privilege. Nordau's success hinged on his audacious assumption that the public knew nothing of the Law of Antithesis. Yet Plato explained that the opposites of things look alike, and sometimes are alike--and that was quite a while ago. The multitude answered, "Thou hast a devil." Many of them said, "He hath a devil and is mad." Festus said with a loud voice, "Paul, thou art beside thyself." And Nordau shouts in a voice more heady than that of Pilate, more throaty than that of Festus, "Mad--Whitman was--mad beyond the cavil of a doubt!" In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two, Lincoln, looking out of a window (before lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed) on one of the streets of Washington, saw a workingman in shirt-sleeves go by. Turning to a friend, the President said, "There goes a MAN!" The exclamation sounds singularly like that of Napoleon on meeting Goethe. But the Corsican's remark was intended for the poet's ear, while Lincoln did not know who his man was, although he came to know him afterward. Lincoln in his early days was a workingman and an athlete, and he never quite got the idea out of his head (and I am glad) that he was still a hewer of wood. He once told George William Curtis that he more than half expected yet to go back to the farm and earn his daily bread by the work that his hands found to do; he dreamed of it nights, and whenever he saw a splendid toiler, he felt like hailing the man as brother and striking hands with him. When Lincoln saw Whitman strolling majestically past, he took him for a stevedore or possibly the foreman of a construction gang. Whitman was fifty-one years old then. His long, flowing beard was snow-white, and the shock that covered his Jove-like head was iron-gray. His form was that of an Apollo who had arrived at years of discretion. He weighed an even two hundred pounds and was just six feet high. His plain, check, cotton shirt was open at the throat to the breast; and he had an independence, a self-sufficiency, and withal a cleanliness, a sweetness and a gentleness, that told that, although he had a giant's strength, he did not use it like a giant. Whitman used no tobacco, neither did he apply hot and rebellious liquors to his blood and with unblushing forehead woo the means of debility and disease. Up to his fifty-third year he had never known a sick day, although at thirty his hair had begun to whiten. He had the look of age in his youth and the look of youth in his age that often marks the exceptional man. But at fifty-three his splendid health was crowded to the breaking strain. How? Through caring for wounded, sick and dying men, hour after hour, day after day, through the long, silent watches of the night. From Eighteen Hundred Sixty-four to the day of his death in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-two, he was, physically, a man in ruins. But he did not wither at the top. Through it all he held the healthy optimism of boyhood, carrying with him the perfume of the morning and the lavish heart of youth. Doctor Bucke, who was superintendent of a hospital for the insane for fifteen years, and the intimate friend of Whitman all the time, has said: "His build, his stature, his exceptional health of mind and body, the size and form of his features, his cleanliness of mind and body, the grace of his movements and gestures, the grandeur, and especially the magnetism, of his presence; the charm of his voice, his genial, kindly humor; the simplicity of his habits and tastes, his freedom from convention, the largeness and the beauty of his manner; his calmness and majesty; his charity and forbearance--his entire unresentfulness under whatever provocation; his liberality, his universal sympathy with humanity in all ages and lands, his broad tolerance, his catholic friendliness, and his unexampled faculty of attracting affection, all prove his perfectly proportioned manliness." But Whitman differed from the disciple of Lombroso in two notable particulars: He had no quarrel with the world, and he did not wax rich. "One thing thou lackest, O Walt Whitman!" we might have said to the poet; "you are not a financier." He died poor. But this is no proof of degeneracy, save on 'Change. When the children of Count Tolstoy endeavored to have him adjudged insane, the Court denied the application and voiced the wisest decision that ever came out of Russia: A man who gives away his money is not necessarily more foolish than he who saves it. And with Horace L. Traubel I assert that Whitman was the sanest man I ever saw. * * * * * Some men make themselves homes; and others there be who rent rooms. Walt Whitman was essentially a citizen of the world: the world was his home and mankind were his friends. There was a quality in the man peculiarly universal: a strong, virile poise that asked for nothing, but took what it needed. He loved men as brothers, yet his brothers after the flesh understood him not; he loved children--they turned to him instinctively--but he had no children of his own; he loved women, and yet this strongly sexed and manly man never loved a woman. And I might here say as Philip Gilbert Hamerton said of Turner, "He was lamentably unfortunate in this: throughout his whole life he never came under the ennobling and refining influence of a good woman." It requires two to make a home. The first home was made when a woman, cradling in her loving arms a baby, crooned a lullaby. All the tender sentimentality we throw around a place is the result of the sacred thought that we live there with some one else. It is "our" home. The home is a tryst--the place where we retire and shut the world out. Lovers make a home, just as birds make a nest, and unless a man knows the spell of the divine passion I hardly see how he can have a home at all. He only rents a room. Camden is separated from the city of Philadelphia by the Delaware River. Camden lies low and flat--a great, sandy, monotonous waste of straggling buildings. Here and there are straight rows of cheap houses, evidently erected by staid, broad-brimmed speculators from across the river, with eyes on the main chance. But they reckoned ill, for the town did not boom. Some of these houses have marble steps and white, barn-like shutters, that might withstand a siege. When a funeral takes place in one of these houses, the shutters are tied with strips of mournful, black alpaca for a year and a day. Engineers, dockmen, express-drivers and mechanics largely make up the citizens of Camden. Of course, Camden has its smug corner where prosperous merchants most do congregate: where they play croquet in the front yards, and have window-boxes, and a piano and veranda-chairs and terra-cotta statuary; but for the most part the houses of Camden are rented, and rented cheap. Many of the domiciles are frame and have the happy tumbledown look of the back streets in Charleston or Richmond--those streets where the white trash merges off into prosperous colored aristocracy. Old hats do duty in keeping out the fresh air where Providence has interfered and broken out a pane; blinds hang by a single hinge; bricks on the chimney-tops threaten the passersby; stringers and posts mark the place where proud picket fences once stood--the pickets having gone for kindling long ago. In the warm, Summer evenings, men in shirt-sleeves sit on the front steps and stolidly smoke, while children pile up sand in the streets and play in the gutters. Parallel with Mickle Street, a block away, are railway-tracks. There noisy switch-engines that never keep Sabbath, puff back and forth, day and night, sending showers of soot and smoke when the wind is right (and it usually is) straight over Number 328, where, according to John Addington Symonds and William Michael Rossetti, lived the mightiest seer of the century--the man whom they rank with Socrates, Epictetus, Saint Paul, Michelangelo and Dante. It was in August of Eighteen Hundred Eighty-three that I first walked up that little street--a hot, sultry Summer evening. There had been a shower that turned the dust of the unpaved roadway to mud. The air was close and muggy. The houses, built right up to the sidewalks, over which, in little gutters, the steaming sewage ran, seemed to have discharged their occupants into the street to enjoy the cool of the day. Barefooted children by the score paddled in the mud. All the steps were filled with loungers; some of the men had discarded not only coats but shirts as well, and now sat in flaming red underwear, holding babies. They say that "woman's work is never done," but to the women of Mickle Street this does not apply--but stay! perhaps their work IS never done. Anyway, I remember that women sat on the curbs in calico dresses or leaned out of the windows, and all seemed supremely free from care. "Can you tell me where Mr. Whitman lives?" I asked a portly dame who was resting her elbows on a windowsill. "Who?" "Mr. Whitman!" "You mean Walt Whitman?" "Yes." "Show the gentleman, Molly; he'll give you a nickel, I'm sure!" I had not seen Molly. She stood behind me, but as her mother spoke she seized tight hold of one of my fingers, claiming me as her lawful prey, and all the other children looked on with envious eyes as little Molly threw at them glances of scorn and marched me off. Molly was five, going on six, she told me. She had bright-red hair, a grimy face and little chapped feet that made not a sound as we walked. She got her nickel and carried it in her mouth, and this made conversation difficult. After going one block she suddenly stopped, squared me around and pointing said, "Them is he!" and disappeared. In a wheeled rattan chair, in the hallway, a little back from the door of a plain, weather-beaten house, sat the coatless philosopher, his face and head wreathed in a tumult of snow-white hair. I had a little speech, all prepared weeks before and committed to memory, that I intended to repeat, telling him how I had read his poems and admired them. And further I had stored away in my mind a few blades from "Leaves of Grass" that I purposed to bring out at the right time as a sort of certificate of character. But when that little girl jerked me right-about-face and heartlessly deserted me, I stared dumbly at the man whom I had come a hundred miles to see. I began angling for my little speech, but could not fetch it. "Hello!" called the philosopher, out of the white aureole. "Hello! come here, boy!" He held out his hand and as I took it there was a grasp with meaning in it. "Don't go yet, Joe," he said to a man seated on the step smoking a cob-pipe. "The old woman's calling me," said the swarthy Joe. Joe evidently held truth lightly. "So long, Walt!" "Good-by, Joe. Sit down, lad; sit down!" I sat in the doorway at his feet. "Now isn't it queer--that fellow is a regular philosopher and works out some great problems, but he's ashamed to express 'em. He could no more give you his best than he could fly. Ashamed, I s'pose, ashamed of the best that is in him. We are all a little that way--all but me--I try to write my best, regardless of whether the thing sounds ridiculous or not--regardless of what others think or say or have said. Ashamed of our holiest, truest and best! Is it not too bad? "You are twenty-five now? Well, boy, you may grow until you are thirty and then you will be as wise as you ever will be. Haven't you noticed that men of sixty have no clearer vision than men of forty? One reason is that we have been taught that we know all about life and death and the mysteries of the grave. But the main reason is that we are ashamed to shove out and be ourselves. Jesus expressed His own individuality perhaps more than any other man we know of, and so He wields a wider influence than any other. And this though we only have a record of just twenty-seven days of His life. Now that fellow that just left is an engineer, and he dreams some beautiful dreams; but he never expresses them to any one--only hints them to me, and this only at twilight. He is like a weasel or a mink or a whippoorwill--he comes out only at night. "'If the weather was like this all the time, people would never learn to read and write,' said Joe to me just as you arrived. And isn't that so? Here we can count a hundred people up and down this street, and not one is reading, not one but that is just lolling about, except the children--and they are happy only when playing in the dirt. Why, if this tropical weather should continue we would all slip back into South Sea Islanders! You can raise good men only in a little strip around the North Temperate Zone--when you get out of the track of a glacier, a tender-hearted, sympathetic man of brains is an accident." Then the old man suddenly ceased and I imagined that he was following the thought out in his own mind. We sat silent for a space. The twilight fell, and a lamplighter lit the street lamp on the corner. He stopped an instant to salute the poet cheerily as he passed. The man sitting on the doorstep, across the street, smoking, knocked the ashes out of his pipe on his boot-heel and went indoors. Women called their children, who did not respond, but still played on. Then the creepers were carried in, to be fed their bread-and-milk and put to bed; and, shortly, shrill feminine voices ordered the other children indoors, and some obeyed. The night crept slowly on. I heard Old Walt chuckle behind me, talking incoherently to himself, and then he said, "You are wondering why I live in such a place as this?" "Yes; that is exactly what I was thinking of!" "You think I belong in the country, in some quiet, shady place. But all I have to do is to shut my eyes and go there. No man loves the woods more than I--I was born within sound of the sea--down on Long Island, and I know all the songs that the seashell sings. But this babble and babel of voices pleases me better, especially since my legs went on a strike, for although I can't walk, you see I can still mix with the throng, so I suffer no loss. "In the woods, a man must be all hands and feet. I like the folks, the plain, ignorant, unpretentious folks; and the youngsters that come and slide on my cellar-door do not disturb me a bit. I'm different from Carlyle--you know he had a noise-proof room where he locked himself in. Now, when a huckster goes by, crying his wares, I open the blinds, and often wrangle with the fellow over the price of things. But the rogues have got into a way lately of leaving truck for me and refusing pay. Today an Irishman passed in three quarts of berries and walked off pretending to be mad because I offered to pay. When he was gone, I beckoned to the babies over the way--they came over and we had a feast. "Yes, I like the folks around here; I like the women, and I like the men, and I like the babies, and I like the youngsters that play in the alley and make mud pies on my steps. I expect to stay here until I die." "You speak of death as a matter of course--you are not afraid to die?" "Oh, no, my boy; death is as natural as life, and a deal kinder. But it is all good--I accept it all and give thanks--you have not forgotten my chant to death?" "Not I!" I repeated a few lines from "Drum-Taps." He followed me, rapping gently with his cane on the floor, and with little interjectory remarks of "That's so!" "Very true!" "Good, good!" And when I faltered and lost the lines he picked them up where "The voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird." In a strong, clear voice, but a voice full of sublime feeling, he repeated those immortal lines, beginning, "Come, lovely and soothing Death." "Come, lovely and soothing Death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate Death. Praised be the fathomless universe For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise For the sure enwinding arms of cool, enfolding Death. Dark Mother, always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? Then I chant for thee, I glorify thee above all, I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. Approach, strong deliveress, When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the death, Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee, Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death. From me to thee glad serenades, Dances for thee I propose, saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee, And the sights of the open landscape and the high spread sky are fitting, And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night. The night in silence under many a star, The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know, And the soul turning to thee, O vast and well-veil'd Death, And the body gratefully nestling close to thee. Over the tree-tops I float thee a song, Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide, Over the dense-packed cities all, and the teeming wharves, and ways, I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O Death." The last playing youngster had silently disappeared from the streets. The doorsteps were deserted--save where across the way a young man and maiden sat in the gloaming, conversing in low monotone. The clouds had drifted away. A great, yellow star shone out above the chimney-tops in the East. I arose to go. "I wish you'd come oftener--I see you so seldom, lad," said the old man, half-plaintively. I did not explain that we had never met before--that I had come from New York purposely to see him. He thought he knew me. And so he did--as much as I could impart. The rest was irrelevant. As to my occupation or name, what booted it!--he had no curiosity concerning me. I grasped his outstretched hand in both of my own. He said not a word; neither did I. I turned and made my way to the ferry--past the whispering lovers on the doorsteps, and over the railway-tracks where the noisy engines puffed. As I walked on board the boat, the wind blew up cool and fresh from the West. The star in the East grew brighter, and other stars came out, reflecting themselves like gems in the dark blue of the Delaware. There was a soft sublimity in the sound of the bells that came echoing over the waters. My heart was very full, for I had felt the thrill of being in the presence of a great and loving soul. It was the first time and the last that I ever saw Walt Whitman. * * * * * A good many writers bear no message: they carry no torch. Sometimes they excite wonder, or they amuse and divert--divert us from our work. To be diverted to a certain degree may be well, but there is a point where earth ends and cloud-land begins, and even great poets occasionally befog the things they would reveal. Homer was seemingly blind to much simple truth; Vergil carries you away from earth; Horace was undone without his Mæcenas; Dante makes you an exile; Shakespeare was singularly silent concerning the doubts, difficulties and common lives of common people; Byron's corsair life does not help you in your toil, and in his fight with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers we crave neutrality; to be caught in the meshes of Pope's "Dunciad" is not pleasant; and Lowell's "Fable for Critics" is only another "Dunciad." But above all other poets who have ever lived, the author of "Leaves of Grass" was the poet of humanity. Milton knew all about Heaven, and Dante conducts us through Hell, but it was left for Whitman to show us Earth. His voice never goes so high that it breaks into an impotent falsetto, neither does it growl and snarl at things it does not understand and not understanding does not like. He was so great that he had no envy, and his insight was so sure that he had no prejudice. He never boasted that he was higher, nor claimed to be less than any of the other sons of men. He met all on terms of absolute equality, mixing with the poor, the lowly, the fallen, the oppressed, the cultured, the rich--simply as brother with brother. And when he said to an outcast, "Not till the sun excludes you will I exclude you," he voiced a sentiment worthy of a god. He was brother to the elements, the mountains, the seas, the clouds, the sky. He loved them all and partook of them all in his large, free, unselfish, untrammeled nature. His heart knew no limits, and feeling his feet mortised in granite and his footsteps tenoned in infinity he knew the amplitude of time. Only the great are generous; only the strong are forgiving. Like Lot's wife, most poets look back over their shoulders; and those who are not looking backward insist that we shall look into the future, and the vast majority of the whole scribbling rabble accept the precept, "Man never is, but always to be blest." We grieve for childhood's happy days, and long for sweet rest in Heaven and sigh for mansions in the skies. And the people about us seem so indifferent, and our friends so lukewarm; and really no one understands us, and our environment queers our budding spirituality, and the frost of jealousy nips our aspirations: "O Paradise, O Paradise, the world is growing old; who would not be at rest and free where love is never cold." So sing the fearsome dyspeptics of the stylus. O anemic he, you bloodless she, nipping at crackers, sipping at tea, why not consider that, although evolutionists tell us where we came from, and theologians inform us where we are going to, yet the only thing we are really sure of is that we are here! The present is the perpetually moving spot where history ends and prophecy begins. It is our only possession: the past we reach through lapsing memory, halting recollection, hearsay and belief; we pierce the future by wistful faith or anxious hope; but the present is beneath our feet. Whitman sings the beauty and the glory of the present. He rebukes our groans and sighs--bids us look about on every side at the wonders of creation, and at the miracles within our grasp. He lifts us up, restores us to our own, introduces us to man and to Nature, and thus infuses into us courage, manly pride, self-reliance, and the strong faith that comes when we feel our kinship with God. He was so mixed with the universe that his voice took on the sway of elemental integrity and candor. Absolutely honest, this man was unafraid and unashamed, for Nature has neither apprehension, shame nor vainglory. In "Leaves of Grass" Whitman speaks as all men have ever spoken who believe in God and in themselves--oracular, without apology or abasement--fearlessly. He tells of the powers and mysteries that pervade and guide all life, all death, all purpose. His work is masculine, as the sun is masculine; for the Prophetic Voice is as surely masculine as the lullaby and lyric cry are feminine. Whitman brings the warmth of the sun to the buds of the heart, so that they open and bring forth form, color, perfume. He becomes for them aliment and dew; so these buds become blossoms, fruits, tall branches and stately trees that cast refreshing shadows. There are men who are to other men as the shadow of a mighty rock in a weary land--such is Walt Whitman. VICTOR HUGO Man is neither master of his life nor of his fate. He can but offer to his fellowmen his efforts to diminish human suffering; he can but offer to God his indomitable faith in the growth of liberty. --_Victor Hugo_ [Illustration: VICTOR HUGO] The father of Victor Hugo was a general in the army of Napoleon, his mother a woman of rare grace and brave good sense. Victor was the third of three sons. Six weeks before the birth of her youngest boy, the mother wrote to a very dear friend of her husband, this letter: "To General Victor Lahorie, "Citizen-General: "Soon to become the mother of a third child, it would be very agreeable to me if you would act as its godfather. Its name shall be yours--one which you have not belied and one which you have so well honored: Victor or Victorine. Your consent will be a testimonial of your friendship for us. "Please accept, Citizen-General, the assurance of our sincere attachment. "Femme Hugo." Victorine was expected, Victor came. General Lahorie acted as sponsor for the infant. A soldier's family lives here or there, everywhere or anywhere. In Eighteen Hundred Eight, General Hugo was with Joseph Bonaparte in Spain. Victor was then six years old. His mother had taken as a residence a quaint house in the Impasse of the Feullantines, Paris. It was one of those peculiar old places occasionally seen in France. The environs of London have a few; America none of which I know. This house, roomy, comfortable and antiquated, was surrounded with trees and a tangle of shrubbery, vines and flowers; above it all was a high stone wall, and in front a picket iron gate. It was a mosaic--a sample of the Sixteenth Century inlaid in this; solitary as the woods; quiet as a convent; sacred as a forest; a place for dreams, and reverie, and rest. At the back of the house was a dilapidated little chapel. Here an aged priest counted his beads, said daily mass, and endeavored to keep moth, rust and ruin from the house of prayer. This priest was a scholar, a man of learning: he taught the children of Madame Hugo. Another man lived in this chapel. He never went outside the gate and used to take exercise at night. He had a cot-bed in the shelter of the altar; beneath his pillow were a pair of pistols and a copy of Tacitus. This man lived there Summer and Winter, although there was no warmth save the scanty sunshine that stole in through the shattered windows. He, too, taught the children and gave them little lectures on history. He loved the youngest boy and would carry him on his shoulder and tell him stories of deeds of valor. One day a file of soldiers came. They took this man and manacled him. The mother sought to keep her children inside the house so that they should not witness the scene, but she did not succeed. The boys fought their mother and the servants in a mad frenzy trying to rescue the old man. The soldiers formed in columns of four and marched their prisoner away. Not long after, Madame Hugo was passing the church of Saint Jacques du Haut Pas: her youngest boy's hand was in hers. She saw a large placard posted in front of the church. She paused and pointing to it said, "Victor, read that!" The boy read. It was a notice that General Lahorie had been shot that day on the plains of Grenville by order of a court martial. General Lahorie was a gentleman of Brittany. He was a Republican, and five years before had grievously offended the Emperor. A charge of conspiracy being proved against him, a price was placed upon his head, and he found a temporary refuge with the mother of his godson. That tragic incident of the arrest, and the placard announcing General Lahorie's death, burned deep into the soul of the manling, and who shall say to what extent it colored his future life? When Napoleon met his downfall, it was also a Waterloo for General Hugo. His property was confiscated, and penury took the place of plenty. When Victor was nineteen, his mother having died, the family life was broken up. In "Les Miserables" the early struggles of Marius are described; and this, the author has told us, may be considered autobiography. He has related how the young man lived in a garret; how he would sweep this barren room; how he would buy a pennyworth of cheese, waiting until dusk to get a loaf of bread, and slink home as furtively as if he had stolen it; how carrying his book under his arm he would enter the butcher's shop, and after being elbowed by jeering servants till he felt the cold sweat standing out on his forehead, he would take off his hat to the astonished butcher and ask for a single mutton-chop. This he would carry to his garret, and cooking it himself it would be made to last for three days. In this way he managed to live on less than two hundred dollars a year, derived from the proceeds of poems, pamphlets and essays. At this time he was already an "Academy Laureate," having received honorable mention for a poem submitted in a competition. In his twentieth year, fortune came to him in triple form: he brought out a book of poems that netted him seven hundred francs; soon after the publication of this book, Louis the Eighteenth, who knew the value of having friends who were ready writers, bestowed on him a pension of one thousand francs a year; then these two pieces of good fortune made possible a third--his marriage. Early marriages are like late ones: they may be wise and they may not. Victor Hugo's marriage with Adele Foucher was a most happy event. A man with a mind as independent as Victor Hugo's is sure to make enemies. The "Classics" were positive that he was defiling the well of Classic French, and they sought to write him down. But by writing a man up you can not write him down; the only thing that can smother a literary aspirant is silence. Victor Hugo coined the word when he could not find it, transposed phrases, inverted sentences, and never called a spade an agricultural implement. Not content with this, he put the spade on exhibition and this often at unnecessary times, and occasionally prefaced the word with an adjective. Had he been let alone he would not have done this. The censors told him he must not use the name of Deity, nor should he refer so often to kings. At once, he doubled his Topseys and put on his stage three Uncle Toms when one might have answered. Like Shakespeare, he used idioms and slang with profusion--anything to express the idea. Will this convey the thought? If so, it was written down, and, once written, Beelzebub and all his hosts could not make him change it. But in the interest of truth let me note one exception: "I do not like that word," said Mademoiselle Mars to Victor Hugo at a rehearsal of "Hernani"; "can I not change it?" "I wrote it so and it must stand," was the answer. Mademoiselle Mars used another expression instead of the author's, and he promptly asked her to resign her part. She wept, and upon agreeing to adhere to the text was reinstated in favor. Rehearsal after rehearsal occurred, and the words were repeated as written. The night of the performance came. Superb was the stage-setting, splendid the audience. The play went forward amid loud applause. The scene was reached where came the objectionable word. Did Mademoiselle Mars use it? Of course not; she used the word she chose--she was a woman. Fifty-three times she played the part, and not once did she use the author's pet phrase; and he was wise enough not to note the fact. The moral of this is that not even a strong man can cope with a small woman who weeps at the right time. The censorship forbade the placing of "Marion Delorme" on the stage until a certain historical episode in it had been changed. Would the author be so kind as to change it? Not he. "Then it shall not be played," said M. de Martignac. The author hastened to interview the minister in person. He got a North Pole reception. In fact, M. de Martignac said that it was his busy day, and that playwriting was foolish business anyway; but if a man were bound to write, he should write to amuse, not to instruct. And young Hugo was bowed out. When he found himself well outside the door he was furious. He would see the King himself. And he did see the King. His Majesty was gracious and very patient. He listened to the young author's plea, talked book-lore, recited poetry, showed that he knew Hugo's verses, asked after the author's wife, then the baby, and--said that the play could not go on. Hugo turned to go. Charles the Tenth called him back, and said that he was glad the author had called--in fact, he was about to send for him. His pension thereafter should be six thousand francs a year. Victor Hugo declined to receive it. Of course, the papers were full of the subject. All cafedom took sides: Paris had a topic for gesticulation, and Paris improved the opportunity. Conservatism having stopped this play, there was only one thing to do: write another; for a play of Victor Hugo's must be put upon the stage. All his friends said so; his honor was at stake. In three weeks another play was ready. The censors read it and gave their report. They said that "Hernani" was whimsical in conception, defective in execution, a tissue of extravagances, generally trivial and often coarse. But they advised that it be put upon the stage, just to show the public to what extent of folly an author could go. In order to preserve the dignity of their office, they drew up a list of six places where the text should be changed. Both sides were afraid, so each was willing to give in a point. The text was changed, and the important day for the presentation was drawing nigh. The Romanticists were, of course, anxious that the play should be a great success; the Classics were quite willing that it should be otherwise; in fact, they had bought up the claque and were making arrangements to hiss it down. But the author's friends were numerous; they were young and lusty; they held meetings behind locked doors, and swore terrible oaths that the play should go. On the day of the initial performance, five hours before the curtain rose, they were on hand, having taken the best seats in the house. They also took the worst, wherever a hisser might hide. These advocates of liberal art wore coats of green or red or blue, costumes like bullfighters, trousers and hats to match or not to match--anything to defy tradition. All during the performance there was an uproar. Theophile Gautier has described the event in most entertaining style, and in "L'Historie de Romanticisme" the record of it is found in detail. Several American writers have touched upon this particular theme, and all who have seen fit to write of it seem to have stood under umbrellas when God rained humor. One writer calls it "the outburst of a tremendous revolution in literature." He speaks of "smoldering flames," "the hordes that furiously fought entrenched behind prestige, age, caste, wealth and tradition," "suppression and extermination of heresy," "those who sought to stop the onward march of civilization," etc. Let us be sensible. A "cane-rush" is not a revolution, and "Bloody Monday" at Harvard is not "a decisive battle in the onward and upward march." If "Hernani" had been hissed down, Victor Hugo would have lived just as long and might have written better. Civilization is not held in place by noisy youths in flaming waistcoats; and even if every cabbage had hit its mark, and every egg bespattered its target, the morning stars would still sing together. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was next turned out--written in five months--and was a great success. Publishers besieged the author for another story, but he preferred poetry. It was thirty years before his next novel, "Les Miserables," appeared. But all the time he wrote--plays, verses, essays, pamphlets. Everything that he penned was widely read. Amid storms of opposition and cries of bravo, continually making friends, he moved steadily forward. Men like Victor Hugo can be killed or they may be banished, but they can not be bought; neither can they be intimidated into silence. He resigned his pension and boldly expressed himself in his own way. He knew history by heart and toyed with it; politics was his delight. But it is a mistake to call him a statesman. He was bold to rashness, impulsive, impatient and vehement. Because a man is great is no reason why he should be proclaimed perfect. Such men as Victor Hugo need no veneer--the truth will answer: he would explode a keg of powder to kill a fly. He was an agitator. But these zealous souls are needed--not to govern or to be blindly followed, but rather to make other men think for themselves. Yet to do this in a monarchy is not safe. The years passed, and the time came for either Hugo or Royalty to go; France was not large enough for both. It proved to be Hugo; a bounty of twenty-five thousand francs was offered for his body, dead or alive. Through a woman's devotion he escaped to Brussels. He was driven from there to Jersey, then to Guernsey. It was nineteen years before he returned to Paris--years of banishment, but years of glory. Exiled by Fate that he might do his work! * * * * * Each day a steamer starts from Southampton for Guernsey, Alderney and Jersey. These are names known to countless farmers' boys the wide world over. You can not mistake the Channel Island boats--they smell like a county fair, and though you be blind and deaf it is impossible to board the wrong craft. Every time one of these staunch little steamers lands in England, crates containing mild-eyed, lusty calves are slid down the gangplank, marked for Maine, Iowa, California, or some uttermost part of the earth. There his vealship (worth his weight in gold) is going to found a kingdom. I stood on the dock watching the bovine passengers disembark, and furtively listened the while to an animated argument between two rather rough-looking, red-faced men, clothed in corduroys and carrying long, stout staffs. Mixed up in their conversation I caught the names of royalty, then of celebrities great, and artists famous--warriors, orators, philanthropists and musicians. Could it be possible that these rustics were poets? It must be so. And there came to me thoughts of Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Joaquin Miller, and all that sublime company of singers in shirt-sleeves. Suddenly the wind veered and the veil fell; all the sacred names so freely bandied about were those of "families" with mighty milk-records. When we went on board and the good ship was slipping down The Solent, I made the acquaintance of these men and was regaled with more cow-talk than I had heard since I left Texas. We saw the island of Portsea, where Dickens was born, and got a glimpse of the spires of Portsmouth as we passed; then came the Isle of Wight and the quaint town of Cowes. I made a bright joke on the latter place as it was pointed out to me by my Jersey friend, but it went for naught. A pleasant sail of eight hours and the towering cliffs of Guernsey came in sight. Foam-dashed and spray-covered they rise right out of the sea at the south, to the height of two hundred seventy feet. About them great flocks of sea-fowl hover, swirl and soar. Wild, rugged and romantic is the scene. The Isle of Guernsey is nine miles long and six wide. Its principal town is Saint Peter Port, a place of about sixteen thousand inhabitants, where a full dozen hotel porters meet the incoming steamer and struggle for your baggage. Hotels and boarding-houses here are numerous and good. Guernsey is a favorite resort for invalids and those who desire to flee the busy world for a space. In fact, the author of "Les Miserables" has made exile popular. Emerging from my hotel at Saint Peter Port I was accosted by a small edition of Gavroche, all in tatters, who proposed showing me the way to Hauteville House for a penny. I already knew the route, but accepted the offer on Gavroche's promise to reveal to me a secret about the place. The secret is this: The house is haunted, and when the wind is east, and the setting moon shows only a narrow rim above the rocks, ghosts come and dance a solemn minuet on the glass roof above the study. Had Gavroche ever seen them? No, but he knew a boy who had. Years and years--ever so many years ago--long before there were any steamboats, and when only a schooner came to Guernsey once a week, a woman was murdered in Hauteville House. Her ghost came back with other ghosts and drove the folks away. So the big house remained vacant--save for the spooks, who paid no rent. Then after a great, long time Victor Hugo came and lived in the house. The ghosts did not bother him. Faith! they had been keeping the place just a' purpose for him. He rented the house first, and liked it so well that he bought it--got it at half-price on account of the ghosts. Here, every Christmas, Victor Hugo gave a big dinner in the great oak hall to all the children in Guernsey: hundreds of them--all the way from babies that could barely creep, to "boys" with whiskers. They were all fed on turkey, tarts, apples, oranges and figs; and when they went away, each was given a bag of candy to take home. Climbing a narrow, crooked street we came to the great, dark, gloomy edifice situated at the top of a cliff. The house was painted black by some strange whim of a former occupant. "We will leave it so," said Victor Hugo; "liberty is dead, and we are in mourning for her." But the gloom of Hauteville House is only on the outside. Within all is warm and homelike. The furnishings are almost as the poet left them, and the marks of his individuality are on every side. In the outer hall stands an elegant column of carved oak, its panels showing scenes from "The Hunchback." In the dining-room there is fantastic wainscoting with plaques and porcelain tiles inlaid here and there. Many of these ornaments were presents, sent by unknown admirers in all parts of the world. In "Les Miserables" there is a chance line revealing the author's love for the beautiful as shown in the grain of woods. The result was an influx of polished panels, slabs, chips, hewings, carvings, and in one instance a log sent "collect." Samples of redwood, ebony, calamander, hamamelis, suradanni, tamarind, satinwood, mahogany, walnut, maples of many kinds and oaks without limit--all are there. A mammoth ax-helve I noticed on the wall was labeled, "Shagbark-hickory from Missouri." These specimens of wood were sometimes made up into hatracks, chairs, canes, or panels for doors, and are seen in odd corners of these rambling rooms. Charles Hugo once facetiously wrote to a friend: "We have bought no kindling for three years." At another time he writes: "Father still is sure he can sketch and positive he can carve. He has several jackknives, and whittles names, dates and emblems on sticks and furniture--we tremble for the piano." In the dining-room, I noticed a huge oaken chair fastened to the wall with a chain. On the mantel was a statuette of the Virgin; on the pedestal Victor Hugo had engraved lines speaking of her as "Freedom's Goddess." This dining-room affords a sunny view out into the garden; on this floor are also a reception-room, library and a smoking-room. On the next floor are various sleeping-apartments, and two cozy parlors, known respectively as the red room and the blue. Both are rich in curious draperies, a little more pronounced in color than some folks admire. The next floor contains the "Oak Gallery": a ballroom we should call it. Five large windows furnish a flood of light. In the center of this fine room is an enormous candelabrum with many branches, at the top a statue of wood, the whole carved by Victor Hugo's own hands. The Oak Gallery is a regular museum of curiosities of every sort--books, paintings, carvings, busts, firearms, musical instruments. A long glass case contains a large number of autograph-letters from the world's celebrities, written to Hugo in exile. At the top of the house and built on its flat roof is the most interesting apartment of Hauteville House--the study and workroom of Victor Hugo. Three of its sides and the roof are of glass. The floor, too, is one immense slab of sea-green glass. Sliding curtains worked by pulleys cut off the light as desired. "More light, more light," said the great man again and again. He gloried and reveled in the sunshine. Here, in the Winter, with no warmth but the sun's rays, his eyes shaded by his felt hat, he wrote, always standing at a shelf fixed in the wall. On this shelf were written all "The Toilers," "The Man Who Laughs," "Shakespeare" and much of "Les Miserables." The leaves of manuscript were numbered and fell on the floor, to remain perhaps for days before being gathered up. When Victor Hugo went to Guernsey he went to liberty, not to banishment. He arrived at Hauteville House poor in purse and broken in health. Here the fire of his youth came back, and his pen retrieved the fortune that royalty had confiscated. The forenoons were given to earnest work. The daughter composed music; the sons translated Shakespeare and acted as their father's faithful helpers; Madame Hugo collected the notes of her husband's life and cheerfully looked after her household affairs. Several hours of each afternoon were given to romp and play; the evenings were sacred to music, reading and conversation. Horace Greeley was once a prisoner in Paris. From his cell he wrote, "The Saint Peter who holds the keys of this place has kindly locked the world out; and for once, thank Heaven, I am free from intrusion." Lovers of truth must thank exile for some of our richest and ripest literature. Exile is not all exile. Imagination can not be imprisoned. Amid the winding bastions of the brain, thought roams free and untrammeled. Liberty is only a comparative term, and Victor Hugo at Guernsey enjoyed a thousand times more freedom than ever ruling monarch knew. Standing at the shelf-desk where this "Gentleman of France" stood for so many happy hours, I inscribed my name in the "visitors' book." I thanked the good woman who had shown me the place, and told me so much of interest--thanked her in words that seemed but a feeble echo of all that my heart would say. I went down the stairs--out at the great carved doorway--and descended the well-worn steps. Perched on a crag waiting for me was little Gavroche, his rags fluttering in the breeze. He offered to show me the great stone chair where Gilliatt sat when the tide came up and carried him away. And did I want to buy a bull calf? Gavroche knew where there was a fine one that could be bought cheap. Gavroche would show me both the calf and the stone chair for threepence. I accepted the offer, and we went down the stony street toward the sea, hand in hand. * * * * * On the Twenty-eighth day of June, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, I took my place in the long line and passed slowly through the Pantheon at Paris and viewed the body of President Carnot. The same look of proud dignity that I had seen in life was there--calm, composed, serene. The inanimate clay was clothed in the simple black of a citizen of the Republic; the only mark of office being the red silken sash that covered the spot in the breast where the stiletto-stroke of hate had gone home. Amid bursts of applause, surrounded by loving friends and loyal adherents, he was stricken down and passed out into the Unknown. Happy fate! to die before the fickle populace had taken up a new idol; to step in an instant beyond the reach of malice--to leave behind the self-seekers that pursue, the hungry horde that follows, the zealots who defame; to escape the dagger-thrust of calumny and receive only the glittering steel that at the same time wrote his name indelibly on the roll of honor. Carnot, thrice happy thou! Thy name is secure on history's page, and thy dust now resting beneath the dome of the Pantheon is bedewed with the tears of thy countrymen. Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, died in Five Hundred Twelve. She was buried on a hilltop, the highest point in Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. Over the grave was erected a chapel which for many years was a shrine for the faithful. This chapel with its additions remained until Seventeen Hundred Fifty, when a church was designed which in beauty of style and solidity of structure has rarely been equaled. The object of the architect was to make the most enduring edifice possible, and still not sacrifice proportion. Louis the Fifteenth laid the cornerstone of this church in Seventeen Hundred Sixty-four, and in Seventeen Hundred Ninety the edifice was dedicated by the Roman Catholics with great pomp. But the spirit of revolution was at work; and in one year after, a mob sacked this beautiful building, burned its pews, destroyed its altar, and wrought havoc with its ecclesiastical furniture. The Convention converted the structure into a memorial temple, inscribing on its front the words, "Aux grandes Hommes la patrie reconnaisante," and they named the building the Pantheon. In Eighteen Hundred Six, the Catholics had gotten such influence with the government that the building was restored to them. After the revolution of Eighteen Hundred Thirty, the church of Saint Genevieve was again taken from the priests. It was held until Eighteen Hundred Fifty-one, when the Romanists in the Assembly succeeded in having it again reconsecrated. In the meantime, many of the great men of France had been buried there. The first interment in the Pantheon was Mirabeau. Next came Marat--stabbed while in the bath by Charlotte Corday. Both bodies were removed by order of the Convention when the church was given back to Rome. In the Pantheon, the visitor now sees the elaborate tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. In the dim twilight he reads the glowing inscriptions, and from the tomb of Rousseau he sees the hand thrust forth bearing a torch--but the bones of these men are not here. While robed priests chanted the litany, as the great organ pealed, and swinging censers gave off their perfume, visitors came, bringing children, and they stopped at the arches where Rousseau and Voltaire slept side by side, and they said, "It is here." And so the dust of infidel greatness seemed to interfere with the rites. A change was made. Let Victor Hugo tell: "One night in May, Eighteen Hundred Fourteen, about two o'clock in the morning, a cab stopped near the city gate of La Gare at an opening in a board fence. This fence surrounded a large, vacant piece of ground belonging to the city of Paris. The cab had come from the Pantheon, and the coachman had been ordered to take the most deserted streets. Three men alighted from the cab and crawled into the enclosure. Two carried a sack between them. Other men, some in cassocks, awaited them. They proceeded towards a hole dug in the middle of the field. At the bottom of the hole was quicklime. These men said nothing, they had no lanterns. The wan daybreak gave a ghastly light; the sack was opened. It was full of bones. These were the bones of Jean Jacques and of Voltaire, which had been withdrawn from the Pantheon. "The mouth of the sack was brought close to the hole, and the bones rattled down into that black pit. The two skulls struck against each other; a spark, not likely to be seen by those standing near, was doubtless exchanged between the head that made 'The Philosophical Dictionary' and the head that made 'The Social Contract,' When that was done, when the sack was shaken, when Voltaire and Rousseau had been emptied into that hole, a digger seized a spade, threw into the opening the heap of earth, and filled up the grave. The others stamped with their feet upon the ground, so as to remove from it the appearance of having been freshly disturbed. One of the assistants took for his trouble the sack--as the hangman takes the clothing of his victim--they left the enclosure, got into the cab without saying a word, and, hastily, before the sun had risen, these men got away." The ashes of the man who wrote these vivid words now rest next to the empty tombs of Voltaire and Rousseau. But a step away is the grave of Sadi-Carnot. When the visitor is conducted to the crypt of the Pantheon, he is first taken to the tomb of Victor Hugo. The sarcophagus on each side is draped with the red, white and blue of France and the stars and stripes of America. With uncovered heads, we behold the mass of flowers and wreaths, and our minds go back to Eighteen Hundred Eighty-five, when the body of the chief citizen of Paris lay in state at the Pantheon and five hundred thousand people passed by and laid the tribute of silence or of tears on his bier. The Pantheon is now given over as a memorial to the men of France who have enriched the world with their lives. Over the portals of this beautiful temple are the words, "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite." Across its floors of rarest mosaic echo only the feet of pilgrims and those of the courteous and kindly old soldiers who have the place in charge. On the walls color revels in beautiful paintings, and in the niches and on the pedestals is marble that speaks of greatness which lives in lives made better. The history of the Pantheon is one of strife. As late as Eighteen Hundred Seventy the Commune made it a stronghold, and the streets on every side were called upon to contribute their paving-stones for a barricade. Yet it seems meet that Victor Hugo's dust should lie here amid the scenes he loved and knew, and where he struggled, worked, toiled, achieved; from whence he was banished, and to which he returned in triumph, to receive at last the complete approbation so long withheld. Certainly not in the quiet of a mossy graveyard, nor in a church where priests mumble unmeaning words at fixed times, nor yet alone on the mountain-side--for he chafed at solitude--but he should have been buried at sea. In the midst of storm and driving sleet, at midnight, the sails should have been lowered, the great engines stopped, and with no requiem but the sobbing of the night-wind and the sighing of the breeze through the shrouds, and the moaning of the waves as they surged about the great, black ship, the plank should have been run out, and the body wrapped in the red, white and blue of the Republic: the sea, the infinite mother of all, beloved and sung by him, should have taken his tired form to her arms, and there he would rest. If not this, then the Pantheon. WM. WORDSWORTH Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of Faith; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things; Of ebb and flow and ever-during power; And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation. Here you stand, Adore and worship, when you know it not; Pious beyond the intention of your thought; Devout above the meaning of your will. --_Wordsworth_ [Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH] Some one has told us that Heaven is not a place but a condition of mind, and it is possible that he is right. But if Heaven is a place, surely it is not unlike Grasmere. Such loveliness of landscape--such sylvan stretches of crystal water--peace and quiet and rest! Great, green hills lift their heads to the skies, and all the old stone walls and hedgerows are covered with trailing vines and blooming flowers. The air is rich with song of birds, sweet with perfume, and the blossoms gaily shower their petals on the passer-by. Overhead, white, billowy clouds float lazily over their background of ethereal blue. Cool June breezes fan the cheek. Distant knolls are dotted with flocks of sheep whose bells tinkle dreamily; and drowsy hum of beetle makes the bass, while lark song forms the air of the sweet symphony that Nature plays. Such was Grasmere as I first saw it. To love the plain, homely, common, simple things of earth, of these to sing; to make the familiar beautiful and the commonplace enchanting; to cause each bush to burn with the actual presence of the living God: this is the poet's office. And if the poet lives near Grasmere, his task does not seem difficult. From Seventeen Hundred Ninety-nine to Eighteen Hundred Eight, Wordsworth lived at Dove Cottage. Thanks to a few earnest souls, the place is now secured to the people of England and the lovers of poetry wherever they may be. A good old woman has charge of the cottage, and for a slight fee shows you the house and garden and little orchard and objects of interest, all the while talking: and you are glad, for, although unlettered, she is reverent and honest. She was born here, and all she knows is Wordsworth and the people and the things he loved. Is not this enough? Here Wordsworth lived before anything he wrote was published in book form: here his best work was done, and here Dorothy--splendid, sympathetic Dorothy---was inspiration, critic, friend. But who inspired Dorothy? Coleridge perhaps more than all others, and we know somewhat of their relationship as told in Dorothy's diary. There is a little Wordsworth Library in Dove Cottage, and I sat at the window of "De Quincey's room" and read for an hour. Says Dorothy: "Sat until four o'clock reading dear Coleridge's letters." "We paced the garden until moonrise at one o'clock--we three, brother, Coleridge and I." "I read Spenser to him aloud and then we had a midnight tea." Here in this little, terraced garden, behind the stone cottage with its low ceilings and wide window-seats and little, diamond panes, she in her misery wrote: "Oh, the pity of it all! Yet there is recompense; every sight reminds me of Coleridge, dear, dear fellow; of our walks and talks by day and night; of all the bright and witty, and sad sweet things of which we spoke and read. I was melancholy and could not talk, and at last I eased my heart by weeping." Alas, too often there is competition between brother and sister, then follow misunderstandings; but here the brotherly and sisterly love stands out clear and strong after these hundred years have passed, and we contemplate it with delight. Was ever woman more honestly and better praised than Dorothy? "The blessings of my later years Were with me when I was a boy. She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And humble cares and gentle fears, A heart! the fountain of sweet tears, And love and thought and joy. And she hath smiles to earth unknown, Smiles that with motion of their own Do spread and sink and rise; That come and go with endless play, And ever as they pass away Are hidden in her eyes." And so in a dozen or more poems, we see Dorothy reflected. She was the steel on which he tried his flint. Everything he wrote was read to her, then she read it alone, balancing the sentences in the delicate scales of her womanly judgment. "Heart of my heart, is this well done?" When she said, "This will do," it was no matter who said otherwise. Back of the house on the rising hillside is the little garden. Hewn out of the solid rock is "Dorothy's seat." There I rested while Mrs. Dixon discoursed of poet lore, and told me of how, many times, Coleridge and Dorothy had sat in the same seat and watched the stars. Then I drank from "the well," which is more properly a spring; the stones that curb it were placed in their present position by the hand that wrote "The Prelude." Above the garden is the orchard, where the green linnet still sings, for the birds never grow old. There, too, are the circling swallows; and in a snug little alcove of the cottage you can read "The Butterfly" from a first edition; and then you can go sit in the orchard, white with blossoms, and see the butterflies that suggested the poem. And if your eye is good you can discover down by the lakeside the daffodils, and listen the while to the cuckoo call. Then in the orchard you can see not only "the daisy," but many of them, and, if you wish, Mrs. Dixon will let you dig a bunch of the daisies to take back to America; and if you do, I hope that yours will prosper as have mine, and that Wordsworth's flowers, like Wordsworth's verse, will gladden your heart when the blue sky of your life threatens to be o'ercast with gray. Here Southey came, and "Thalaber" was read aloud in this little garden. Here, too, came Clarkson, the man with a fine feminine carelessness, as Dorothy said. Charles Lloyd sat here and discoursed with William Calvert. Sir George Beaumont forgot his title and rapped often at the quaint, hinged door. An artist was Beaumont, but his best picture they say is not equal to the lines that Wordsworth wrote about it. Sir George was not only a gentleman according to law, but one in heart, for he was a friend, kind, gentle and generous. With such a friend Wordsworth was rich indeed. But perhaps the friends we have are only our other selves, and we get what we deserve. We must not forget the kindly face of Humphry Davy, whose gracious playfulness was ever a charm to the Wordsworths. The safety-lamp was then only an unspoken word, and perhaps few foresaw the sweetness and light that these two men would yet give to earth. Walter Scott and his wife came to Dove Cottage in Eighteen Hundred Five. He did not bring his title, for it, like Humphry Davy's, was as yet unpacked down in London town. They slept in the little cubby-hole of a room in the upper southwest corner. One can imagine Dorothy taking Sir Walter's shaving-water up to him in the morning; and the savory smell of breakfast as Mistress Mary poured the tea, while England's future laureate served the toast and eggs: Mr. Scott eating everything in sight and talking a torrent the while about art and philosophy as he passed his cup back, to the consternation of the hostess, whose frugal ways were not used to such ravages of appetite. Of course she did not know that a combined novelist and rhymster ate twice as much as a simple poet. Afterwards Mrs. Scott tucked up her dress, putting on one of Dorothy's aprons, and helped do the dishes. Then Coleridge came over and they all climbed to the summit of Helm Crag. Shy little De Quincey had read some of Wordsworth's poems, and knew from their flavor that the man who penned them was a noble soul. He came to Grasmere to call on him: he walked past Dove Cottage twice, but his heart failed him and he went away unannounced. Later, he returned and found the occupants as simple folks as himself. Happiness was there and good society; few books, but fine culture; plain living and high thinking. Wordsworth lived at Rydal Mount for thirty-three years, yet the sweetest flowers of his life blossomed at Dove Cottage. For difficulty, toil, struggle, obscurity, poverty, mixed with aspiration and ambition---all these were here. Success came later, but this is naught; for the achievement is more than the public acknowledgment of the deed. After Wordsworth moved away, De Quincey rented Dove Cottage and lived in it for twenty-seven years. He acquired a library of more than five thousand volumes, making bookshelves on four sides of the little rooms from floor to ceiling. Some of these shelves still remain. Here he turned night into day and dreamed the dreams of "The Opium-Eater." And all these are some of the things that Mrs. Dixon told me on that bright Summer day. What if I had heard them before! no difference. Dear old lady, I salute you and at your feet I lay my gratitude for a day of rare and quiet joy. "Farewell, thou little nook of mountain ground, Thou rocky corner in the lowest stair Of that magnificent temple which does bound One side of our whole vale with gardens rare, Sweet garden-orchard, eminently fair, The loveliest spot that man has ever found, Farewell! We leave thee to Heaven's peaceful care, Thee, and the Cottage which thou dost surround." * * * * * At places of pleasure and entertainment in the Far West, are often found functionaries known as "bouncers." It is the duty of the bouncer to give hints to objectionable visitors that their presence is not desired. And inasmuch as there are many men who can never take a hint without a kick, the bouncer is a person selected on account of his peculiar fitness--psychic and otherwise--for the place. We all have special talents, and these faculties should be used in a manner that will help our fellowmen on their way. My acquaintanceship with the bouncer has been only general, not particular. Yet I have admired him from a distance, and the skill and eclat that he sometimes shows in a professional way has often excited my admiration. In social usages, America borrows constantly from the mother country. But like all borrowing it seems to be one-sided, for seldom, very, very seldom, in point of etiquette and manners does England borrow from us. Yet there are exceptions. It is a beautiful highway that skirts Lake Windermere and follows up through Ambleside. We get a glimpse of the old home of Harriet Martineau, and "Fox Howe," the home of Matthew Arnold. Just before Rydal Water is reached comes Rydal Road, running straight up the hillside, off from the turnpike. Rydal Mount is the third house up on the left-hand side, I knew the location, for I had read of it many times, and in my pocketbook I carried a picture taken from an old "Frank Leslie's," showing the house. My heart beat fast as I climbed the hill. To visit the old home of one who was Poet Laureate of England is no small event in the life of a book-lover. I was full of poetry and murmured lines from "The Excursion" as I walked. Soon rare old Rydal Mount came in sight among the wealth of green. I stopped and sighed. Yes, yes, Wordsworth lived here for thirty-three years, and here he died; the spot whereon I then stood had been pressed many times by his feet. I walked slowly, with uncovered head, and approached the gate. It was locked. I fumbled at the latch; and just as there came a prospect of its opening, a loud, deep, guttural voice dashed over me like a wave: "There--you! now, wot you want?" The owner of this voice was not ten feet away, but he was standing up close to the wall and I had not seen him. I was somewhat startled at first. The man did not move. I stepped to one side to get a better view of my interlocutor, and saw him to be a large, red man of perhaps fifty. A handkerchief was knotted around his thick neck, and he held a heavy hoe in his hand. A genuine beefeater he was, only he ate too much beef and the ale he drank was evidently Extra XXX. His scowl was so needlessly severe and his manner so belligerent that I--thrice armed, knowing my cause was just--could not restrain a smile. I touched my hat and said, "Ah, excuse me, Mr. Falstaff, you are the bouncer?" "Never mind wot I am, sir--'oo are you?" "I am a great admirer of Wordsworth----" "That's the way they all begins. Cawn't ye hadmire 'im on that side of the wall as well as this?" There is no use of wasting argument with a man of this stamp; besides that, his question was to the point. But there are several ways of overcoming one's adversary: I began feeling in my pocket for pence. My enemy ceased glaring, stepped up to the locked gate as though he half-wished to be friendly, and there was sorrow in his voice: "Don't tempt me, sir; don't do ut! The Missus is peekin' out of the shutters at us now." "And do you never admit visitors, even to the grounds?" "No, sir, never, God 'elp me! and there's many an honest bob I could turn by ut, and no one 'urt. But I've lost my place twic't by ut. They took me back though. The Guv'ner 'ud never forgive me again. 'It's three times and out, Mister 'Opkins,' says 'ee, only last Whitsuntide." "But visitors do come?" "Yes, sir; but they never gets in. Mostly 'mer'cans; they don't know no better, sir. They picks all the ivy orf the outside of the wall, and you sees yourself there's no leaves on the lower branches of that tree. Then they carries away so many pebbles from out there that I've to dump in a fresh weelbarrel full o' gravel every week, sir, don't you know." He thrust a pudgy, freckled hand through the bars of the gate to show that he bore me no ill-will, and also, I suppose, to mollify my disappointment. For although I had come too late to see the great poet himself and had even failed to see the inside of his house, yet I had at least been greeted at the gate by his proxy. I pressed the hand firmly, pocketed a handful of gravel as a memento, then turned and went my way. And all there is to tell about my visit to Rydal Mount is this interview with the bouncer. * * * * * Wordsworth lived eighty years. His habitation, except for short periods, was never more than a few miles from his birthplace. His education was not extensive, his learning not profound. He lacked humor and passion; in his character there was little personal magnetism, and in his work there is small dramatic power. He traveled more or less and knew humanity, but he did not know man. His experience in so-called practical things was slight, his judgment not accurate. So he lived--quietly, modestly, dreamily. His dust rests in a country churchyard, the grave marked by a simple slab. A gnarled, old yew-tree stands guard above the grass-grown mound. The nearest railroad is fifteen miles away. As a poet, Wordsworth stands in the front rank of the second class. Shelley, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, far surpass him; and the sweet singer of Michigan, even in uninspired moments, never "threw off" anything worse than this: "And he is lean and he is sick: His body, dwindled and awry, Rests upon ankles swollen and thick; His legs are thin and dry. One prop he has, and only one, His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him near the waterfall, Upon the village common." Jove may nod, but when he makes a move it counts. Yet the influence of Wordsworth upon the thought and feeling of the world has been very great. He himself said, "The young will read my poems and be better for their truth." Many of his lines pass as current coin: "The child is father of the man," "The light that never was on land nor sea," "Not too bright and good for human nature's daily food," "Thoughts that do lie too deep for tears," "The mighty stream of tendency," and many others. "Plain living and high thinking" is generally given to Emerson, but he discovered it in Wordsworth, and recognizing it as his own he took it. In a certain book of quotations, "The still sad music of humanity" is given to Shakespeare; but to equalize matters we sometimes attribute to Wordsworth "The Old Oaken Bucket." The men who win are those who correct an abuse. Wordsworth's work was a protest--mild yet firm--against the bombastic and artificial school of the Eighteenth Century. Before his day the "timber" used by poets consisted of angels, devils, ghosts, gods; onslaught, tourneys, jousts, tempests of hate and torrents of wrath, always of course with a very beautiful and very susceptible young lady just around the corner. The women in those days were always young and ever beautiful, but seldom wise and not often good. The men were saints or else "bad," generally bad. Like the cats of Kilkenny, they fought on slight cause. Our young man at Hawkshead School saw this: it pleased him not, and he made a list of the things on which he would write poems. This list includes: sunset, moonrise, starlight, mist, brooks, shells, stones, butterflies, moths, swallows, linnets, thrushes, wagoners, babies, bark of trees, leaves, nests, fishes, rushes, leeches, cobwebs, clouds, deer, music, shade, swans, crags and snow. He kept his vow and "went it one better," for among his verses I find the following titles: "Lines Left Upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree," "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," "To a Wounded Butterfly," "To Dora's Portrait," "To the Cuckoo," "On Seeing a Needlebook Made in the Shape of a Harp," etc. Wordsworth's service to humanity consists in the fact that he has shown us old truth in a new light, and has made plain the close relationship that exists between physical nature and the soul of man. Is this much or little? I think it is much. When we realize that we are a part of all that we see, or hear, or feel, we are not lonely. But to feel a sense of separation is to feel the chill of death. Wordsworth taught that the earth is the universal Mother and that the life of the flower has its source in the same universal life from whence ours is derived. To know this truth is to feel a tenderness, a kindliness, a spirit of fraternalism, toward every manifestation of this universal life. No attempt was made to say the last word, only a wish to express the truth that the spirit of God is manifest on every hand. Now this is a very simple philosophy. No far-reaching, syllogistic logic is required to prove it; no miracle, nor special dispensation is needed; you just feel that it is so, that's all, and it gives you peace. Children, foolish folks, old men, whose sands of life are nearly run, comprehend it. But heaven bless you! you can't prove any such foolishness. Jeffrey saw the ridiculousness of these assumptions and so he declared, "This will never do," and for twenty years "The Edinburgh Review" never ceased to fling off fleers and jeers--and to criticize and scoff. That a great periodical, rich and influential, in the city which was the very center of learning, should go so much out of its way to attack a quiet countryman living in a four-roomed cottage, away off in the hills of Cumberland, seems a little queer. Then, this countryman did not seek to found a kingdom, nor to revolutionize society, nor did he force upon the world his pattypan rhymes about linnets, and larks, and daffodils. Far from it: he was very modest--diffident, in fact--and his song was quite in the minor key, but still the chain-shot and bombs of literary warfare were sent hissing in his direction. There is a little story about a certain general who figured as division-commander in the War of Secession: this warrior had his headquarters, for a time, in a typical Southern home in the Tennessee Mountains. The house had a large fireplace and chimney; in this chimney, swallows had nests. One day, as the great man was busy at his maps, working out a plan of campaign against the enemy, the swallows made quite an uproar. Perhaps some of the eggs were hatching; anyway, the birds were needlessly noisy in their domestic affairs, and it disturbed the great man--he grew nervous. He called his adjutant. "Sir," said the mighty warrior, "dislodge those damn pests in the chimney, without delay." Two soldiers were ordered to climb the roof and dislodge the enemy. Yet the swallows were not dislodged, for the soldiers could not reach them. So Jeffrey's tirades were unavailing, and Wordsworth was not dislodged. "He might as well try to crush Skiddaw," said Southey. WILLIAM M. THACKERAY TO MR. BROOKFIELD September 16, 1849 Have you read Dickens? Oh, it is charming! Brave Dickens! "David Copperfield" has some of his prettiest touches, and the reading of the book has done another author a great deal of good. --W.M.T. [Illustration: W.M. THACKERAY] There are certain good old ladies in every community who wear perennial mourning. They attend every funeral, carrying black-bordered handkerchiefs, and weep gently at the right time. I have made it a point to hunt out these ancient dames at their homes, and, over the teacups, I have discovered that invariably they enjoy a sweet peace--a happiness with contentment--that is a great gain. They seem to be civilization's rudimentary relic of the Irish keeners and the paid mourners of the Orient. And there is just a little of this tendency to mourn with those who mourn in all mankind. It is not difficult to bear another's woe--and then there is always a grain of mitigation, even in the sorrow of the afflicted, that makes their tribulation bearable. Burke affirms, in "On the Sublime," that all men take a certain satisfaction in the disasters of others. Just as Frenchmen lift their hats when a funeral passes and thank God that they are not in the hearse, so do we in the presence of calamity thank Heaven that it is not ours. Perhaps this is why I get a strange delight from walking through a graveyard by night. All about are the white monuments that glisten in the ghostly starlight, the night-wind sighs softly among the grassy mounds--all else is silent--still. This is the city of the dead, and of all the hundreds or thousands who have traveled to this spot over long and weary miles, I, only I, have the power to leave at will. Their ears are stopped, their eyes are closed, their hands are folded--but I am alive. One of the first places I visited on reaching London was Kensal Green Cemetery. I quickly made the acquaintance of the First Gravedigger, a rare wit, over whose gray head have passed full seventy pleasant summers. I presented him a copy of "The Shroud," the organ of the American Undertakers' Association, published at Syracuse, New York. I subscribe for "The Shroud" because it has a bright wit-and-humor column, and also for the sweet satisfaction of knowing that there is still virtue left in Syracuse. The First Gravedigger greeted me courteously, and when I explained briefly my posthumous predilections we grasped hands across an open grave (that he had just digged) and were fast friends. "Do you believe in cremation, sir?" he asked. "No, never; it's pagan." "Aye, you are a gentleman--and about burying folks in churches?" "Never! A grave should be out under the open sky, where the sun by day and the moon and stars----" "Right you are. How Shakespeare can ever stand it to have his grave walked over by a boy choir is more than I can understand. If I had him here I could look after him right. Come, I'll show you the company I keep!" Not twenty feet from where we stood was a fine but plain granite block to the memory of the second wife of James Russell Lowell. "Just Mr. Lowell and one friend stood by the grave when we lowered the coffin--just two men and no one else but the young clergyman who belongs here. Mr. Lowell shook hands with me when he went away. He gave me a guinea and wrote me two letters afterward from America; the last was sent only a week before he died. I'll show 'em to you when we go to the office. Say, did you know him?" He pointed to a slab, on which I read the name of Sydney Smith. Then we went to the graves of Mulready, the painter; Kemble, the actor; Sir Charles Eastlake, the artist. Next came the resting-place of Buckle--immortal for writing a preface--dead at thirty-seven, with his history unwrit; Leigh Hunt sleeps near, and above his dust a column that explains how it was erected by friends. In life he asked for bread; when dead they gave him a costly pile of stone. Here are also the graves of Madame Tietjens; of Charles Mathews, the actor; and of Admiral Sir John Ross, the Arctic explorer. "And just down the hill aways another big man is buried. I knew him well; he used to come and visit us often. The last time I saw him I said as he was going away, 'Come again, sir; you are always welcome!' "'Thank you, Mr. First Gravedigger,' says he; 'I will come again before long, and make you an extended visit.' In less than a year the hearse brought him. That's his grave--push that ivy away and you can read the inscription. Did you ever hear of him?" It was a plain, heavy slab placed horizontally, and the ivy had so run over it that the white of the marble was nearly obscured. But I made out this inscription: WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY Born July 18, 1811 Died Dec. 24, 1863 ANNE CARMICHAEL SMYTH Died Dec. 18, 1864, aged 72--his mother by her first marriage The unpoetic exactness of that pedigree gave me a slight chill. But here they sleep--mother and son in one grave. She who gave him his first caress also gave him his last; and when he was found dead in his bed, his mother, who lived under the same roof, was the first one called. He was the child of her girlhood--she was scarcely twenty when she bore him. In life they were never separated, and in death they are not divided. It is as both desired. Thackeray was born in India, and was brought to England on the death of his father, when he was six years of age. On the way from Calcutta the ship touched at the Island of Saint Helena. A servant took the lad ashore and they walked up the rocky heights to Longwood, and there, pacing back and forth in a garden, they saw a short, stout man. "Lookee, lad, lookee quick--that's him! He eats three sheep every day and all the children he can get!" "And that's all I had to do with the Battle of Waterloo," said "Old Thack," forty years after. But you will never believe it after reading those masterly touches concerning the battle, in "Vanity Fair." Young Thackeray was sent to the Charterhouse School, where he was considered rather a dull boy. He was big and good-natured, and read novels when he should have studied arithmetic. This tendency to "play off" stuck to him at Cambridge--where he did not remain long enough to get a degree, but to the relief of his tutors went off on a tour through Europe. Travel as a means of education is a very seductive bit of sophistry. Invalids whom the doctors can not cure, and scholars whom teachers can not teach, are often advised to take "a change." Still there is reason in it. In England Thackeray was intent on law; at Paris he received a strong bent toward art; but when he reached Weimar and was introduced at the Court of Letters and came into the living presence of Goethe, he caught the infection and made a plan for translating Schiller. Schiller dead was considered in Germany a greater man than Goethe living, as if it were an offense to live and a virtue to die. And young William Makepeace wrote home to his mother that Schiller was the greatest man that ever lived and that he was going to translate his books and give them to England. No doubt there are certain people born with a tendency to infectiousness in regard to certain diseases; so there are those who catch the literary mania on slight exposure. "I've got it," said Thackeray, and so he had. He went back to England and made groggy efforts at Blackstone, and Somebody's Digest, and What's-His-Name's Compendium, but all the time he scribbled and sketched. The young man had come into possession of a goodly fortune from his father's estate--enough to yield him an income of over two thousand dollars a year. But bad investments and signing security for friends took the money the way that money usually goes when held by a man who has not earned it. "Talk about riches having wings," said Thackeray; "my fortune had pinions like a condor, and flew like a carrier-pigeon." When Thackeray was thirty he was eking out a meager income writing poems, reviews, criticisms and editorials. His wife was a confirmed invalid, a victim of mental darkness, and his sorrows and anxieties were many. He was known as a bright writer, yet London is full of clever, unsuccessful men. But in Thackeray's thirty-eighth year "Vanity Fair" came out, and it was a success from the first. In "Yesterdays With Authors," Mr. Fields says: "I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray to the various houses where his books had been written; and I remember when we came to Young Street, Kensington, he said, with mock gravity, 'Down on your knees, you rogue, for here "Vanity Fair" was penned; and I will go down with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself.'" Young Street is only a block from the Kensington Metropolitan Railway-Station. It is a little street running off Kensington Road. At Number Sixteen (formerly Number Thirteen), I saw a card in the window, "Rooms to Rent to Single Gentlemen." I rang the bell, and was shown a room that the landlady offered me for twelve shillings a week if I paid in advance; or if I would take another room one flight up with a "gent who was studying hart" it would be only eight and six. I suggested that we go up and see the "gent." We did so, and I found the young man very courteous and polite. He told me that he had never heard Thackeray's name in connection with the house. The landlady protested that "no man by the name o' Thack'ry has had rooms here since I rented the place; leastwise, if he has been here he called hisself by sumpthink else, which was like o'nuff the case, as most ev'rybody is crooked now'days--but surely no decent person can blame me for that!" I assured her that she was in no wise to blame. From this house in Young Street the author of "Vanity Fair" moved to Number Thirty-six Onslow Square, where he wrote "The Virginians." On the south side of the Square there is a row of three-storied brick houses. Thackeray lived in one of these houses for nine years. They were the years when honors and wealth were being heaped upon him; and he was worldling enough to let his wants keep pace with his ability to gratify them. He was made of the same sort of clay as other men, for his standard of life conformed to his pocketbook and he always felt poor. From this fine house on Onslow Square he moved to a veritable palace, which he built to suit his own taste, at Number Two Palace Green, Kensington. But mansions on earth are seldom for long--he died here on Christmas Eve, Eighteen Hundred Sixty-three. And Charles Dickens, Mark Lemon, Millais, Trollope, Robert Browning, Cruikshank, Tom Taylor, Louis Blanc, Charles Mathews and Shirley Brooks were among the friends who carried him to his rest. * * * * * To take one's self too seriously is a great mistake. Complacency is the unpardonable sin, and the man who says, "Now I'm sure of it," has at that moment lost it. Villagers who have lived in one little place until they think themselves great, having lost the sense of proportion through lack of comparison, are generally "in dead earnest." Surely they are often intellectually dead, and I do not dispute the fact that they are in earnest. All those excellent gentlemen in the days gone by who could not contemplate a celestial bliss that did not involve the damnation of those who disagreed with them were in dead earnest. Cotton Mather once saw a black cat perched on the shoulder of an innocent, chattering old gran'ma. The next day a neighbor had a convulsion; and Cotton Mather went forth and exorcised Tabby with a hymn-book, and hanged gran'ma by the neck, high on Gallows Hill, until she was dead. Had the Reverend Mr. Mather possessed but a mere modicum of humor he might have exorcised the cat, but I am sure he would never have troubled old gran'ma. But alas, Cotton Mather's conversation was limited to yea, yea, and nay, nay--generally, nay, nay--and he was in dead earnest. In the Boston Public Library is a book written in Sixteen Hundred Eighty-five by Cotton Mather, entitled, "Wonders of the Invisible World." This book received the endorsement of the Governor of the Province and also of the President of Harvard College. The author cites many cases of persons who were bewitched; and also makes the interesting statement that the Devil knows Greek, Latin and Hebrew, but speaks English with an accent. These facts were long used at Harvard as an argument in favor of the Classics. And when Greek was at last made optional, the Devil was supposed to have filed a protest with the Dean of the Faculty. The Reverend Francis Gastrell, who razed New Place, and cut down the poet's mulberry-tree to escape the importunities of visitors, was in dead earnest. Attila, and Herod, and John Calvin were in dead earnest. And were it not for the fact that Luther had lucid intervals when he went about with his tongue in his cheek he surely would have worked grievous wrong. Recent discoveries in Egyptian archeology show that in his lifetime Moses was esteemed more as a wit than as a lawmaker. His jokes were posted upon the walls and explained to the populace, who it seems were a bit slow. Job was a humorist of a high order, and when he said to the wise men, "No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you," he struck twelve. When the sons of Jacob went down into Egypt and Joseph put up the price of corn, took their money, and then secretly replaced the coin in the sacks, he showed his artless love of a quiet joke. Shakespeare's fools were the wisest and kindliest men at court. When the master decked a character in cap and bells, it was as though he had given bonds for the man's humanity. Touchstone followed his master into exile; and when all seemed to have forsaken King Lear the fool bared himself to the storm and covered the shaking old man with his own cloak. And if Costard, Trinculo, Touchstone, Jaques and Mercutio had lived in Salem in Sixteen Hundred Ninety-two, there would have been not only a flashing of merry jests, but a flashing of rapiers as well, and every gray hair of every old dame's head would have been safe so long as there was a striped leg on which to stand. Lincoln, liberator of men, loved the motley. In fact, the individual who is incapable of viewing the world from a jocular basis is unsafe, and can be trusted only when the opposition is strong enough to laugh him into line. In the realm of English letters, Thackeray is prince of humorists. He could see right through a brick wall, and never mistook a hawk for a hernshaw. He had a just estimate of values, and the temperament that can laugh at all trivial misfits. And he had, too, that dread capacity for pain which every true humorist possesses, for the true essence of humor is sensibility. In all literature that lives there is mingled like pollen an indefinable element of the author's personality. In Thackeray's "Lectures on English Humorists" this subtle quality is particularly apparent. Elusive, delicate, alluring--it is the actinic ray that imparts vitality. When wit plays skittles with dulness, dulness gets revenge by taking wit at his word. Vast numbers of people taking Thackeray at his word consider him a bitter pessimist. He even disconcerted bright little Charlotte Bronte, who went down to London to see him, and then wrote back to Haworth that "the great man talked steadily with never a smile. I could not tell when to laugh and when to cry, for I did not know what was fun and what fact." But finally the author of "Jane Eyre" found the combination, and she saw that beneath the brusk exterior of that bulky form there was a woman's tender sympathy. Thackeray has told us what he thought of the author of "Jane Eyre," and the author of "Jane Eyre" has told us what she thought of the author of "Vanity Fair." One was big and whimsical, the other was little and sincere, but both were alike in this: their hearts were wrung at the sight of suffering, and both had tears for the erring, the groping, and the oppressed. A Frenchman can not comprehend a joke that is not accompanied by grimace and gesticulation; and so M. Taine chases Thackeray through sixty solid pages, berating him for what he is pleased to term "bottled hate." Taine is a cynic who charges Thackeray with cynicism, all in the choicest of biting phrase. It is a beautiful example of sinners calling the righteous to repentance--a thing that is often done, but seldom with artistic finish. The fun is too deep for Monsieur, or mayhap the brand is not the yellow label to which his palate is accustomed, so he spews it all. Yet Taine's criticism is charming reading, although he is only hot after an aniseed trail of his own dragging. But the chase is a deal more exciting than most men would lead, were there real live game to capture. If pushed, I might suggest several points in this man's make-up where God could have bettered His work. But accepting Thackeray as we find him, we see a singer whose cage Fate had overhung with black until he had caught the tune. The "Ballad of Boullabaisse" shows a tender side of his spirit that he often sought to conceal. His heart vibrated to all finer thrills of mercy; and his love for all created things was so delicately strung that he would, in childish shame, sometimes issue a growl to drown its rising, tearful tones. In the character of Becky Sharp, he has marshaled some of his own weak points and then lashed them with scorn. He looked into the mirror and seeing a potential snob he straightway inveighed against snobbery. The punishment does not always fit the crime--it is excess. But I still contest that where his ridicule is most severe, it is Thackeray's own back that is bared to the knout. The primal recipe for roguery in art is, "Know Thyself." When a writer portrays a villain and does it well--make no mistake, he poses for the character himself. Said gentle Ralph Waldo Emerson, "I have capacity in me for every crime." The man of imagination knows those mystic spores of possibility that lie dormant, and like the magicians of the East who grow mango-trees in an hour, he develops the "inward potential" at will. The mere artisan in letters goes forth and finds a villain and then describes him, but the artist knows a better way: "I am that man." One of the very sweetest, gentlest characters in literature is Colonel Newcome. The stepfather of Thackeray, Major Carmichael Smyth, was made to stand for the portrait of the lovable Colonel; and when that all-round athlete, F. Hopkinson Smith, gave us that other lovable old Colonel he paid high tribute to "The Newcomes." Thackeray was a poet, and as such was often caught in the toils of doubt--the crux of the inquiring spirit. He aspired for better things, and at times his imperfections stood out before him in monstrous shape, and he sought to hiss them down. In the heart of the artist-poet there is an Inmost Self that sits over against the acting, breathing man and passes judgment on his every deed. To satisfy the world is little; to please the populace is naught; fame is vapor; gold is dross; and every love that has not the sanction of that Inmost Self is a viper's sting. To satisfy the demands of the God within is the poet's prayer. What doubts beset, what taunting fears surround, what crouching sorrows lie in wait, what dead hopes drag, what hot desires pursue, and what kindly lights do beckon on--ah! "'tis we musicians know." Thackeray came to America to get a pot of money, and was in a fair way of securing it, when he chanced to pick up a paper in which a steamer was announced to sail that evening for England. A wave of homesickness swept over the big boy--he could not stand it. He hastily packed up his effects and without saying good-by to any one, and forgetting all his engagements, he hastened to the dock, leaving this note for the kindest of kind friends: "Good-by, Fields; good-by, Mrs. Fields--God bless everybody, says W.M.T." CHARLES DICKENS I hope for the enlargement of my mind, and for the improvement of my understanding. If I have done but little good, I trust I have done less harm, and that none of my adventures will be other than a source of amusing and pleasant recollection. God bless you all! --_Pickwick_ [Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS] The path of progress in certain problems seems barred as by a flaming sword. More than a thousand years before Christ, an Arab chief asked, "If a man die shall he live again?" Every man who ever lived has asked the same question, but we know no more today about the subject than did Job. There are one hundred five boy babies born to every one hundred girls. The law holds in every land where vital statistics have been kept; and Sairey Gamp knew just as much about the cause why as Brown-Sequard, Pasteur, Agnew or Austin Flint. There is still a third question that every parent, since Adam and Eve, has sought to solve: "How can I educate this child so that he will attain eminence?" And even in spite of shelves that groan beneath tomes and tomes, and advice from a million preachers, the answer is: Nobody knows. "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will." Moses was sent adrift, but the tide carried him into power. The brethren of Joseph "deposited him into a cavity," but you can not dispose of genius that way! Demosthenes was weighted (or blessed) with every disadvantage; Shakespeare got into difficulty with a woman eight years his senior, stole deer, ran away, and--became the very first among English poets; Erasmus was a foundling. Once there was a woman by the name of Nancy Hanks; she was thin-breasted, gaunt, yellow and sad. At last, living in poverty, overworked, she was stricken by death. She called her son--homely as herself--and pointing to the lad's sister said, "Be good to her, Abe," and died--died, having no expectation for her boy beyond the hope that he might prosper in worldly affairs so as to care for himself and his sister. The boy became a man who wielded wisely a power mightier than that ever given to any other American. Seven college-bred men composed his cabinet; and Proctor Knott once said that "if a teeter were evenly balanced, and the members of the cabinet were all placed on one end, and the President on the other, he would send the seven wise men flying into space." On the other hand, Marcus Aurelius wrote his "Meditations" for a son who did not read them, and whose name is a symbol of profligacy; Charles Kingsley penned "Greek Heroes" for offspring who have never shown their father's heroism; and Charles Dickens wrote "A Child's History of England" for his children--none of whom has proven his proficiency in historiology. Charles Dickens himself received his education at the University of Hard Knocks. Very early in life he was cast upon the rocks and suckled by the she-wolf. Yet he became the most popular author the world has ever known, and up to the present time no writer of books has approached him in point of number of readers and of financial returns. These are facts--facts so hard and true that they would be the delight of Mr. Gradgrind. At twelve years of age, Charles Dickens was pasting labels on blacking-boxes; his father was in prison. At sixteen, he was spending odd hours in the reading-room of the British Museum. At nineteen, he was Parliamentary reporter; at twenty-one, a writer of sketches; at twenty-three, he was getting a salary of thirty-five dollars a week, and the next year his pay was doubled. When twenty-five, he wrote a play that ran for seventy nights at Drury Lane Theater. About the same time he received seven hundred dollars for a series of sketches written in two weeks. At twenty-six, publishers were at his feet. When Dickens was at the flood-tide of prosperity, Thackeray, one year his senior, waited on his doorstep with pictures to illustrate "Pickwick." He worked steadily, and made from eight to twenty-five thousand dollars a year. His fame increased, and the "New York Ledger" paid him ten thousand dollars for one story which he wrote in a fortnight. His collected works fill forty volumes. There are more of Dickens' books sold every year now than in any year in which he lived. There were more of Dickens' books sold last year than any previous year. "I am glad that the public buy his books," said Macready; "for if they did not he would take to the stage and eclipse us all." "Not So Bad As We Seem," by Bulwer-Lytton, was played at Devonshire House in the presence of the Queen, Dickens taking the principal part. He gave theatrical performances in London, Liverpool and Manchester, for the benefit of Leigh Hunt, Sheridan Knowles and various other needy authors and actors. He wrote a dozen plays, and twice as many more have been constructed from his plots. He gave public readings through England, Scotland and Ireland, where the people fought for seats. The average receipts for these entertainments were eight hundred dollars per night. In Eighteen Hundred Sixty-three, he made a six months' tour of the United States, giving a series of readings. The prices of admission were placed at extravagant figures, but the box-office was always besieged until the ticket-seller put out his lights and hung out a sign: "The standing-room is all taken." The gross receipts of these readings were two hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars; the expenses thirty-nine thousand dollars; net profit, one hundred ninety thousand dollars. Charles Dickens died of brain-rupture in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, aged fifty-eight. His dust rests in Westminster Abbey. * * * * * "To know the London of Dickens is a liberal education," once said James T. Fields, who was affectionately referred to by Charles Dickens as "Massachusetts Jemmy." And I am aware of no better way to become acquainted with the greatest city in the world than to follow the winding footsteps of the author of "David Copperfield." Beginning his London life when ten years of age, he shifted from one lodging to another, zigzag, tacking back and forth from place to place, but all the time making head, and finally dwelling in palaces of which nobility might be proud. It took him forty-eight years to travel from the squalor of Camden Town to Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey. He lodged first in Bayham Street. "A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow Street officer over the way." It was a shabby district, chosen by the elder Dickens because the rent was low. As he neglected to pay the rent, one wonders why he did not take quarters in Piccadilly. I looked in vain for a sign reading, "Washin dun Heer," but I found a Bow Street orf'cer who told me that Bayham Street had long since disappeared. Yet there is always a recompense in prowling about London, because if you do not find the thing you are looking for, you find something else equally interesting. My Bow Street friend proved to be a regular magazine of rare and useful information--historical, archeological and biographical. A Lunnun Bobby has his clothes cut after a pattern a hundred years old, and he always carries his gloves in his hand--never wearing them--because this was a habit of William the Conqueror. But never mind; he is intelligent, courteous and obliging, and I am perfectly willing that he should wear skirts like a ballet-dancer and a helmet too small, if it is his humor. My perliceman knew an older orf'cer who was acquainted with Mr. Dickens. Mr. Dickens 'ad a full perliceman's suit 'imself, issued to 'im on an order from Scotland Yard, and he used to do patrol duty at night, carrying 'is bloomin' gloves in 'is 'and and 'is chinstrap in place. This was told me by my new-found friend, who volunteered to show me the way to North Gower Street. It's only Gower Street now and the houses have been renumbered, so Number Four is a matter of conjecture; but my guide showed me a door where were the marks of a full-grown plate that evidently had long since disappeared. Some days afterward I found this identical brass plate at an old bookshop in Cheapside. The plate read: "Mrs. Dickens' Establishment." The man who kept the place advertised himself as a "Bibliopole." He offered to sell me the plate for one pun ten; but I did not purchase, for I knew where I could get its mate with a deal more verdigris--all for six and eight. Dickens has recorded that he can not recollect of any pupils coming to the Establishment. But he remembers when his father was taken, like Mr. Dorrit, to the Debtors' Prison. He was lodged in the top story but one, in the very same room where his son afterwards put the Dorrits. It's a queer thing to know that a book-writer can imprison folks without a warrant and even kill them and yet go unpunished--which thought was suggested to me by my philosophic guide. From this house in Gower Street, Charles used to go daily to the Marshalsea to visit Micawber, who not so many years later was to act as the proud amanuensis of his son. The next morning after I first met Bobby he was off duty. I met him by appointment at the Three Jolly Beggars (a place pernicious snug). He was dressed in a fashionable, light-colored suit, the coat a trifle short, and a high silk hat. His large, red neckscarf--set off by his bright, brick-dust complexion--caused me to mistake him at first for a friend of mine who drives a Holborn bus. Mr. 'Awkins (for it was he) greeted me cordially, pulled gently at his neck-whiskers, and, when he addressed me as Me Lud, the barmaid served us with much alacrity and things. We went first to the church of Saint George; then we found Angel Court leading to Bermondsey, also Marshalsea Place. Here is the site of the prison, where the crowded ghosts of misery still hover; but small trace could we find of the prison itself, neither did we see the ghosts. We, however, saw a very pretty barmaid at the public in Angel Court. I think she is still prettier than the one to whom Bobby introduced me at the Sign of the Meat-Axe, which is saying a good deal. Angel Court is rightly named. The blacking-warehouse at Old Hungerford Stairs, Strand, in which Charles Dickens was shown by Bob Fagin how to tie up the pots of paste, has rotted down and been carted away. The coal-barges in the muddy river are still there, just as they were when Charles, Poll Green and Bob Fagin played on them during the dinner-hour. I saw Bob and several other boys, grimy with blacking, chasing each other across the flatboats, but Dickens was not there. Down the river aways there is a crazy, old warehouse with a rotten wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide is in, and on the mud when the tide is out--the whole place literally overrun with rats that scuffle and squeal on the moldy stairs. I asked Bobby if it could not be that this was the blacking-factory; but he said, No, for this one allus wuz. Dickens found lodgings in Lant Street while his father was awaiting in the Marshalsea for something to turn up. Bob Sawyer afterward had the same quarters. When Sawyer invited Mr. Pickwick "and the other chaps" to dine with him, he failed to give his number, so we can not locate the house. But I found the street and saw a big, wooden Pickwick on wheels standing as a sign for a tobacco-shop. The old gentleman who runs the place, and runs the sign in every night, assured me that Bob Sawyer's room was the first floor back. I looked in at it, but seeing no one there whom I knew, I bought tuppence worth of pigtail in lieu of fee, and came away. If a man wished to abstract himself from the world, to remove himself from temptation, to place himself beyond the possibility of desire to look out of the window, he should live in Lant Street, said a great novelist. David Copperfield lodged here when he ordered that glass of Genuine Stunning Ale at the Red Lion and excited the sympathy of the landlord, winning a motherly kiss from his wife. The Red Lion still crouches (under another name) at the corner of Derby and Parliament Streets, Westminster. I daydreamed there for an hour one morning, pretending the while to read a newspaper. I can not, however, recommend their ale as particularly stunning. As there are authors of one book, so are there readers of one author--more than we wist. Children want the same bear story over and over, preferring it to a new one; so "grown-ups" often prefer the dog-eared book to uncut leaves. Mr. Hawkins preferred the dog-eared, and at the station-house, where many times he had long hours to wait in anticipation of a hurry-up call, he whiled away the time by browsing in his Dickens. He knew no other author, neither did he wish to. His epidermis was soaked with Dickensology, and when inspired by gin and bitters he emitted information at every pore. To him all these bodiless beings of Dickens' brain were living creatures. An anachronism was nothing to Hawkins. Charley Bates was still at large, Quilp was just around the corner, and Gaffer Hexam's boat was moored in the muddy river below. Dickens used to haunt the publics, those curious resting-places where all sorts and conditions of thirsty philosophers meet to discuss all sorts of themes. My guide took me to many of these inns which the great novelist frequented, and we always had one legend with every drink. After we had called at three or four different snuggeries, Hawkins would begin to shake out the facts. Now, it is not generally known that the so-called stories of Dickens are simply records of historic events, like What-do-you-call-um's plays! F'r instance, Dombey and Son was a well-known firm, who carried over into a joint stock company only a few years ago. The concern is now known as The Dombey Trading Company; they occupy the same quarters that were used by their illustrious predecessors. I signified a desire to see the counting-house so minutely described by Dickens, and Mr. Hawkins agreed to pilot me thither on our way to Tavistock Square. We twisted down to the first turning, then up three, then straight ahead to the first right-hand turn, where we cut to the left until we came to a stuffed dog, which is the sign of a glover. Just beyond this my guide plucked me by the sleeve; we halted, and he silently and solemnly pointed across the street. Sure enough! There it was, the warehouse with a great stretch of dirty windows in front, through which we could see dozens of clerks bending over ledgers, just as though Mr. Dombey were momentarily expected. Over the door was a gilt sign, "The Bombay Trading Co." Bobby explained that it was all the same. I did not care to go in; but at my request Hawkins entered and asked for Mister Carker, the Junior, but no one knew him. Then we dropped in at The Silver Shark, a little inn about the size of a large dustbin of two compartments and a sifter. Here we rested a bit, as we had walked a long way. The barmaid who waited upon us was in curl-papers, but she was even then as pretty if not prettier than the barmaid at the public in Angel Court, and that is saying a good deal. She was about as tall as Trilby or as Ellen Terry, which is a very nice height, I think. As we rested, Mr. Hawkins told the barmaid and me how Rogue Riderhood came to this very public, through that same doorway, just after he had his Alfred David took down by the Governors Both. He was a slouching dog, was the Rogue. He wore an old, sodden fur cap, Winter and Summer, formless and mangy; it looked like a drowned cat. His hands were always in his pockets up to his elbows, when they were not reaching for something, and when he was out after game his walk was a half-shuffle and run. Hawkins saw him starting off this way one night and followed him--knowing there was mischief on hand--followed him for two hours through the fog and rain. It was midnight and the last stroke of the bells that tolled the hour had ceased, and their echo was dying away, when all at once---- But the story is too long to relate here. It is so long that when Mr. Hawkins had finished it was too late to reach Tavistock Square before dark. Mr. Hawkins explained that as bats and owls and rats come out only when the sun has disappeared, so there are other things that can be seen best by night. And as he did not go on until the next day at one, he proposed that we should go down to The Cheshire Cheese and get a bite of summat and then sally forth. So we hailed a bus and climbed to the top. "She rolls like a scow in the wake of a liner," said Bobby, as we tumbled into seats. When the bus man came up the little winding ladder and jingled his punch, Hawkins paid our fares with a heavy wink, and the guard said, "Thank you, sir," and passed on. We got off at The Cheese and settled ourselves comfortably in a corner. The same seats are there, running along the wall, where Doctor Johnson, "Goldy" and Boswell so often sat and waked the echoes with their laughter. We had chops and tomato-sauce in recollection of Jingle and Trotter. The chops were of that delicious kind unknown outside of England. I supplied the legend this time, for my messmate had never heard of Boswell. Hawkins introduced me to "the cove in the white apron" who waited upon us, and then explained that I was the man who wrote "Martin Chuzzlewit." He kissed his hand to the elderly woman who presided behind the nickel-plated American cash-register. The only thing that rang false about the place was that register, perked up there spick-span new. Hawkins insisted that it was a typewriter, and as we passed out he took a handful of matches (thinking them toothpicks) and asked the cashier to play a tune on the thingumabob, but she declined. We made our way to London Bridge as the night was settling down. No stars came out, but flickering, fluttering gaslights appeared, and around each post was a great, gray, fluffy aureole of mist. Just at the entrance to the bridge we saw Nancy dogged by Noah Claypole. They turned down towards Billingsgate Fish-Market, and as the fog swallowed them, Hawkins answered my question as to the language used at Billingsgate. "It's not so bloomin' bad, you know; why, I'll take you to a market in Islington where they talk twice as vile." He started to go into technicalities, but I excused him. Then he leaned over the parapet and spat down at a rowboat that was passing below. As the boat moved out into the glimmering light we made out Lizzie Hexam at the oars, while Gaffer sat in the stern on the lookout. The Marchioness went by as we stood there, a bit of tattered shawl over her frowsy head, one stocking down around her shoetop. She had a penny loaf under her arm, and was breaking off bits, eating as she went. Soon came Snagsby, then Mr. Vincent Crummels, Mr. Sleary, the horseback-rider, followed by Chops, the dwarf, and Pickleson, the giant. Hawkins said there were two Picklesons, but I saw only one. Just below was the Stone pier and there stood Mrs. Gamp, and I heard her ask: "And which of all them smoking monsters is the Anxworks boat, I wonder? Goodness me!" "Which boat do you want?" asked Ruth. "The Anxworks package--I will not deceive you, Sweet; why should I?" "Why, that is the Antwerp packet, in the middle," said Ruth. "And I wish it was in Jonidge's belly, I do," cried Mrs. Gamp. We came down from the bridge, moved over toward Billingsgate, past the Custom-House, where curious old sea-captains wait for ships that never come. Captain Cuttle lifted his hook to the brim of his glazed hat as we passed. We returned the salute and moved on toward the Tower. "It's a rum place; let's not stop," said Hawkins. Thoughts of the ghosts of Raleigh, of Mary Queen of Scots and of Lady Jane Grey seemed to steady his gait and to hasten his footsteps. In a few moments we saw just ahead of us David Copperfield and Mr. Peggotty following a woman whom we could make out walking excitedly a block ahead. It was Martha, intent on suicide. "We'll get to the dock first and 'ead 'er orf," said 'Awkins. We ran down a side street. But a bright light in a little brick cottage caught our attention--men can't run arm in arm anyway. We forgot our errand of mercy and stood still with open mouths looking in at the window at little Jenny Wren hard at work dressing her dolls and stopping now and then to stab the air with her needle. Bradley Headstone and Charlie and Lizzie Hexam came in, and we then passed on, not wishing to attract attention. There was an old smoke-stained tree on the corner which I felt sorry for, as I do for every city tree. Just beyond was a blacksmith's forge and a timber-yard behind, where a dealer in old iron had a shop, in front of which was a rusty boiler and a gigantic flywheel half buried in the sand. There were no crowds to be seen now, but we walked on and on--generally in the middle of the narrow streets, turning up or down or across, through arches where tramps slept, by doorways where children crouched; passing drunken men, and women with shawls over their heads. Now and again the screech of a fiddle could be heard or the lazy music of an accordion, coming from some "Sailors' Home." Steps of dancing with rattle of iron-shod boot-heels clicking over sanded floors, the hoarse shout of the "caller-off," and now and again angry tones with cracked feminine falsettos broke on the air; and all the time the soft rain fell and the steam seemed to rise from the sewage-laden streets. We were in Stepney, that curious parish so minutely described by Walter Besant in "All Sorts and Conditions of Men"--the parish where all children born at sea were considered to belong. We saw Brig Place, where Walter Gay visited Captain Cuttle. Then we went with Pip in search of Mrs. Wimple's house, at Mill-Pond Bank, Chink's Basin, Old Green Copper Rope Walk; where lived old Bill Barley and his daughter Clara, and where Magwitch was hidden. It was the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a dark corner as a club for tomcats. Then, standing out in the gloom, we saw Limehouse Church, where John Rokesmith prowled about on a 'tective scent; and where John Harmon waited for the third mate Radfoot, intending to murder him. Next we reached Limehouse Hole, where Rogue Riderhood took the plunge down the steps of Leaving Shop. Hawkins thought he saw the Artful Dodger ahead of us on the dock. He went over and looked up and down and under an old upturned rowboat, then peered over the dock and swore a harmless oath that if we could catch him we would run him in without a warrant. Yes, we'd clap the nippers on 'im and march 'im orf. "Not if I can help it," I said; "I like the fellow too well." Fortunately Hawkins failed to find him. Here it was that the Uncommercial Traveler did patrol duty on many sleepless nights. Here it was that Esther Summerson and Mr. Bucket came. And by the light of a match held under my hat we read a handbill on the brick wall: "Found Drowned!" The heading stood out in big, fat letters, but the print below was too damp to read, yet there is no doubt it is the same bill that Gaffer Hexam, Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood read, for Mr. Hawkins said so. As we stood there we heard the gentle gurgle of the tide running under the pier, then a dip of oars coming from out the murky darkness of the muddy river: a challenge from the shore with orders to row in, a hoarse, defiant answer and a watchman's rattle. A policeman passed us running and called back, "I say, Hawkins, is that you? There's murder broke loose in Whitechapel again! The reserves have been ordered out!" Hawkins stopped and seemed to pull himself together--his height increased three inches. A moment before I thought he was a candidate for fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, but now his sturdy frame was all atremble with life. "Another murder! I knew it. Bill Sykes has killed Nancy at last. There 's fifty pun for the man who puts the irons on 'im--I must make for the nearest stishun." He gave my hand a twist, shot down a narrow courtway--and I was left to fight the fog, and mayhap this Bill Sykes and all the other wild phantoms of Dickens' brain, alone. * * * * * A certain great general once said that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. Just why the maxim should be limited to aborigines I know not, for when one reads obituaries he is discouraged at the thoughts of competing in virtue with those who have gone hence. Let us extend the remark--plagiarize a bit--and say that the only perfect men are those whom we find in books. The receipt for making them is simple, yet well worth pasting in your scrapbook. Take the virtues of all the best men you ever knew or heard of, leave out the faults, then mix. In the hands of "the lady novelist" this composition, well molded, makes a scarecrow, in the hair of which the birds of the air come and build their nests. But manipulated by an expert a figure may appear that starts and moves and seems to feel the thrill of life. It may even take its place on a pedestal and be exhibited with other waxworks and thus become confounded with the historic And though these things make the unskilful laugh, yet the judicious say, "Dickens made it, therefore let it pass for a man." Dear old M. Taine, ever glad to score a point against the British, and willing to take Dickens at his word, says, "We have no such men in France as Scrooge and Squeers!" But, God bless you, M. Taine, England has no such men either. The novelist takes the men and women he has known, and from life, plus imagination, he creates. If he sticks too close to nature he describes, not depicts: this is "veritism." If imagination's wing is too strong, it lifts the luckless writer off from earth and carries him to an unknown land. You may then fall down and worship his characters, and there is no violation of the First Commandment. Nothing can be imagined that has not been seen; but imagination can assort, omit, sift, select, construct. Given a horse, an eagle, an elephant, and the "creative artist" can make an animal that is neither a horse, an eagle, nor an elephant, yet resembles each. This animal may have eight legs (or forty) with hoofs, claws and toes alternating; a beak, a trunk, a mane; and the whole can be feathered and given the power of rapid flight and also the ability to run like the East Wind. It can neigh, roar or scream by turn, or can do all in concert, with a vibratory force multiplied by one thousand. The novelist must have lived, and the novelist must have imagination. But this is not enough. He must have power to analyze and separate, and then he should have the good taste to select and group, forming his parts into a harmonious whole. Yet he must build large. Life-size will not do: the statue must be heroic, and the artist's genius must breathe into its nostrils the breath of life. The men who live in history are those whose lives have been skilfully written. "Plutarch is the most charming writer of fiction the world has ever known," said Emerson. Dickens' characters are personifications of traits, not men and women. Yet they are a deal funnier--they are as funny as a box of monkeys, as entertaining as a Punch-and-Judy show, as interesting as a "fifteen puzzle," and sometimes as pretty as chromos. Quilp munching the eggs, shells and all, to scare his wife, makes one shiver as though a Jack-in-the-box had been popped out at him. Mr. Mould, the undertaker, and Jaggers, the lawyer, are as amusing as Humpty-Dumpty and Pantaloon. I am sure that no live lawyer ever gave me half the enjoyment that Jaggers has, and Doctor Slammers' talk is better medicine than the pills of any living M.D. Because the burnt-cork minstrel pleases me more than a real "nigger" is no reason why I should find fault! Dickens takes the horse, the eagle and the elephant and makes an animal of his own. He rubs up the feathers, places the tail at a fierce angle, makes the glass eyes glare, and you are ready to swear that the thing is alive. By rummaging over the commercial world you can collect the harshness, greed, avarice, selfishness and vanity from a thousand men. With these sins you can, if you are very skilful, construct a Ralph Nickleby, a Scrooge, a Jonas Chuzzlewit, an Alderman Cute, a Mr. Murdstone, a Bounderby or a Gradgrind at will. A little more pride, a trifle less hypocrisy, a molecule extra of untruth, and flavor with this fault or that, and your man is ready to place up against the fence to dry. Then you can make a collection of all the ridiculous traits--the whims, silly pride, foibles, hopes founded on nothing and dreams touched with moonshine--and you make a Micawber. Put in a dash of assurance and a good thimbleful of hypocrisy, and Pecksniff is the product. Leave out the assurance, replacing it with cowardice, and the result is Doctor Chillip or Uriah Heap. Muddle the whole with stupidity, and Bumble comes forth. Then, for the good people, collect the virtues and season to suit the taste and we have the Cheeryble Brothers, Paul Dombey or Little Nell. They have no development, therefore no history--the circumstances under which you meet them vary, that's all. They are people the like of whom are never seen on land or sea. Little Nell is good all day long, while live children are good for only five minutes at a time. The recurrence with which these five-minute periods return determines whether the child is "good" or "bad." In the intervals the restless little feet stray into flowerbeds; stand on chairs so that grimy, dimpled hands may reach forbidden jam; run and romp in pure joyous innocence, or kick spitefully at authority. Then the little fellow may go to sleep, smile in his dreams so that mamma says angels are talking to him (nurse says wind on the stomach); when he awakens the five-minute good spell returns. Men are only grown-up children. They are cheerful after breakfast, cross at night. Houses, lands, barns, railroads, churches, books, racetracks are the playthings with which they amuse themselves until they grow tired, and Death, the kind old nurse, puts them to sleep. So a man on earth is good or bad as mood moves him; in color his acts are seldom pure white, neither are they wholly black, but generally of a steel-gray. Caprice, temper, accident, all act upon him. The North Wind of hate, the Simoon of Jealousy, the Cyclone of Passion beat and buffet him. Pilots strong and pilots cowardly stand at the helm by turn. But sometimes the South Wind softly blows, the sun comes out by day, the stars at night: friendship holds the rudder firm, and love makes all secure. Such is the life of man--a voyage on life's unresting sea; but Dickens knows it not. Esther is always good, Fagin is always bad, Bumble is always pompous, and Scrooge is always--Scrooge. At no Dickens' party do you ever mistake Cheeryble for Carker; yet in real life Carker is Carker one day and Cheeryble the next--yes, Carker in the morning and Cheeryble after dinner. There is no doubt that a dummy so ridiculous as Pecksniff has reduced the number of hypocrites; and the domineering and unjust are not quite so popular since Dickens painted their picture with a broom. From the yeasty deep of his imagination he conjured forth his strutting spirits; and the names he gave to each are as fitting and as funny as the absurd smallclothes and fluttering ribbons which they wear. Shakespeare has his Gobbo, Touchstone, Simpcox, Sly, Grumio, Mopsa, Pinch, Nym, Simple, Quickly, Overdone, Elbow, Froth, Dogberry, Puck, Peablossom, Taurus, Bottom, Bushy, Hotspur, Scroop, Wall, Flute, Snout, Starveling, Moonshine, Mouldy, Shallow, Wart, Bullcalf, Feeble, Quince, Snag, Dull, Mustardseed, Fang, Snare, Rumor, Tearsheet, Cobweb, Costard and Moth; but in names as well as in plot "the father of Pickwick" has distanced the Master. In fact, to give all the odd and whimsical names invented by Dickens would be to publish a book, for he compiled an indexed volume of names from which he drew at will. He used, however, but a fraction of his list. The rest are wisely kept from the public, else, forsooth, the fledgling writers of penny-shockers would seize upon them for raw stock. Dickens has a watch that starts and stops in a way of its own--never mind the sun. He lets you see the wheels go round, but he never tells you why the wheels go round. He knows little of psychology--that curious, unseen thing that stands behind every act. He knows not the highest love, therefore he never depicts the highest joy. Nowhere does he show the gradual awakening in man of Godlike passion--nowhere does he show the evolution of a soul; very, very seldom does he touch the sublime. But he has given the Athenians a day of pleasure, and for this let us all reverently give thanks. OLIVER GOLDSMITH Jarvis: A few of our usual cards of compliments--that's all. This bill from your tailor; this from your mercer; and this from the little broker in Crooked Lane. He says he has been at a great deal of trouble to get back the money you borrowed. Honeydew: But I am sure we were at a great deal of trouble in getting him to lend it. Jarvis: He has lost all patience. Honeydew: Then he has lost a good thing. Jarvis: There's that ten guineas you were sending to the poor man and his children in the Fleet. I believe that would stop his mouth for a while. Honeydew: Ay, Jarvis; but what will fill their mouths in the meantime? --_Goldsmith, "The Good-Natured Man"_ [Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH] The Isle of Erin has the same number of square miles as the State of Indiana; it also has more kindness to the acre than any other country on earth. Ireland has five million inhabitants; once it had eight. Three millions have gone away, and when one thinks of landlordism he wonders why the five millions did not go, too. But the Irish are a poetic people and love the land of their fathers with a childlike love, and their hearts are all bound up in sweet memories, rooted by song and legend into nooks and curious corners, so the tendrils of affection hold them fast. Ireland is very beautiful. Its pasture-lands and meadow-lands, blossom-decked and water-fed, crossed and recrossed by never-ending hedgerows, that stretch away and lose themselves in misty nothingness, are fair as a poet's dream. Birds carol in the white hawthorn and the yellow furze all day long, and the fragrant summer winds that blow lazily across the fields are laden with the perfume of fairest flowers. It is like crossing the dark river called Death, to many, to think of leaving Ireland--besides that, even if they wanted to go they haven't money to buy a steerage ticket. From across the dark river called Death come no remittances; but from America many dollars are sent back to Ireland. This often supplies the obolus that secures the necessary bit of Cunard passport. Whenever an Irishman embarks at Queenstown, part of the five million inhabitants go down to the waterside to see him off. Not long ago I stood with the crowd and watched two fine lads go up the gangplank, each carrying a red handkerchief containing his worldly goods. As the good ship moved away we lifted a wild wail of woe that drowned the sobbing of the waves. Everybody cried--I wept, too--and as the great, black ship became but a speck on the Western horizon we embraced each other in frenzied grief. There is beauty in Ireland--physical beauty of so rare and radiant a type that it makes the heart of an artist ache to think that it can not endure. On country roads, at fair time, the traveler will see barefoot girls who are women, and just suspecting it, who have cheeks like ripe pippins; laughing eyes with long, dark, wicked lashes; teeth like ivory; necks of perfect poise; and waists that, never having known a corset, are pure Greek. Of course, these girls are aware that we admire them--how could they help it? They carry big baskets on either shapely arm, bundles balanced on their heads, and we, suddenly grown tired, sit on the bankside as they pass by, and feign indifference to their charms. Once safely past, we admiringly examine their tracks in the soft mud (for there has been a shower during the night), and we vow that such footprints were never before left upon the sands of time. The typical young woman in Ireland is Juno before she was married; the old woman is Sycorax after Caliban was weaned. Wrinkled, toothless, yellow old hags are seen sitting by the roadside, rocking back and forth, crooning a song that is mate to the chant of the witches in "Macbeth" when they brew the hellbroth. See that wizened, scarred and cruel old face--how it speaks of a seared and bitter heart! so dull yet so alert, so changeful yet so impassive, so immobile yet so cunning--a paradox in wrinkles, where half-stifled desperation has clawed at the soul until it has fled, and only dead indifference or greedy expectation is left to tell the tragic tale. "In the name of God, charity, kind gentlemen, charity!" and the old crone stretches forth a long, bony claw. Should you pass on she calls down curses on your head. If you are wise, you go back and fling her a copper to stop the cold streaks that are shooting up your spine. And these old women were the most trying sights I saw in Ireland. "Pshaw!" said a friend of mine when I told him this; "these old creatures are actors, and if you would sit down and talk to them, as I have done, they will laugh and joke, and tell you of sons in America who are policemen, and then they will fill black 'dhudeens' out of your tobacco and ask if you know Mike McGuire who lives in She-ka-gy." The last trace of comeliness has long left the faces of these repulsive beggars, but there is a type of feminine beauty that comes with years. It is found only where intellect and affection keep step with spiritual desire; and in Ireland, where it is often a crime to think, where superstition stalks, and avarice rules, and hunger crouches, it is very, very rare. But I met one woman in the Emerald Isle whose hair was snow-white, and whose face seemed to beam a benediction. It was a countenance refined by sorrow, purified by aspiration, made peaceful by right intellectual employment, strong through self-reliance, and gentle by an earnest faith in things unseen. It proved the possible. When the nations are disarmed, Ireland will take first place, for in fistiana she is supreme. James Russell Lowell once said that where the "code duello" exists, men lift their hats to ladies, and say "Excuse me" and "If you please." And if Lowell was so bold as to say a good word for the gentlemen who hold themselves "personally responsible," I may venture the remark that men who strike from the shoulder are almost universally polite to strangers. A woman can do Ireland afoot and alone with perfect safety. Everywhere one finds courtesy, kindness and bubbling good-cheer. Nineteen-twentieths of all lawlessness in Ireland during the past two hundred years has been directed against the landlord's agent. This is a very Irish-like proceeding--to punish the agent for the sins of the principal. When the landlord himself comes over from England he affects a fatherly interest in "his people." He gives out presents and cheap favors, and the people treat him with humble deference. When the landlord's agent goes to America he gets a place as first mate on a Mississippi River Steamboat; and before the War he was in demand in the South as overseer. He it is who has taught the "byes" the villainy that they execute; and it sometimes goes hard, for they better the instruction. But there is one other character that the boys occasionally look after in Ireland, and that is the "Squire." He is a merry wight in tight breeches, red coat, and a number-six hat. He has yellow side-whiskers and 'unts to 'ounds, riding over the wheatfields of honest men. The genuine landlord lives in London; the squire would like to but can not afford it. Of course, there are squires and squires, but the kind I have in mind is an Irishman who tries to pass for an Englishman. He is that curious thing--a man without a country. There is a theory to the effect that the Universal Mother in giving out happiness bestows on each and all an equal portion--that the beggar trudging along the stony road is as happy as the king who rides by in his carriage. This is a very old belief, and it has been held by many learned men. From the time I first heard it, it appealed to me as truth. Yet recently my faith has been shaken; for not long ago in New York I climbed the marble steps of a splendid mansion and was admitted by a servant in livery who carried my card on a silver tray to his master. This master had a son in the "Keeley Institute," a daughter in her grave, and a wife who shrank from his presence. His heart was as lonely as a winter night at sea. Fate had sent him a coachman, a butler, a gardener and a footman, but she took his happiness and passed it through a hole in the thatch of a mud-plastered cottage in Ireland, where, each night, six rosy children soundly slept in one straw bed. In that cottage I stayed two days. There was a stone floor and bare, whitewashed walls; but there was a rosebush climbing over the door, and within health and sunny temper that made mirth with a meal of herbs, and a tenderness that touched to poetry the prose of daily duties. But it is well to bear in mind that an Irishman in America and an Irishman in Ireland are not necessarily the same thing. Often the first effect of a higher civilization is degeneration. Just as the Chinaman quickly learns big swear-words, and the Indian takes to drink, and certain young men on first reading Emerson's essay on "Self-Reliance" go about with a chip on their shoulders, so sometimes does the first full breath of freedom's air develop the worst in Paddy instead of the best. As one tramps through Ireland and makes the acquaintance of a blue-eyed "broth of a bye," who weighs one hundred and ninety, and measures forty-four inches around the chest, he catches glimpses of noble traits and hints of mystic possibilities. There are actions that look like rudiments of greatness gone, and you think of the days when Olympian games were played, and finger meanwhile the silver in your pocket and inwardly place it on this twenty-year-old, pink-faced, six-foot "boy" that stands before you. In Ireland there are no forests, but in the peat-bogs are found remains of mighty trees that once lifted their outstretched branches to the sun. Are these remains of stately forests symbols of a race of men that, too, have passed away? In any wayside village of Leinster you can pick you a model for an Apollo. He is in rags, is this giant, and can not read, but he can dance and sing and fight. He has an eye for color, an ear for music, a taste for rhyme, a love of novelty and a thirst for fun. And withal he has blundering sympathy and a pity whose tears are near the surface. Now, will this fine savage be a victim of arrested development, and sink gradually through weight of years into mere animal stupidity and sodden superstition? The chances are that this is just what he will do, and that at twenty he will be in his intellectual zenith. Summer does not fulfil the promise of Spring. But as occasionally there is one of those beautiful, glowing Irish girls who leaves footsteps that endure (in bettered lives), instead of merely transient tracks in mud, so there has been a Burke, a Wellington, an O'Connell, a Sheridan, a Tom Moore and an Oliver Goldsmith. * * * * * While Goldsmith was an Irishman, Swift was an Englishman who chanced to be born of Irish parents in Dublin. In comparing these men Thackeray says: "I think I would rather have had a cold potato and a friendly word from Goldsmith than to have been beholden to the Dean for a guinea and a dinner. No; the Dean was not an Irishman, for no Irishman ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart." Charles Goldsmith was a clergyman, passing rich on forty pounds a year. He had a nice little family of eight children, and what became of the seven who went not astray I do not know. But the smallest and homeliest one of the brood became the best-loved man in London. These sickly boys who have been educated only because they were too weak to work--what a record their lives make! Little Oliver had a pug-nose and bandy legs, and fists not big enough to fight, but he had a large head, and because he was absent-minded, lots of folks thought him dull and stupid, and others were sure he was very bad. In fact, let us admit it, he did steal apples and rifle birds' nests, and on "the straggling fence that skirts the way," he drew pictures of Paddy Byrne, the schoolmaster, who amazed the rustics by the amount of knowledge he carried in one small head. But Paddy Byrne did not love art for art's sake, so he applied the ferule vigorously to little Goldsmith's anatomy, with a hope of diverting the lad's inclinations from art to arithmetic. I do not think the plan was very successful, for the pockmarked youngster was often adorned with the dunce-cap. "And, Sir," said Doctor Johnson, many years after, "it must have been very becoming." It seems that Paddy Byrne "boarded round," and part of the time was under the roof of the rectory. Now we all know that schoolmasters are dual creatures, and that once away from the schoolyard, and having laid aside the robe of office, are often good, honest, simple folks. In his official capacity Paddy Byrne made things very uncomfortable for the pug-nosed little boy, but, like the true Irishman that he was, when he got away from the schoolhouse he was sorry for it. Whether dignity is the mask we wear to hide ignorance, I am not sure, yet when Paddy Byrne was the schoolmaster he was a man severe and stern to view; but when he was plain Paddy Byrne he was a first-rate good fellow. Evenings he would hold little Oliver on his knee, and instead of helping him in his lessons would tell him tales of robbers, pirates, smugglers--everything and anything in fact that boys like: stories of fairies, goblins, ghosts; lion-hunts and tiger-killing in which the redoubtable Paddy was supposed to have taken a chief part. The schoolmaster had been a soldier and a sailor. He had been in many lands, and when he related his adventures, no doubt he often mistook imagination for memory. But the stories had the effect of choking the desire in Oliver for useful knowledge, and gave instead a thirst for wandering and adventure. Byrne also had a taste for poetry, and taught the lad to scribble rhymes. Very proud was the boy's mother, and very carefully did she preserve these foolish lines. All this was in the village of Lissoy, County Westmeath; yet if you look on the map you will look in vain for Lissoy. But six miles northeast from Athlone and three miles from Ballymahon is the village of Auburn. When Goldsmith was a boy Lissoy was: "Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain, Where health and plenty cheered the laboring swain, Where smiling Spring the earliest visits paid, And parting Summer's lingering blooms delayed-- Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please-- How often have I loitered o'er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene; How often have I paused on every charm, The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm, The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church, that topped the neighboring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade For talking age and whispering lovers made: How often have I blessed the coming day, When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train from labor free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree-- While many a pastime circled in the shade, The young contending as the old surveyed; And many a gambol frolicked o'er the ground, And sleights of art and feats of strength went round." In America, when a "city" is to be started, the first thing is to divide up the land into town-lots and then sell these lots to whoever will buy. This is a very modern scheme. But in Ireland whole villages belong to one man, and every one in the place pays tribute. Then villages are passed down from generation to generation, and sometimes sold outright, but there is no wish to dispose of corner lots. For when a man lives in your house and you can put him out at any time, he is, of course, much more likely to be civil than if he owns the place. But it has happened many times that the inhabitants of Irish villages have all packed up and deserted the place, leaving no one but the village squire and that nice man, the landlord's agent. The cottages then are turned into sheep-pens or hay-barns. They may be pulled down, or, if they are left standing, the weather looks after that. And these are common sights to the tourist. Now the landlord, who owned every rood of the village of Lissoy, lived in London. He lived well. He gambled a little, and as the cards did not run his way he got into debt. So he wrote to his agent in Lissoy to raise the rents. He did so, threatened, applied the screws, and--the inhabitants packed up and let the landlord have his village all to himself. Let Goldsmith tell: "Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn: Amidst thy bowers the tyrant's hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green; One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain. No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all, And the long grass overtops the moldering wall; And, trembling, shrinking from the spoiler's hand, Far, far away, thy children leave the land." A titled gentleman by the name of Napier was the owner of the estate at that time, and as his tenantry had left, he in wrath pulled down their rows of pretty white cottages, demolished the schoolhouse, blew up the mill, and took all the material and built a splendid mansion on the hillside. The cards had evidently turned in his direction, but anyway, he owned several other villages, so although he toiled not neither did he spin, yet he was well clothed and always fed. But my lord Napier was not immortal, for he died, and was buried; and over his grave they erected a monument, and on it are these words: "He was the friend of the oppressed." The records of literature, so far as I know, show no such moving force in a simple poem as the re-birth of the village of Auburn. No man can live in a village and illuminate it by his genius. His fellow townsmen and neighbors are not to be influenced by his eloquence except in a very limited way. His presence creates an opposition, for the "personal touch" repels as well as attracts. Dying, seven cities may contend for the honor of his birthplace; or after his departure, knowledge of his fame may travel back across the scenes that he has known, and move to better things. The years went by and the Napier estate got into a bad way and was sold. Captain Hogan became the owner of the site of the village of Lissoy. Now, Captain Hogan was a poet in feeling, and he set about to replace the village that Goldsmith had loved and immortalized. He adopted the name that Goldsmith supplied, and Auburn it is even unto this day. In the village-green is the original spreading hawthorn-tree, all enclosed in a stone wall to preserve it. And on the wall is a sign requesting you not to break off branches. Around the trees are seats. I sat there one evening with "talking age" and "whispering lovers." The mirth that night was of a quiet sort, and I listened to an old man who recited all "The Deserted Village" to the little group that was present. It cost me sixpence, but was cheap for the money, for the brogue was very choice. I was the only stranger present, and quickly guessed that the entertainment was for my sole benefit, as I saw that I was being furtively watched to see how I took my medicine. A young fellow sitting near me offered a little Goldsmith information, then a woman on the other side did the same, and the old man who had recited suggested that we go over and see the alehouse "where the justly celebhrated Docther Goldsmith so often played his harp so feelin'ly." So we adjourned to The Three Jolly Pigeons--a dozen of us, including the lovers, whom I personally invited. "And did Oliver Goldsmith really play his harp in this very room?" I asked. "Aye, indade he did, yer honor, an' ef ye don't belave it, ye kin sit in the same chair that was his." So they led me to the big chair that stood on a little raised platform, and I sat in the great oaken seat which was surely made before Goldsmith was born. Then we all took ale (at my expense). The lovers sat in one corner, drinking from one glass, and very particular to drink from the same side, and giggling to themselves. The old man wanted to again recite "The Deserted Village," but was forcibly restrained. And instead, by invitation of himself, the landlord sang a song composed by Goldsmith, but which I have failed to find in Goldsmith's works, entitled, "When Ireland Is Free." There were thirteen stanzas in this song, and a chorus and refrain in which the words of the title are repeated. After each stanza we all came in strong on the chorus, keeping time by tapping our glasses on the tables. Then we all drank perdition to English landlords, had our glasses refilled, and I was called on for a speech. I responded in a few words that were loudly cheered, and the very good health of "the 'Merican Nobleman" was drunk with much fervor. The Three Jolly Pigeons is arranged exactly to the letter: "The whitewashed walls, the nicely sanded floor, The varnished clock that clicked behind the door; The chest contrived a doubly debt to pay, A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day; The pictures placed for ornament and use, The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose." And behold, there on the wall behind the big oak chair are "the twelve good rules." The next morning I saw the modest mansion of the village preacher "whose house was known to all the vagrant train," then the little stone church, and beyond I came to the blossoming furze, unprofitably gay, where the village master taught his little school. A bright young woman teaches there now, and it is certain that she can write and cipher too, for I saw "sums" on the blackboard, and I also saw where she had written some very pretty mottoes on the wall with colored chalk, a thing I am sure that Paddy Byrne never thought to do. Below the schoolhouse is a pretty little stream that dances over pebbles and untiringly turns the wheel in the old mill; and not far away I saw the round top of Knockrue hill, where Goldsmith said he would rather sit with a book in hand than mingle with the throng at the court of royalty. Goldsmith's verse is all clean, sweet and wholesome, and I do not wonder that he was everywhere a favorite with women. This was true in his very babyhood. For he was the pet of several good old dames, one of whom taught him to count by using cards as object-lessons He proudly said that when he was three years of age he could pick out the "ten-spot." This love of pasteboard was not exactly an advantage, for when he was sixteen he went to Dublin to attend college, and carried fifty pounds and a deck of cards in his pocket. The first day in Dublin he met a man who thought he knew more about cards than Oliver did--and the man did: in three days Oliver arrived back in Sweet Auburn penniless, but wonderfully glad to get home and everybody glad to see him. "It seemed as if I 'd been away a year," he said. But in a few weeks he started out with no baggage but a harp, and he played in the villages and the inns, and sometimes at the homes of the rich. And his melodies won all hearts. The author of "Vanity Fair" says: "You come hot and tired from the day's battle, and this sweet minstrel sings to you. Who could harm the kind vagrant harper? Whom did he ever hurt? He carries no weapon--only the harp on which he plays to you; and with which he delights great and humble, young and old, the captains in the tent or the soldiers round the fire, or the women and children in the villages at whose porches he stops and sings his simple songs of love and beauty." * * * * * When Goldsmith arrived in London in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-six, he was ragged, penniless, friendless and forlorn. In the country he could always make his way, but the city to him was new and strange. For several days he begged a crust here and there, sleeping in the doorways at night and dreaming of the flowery wealth of gentle Lissoy, where even the poorest had enough to eat and a warm place to huddle when the sun went down. He at length found work as clerk or porter in a chemist's shop, where he remained until he got money enough to buy a velvet coat and a ruffled shirt, and then he moved to the Bankside and hung out a surgeon's sign. The neighbors thought the little doctor funny, and the women would call to him out of the second-story window that it was a fine day, but when they were ill they sent for some one else to attend them. Goldsmith was twenty-eight, and the thought that he could make a living with his pen had never come to him. Yet he loved books, and he would loiter about bookshops, pricing first editions, and talking poetry to the patrons. He chanced in this way to meet Samuel Richardson, who, because he wrote the first English romance, has earned the title of Father of Lies. In order to get a very necessary loaf of bread, Doctor Goldsmith asked Richardson to let him read proof. So Richardson gave him employment, and in correcting proof the discovery was made that the Irish doctor could turn a sentence, too. He became affected with literary eczema, and wrote a tragedy which he read to Richardson and a few assembled friends. They voted it "vile, demnition vile." But one man thought it wasn't so bad as it might be, and this man found a market for some of the little doctor's book reviews, but the tragedy was fed to the fireplace. With the money for his book reviews the doctor bought goose quills and ink, and inspiration in bottles. Grub Street dropped in, shabby, seedy, empty of pocket but full of hope, and little suppers were given in dingy coffeehouses where success to English letters was drunk. Then we find Goldsmith making a bold stand for reform. He hired out to write magazine articles by the day; going to work in the morning when the bell rang, an hour off at noon, and then at it again until nightfall. Mr. Griffiths, publisher of the "Monthly Review," was his employer. And in order to hold his newly captured prize, the publisher boarded the pockmarked Irishman in his own house. Mrs. Griffiths looked after him closely, spurring him on when he lagged, correcting his copy, striking out such portions as showed too much genius and inserting a word here and there in order to make a purely neutral decoction, which it seems is what magazine readers have always desired. Occasionally these articles were duly fathered by great men, as this gave them the required specific gravity. It is said that even in our day there are editors who employ convict labor in this way. But I am sure that this is not so, for we live in an age of competition, and it is just as cheap to hire the great men to supply twaddle direct as it is to employ foreign paupers to turn it out with the extra expense of elderly women to revise. After working in the Griffith literary mill for five months, Goldsmith scaled the barricade one dark night, leaving behind, pasted on the wall, a ballad not only to Mrs. Griffiths' eyebrow, but to her wig as well. Soon after this, when Goldsmith was thirty years of age, his first book, "Enquiry Into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe," was published. It brought him a little money and tuppence worth of fame, so he took better lodgings, in Green Arbor Court, proposing to do great things. Half a century after the death of Goldsmith, Irving visited Green Arbor Court: "At length we came upon Fleet Market, and traversing it, turned up a narrow street to the bottom of a long, steep flight of stone steps called Breakneck Stairs. These led to Green Arbor Court, and down them Goldsmith many a time risked his neck. When we entered the Court, I could not but smile to think in what out of the way corners Genius produces her bantlings. The Court I found to be a small square surrounded by tall, miserable houses, with old garments and frippery fluttering from every window. It appeared to be a region of washerwomen, and lines were stretched about the square on which clothes were dangling to dry. Poor Goldsmith! What a time he must have had of it, with his quiet disposition and nervous habits, penned up in this den of noise and vulgarity." One can imagine Goldsmith running the whole gamut of possible jokes on Breakneck Stairs, and Green Arbor Court, which, by the way, was never green and where there was no arbor. "I've been admitted to Court, gentlemen!" said Goldsmith proudly, one day at The Mitre Tavern. "Ah, yes, Doctor, we know--Green Arbor Court! and any man who has climbed Breakneck Stairs has surely achieved," said Tom Davies. In Seventeen Hundred Sixty, Goldsmith moved to Number Six Wine-Office Court, where he wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield." Boswell reports Doctor Johnson's account of visiting him there: "I received, one morning, a message from poor Goldsmith that he was in great distress, and, as it was not in his power to come to me, begging that I would come to him as soon as possible. I sent him a guinea and promised to come to him directly. I accordingly went to him as soon as I was dressed, and found that his landlady had arrested him for his rent, at which he was in a violent passion. I perceived that he had already changed my guinea, and had half a bottle of Madeira and a glass before him. I put the cork in the bottle, desired he would be calm, and began to talk to him of the means by which he might be extricated. He then told me he had a novel ready for the press, which he produced for me. I looked into it and saw its merits; told the landlady I would soon return, and having gone to a bookseller, sold it for sixty pounds. I brought Goldsmith the money, and he discharged the rent, not without rating his landlady for having used him so ill." For the play of "The Good-Natured Man" Goldsmith received five hundred pounds. And he immediately expended four hundred in mahogany furniture, easy chairs, lace curtains and Wilton carpets. Then he called in his friends. This was at Number Two Brick Court, Middle Temple. Blackstone had chambers just below, and was working as hard over his Commentaries as many a lawyer's clerk has done since. He complained of the abominable noise and racket of "those fellows upstairs," but was asked to come in and listen to wit while he had the chance. I believe the bailiffs eventually captured the mahogany furniture, but Goldsmith held the quarters. They are today in good repair, and the people who occupy the house are very courteous, and obligingly show the rooms to the curious. No attempt at a museum is made, but there are to be seen various articles which belonged to Goldsmith and a collection of portraits that are interesting. When "The Traveler" was published Goldsmith's fame was made secure. As long as he wrote plays, reviews, history and criticism he was working for hire. People said it was "clever," "brilliant," and all that, but their hearts were not won until the poet had poured out his soul to his brother in that gentlest of all sweet rhymes. I pity the man who can read the opening lines of "The Traveler" without a misty something coming over his vision: "Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, My heart untraveled fondly turns to thee; Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain, And drags at each remove a lengthening chain." This is the earliest English poem which I can recall that makes use of our American Indian names: "Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around, And Niagara stuns with thundering sound." Indeed, we came near having Goldsmith for an adopted citizen. According to his own report he once secured passage to Boston, and after carrying his baggage aboard the ship he went back to town to say a last hurried word of farewell to a fair lady, and when he got back to the dock the ship had sailed away with his luggage. His earnest wish was to spend his last days in Sweet Auburn. "In all my wand'rings round this world of care, In all my griefs--and God has given my share-- I still had hopes, my latest hours to crown, Amidst those humble bowers to lay me down; To husband out life's taper at its close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose. I still had hopes--for pride attends us still-- Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt and all I saw. And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return--and die at home at last." But he never saw Ireland after he left it in Seventeen Hundred Fifty-four. He died in London in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-four, aged forty-six. On the plain little monument in Temple Church where he was buried are only these words: Here Lies Oliver Goldsmith. Hawkins once called on the Earl of Northumberland and found Goldsmith waiting in an outer room, having come in response to an invitation from the nobleman. Hawkins, having finished his business, waited until Goldsmith came out, as he had a curiosity to know why the Earl had sent for him. "Well," said Hawkins, "what did he say to you?" "His lordship told me that he had read 'The Traveler,' and that he was pleased with it, and that inasmuch as he was soon to be Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and knowing I was an Irishman, asked what he could do for me!" "And what did you tell him?" inquired the eager Hawkins. "Why, there was nothing for me to say, but that I was glad he liked my poem, and--that I had a brother in Ireland, a clergyman, who stood in need of help----" "Enough!" cried Hawkins, and left him. To Hawkins himself are we indebted for the incident, and after relating it Hawkins adds: "And thus did this idiot in the affairs of the world trifle with his fortunes!" Let him who wishes preach a sermon on this story. But there you have it! "A brother in Ireland who needs help----" The brother in London, the brother in America, the brother in Ireland who needs help! All men were his brothers, and those who needed help were first in his mind. Dear little Doctor Goldsmith, you were not a hustler, but when I get to the Spirit World, I'll surely hunt you up! WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE It is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. --_As You Like It_ [Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE] I have on several occasions been to the Shakespeare country, approaching it from different directions, but each time I am set down at Leamington. Perhaps this is by some Act of Parliament--I really do not know; anyway, I have ceased to kick against the pricks and now meekly accept my fate. Leamington seems largely under subjection to that triumvirate of despots--the Butler, the Coachman and the Gardener. You hear the jingle of keys, the flick of the whip and the rattle of the lawnmower; and a cold, secret fear takes possession of you--a sort of half-frenzied impulse to flee, before smug modernity takes you captive and whisks you off to play tiddledywinks or to dance the racquet. But the tram is at the door--the outside fare is a penny, inside it's two--and we are soon safe, for we have reached the point where the Leam and the Avon meet. Warwick is worth our while. For here we see scenes such as Shakespeare saw, and our delight is in the things that his eyes beheld. At the foot of Mill Street are the ruins of the old Gothic bridge that leads off to Banbury. Oft have I ridden to Banbury Cross on my mother's foot, and when I saw that sign and pointing finger I felt like leaving all and flying thence. Just beyond the bridge, settled snugly in a forest of waving branches, we see storied old Warwick Castle, with Cæsar's Tower lifting itself from the mass of green. All about are quaint old houses and shops, with red-tiled roofs, and little windows, with diamond panes, hung on hinges, where maidens fair have looked down on brave men in coats of mail. These narrow, stony streets have rung with the clang and echo of hurrying hoofs; the tramp of Royalist and Parliamentarian, horse and foot, drum and banner; the stir of princely visits, of mail-coach, market, assize and kingly court. Colbrand, armed with giant club; Sir Guy; Richard Neville, kingmaker, and his barbaric train, all trod these streets, watered their horses in this river, camped on yonder bank, or huddled in this castle yard. And again they came back when Will Shakespeare, a youth from Stratford, eight miles away, came here and waved his magic wand. Warwick Castle is probably in better condition now than it was in the Sixteenth Century. But practically it is the same. It is the only castle in England where the portcullis is lowered at ten o'clock every night and raised in the morning (if the coast happens to be clear) to tap of drum. It costs a shilling to visit the castle. A fine old soldier in spotless uniform, with waxed white moustache and dangling sword, conducts the visitors. He imparts full two shillings' worth of facts as we go, all with a fierce roll of r's, as becomes a man of war. The long line of battlements, the massive buttresses, the angular entrance cut through solid rock, crooked, abrupt, with places where fighting men can lie in ambush, all is as Shakespeare knew it. There are the cedars of Lebanon, brought by Crusaders from the East, and the screaming peacocks in the paved courtway: and in the Great Hall are to be seen the sword and accouterments of the fabled Guy, the mace of the "Kingmaker," the helmet of Cromwell, and the armor of Lord Brooke, killed at Litchfield. And that Shakespeare saw these things there is no doubt. But he saw them as a countryman who came on certain fete-days, and stared with open mouth. We know this, because he has covered all with the glamour of his rich, boyish imagination that failed to perceive the cruel mockery of such selfish pageantry. Had his view been from the inside he would not have made his kings noble nor his princes generous; for the stress of strife would have stilled his laughter, and from his brain the dazzling pictures would have fled. Yet his fancies serve us better than the facts. Shakespeare shows us many castles, but they are always different views of Warwick or Kenilworth. When he pictures Macbeth's castle he has Warwick in his inward eye: "This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses. This guest of Summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird Hath made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, The air is delicate." Five miles from Warwick (ten, if you believe the cab-drivers) are the ruins of Kenilworth Castle. In Fifteen Hundred Seventy-five, when Shakespeare was eleven years of age, Queen Elizabeth came to Kenilworth. Whether her ticket was by way of Leamington I do not know. But she remained from July Ninth to July Twenty-seventh, and there were great doings 'most every day, to which the yeomanry were oft invited. John Shakespeare was a worthy citizen of Warwickshire, and it is very probable that he received an invitation, and that he drove over with Mary Arden, his wife, sitting on the front seat holding the baby, and all the other seven children sitting on the straw behind. And we may be sure that the eldest boy in that brood never forgot the day. In fact, in "Midsummer Night's Dream" he has called on his memory for certain features of the show. Elizabeth was forty-one years old then, but apparently very attractive and glib of tongue. No doubt Kenilworth was stupendous in its magnificence, and it will pay you to take down from its shelf Sir Walter's novel and read about it. But today it is all a crumbling heap; ivy, rooks and daws hold the place in fee, each pushing hard for sole possession. It is eight miles from Warwick to Stratford by the direct road, but ten by the river. I have walked both routes and consider the latter the shorter. Two miles down the river is Barford, and a mile farther is Wasperton, with its quaint old stone church. It is a good place to rest: for nothing is so soothing as a cool church where the dim light streams through colored windows, and out of sight somewhere an organ softly plays. Soon after leaving the church a rustic swain hailed me and asked for a match. The pipe and the Virginia weed--they mean amity the world over. If I had questions to ask, now was the time! So I asked, and Rusticus informed me that Hampton Lucy was only a mile beyond and that Shakespeare never stole deer at all; so I hope we shall hear no more of that libelous accusation. "But did Shakespeare run away?" I demanded. "Ave coorse he deed, sir; 'most all good men 'ave roon away sometime!" And come to think of it Rusticus is right. Most great men have at some time departed hastily without leaving orders where to forward their mail. Indeed, it seems necessary that a man should have "run away" at least once, in order afterward to attain eminence. Moses, Lot, Tarquin, Pericles, Demosthenes, Saint Paul, Shakespeare, Rousseau, Voltaire, Goldsmith, Hugo--but the list is too long to give. But just suppose that Shakespeare had not run away! And to whom do we owe it that he did leave--Justice Shallow or Ann Hathaway, or both? I should say to Ann first and His Honor second. I think if Shakespeare could write an article for "The Ladies' Home Journal" on "Women Who Have Helped Me," and tell the whole truth (as no man ever will in print), he would put Ann Hathaway first. He signed a bond when eighteen years old agreeing to marry her; she was twenty-six. No record is found of the marriage. But we should think of her gratefully, for no doubt it was she who started the lad off for London. That's the way I expressed it to my new-found friend, and he agreed with me, so we shook hands and parted. Charlcote is as fair as a dream of Paradise. The winding Avon, full to its banks, strays lazily through rich fields and across green meadows, past the bright red-brick pile of Charlcote Mansion. The river-bank is lined with rushes, and in one place I saw the prongs of antlers shaking the elders. I sent a shrill whistle and a stick that way, and out ran four fine deer that loped gracefully across the turf. The sight brought my poacher instincts to the surface, but I bottled them, and trudged on until I came to the little church that stands at the entrance to the park. All mansions, castles and prisons in England have chapels or churches attached. And this is well, for in the good old days it seemed wise to keep in close communication with the other world. For often, on short notice, the proud scion of royalty was compelled hastily to pack a ghostly valise and his him hence with his battered soul; or if he did not go himself he compelled others to do so, and who but a brute would kill a man without benefit of the clergy! So each estate hired its priests by the year, just as men with a taste for litigation hold attorneys in constant retainer. In Charlcote Church is a memorial to Sir Thomas Lucy; and there is a glowing epitaph that quite upsets any of those taunting and defaming allusions in "The Merry Wives." At the foot of the monument is a line to the effect that the inscription thereon was written by the only one in possession of the facts, Sir Thomas himself. Several epitaphs in the churchyard are worthy of space in your commonplace book, but the lines on the slab to John Gibbs and wife struck me as having the true ring: "Farewell, proud, vain, false, treacherous world, We have seen enough of thee: We value not what thou canst say of we." When the Charlcote Mansion was built, there was a housewarming, and Good Queen Bess (who was not so awful good) came in great state; so we see that she had various calling acquaintances in these parts. But we have no proof that she ever knew that any such person as W. Shakespeare lived. However, she came to Charlcote and dined on venison, and what a pity it is that she and Shakespeare did not meet in London afterward and talk it over! Some hasty individual has put forth a statement to the effect that poets can only be bred in a mountainous country, where they could lift up their eyes to the hills. Rock and ravine, beetling crag, singing cascade, and the heights where the lightning plays and the mists hover are certainly good timber for poetry--after you have caught your poet--but Nature eludes all formula. Again, it is the human interest that adds vitality to art--they reckon ill to leave man out. Drayton before Shakespeare's time called Warwick "the heart of England," and the heart of England it is today--rich, luxuriant, slow. The great colonies of rabbits that I saw at Charlcote seemed too fat to frolic, save more than to play a trick or two on the hounds that blinked in the sun. Down toward Stratford there are flat islands covered with sedge, long rows of weeping-willows, low hazel, hawthorn, and places where "Green Grow the Rushes, O." Then, if the farmer leaves a spot untilled, the dogrose pre-empts the place and showers its petals on the vagrant winds. Meadowsweet, forget-me-nots and wild geranium snuggle themselves below the boughs of the sturdy yews. The first glimpse we get of Stratford is the spire of Holy Trinity; then comes the tower of the new Memorial Theater, which, by the way, is exactly like the city hall at Dead Horse, Colorado. Stratford is just another village of Niagara Falls. The same shops, the same guides, the same hackmen--all are there, save poor Lo, with his beadwork and sassafras. In fact, a "cabby" just outside of New Place offered to take me to the Whirlpool and the Canada side for a dollar. At least, this is what I thought he said. Of course, it is barely possible that I was daydreaming, but I think the facts are that it was he who dozed, and waking suddenly as I passed gave me the wrong cue. There is a Macbeth livery-stable, a Falstaff bakery, and all the shops and stores keep Othello this and Hamlet that. I saw briarwood pipes with Shakespeare's face carved on the bowl, all for one-and-six; feather fans with advice to the players printed across the folds; the "Seven Ages" on handkerchiefs; and souvenir-spoons galore, all warranted Gorham's best. The visitor at the birthplace is given a cheerful little lecture on the various relics and curiosities as they are shown. The young ladies who perform this office are clever women with pleasant voices and big, starched, white aprons. I was at Stratford four days and went just four times to the old curiosity-shop. Each day the same bright British damsel conducted me through, and told her tale, but it was always with animation, and a certain sweet satisfaction in her mission and starched apron that was very charming. No man can tell the same story over and over without soon reaching a point where he betrays his weariness, and then he flavors the whole with a dash of contempt; but a good woman, heaven bless her! is ever eager to please. Each time when we came to that document certified to by Her "Judith X Shakespeare," Mark I was told that it was very probable that Judith could write, but that she affixed her name thus in merry jest. John Shakespeare could not write, we have no reason to suppose that Ann Hathaway could, and this little explanation about the daughter is so very good that it deserves to rank with that other pleasant subterfuge, "The age of miracles is past"; or that bit of jolly claptrap concerning the sacred baboons that are seen about certain temples in India: "They can talk," explain the priests, "but being wise they never do." Judith married Thomas Quiney. The only letter addressed to Shakespeare that can be found is one from the happy father of Thomas, Mr. Richard Quiney, wherein he asks for a loan of thirty pounds. Whether he was accommodated we can not say; and if he was, did he pay it back, is a question that has caused much hot debate. But it is worthy of note that, although considerable doubt as to authenticity has smooched the other Shakespearian relics, yet the fact of the poet having been "struck" for a loan by Richard Quiney stands out in a solemn way as the one undisputed thing in the master's career. Little did Mr. Quiney think, when he wrote that letter, that he was writing for the ages. Philanthropists have won all by giving money, but who save Quiney has reaped immortality by asking for it! The inscription over Shakespeare's grave is an offer of reward if you do, and a threat of punishment if you don't, all in choice doggerel. Why did he not learn at the feet of Sir Thomas Lucy and write his own epitaph? But I rather guess I know why his grave was not marked with his name. He was a play-actor, and the church people would have been outraged at the thought of burying a "strolling player" in that sacred chancel. But his son-in-law, Doctor John Hall, honored the great man and was bound he should have a worthy resting-place; so at midnight, with the help of a few trusted friends, he dug the grave and lowered the dust of England's greatest son. Then they hastily replaced the stones, and over the grave they placed the slab that they had brought: "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear, To dig the dust enclosed here, Blest be the man who spares these stones, And cursed be he who moves my bones." A threat from a ghost! Ah, no one dare molest that grave--besides they didn't know who was buried there--neither are we quite sure. Long years after the interment, some one set a bust of the poet, and a tablet, on the wall over against the grave. Under certain circumstances, if occasion demands, I might muster a sublime conceit; but considering the fact that ten thousand Americans visit Stratford every year, and all write descriptions of the place, I dare not in the face of Baedeker do it. Further than that, in every library there are Washington Irving, Hawthorne, and William Winter's three lacrimose but charming volumes. And I am glad to remember that the Columbus who discovered Stratford and gave it to the people was an American: I am proud to think that Americans have written so charmingly of Shakespeare: I am proud to know that at Stratford no man besides the master is as honored as Irving, and while I can not restrain a blush for our English cousins, I am proud that over half the visitors at the birthplace are Americans, and prouder still am I to remember that they all write letters to the newspapers at home about Stratford-on-Avon. * * * * * In England poets are relegated to a "Corner." The earth and the fulness thereof belongs to the men who can kill; on this rock have the English State and Church been built. As the tourist approaches the city of London for the first time, there are four monuments that probably will attract his attention. They lift themselves out of the fog and smoke and soot, and seem to struggle toward the blue. One of these monuments is to commemorate a calamity--the conflagration of Sixteen Hundred Sixty-six--and the others are in honor of deeds of war. The finest memorial in Saint Paul's is to a certain eminent Irishman, Arthur Wellesley. The mines and quarries of earth have been called on for their richest contributions; and talent and skill have given their all to produce this enduring work of beauty, that tells posterity of the mighty acts of this mighty man. The rare richness and lavish beauty of the Wellington mausoleum are only surpassed by a certain tomb in France. As an exploiter, the Corsican overdid the thing a bit--so the world arose and put him down; but safely dead, his shade can boast a grave so sumptuous that Englishmen in Paris refuse to look upon it. But England need not be ashamed. Her land is spiked with glistening monuments to greatness gone. And on these monuments one often gets the epitomized life of the man whose dust lies below. On the carved marble to Lord Cornwallis I read that, "He defeated the Americans with great slaughter." And so, wherever in England I see a beautiful monument, I know that probably the inscription will tell how "he defeated" somebody. And one grows to the belief that, while woman's glory is her hair, man's glory is to defeat some one. And if he can "defeat with great slaughter" his monument is twice as high as if he had only visited on his brother man a plain undoing. In truth, I am told by a friend who has a bias for statistics, that all monuments above fifty feet high in England are to the honor of men who have defeated other men "with great slaughter." The only exceptions to this rule are the Albert Memorial--which is a tribute of wifely affection rather than a public testimonial, so therefore need not be considered here--and a monument to a worthy brewer who died and left three hundred thousand pounds to charity. I mentioned this fact to my friend, but he unhorsed me by declaring that modesty forbade carving truth on monuments, yet it was a fact that the brewer, too, had brought defeat to vast numbers and had, like Saul, slaughtered his thousands. When I visited the site of the Globe Theater and found thereon a brewery, whose shares are warranted to make the owner rich beyond the dream of avarice, I was depressed. In my boyhood I had supposed that if ever I should reach this spot where Shakespeare's plays were first produced, I should see a beautiful park and a splendid monument; while some white-haired old patriarch would greet me, and give a little lecture to the assembled pilgrims on the great man whose footsteps had made sacred the soil beneath our feet. But there is no park, and no monument, and no white-haired old poet to give you welcome--only a brewery. "Ay, mon, but ain't ut a big un?" protested an Englishman who heard my murmurs. Yes, yes, I must be truthful--it is a big brewery, and there are four big bulldogs in the courtway; and there are big vats, and big workmen in big aprons. And each of these workmen is allowed to drink six quarts of beer each day, without charge, which proves that kindliness is not dead. Then there are big horses that draw the big wagons, and on the corner there is a big taproom where the thirsty are served with big glasses. The founder of this brewery became rich; and if my statistical friend is right, the owners of these mighty vats have defeated mankind with "great slaughter." We have seen that, although Napoleon, the defeated, has a more gorgeous tomb than Wellington, who defeated him, yet there is consolation in the thought that although England has no monument to Shakespeare he now has the freedom of Elysium; while the present address of the British worthies who have battened and fattened on poor humanity's thirst for strong drink, since Samuel Johnson was executor of Thrale's estate, is unknown. We have this on the authority of a solid Englishman, who says: "The virtues essential and peculiar to the exalted station of British Worthy debar the unfortunate possessor from entering Paradise. There is not a Lord Chancellor, or Lord Mayor, or Lord of the Chamber, or Master of the Hounds, or Beefeater in Ordinary, or any sort of British bigwig, out of the whole of British Beadledom, upon which the sun never sets, in Elysium. This is the only dignity beyond their reach." The writer quoted is an honorable man, and I am sure he would not make this assertion if he did not have proof of the fact. So, for the present, I will allow him to go on his own recognizance, believing that he will adduce his documents at the proper time. But still, should not England have a fitting monument to Shakespeare? He is her one universal citizen. His name is honored in every school or college of earth where books are prized. There is no scholar in any clime who is not his debtor. He was born in England; he never was out of England; his ashes rest in England. But England's Budget has never been ballasted with a single pound to help preserve inviolate the memory of her one son to whom the world uncovers. Victor Hugo has said something on this subject which runs about like this: Why a monument to Shakespeare? He is his own monument and England is its pedestal. Shakespeare has no need of a pyramid; he has his work. What can bronze or marble do for him? Malachite and alabaster are of no avail; jasper, serpentine, basalt, porphyry, granite: stones from Paros and marble from Carrara--they are all a waste of pains: genius can do without them. What is as indestructible as these: "The Tempest," "The Winter's Tale," "Julius Cæsar," "Coriolanus"? What monument sublimer than "Lear," sterner than "The Merchant of Venice," more dazzling than "Romeo and Juliet," more amazing than "Richard III"? What moon could shed about the pile a light more mystic than that of "A Midsummer Night's Dream"? What capital, were it even in London, could rumble around it as tumultuously as Macbeth's perturbed soul? What framework of cedar or oak will last as long as "Othello"? What bronze can equal the bronze of "Hamlet"? No construction of lime, or rock, of iron and of cement is worth the deep breath of genius, which is the respiration of God through man. What edifice can equal thought? Babel is less lofty than Isaiah; Cheops is smaller than Homer; the Colosseum is inferior to Juvenal; the Giralda of Seville is dwarfish by the side of Cervantes; Saint Peter's of Rome does not reach to the ankle of Dante. What architect has the skill to build a tower so high as the name of Shakespeare? Add anything if you can to mind! Then why a monument to Shakespeare? I answer, not for the glory of Shakespeare, but for the honor of England! THOMAS A. EDISON The mind can not conceive what man will do in the Twentieth Century with his chained lightning. --_Thomas A. Edison_ [Illustration: THOMAS A. EDISON _Photogravure from drawing by Gaspard_] Some years ago, a law was passed out in Ohio, making any man ineligible to act as a magistrate who had not studied law and been duly admitted to the bar. Men who had not studied law were deemed lacking in the sense of justice. This law was designed purely for one man--Samuel M. Jones of Toledo. Was ever a Jones so honored before? In Athens, of old, a law was once passed declaring that every man, either of whose parents was an alien, was not a citizen and therefore ineligible to hold office. This law was aimed at the head of one man--Themistocles. "And so you are an alien?" was the taunting remark flung at the mother of Themistocles. And the Greek matron proudly answered, "Yes, I am an alien--but my son is Themistocles." Down at Lilly Dale the other day, a woman told me that she had talked with the mother of Edison, and the spirit-voice had said: "It is true I was a Canadian schoolteacher, and this at a time when very few women taught, but I am the mother of him you call Thomas A. Edison. I studied and read and wrote and in degree I educated myself. I had great ambition--I thirsted to know, to do, to become. But I was hampered and chained in an uncongenial atmosphere. My body struggled with its bonds, so that I grew weak, worried, sick, and died, leaving my boy to struggle his way alone. My only regret at death was the thought that I was leaving my boy. I thought that through my marriage I had killed my career--sacrificed myself. But my boy became heir to all my hunger for knowledge, and he has accomplished what I dimly dreamed. He has made plain what I only guessed. From my position here I have whispered secrets to him that only the freed spirits knew. I once thought my life was a failure, but now I know that the word 'failure' is a term used only by foolish mortals. In the universal sense there is no such thing as failure." Just here it seems to me that some one once said that we get no mind without brain. But we had here the brain of the medium, otherwise this alleged message from the spirit realm would not be ours. So we will not now tarry to discuss psychic phenomena, but go on to other things. But the woman from Lilly Dale said something, just the same. * * * * * Edison was born at the little village of Milan, Ohio, which lies six miles from Norwalk on the road between Cleveland and Toledo. On the breaking out of the Civil War the boy was fourteen years old. His parents had moved to Sarnia, Canada, and then across to Port Huron. Young Edison used to ride up and down from Detroit on the passenger-boats and sell newspapers. His standing with the Detroit "Free Press," backed up by his good-cheer and readiness to help the passengers with their babies and bundles, gave him free passage on all railroads and steamboat-lines. There was a public library at Detroit where any one could read, but books could not be taken away. All Edison's spare time was spent at the library, which to him was a gold-mine. All his mother's books had been sold, stolen or given away. And ahoy there, all you folks who have books! Do you not know what books are to a child hungry for truth, that has no books? Of course you do not! Books to a boy like young Edison are treasures-trove, in which is stored the learning of all great and good and wise who have ever lived. And the boy has to read, and read for a decade, in order to find that books are not much after all. When Edison saw the inside of that library and was told he could read any or all of the books, he said, "If you please, Mister, I'll begin here." And he tackled the first shelf, mentally deciding that he would go through the books ten feet at a time. A little later he bought at an auction fifty volumes of the "North American Review," and moving the books up to his home at Port Huron proceeded to read them. The war was on--papers sold for ten cents each and business was good. Edison was making money--and saving it. He only plunged on books. Over at Mount Clemens, at the Springs, folks congregated, and there young Edison took weekly trips selling papers. On one such visit he rescued the little son of the station-agent from in front of a moving train. In gratitude, the man took the boy to his house and told him he must make it his home while in Mount Clemens; and then after supper the youngster went down to the station; and what was more, the station-agent took him in behind the ticket-window, where the telegraph-instrument clicked off dots and dashes on a long strip of paper. Edison looked on with open mouth. "Would you like to become a telegraph-operator?" asked the agent. "Sure!" was the reply. Already the boy had read up on the subject in his library of the "North American Review," and he really knew the history of the thing better than did the agent. Edison was now a newsboy on the Grand Trunk, and he arranged his route so as to spend every other night at Mount Clemens. In a few months he could handle the key about as well as the station-agent. About this time the ice had carried out the telegraph-line between Port Huron and Sarnia. The telegraph people were in sore straits. Edison happened along and said to the local operator, "Come out here, Bill, on this switch-engine and we'll fix things!" By short snorts of the whistle for dots and long ones for dashes, they soon caught the ear of the operator on the other side. He answered back, "What t'ell is the matter with you fellows?" And Edison and the other operator roared with laughter, so that the engineer thought their think-boxes needed re-babbitting. And that scheme of telegraphy with a steam-whistle was Edison's first invention. * * * * * Instead of going to college Edison started a newspaper--a kind of amateur affair, in which he himself wrote editorials, news-items and advertisements--this when he was seventeen years old. The best way to become a skilled writer is to write; and if there is a better way to learn than by doing, the world has not yet discovered it. Also, if there is a finer advantage for a youth who would be a financier than to have a shiftless father, it has not been recorded. When nineteen, Edison had two thousand dollars in cash--more money than his father had ever seen at any one time. The Grand Trunk folks found that their ex-trainboy could operate, and so they called on him to help them out, up and down the line. Then the Western Union wanted extra good men, and young Edison was given double pay to go to New Orleans, where there was a pitiful dearth of operators, the Southern operators being mostly dead, and Northern men not caring to live in the South. So Edison traveled North and South and East and West, gathering gear. He had studied the science of telegraphy closely enough to see that it could be improved upon. One message at a time for one wire was absurd--why not two, or four, and why not send messages both ways at once! It was the general idea then that electricity traveled: Edison knew better--electricity merely rendered the wire sensitive. Edison was getting a reputation among his associates. He had read everything, and when his key was not busy, there was in his hand a copy of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall." He wrote a hand like copperplate and could "take" as fast as the best could send. And when it came to "sending," he had made the pride of Chicago cry quits. The Western Union had need of a specially good man at Albany while the Legislature was in session, and Edison was sent there. He took the key and never looked at the clock--he cleaned up the stuff. He sat glued to his chair for ten hours, straight. At one time, the line suddenly became blocked between Albany and New York. The manager was in distress, and after exhausting all known expedients went to Edison. The lanky youth called up a friend of his in Pittsburgh and ordered that New York give the Pittsburgh man the Albany wire. "Feel your way up the river until you find me," were the orders. Edison started feeling his way down the river. In twenty minutes he called to the manager, "The break is two miles below Poughkeepsie--I've ordered the section-boss at Poughkeepsie to take a repairer on his handcar and go and fix it!" Of course, this plain telegraph-operator had no right to order out a section-boss; but nevertheless he did it. He shouldered responsibility like Tom Potter of the C., B. & Q. Not long after the Albany experience, Edison was in New York, not looking for work as some say, but nosing around Wall Street investigating the "Laws Automatic Ticker." The machine he was looking at suddenly stopped, and this blocked all the tickers on the line. An expert was sent for, but he could not start it. "I'll fix it," said a tall, awkward volunteer, the same which was Edison. History is not yet clear as to whether Edison had not originally "fixed" it, and Edison so far has not confessed. And there being no one else to start the machine, Edison was given a chance, and soon the tickers were going again. This gave him an introduction to the stock-ticker folks, and the Western Union people he already knew. This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, and Edison was then twenty-three years old. He studied out how stock-reporting could be bettered and invented a plan which he duly patented, and then laid his scheme before the Western Union managers. A stock company was formed, and young Edison, aged twenty-four, was paid exactly forty thousand dollars for his patent, and retained by the Company as Electrical Adviser at three hundred dollars a month. In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was twenty-seven, he had perfected his duplex telegraph apparatus and had a factory turning out telegraph-instruments and appliances at Newark, New Jersey, where three hundred men were employed. In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, the year of the Centennial Exposition, Edison told the Exposition Managers that if they would wait a year or so he would light their show with electricity. He moved to the then secluded spot of Menlo Park to devote himself to experiments, spending an even hundred thousand dollars in equipment as a starter. Results followed fast, and soon we had the incandescent lamp, trolley-car, electric pen and many other inventions. It was on the night of October the Twenty-third, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, that Edison first turned the current through an incandescent burner and got the perfect light. He sat and looked at the soft, mild, beautiful light and laughed a joyous peal of laughter that was heard in the adjoining rooms. "We've got it, boys!" he cried, and the boys, a dozen of them, came tumbling in. Arguments started as to how long it would last. One said an hour. "Twenty-four hours," said Edison. They all vowed they would watch it without sleep until the carbon film was destroyed and the light went out. It lasted just forty hours. Around Edison grew up a group of great workers--proud to be called "Edison Men"--and some of these went out and made for themselves names and fortunes. Edison was born in Eighteen Hundred Forty-seven. Consequently, at this writing he is sixty-three years old. He is big and looks awkward, because his dusty-gray clothes do not fit, and he walks with a slight stoop. When he wants clothes he telephones for them. His necktie is worn by the right oblique, his iron-gray hair is combed by the wind. On his cherubic face usually sits a half-quizzical, pleased smile, that fades into a look plaintive and very gentle. The face is that of a man who has borne burdens and known sorrow, of one who has overcome only after mighty effort. I was going to say that Edison looks like a Roman Emperor, but I recall that no Roman Emperor deserves to rank with him--not even Julius Cæsar! The face is that of Napoleon at Saint Helena, unsubdued. The predominant characteristics of the man are his faith, hope, good-cheer and courage. But at all times his humor is apt to be near the surface. Had Edison been as keen a businessman as Rockefeller, and kept his own in his own hands, he would today be as rich as Rockefeller. But Edison is worth, oh, say, two million dollars, and that is all any man should be worth--it is all he needs. Yet there are at least a hundred men in the world today, far richer than Edison, who have made their fortunes wholly and solely by appropriating his ideas. Edison has trusted people, and some of them have taken advantage of his great, big, generous, boyish spirit to do him grievous wrong. But the nearest I ever heard him come to making a complaint was when he said to me, "Fra Elbertus, you never wrote but one really true thing!" "Well, what was that, Mr. Edison?" "You said, 'There is one thing worse than to be deceived by men, and that is to distrust them.' Now people say I have been successful, and so I have, in degree, and it has been through trusting men. There are a few fellows who always know just what I am doing--I confide in them--I explain things to them just to straighten the matter out in my own mind." But of the men who have used Edison's money and ideas, who have made it a life business to study his patents and then use them, evading the law, not a word! From Eighteen Hundred Seventy to Eighteen Hundred Ninety, Edison secured over nine hundred patents, or at the rate of one patent every ten days. Very few indeed of these patents ever brought him any direct return, and now his plan is to invent and keep the matter a secret in his "family." "The value of an idea lies in the using of it," he said to me. "You patent a thing and the other fellow starts even with you. Keep it to yourself and you have the machinery going before the other fellow is awake. Patents may protect some things, and still others they only advertise. Up in Buffalo you have a great lawyer who says he can drive a coach and four through any will that was ever made--and I guess he can. All good lawyers know how to break wills and contracts, and there are now specialists who secure goodly fees for busting patents. If you have an idea, go ahead and invent a way to use it and keep your process secret." * * * * * The Edison factories at West Orange cover a space of about thirty acres, all fenced in with high pickets and barb-wire. Over two thousand people are employed inside that fence. There are guards at the gates, and the would-be visitor is challenged as if he were an enemy. If you want to see any particular person, you do not go in and see him--he comes to you and you sit in a place like the visitors' dock at Sing-Sing. With me it was different: I had a note that made the gates swing wide. However, one gatekeeper scrutinized the note and scrutinized me, and then went back into a maze of buildings for advice. When he came back, the General Manager was with him and was reproving him. In a voice full of defense the County Down watchman said: "Ah, now, and how did I know but that it was a forgery? And anyhow, I'd never let in a man what looks like that, even if he had an order from Bill Taft." The Edison factories, all enclosed in the high fence and under guard, include four separate and distinct corporations, each with its own set of offices. Edison himself owns a controlling interest in each corporation, and the rest of the stock is owned by the managers or "family." With his few trusted helpers he is most liberal. Not only do they draw goodly salaries, but they have an interest in the profits that is no small matter. The secrets of the place are protected by having each workman stick right to one thing and work in one room. No running around is allowed--each employee goes to a certain place and remains there all day. To be found elsewhere is a misdemeanor, and while spies at the Edison factory are not shot, they have been known to disappear into space with great velocity. To make amends for the close restrictions on workers, an extra wage is paid and the eight-hour day prevails, so help is never wanting. Ninety-nine workers out of a hundred want their wages, and nothing else. Promotion, advancement and education are things that never occur to them. But for the few that have the stuff in them, Edison is always on the lookout. His place is really a college, for to know the man is an education. He radiates good-cheer and his animation is catching. To a woman who wanted him to write a motto for her son, Edison wrote, "Never look at the clock!" The argument is plain--get the thing done. And around the Edison laboratory there is no use of looking at the clock, for none of them runs. That is the classic joke of the place. Years ago Edison expressed his contempt for the man who watched the clock, and now every Christmas his office family take up a collection and buy him a clock, and present it with great ceremony. He replies in a speech on the nebular hypothesis and all are very happy. One year the present assumed the form of an Ingersoll Dollar Watch, which the Wizard showed to me with great pride. In the stockade is a beautiful library building and here you see clocks galore, some of which must have cost a thousand dollars a piece, all silent. One clock had a neatly printed card attached, "Don't look at this clock--it has stopped." And another, "You may look at this clock, for you can't stop it!" It was already stopped. One very elegant clock had a solid block of wood where the works should have been, but the face and golden hands were all complete. However, one clock was running, with a tick needlessly loud, but this clock had no hands. The Edison Library is a gigantic affair, with two balconies and bookstacks limitless. The intent was to have a scientific library right at hand that would compass the knowledge of the world. The Laboratory is quite as complete, for in it is every chemical substance known to man, all labeled, classified and indexed. Seemingly, Edison is the most careless, indifferent and slipshod of men, but the real fact is that such a thorough business general the world has seldom seen. If he wants, say, the "Electrical Review" for March, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-One, he hands a boy a slip of paper and the book is in his hands in five minutes. Edison of all men understands that knowledge consists in having a clerk who can quickly find the thing. In his hands the card-index has reached perfection. Edison has no private office, and his desk in the great library has not had a letter written on it since Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. "I hate to disturb the mice," he said as he pointed it out indifferently. He arrives at the stockade early--often by seven o'clock, and makes his way direct to the Laboratory, which stands in the center of the campus. All around are high factory buildings, vibrating with the suppressed roar and hum of industry. In the Laboratory, Edison works, secure and free from interruption unless he invites it. Much of his time is spent in the Chemical Building, a low, one-story structure, lighted from the top. It has a cement floor and very simple furniture, the shelves and tables being mostly of iron. "We are always prepared for fires and explosions here," said Edison in half-apology for the barrenness of the rooms. The place is a maze of retorts, kettles, tubes, siphons and tiny brass machinery. In the midst of the mess stood two old-fashioned armchairs--both sacred to Edison. One he sits in, and the other is for his feet, his books, pads and paper. Here he sits and thinks, reads or muses or tells stories or shuffles about with his hands in his pockets. Edison is a man of infinite leisure. He has the faculty of throwing details upon others. At his elbow, shod in sneakers silent, is always a stenographer. Then there is a bookkeeper who does nothing but record the result of every experiment, and these experiments are going on constantly, attended to by half a dozen quiet and alert men, who work like automatons. "I have tried a million schemes that will not work--I know everything that is no good. I work by elimination," says Edison. When hot on the trail of an idea he may work here for three days and nights without going home, and his wife is good enough and great enough to leave him absolutely to himself. In a little room in the corner of the Laboratory is a little iron cot and three gray army blankets. He can sleep at any time, and half an hour's rest will enable him to go on. When he can't quite catch the idea, he closes up his brain-cells for ten minutes and sleeps, then up and after it again. Mrs. Edison occasionally sends meals down for the Wizard when he is on the trail of a thought and does not want to take time to go home. One day the dinner arrived when Edison was just putting salt on the tail of an idea. There was no time to eat, but it occurred to the inventor that if he would just quit thinking for ten minutes and sleep, he could awaken with enough brain-power to throw the lariat successfully. So he just leaned back, put his feet in the other chair and went to sleep. The General Manager came in and saw the dinner on the table and Edison sleeping, so he just sat down and began to eat the dinner. He ate it all, and tiptoed out. Edison slept twenty minutes, awoke, looked at the empty dishes, pulled down his vest, took out his regular after-dinner cigar, lighted it and smoked away in sweet satisfaction, fully believing that he had had his dinner; and even after the General Manager had come in and offered to bet him a dollar he hadn't, he was still of the same mind. This spirit of sly joking fills the place, set afloat by the master himself. Edison dearly loves a joke, and will quit work any time to hear one. It is the five minutes' sleep and the good laugh that keep his brain from becoming a hotbox--he gets his rest! "When do you take your vacation, Mr. Edison?" a lady asked him. "Election night every November," was the reply. And this is literally true, for on that night there is a special wire run into the Orange Clubhouse, and Edison takes the key and sits there until daylight taking the returns, writing them out carefully in that copperplate Western Union hand. He is as careful about his handwriting now as if he were writing out train-orders. "If I wanted to live a hundred years I would use neither tobacco nor coffee," said Edison as we sat at lunch. "But you see I'd rather get a little really good work done than live long and do nothing to speak of. And so I spur what I am pleased to call my mind, at times with coffee and a good cigar--just pass the matches, thank you! Some day some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I'll do the trick myself if some one else doesn't get at it. Why, that is all there is about my work in electricity--you know, I never claimed to have invented electricity--that is a campaign lie--nail it!" "Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, but we will take that up later. Now the trick was, you see, to concentrate the juice and liberate it as you needed it. The old-fashioned way inaugurated by Jove, of letting it off in a clap of thunder, is dangerous, disconcerting and wasteful. It doesn't fetch up anywhere. My task was to subdivide the current and use it in a great number of little lights, and to do this I had to store it. And we haven't really found out how to store it yet and let it off real easy-like and cheap. Why, we have just begun to commence to get ready to find out about electricity. This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of--it is so wasteful. It is just the old, foolish Prometheus idea, and the father of Prometheus was a baboon." "When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy." "Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property. "There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it can not be destroyed. "Now, I am not sure but that my new storage-battery is the thing. I'd tell you about that, but I don't want to bore you. Of course, I know that nothing is more interesting to the public than a good lie. You see, I have been a newspaperman myself--used to run a newspaper--in fact, Veritas and Old Subscriber once took exception to one of my editorials and threw me into the Detroit River--that is where I got my little deafness--what's that? No, I did not say my deftness--I got that in another way. But about lies, you have heard that one about my smoking big, black cigars! Well, the story is that the boys in the office used to steal my cigars, and so I got a cigarmaker to make me up a box that looked just like my favorite brand, only I had 'em filled with hemp, horsehair and a touch of asafetida. Then I just left the box where the boys would be sure to dip into it; but it seems the cigarman put them on, and so they just put that box into my own private stock and I smoked the fumigators and never knew the difference. "That whole story is a pernicious malrepresentation invented by the enemy of mankind in order to throw obloquy over a virtuous old telegraph-operator--brand it!" Witness, therefore, that I have branded it, forevermore! * * * * * Once upon a day I wrote an article on Alexander Humboldt. And in that article among other things I said, "This world of ours, round like an orange and slightly flattened at the Poles, has produced but five educated men." And ironical ladies and gents from all parts of the United States wrote me on postal cards, begging that I should name the other four. Let us leave the cynics to their little pleasantries, and make our appeal to people who think. Education means evolution, development, growth. Education is comparative, for there is no fixed standard--all men know more than some men, and some men know more than some other men. "Every man I meet is my master in some particular," said Emerson. But there are five men in history who had minds so developed, and evolved beyond the rest of mankind so far, that they form a class by themselves, and deserve to be called Educated Men. The men I have in mind were the following: Pericles, Builder of Athens. Aristotle, tutor of Alexander, and the world's first naturalist. Leonardo, the all-round man--the man who could do more things, and do them well, than any other man who every lived. Sir Isaac Newton, the mathematician, who analyzed light and discovered the law of gravitation. Alexander von Humboldt, explorer and naturalist, who compassed the entire scientific knowledge of the world, issued his books in deluxe limited editions at his own expense, and sold them for three thousand dollars a set. Newton and Humboldt each wore a seven and three-fourths hat. Leonardo and Aristotle went untaped, but Pericles had a head so high and so big that he looked like a caricature, and Aristophanes, a nice man who lived at the same time, said that the head of Pericles looked like a pumpkin that had been sat upon. All the busts of Pericles represent him wearing a helmet--this to avoid what the artists thought an abnormality, the average Greek having a round, smooth chucklehead like that of a Bowery bartender. America has produced two men who stand out so far beyond the rest of mankind that they form a class by themselves: Benjamin Franklin and Thomas A. Edison. Franklin wore a seven and a half hat; Edison wears a seven and three-fourths. The difference in men is the difference in brain-power. And while size does not always token quality, yet size and surface are necessary to get power, and there is no record of a man with a six and a half head ever making a ripple on the intellectual sea. Without the cells you get no mind, and if mind exists without the cells, it has not yet been proven. The brain is a storage-battery made up of millions of minute cells. The weight of an average man's brain is forty-nine ounces. Now, Humboldt's brain weighed fifty-six ounces, and Newton's and Franklin's weighed fifty-seven. Let us hope the autopsist will not have a chance to weigh Edison's brain for many years, but when he does the mark will register fifty-seven ounces. An orang-utan weighs about the same as a man, but its brain weighs only a pound, against three pounds for a man. Give a gorilla a brain weighing fifty ounces, and he would be a Methodist Presiding Elder. Give him a brain the same size of Edison's, say fifty-seven ounces, and instead of spending life in hunting for snakes and heaving cocoanuts at monkeys as respectable gorillas are wont, he would be weighing the world in scales of his own invention and making, and measuring the distances of the stars. Pericles was taught by the gentle Anaxagoras, who gave all his money to the State in order that he might be free. The State reciprocated by cutting off his head, for republics are always ungrateful. Aristotle was a pupil of Plato and worked his way through college, sifting ashes, washing windows and sweeping sidewalks. Leonardo was self-taught and gathered knowledge as a bee gathers honey, although honey isn't honey until the bee digests it. Sir Isaac Newton was a Cambridge man. He held the office of Master of the Mint, and to relieve himself of the charge of atheism he anticipated the enemy and wrote a book on the Hebrew Prophets, which gave the scientists the laugh on him, but made his position with the State secure. Newton is the only man herein mentioned who knew anything about theology, all the others being "infidels" in their day, devoting themselves strictly to this world. Humboldt was taught by the "natural method," and never took a college degree. Franklin was a graduate of the University of Hard Knocks, and Edison's Alma Mater is the same. There is one special characteristic manifested by the Seven Educated men I have named--good-cheer, a great welling sense of happiness! They were all good animals: they gloried in life; they loved the men and women who were still on earth; they feasted on the good things in life; breathed deeply; slept soundly and did not bother about the future. Their working motto was, "One world at a time." They were all able to laugh. Genius is a great fund of joyousness. Each and all of these men influenced the world profoundly. We are different people because they lived. Every house, school, library and workshop in Christendom is touched by their presence. All are dead but Edison, yet their influence can never die. And no one in the list has influenced civilization so profoundly as Edison. You can not look out of a window in any city in Europe or America without beholding the influence of his thought. You may say that the science of electricity has gone past him, but all the Sons of Jove have built on him. He gave us the electric light and the electric car and pointed the way to the telephone--three things that have revolutionized society. As Athens at her height was the Age of Pericles, so will our time be known as the Age of Edison. SO HERE ENDETH "LITTLE JOURNEYS TO THE HOMES OF GOOD MEN AND GREAT," BEING VOLUME ONE OF THE SERIES, AS WRITTEN BY ELBERT HUBBARD: EDITED AND ARRANGED BY FRED BANN; BORDERS AND INITIALS BY ROYCROFT ARTISTS AND PRODUCED BY THE ROYCROFTERS, AT THEIR SHOPS, WHICH ARE IN EAST AURORA, ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, MCMXXII 
36847	----	_Eminent Women Series_ EDITED BY JOHN H. INGRAM GEORGE ELIOT [_All Rights Reserved_] GEORGE ELIOT BY MATHILDE BLIND LONDON: W. H. ALLEN AND CO. 13, WATERLOO PLACE 1883. [_All Rights Reserved_] LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. PREFATORY NOTE. Detailed accounts of GEORGE ELIOT'S life have hitherto been singularly scanty. In the dearth of published materials a considerable portion of the information contained in this biographical study has, necessarily, been derived from private sources. In visiting the places connected with GEORGE ELIOT'S early life, I enjoyed the privilege of meeting her brother, Mr. Isaac Evans, and was also fortunate in gleaning many a characteristic fact and trait from old people in the neighbourhood, contemporaries of her father, Mr. Robert Evans. For valuable help in forming an idea of the growth of GEORGE ELIOT'S mind, my warm thanks are especially due to her oldest friends, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray, and Miss Hennell of Coventry. Miss Jenkins, the novelist's schoolfellow, and Mrs. John Cash, also generously afforded me every assistance in their power. A great part of the correspondence in the present volume has not hitherto appeared in print, and has been kindly placed at my disposal by Mrs. Bray, Mrs. Gilchrist, Mrs. Clifford, Miss Marks, Mr. William M. Rossetti, and the late James Thomson. I have also quoted from letters addressed to Miss Phelps which were published in _Harper's Magazine_ of March 1882, and from one or two other articles that have appeared in periodical publications. For permission to make use of this correspondence my thanks are due to Mr. C. L. Lewes. By far the most exhaustive published account of GEORGE ELIOT'S life and writings, and the one of which I have most freely availed myself, is Mr. Call's admirable essay in the _Westminster Review_ of July 1881. Although this, as indeed every other article on the subject, states GEORGE ELIOT'S birthplace incorrectly, it contains many important _data_ not mentioned elsewhere. To the article on GEORGE ELIOT in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for February 1881, I owe many interesting particulars, chiefly connected with the beginning of GEORGE ELIOT'S literary career. Amongst other papers consulted may be mentioned a noticeable one by Miss Simcox in the _Contemporary Review_, and an appreciative notice by Mr. Frederick Myers in _Scribner's Magazine_, as well as articles in _Harper's Magazine_ of May 1881, and _The Century_ of August 1882. Two quaint little pamphlets, 'Seth Bede: the Methody,' and 'George Eliot in Derbyshire,' by Guy Roslyn, although full of inaccuracies, have also furnished some curious items of information. MATHILDE BLIND. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY 1 CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD AND EARLY HOME 9 CHAPTER III. YOUTHFUL STUDIES AND FRIENDSHIPS 22 CHAPTER IV. TRANSLATION OF STRAUSS AND FEUERBACH--TOUR ON THE CONTINENT 44 CHAPTER V. THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW" 59 CHAPTER VI. GEORGE HENRY LEWES 77 CHAPTER VII. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE 91 CHAPTER VIII. ADAM BEDE 106 CHAPTER IX. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS 123 CHAPTER X. SILAS MARNER 137 CHAPTER XI. ROMOLA 148 CHAPTER XII. HER POEMS 161 CHAPTER XIII. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH 175 CHAPTER XIV. DANIEL DERONDA 192 CHAPTER XV. LAST YEARS 204 GEORGE ELIOT. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Speaking of the contributions made to literature by her own sex, George Eliot, in a charming essay written in 1854, awards the palm of intellectual pre-eminence to the women of France. "They alone," says the great English author, "have had a vital influence on the development of literature. For in France alone the mind of woman has passed, like an electric current, through the language, making crisp and definite what is elsewhere heavy and blurred; in France alone, if the writings of women were swept away, a serious gap would be made in the national history." The reason assigned by George Eliot for this literary superiority of Frenchwomen consists in their having had the courage of their sex. They thought and felt as women, and when they wrote, their books became the fullest expression of their womanhood. And by being true to themselves, by only seeking inspiration from their own life-experience, instead of servilely copying that of men, their letters and memoirs, their novels and pictures have a distinct, nay unique, value, for the student of art and literature. Englishwomen, on the other hand, have not followed the spontaneous impulses of nature. They have not allowed free play to the peculiarly feminine element, preferring to mould their intellectual products on the masculine pattern. For that reason, says George Eliot, their writings are "usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine style, like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire." This novel theory, concerning a specifically feminine manifestation of the intellect, is doubly curious when one compares it with Madame de Staël's famous saying, "_Le génie n'a pas de sexe._" But an aphorism, however brilliant, usually contains only one half the truth, and there is every reason to think that women have already, and will much more largely, by-and-by, infuse into their works certain intellectual and emotional qualities which are essentially their own. Shall we, however, admit George Eliot's conclusion that Frenchwomen alone have hitherto shown any of this original bias? Several causes are mentioned by her in explanation of this exceptional merit. Among these causes there is one which would probably occur to every one who began to reflect on this subject. The influence of the "Salon" in developing and stimulating the finest feminine talents has long been recognised. In this school for women the gift of expression was carried to the utmost pitch of perfection. By their active co-operation in the discussion of the most vital subjects, thought became clear, luminous, and forcible; sentiment gained indescribable graces of refinement; and wit, with its brightest scintillations, lit up the sombre background of life. But among other causes enumerated as accounting for that more spontaneous productivity of Frenchwomen, attributed to them by George Eliot, there is one which would probably have occurred to no other mind than hers, and which is too characteristic of her early scientific tendencies to be omitted. For according to her, the present superiority of Frenchwomen is mainly due to certain physiological peculiarities of the Gallic race. Namely, to the "small brain and vivacious temperament which permit the fragile system of woman to sustain the superlative activity requisite for intellectual creativeness," whereas "the larger brain and slower temperament of the English and Germans are in the womanly organisation generally dreamy and passive. So that the _physique_ of a woman may suffice as the substratum for a superior Gallic mind, but is too thin a soil for a superior Teutonic one." So knotty and subtle a problem must be left to the scientist of the future to decide. Perhaps some promising young physiologist, profiting by the "George Henry Lewes Studentship" founded by George Eliot, may some day satisfactorily elucidate this question. In the meanwhile it is at least gratifying to reflect that she does not deny the future possibilities of even English and German women. She admits that conditions might arise which in their case also would be favourable to the highest creative effort; conditions which would modify the existing state of things according to which, to speak in her own scientific phraseology: "The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy required for spontaneous activity; the voltaic pile is not strong enough to produce crystallisations." But was the author of 'Adam Bede' not herself destined to be a triumphant refutation of her theory? Or had those more favourable circumstances mentioned as vague possibilities already arisen in her case? Not that we believe, for that matter, in the superior claims of illustrious Frenchwomen. It is true George Eliot enumerates a formidable list of names. But on the whole we may boast of feminine celebrities that need not shrink from the comparison. There is, of course, much truth in the great Englishwoman's generous praise of her French compeers. "Mme. de Sévigné remains," she says, "the single instance of a woman who is supreme in a class of literature which has engaged the ambition of men; Mme. Dacier still reigns the queen of blue-stockings, though women have long studied Greek without shame; Mme. de Staël's name still rises to the lips when we are asked to mention a woman of great intellectual power; Mme. Roland is still the unrivalled type of the sagacious and sternly heroic yet lovable woman; George Sand is the unapproached artist who, to Jean Jacques' eloquence and deep sense of external nature, unites the clear delineation of character and the tragic depth of passion." Shall we be forced to admit that the representative women of England cannot justly be placed on as high a level? Is it so certain that they, too, did not speak out of the fulness of their womanly natures? That they too did not feel the genuine need to express modes of thought and feeling peculiar to themselves, which men, if at all, had but inadequately expressed hitherto? Was not Queen Elizabeth the best type of a female ruler, one whose keen penetration enabled her to choose her ministers with infallible judgment? Did not Fanny Burney distil the delicate aroma of girlhood in one of the most delightful of novels? Or what of Jane Austen, whose microscopic fidelity of observation has a well-nigh scientific accuracy, never equalled unless in the pages of the author we are writing of? Sir Walter Scott apparently recognised the eminently feminine inspiration of her writings, as he says: "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvements, and feelings, and characters of ordinary life, which is for me the most wonderful I ever met with. The Bow-wow strain I can do myself like any now agoing; but the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting from the truth of the descriptions and the sentiment, is denied to me." Then turning to the Brontës, does not one feel the very heartbeats of womanhood in those powerful utterances that seem to spring from some central emotional energy? Again, does not Mrs. Browning occupy a unique place among poets? Is there not a distinctively womanly strain of emotion in the throbbing tides of her high-wrought melodious song? And, to come to George Eliot herself, will any one deny that, in the combination of sheer intellectual power with an unparalleled vision for the homely details of life, she takes precedence of all writers of this or any other country? To some extent this wonderful woman conforms to her own standard. She undoubtedly adds to the common fund of crystallised human experience, as literature might be called, something which is specifically feminine. But, on the other hand, her intellect excels precisely in those qualities habitually believed to be masculine, one of its chief characteristics consisting in the grasp of abstract philosophical ideas. This faculty, however, by no means impairs those instinctive processes of the imagination by which true artistic work is produced; George Eliot combining in an unusual degree the subtlest power of analysis with that happy gift of genius which enabled her to create such characters as Amos Barton, Hetty, Mrs. Poyser, Maggie, and Tom Tulliver, Godfrey Cass and Caleb Garth, which seem to come fresh from the mould of Nature itself. Indeed, she has hardly a rival among women in this power of objective imagination by which she throws her whole soul into natures of the most varied and opposite types, whereas George Sand only succeeds greatly when she is thoroughly in sympathy with her creations. After George Eliot's eulogium of French women, one feels tempted to institute a comparison between these two great contemporaries, who occupied the same leading position in their respective countries. But it will probably always remain a question of idiosyncracy which of the two one is disposed to rank higher, George Eliot being the greatest realist, George Sand the greatest idealist, of her sex. The works of the French writer are, in fact, prose poems rather than novels. They are not studies of life, but life interpreted by the poet's vision. George Sand cannot give us a description of any scene in nature, of her own feelings, of a human character, without imparting to it some magical effect as of objects seen under the transfiguring influence of moonlight or storm clouds; whereas George Eliot loves to bathe her productions in the broad pitiless midday light, which leaves no room for illusion, but reveals all nature with uncompromising directness. The one has more of that primitive imagination which seizes on the elemental side of life--on the spectacle of the starry heavens or of Alpine solitudes, on the insurrection and tumult of human passion, on the shocks of revolution convulsing the social order--while the other possesses, in a higher degree, the acute intellectual perception for the orderly sequence of life, for that unchangeable round of toil which is the lot of the mass of men, and for the earth in its homelier aspects as it tells on our daily existence. In George Sand's finest work there is a sweet spontaneity, almost as if she were an oracle of Nature uttering automatically the divine message. But, on the other hand, when the inspiration forsakes her, she drifts along on a windy current of words, the fatal facility of her pen often beguiling the writer into vague diffuseness and unsubstantial declamation. In this respect, also, our English novelist is the opposite of George Sand, for George Eliot invariably remains the master of her genius: indeed, she thoroughly fulfils Goethe's demand that if you set up for an artist you must command art. This intellectual self-restraint never forsakes George Eliot, who always selects her means with a thorough knowledge of the ends to be attained. The radical difference in the genius of these two writers, to both of whom applies Mrs. Browning's apt appellation of "large-brained woman and large-hearted man," extends naturally to their whole tone of thought. George Sand is impassioned, turbulent, revolutionary, the spiritual daughter of Rousseau, with an enthusiastic faith in man's future destiny. George Eliot, contemplative, observant, instinctively conservative, her imagination dearly loving to do "a little Toryism on the sly," is as yet the sole outcome of the modern positive spirit in imaginative literature--the sole novelist who has incorporated in an artistic form some of the leading ideas of Comte, of Mazzini, and of Darwin. In fact, underlying all her art there is the same rigorous teaching of the inexorable laws which govern the life of man. The teaching that not liberty but duty is the condition of existence; the teaching of the incalculable effects of hereditary transmission, with the solemn responsibilities it involves; the teaching of the inherent sadness and imperfection in human nature, which render resignation the first virtue of man. In fact, as a moral influence, George Eliot cannot so much be compared with George Sand, or with any other novelist of her generation, as with Carlyle. She had, indeed, a far more explicit ethical code to offer than the author of 'Sartor Resartus.' For though the immense force of the latter's personality, glowing through his writings, had a tonic effect in promoting a healthy moral tone, there was little of positive moral truth to be gathered from them. But the lessons which George Eliot would fain teach to men were most unmistakable in their bearing--the lessons of pitying love towards fellow-men; of sympathy with all human suffering; of unwavering faithfulness towards the social bond, consisting in the claims of race, of country, of family; of unflagging aspiration after that life which is most beneficent to the community, that life, in short, towards which she herself aspired in the now famous prayer to reach "That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardour, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-- Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense." CHAPTER II. CHILDHOOD AND EARLY HOME. Mary Ann Evans, better known as "George Eliot," was born on November 22nd, 1819, at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish of Colton, in Warwickshire. Both the date and place of her birth have been incorrectly stated, hitherto, in the notices of her life. The family moved to Griff House in March of the following year, when she was only six months old. Her father, Robert Evans, of Welsh origin, was a Staffordshire man from Ellaston, near Ashbourne, and began life as a carpenter. In the kitchen at Griff House may still be seen a beautifully-fashioned oaken press, a sample of his workmanship. A portrait of him, also preserved there, is known among the family as "Adam Bede." It is not as good a likeness as that of a certain carefully painted miniature, the features of which bear an unmistakable resemblance to those of the daughter destined to immortalise his name. A strongly marked, yet handsome face, massive in structure, and with brown eyes, whose shrewd, penetrating glance is particularly noticeable, betoken the man of strong practical intelligence, of rare energy and endurance. His career and character are partially depicted in Adam Bede, Caleb Garth, and Mr. Hackit--portraitures in which the different stages of his life are recorded with a mingling of fact and fiction. A shadowing forth of the same nature is discernible in the devotion of Stradivarius to his noble craft; and even in the tender paternity of Mr. Tulliver there are indications of another phase of the same individuality. Like Adam Bede, Mr. Evans from carpenter rose to be forester, and from forester to be land-agent. It was in the latter capacity alone that he was ever known in Warwickshire. At one time he was surveyor to five estates in the midland counties--those of Lord Aylesford, Lord Lifford, Mr. Bromley Davenport, Mrs. Gregory, and Sir Roger Newdigate. The last was his principal employer. Having early discerned the exceptional capacity of the man, Sir Roger induced him to settle in Warwickshire, and take charge of his estates. Sir Roger's seat, Arbury Hall, is the original of the charming description of Cheverel Manor in 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story.' It is said that Mr. Evans's trustworthiness had become proverbial in the county. But while faithfully serving his employers he also enjoyed great popularity among their tenants. He was gentle, but of indomitable firmness; and while stern to the idle and unthrifty, he did not press heavily on those who might be behindhand with their rent, owing to ill-luck or misfortune, on quarter days. Mr. Evans was twice married. He had lost his first wife, by whom he had a son and a daughter, before settling in Warwickshire. Of his second wife, whose maiden name was Pearson, very little is known. She must, therefore, according to Schiller, have been a pattern of womanhood; for he says that the best women, like the best ruled states, have no history. We have it on very good authority, however, that Mrs. Hackit, in 'Amos Barton,' is a faithful likeness of George Eliot's mother. This may seem startling at first, but, on reflection, she is the woman one might have expected, being a strongly-marked figure, with a heart as tender as her tongue is sharp. She is described as a thin woman, with a chronic liver-complaint, of indefatigable industry and epigrammatic speech; who, "in the utmost enjoyment of spoiling a friend's self-satisfaction, was never known to spoil a stocking." A notable housewife, whose clockwork regularity in all domestic affairs was such that all her farm-work was done by nine o'clock in the morning, when she would sit down to her loom. "In the same spirit, she brought out her furs on the first of November, whatever might be the temperature. She was not a woman weakly to accommodate herself to shilly-shally proceedings. If the season didn't know what it ought to do, Mrs. Hackit did. In her best days it was always sharp weather at 'Gunpowder Plot,' and she didn't like new fashions." Keenly observant and quick of temper, she was yet full of good nature, her sympathy showing itself in the active helpfulness with which she came to the assistance of poor Milly Barton, and the love she showed to her children, who, however, declined kissing her. Is there not a strong family resemblance between this character and Mrs. Poyser, that masterpiece of George Eliot's art? Mary Ann's gift of pointed speech was therefore mother-wit, in the true sense, and her rich humour and marvellous powers of observation were derived from the same side, while her conscientiousness, her capacity, and that faculty of taking pains, which is so large a factor in the development of genius, came more directly from the father. Mr. Evans had three children by his second wife, Christiana, Isaac, and Mary Ann. "It is interesting, I think," writes George Eliot, in reply to some questions of an American lady, "to know whether a writer was born in a central or border district--a condition which always has a strongly determining influence. I was born in Warwickshire, but certain family traditions connected with more northerly districts made these districts a region of poetry to me in my early childhood." In the autobiographical sonnets, entitled 'Brother and Sister,' we catch a glimpse of the mother preparing her children for their accustomed ramble, by stroking down the tippet and setting the frill in order; then standing on the door-step to follow their lessening figures "with the benediction of her gaze." Mrs. Evans was aware, to a certain extent, of her daughter's unusual capacity, being anxious not only that she should have the best education attainable in the neighbourhood, but also that good moral influences should be brought to bear upon her: still, the girl's constant habit of reading, even in bed, caused the practical mother not a little annoyance. The house, where the family lived at that time, and in which the first twenty years of Mary Ann Evans's life were spent, is situated in a rich verdant landscape, where the "grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedge-rows," blend harmoniously with the red-roofed cottages scattered in a happy haphazard fashion amid orchards and elder-bushes. Sixty years ago the country was much more thickly wooded than now, and from the windows of Griff House might be seen the oaks and elms that had still survived from Shakespeare's forest of Arden. The house of the Evans family, half manor-house, half farm, was an old-fashioned building, two stories high, with red brick walls thickly covered with ivy. Like the Garths, they were probably "very fond of their old house." A lawn, interspersed with trees, stretched in front towards the gate, flanked by two stately Norway firs, while a sombre old yew almost touched some of the upper windows with its wide-spreading branches. A farm-yard was at the back, with low rambling sheds and stables; and beyond that, bounded by quiet meadows, one may still see the identical "leafy, flowery, bushy" garden, which George Eliot so often delighted in describing, at a time when her early life, with all its tenderly hoarded associations, had become to her but a haunting memory of bygone things. A garden where roses and cabbages jostle each other, where vegetables have to make room for gnarled old apple-trees, and where, amid the raspberry bushes and row of currant trees, you expect to come upon Hetty herself, "stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit." Such was the place where the childhood of George Eliot was spent. Here she drew in those impressions of English rural and provincial life, of which one day she was to become the greatest interpreter. Impossible to be in a better position for seeing life. Not only was her father's position always improving, so that she was early brought in contact with different grades of society, but his calling made him more or less acquainted with all ranks of his neighbours, and, says George Eliot, "I have always thought that the most fortunate Britons are those whose experience has given them a practical share in many aspects of the national lot, who have lived long among the mixed commonalty, roughing it with them under difficulties, knowing how their food tastes to them, and getting acquainted with their notions and motives, not by inference from traditional types in literature, or from philosophical theories, but from daily fellowship and observation." And what kind of a child was it who loitered about the farm-yard and garden and fields, noticing everything with grave, watchful eyes, and storing it in a memory of extraordinary tenacity? One of her schoolfellows, who knew her at the age of thirteen, confessed to me that it was impossible to imagine George Eliot as a baby; that it seemed as if she must have come into the world fully developed, like a second Minerva. Her features were fully formed at a very early age, and she had a seriousness of expression almost startling for her years. The records of her child-life may be deciphered, amid some romantic alterations, in the early history of Tom and Maggie Tulliver. Isaac and Mary Ann Evans were playmates, like these, the latter having all the tastes of a boy; whereas her sister Chrissy, said to be the original of Lucy Deane, had peculiarly dainty feminine ways, and shrank from out-door rambles for fear of soiling her shoes or pinafore. But Mary Ann and her brother went fishing together, or spinning tops, or digging for earth-nuts; and the twice-told incident of the little girl being left to mind the rod and losing herself in dreamy contemplation, oblivious of her task, is evidently taken from life, and may be quoted as a reminiscence of her own childhood:-- "One day my brother left me in high charge To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait, And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge, Snatch out the line, lest he should come too late. Proud of the task I watched with all my might For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide, Till sky and earth took on a new strange light And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide. A fair pavilioned boat for me alone, Bearing me onward through the vast unknown. But sudden came the barge's pitch-black prow, Nearer and angrier came my brother's cry, And all my soul was quivering fear, when lo! Upon the imperilled line, suspended high, A silver perch! My guilt that won the prey Now turned to merit, had a guerdon rich Of hugs and praises, and made merry play Until my triumph reached its highest pitch When all at home were told the wondrous feat, And how the little sister had fished well. In secret, though my fortune tasted sweet, I wondered why this happiness befell. 'The little lass had luck,' the gardener said; And so I learned, luck was to glory wed." Unlike Maggie, however, little Mary Ann was as good a hand at fishing as her brother, only differing from him in not liking to put the worms on the hooks. Another incident taken from real life, if somewhat magnified, is the adventure with the gipsies. For the prototype of Maggie also fell among these marauding vagrants, and was detained a little time among them. Whether she also proposed to instruct the gipsies and to gain great influence over them by teaching them something about "geography" and "Columbus," does not transpire. But, indeed, most of Maggie's early experiences are autobiographic, down to such facts as her father telling her to rub her "turnip" cheeks against Sally's to get a little bloom, and to cutting off one side of her hair in a passion. At a very early age Mary Ann and her brother were sent to the village free school at Colton, in the parish of Griff, a not unusual custom in those days, when the means of tuition for little children were much more difficult to procure than now. There are still old men living who used to sit on the same form with little Mary Ann Evans learning her A, B, C, and a certain William Jacques (the original of the delightfully comic Bob Jakins of fiction) remembers carrying her pick-a-back on the lawn in front of her father's house. As the brother and sister grew older they saw less of each other, Mary Ann being sent to a school at Nuneaton, kept by Miss Lewis, for whom she retained an affectionate regard long years afterwards. About the same time she taught at a Sunday-school, in a little cottage adjoining her father's house. When she was twelve years old, being then, in the words of a neighbour, who occasionally called at Griff House, "a queer, three-cornered, awkward girl," who sat in corners and shyly watched her elders, she was placed as boarder with the Misses Franklin at Coventry. This school, then in high repute throughout the neighbourhood, was kept by two sisters, of whom the younger, Miss Rebecca Franklin, was a woman of unusual attainments and ladylike culture, although not without a certain taint of Johnsonian affectation. She seems to have thoroughly grounded Miss Evans in a sound English education, laying great stress in particular on the propriety of a precise and careful manner of speaking and reading. She herself always made a point of expressing herself in studied sentences, and on one occasion, when a friend had called to ask after a dying relative, she actually kept the servant waiting till she had framed an appropriately worded message. Miss Evans, in whose family a broad provincial dialect was spoken, soon acquired Miss Rebecca's carefully elaborated speech, and, not content with that, she might be said to have created a new voice for herself. In later life every one who knew her was struck by the sweetness of her voice, and the finished construction of every sentence, as it fell from her lips; for by that time the acquired habit had become second nature, and blended harmoniously with her entire personality. But in those early days the artificial effort at perfect propriety of expression was still perceptible, and produced an impression of affectation, perhaps reflecting that of her revered instructress. It is also believed that some of the beauty of her intonation in reading English poetry was owing to the same early influence. Mary Ann, or Marian as she came afterwards to be called, remained about three years with the Misses Franklin. She stood aloof from the other pupils, and one of her schoolfellows, Miss Bradley Jenkins, says that she was quite as remarkable in those early days as after she had acquired fame. She seems to have strangely impressed the imagination of the latter, who, figuratively speaking, looked up at her "as at a mountain." There was never anything of the schoolgirl about Miss Evans, for, even at that early age, she had the manners and appearance of a grave, staid woman; so much so, that a stranger, happening to call one day, mistook this girl of thirteen for one of the Misses Franklin, who were then middle-aged women. In this, also, there is a certain resemblance to Maggie Tulliver, who, at the age of thirteen, is described as looking already like a woman. English composition, French and German, were some of the studies to which much time and attention were devoted. Being greatly in advance of the other pupils in the knowledge of French, Miss Evans and Miss Jenkins were taken out of the general class and set to study it together; but, though the two girls were thus associated in a closer fellowship, no real intimacy apparently followed from it. The latter watched the future "George Eliot" with intense interest, but always felt as if in the presence of a superior, though socially their positions were much on a par. This haunting sense of superiority precluded the growth of any closer friendship between the two fellow-pupils. All the more startling was it to the admiring schoolgirl, when one day, on using Marian Evans's German dictionary, she saw scribbled on its blank page some verses, evidently original, expressing rather sentimentally a yearning for love and sympathy. Under this granite-like exterior, then, there was beating a heart that passionately craved for human tenderness and companionship! Inner solitude was no doubt the portion of George Eliot in those days. She must already have had a dim consciousness of unusual power, to a great extent isolating her from the girls of her own age, absorbed as they were in quite other feelings and ideas. Strong religious convictions pervaded her life at this period, and in the fervid faith and spiritual exaltation which characterise Maggie's girlhood, we have a very faithful picture of the future novelist's own state of mind. Passing through many stages of religious thought, she was first simple Church of England, then Low Church, then "Anti-Supernatural." In this latter character she wore an "Anti-Supernatural" cap, in which, so says an early friend, "her plain features looked all the plainer." But her nature was a mixed one, as indeed is Maggie's too, and conflicting tendencies and inclinations pulled her, no doubt, in different directions. The self-renouncing impulses of one moment were checkmated at another by an eager desire for approbation and distinguishing pre-eminence; and a piety verging on asceticism did not exclude, on the other hand, a very clear perception of the advantages and desirability of good birth, wealth, and high social position. Like her own charming Esther in 'Felix Holt,' she had a fine sense, amid somewhat anomalous surroundings, of the highest refinements and delicacies which are supposed to be the natural attributes of people of rank and fashion. She even shared with the above-mentioned heroine certain girlish vanities and weaknesses, such as liking to have all things about her person as elegant as possible. About the age of fifteen Marian Evans left the Misses Franklin, and soon afterwards she had the misfortune of losing her mother, who died in her forty-ninth year. Writing to a friend in after life she says, "I began at sixteen to be acquainted with the unspeakable grief of a last parting, in the death of my mother." Less sorrowful partings ensued, though in the end they proved almost as irrevocable. Her elder sister, and the brother in whose steps she had once followed "puppy-like," married and settled in homes of their own. Their different lots in life, and the far more pronounced differences of their aims and ideas, afterwards divided the "brother and sister" completely. This kind of separation between people who have been friends in youth is often more terrible to endure than the actual loss by death itself, and doth truly "work like madness in the brain." Is there not some reference to this in that pathetic passage in 'Adam Bede:' "Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains, blends yearning and repulsion, and ties us by our heartstrings to the beings that jar us at every movement ... we see eyes--ah! so like our mother's, averted from us in cold alienation." For some years after this Miss Evans and her father remained alone together at Griff House. He offered to get a housekeeper, as not the house only, but farm matters, had to be looked after, and he was always tenderly considerate of "the little wench" as he called her. But his daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into her own hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge of her domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on at the same time. One of her chief beauties was in her large, finely-shaped, feminine hands--hands which she has, indeed, described as characteristic of several of her heroines; but she once pointed out to a friend at Foleshill that one of them was broader across than the other, saying, with some pride, that it was due to the quantity of butter and cheese she had made during her housekeeping days at Griff. It will be remembered that this is a characteristic attributed to the exemplary Nancy Lammeter, whose person gave one the idea of "perfect unvarying neatness as the body of a little bird," only her hands bearing "the traces of butter making, cheese crushing, and even still coarser work." Certainly the description of the dairy in 'Adam Bede,' and all the processes of butter making, is one which only complete knowledge could have rendered so perfect. Perhaps no scene in all her novels stands out with more life-like vividness than that dairy which one could have sickened for in hot, dusty streets: "Such coolness, such purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and hinges." This life of mixed practical activity and intellectual pursuits came to an end in 1841, when Mr. Evans relinquished Griff House, and the management of Sir Roger Newdigate's estates, to his married son, and removed with his daughter to Foleshill, near Coventry. CHAPTER III. YOUTHFUL STUDIES AND FRIENDSHIPS. The period from about twenty to thirty is usually the most momentous in the lives of illustrious men and women. It is true that the most abiding impressions, those which the future author will reproduce most vividly, have been absorbed by the growing brain previous to this age; but the fusion of these varied impressions of the outward world with the inner life, and the endless combinations in which imagination delights, rarely begin before. Then, as a rule, the ideas are engendered to be carried out in the maturity of life. Alfred de Vigny says truly enough: "Qu'est-ce qu'une grande vie? Une pensée de la jeunesse, exécutée par l'âge mur." Moreover, it is a revolutionary age. Inherited opinions that had been accepted, as the rotation of the seasons, with unhesitating acquiescence, become an object of speculation and passionate questioning. Nothing is taken upon trust. The intellect, stimulated by the sense of expanding and hitherto unchecked capacity, delights in exercising its strength by critically passing in review the opinions, laws, institutions commonly accepted as unalterable. And if the intellect is thus active the heart is still more so. This is emphatically the time of enthusiastic friendship and glowing love, if often also of cruel disenchantment and disillusion. In most biographies, therefore, this phase of life is no less fascinating than instructive. For it shows the individual while still in a stage of growth already reacting on his environment, and becoming a motive power according to the measure of his intellectual and moral endowments. It is on this state of George Eliot's life that we are now entering. At Foleshill she acquired that vast range of knowledge and universality of culture which so eminently distinguished her. The house she now inhabited though not nearly as picturesque or substantial as the former home of the Evanses, was yet sufficiently spacious, with a pleasant garden in front and behind it; the latter, Marian Evans was fond of making as much like the delicious garden of her childhood as was possible under the circumstances. In other respects she greatly altered her ways of life, cultivating an ultra-fastidiousness in her manners and household arrangements. Though so young she was not only entire mistress of her father's establishment but, as his business required him to be abroad the greater part of each week, she was mostly alone. Her life now became more and more that of a student, one of her chief reasons for rejoicing at the change of residence being the freer access to books. She had, however, already amassed quite a library of her own by this time. In addition to her private studies, she was now also able to have masters to instruct her in a variety of subjects. The Rev. T. Sheepshanks, headmaster of the Coventry Grammar-school, gave her lessons in Greek and Latin, as she particularly wished to learn the former language in order to read Æschylus. She continued her study of French, German, and Italian under the tuition of Signor Brezzi, even acquiring some knowledge of Hebrew by her own unassisted efforts. Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michael's, Coventry, instructed her in the pianoforte; and probably Rosamond Vincy's teacher in 'Middlemarch' is a faithful portraiture of him. "Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close to a country town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in the provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity." George Eliot's sympathetic rendering of her favourite composers, particularly Beethoven and Schubert, was always delightful to her friends, although connoisseurs considered her possessed of little or no strictly technical knowledge. Be that as it may, many an exquisite passage scattered up and down her works, bears witness to her heartfelt appreciation of music, which seems to have had a more intimate attraction for her than the fine arts. She shows little feeling for archæological beauties, in which Warwickshire is so rich: in her 'Scenes of Clerical Life' dismissing a fine monument of Lady Jane Grey, a genuine specimen of old Gothic art at Astley Church, with a sneer about "marble warriors, and their wives without noses." In spite of excessive study, this period of Marian's life is not without faint echoes of an early love-story of her own. In the house of one of her married half-sisters she met a young man who promised, at that time, to take a distinguished position in his profession. A kind of engagement, or semi-engagement, took place, which Mr. Evans refused to countenance, and finally his daughter broke it off in a letter, showing both her strong sense and profoundly affectionate nature. At this time she must have often had a painful consciousness of being cut off from that living fellowship with the like-minded so stimulating to the intellectual life. Men are not so subject to this form of soul hunger as women; for at their public schools and colleges they are brought into contact with their contemporaries, and cannot fail to find comrades amongst them of like thoughts and aspirations with themselves. A fresh life, however, at once vivifying to her intellect and stimulating to her heart, now began for Marian Evans in the friendship she formed with Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray of Rosehill, Coventry. Rahel--the subtly gifted German woman, whose letters and memoirs are a treasury of delicate observation and sentiment--observes that people of marked spiritual affinities are bound to meet some time or other in their lives. If not entirely true, there is a good deal to be said for this comforting theory; as human beings of similar nature seem constantly converging as by some magnetic attraction. The circle to which Miss Evans now happened to be introduced was in every sense congenial and inspiriting. Mr. Bray, his wife, and his sister-in-law were a trio more like some delightful characters in a first-rate novel than the sober inhabitants of a Warwickshire country town. Living in a house beautifully situated on the outskirts of Coventry, they used to spend their lives in philosophical speculations, philanthropy, and pleasant social hospitality, joining to the ease and _laisser aller_ of continental manners a thoroughly English geniality and trustworthiness. Mr. Bray was a wealthy ribbon manufacturer, but had become engrossed from an early age in religious and metaphysical speculation as well as in political and social questions. Beginning to inquire into the dogmas which formed the basis of his belief, he found, on careful investigation, that they did not stand, in his opinion, the test of reason. His arguments set his brother-in-law, Mr. Charles C. Hennell, a Unitarian, to examine afresh and go carefully over the whole ground of popular theology, the consequence of this close study being the 'Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity,' a work which attracted a good deal of attention when it appeared, and was translated into German at the instance of David Strauss. It was published in 1838, a few years after the appearance of the 'Life of Jesus.' In its critical examination of the miracles, and in the sifting of mythological from historical elements in the Gospels it bears considerable analogy to Strauss's great work, although strictly based on independent studies, being originally nothing more than an attempt to solve the doubts of a small set of friends. Their doubts were solved, but not in the manner originally anticipated. Mrs. Bray, of an essentially religious nature, shared the opinions of her husband and brother, and without conforming to the external rites and ceremonies of a creed, led a life of saintly purity and self-devotion. The exquisite beauty of her moral nature not only attracted Marian to this truly amiable woman, but filled her with reverence, and the friendship then commenced was only ended by death. In Miss Sara Hennell, Marian Evans found another congenial companion who became as a sister to her. This singular being, in most respects such a contrast to her sister, high-strung, nervous, excitable, importing all the ardour of feeling into a life of austere thought, seemed in a manner mentally to totter under the weight of her own immense metaphysical speculations. A casual acquaintance of these two young ladies might perhaps have predicted that Miss Hennell was the one destined to achieve fame in the future, and she certainly must have been an extraordinary mental stimulus to her young friend Marian. These gifted sisters, two of a family, all the members of which were remarkable, by some are identified as the originals of the delightful Meyrick household in 'Daniel Deronda.' Each member of this genial group was already, or ultimately became, an author of more or less repute. A reviewer in the 'Westminster,' writing of Mr. Bray's philosophical publications, some years ago, said: "If he would reduce his many works to one containing nothing unessential, he would doubtless obtain that high place among the philosophers of our country to which his powers of thought entitle him." His most popular book, called 'The Education of the Feelings,' intended for use in secular schools, deals with the laws of morality practically applied. Mrs. Bray's writings, on the same order of subjects, are still further simplified for the understanding of children. She is the authoress of 'Physiology for Schools,' 'The British Empire,' 'Elements of Morality,' etc. Her 'Duty to Animals' has become a class book in the schools of the midland counties, and she was one of the first among those noble-hearted men and women who have endeavoured to introduce a greater degree of humanity into our treatment of animals. George Eliot, writing to Mrs. Bray in March 1873 on this very subject, says: "A very good, as well as very rich, woman, Mrs. S----, has founded a model school at Naples, and has the sympathy of the best Italians in her educational efforts. Of course a chief point in trying to improve the Italians is to teach them kindness to animals, and a friend of Mrs. S---- has confided to her a small sum of money--fifty pounds, I think--to be applied to the translation and publication of some good books for young people, which would be likely to rouse in them a sympathy with dumb creatures. "Will you kindly help me in the effort to further Mrs. S----'s good work by sending me a copy of your book on animals, and also by telling me the periodical in which the parts of the book first appeared, as well as the titles of any other works which you think would be worth mentioning for the purpose in question? "Mrs. S---- (as indeed you may probably know) is the widow of a German merchant of Manchester, as rich as many such merchants are, and as benevolent as only the choicest few. She knows all sorts of good work for the world, and is known by most of the workers. It struck me, while she was speaking of this need of a book to translate, that you had done the very thing." A few days later the following highly interesting letter came from the same source: "Many thanks for the helpful things you have sent me. 'The Wounded Bird' is charming. But now something very much larger of the same kind must be written, and you are the person to write it--something that will bring the emotions, sufferings, and possible consolations of the dear brutes vividly home to the imaginations of children: fitted for children of all countries, as Reineke Fuchs is comprehensible to all nations. A rough notion came to me the other day of supposing a house of refuge, not only for dogs, but for all distressed animals. The keeper of this refuge understands the language of the brutes, which includes differences of dialect not hindering communication even between birds, and dogs, by the help of some Ulysses among them who is versed in the various tongues, and puts in the needed explanations. Said keeper overhears his refugees solacing their evenings by telling the story of their experiences, and finally acts as editor of their autobiographies. I imagine my long-loved fellow-creature, the ugly dog, telling the sorrows and the tender emotions of gratitude which have wrought him into a sensitive soul. The donkey is another cosmopolitan sufferer, and a greater martyr than Saint Lawrence. If we only knew what fine motives he has for his meek endurance, and how he loves a friend who will scratch his nose! "All this is not worth anything except to make you feel how much better a plan you can think of. "Only you must positively write this book which everybody wants--this book which will do justice to the share our 'worthy fellow-labourers' have had in the groaning and travailing of the world towards the birth of the right and fair. "But you must not do it without the 'sustenance of labour'--I don't say 'pay,' since there is no pay for good work. Let Mr. ... be blest with the blessing of the unscrupulous. I want to contribute something towards helping the brutes, and helping the children, especially the southern children, to be good to the creatures who are continually at their mercy. I can't write the needed book myself, but I feel sure that you can, and that you will not refuse the duty." Mrs. Bray's answer to this humorous suggestion may be gathered from George Eliot's amiable reply: "I see at once that you must be right about the necessity for being simple and literal. In fact I have ridiculous impulses in teaching children, and always make the horizon too wide. "'The Wounded Bird' is perfect of its kind, and that kind is the best for a larger work. You yourself see clearly that it is an exceptional case for any one to be able to write books for children without putting in them false morality disguised as devout religion. And you are one of the exceptional cases. I am quite sure, from what you have done, that you can do the thing which is still wanted to be done. As to imagination, 'The Wounded Bird' is full of imagination." These extracts pleasantly illustrate both the writer and recipient of such humane letters; and, though written at a much later period, not only give an idea of the nature of Mrs. Bray's literary pursuits, but of the friendly relations subsisting to the end between her and George Eliot. Of Miss Hennell's work it is more difficult to speak without entering more deeply into her subject-matter than is compatible with the scope of the present work. In one of her best known books, entitled 'Thoughts in Aid of Faith,' she makes the daring attempt to trace the evolution of religion, her mode of thought partaking at once of the scientific and the mystical. For the present she seems to be one of the very few women who have ventured into the arena of philosophy; and, curiously enough, her doctrine is that there should be a feminine method in metaphysics as well as a masculine, the sexes, according to this singular theory, finding their counterpart in religion and science. It may be remembered that George Eliot, in one of her essays, is of opinion that women should endeavour to make some distinctively feminine contributions to the intellectual pursuits they engage in, saying, "Let the whole field of reality be laid open to woman as well as to man, and then that which is peculiar in her mental modification, instead of being, as it is now, a source of discord and repulsion between the sexes, will be found to be a necessary complement to the truth and beauty of life. Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of happiness." Something of the same idea lies at the root of much in Miss Hennell's mystical disquisitions. This circumstantial account of the circle to which Miss Evans was now introduced has been given, because it consisted of friends who, more than any others, helped in the growth and formation of her mind. No human being, indeed, can be fully understood without some knowledge of the companions that at one time or other, but especially during the period of development, have been intimately associated with his or her life. However vastly a mountain may appear to loom above us from the plain, on ascending to its summit one always finds innumerable lesser eminences which all help in making up the one imposing central effect. And similarly in the world of mind, many superior natures, in varying degrees, all contribute their share towards the maturing of that exceptional intellectual product whose topmost summit is genius. The lady who first introduced Marian Evans to the Brays was not without an object of her own, for her young friend--whose religious fervour, tinged with evangelical sentiment, was as conspicuous as her unusual learning and thoughtfulness--seemed to her peculiarly fitted to exercise a beneficial influence on the Rosehill household, where generally unorthodox opinions were much in vogue. Up to the age of seventeen or eighteen Marian had been considered the most truly pious member of her family, being earnestly bent, as she says, "to shape this anomalous English Christian life of ours into some consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament." "I was brought up," she informs another correspondent, "in the Church of England, and have never joined any other religious society; but I have had close acquaintance with many dissenters of various sects, from Calvinistic Anabaptists to Unitarians." Her inner life at this time is faithfully mirrored in the spiritual experiences of Maggie Tulliver. Marian Evans was not one who could rest satisfied with outward observances and lip-worship: she needed a faith which should give unity and sanctity to the conception of life; which should awaken "that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, which is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life." At one time Evangelicalism supplied her with the most essential conditions of a religious life: with all the vehemence of an ardent nature she flung her whole soul into a passionate acceptance of the teaching of Christianity, carrying her zeal to the pitch of asceticism. This was the state of her mind, at the age of seventeen, when her aunt from Wirksworth came to stay with her. Mrs. Elizabeth Evans (who came afterwards to be largely identified with Dinah Morris) was a zealous Wesleyan, having at one time been a noted preacher; but her niece, then a rigid Calvinist, hardly thought her doctrine strict enough. When this same aunt paid her a visit, some years afterwards, at Foleshill, Marian's views had already undergone a complete transformation, and their intercourse was constrained and painful; for the young evangelical enthusiast, who had been a favourite in clerical circles, was now in what she afterwards described as a "crude state of freethinking." It was a period of transition through which she gradually passed into a new religious synthesis. Her intimacy with the Brays began about the time when these new doubts were beginning to ferment in her. Her expanding mind, nourished on the best literature, ancient and modern, began to feel cramped by dogmas that had now lost their vitality; yet a break with an inherited form of belief to which a thousand tender associations bound her, was a catastrophe she shrank from with dread. Hence a period of mental uncertainty and trouble. In consequence of these inward questionings, it happened that the young lady who had been unwittingly brought to convert her new acquaintances was converted by them. In intercourse with them she was able freely to open her mind, their enlightened views helping her in this crisis of her spiritual life; and she found it an intense relief to feel no longer bound to reconcile her moral and intellectual perceptions with a particular form of worship. The antagonism she met with in certain quarters, the social persecution from which she had much to suffer, are perhaps responsible for some of the sharp, caustic irony with which she afterwards assailed certain theological habits of thought. It is not unlikely that in some of her essays for the _Westminster Review_ she mainly expressed the thoughts which were stirred in her by the opposition she encountered at this period of her life--as, for example, in the brilliant paper entitled 'Worldliness and Otherworldliness,' which contains such a scathing passage as the following: "For certain other elements of virtue, which are of more obvious importance to untheological minds,--a delicate sense of our neighbour's rights, an active participation in the joys and sorrows of our fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition of good to others, in a word, the extension and intensification of our sympathetic nature, we think it of some importance to contend, that they have no more direct relation to the belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in the lungs has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable that to some minds the deep pathos lying in the thought of human mortality--that we are here for a little while and then vanish away, that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved ones, and to our many suffering fellow-men, lies nearer the fountains of moral emotion than the conception of extended existence.... To us it is matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessity of healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its evolution is ensured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as the evolution of science or of art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into them with undefinable limits." It was, of course, inevitable that her changed tone of mind should attract the attention of the family and friends of Marian, and that the backsliding of so exemplary a member should afford matter for scandal in many a clerical circle and evangelical tea-meeting. Close to the Evanses there lived at that time a dissenting minister, whose daughter Mary was a particular favourite of Marian Evans. There had been much neighbourly intimacy between the two young ladies, and though there was only five years' difference between them, Marian always inspired her friend with a feeling of awe at her intellectual superiority. Yet her sympathy--that sympathy with all human life which was the strongest element of her character--was even then so irresistible that every little trouble of Mary's life was entrusted to her keeping. But the sudden discovery of their daughter's friend being an "infidel" came with the shock of a thunderclap on the parents. Much hot argument passed between the minister and this youthful controversialist, but the former clinched the whole question by a triumphant reference to the dispersion of the Jews throughout the world as an irrefutable proof of the divine inspiration of the Bible. In spite of this vital difference on religious questions, Miss Evans was suffered to go on giving the minister's daughter lessons in German, which were continued for two or three years, she having generously undertaken this labour of love twice a week, because she judged from the shape of her young friend's head--phrenology being rife in those days--that she must have an excellent understanding. But, better than languages, she taught her the value of time, always cutting short mere random talk by simply ignoring it. Altogether the wonderful strength of her personality manifested itself even at this early period in the indelible impression it left on her pupil's memory, many of her sayings remaining graven on it as on stone. As, for instance, when one day twitting Mary's too great self-esteem she remarked, "We are very apt to measure ourselves by our aspiration instead of our performance." Or when on a friend's asking, "What is the meaning of Faust?" she replied, "The same as the meaning of the universe." While reading _'Wallenstein's Lager_,' with her young pupil, the latter happened to say how life-like the characters seemed: "Don't say _seemed_," exclaimed Marian; "we know that they _are_ true to the life." And she immediately began repeating the talk of labourers, farriers, butchers, and others of that class, with such close imitation as to startle her friend. Is not this a fore-shadowing of the inimitable scene at the 'Rainbow?' By far the most trying consequence of her change of views was that now, for the first time, Marian was brought into collision with her father, whose pet she had always been. He could not understand her inward perplexities, nor the need of her soul for complete inward unity of thought, a condition impossible to her under the limiting conditions of a dogmatic evangelicalism, "where folly often mistakes itself for wisdom, ignorance gives itself airs of knowledge, and selfishness, turning its eyes upwards, calls itself religion." She, on the other hand, after a painful struggle, wanted to break away from the old forms of worship, and refused to go to church. Deeply attached though she was to her father, the need to make her acts conform with her convictions became irresistible. Under such conflicting tendencies a rupture between father and daughter became imminent, and for a short time a breaking up of the home was contemplated, Marian intending to go and live by herself in Coventry. One of the leading traits in her nature was its adhesiveness, however, and the threat of separation proved so painful to her that her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bray, persuaded her to conform to her father's wishes as far as outward observances were implied, and for the rest he did not trouble himself to inquire into her thoughts or occupations. From a letter written at this period it appears that the 'Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity' had made a most powerful impression on her mind. Indeed, she dated from it a new birth. But so earnest and conscientious was she in her studies, that before beginning its longed-for perusal, she and a friend determined to read the Bible through again from beginning to end. The intimacy between the inmates of Rosehill and the girl student at Foleshill meanwhile was constantly growing closer. They met daily, and in their midst the humorous side of her nature expanded no less than her intellect. Although striking ordinary acquaintances by an abnormal gravity, when completely at her ease she at times bubbled over with fun and gaiety, irradiated by the unexpected flashes of a wit whose full scope was probably as yet unsuspected by its possessor. Not but that Miss Evans and her friends must have been conscious, even at that early age, of extraordinary powers in her, destined some day to give her a conspicuous position in the world. For her conversation was already so full of charm, depth, and comprehensiveness, that all talk after hers seemed stale and common-place. Many were the discussions in those days between Mr. Bray and Marian Evans, and though frequently broken off in fierce dispute one evening, they always began again quite amicably the next. Mr. Bray probably exercised considerable influence on his young friend's mind at this impressible period of life; perhaps her attention to philosophy was first roused by acquaintance with him, and his varied acquirements in this department may have helped in giving a positive direction to her own thoughts. Mr. Bray was just then working out his 'Philosophy of Necessity,' the problems discussed being the same as those which have occupied the leading thinkers of the day: Auguste Comte in his 'Positive Philosophy;' Buckle in his 'History of Civilization;' and Mr. Herbert Spencer in his 'Sociology.' The theory that, as an individual and collectively, man is as much subject to law as any of the other entities in nature, was one of those magnificent ideas which revolutionise the world of thought. Many minds, in different countries, of different calibre, were all trying to systematise what knowledge there was on this subject in order to convert hypothesis into demonstration. To what extent Mr. Bray may have based his 'Philosophy of Necessity' on independent research, or how much was merely assimilated from contemporary sources, we cannot here inquire. Enough that the ideas embodied in it represented some of the most vital thought of the age, and contributed therefore not a little to the formation of George Eliot's mind, and to the grip which she presently displayed in the handling of philosophical topics. In 1842 the sensation created by Dr. Strauss's _Leben Jesu_ had even extended to so remote a district as Warwickshire. Some persons of advanced opinions, deeply impressed by its penetrating historical criticism, which was in fact Niebuhr's method applied to the elucidation of the Gospels, were very desirous of obtaining an English translation of this work; meeting at the house of a common friend, the late Mr. Joseph Parkes of Birmingham, they agreed, in the first blush of their enthusiasm, to raise amongst them whatever sum might be required for the purpose. Mr. Hennell, the leading spirit in this enterprise, proposed that the translation should be undertaken by Miss Brabant, the accomplished daughter of Dr. Brabant, a scholar deeply versed in theological matters, who was in friendly correspondence with Strauss and Paulus in Germany and with Coleridge and Grote in England. The lady in question, though still in her teens, was peculiarly fitted for the task, as she had already translated some of Baur's erudite writings on theological subjects into English. But when she had done about one half of the first volume, her learned labours came to an unexpected conclusion, as she became engaged to Mr. Hennell, who to great mental attainments joined much winning buoyancy of manner. And on her marriage with this gentleman she had to relinquish her task as too laborious. Miss Brabant's acquaintance with Marian began in 1843, and in the summer of that year the whole friendly group started on an excursion to Tenby. During their stay at this watering-place the lady who had begun, and the lady destined eventually to accomplish, the enormous labour of translating the 'Life of Jesus' gave tokens of feminine frivolity by insisting on going to a public ball, where, however, they were disappointed, as partners were very scarce. It should be remembered that Marian Evans was only twenty-three years old at this time, but, though she had not yet done anything, her friends already thought her a wonderful woman. She never seems to have had any real youthfulness, and her personal appearance greatly improved with time. It is only to the finest natures, it should be remembered, that age gives an added beauty and distinction; for the most persistent self has then worked its way to the surface, having modified the expression, and to some extent the features, to its own likeness. There exists a coloured sketch done by Mrs. Bray about this period, which gives one a glimpse of George Eliot in her girlhood. In those Foleshill days she had a quantity of soft pale-brown hair worn in ringlets. Her head was massive, her features powerful and rugged, her mouth large but shapely, the jaw singularly square for a woman, yet having a certain delicacy of outline. A neutral tone of colouring did not help to relieve this general heaviness of structure, the complexion being pale but not fair. Nevertheless the play of expression and the wonderful mobility of the mouth, which increased with age, gave a womanly softness to the countenance in curious contrast with its framework. Her eyes, of a grey-blue, constantly varying in colour, striking some as intensely blue, others as of a pale, washed-out grey, were small and not beautiful in themselves, but when she grew animated in conversation, those eyes lit up the whole face, seeming in a manner to transfigure it. So much was this the case, that a young lady, who had once enjoyed an hour's conversation with her, came away under its spell with the impression that she was beautiful, but afterwards, on seeing George Eliot again when she was not talking, she could hardly believe her to be the same person. The charm of her nature disclosed itself in her manner and in her voice, the latter recalling that of Dorothea, in being "like the voice of a soul that has once lived in an Æolian harp." It was low and deep, vibrating with sympathy. Mr. Bray, an enthusiastic believer in phrenology, was so much struck with the grand proportions of her head that he took Marian Evans to London to have a cast taken. He thinks that, after that of Napoleon, her head showed the largest development from brow to ear of any person's recorded. The similarity of type between George Eliot's face and Savonarola's has been frequently pointed out. Some affinity in their natures may have led her, if unconsciously, to select that epoch of Florentine life in which he played so prominent a part. Though not above the middle height Marian gave people the impression of being much taller than she really was, her figure, although thin and slight, being well-poised and not without a certain sturdiness of make. She was never robust in health, being delicately strung, and of a highly nervous temperament. In youth the keen excitability of her nature often made her wayward and hysterical. In fact her extraordinary intellectual vigour did not exclude the susceptibilities and weaknesses of a peculiarly feminine organisation. With all her mental activity she yet led an intensely emotional life, a life which must have held hidden trials for her, as in those days she was known by her friends "to weep bucketfuls of tears." A woman of strong passions, like her own Maggie, deeply affectionate by nature, of a clinging tenderness of disposition, Marian Evans went through much inward struggle, through many painful experiences before she reached the moral self-government of her later years. Had she not, it is hardly likely that she could have entered with so deep a comprehension into the most intricate windings of the human heart. That, of course, was to a great extent due to her sympathy, sympathy being the strongest quality of her moral nature. She flung herself, as it were, into other lives, making their affairs, their hopes, their sorrows, her own. And this power of identifying herself with the people she came near had the effect of a magnet in attracting her fellow-creatures. If friends went to her in their trouble they would find not only that she entered with deep feeling into their most minute concerns, but that, by gradual degrees, she lifted them beyond their personal distress, and that they would leave her presence in an ennobled and elevated frame of mind. This sympathy was closely connected with her faculty of detecting and responding to anything that showed the smallest sign of intellectual vitality. She essentially resembled Socrates in her manner of eliciting whatsoever capacity for thought might be latent in the people she came in contact with: were it only a shoemaker or day-labourer, she would never rest till she had found out in what points that particular man differed from other men of his class. She always rather educed what was in others than impressed herself on them; showing much kindliness of heart in drawing out people who were shy. Sympathy was the key-note of her nature, the source of her iridescent humour, of her subtle knowledge of character, and of her dramatic genius. CHAPTER IV. TRANSLATION OF STRAUSS AND FEUERBACH.--TOUR ON THE CONTINENT. Miss Brabant's marriage to Mr. Charles Hennell occurred some months after this excursion to Tenby. In the meanwhile it was settled that Miss Evans should continue her translation of Dr. Strauss's _Leben Jesu_. Thus her first introduction to literature was in a sense accidental. The result proved her admirably fitted for the task; for her version of this searching and voluminous work remains a masterpiece of clear nervous English, at the same time faithfully rendering the spirit of the original. But it was a vast and laborious undertaking, requiring a large share of patience, will, and energy, quite apart from the necessary mental qualifications. On this occasion, to fit herself more fully for her weighty task, Marian taught herself a considerable amount of Hebrew. But she groaned, at times, under the pressure of the toil which had necessarily to be endured, feeling tempted to relinquish what must often have seemed almost intolerable drudgery. The active interest and encouragement of her friends, however, tided her over these moments of discouragement, and after three years of assiduous application, the translation was finally completed, and brought out by Dr. (then Mr.) John Chapman in 1846. It is probably safe to assume that the composition of none of her novels cost George Eliot half the effort and toil which this translation had done. Yet so badly is this kind of literary work remunerated, that twenty pounds was the sum paid for what had cost three years of hard labour! Indeed, by this time, most of the twelve friends who had originally guaranteed the sum necessary for the translation and publication of the 'Life of Jesus,' had conveniently forgotten the matter; and had it not been for the generosity of Mr. Joseph Parkes, who volunteered to advance the necessary funds, who knows how long the MS. translation might have lain dormant in a drawer at Foleshill? It no sooner saw the light, however, than every one recognised the exceptional merits of the work. And for several years afterwards Miss Evans continued to be chiefly known as the translator of Strauss's _Leben Jesu_. Soon after relieving Miss Brabant from the task of translation, Miss Evans went to stay for a time with her friend's father, Dr. Brabant, who sadly felt the loss of his daughter's intelligent and enlivening companionship. No doubt the society of this accomplished scholar, described by Mr. Grote as "a vigorous self-thinking intellect," was no less congenial than instructive to his young companion; while her singular mental acuteness and affectionate womanly ways were most grateful to the lonely old man. There is something very attractive in this episode of George Eliot's life. It recalls a frequently recurring situation in her novels, particularly that touching one of the self-renouncing devotion with which the ardent Romola throws herself into her afflicted father's learned and recondite pursuits. There exists a letter written to an intimate friend in 1846, soon after the translation of Strauss was finished, which, I should say, already shows the future novelist in embryo. In this delightfully humorous mystification of her friends, Miss Evans pretends that, to her gratification, she has actually had a visit from a real live German professor, whose musty person was encased in a still mustier coat. This learned personage has come over to England with the single purpose of getting his voluminous writings translated into English. There are at least twenty volumes, all unpublished, owing to the envious machinations of rival authors, none of them treating of anything more modern than Cheops, or the invention of the hieroglyphics. The respectable professor's object in coming to England is to secure a wife and translator in one. But though, on inquiry, he finds that the ladies engaged in translation are legion, they mostly turn out to be utterly incompetent, besides not answering to his requirements in other respects; the qualifications he looks for in a wife, besides a thorough acquaintance with English and German, being personal ugliness and a snug little capital, sufficient to supply him with a moderate allowance of tobacco and _Schwarzbier_, after defraying the expense of printing his books. To find this phoenix among women he is sent to Coventry on all hands. In Miss Evans, so she runs on, the aspiring professor finds his utmost wishes realised, and so proposes to her on the spot; thinking that it may be her last chance, she accepts him with equal celerity, and her father, although strongly objecting to a foreigner, is induced to give his consent for the same reason. The lady's only stipulation is that her future husband shall take her out of England, with its dreary climate and drearier inhabitants. This being settled, she invites her friends to come to her wedding, which is to take place next week. This lively little _jeu d'esprit_ is written in the wittiest manner, and one cannot help fancying that this German Dryasdust contained the germ of one of her very subtlest masterpieces in characterisation, that of the much-to-be-pitied Casaubon, the very Sysiphus of authors. In the lady, too, willing to marry her parchment-bound suitor for the sake of co-operating in his abstruse mental labours, we have a faint adumbration of the simple-minded Dorothea. But these sudden stirrings at original invention did not prevent Miss Evans from undertaking another task, similar to her last, if not so laborious. She now set about translating Ludwig Feuerbach's _Wesen des Christenthums_. This daring philosopher, who kept aloof from professional honours, and dwelt apart in a wood, that he might be free to handle questions of theology and metaphysics with absolute fearlessness, had created a great sensation by his philosophical criticism in Germany. Unlike his countrymen, whose writings on these subjects are usually enveloped in such an impenetrable mist that their most perilous ideas pass harmlessly over the heads of the multitude, Feuerbach, by his keen incisiveness of language and luminousness of exposition, was calculated to bring his meaning home to the average reader. Mr. Garnett's account of the 'Essence of Christianity' in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica,' admirably concise as it is, may be quoted here, as conveying in the fewest words the gist of this "famous treatise, where Feuerbach shows that every article of Christian belief corresponds to some instinct or necessity of man's nature, from which he infers that it is the creation and embodiment of some human wish, hope, or apprehension.... Following up the hint of one of the oldest Greek philosophers, he demonstrates that religious ideas have their counterparts in human nature, and assumes that they must be its product." The translation of the 'Essence of Christianity' was also published by Mr. Chapman in 1854. It appeared in his 'Quarterly Series,' destined "to consist of works by learned and profound thinkers, embracing the subjects of theology, philosophy, biblical criticism, and the history of opinion." Probably because her former translation had been so eminently successful, Miss Evans received fifty pounds for her present work. But there was no demand for it in England, and Mr. Chapman lost heavily by its publication. About the same period Miss Evans also translated Spinoza's _De Deo_ for the benefit of an inquiring friend. But her English version of the 'Ethics' was not undertaken till the year 1854, after she had left her home at Foleshill. In applying herself to the severe labour of rendering one philosophical work after another into English, Miss Evans, no doubt, was bent on elucidating for herself some of the most vital problems which engage the mind when once it has shaken itself free from purely traditional beliefs, rather than on securing for herself any pecuniary advantages. But her admirable translations attracted the attention of the like-minded, and she became gradually known to some of the most distinguished men of the time. Unfortunately her father's health now began to fail, causing her no little pain and anxiety. At some period during his illness she stayed with him in the Isle of Wight, for in a letter to Mrs. Bray, written many years afterwards, she says, "The 'Sir Charles Grandison' you are reading must be the series of little fat volumes you lent me to carry to the Isle of Wight, where I read it at every interval when my father did not want me, and was sorry that the long novel was not longer. It is a solace to hear of any one's reading and enjoying Richardson. We have fallen on an evil generation who would not read 'Clarissa' even in an abridged form. The French have been its most enthusiastic admirers, but I don't know whether their present admiration is more than traditional, like their set phrases about their own classics." During the last year of her father's life his daughter was also in the habit of reading Scott's novels aloud to him for several hours of each day; she must thus have become deeply versed in his manner of telling the stories in which she continued to delight all her life; and in speaking of the widening of our sympathies which a picture of human life by a great artist is calculated to produce, even in the most trivial and selfish, she gives as an instance Scott's description of Luckie Mucklebackit's cottage, and his story of the 'Two Drovers.' But a heavy loss now befell Marian Evans in the death of her father, which occurred in 1849. Long afterwards nothing seemed to afford consolation to her grief. For eight years these two had kept house together, and the deepest mutual affection had always subsisted between them. Marian ever treasured her father's memory. As George Eliot she loved to recall in her works everything associated with him in her childhood; those happy times when, standing between her father's knees, she used to be driven by him to "outlying hamlets, whose groups of inhabitants were as distinctive to my imagination as if they belonged to different regions of the globe." Miss Evans, however, was not suffered to mourn uncomforted. The tender friends who cared for her as a sister, now planned a tour to the Continent in hopes that the change of scene and associations would soften her grief. So they started on their travels, going to Switzerland and Italy by the approved route, which in those days was not so hackneyed as it now is. To so penetrating an observer as Miss Evans there must have been an infinite interest in this first sight of the Continent. But the journey did not seem to dispel her grief, and she continued in such very low spirits that Mrs. Bray almost regretted having taken her abroad so soon after her bereavement. Her terror, too, at the giddy passes which they had to cross, with precipices yawning on either hand--so that it seemed as if a false step must send them rolling into the abyss--was so overpowering that the sublime spectacle of the snow-clad Alps seemed comparatively to produce but little impression on her. Her moral triumph over this constitutional timidity, when any special occasion arose, was all the more remarkable. One day when crossing the Col de Balme from Martigny to Chamounix, one of the side-saddles was found to be badly fitted, and would keep turning round, to the risk of the rider, if not very careful, slipping off at any moment. Marian, however, insisted on having this defective saddle in spite of the protest of Mrs. Bray, who felt quite guilty whenever they came to any perilous places. How different is this timidity from George Sand's hardy spirit of enterprise! No one who has read that captivating book, her _Lettres d'un Voyageur_, can forget the great Frenchwoman's description of a Swiss expedition, during which, while encumbered with two young children, she seems to have borne all the perils, fatigues, and privations of a toilsome ascent with the hardihood of a mountaineer. But it should not be forgotten that, although Miss Evans was just then in a peculiarly nervous and excitable condition, and her frequent fits of weeping were a source of pain to her anxious fellow-travellers. She had, in fact, been so assiduous in attendance on her sick father, that she was physically broken down for a time. Under these circumstances an immediate return to England seemed unadvisable, and, when her friends started on their homeward journey, it was decided that Marian should remain behind at Geneva. Here, amid scenes so intimately associated with genius--where the "self-torturing sophist, wild Rousseau," placed the home of his '_Nouvelle Héloïse_,' and the octogenarian Voltaire spent the serene Indian summer of his stirring career; where Gibbon wrote his 'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire;' where Byron and Shelley sought refuge from the hatred of their countrymen, and which Madame de Staël complainingly exchanged for her beloved Rue du Bac--here the future author of 'Romola' and 'Middlemarch' gradually recovered under the sublime influences of Nature's healing beauties. For about eight months Miss Evans lived at a boarding-house, "Le Plongeau," near Geneva. But she was glad to find a quieter retreat in the family of an artist, M. d'Albert, becoming much attached to him and his wife. Established in one of the lofty upper stories of this pleasant house, with the blue shimmering waters of the lake glancing far below, and the awful heights of Mont Blanc solemnly dominating the entire landscape, she not only loved to prosecute her studies, but, in isolation from mankind, to plan glorious schemes for their welfare. During this stay she drank deep of Rousseau, whose works, especially _Les Confessions_, made an indelible impression on her. And when inciting a friend to study French, she remarked that it was worth learning that language, if only to read him. At the same period Marian probably became familiarised with the magnificent social Utopias of St. Simon, Proudhon, and other French writers. Having undergone a kind of mental revolution herself not so long ago, she must have felt some sympathy with the thrilling hopes of liberty which had agitated the states of Western Europe in 1849. But, as I have already pointed out, her nature had conservative leanings. She believed in progress only as the result of evolution, not revolution. And in one of her most incisive essays, entitled 'The National History of German Life,' she finely points out the "notable failure of revolutionary attempts conducted from the point of view of abstract democratic and socialistic theories." In the same article she draws a striking parallel between the growth of language and that of political institutions, contending that it would be as unsatisfactory to "construct a universal language on a rational basis"--one that had "no uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms 'familiar with forgotten years'"--as abruptly to alter forms of government which are nothing, in fact, but the result of historical growth, systematically embodied by society. Besides the fascinations of study, and the outward glory of nature, the charm of social intercourse was not wanting to this life at Geneva. In M. D'Albert, a very superior man, gentle, refined, and of unusual mental attainments, she found a highly desirable daily companion. He was an artist by profession, and it is whispered that he suggested some of the traits in the character of the delicate-minded Philip Wakem in the 'Mill on the Floss.' The only portrait in oils which exists of George Eliot is one painted by M. D'Albert at this interesting time of her life. She inspired him, like most people who came into personal contact with her, with the utmost admiration and regard, and, wishing to be of some service, he escorted Miss Evans to England on her return thither. Curiously enough, M. D'Albert subsequently translated one of her works, probably 'Adam Bede,' without in the least suspecting who its real author was. It is always a shock when vital changes have occurred in one's individual lot to return to a well-known place, after an absence of some duration, to find it wearing the same unchangeable aspect. One expects somehow that fields and streets and houses would show some alteration corresponding to that within ourselves. But already from a distance the twin spires of Coventry, familiar as household words to the Warwickshire girl, greeted the eyes of the returning traveller. In spite of all love for her native spot of earth, this was a heavy time to Marian Evans. Her father was dead, the home where she had dwelt as mistress for so many years broken up, the present appearing blank and comfortless, the future uncertain and vaguely terrifying. The question now was where she should live, what she should do, to what purposes turn the genius whose untried and partially unsuspected powers were darkly agitating her whole being. As has been already said, Marian Evans had a highly complex nature, compounded of many contradictory impulses, which, though gradually brought into harmony as life matured, were always pulling her, in those days, in different directions. Thus, though she possessed strong family affections, she could not help feeling that to go and take up her abode in the house of some relative, where life resolved itself into a monotonous recurrence of petty considerations, something after the Glegg pattern, would be little short of crucifixion to her, and, however deep her attachment for her native soil may have been, she yet sighed passionately to break away from its associations, and to become "a wanderer and a pilgrim on the face of the earth." For some little time after her return from abroad Marian took up her residence with her brother and his family. But the children who had toddled hand-in-hand in the fields together had now diverged so widely that no memories of a mutual past could bridge over the chasm that divided them. Under these circumstances the family at Rosehill pressed her to make their home permanently hers, and for about a year, from 1850 to 1851, she became the member of a household in fullest sympathy with her. Here Mr. Bray's many-sided mental activity and genial brightness of disposition, and his wife's exquisite goodness of heart, must have helped to soothe and cheer one whose delicately strung nature was just then nearly bending under the excessive strain of thought and feeling she had gone through. One person, indeed, was so struck by the grave sadness generally affecting her, that it seemed to him as if her coming took all the sunshine out of the day. But whether grave or gay, whether meditative or playful, her conversation exercised a spell over all who came within its reach. In the pleasant house at Rosehill distinguished guests were constantly coming and going, so that there was no lack of the needed intellectual friction supplied by clever and original talk. Here in a pleasant garden, planted with rustling acacia trees, and opening on a wide prospect of richly-wooded, undulating country, with the fitful brightness of English skies overhead, and a smooth-shaven lawn to walk or recline upon, many were the topics discussed by men who had made, or were about to make, their mark. Froude was known there. George Combe discussed with his host the principles of phrenology, at that time claiming "its thousands of disciples." Ralph Waldo Emerson, on a lecturing tour in this country, while on a brief visit, made Marian's acquaintance, and was observed by Mrs. Bray engaged in eager talk with her. Suddenly she saw him start. Something said by this quiet, gentle-mannered girl had evidently given him a shock of surprise. Afterwards, in conversation with her friends, he spoke of her "great calm soul." This is no doubt an instance of the intense sympathetic adaptiveness of Miss Evans. If great, she was not by any means calm at this period, but inwardly deeply perturbed, yet her nature, with subtlest response, reflected the transcendental calm of the philosopher when brought within his atmosphere. George Dawson, the popular lecturer, and Mr. Flower, were more intimately associated with the Rosehill household. The latter, then living at Stratford-on-Avon, where he was wont to entertain a vast number of people, especially Americans, who make pilgrimages to Shakespeare's birthplace, is known to the world as the benevolent denouncer of "bits and bearing-reins." One day this whole party went to hear George Dawson, who had made a great sensation at Birmingham, preach one of his thrilling sermons from the text "And the common people heard him gladly." George Eliot, alluding to these days as late as 1876, says, in a letter to Mrs. Bray: "George Dawson was strongly associated for me with Rosehill, not to speak of the General Baptist Chapel, where we all heard him preach for the first time (to us).... I have a vivid recollection of an evening when Mr. and Mrs. F---- dined at your house with George Dawson, when he was going to lecture at the Mechanics' Institute, and you felt compassionately towards him, because you thought the rather riotous talk was a bad preface to his lecture. We have a Birmingham friend, whose acquaintance we made many years ago in Weimar, and from him I have occasionally had some news of Mr. Dawson. I feared, what you mention, that his life has been a little too strenuous in these latter years." On the evening alluded to in this letter Mr. Dawson was dining at Mrs. Bray's house before giving his lecture on 'John Wesley,' at the Mechanics' Institute. His rich sarcasm and love of fun had exhilarated the whole company, and not content with merely "riotous talk," George Dawson and Mr. Flower turned themselves into lions and wild cats for the amusement of the children, suddenly pouncing out from under the table-cloth, with hideous roarings and screechings, till the hubbub became appalling, joined to the delighted half-frightened exclamations of the little ones. Mr. Dawson did the lions, and Mr. Flower, who had made personal acquaintance with the wild cats in the backwoods of America, was inimitable in their peculiar pounce and screech. Thus amid studies and pleasant friendly intercourse did the days pass at Rosehill. Still Marian Evans was restless, tormented, frequently in tears, perhaps unconsciously craving a wider sphere, and more definitely recognised position. However strenuously she, at a maturer time of life, inculcated the necessity of resignation, she had not then learned to resign herself. And now a change was impending--a change which, fraught with the most important consequences, was destined to give a new direction to the current of her life. Dr. John Chapman invited her to assist him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, which passed at that time into his hands from John Mill. They had already met, when Marian was passing through London on her way to the Continent, on some matter of business or other connected with one of her translations. Dr. Chapman's proposition was accepted; and although Marian suffered keenly from the wrench of parting with her friends, the prompting to work out her powers to the full overcame the clinging of affection, and in the spring of 1851 she left Rosehill behind her and came to London. CHAPTER V. THE 'WESTMINSTER REVIEW.' Dr. and Mrs. Chapman were at this time in the habit of admitting a few select boarders, chiefly engaged in literary pursuits, to their large house in the Strand, and Miss Evans, at their invitation, made her home with them. Thus she found herself at once in the centre of a circle consisting of some of the most advanced thinkers and brilliant _littérateurs_ of the day; a circle which, partly consisting of contributors to the _Westminster Review_, was strongly imbued with scientific tendencies, being particularly partial to the doctrines of Positive Philosophy. Those were in truth the palmy days of the _Westminster Review_. Herbert Spencer, G. H. Lewes, John Oxenford, James and Harriet Martineau, Charles Bray, George Combe, and Professor Edward Forbes were among the writers that made it the leading expositor of the philosophic and scientific thought of the age. It occupied a position something midway between that of the _Nineteenth Century_ and the _Fortnightly_. Scorning, like the latter, to pander to the frivolous tastes of the majority, it appealed to the most thoughtful and enlightened section of the reading public, giving especial prominence to the philosophy of the Comtist School; and while not so fashionable as the _Nineteenth Century_, it could boast among its contributors names quite as famous, destined as they were to become the foremost of their time and country. With this group of illustrious writers Miss Evans was now associated, and the articles she contributed from the year 1852 to 1858 are among the most brilliant examples of periodical literature. The first notice by her pen is a brief review of Carlyle's 'Life of Sterling' for January 1852, and judging from internal evidence, as regards style and method of treatment, the one on Margaret Fuller, in the next number, must be by the same hand. To the biographer there is a curious interest in what she says in her first notice about this kind of literature, and it would be well for the world if writers were to lay it more generally to heart. "We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently to the task of the biographer, that when some great or good personage dies, instead of the dreary three-or five-volumed compilations of letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds of the public have not the chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could have a real "life," setting forth briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims, and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly autobiographies) the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any other kind of reading." Then again, speaking of the 'Memoirs of Margaret Fuller,' she remarks, in reference to the same topic, "The old-world biographies present their subjects generally as broken fragments of humanity, noticeable because of their individual peculiarities, the new-world biographies present their subjects rather as organic portions of society." George Eliot's estimate of Margaret Fuller (for there can be little doubt that it is hers) possesses too rare an interest for readers not to be given here in her own apposite and pungent words: "We are at a loss whether to regard her as the parent or child of New England Transcendentalism. Perhaps neither the one nor the other. It was essentially an intellectual, moral, spiritual regeneration--a renewing of the whole man--a kindling of his aspirations after full development of faculty and perfect symmetry of being. Of this sect Margaret Fuller was the priestess. In conversation she was as copious and oracular as Coleridge, brilliant as Sterling, pungent and paradoxical as Carlyle; gifted with the inspired powers of a Pythoness, she saw into the hearts and over the heads of all who came near her, and, but for a sympathy as boundless as her self-esteem, she would have despised the whole human race! Her frailty in this respect was no secret either to herself or her friends.... We must say that from the time she became a mother till the final tragedy when she perished with her husband and child within sight of her native shore, she was an altered woman, and evinced a greatness of soul and heroism of character so grand and subduing, that we feel disposed to extend to her whole career the admiration and sympathy inspired by the closing scenes. "While her reputation was at its height in the literary circles of Boston and New York, she was so self-conscious that her life seemed to be a studied act, rather than a spontaneous growth; but this was the mere flutter on the surface; the well was deep, and the spring genuine; and it is creditable to her friends, as well as to herself, that such at all times was their belief." In this striking summing-up of a character, the penetrating observer of human nature--taking in at a glance and depicting by a few masterly touches all that helps to make up a picture of the real living being--begins to reveal herself. These essays in the _Westminster Review_ are not only capital reading in themselves, but are, of course, doubly attractive to us because they let out opinions, views, judgments of things and authors, which we should never otherwise have known. Marian Evans had not yet hidden herself behind the mask of George Eliot, and in many of these wise and witty utterances of hers we are admitted behind the scenes of her mind, so to speak, and see her in her own undisguised person--before she had assumed the _rôle_ of the novelist, showing herself to the world mainly through her dramatic impersonations. In these articles, written in the fresh maturity of her powers, we learn what George Eliot thought about many subjects; we learn who were her favourite authors in fiction; what opinions she held on art and poetry; what was her attitude towards the political and social questions of the day; what was her conception of human life in general. There is much here, no doubt, that one might have been prepared to find, but a good deal, too, that comes upon one with the freshness of surprise. A special interest attaches naturally to what she has to say about her own branch of art--the novel. Though she had probably no idea that she was herself destined to become one of the great masters of fiction, she had evidently a special predilection for works of that kind, noticeable because hitherto her bent might have appeared almost exclusively towards philosophy. To the three-volume circulating-library novel of the ordinary stamp she is merciless in her sarcasm. One of her most pithy articles of this time, or rather later, its date being 1856, is directed against "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists." "These," she says, "consist of the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these--a composite order of feminine fatuity, that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the _mind and millinery_ species. We had imagined that destitute women turned novelists, as they turned governesses, because they had no other 'ladylike' means of getting their bread. Empty writing was excused by an empty stomach, and twaddle was consecrated by tears.... It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs, with violet-coloured ink and a ruby pen, that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers' accounts, and inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains." After finding fault with what she sarcastically calls the _white neck-cloth_ species of novel, "a sort of medical sweetmeat for Low Church young ladies," she adds, "The real drama of Evangelicalism, and it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it, lies among the middle and lower classes. Why can we not have pictures of religious life among the industrial classes in England, as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's pictures of religious life among the negroes?" She who asked that question was herself destined, a few years later, to answer her own demand in most triumphant fashion. Already here and there we find hints and suggestions of the vein that was to be so fully worked out in 'Scenes of Clerical Life' and 'Adam Bede.' Her intimate knowledge of English country life, and the hold it had on her imagination, every now and then eats its way to the surface of her writings, and stands out amongst its surrounding matter with a certain unmistakable native force. After censuring the lack of reality with which peasant life is commonly treated in art, she makes the following apposite remarks, suggested by her own experience: "The notion that peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village children necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from the artistic mind which looks for its subjects into literature instead of life. The painter is still under the influence of idyllic literature, which has always expressed the imagination of the town-bred rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers dance in the chequered shade and refresh themselves not immoderately with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual ploughmen thinks them jocund, no one who is well acquainted with the English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no sense of beauty beams, no humour twinkles; the slow utterance, and the heavy slouching walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal the camel, than of the sturdy countryman, with striped stockings, red waistcoat, and hat aside, who represents the traditional English peasant. Observe a company of haymakers. When you see them at a distance tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon creeps slowly with its increasing burden over the meadow, and the bright green space which tells of work done gets larger and larger, you pronounce the scene 'smiling,' and you think these companions in labour must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give animation. Approach nearer and you will find haymaking time is a time for joking, especially if there are women among the labourers; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence of the mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the northern peasant, except tipsy revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for the English clown exists at the bottom of the third quart pot. "The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket-books and never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake, that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite sure that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging-letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make men moral something more is requisite than to turn them out to grass." Every one must see that this is the essay writing of a novelist rather than of a moral philosopher. The touches are put on with the vigour of a Velasquez. Balzac, or Flaubert, or that most terrible writer of the modern French school of fiction, the author of 'Le Sabot Rouge,' never described peasant life with more downright veracity. In the eyes of Miss Evans this quality of veracity is the most needful of all for the artist. Because "a picture of human life, such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of sentiment." For "art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the People. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not so very serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent fashions--about the manners and conversation of beaux and duchesses; but it is serious that our sympathy with the perennial joys and struggles, the toil, the tragedy, and the humour in the life of our more heavily laden fellow-men should be perverted, and turned towards a false object instead of a true one." George Eliot afterwards faithfully adhered to the canons fixed by the critic. Whether this consciousness of a moral purpose was altogether a gain to her art may be more fitly discussed in connection with the analysis of her works of fiction. It is only needful to point out here how close and binding she wished to make the union between ethics and æsthetics. Almost identical views concerning fundamental laws of Art are discussed in an equally terse, vigorous, and pictorial manner in an article called 'Realism in Art: Recent German Fiction.' This article, however, is not by George Eliot, but by George Henry Lewis. It was published in October 1858, and appeared after their joint sojourn in Germany during the spring and summer of that year. I think that if one carefully compares 'Realism in Art' with George Eliot's other articles, there appears something like a marriage of their respective styles in this paper. It seems probable that Lewis, with his flexible adaptiveness, had come under the influence of George Eliot's powerful intellect, and that many of the views he expresses here at the same time render George Eliot's, as they frequently appear, identical with hers. In the article in question the manner as well as the matter has a certain suggestion of the novelist's style. For example she frequently indicates the quality of human speech by its resemblance to musical sounds. She is fond of speaking of "the _staccato_ tones of a voice," "an _adagio_ of utter indifference," and in the above-mentioned essay there are such expressions as the "stately _largo_" of good German prose. Again, in the article in question, we find the following satirical remarks about the slovenly prose of the generality of German writers: "To be gentlemen of somewhat slow, sluggish minds is perhaps their misfortune; but to be writers deplorably deficient in the first principles of composition is assuredly their fault. Some men pasture on platitudes, as oxen upon meadow-grass; they are at home on a dead-level of common-place, and do not desire to be irradiated by a felicity of expression." And in another passage to the same effect the author says sarcastically, "Graces are gifts: it can no more be required of a professor that he should write with felicity than that he should charm all beholders with his personal appearance; but literature requires that he should write intelligibly and carefully, as society requires that he should wash his face and button his waistcoat." Some of these strictures are very similar in spirit to what George Eliot had said in her review of Heinrich Heine, published in 1856, where complaining of the general cumbrousness of German writers, she makes the following cutting remark: "A German comedy is like a German sentence: you see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than of the author." A passage in this article, which exactly tallies with George Eliot's general remarks on Art, must not be omitted here. "Art is a representation of Reality--a Representation inasmuch as it is not the thing itself, but only represents it, must necessarily be limited by the nature of its medium.... Realism is thus the basis of all Art, and its antithesis is not Idealism but Falsism.... To misrepresent the forms of ordinary life is no less an offence than to misrepresent the forms of ideal life: a pug-nosed Apollo, or Jupiter in a great-coat, would not be more truly shocking to an artistic mind than are those senseless falsifications of Nature into which incompetence is led under the pretence of 'beautifying' Nature. Either give us true peasants or leave them untouched; either paint no drapery at all, or paint it with the utmost fidelity; either keep your people silent, or make them speak the idiom of their class." Among German novelists (or rather writers of short stories), Paul Heyse is one of the few who is singled out for special praise in this review. And it is curious that there should be a tale by this eminent author called 'The Lonely Ones' (which also appeared in 1858), in which an incident occurs forcibly recalling the catastrophe of Grandcourt's death in 'Daniel Deronda': the incident--although unskilfully introduced--of a Neapolitan fisherman whose momentary murderous hesitation to rescue his drowning friend ends in lifelong remorse for his death. What makes the article in question particularly interesting are the allusions to the German tour, which give it an almost biographical interest. As has been mentioned already, Mr. Lewis and George Eliot were travelling in Germany in the spring of 1858, and in a letter to a friend she writes: "Then we had a delicious journey to Salzburg, and from thence through the Salz-Kammergut to Vienna, from Vienna to Prague, and from Prague to Dresden, where we spent our last six weeks in quiet work and quiet worship of the Madonna." And in his essay on Art Mr. G. H. Lewis alludes to the most priceless art-treasure Dresden contains, "Raphael's marvellous picture, the Madonna di San Sisto," as furnishing the most perfect illustration of what he means by Realism and Idealism. Speaking of the child Jesus he says: "In the never-to-be-forgotten divine babe, we have at once the intensest realism of presentation with the highest idealism of conception: the attitude is at once grand, easy and natural; the face is that of a child, but the child is divine: in those eyes and in that brow there is an indefinable something which, greater than the expression of the angels, grander than that of pope or saint, is to all who see it a perfect _truth_; we feel that humanity in its highest conceivable form is before us, and that to transcend such a form would be to lose sight of the _human_ nature there represented." A similar passage occurs in 'The Mill on the Floss,' where Philip Wakem says: "The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to be divine." Enough has probably been quoted from George Eliot's articles to give the reader some idea of her views on art. But they are so rich in happy aphorisms, originality of illustration, and raciness of epithet that they not only deserve attentive study because they were the first fruits of the mind that afterwards gave to the world such noble and perfect works as 'The Mill on the Floss' and 'Silas Marner,' but are well worth attention for their own sake. Indeed nothing in George Eliot's fictions excels the style of these papers. And what a clear, incisive, masterly style it was! Her prose in those days had a swiftness of movement, an epigrammatic felicity, and a brilliancy of antithesis which we look for in vain in the over-elaborate sentences and somewhat ponderous wit of 'Theophrastus Such.' A very vapid paper on 'Weimar and its Celebrities,' April 1859, which a writer in the _Academy_ attributes to the same hand, I know not on what authority, does not possess a single attribute that we are in the habit of associating with the writings of George Eliot. That an author who, by that time, had already produced some of her very finest work, namely, the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' and 'Adam Bede,' should have been responsible simultaneously for the trite commonplaces ventilated in this article is simply incredible. It is true that Homer is sometimes found nodding, and the right-hand of the greatest master may forget its cunning, but would George Eliot in her most abject moments have been capable of penning such a sentence as this in connection with Goethe? "Would not Fredricka or Lili have been a more genial companion than Christina Vulpius for that great poet of whom his native land is so justly proud?" It is not worth while to point out other platitudes such as flow spontaneously from the facile pen of a penny-a-liner; but the consistent misspelling of every name may be alluded to in passing. Thus we read "Lily" for "Lely," "Zetter" for "Zelter," "Quintus Filein" for "Fixlein," "Einsedel" for "Einsiedel," etc. etc. This, in itself, would furnish no conclusive argument, supposing George Eliot to have been on the Continent and out of the way of correcting proofs. But as it happened she was in England in April 1859, and it is, therefore, on all grounds impossible that this worthless production should be hers. Perhaps her two most noteworthy articles are the one called 'Evangelical Teaching,' published in 1855, and the other on 'Worldliness and other Worldliness,' which appeared in 1857. This happy phrase, by the way, was first used by Coleridge, who says, "As there is a worldliness or the too much of this life, so there is another _worldliness_ or rather _other worldliness_ equally hateful and selfish with _this worldliness_." These articles are curious because they seem to occupy a midway position between George Eliot's earliest and latest phase of religious belief. But at this period she still felt the recoil from the pressure of a narrowing dogmatism too freshly not to launch back at it some of the most stinging shafts from the armoury of her satire. Not Heine himself, in his trenchant sallies, surpasses the irony with which some of her pages are bristling. To ignore this stage in George Eliot's mental development would be to lose one of the connecting links in her history: a history by no means smooth and uneventful, as some times superficially represented, but full of strong contrasts, abrupt transitions, outward and inward changes sympathetically charged with all the meaning of this transitional time. Two extracts from the above-mentioned articles will amply testify to what has just been said. "Given a man with a moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of intellectual mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun practical extremes, and be ultra only in what is purely theoretic. Let him be stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on fasting; unflinching in insisting on the eternity of punishment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial comforts of time; ardent and imaginative on the pre-millenial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious towards every other infringement of the _status quo_. Let him fish for souls, not with the bait of inconvenient singularity, but with the drag-net of comfortable conformity. Let him be hard and literal in his interpretation only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads of unbelievers and adversaries, but when the letter of the Scriptures presses too closely on the genteel Christianity of the nineteenth century, let him use his spiritualising alembic and disperse it into impalpable ether. Let him preach less of Christ than of Antichrist; let him be less definite in showing what sin is than in showing who is the Man of Sin; less expansive on the blessedness of faith than on the accursedness of infidelity. Above all, let him set up as an interpreter of prophecy, rival 'Moore's Almanack' in the prediction of political events, tickling the interest of hearers who are but moderately spiritual by showing how the Holy Spirit has dictated problems and charades for their benefit; and how, if they are ingenious enough to solve these, they may have their Christian graces nourished by learning precisely to whom they may point as 'the horn that had eyes,' 'the lying prophet,' and the 'unclean spirits.' In this way he will draw men to him by the strong cords of their passions, made reason-proof by being baptized with the name of piety. In this way he may gain a metropolitan pulpit; the avenues to his church will be as crowded as the passages to the opera; he has but to print his prophetic sermons, and bind them in lilac and gold, and they will adorn the drawing-room table of all evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious 'light reading' the demonstration that the prophecy of the locusts, whose sting is in their tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish commander having taken a horse's tail for his standard, and that the French are the very frogs predicted in the Revelations." Even more scathing than this onslaught on a certain type of the popular evangelical preacher, is the paper on the poet Young, one of the wittiest things from George Eliot's pen, wherein she castigates with all her powers of sarcasm and ridicule that class of believers who cannot vilify this life sufficiently in order to make sure of the next, and who, in the care of their own souls, are careless of the world's need. Her analysis of the 'Night Thoughts' remains one of the most brilliant criticisms of its kind. Young's contempt for this earth, of all of us, and his exaltation of the starry worlds above, especially provoke his reviewer's wrath. This frame of mind was always repulsive to George Eliot, who could never sufficiently insist on the need of man's concentrating his love and energy on the life around him. She never felt much toleration for that form of aspiration that would soar to some shadowy infinite beyond the circle of human fellowship. One of the most epigrammatic passages in this article is where she says of Young, "No man can be better fitted for an Established Church. He personifies completely her nice balance of temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for immortal life and for 'livings;' he has a fervid attachment to patrons in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly things; and he will feel something more than private disgust, if his meritorious efforts in directing men's attention to another world are not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire for 'an ornament of religion and virtue;' he hopes courtiers will never forget to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the king's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar than Golgotha and 'the skies;' it walks in graveyards, or soars among the stars.... If it were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers it would be wise and agreeable to be indecent, or to murder one's father; and, heaven apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is to be humbled by being reminded of its 'relation to the stars,' and frightened into moderation by the contemplation of deathbeds and skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and exalting the next, and by this double process you get the Christian--'the highest style of man.' With all this our new-made divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the worldling and the rhetorician there is added a real spark of Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes and objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel house morality, in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive: for this divine is Edward Young, the future author of the 'Night Thoughts.'" It has seemed appropriate to quote thus largely from these essays, because, never having been reprinted, they are to all intents and purposes inaccessible to the general reader. Yet they contain much that should not willingly be consigned to the dust and cobwebs, among which obsolete magazines usually sink into oblivion. They may as well be specified here according to their dates. 'Carlyle's Life of Sterling,' January 1852; 'Woman in France: Madame de Sablé,' October 1854; 'Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming,' October 1855; 'German Wit: Heinrich Heine,' January 1856; 'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists,' October 1856; 'The Natural History of German Life,' July 1856; and 'Worldliness and other Worldliness: the Poet Young,' January 1857. Miss Evans's main employment on the _Westminster Review_ was, however, editorial. She used to write a considerable portion of the summary of contemporary literature at the end of each number. But her co-operation as sub-editor ceased about the close of 1853, when she left Dr. Chapman's house, and went to live in apartments in a small house in Cambridge Terrace, Hyde Park. Marian Evans was not entirely dependent at this time on the proceeds of her literary work, her father having settled the sum of 80l. to 100l. a year on her for life, the capital of which, however, did not belong to her. She was very generous with her money; and although her earnings at this time were not considerable, they were partly spent on her poor relations. CHAPTER VI. GEORGE HENRY LEWES. Meanwhile, these literary labours were pleasantly diversified by frequent visits to her friends at Rosehill and elsewhere. In October 1852, she stayed with Mr. and Mrs. George Combe at Edinburgh, and on her way back was the guest of Harriet Martineau, at her delightfully situated house in Ambleside. Her acquaintance with Mr. Herbert Spencer had ripened into a cordial friendship. They met constantly both in London and in the country, and their intercourse was a source of mutual intellectual enjoyment and profit. As must already have become evident, it is erroneous to suppose that he had any share in the formation of her mind: for as Mr. Herbert Spencer said, in a letter to the _Daily News_, "Our friendship did not commence until 1851 ... when she was already distinguished by that breadth of culture, and universality of power, which have since made her known to all the world." In a letter to Miss Phelps, George Eliot touches on this rumour, after alluding in an unmistakable manner to another great contemporary: "I never--to answer one of your questions quite directly--I never had any personal acquaintance with" (naming a prominent Positivist); "never saw him to my knowledge, except in the House of Commons; and though I have studied his books, especially his 'Logic' and 'Political Economy,' with much benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked epoch in my life. "Of Mr. ----'s friendship I have had the honour and advantage for twenty years, but I believe that every main bias of my mind had been taken before I knew him. Like the rest of his readers, I am, of course, indebted to him for much enlargement and clarifying of thought." But there was another acquaintance which Miss Evans made during the first year of her residence in the Strand, destined to affect the whole future tenor of her life--the acquaintance of Mr. George Henry Lewes, then, like her, a contributor to the _Westminster Review_. George Henry Lewes was Marian's senior by two years, having been born in London on the 18th of April, 1817. He was educated at Greenwich in a school once possessing a high reputation for thoroughly "grounding" its pupils in a knowledge of the classics. When his education was so far finished, he was placed as clerk in a merchant's office. This kind of occupation proving very distasteful, he turned medical student for a time. Very early in life he was attracted towards philosophy, for at the age of nineteen we find him attending the weekly meetings of a small club, in the habit of discussing metaphysical problems in the parlour of a tavern in Red Lion Square, Holborn. This club, from which the one in 'Daniel Deronda' is supposed to have borrowed many of its features, was the point of junction for a most heterogeneous company. Here, amicably seated round the fire, a speculative tailor would hob and nob with some medical student deep in anatomy; a second-hand bookseller having devoured the literature on his shelves, ventilated their contents for the general benefit; and a discursive American mystic was listened to in turn with a Jewish journeyman watchmaker deeply imbued with Spinozism. It is impossible not to connect this Jew, named Cohen, and described as "a man of astonishing subtilty and logical force, no less than of sweet personal worth," with the Mordecai of the novel just mentioned. However wide the after divergencies, here evidently lies the germ. The weak eyes and chest, the grave and gentle demeanour, the whole ideality of character correspond. In some respects G. H. Lewes was the "Daniel Deronda" to this "Mordecai." For he not only loved but venerated his "great calm intellect." "An immense pity," says Mr. Lewes, "a fervid indignation filled me as I came away from his attics in one of the Holborn courts, where I had seen him in the pinching poverty of his home, with his German wife and two little black-eyed children." To this pure-spirited suffering watchmaker, Lewes owed his first acquaintance with Spinoza. A certain passage, casually cited by Cohen, awakened an eager thirst for more in the youth. The desire to possess himself of Spinoza's works, still in the odour of pestilential heresy, haunted him like a passion. For he himself, then "suffering the social persecution which embitters any departure from accepted creeds," felt in defiant sympathy with all outcasts. On a dreary November evening, the coveted volumes were at length discovered on the dingy shelves of a second-hand bookseller. By the flaring gaslight, young Lewes, with a beating heart, read on the back of a small brown quarto those thrilling words, 'Spinoza: Opera Posthuma!' He was poor in those days, and the price of the volume was twenty shillings, but he would gladly have sacrificed his last sixpence to secure it. Having paid his money with feverish delight, he hurried home in triumph, and immediately set to work on a translation of the 'Ethics,' which, however, he was too impatient to finish. This little incident is well worth dwelling upon not only as being the first introduction of a notable thinker to philosophy, but as showing the eager impulsive nature of the man. The study of Spinoza led to his publishing an article on his life and works in the _Westminster Review_ of 1843, almost the first account of the great Hebrew philosopher which appeared in this country. This article, afterwards incorporated in the 'Biographical History of Philosophy,' formed the nucleus, I believe, of that "admirable piece of synthetic criticism and exposition," as Mr. Frederic Harrison calls it; a work which, according to him, has influenced the thought of the present generation almost more than any single book except Mr. Mill's 'Logic.' Before the appearance of either article or 'History of Philosophy,' Mr. Lewes went to Germany, and devoted himself to the study of its language and literature, just brought into fashion by Carlyle. Returning to England in 1839, he became one of the most prolific journalists of the day. Witty, brilliant, and many-sided, he seemed pre-eminently fitted by nature for a press writer and _littérateur_. His versatility, was so amazing, that a clever talker once said of him: "Lewes can do everything in the world but paint: and he could do that, too, after a week's study." At this time, besides assisting in the editorship of the _Classical Museum_, he wrote for the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Athenæum_, the _Edinburgh_, _Foreign Quarterly_, _British Quarterly_, _Blackwood_, _Fraser_, and the _Westminster Review_. After publishing 'A Biographical History of Philosophy,' through Mr. Knight's 'Weekly Volumes' in 1846, he wrote two novels, 'Ranthorpe,' and 'Rose, Blanche, and Violet,' which successively appeared in 1847 and 1848. But fiction was not his _forte_, these two productions being singularly crude and immature as compared with his excellent philosophical work. Some jokes in the papers about "rant," killed what little life there was in "Ranthorpe." Nevertheless, Charlotte Brontë, who had some correspondence with Mr. Lewes about 1847, actually wrote about it as follows: "In reading 'Ranthorpe,' I have read a new book, not a reprint, not a reflection of any other book, but a _new book_." Another great writer, Edgar Poe, admired it no less, for he says of the work: "I have lately read it with deep interest, and derived great _consolation_ from it also. It relates to the career of a literary man, and gives a just view of the true aims and the true dignity of the literary character." 'The Spanish Drama;' 'The Life of Maximilian Robespierre, with extracts from his unpublished correspondence;' 'The Noble Heart: a Tragedy;' all followed in close succession from the same inexhaustible pen. The last, it was said, proved also a tragedy to the publishers. But not content with writing dramas, Mr. Lewes was also ambitious of the fame of an actor, the theatre having always possessed a strong fascination for him. Already as a child he had haunted the theatres, and now, while delivering a lecture at the Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, he shocked its staid _habitués_ not a little by immediately afterwards appearing on the stage in the character of Shylock: so many, and seemingly incompatible, were Lewes's pursuits. But this extreme mobility of mind, this intellectual tripping from subject to subject, retarded the growth of his popularity. The present mechanical subdivision of labour has most unfortunately also affected the judgment passed on literary and artistic products. Let a man once have written a novel typical of the manners and ways of a certain class of English society, or painted a picture with certain peculiar effects of sea or landscape, or composed a poem affecting the very trick and language of some bygone mediæval singer, he will be doomed, to the end of his days, to do the same thing over and over again, _ad nauseam_. Nothing can well be more deadening to any vigorous mental life, and Mr. Lewes set a fine example of intellectual disinterestedness in sacrificing immediate success to the free play of a most variously endowed nature. The public too was a gainer by this. For the life of Goethe could not have been made the rich, comprehensive, many-sided biography it is, had Mr. Lewes himself not tried his hand at such a variety of subjects. This life, begun in 1845, the result partly of his sojourn in Germany, did not appear in print until 1855. Ultimately destined to a great and lasting success, the MS. of the 'Life of Goethe' was ignominiously sent from one publisher to another, until at last Mr. David Nutt, of the Strand, showed his acumen by giving it to the reading world. Some years before the publication of this biography Mr. Lewes had also been one of the founders of that able, but unsuccessful weekly, the _Leader_, of which he was the literary editor from 1849 to 1854. Many of his articles on Auguste Comte were originally written for this paper, and afterwards collected into a volume for Bohn's series. Indeed, after Mr. John Stuart Mill, he is to be regarded as the earliest exponent of Positivism in England. He not only considered the '_Cours de Philosophie Positive_' the greatest work of this century, but believed it would "form one of the mighty landmarks in the history of opinion. No one before M. Comte," he says, "ever dreamed of treating social problems otherwise than upon theological or metaphysical methods. He first showed how possible, nay, how imperative, it was that social questions should be treated on the same footing with all other scientific questions. This being his object, he was forced to detect the law of mental evolution before he could advance. This law is the law of historical progression." But while Mr. Lewes, with his talent for succinct exposition, helped more than any other Englishman to disseminate the principles of Comte's philosophy in this country, he was at the same time violently opposed to his '_Politique Positive_,' with its schemes of social reorganisation. Even so slight a survey as this must show the astonishing discursiveness of Mr. Lewes's intellect. By the time he was thirty he had already tried his hand at criticism, fiction, biography, the drama, and philosophy. He had enlarged his experience of human nature by foreign travel; he had addressed audiences from the lecturer's platform; he had enjoyed the perilous sweets of editing a newspaper; he had even, it is said, played the harlequin in a company of strolling actors. Indeed, Mr. Thackeray was once heard to say that it would not surprise him to meet Lewes in Piccadilly, riding on a white elephant; whilst another wit likened him to the Wandering Jew, as you could never tell where he was going to turn up, or what he was going to do next. In this discursiveness of intellect he more nearly resembled the Encyclopedists of the 18th century than the men of his own time. Indeed his personal appearance, temperament, manners, general tone of thought, seemed rather to be those of a highly-accomplished foreigner than of an Englishman. He was a lightly-built, fragile man, with bushy curly hair, and a general shagginess of beard and eyebrow not unsuggestive of a Skye terrier. For the rest, he had a prominent mouth and grey, deeply-set eyes under an ample, finely-proportioned forehead. Volatile by nature, somewhat wild and lawless in his talk, he in turn delighted and shocked his friends by the gaiety, recklessness, and genial _abandon_ of his manners and conversation. His companionship was singularly stimulating, for the commonest topic served him as a starting-point for the lucid development of some pet philosophical theory. In this gift of making abstruse problems intelligible, and difficult things easy, he had some resemblance to the late W. K. Clifford, with his magical faculty of illuminating the most abstruse subjects by his vivid directness of exposition. As Lewes's life was so soon to be closely united to that of Marian Evans, this cursory sketch of his career will not seem inappropriate. At the time they met at Dr. Chapman's house, Mr. Lewes, who had married early in life, found his conjugal relations irretrievably spoiled. How far the blame of this might attach to one side or to the other does not concern us here. Enough that in the intercourse with a woman of such astonishing intellect, varied acquirements, and rare sympathy, Mr. Lewes discovered a community of ideas and a moral support that had been sadly lacking to his existence hitherto. In many ways these two natures, so opposite in character, disposition, and tone of mind, who, from such different starting-points, had reached the same standpoint, seemed to need each other for the final fruition and utmost development of what was best in each. A crisis was now impending in Marian's life. She was called upon to make her private judgment a law unto herself, and to shape her actions, not according to the recognised moral standard of her country, but in harmony with her own convictions of right and wrong. From a girl, it appears, she had held independent views about marriage, strongly advocating the German divorce laws. On the appearance of 'Jane Eyre,' when every one was talking of this book and praising the exemplary conduct of Jane in her famous interview with Rochester, Marian Evans, then only four-and-twenty, remarked to a friend that in his position she considered him justified in contracting a fresh marriage. And in an article on Madame de Sablé, written as early as 1854, there is this significant passage in reference to the "laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage-tie in France." "Heaven forbid," she writes, "that we should enter on a defence of French morals, most of all in relation to marriage! But it is undeniable that unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, and grounded only on inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more intelligent sympathy with man, and to heighten and complicate their share in the political drama. The quiescence and security of the conjugal relation are, doubtless, favourable to the manifestation of the highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object--to convert indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness into perspicuity." Such a union, formed in the full maturity of thought and feeling, was now contracted by Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes. Legal union, however, there could be none, for though virtually separated from his wife, Mr. Lewes could not get a divorce. Too little has as yet transpired concerning this important step to indicate more than the bare outline of events. Enough that Mr. Lewes appears to have written a letter in which, after a full explanation of his circumstances, he used all his powers of persuasion to win Miss Evans for his life-long companion; that she consented, after having satisfied her conscience that in reality she was not injuring the claims of others; and that henceforth she bore Mr. Lewes's name, and became his wife in every sense but the legal one. This proceeding caused the utmost consternation amongst her acquaintances, especially amongst her friends at Rosehill. The former intimate and affectionate intercourse with Mrs. Bray and her sister was only gradually restored, and only after they had come to realise how perfectly her own conscience had been consulted and satisfied in the matter. Miss Hennell, who had already entered on the scheme of religious doctrine which ever since she has been setting forth in her printed works, "swerved nothing from her own principles that the maintenance of a conventional form of marriage (remoulded to the demands of the present age) is essentially attached to all religion, and pre-eminently so to the religion of the future." In thus defying public opinion, and forming a connection in opposition to the laws of society, George Eliot must have undergone some trials and sufferings peculiarly painful to one so shrinkingly sensitive as herself. Conscious of no wrong-doing, enjoying the rare happiness of completest intellectual fellowship in the man she loved, the step she had taken made a gap between her kindred and herself which could not but gall her clinging, womanly nature. To some of her early companions, indeed, who had always felt a certain awe at the imposing gravity of her manners, this dereliction from what appeared to them the path of duty was almost as startling and unexpected as if they had seen the heavens falling down. How far the individual can ever be justified in following the dictates of his private judgment, in opposition to the laws and prevalent opinions of his time and country, must remain a question no less difficult than delicate of decision. It is precisely the point where the highest natures and the lowest sometimes apparently meet; since to act in opposition to custom may be due to the loftiest motives--may be the spiritual exaltation of the reformer, braving social ostracism for the sake of an idea, or may spring, on the other hand, from purely rebellious promptings of an anti-social egoism, which recognises no law higher than that of personal gratification. At the same time, it seems, that no progress could well be made in the evolution of society without these departures on the part of individuals from the well-beaten tracks, for even the failures help eventually towards a fuller recognition of what is beneficial and possible of attainment. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, George Sand, the New England Transcendentalists, with their communistic experiment at Brooke Farm, all more or less strove to be path-finders to a better and happier state of society. George Eliot, however, hardly belonged to this order of mind. Circumstances prompted her to disregard one of the most binding laws of society, yet, while she considered herself justified in doing so, her sympathies were, on the whole, more enlisted in the state of things as they are than as they might be. It is certainly curious that the woman, who in her own life had followed such an independent course, severing herself in many ways from her past with all its traditional sanctities, should yet so often inculcate the very opposite teaching in her works--should inculcate an almost slavish adherence to whatever surroundings, beliefs, and family ties a human being may be born to. I need only add here that Mr. Lewes and Marian went to Germany soon after forming this union, which, only ending by death, gave to each what had hitherto been lacking in their lives. Many marriages solemnised in a church, and ushered in with all the ostentation of _trousseau_, bridesmaids, and wedding breakfast, are indeed less essentially such in all the deeper human aspects which this relation implies, than the one contracted in this informal manner. Indeed, to those who saw them together, it seemed as if they could never be apart. Yet, while so entirely at one, each respected the other's individuality, his own, at the same time, gaining in strength by the contact. Mr. Lewes's mercurial disposition now assumed a stability greatly enhancing his brilliant talents, and for the first time facilitating that concentration of intellect so necessary for the production of really lasting philosophic work. On the other hand, George Eliot's still dormant faculties were roused and stimulated to the utmost by the man to whom this union with her formed the most memorable year of his life. By his enthusiastic belief in her he gave her the only thing she wanted--a thorough belief in herself. Indeed, he was more than a husband: he was, as an intimate friend once pithily remarked, a very mother to her. Tenderly watching over her delicate health, cheering the grave tenor of her thoughts by his inexhaustible buoyancy, jealously shielding her from every adverse breath of criticism, Mr. Lewes in a manner created the spiritual atmosphere in which George Eliot could best put forth all the flowers and fruits of her genius. In joining her life with that of Mr. Lewes, the care of his three children devolved upon George Eliot, who henceforth showed them the undeviating love and tenderness of a mother. One of the sons had gone out to Natal as a young man, and contracted a fatal disease, which, complicated with some accident, resulted in an untimely death. He returned home a hopeless invalid, and his tedious illness was cheered by the affectionate tendance of her who had for so many years acted a mother's part towards him. CHAPTER VII. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. As has already been mentioned, Mr. Lewes and Marian went to Germany in 1854, dividing the year between Berlin, Munich, and Weimar. In the latter pleasant little Saxon city, on which the mighty influence of Goethe seemed still visibly resting, as the reflection of the sun lingers in the sky long after the sun himself has set, Lewes partly re-wrote his 'Life of Goethe.' Here must have been spent many delightful days, wandering in Goethe's track, exploring the beautiful neighbourhood, and enjoying some of the most cultivated society in Germany. Several articles on German life and literature, afterwards published in the _Westminster Review_, were probably written at this time. The translation of Spinoza's 'Ethics' by George Eliot was also executed in the same year. Mr. Lewes, alluding to it in 'Goethe's Life,' says, in a foot-note, "It may interest some readers to learn that Spinoza will ere long appear in English, edited by the writer of these lines." This was a delusive promise, since the translation has not yet made its appearance. But surely its publication would now be warmly welcomed. The time, however, was approaching when George Eliot was at last to discover where her real mastery lay. And this is the way, as the story goes, that she discovered it. They had returned from the Continent and were settled again in London, both actively engaged in literature. But literature, unless in certain cases of triumphant popularity, is perhaps the worst paid of all work. Mr. Lewes and George Eliot were not too well off. The former, infinite in resources, having himself tried every form of literature in turn, could not fail to notice the matchless power of observation, and the memory matching it in power, of the future novelist. One day an idea struck him. "My dear," he said, "I think you could write a capital story." Shortly afterwards there was some dinner engagement, but as he was preparing to go out, she said, "I won't go out this evening, and when you come in don't disturb me. I shall be very busy." And this was how the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' came first to be written! On being shown a portion of the first tale, 'Amos Barton,' Mr. Lewes was fairly amazed. Stories are usually fabricated after the event; but, if not true, they often truly paint a situation. And the general testimony of friends seems to agree that it was Mr. Lewes who first incited the gifted woman, of whose great powers he was best able to form a judgment, to express herself in that species of literature which would afford the fullest scope to the creative and dramatic faculties which she so eminently possessed. Here, however, his influence ended. He helped to reveal George Eliot to herself, and after that there was little left for him to do. But this gift of stimulating another by sympathetic insight and critical appreciation is itself of priceless value. When Schiller died, Goethe said, "The half of my existence is gone from me." A terrible word to utter for one so great. But never again, he knew, would he meet with the same complete comprehension, and, lacking that, his genius itself seemed less his own than before. There is an impression abroad that Mr. Lewes, if anything, did some injury to George Eliot from a literary point of view; that the nature of his pursuits led her to adopt too technical and pedantic a phraseology in her novels. But this idea is unjust to both. In comparing her earliest with her latest style, it is clear that from the first she was apt to cull her illustrations from the physical sciences, thereby showing how much these studies had become part of herself. Indeed, she was far more liable to introduce these scientific modes of expression than Mr. Lewes, as may be easily seen by comparing his 'Life of Goethe,' partly re-written in 1854, with some of her essays of the same date. As to her matter, it is curious how much of it was drawn from the earliest sources of memory--from that life of her childhood to which she may sometimes have turned yearningly as to a long-lost Paradise. Most of her works might, indeed, not inaptly be called 'Looking Backward.' They are a half-pathetic, half-humorous, but entirely tender revivification of the "days that are no more." No one, however intimate, could really intermeddle with the workings of a genius drawing its happiest inspiration from the earliest experiences of its own individual past. Nothing is more characteristic of this obvious tendency than the first of the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' 'The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton.' At Chilvers Coton the curious in such matters may still see the identical church where the incumbent of Shepperton used to preach sermons shrewdly compounded of High Church doctrines and Low Church evangelicalism, not forgetting to note "its little flight of steps with their wooden rail running up the outer wall, and leading to the school-children's gallery." There they may still see the little churchyard, though they may look in vain for the "slim black figure" of the Rev. Amos, "as it flits past the pale gravestones," in "the silver light that falls aslant on church and tomb." And among the tombs there is one, a handsome substantial monument, overshadowed by a yew-tree, on which there is this inscription: HERE LIES, WAITING THE SUMMONS OF THE ARCHANGEL'S TRUMPET, ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF THE BELOVED WIFE OF THE REV. JOHN GWYTHER, B.A., CURATE OF THIS PARISH, NOV. 4TH, 1836, AGED THIRTY-FOUR YEARS, LEAVING A HUSBAND AND SEVEN CHILDREN. This Emma Gwyther is none other than the beautiful Milly, the wife of Amos, so touchingly described by George Eliot, whose mother, Mrs. Evans, was her intimate friend. George Eliot would be in her teens when she heard the story of this sweet woman: heard the circumstantial details of her struggles to make the two ends of a ridiculously small income meet the yearly expenses: heard her mother, no doubt (in the words of Mrs. Hackit) blame her weak forbearance in tolerating the presence in her house of the luxurious and exacting countess, who, having ingratiated herself with the gullible Amos by her talk of the "livings" she would get him, gave much scandal in the neighbourhood: heard of the pathetic death-bed, when, worn by care and toil, the gentle life ebbed quietly away, leaving a life-long void in her husband's heart and home. All this was the talk of the neighbourhood when George Eliot was a girl; and her extraordinary memory allowed nothing to escape. On the completion of 'Amos Barton,' Mr. Lewes, who, as already mentioned, was a contributor to 'Maga.' sent the MS. to the editor, the late Mr. John Blackwood, as the work of an anonymous friend. This was in the autumn of 1856. The other scenes of 'Clerical Life' were then unwritten, but the editor was informed that the story submitted to his approval formed one of a series. Though his judgment was favourable, he begged to see some of the other tales before accepting this, freely making some criticisms on the plot and studies of character in 'Amos Barton.' This, however, disheartened the author, whose peculiar diffidence had only been overcome by Mr. Lewes's hearty commendation. When the editor had been made aware of the injurious effect of his objections, he hastened to efface it by accepting the tale without further delay. It appeared soon afterwards in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for January 1857, where it occupied the first place. This story, by some considered as fine as anything the novelist ever wrote, came to an end in the next number. 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story,' and 'Janet's Repentance' were written in quick succession, and the series was completed in November of the same year. Although there was nothing sufficiently sensational in these 'Scenes' to arrest the attention of that great public which must be roused by something new and startling, literary judges were not slow to discern the powerful realism with which the author had drawn these uncompromising studies from life. After the appearance of 'Amos Barton,' Mr. Blackwood wrote to the anonymous author: "It is a long time since I have read anything so fresh, so humorous, and so touching. The style is capital, conveying so much in so few words." Soon afterwards he began another letter: "My dear Amos, I forget whether I told you or Lewes that I had shown part of the MS. to Thackeray. He was staying with me, and having been out at dinner, came in about eleven o'clock, when I had just finished reading it. I said to him, 'Do you know that I think I have lighted upon a new author, who is uncommonly like a first-class passenger.' I showed him a page or two, I think the passage where the curate returns home and Milly is first introduced. He would not pronounce whether it came up to my ideas, but remarked afterwards that he would have liked to have read more, which I thought a good sign." Dickens, after the publication of the 'Scenes,' sent a letter to the unknown writer through the editor, warmly expressing the admiration he felt for them. But he was strongly of opinion from the first that they must have been written by a woman. In the meanwhile the tales were reprinted in a collected form, and they were so successful that the editor, writing to Mr. Lewes at the end of January 1858, when the book had hardly been out a month, was able to say, "George Eliot has fairly achieved a literary reputation among judges, and the public must follow, although it may take time." And in a letter to George Eliot herself, he wrote in February: "You will recollect, when we proposed to reprint, my impression was that the series had not lasted long enough in the magazine to give you a hold on the general public, although long enough to make your literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases, a very long time often elapses between the two stages of reputation--the literary and the public. Your progress will be _sure_, if not so quick as we could wish." While the sketches were being re-issued in book form, Messrs. Blackwood informed its author that they saw good cause for making a large increase in the forthcoming reprint, and their anticipations were fully justified by its success. All sorts of rumours were abroad as to the real author of these clerical tales. Misled by a hint, calculated to throw him off the real scent, Mr. Blackwood was at first under the impression that they were the work of a clergyman, and perhaps this may have been the origin of a belief which lingered till quite recently, that George Eliot was the daughter of a clergyman, a statement made by several of the leading daily papers after her death. Abandoning the idea of the clergyman, Mr. Blackwood next fixed upon a very different sort of person, to wit, Professor Owen, whom he suspected owing to the similarity of handwriting and the scientific knowledge so exceptional in a novelist. No less funny was the supposition held by others of Lord Lytton--who more than once hoaxed the public under a new literary disguise--having at last surpassed himself in the sterling excellence of these tales. Now that Bulwer has gone the way of all fashions, it seems incredible that the most obtuse and slow-witted of critics should have mistaken for a moment his high-flown sentimental style for the new author's terse, vigorous and simple prose. It was impossible, however, for an author to remain a mere nameless abstraction. An appellation of some kind became an imperative necessity, and, during the passage of 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' through the press, the pseudonym of "George Eliot"--a name destined to become so justly renowned--was finally assumed. The 'Scenes of Clerical Life' were to George Eliot's future works what a bold, spirited sketch is to a carefully elaborated picture. All the qualities that distinguished her genius may be discovered in this, her first essay in fiction. With all Miss Austen's matchless faculty for painting commonplace characters, George Eliot has that other nobler faculty of showing what tragedy, pathos, and humour may be lying in the experience of a human soul "that looks out through dull grey eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones." While depicting some commonplace detail of every day life, she has the power to make her reader realise its close relation to the universal life. She never gives you the mere dry bones and fragments of existence as represented in some particular section of society, but always manages to keep before the mind the invisible links connecting it with the world at large. In 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' there is a passage as beautiful as any in her works, and fully illustrating this attitude of her mind. It is where Tina, finding herself deceived in Captain Wybrow, gives way to her passionate grief in solitude. "While this poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy for it, Nature was holding on her calm inexorable way, in unmoved and terrible beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was making brilliant day to busy nations on the other side of the swift earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and broadening onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships were labouring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest; and sleepless statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest centre of quivering life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought food, and has found the nest torn and empty." There is rather more incident in this story of Mr. Gilfil than in either of the two other 'Scenes of Clerical Life.' In 'Amos Barton' the narrative is of the simplest, as has already been indicated; and the elements from which 'Janet's Repentance' is composed are as free from any complex entanglement of plot. The author usually describes the most ordinary circumstances of English life, but the powerful rendering of the human emotions which spring from them takes a most vivid hold of the imagination: 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story,' however, seems a little Italian romance dropped on English soil. It is, in brief, the narration of how Sir Christopher Cheverel and his wife, during their residence at Milan, took pity on a little orphan girl, "whose large dark eyes shone from out her queer little face like the precious stones in a grotesque image carved in old ivory." Caterina, or Tina as she is called, taken back to Cheverel Manor, grew up under the care of the Baronet's wife, to whom she became endeared by her exceptional musical talent. Sir Christopher had no children, but had chosen his nephew, Captain Wybrow, for his heir, and planned a marriage between him and Miss Assher, the handsome and accomplished owner of a pretty estate. Another marriage, on which he has equally set his heart, is that between his ward Maynard Gilfil, an open-eyed manly young fellow destined for the Church, and the mellow-voiced, large-eyed Tina, for whom he has long nursed an undeclared passion. But alas, for the futility of human plans! Tina, to whom the elegant Anthony Wybrow has been secretly professing love, suffers tortures of jealousy when he and Miss Assher, to whom he has dutifully become engaged, come on a visit to Cheverel Manor. The treacherous Captain, to lull the suspicions of his betrothed, insinuates that poor Miss Sarti entertains a hopeless passion for him, which puts the poor girl, who gets an inkling of this double-dealing, into a frenzy of indignation. In this state she possesses herself of a dagger, and as she is going to meet the Captain by appointment, dreams of plunging the weapon in the traitor's heart. But on reaching the appointed spot, she beholds the false lover stretched motionless on the ground already--having suddenly died of heart disease. Tina's anguish is indescribable: she gives the alarm to the household, but stung by remorse for a contemplated revenge of which her tender-hearted nature was utterly incapable, she flies unperceived from the premises at night. Being searched for in vain, she is suspected of having committed suicide. After some days of almost unbearable suspense, news is brought that Tina is lying ill at the cottage of a former maid in the household. With reviving hopes her anxious lover rides to the farm, sees the half-stunned, unhappy girl, and, after a while, manages to remove her to his sister's house. She gradually recovers under Mrs. Heron's gentle tendance, and one day a child's accidental striking of a deep bass note on the harpsichord suddenly revives her old passionate delight in music. And 'the soul that was born anew to music was born anew to love.' After a while Tina agrees to become Mr. Gilfil's wife, who has been given the living at Shepperton, where a happy future seems in store for the Vicar. "But the delicate plant had been too deeply bruised, and in the struggle to put forth a blossom it died. "Tina died, and Maynard Gilfil's love went with her into deep silence for evermore." Besides this sympathy with the homeliest characters and situations, or, more properly speaking, springing from it, there already runs through these three tales the delicious vein of humour irradiating George Eliot's otherwise sombre pictures of life with sudden flashes of mirth as of sunlight trembling above dark waters. In this depth and richness of humour George Eliot not only takes precedence of all other distinguished women, but she stands among them without a rival. Hers is that thoughtful outlook on life, that infinite depth of observation which, taking note of the inconsistencies and the blunders, the self-delusions and "fantastic pranks" of her fellow-men, finds the source of laughter very near to tears; never going out of her way for the eccentric and peculiar in human nature, seeing that human nature itself appears to her as the epitome of all incongruity. It is this breadth of conception and unerringness of vision piercing through the external and accidental to the core of man's mixed nature which give certain of her creations something of the life-like complexity of Shakespeare's. Her power of rendering the idiom and manners of peasants, artisans, and paupers, of calling up before us the very gestures and phrases of parsons, country practitioners, and other varieties of inhabitants of our provincial towns and rural districts, already manifests itself fully in these clerical stories. Here we find such types as Mr. Dempster, the unscrupulous, brutal, drunken lawyer; Mr. Pilgrim, the tall, heavy, rough-mannered, and spluttering doctor, profusely addicted to bleeding and blistering his patients; Mr. Gilfil, the eccentric vicar, with a tender love-story hidden beneath his rugged exterior; the large-hearted, unfortunate Janet, rescued from moral ruin by Mr. Tryan, the ascetic evangelical clergyman, whose character, the author remarks, might have been found sadly wanting in perfection by feeble and fastidious minds, but, as she adds, "The blessed work of helping the world forward happily does not wait to be done by perfect men; and I should imagine that neither Luther nor John Bunyan, for example, would have satisfied the modern demand for an ideal hero, who believes nothing but what is true, feels nothing but what is exalted, and does nothing but what is graceful. The real heroes of God's making are quite different: they have their natural heritage of love and conscience, which they drew in with their mother's milk; they know one or two of those deep spiritual truths which are only to be won by long wrestling with their own sins and their own sorrows; they have earned faith and strength so far as they have done genuine work, but the rest is dry, barren theory, blank prejudice, vague hearsay." George Eliot's early acquaintance with many types of the clerical character, and her sympathy with the religious life in all its manifestations, was never more fully shown than in these 'Scenes.' In 'Janet's Repentance' we already discover one of George Eliot's favourite psychological studies--the awakening of a morally mixed nature to a new, a spiritual life. This work of regeneration Mr. Tryan performs for Janet, Felix Holt for Esther, and Daniel Deronda for Gwendolen. Her protest against the application of too lofty a moral standard in judging of our fellow-creatures, her championship of the "mongrel, ungainly dogs who are nobody's pets," is another of the prominent qualities of her genius fully expressed in this firstling work, being, indeed, at the root of her humorous conception of life. One of the finest bits of humour in the present volume is the scene in 'Amos Barton,' which occurs at the workhouse, euphemistically called the "College." Mr. Barton, having just finished his address to the paupers, is thus accosted by Mr. Spratt, "a small-featured, small-statured man, with a remarkable power of language, mitigated by hesitation, who piqued himself on expressing unexceptionable sentiments in unexceptionable language on all occasions. "'Mr. Barton, sir--aw--aw--excuse my trespassing on your time--aw--to beg that you will administer a rebuke to this boy; he is--aw--aw--most inveterate in ill-behaviour during service-time.' "The inveterate culprit was a boy of seven, vainly contending against 'candles' at his nose by feeble sniffing. But no sooner had Mr. Spratt uttered his impeachment than Mrs. Fodge rushed forward, and placed herself between Mr. Barton and the accused. "'That's _my_ child, Muster Barton,' she exclaimed, further manifesting her maternal instincts by applying her apron to her offspring's nose. 'He's aly's a-findin' faut wi' him, and a-poundin' him for nothin'. Let him goo an' eat his roost goose as is a-smellin' up in our noses while we're a-swallering them greasy broth, an' let my boy alooan.' "Mr. Spratt's small eyes flashed, and he was in danger of uttering sentiments not unexceptionable before the clergyman; but Mr. Barton, foreseeing that a prolongation of this episode would not be to edification, said 'Silence!' in his severest tones. "'Let me hear no abuse. Your boy is not likely to behave well, if you set him the example of being saucy.' Then stooping down to Master Fodge, and taking him by the shoulder, 'Do you like being beaten?' "'No--a.' "'Then what a silly boy you are to be naughty. If you were not naughty, you wouldn't be beaten. But if you are naughty, God will be angry, as well as Mr. Spratt; and God can burn you for ever. That will be worse than being beaten.' "Master Fodge's countenance was neither affirmative nor negative of this proposition. "'But,' continued Mr. Barton, 'if you will be a good boy, God will love you, and you will grow up to be a good man. Now, let me hear next Thursday that you have been a good boy.' "Master Fodge had no distinct vision of the benefit that would accrue to him from this change of courses." CHAPTER VIII. ADAM BEDE. Rarely has a novelist come to his task with such a far-reaching culture, such an intellectual grasp, as George Eliot. We have seen her girlhood occupied with an extraordinary variety of studies; we have seen her plunged in abstruse metaphysical speculations; we have seen her translating some of the most laborious philosophical investigations of German thinkers; we have seen her again translating from the Latin the 'Ethics' of Spinoza; and, finally, we have seen her attracting, and attracted by, some of the leaders in science, philosophy, and literature. Compared with such qualifications who among novelists could compete? What could a Dickens, or a Thackeray himself, throw into the opposing scale? Lewes, indeed, was a match for her in variety of attainments, but he had made several attempts at fiction, and the attempts had proved failures. When at last, in the maturity of her powers, George Eliot produced 'Adam Bede,' she produced a novel in which the amplest results of knowledge and meditation were so happily blended with instinctive insight into life and character, and the rarest dramatic imagination, as to stamp it immediately as one of the great triumphs and masterpieces in the world of fiction. It is worth noticing that in 'Adam Bede' George Eliot fulfils to the utmost the demands which she had been theoretically advocating in her essays. In some of these she had not only eloquently enforced the importance of a truthful adherence to nature, but had pointed out how the artist is thus in the very vanguard of social and political reforms; as in familiarising the imagination with the real condition of the people, he did much towards creating that sympathy with their wants, their trials, and their sufferings, which would eventually effect external changes in harmony with this better understanding. Such had been her teaching. And in Dickens she had recognised the one great novelist who, in certain respects, had painted the lower orders with unerring truthfulness. His "Oliver Twists," his "Nancys," his "Joes," were terrible and pathetic pictures of the forlorn outcasts haunting our London streets. And if, as George Eliot says, Dickens had been able to "give us their psychological character, their conception of life and their emotions, with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution Art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies." Now George Eliot absolutely does what Dickens aimed at doing. She not merely seizes the outward and accidental traits of her characters: she pierces with unerring vision to the very core of their nature, and enables us to realise the peculiarly subtle relations between character and circumstance. Her primary object is to excite our sympathy with the most ordinary aspects of human life, with the people that one may meet any day in the fields, the workshops, and the homes of England. Her most vivid creations are not exceptional beings, not men or women pre-eminently conspicuous for sublime heroism of character or magnificent mental endowments, but work-a-day folk, "Not too fine or good For human nature's daily food." To this conscientious fidelity of observation and anxious endeavour to report the truth and nothing but the truth, as of a witness in a court of justice, are owing that life-like vividness with which the scenery and people in 'Adam Bede' seem projected on the reader's imagination. The story, indeed, is so intensely realistic as to have given rise to the idea that it is entirely founded on fact. That there is such a substratum is hardly a matter of doubt, and there have been various publications all tending to prove that the chief characters in 'Adam Bede' were not only very faithful copies of living people, but of people closely connected with its author. To some extent this is incontrovertible. But, on the other hand, there is a likelihood of the fictitious events having in their turn been grafted on to actual personages and occurrences, till the whole has become so fused together as to lead some persons to the firm conviction that Dinah Morris is absolutely identical with Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, the Derbyshire Methodist. Such a supposition would help to reconcile the conflicting statements respectively made by the great novelist and the writers of two curious little books entitled 'Seth Bede, the Methody, his Life and Labours,' chiefly written by himself, and 'George Eliot in Derbyshire,' by Guy Roslyn. From these brochures one gathers that Hayslope, where the rustic drama of 'Adam Bede' unfolds itself, is the village of Ellaston, not far from Ashbourne in Staffordshire. This village is so little altered that the traveller may still see the sign-board of the "Donnithorne Arms," and the red brick hall, only with windows no longer unpatched. Samuel, William, and Robert Evans (the father of the novelist) were born in this place, and began life as carpenters, as their father before them. Samuel Evans became a zealous Methodist, and was rather laughed at by his family in consequence, for he says, "My elder brothers often tried to tease me; they entertained High Church principles. They told me what great blunders I made in preaching and prayer; that I had more zeal than knowledge." In this, as in other respects, he is the prototype of Seth, as Adam resembles Robert Evans, one of the more secular elder brothers, only that in real life it was Samuel who married Elizabeth, the Dinah Morris of fiction. Much has been written about this Elizabeth Evans (the aunt of George Eliot, already spoken of): indeed, her life was one of such rare devotion to an ideal cause, that even such imperfect fragments of it as have been committed to writing by herself or her friends are of considerable interest. Elizabeth was born at Newbold in Leicestershire, and left her father's house when little more than fourteen years old. She joined the Methodists in 1797, after which she had entirely done with the pleasures of the world and all her old companions. "I saw it my duty," she says, "to leave off all my superfluities of dress; hence I pulled off all my bunches, cut off my curls left off my lace, and in this I found an unspeakable pleasure. I saw I could make a better use of my time and money than to follow the fashions of a vain world." While still a beautiful young girl, attired in a quaker dress and bonnet, she used to walk across those bleak Derbyshire hills looking so strangely mournful in their treeless nudity, with their bare stone fences grey against a greyer sky. Here she trudged from village to village gathering the poor about her, and pouring forth words of such earnest conviction that, as she says, "Many were brought to the Lord." The points of resemblance between her career and that of Dinah Morris cannot fail to strike the reader, even their phraseology being often singularly alike, as when Mrs. Evans writes in the short account of what she calls her "unprofitable life:" "I saw it my duty to be wholly devoted to God, and to be set apart for the Master's use;" while Dinah says: "My life is too short, and God's work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world." It must be borne in mind, however, that these similarities of expression are natural enough when one considers that Dinah is a type of the same old-fashioned kind of Methodism to which Mrs. Evans belonged. What is perhaps stranger is, that the account given by George Eliot of her various meetings with her aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, should differ considerably from what the latter herself remembered or has stated about them. Shortly after the appearance of 'Adam Bede,' attention had been publicly called to the identity of the heroine of fiction with the Methodist preacher. This conviction was so strong in Wirksworth, that a number of friends placed a memorial tablet in the Methodist chapel at Wirksworth with the following inscription:-- ERECTED BY GRATEFUL FRIENDS, In Memory of MRS. ELIZABETH EVANS, (KNOWN TO THE WORLD AS "DINAH BEDE ") WHO DURING MANY YEARS PROCLAIMED ALIKE IN THE OPEN AIR, THE SANCTUARY, AND FROM HOUSE TO HOUSE, THE LOVE OF CHRIST: SHE DIED IN THE LORD, MAY 9TH, 1849; AGED 74 YEARS. In order to give a correct notion of the amount of truth in her novel, George Eliot wrote in the following terms to her friend Miss Hennell on the 7th of October, 1859: "I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt, Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he married my mother. There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family--few and far between visits of (to my childish feeling) strange uncles and aunts and cousins from my father's far-off native county, and once a journey of my own, as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William (a rich builder) in Staffordshire--but _not_ my uncle and aunt Samuel, so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I remember of northerly relatives in my childhood. "But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married, and I was mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he persuaded her to return with him, telling her that _I_ should be very, very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly under the influence of evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavouring to shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament. I _was_ delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that I should find sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--above sixty--and, I believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little woman, with bright, small dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I imagine, but was now grey--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will believe--was not _simply_ physical; no difference is. She was a woman of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and quiet in her manners, very loving, and (what she must have been from the very first), a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and love of man were fused together. There was nothing rightly distinctive in her religious conversation. I had had much intercourse with pious dissenters before; the only freshness I found in her talk came from the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and though _she left the society when women were no longer allowed to preach_, and joined the New Wesleyans, she retained the character of thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which at the time I disapproved; it was not strictly a consequence of her Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it, yet it came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister once greatly respected, who, from the action of trouble upon him, had taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. 'But I hope the good man's in heaven for all that,' said my uncle. 'Oh yes,' said my aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, 'Mr. A.'s in heaven, that's sure.' This was at the time an offence to my stern, ascetic, hard views--how beautiful it is to me now! "As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution; and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed, among the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass_. In her account of the prison scenes I remember no word she uttered; I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe, or told me nothing, but that she was a common, coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my mind a nidus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of 'Adam Bede.' "I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and night with my father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former time; I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to see me, when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of freethinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested 'Dinah;' but it is not possible you should see, as I do, how entirely her individuality differed from 'Dinah's.' How curious it seems to me that people should think 'Dinah's' sermon, prayers, and speeches were _copied_, when they were written with hot tears as they surged up in my own mind! "As to my indebtedness to facts of local and personal history of a small kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire, you may imagine of what kind that is, when I tell you that I never remained in either of those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I know as facts, and have made use of for my picture, were gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk about old times. "As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that 'Dinah' is a good portrait of my aunt, that is simply the vague, easily-satisfied notion imperfectly-instructed people always have of portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women, without pretension to enlightened discrimination, should think a generic resemblance constitutes a portrait, when we see the great public, so accustomed to be delighted with _mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as representations, that they are scandalised when art makes a nearer approach to truth. "Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years 'Adam Bede,' and all that concerns it, may have become a dim portion of the past, and that I may not be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you." Nothing could prove more conclusively how powerful was the impression which 'Adam Bede' created than this controversy concerning the amount of truth which its characters contained. But, as hinted before, it seems very likely that some of the doings and sayings of the fictitious personages should have been attributed, almost unconsciously, to the real people whom they resembled. How quick is the popular imagination in effecting these transformations came only quite recently under my notice, when some English travellers, while visiting Château d'If, were taken by the guide in perfect good faith to see the actual dungeon where Monte Christo was imprisoned! Similarly, one would think, that the moving sermon preached by Dinah on the Green at Hayslope had been afterwards erroneously ascribed to Mrs. Elizabeth Evans. But an account recently published in the _Century Magazine_ by one who had long known the Evanses of Wirksworth, seems irreconcilable with such a supposition. According to this writer it would appear that besides the visits to her aunt at Wirksworth, of which George Eliot speaks in the letter just quoted, there was one other of which no mention is made. This visit, which she paid her cousin, Mr. Samuel Evans, occurred in 1842, when she remained a week at his house in Wirksworth. The aunt and niece were in the habit of seeing each other every day for several hours at this time. They usually met at the house of one of the married daughters of Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, holding long conversations while sitting by themselves in the parlour. "These secret conversations," says the writer of the article, "excited some curiosity in the family, and one day one of the daughters said, 'Mother, I can't think what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans replied: 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.'" After her departure, Mrs. Evans is reported to have said to her daughter, "Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and that is the notes of the first sermon I preached at Ellaston Green." According to the same authority, Marian Evans took notes of everything people said in her hearing: no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which seemed never out of her hand; and these notes she is said to have transcribed every night before going to bed. Yet this habit was foreign to her whole character, and the friends who knew her most intimately in youth and later life never remember seeing her resort to such a practice. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that the novelist very freely used many of the circumstances connected with her aunt's remarkable career. How closely she adhered to nature is shown by the fact that in Mrs. Poyser and Bartle Massey she retained the actual names of the characters portrayed, as they happened to be both dead. Bartle Massey, the village cynic, had been the schoolmaster of her father, Robert Evans. How accurately the latter, together with all his surroundings, was described is shown by the following anecdote. On its first appearance 'Adam Bede' was read aloud to an old man, an intimate associate of Robert Evans in his Staffordshire days. This man knew nothing concerning either author or subject beforehand, and his astonishment was boundless on recognising so many friends and incidents of his own youth portrayed with unerring fidelity. He sat up half the night listening to the story in breathless excitement, now and then slapping his knee as he exclaimed, "That's Robert, that's Robert to the life." Although Wirksworth is not the locality described in 'Adam Bede,' it contains features recalling that quaint little market-town, where over the door of one of the old-fashioned houses may be read the name made illustrious by the inimitable Mrs. Poyser. In the neighbourhood, too, are "Arkwright's mills there at Cromford," casually alluded to by Adam Bede; and should the tourist happen to enter one of the cottages of grey stone, with blue-washed door and window-frames, he may still alight on specimens of Methodism, as devout as Seth Bede, eloquently expounding the latest political event by some prophecy of Daniel or Ezekiel. In short, one breathes the atmosphere in which such characters as Dinah and Seth actually lived and had their being. This uncompromising Realism, so far from detracting, only enhances the genius of this powerful novel. A thousand writers might have got hold of these identical materials: a George Eliot alone could have cast these materials into the mould of 'Adam Bede.' Let any one glance at the account of their religious experiences, as given by Elizabeth or Samuel Evans, and he will realise all the more strongly how great was the genius of her who transfused these rambling, commonplace effusions into such an artistic whole. I have entered so minutely into this question of the likeness between the actual characters and those in the novel purely on account of the biographical interest attaching to it. In judging of 'Adam Bede' as a work of art these facts possess next to no importance. If we could trace the characters in any one of Shakespeare's plays to human beings actually connected with the poet, we should consider such a discovery immensely valuable as throwing new light on his own life, though it would hardly affect our critical estimate of the drama itself. So much has been said already about the characters in 'Adam Bede' in connection with the real people they resemble, that little need be added here about them. Dinah Morris--the youthful preacher, whose eloquence is but the natural, almost involuntary manifestation in words, of a beautiful soul; whose spring of love is so abundant that it overflows the narrow limits of private affection, and blesses multitudes of toiling, suffering men and women with its wealth of pity, hope, and sympathy--was a new creation in the world of fiction. Some writer has pointed out a certain analogy between the sweet Derbyshire Methodist and the gentle pietist whose confessions form a very curious chapter of 'Wilhelm Meister.' But the two characters are too dissimilar for comparison. The German heroine is a dreamy, passive, introspective nature, feeling much but doing little; whereas the English preacher does not inquire too curiously into the mysteries of her faith, but moved by the spirit of its teaching goes about actively, participating in the lives of others by her rousing words and her acts of charity. Only a woman would or could have described just such a woman as this: a woman whose heart is centred in an impersonal ideal instead of in any individual object of love; whereas a man's heroine always has her existence rooted in some personal affection or passion, whether for parent or lover, child or husband. This makes Dinah less romantically interesting than Hetty Sorrel, the beautiful, kittenlike, self-involved creature with whom she is so happily contrasted. George Eliot never drew a more living figure than this of Hetty, hiding such a hard little heart under that soft dimpling beauty of hers. Again, I think that only a woman would have depicted just such a Hetty as this. The personal charms of this young girl are drawn in words that have the glow of life itself; yet while intensely conscious of her beauty, we are kept aware all the time that, to use one of the famous Mrs. Poyser's epigrammatic sayings, Hetty is "no better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it." George Eliot is never dazzled or led away by her own bewitching creation as a man would have been. There is a certain pitilessness in her analysis of Hetty's shallow, frivolous little soul, almost as if she were saying--See here, what stuff this beauty which you adore is made of in reality! To quote her own subtle, far-reaching interpretation of beauty: "Hetty's face had a language that transcended her feelings. There are faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos not belonging to the simple human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations; eyes that tell of deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with these eyes, perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing, just as a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that use it." The sensation created by 'Adam Bede' was shown in other ways besides the claim of some to have discovered the original characters of this striking novel. The curiosity of the public was naturally much exercised as to who the unknown author could possibly be, who had so suddenly leaped into fame. And now there comes on the scene an individual who does not claim to be the living model of one of the characters portrayed, but to be the author of the book himself. And the name of this person was Liggins! While the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' were yet appearing in _Blackwood's Magazine_ the inhabitants of Nuneaton and its neighbourhood were considerably perplexed and excited to find well-known places and persons touched off to the life. In Amos Barton they recognised the incumbent of Coton Church, in Mr. Pilgrim a medical man familiar to every child in the town, and indeed in every one of the characters an equally unmistakable portrait. Clearly no one but a fellow-townsman could have hit off these wonderful likenesses. Literary talent not being too abundant, their choice of an author was limited. The only man who by any stretch of imagination seemed to have the making of a man of letters in him was this above-mentioned Liggins. To have studied at Cambridge, gallantly run through a fortune, and be in very needy circumstances, were exactly the qualifications to be expected in a man of genius. Further evidence seeming unnecessary, the real authorship of the 'Scenes' was now revealed in an Isle of Man paper. At first the reputed author gently denied the impeachment, but on the appearance of 'Adam Bede' he succumbed to the temptation. To be fêted at dinner parties as a successful author, and to have a subscription set on foot by enthusiastic lady-admirers and fellow-townsmen, in whose eyes he was a sadly unrequited genius, proved irresistible. A local clergyman even wrote to the _Times_ stating Liggins to be the real surname of "George Eliot!" The latter wrote, of course, denying the statement, and challenging the pretender to produce some specimen of his writing in the style of 'Adam Bede.' But the confidence of the Nuneaton public in their hero Liggins was not to be so easily shaken. Two dissenting ministers from Coventry went over to Attleborough to call upon the "great author," and to find out if he really did write 'Adam Bede.' Liggins evaded their questions, indirectly admitting that he did; but when they asked him point blank, "Liggins, tell us, _did_ you write 'Adam Bede'?" he said, "If I didn't, the devil did!" and that was all they could get out of him. Another clergyman was much less sceptical, assuring every one that he was positive as to Liggins being the author, as he had seen the MS. of 'Adam Bede' in his hands. To this day there lives in the Isle of Man a certain venerable old gentleman who has never lost his faith in Liggins, but, when George Eliot is mentioned, gravely shakes his head, implying that there is more in the name than meets the eye of the superficial observer. But a heavy retribution befell the poor pseudo-author at last, for when his false pretences to favour were fully manifest he fell into utter neglect and poverty, ending his days in the workhouse. This foolish misrepresentation hastened the disclosure of George Eliot's real personality and name, which occurred on the publication of the 'Mill on the Floss.' Shortly before that, Mr. Blackwood, who had long entertained the wish to know the author of the 'Scenes of Clerical Life' and of 'Adam Bede,' was invited by Lewes to meet him at last. No one was present at the dinner-table besides Mr. Lewes, Marian, and Mr. Blackwood himself. The dinner was an extremely pleasant one, but when it was over, the guest could not help expressing his regret that George Eliot himself should not have been present. "Here he is," said Lewes, introducing the quiet, low-spoken lady who had presided at table, not without enjoyment at the sensation he produced as the astonished publisher shook hands with his contributor. CHAPTER IX. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. While the public had been trying to discover who the mysterious George Eliot could possibly be, one person there was who immediately penetrated the disguise, and felt positive as to the identity of the author. On reading the 'Scenes,' and especially 'Adam Bede,' he was convinced that no one but a member of his own family could have written these stories. He recognised incidents, touches, a saying here or there, just the things that no one outside his own home could by any chance have come upon. But George Eliot's brother kept this discovery closely locked within his own breast. He trembled lest any one else should discover the secret, fearing the outcry of neighbours who might not always feel that the author had represented them in colours sufficiently flattering. When the 'Mill on the Floss' appeared, however, the veil was lifted, and people heard that George Eliot had once been a Miss Marian Evans, who came from the neighbourhood of Nuneaton in Warwickshire. To her brother Isaac alone this was no news, as he had detected his sister in the first of the 'Scenes.' The child-life of Tom and Maggie Tulliver was in many respects an autobiography; and no biographer can ever hope to describe the early history of George Eliot as she herself has done in the 'Mill on the Floss.' How many joys and griefs of those happy careless days must have been recalled to her brother--those days when little Mary Ann had sat poring over Daniel Defoe's 'History of the Devil'--or sought refuge in the attic at Griff house, after a quarrel with him: "This attic was Maggie's favourite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill-humours, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks, but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Maggie's nine years of earthly struggle, that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible." Again, at some fields' distance from their old home there had been a "Round Pool" called "The Moat," "almost a perfect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink." This was a favourite resort of Isaac and Mary Ann, as also of Tom and his sister when they went fishing together, and "Maggie thought it probable that the small fish would come to her hook and the large ones to Tom's." The "Red Deeps," too, where Maggie loved to walk in June, when the "dog-roses were in their glory," and where she lived through many phases of her shifting inner life was in the same vicinity, and at one time a beloved haunt of the future novelist. But although some of the spots mentioned in the 'Mill on the Floss' have been easily identified as connected with George Eliot's early home, the scenery of that novel is mainly laid in Lincolnshire. St. Oggs, with "its red-fluted roofs and broad warehouse gables," is the ancient town of Gainsborough. The Floss is a tidal river like the Trent, and in each case the spring-tide, rushing up the river with its terrific wave and flooding the land for miles round, is known as the Eagre, a name not a little descriptive of the thing itself. The 'Mill on the Floss' (a title adopted by the author at the suggestion of Mr. Blackwood in preference to 'Sister Maggie') is the most poetical of George Eliot's novels. The great Floss, hurrying between green pastures to the sea, gives a unity of its own to this story, which opens to the roar of waters, the weltering waters which accompany it at the close. It forms the elemental background which rounds the little lives of the ill-starred family group nurtured on its banks. The childhood of Tom and Maggie Tulliver is inextricably blended with this swift river, the traditions of which have been to them as fairy tales; its haunting presence is more or less with them throughout their chequered existence; and when pride and passion, when shame and sorrow have divided the brother and sister, pursued as by some tragic fate, the Floss seems to rise in sympathy, and submerges them in its mighty waters to unite them once more "in an embrace never to be parted." It cannot fail to strike the reader that in almost every one of George Eliot's novels there occurs a death by drowning: as in the instance of Thias Bede, of Dunstan Cass, of Henleigh Grandcourt, and nearly in that of Tito. This may be accounted for by the fact that as a child the novelist became acquainted with the sudden death of a near relative who had accidentally fallen into a stream: an incident which sunk deeply into her retentive mind. Fate plays a very conspicuous part in this as in most of George Eliot's novels. But it is not the Fate of the Greeks, it is not a power that affects human existence from without: it rather lies at the root of it, more or less shaping that existence according to obscure inherited tendencies, and in the collision between character and circumstance, between passion and law, potent only in proportion as the individual finally issues conquered or a conqueror from the struggle of life. This action of character on circumstance, and of circumstance on character is an ever-recurring _motif_ with George Eliot. We constantly see adverse circumstances modifying and moulding the lives of the actors in her stories. She has hardly, if ever, therefore, drawn a hero or heroine, for these, instead of yielding, make circumstances yield to them. Dorothea and Lydgate in abandoning their striving after the highest kind of life; Tito in invariably yielding to the most pleasurable prompting of the moment; Gwendolen in being mainly influenced by circumstances acting on her, without her reacting on them, are all types of this kind. Maggie belongs, on the whole, to the same type. She, too, is what Goethe calls a problematic nature, a nature which, along with vast possibilities and lofty aspirations, lacks a certain fixity of purpose, and drifting helplessly from one extreme to another, is shattered almost as soon as it has put out of port. In Maggie's case this evil springs from the very fulness of her nature; from the acuteness of an imagination which the many-sidedness of life attracts by turns in the most opposite directions. Tom, on the other hand, with his narrow practical understanding, entirely concentrated on the business in hand, swerves neither to right nor left, because he may be said to resemble a horse with blinkers, in that he sees only the road straight ahead. Maggie, with all her palpable weaknesses and startling inconsistencies, is the most adorable of George Eliot's women. In all poetry and fiction there is no child more delicious than the "little wench" with her loving heart and dreamy ways, her rash impulses and wild regrets, her fine susceptibilities and fiery jets of temper--in a word, her singularly fresh and vital nature. The same charm pervades every phase of her life. In her case the child, if I may so far modify Wordsworth's famous saying, is eminently the mother of the woman. Profoundly affectionate by nature, and sympathising as she does with her father in his calamity, she cannot help rebelling at the sordid narrowness of her daily life, passionately craving for a wider field wherein to develop her inborn faculties. In this state of yearning and wild unrest, her accidental reading of Thomas à Kempis forms a crisis in her life, by bringing about a spiritual awakening in which Christianity, for the first time, becomes a living truth to her. Intense as she is, Maggie now throws all the ardour of her nature into renunciation and self-conquest. She seeks her highest satisfaction in abnegation of all personal desire, and in entire devotion to others. In her young asceticism she relinquishes a world of which she is ignorant, stifling every impulse, however innocent, that seems opposed to her new faith. But Maggie has more actual affinity with poets and artists than with saints and martyrs. Her soul thrills like a finely-touched instrument to the beauty of the world around her, and though she doubts whether there may not even be a sinfulness in the indulgence of this enjoyment, yet the summer flowers and the summer sunshine put her scruples to flight. And then, when, through the intervention of Philip Wakem, the enchantments of romance and poetry are brought within her reach, the glory of the world again lays hold of her imagination, and a fresh conflict is begun in her soul. Thus she drifts from one state into another most opposed to it, and to an outside observer, such as Tom, her abrupt transitions are a sign that she is utterly wanting in moral stamina. Not only Tom, but many eminent critics, who have descanted with fond partiality on Maggie's early life, seem to be shocked by that part of her story in which she allows herself to fall passionately in love with such an ordinary specimen of manhood as Stephen Guest. The author has even been accused of violating the truth of Nature, inasmuch as such a high-minded woman as Maggie could never have inclined to so vulgar, so commonplace a man as her lover. Others, while not questioning the truth of the character, find fault with the poor heroine herself, whom they pronounce an ineffective nature revealing its innate unsoundness by the crowning error of an abject passion for so poor a creature as the dandy of St. Oggs. This contention only proves the singular vitality of the character itself, and nothing is more psychologically true in George Eliot's studies of character than this love of the high-souled heroine for a man who has no corresponding fineness of fibre in his nature, his attraction lying entirely in the magnetism of mutual passion. This vitality places Maggie Tulliver by the side of the Juliets, the Mignons, the Consuelos, the Becky Sharps and other airy inheritors of immortality. It is curious that Mr. Swinburne, in view of such a character as this, or, indeed, bearing in mind a Silas Marner, a Dolly Winthrop, a Tito, and other intrinsically living reproductions of human nature, should describe George Eliot's as intellectually constructed characters in contrast to Charlotte Brontë's creations, the former, according to him, being the result of intellect, the latter of genius. If ever character came simply dropped out of the mould of Nature it is that of Maggie. His assumption, that the 'Mill on the Floss' can in any sense have been suggested by, or partially based upon, Mrs. Gaskell's story of 'The Moorland Cottage,' seems equally baseless. There is certainly the identity of name in the heroines, and some resemblance of situation as regards portions of the story, but both the name and the situation are sufficiently common not to excite astonishment at such a coincidence. Had George Eliot really known of this tale--a tale feebly executed at the best--she would obviously have altered the name so as not to make her obligation too patent to the world. As it is, she was not a little astonished and even indignant, on accidentally seeing this opinion stated in some review, and positively denied ever having seen the story in question. Indeed when one knows how this story grew out of her own experience, how its earlier portions especially are a record of her own and her brother's childhood--how even Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Pullet were only too faithfully done from the aunts of real life, one need not go far afield to seek for its origin. Every author usually writes one book, which he might more or less justly entitle 'My Confessions,' into which he pours an intimate part of his life under a thin disguise of fiction, a book invariably exciting a unique kind of interest in the reader be he conscious or not of the presence of this autobiographical element. Fielding's 'Amelia,' Thackeray's 'Pendennis,'Dickens's 'David Copperfield,' Charlotte Brontë's 'Villette,' are cases in point. The 'Mill on the Floss' is a work of similar nature. Maggie Tulliver is George Eliot herself, but only one side, one portion, one phase of George Eliot's many-sided, vastly complex nature. It is George Eliot's inner life in childhood and youth as it appeared to her own consciousness. We recognise in it her mental acuteness, her clinging affectionateness, her ambition, her outlook beyond the present, her religious and moral preoccupations, even her genius is not so much omitted as left in an undeveloped, rudimentary state. While her make-believe stories, her thirst for knowledge, her spiritual wrestlings, and the passionate response of her soul to high thinking, noble music, and the beautiful in all its forms, show that the making of genius was there in germ. Much in the same manner Goethe was fond of partitioning his nature, and of giving only the weaker side to his fictitious representatives. Conscious in himself of fluctuations of purpose which he only got the better of by his indomitable will, he usually endowed these characters with his more impulsive, pliant self, as manifested in Werther, in Tasso, in Edward of the 'Elective Affinities.' In this sense also Maggie Tulliver resembles George Eliot. She is her potential self, such as she might have been had there not been counterbalancing tendencies of unusual force, sufficient to hold in check all erratic impulses contrary to the main direction of her life. While tempted to dwell largely on Maggie Tulliver, the central figure of 'The Mill on the Floss,' it would be very unfair to slur over the other admirably drawn characters of this novel. Her brother Tom, already repeatedly alluded to, is in every sense the counterpart of "Sister Maggie." Hard and narrow-minded he was from a boy, "particularly clear and positive on one point, namely, that he would punish everybody who deserved it: why, he wouldn't have minded being punished himself, if he deserved it; but, then, he never _did_ deserve it." This strikes the key-note of a character whose stern inflexibility, combined with much practical insight and dogged persistence of effort, is at the same time dignified by a high, if somewhat narrow, sense of family honour. Conventional respectability, in fact, is Tom Tulliver's religion. He is not in any sense bad, or mean, or sordid; he is only so circumscribed in his perceptive faculties, that he has no standard by which to measure thoughts or feelings that transcend his own very limited conception of life. Both by his good and his bad qualities, by his excellencies and his negations, Tom Tulliver proves himself what he is--a genuine sprig of the Dodson family, a chip of the old block! And the Dodson sisters are, in their way, among the most amazingly living portraitures that George Eliot ever achieved. Realism in art can go no further in this direction. These women, if present in the flesh, would not be so distinctively vivid as when beheld through the transfixing medium of George Eliot's genius. For here we have the personages, with all their quaintnesses, their eccentricities, their odd, old-fashioned twists and ways--only observed by fragments in actual life--successfully brought to a focus for the delight and amusement of generations of readers. There is nothing grotesque, nothing exaggerated, in these humorous figures. The comic effect is not produced, as is often the case with the inventions of Dickens, by some set peculiarity of manner or trick of speech, more in the spirit of caricature. On the contrary, it is by a strict adherence to the just mean of nature, by a conscientious care not to overstep her probabilities, that we owe these matchless types of English provincial life. And the genuine humour of these types verges on the pathetic, in that the infinitely little of their lives is so magnified by them out of all proportion to its real importance. Mrs. Glegg, with her dictatorial ways, her small economies, her anxiety to make a handsome figure in her will, and her invariable reference to what was "the way in our family," as a criterion of right behaviour on all occasions: Mrs. Pullet, the wife of the well-to-do yeoman-farmer, bent on proving her gentility and wealth by the delicacy of her health, and the quantity of doctor's stuff she can afford to imbibe: Mrs. Tulliver, the good, muddle-headed woman, whose husband "picked her from her sisters o' purpose, 'cause she was a bit weak, like," and for whom the climax of misery in bankruptcy is the loss of her china and table-linen: these, as well as the henpecked Mr. Glegg, and the old-maidish Mr. Pullet, are worthy pendants to Mrs. Poyser and Dolly Winthrop. Whether too great a predominance may not be given to the narrow, trivial views of these people, with their prosaic respectability, is a nice question, which one is inclined to answer in the negative on reading such a conjugal scene as that between Mr. and Mrs. Glegg, after the latter's quarrel with Mr. Tulliver: "It was a hard case that a vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly capable of using any opportunity, should not meet with a single remark from Mr. Glegg on which to exercise itself. But by-and-by it appeared that his silence would answer the purpose, for he heard himself apostrophised at last in that tone peculiar to the wife of one's bosom. "'Well, Mr. Glegg! it's a poor return I get for making you the wife I've made you all these years. If this is the way I'm to be treated, I'd better ha' known it before my poor father died, and then when I'd wanted a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere--as the choice was offered me.' "Mr. Glegg paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any new amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we regard constant mysteries. "'Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now?' "'Done now, Mr. Glegg? _done now?_ ... I'm sorry for you.' "Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Glegg reverted to his porridge. "'There's husbands in the world,' continued Mrs. Glegg, after a pause, 'as 'ud have known how to do something different to siding with everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong, and you can teach me better. But I've allays heard as it's the husband's place to stand by the wife, instead of rejoicing and triumphing when folks insult her." "'Now what call have you to say that?' said Mr. Glegg rather warmly, for, though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. 'When did I rejoice or triumph over you?' "'There's ways o' doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr. Glegg. I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to make as everybody's in the right but me, and come to your breakfast in the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet.' "'Sulk at you?' said Mr. Glegg, in a tone of angry facetiousness. 'You're like a tipsy man as thinks everybody's had too much but himself.' "'Don't lower yourself with using coarse language to _me_, Mr. Glegg! It makes you look very small, though you can't see yourself,' said Mrs. Glegg, in a tone of energetic compassion. 'A man in your place should set an example, and talk more sensible.'" After a good deal of sparring in the same tone, Mr. Glegg at last bursts forth: "'Did ever anybody hear the like i' this parish? A woman with everything provided for her, and allowed to keep her own money the same as if it was settled on her, and with a gig new stuffed and lined at no end o' expense, and provided for when I die beyond anything she could expect ... to go on i' this way, biting and snapping like a mad dog! It's beyond everything, as God A'mighty should ha' made women _so_.' (These last words were uttered in a tone of sorrowful agitation. Mr. Glegg pushed his tea from him, and tapped the table with both his hands.) "'Well, Mr. Glegg! if those are your feelings, it's best they should be known,' said Mrs. Glegg, taking off her napkin, and folding it in an excited manner. 'But if you talk o' my being provided for beyond what I could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I'd a right to expect a many things as I don't find. And as to my being like a mad dog, it's well if you're not cried shame on by the country for your treatment of me, for it's what I can't bear, and I won't bear.'... "Here Mrs. Glegg's voice intimated that she was going to cry, and, breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently. "'Sally,' she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather a choked voice, 'light a fire upstairs, and put the blinds down. Mr. Glegg, you'll please order what you like for dinner. I shall have gruel.'" Equally well drawn in their way, though belonging to a different class of character, are Maggie's cousin, the lovely, gentle, and refined Lucy; Philip Wakem, whose physical malformation is compensated by exceptional culture and nobility of nature; Mr. Tulliver, the headstrong, violent, but withal generous, father of Maggie, and his sister Mrs. Moss, whose motherliness and carelessness of appearances form a striking foil to the Dodson sisters. Indeed, 'The Mill on the Floss' is so rich in minor characters that it is impossible to do more than mention such capital sketches as that of Bob Jakin and his dog Mumps, or of Luke, the head miller, who has no opinion of reading, considering that "There's fools enoo--an' rogues enoo--wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em." The distinguishing feature of this novel, however, lies not so much in its wealth of portraiture or freshness of humour as in a certain passionate glow of youth, which emanates from the heroine, and seems to warm the story through and through. For passion, pathos, and poetic beauty of description, 'The Mill on the Floss' is certainly unique among George Eliot's works. CHAPTER X. SILAS MARNER. The 'Mill on the Floss,' which appeared in 1860, fully established George Eliot's popularity with the public. In the same year she published anonymously, in _Blackwood's Magazine_, a short story called the 'Lifted Veil.' This tale is curious as differing considerably from her general style, having a certain mystical turn, which perhaps recommended it more especially to the admiration of Bulwer Lytton; but, indeed, it attracted general attention. In the meanwhile, the relations between author and publisher became more and more friendly; the latter's critical acumen and sound judgment being highly esteemed by George Eliot. "He judged well of writing," she remarked, "because he had learned to judge well of men and things, not merely through quickness of observation and insight, but with the illumination of a heart in the right place." This was the most productive period of George Eliot's life. In three successive years she published 'Adam Bede,' 'The Mill on the Floss,' and 'Silas Marner,' the last story appearing in 1861. When the amount of thought, observation, and wisdom concentrated in these novels is taken into consideration, it must be admitted that her mental energy was truly astonishing. But it was the accumulated experience of her whole past, the first abundant math borne by the springtide of life which was garnered up in these three remarkable works. Afterwards, when she came to write her next book,'Romola,' she turned to entirely fresh fields of inspiration; indeed, already at this date her mind was occupied with the idea of an Italian novel of the time of Savonarola. In the meanwhile she produced her most perfect work. She wrote 'Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe.' I call 'Silas Marner' her most perfect work, not only because of the symmetry with which each part is adjusted in relation to the whole, nor because of the absence of those partly satirical, partly moral reflections with which George Eliot usually accompanies the action of her stories, but chiefly on account of the simple pathos of the central motive into which all the different incidents and characters naturally converge. How homely are the elements from which this work of art is constructed, and how matchless the result! Nothing but the story of a humble weaver belonging to a small dissenting community which assembled in Lantern Yard, somewhere in the back streets of a manufacturing town; of a faithless love and a false friend, and the loss of trust in all things human or divine. Nothing but the story of a lone, bewildered man, shut out from his kind, concentrating every baulked passion into one--the all-engrossing passion for gold. And then the sudden disappearance of the hoard from its accustomed hiding-place, and in its stead the startling apparition of a golden-haired little child, found one snowy winter's night sleeping on the floor in front of the glimmering hearth. And the gradual reawakening of love in the heart of the solitary man, a love "drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money," and once more bringing him into sympathetic relations with his fellow-men. "In old days," says the story, "there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward, and the hand may be a little child's." Curiously enough, I came quite recently upon a story which in its leading features very closely resembles this tale of the 'Weaver of Raveloe.' It is called 'Jermola the Potter,' and is considered the masterpiece of J. I. Kraszewski, the Polish novelist, author of at least one hundred and fifty works in different branches of literature. 'Jermola,' the most popular of them all, has been translated into French, Dutch, and German. It gives an extraordinarily vivid picture of peasant life in a remote Polish village, and not only of peasant life, but of the manners and habits of the landed proprietor, the Jew, the artisan, and the yeoman, in a community whose modes of life have undergone but little modification since the Middle Ages. These pictures, though not elaborated with anything like the minute care of George Eliot's descriptions of English country life, yet from their extreme simplicity produce a most powerful impression on the reader. The story, in brief, is that of Jermola, the body servant of a Polish nobleman in Volhynia, whom he has served with rare devotion during the greater part of his life. Left almost a beggar at his master's death, without a single human tie, all he can get for years of faithful service is a tumble-down, forsaken old inn, where he manages to keep body and soul together in a dismantled room that but partly shelters him from the inclemency of the weather. Hopeless, aimless, loveless, he grows old before his time, and the passing of the days affects him hardly more than it does a stone. But one evening, as he is sitting in front of a scanty fire repeating the Lord's Prayer, the cry as of a little child startles him from his devotion. Going to look what can be the meaning of such unusual sounds, he soon discovers an infant in linen swaddling-clothes wailing under an old oak tree. He takes the foundling home, and from that moment a new life enters the old man's breast. He is rejuvenated by twenty years. He is kept in a constant flutter of hope, fear, and activity. A kind-hearted woman, called the Kozaczicha, tenders him her services, but he is so jealous of any one but himself doing aught for the child, that he checks her advances, and by hook or by crook obtains a goat from an extortionate Jew, by the help of which he rears the boy satisfactorily. Then, wishing to make a livelihood for the child's sake, he inclines at first to the craft of the weaver, but finally turns potter in his old age. Love sharpening his wits, he plies quite a thriving trade in time, and the beautiful boy brings him into more friendly relations with his neighbours. But one day, when Radionek, who has learned Jermola's trade, is about twelve years old, the real parents appear and claim him as their own. They had never dared to acknowledge their marriage till the father, who had threatened to disinherit his son in such an event, had departed this life. Now, having nothing more to fear, they want to have their child back, and to bring him up as befits their station in life. Jermola suffers a deadly anguish at this separation; the boy, too, is in despair, for he clings fondly to the old man who has reared him with more than a father's love. But the parents insisting on their legal rights, Radionek is at last carried off to their house in town, to be turned into a gentleman, being only grudgingly allowed to see Jermola from time to time. The boy pines, however, for the dear familiar presence of his foster-father, and the free outdoor life, and at last, after some years of misery, he appears one day suddenly in Jermola's hut, who has given up his pottery in order to be secretly near the child he is afraid to go and see. The piteous entreaties of Radionek, and the sight of his now sickly countenance, induce the old man to flee into the pathless forests, where the two may escape unseen, and reach some distant part of the country to take up their old pleasant life once more. But the hardships and fatigues of the journey are too much for the boy's enfeebled health, and just as they come within sight of human dwellings, he is seized with a fever which cuts his young life short, leaving Jermola nearly crazy with anguish. Long afterwards a little decrepit old man was to be seen by churchgoers sitting near a grave, whom the children mocked by calling the "bony little man," because he seemed to consist of nothing but bones. Such is the bare outline of a story whose main idea, that of the redemption of a human soul from cold, petrifying isolation, by means of a little child, is unquestionably the same as in 'Silas Marner.' Other incidents, such as that of the peasant woman who initiates Jermola into the mysteries of baby management, and the disclosure of the real parents after a lapse of years, wanting to have their child back suggest parallel passages in the English book. But coincidences of this kind are, after all, natural enough, considering that the circle of human feeling and action is limited, and that in all ages and countries like conditions must give rise to much the same sequence of events. It is therefore most likely that George Eliot never saw, and possibly never even heard of, 'Jermola the Potter.' The monotonous tone in the narrative of this Polish novel is in strong contrast, it may be observed, to George Eliot's vivid and varied treatment of her subject. This monotony, however, suits the local colouring of 'Jermola,' by suggesting the idea of the league-long expanse of ancient forests whose sombre solitudes encompass with a mysterious awe the little temporary dwellings of men. But if the foreign story surpasses 'Silas Marner' in tragic pathos, the latter far excels it in the masterly handling of character and dialogue, in the underlying breadth of thought, and, above all, in the precious salt of its humour. Indeed, for humour, for sheer force, for intense realism, George Eliot, in the immortal scene at the "Rainbow," may be said to rival Shakespeare. Her farriers, her butchers, her wheelwrights, her tailors, have the same startling vitality, the same unmistakable accents of nature, the same distinctive yet unforced individuality, free from either exaggeration or caricature. How delicious is the description of the party assembled in the kitchen of that inn, whose landlord--a strong advocate for compromising whatever differences of opinion may arise between his customers, as beings "all alike in need of liquor"--clinches all arguments by his favourite phrase--"You're both right and you're both wrong, as I say." How admirably comic are these villagers, invariably beginning their nightly sittings by a solemn silence, in which one and all puff away at their pipes, staring at the fire "as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked." And when they begin at last, how rich is the flavour of that talk, given with an unerring precision that forthwith makes one acquainted with the crass ignorance and shrewdness, the mother-wit and superstition, so oddly jumbled together in the villager's mind. What sublime absence of all knowledge of his native land is shown by the veteran parish clerk, Mr. Macey, in speaking of a person from another county which apparently could not be so very different "from this country, for he brought a fine breed o' sheep with him, so there must be pastures there, and everything reasonable." Yet the same man can put down youthful presumption pretty sharply, as when he remarks: "There's allays two 'pinions; there's the 'pinion a man has o' himsen, and there's the 'pinion other folks have on him. There'd be two 'pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself." Dolly Winthrop, the wife of the jolly wheelwright who makes one of the company at the "Rainbow," is no less admirable. She is not cut after any particular pattern or type of human nature, but has a distinctive individuality, and is full of a freshness and unexpectedness which sets foregone conclusions at defiance. A notable woman, with a boundless appetite for work, so that, rising at half-past four, she has "a bit o' time to spare most days, for when one gets up betimes i' the morning the clock seems to stan' still tow'rt ten, afore it's time to go about the victual." Yet with all this energy she is not shrewish, but a calm, grave woman, in much request in sick rooms or wherever there is trouble. She is good-looking, too, and of a comfortable temper, being patiently tolerant of her husband's jokes, "considering that 'men would be so,' and viewing the stronger sex' in the light of animals whom it pleased Heaven to make troublesome like bulls or turkey cocks.'" Her vague idea, shared indeed by Silas, that he has quite another faith from herself, as coming from another part of the country, gives a vivid idea of remote rural life, as well as her own dim, semi-pagan but thoroughly reverential religious feelings, prompting her always to speak of the Divinity in the plural, as when she says to Marner: "I've looked for help in the right quarter, and give myself up to Them as we must all give ourselves up to at the last; and if we'n done our part, it isn't to be believed as Them as are above us 'ull be worse nor we are, and come short o' Theirn." The humour shown in these scenes and characters, or, more properly speaking, George Eliot's humour in general, belongs to the highest order, the same as Shakespeare's. It is based on the essential elements of human nature itself, on the pathetic incongruities of which that "quintessence of dust," man, is made up, instead of finding the comic in the purely accidental or external circumstances of life, as is the case with such humourists as Rabelais and Dickens. These latter might find a good subject for their comic vein in seeing the Venus of Milo's broken nose, which a mischievous urchin had again stuck on the wrong side upwards--a sight to send the ordinary spectator into fits of laughter. But the genuine humourist sees something in that feature itself, as nature shaped it, to excite his facetiousness. In 'A Minor Prophet' some lines occur in which a somewhat similar view of the genuine source of humour is pithily put: "My yearnings fail To reach that high apocalyptic mount Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world, Or enter warmly into other joys Than those of faulty, struggling human kind. That strain upon my soul's too feeble wing Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall Into short-sighted pity for the men Who, living in those perfect future times, Will not know half the dear imperfect things That move my smiles and tears--will never know The fine old incongruities that raise My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits That like a needless eyeglass or black patch Give those who wear them harmless happiness; The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, That touch me to more conscious fellowship (I am not myself the finest Parian) With my coevals." Again, in her essay on 'Heinrich Heine,' George Eliot thus defines the difference between humour and wit: "Humour is of earlier growth than wit, and it is in accordance with this earlier growth that it has more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humour draws its materials from situations and characteristics; wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations.... It is only the ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness which lift some witticisms from reasoning into wit; they are reasoning raised to its highest power. On the other hand, humour, in its higher forms and in proportion as it associates itself with the sympathetic emotions, continually passes into poetry; nearly all great modern humorists may be called prose poets." The quality which distinguishes George Eliot's humour may be said to characterise her treatment of human nature generally. In her delineations of life she carefully eschews the anomalous or exceptional, pointing out repeatedly that she would not, if she could, be the writer, however brilliant, who dwells by preference on the moral or intellectual attributes which mark off his hero from the crowd instead of on those which he has in common with average humanity. Nowhere perhaps in her works do we find this tendency so strikingly illustrated as in the one now under consideration; for here we have the study of a human being who, by stress of circumstances, developes into a most abnormal specimen of mankind, yet who is brought back to normal conditions and to wholesome relations with his fellow-men by such a natural process as the re-awakening of benumbed sympathies through his love for the little foundling child. The scene where he finds that child has only been touched on in a passing allusion, yet there is no more powerfully-drawn situation in any of her novels than that where Silas, with the child in his arms, goes out into the dark night, and, guided by the little footprints in the virgin snow, discovers the dead mother, Godfrey Cass's opium-eating wife, lying with "her head sunk low in the furze and half covered with the shaken snow." There is a picture of this subject by the young and singularly gifted artist, the late Oliver Madox Brown, more generally known as a novelist, which is one of the few pictorial interpretations that seem to completely project on the canvas a visible embodiment of the spirit of the original. The pale, emaciated weaver, staring with big, short-sighted eyes at the body of the unconscious young woman stretched on the ground, clutching the lusty, struggling child with one arm, while with the other he holds a lantern which throws a feeble gleam on the snow--is realised with exceptional intensity. The exquisite picture of Eppie's childhood, the dance she leads her soft-hearted foster-father, are things to read, not to describe, unless one could quote whole pages of this delightful idyl, which for gracious charm and limpid purity of description recalls those pearls among prose-poems, George Sand's 'Francois le Champi' and 'La Mare au Diable.' CHAPTER XI. ROMOLA. 'Romola' marks a new departure in George Eliot's literary career. From the present she turned to the past, from the native to the foreign, from the domestic to the historical. Yet in thus shifting her subject-matter, she did not alter the strongly-pronounced tendencies underlying her earlier novels; there was more of spontaneous, humorous description of life in the latter, whereas in 'Romola' the ethical teaching which forms so prominent a feature of George Eliot's art, though the same in essence, was more distinctly wrought out. Touching on this very point, she observes in a letter to an American correspondent: "It is perhaps less irrelevant to say, apropos of a distinction you seem to make between my earlier and later works, that though I trust there is some growth in my appreciation of others and in my self-distrust, there has been no change in the point of view from which I regard our life since I wrote my first fiction, the 'Scenes of Clerical Life.' Any apparent change of spirit must be due to something of which I am unconscious. The principles which are at the root of my effort to paint Dinah Morris are equally at the root of my effort to paint Mordecai." The first section of 'Romola' appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for the summer of 1862, and, running its course in that popular periodical, was finished in the summer of the following year. Mr. Lewes, in a letter written from 16 Blandford Square, July 5, 1862, to some old friends of George Eliot, makes the following remarks in reference to this new form of publication: "My main object in persuading her to consent to serial publication, was not the unheard-of magnificence of the offer, but the advantage to such a work of being read slowly and deliberately, instead of being galloped through in three volumes. I think it quite unique, and so will the public when it gets over the first feeling of surprise and disappointment at the book not being English, and like its predecessor." And some time afterwards he wrote to the same friends: "Marian lives entirely in the fifteenth century, and is much cheered every now and then by hearing indirectly how her book is appreciated by the higher class of minds, and some of the highest; though it is not, and cannot be popular. In Florence we hear they are wild with delight and surprise at such a work being executed by a foreigner; as if an Italian had ever done anything of the kind!" Before writing 'Romola' George Eliot had spent six weeks in Florence in order to familiarise herself with the manners and conversation of its inhabitants, and yet she hardly caught the trick of Italian speech, and for some time afterwards she hung back from beginning her story, as her characters not only refused to speak Italian to her, but would not speak at all, as we can well imagine Mrs. Poyser, Bartle Massey, and Maggie to have done. These recalcitrant spirits were at last brought to order, and she succeeded so well, especially in her delineation of the lower classes, that they have been recognised by Italians as true to the life. It should, however, be mentioned that the greatest modern Italian, Giuseppe Mazzini, found fault with the handling, and, indeed, with the introduction into this novel of the great figure of Savonarola. He considered that it compared unfavourably with 'Adam Bede,' a novel he genuinely admired, all but the marriage of Adam with Dinah Morris, which, he said, shocked his feelings, not having any conception that the taste of the novel-reading public demands a happy ending, whatever may have been the previous course of the three volumes. Another illustrious man, D. G. Rossetti, whose judgment on such a subject carries peculiar weight, considered George Eliot to have been much less successful in 'Romola' than in her novels of English country life. He did not think that the tone and colour of Italian life in the fifteenth century were caught with that intuitive perception of a bygone age characteristic of a Walter Scott or a Meinhold. The Florentine contemporaries of "Fra Girolamo" seemed to him Nineteenth Century men and women dressed up in the costume of the Fifteenth. The book, to use his expression, was not "native." It is a majestic book, however: the most grandly planned of George Eliot's novels. It has a certain architectural dignity of structure, quite in keeping with its Italian nationality, a quality, by the way, entirely absent from the three later novels. The impressive historical background is not unlike one of Mr. Irving's magnificently wrought Italian stage-effects, rich in movement and colour, yet helping to throw the chief figures into greater relief. The erudition shown in this work; the vast yet minute acquaintance with the habits of thought, the manners, the very talk of the Florentines of that day are truly surprising; but perhaps the very fact of that erudition being so perceptible shows that the material has not been absolutely vitalised. The amount of labour George Eliot expended on 'Romola' was so great, that it was the book which, she remarked to a friend, "she began a young woman and ended an old one." The deep impression her works had made upon the public mind heightened her natural conscientiousness, and her gratitude for the confidence with which each fresh contribution from her pen was received, increased her anxiety to wield her influence for the highest ends. But her gratitude to the public by no means extended to the critics. She recoiled from them with the instinctive shrinking of the sensitive plant. These interpreters between author and public were in her eyes a most superfluous modern institution: though at one time she herself had not scorned to sit in the critic's seat. It is well-known that G. H. Lewes acted as a kind of moral screen protecting her from every gust or breath of criticism that was not entirely genial. One lady, after reading 'The Mill on the Floss,' had written off in the heat of the moment, and, with the freedom of old friendship, while expressing the warmest admiration for the beauty of the first two volumes, she had ventured to find fault with part of the third. This letter was returned by Lewes, who begged her at the same time never to write again in this strain to George Eliot, to whom he had not ventured to show it for fear it should too painfully affect her. In a letter to the American lady already mentioned, George Eliot, after referring to this habit of Mr. Lewes, says: "In this way I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest.... I have been led into this rather superfluous sort of remark by the mention of a rule which seemed to require explanation." And again on another occasion to the same effect: "But do not expect criticism from me. I hate 'sitting in the seat of judgment,' and I would rather impress the public generally with the sense that they may get the best result from a book without necessarily forming an 'opinion' about it, than I would rush into stating opinions of my own. The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of our times--a chief obstacle to true culture." In spite of these severe strictures on the critics and their opinions, an "opinion" must now be given about 'Romola.' This novel may really be judged from two entirely different points of view, possibly from others besides, but, as it appears to me, from two. One may consider it as an historical work, with its moving pageants, its civic broils, its church festivals, its religious revival, its fickle populace, now siding with the Pope, and now with the would-be reformer of the Papacy. Or again one may regard the conjugal relations between Romola and Tito, the slow spiritual growth of the one, and the swifter moral disintegration of the other, as one of the subtlest studies in psychology in literature. To turn to the scenic details which form a considerable element of this historical picture, I have already hinted that they are not without a taint of cumbrousness and pedantry. The author seems to move somewhat heavily under her weight of learning, and we miss that splendid natural swiftness and ease of movement which Shakespeare, Goethe, and Hugo know how to impart to their crowds and spectacular effects. If, instead of the people, one examines the man who dominated the people, the large, massive, imposing figure of Savonarola, one must admit that the character is very powerfully and faithfully executed but not produced at one throw. He does not take the imagination by storm as he would have done had Carlyle been at his fashioning. With an epithet or two, with a sharp, incisive phrase, the latter would have conjured the great Dominican from his grave, and we should have seen him, or believed at least that we saw him, as he was in the flesh when his impassioned voice resounded through the Duomo, swaying the hearts of the Florentine people with the force of a great conviction. That he stands out thus tangibly in 'Romola' it would be futile to assert: nevertheless, he is a noble, powerful study, although one has laboriously to gather into one's mind the somewhat mechanical descriptions which help to portray his individuality. The idea underlying the working out of this grand character is the same which Goethe had once proposed to himself in his projected, but unfortunately never executed, drama of 'Mahomet.' It is that of a man of moral genius, who, in solitude and obscurity, has conceived some new, profounder aspect of religious truth, and who, stirred by a sublime devotion, now goes forth among men to bless and regenerate them by teaching them this higher life. But in his contact with the multitude, in his efforts at influencing it, the prophet or preacher is in his turn influenced. If he fails to move by the loftiest means, he will gradually resort to the lower in order to effect his purpose. The purity of his spirit is tarnished, ambition has crept in where holiness reigned, and his perfect rectitude of purpose will be sacrificed so that he may but rule. Such are the opposing tendencies co-existing in Savonarola's mixed but lofty nature. For "that dissidence between inward reality and outward seeming was not the Christian simplicity after which he had striven through years of his youth and prime, and which he had preached as a chief fruit of the Divine life. In the heat and stress of the day, with cheeks burning, with shouts ringing in the ears, who is so blest as to remember the yearnings he had in the cool and silent morning, and know that he has not belied them?" And again: "It was the habit of Savonarola's mind to conceive great things, and to feel that he was the man to do them. Iniquity should be brought low; the cause of justice, purity, and love should triumph, and it should triumph by his voice, by his work, by his blood. In moments of ecstatic contemplation, doubtless, the sense of self melted in the sense of the Unspeakable, and in that part of his experience lay the elements of genuine self-abasement; but in the presence of his fellow-men for whom he was to act, pre-eminence seemed a necessary condition of life." But, as George Eliot says, "Power rose against him, not because of his sins, but because of his greatness; not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to make it noble. And through that greatness of his he endured a double agony; not only the reviling, and the torture, and the death-throe, but the agony of sinking from the vision of glorious achievement into that deep shadow where he could only say, 'I count as nothing: darkness encompasses me; yet the light I saw was the true light.'" But after all, in George Eliot's story the chief interest attaching to "Fra Girolamo" consists in his influence on Romola's spiritual growth. This may possibly be a blemish; yet in most novels the fictitious characters eclipse the historical ones. The effect produced by the high-souled Romola is not unlike that of an antique statue, at once splendidly beautiful and imposingly cold. By the side of Tito she reminds one of the pure whiteness of marble sculpture as contrasted with the rich glowing sensuousness of a Venetian picture. It is difficult to analyse why the proud, loving, single-hearted Romola, who has something of the fierceness and impetuosity of the old "Bardo blood" in her, should leave this impression of coldness; for in spite of her acts of magnanimity and self-devotion, such, curiously enough, is the case. Perhaps in this instance George Eliot modelled the character too much according to a philosophical conception, instead of projecting it, complete in its incompleteness, as it might have come from the hand of Nature. Another objection sometimes brought forward, of Romola having but little resemblance to an Italian woman of the fifteenth century, seems to me less relevant. The lofty dignity, the pride, the intense adhesion to family traditions were, on the contrary, very marked attributes of a high national type during the period of Italian supremacy. In fact, the character is not without hints and suggestions of such a woman as Vittoria Colonna, while its didactic tendency slightly recalls "those awful women of Italy who held professorial chairs, and were great in civil and canon law." In one sense Romola is a true child of the Renaissance. Brought up by her father, the enthusiastic old scholar, in pagan ideas, she had remained aloof from Roman Catholic beliefs and superstitions, and even when transformed by the mighty influence of Savonarola into a devoted _Piagnone_, her attitude always remains more or less that of a Protestant, unwilling to surrender the right of private judgment to the Church. The clash of character when a woman like Romola finds herself chained in a life-long bond to such a nature as Tito's--the beautiful, wily, insinuating Greek--is wrought out with wonderful skill and matchless subtlety of analysis. Indeed Tito is not only one of George Eliot's most original creations, he is a unique character in fiction. Novelists, as a rule, only depict the full-blown villain or traitor, their virtuous and wicked people being separated from each other by a hard and fast line much like the goats and sheep. They continually treat character as something permanent and unchangeable, whereas to George Eliot it presents itself as an organism flexible by nature, subject to change under varying conditions, liable on the one hand to disease and deterioration, but on the other hand no less capable of being rehabilitated, refined, or ennobled. This is one of the most distinctive notes of George Eliot's art, and gives a quickening, fructifying quality to her moral teaching. But it is an artistic no less than a moral gain, sharpening the interest felt in the evolution of her fictitious personages. For this reason Tito, the creature of circumstances, is perhaps the most striking of all her characters in the eyes of the psychologist. We seem to see the very pulse of the human machine laid bare, to see the corroding effect of self-indulgence and dread of pain on a nature not intrinsically wicked, to see at last how, little by little, weakness has led to falsehood, and falsehood to infamy. And yet this creature, who, under our eyes, gradually hardens into crime, is one so richly dowered with rare gifts of person and mind, that in spite of his moral degeneracy, he fascinates the reader no less than the men and women supposed to come into actual contact with him. His beauty is described with the same life-like intensity as Hetty's: the warm glow of colour in his perfectly-moulded face, with its dark curls and long agate-like eyes; his sunny brightness of look, the velvet softness of a manner with which he ingratiates himself with young and old, and the airy buoyancy of his whole gracious being, are as vividly portrayed as the quick talent to which everything comes natural, the abundant good-humour, the acuteness of a polished intellect, whose sharp edge, will, at need, cut relentlessly through every tissue of sentiment. From Melema's first uneasy debate with himself, when, in his splendid, unsoiled youth, he enters Florence a shipwrecked stranger--a debate, that is, as to whether he is bound to go in search of Baldassare, who has been as a father to him--to the moment when his already blunted conscience absolves him from such a search, and again, on to that supreme crisis when, suddenly face to face with his benefactor, he denies him, and so is inevitably urged from one act of baseness and cruelty to another still blacker--we have unfolded before us, by an unshrinking analyzer of human nature, what might not inappropriately be called "A Soul's Tragedy." The wonderful art in the working out of this character is shown in the fact that one has no positive impression of Tito's innate badness, but, on the contrary, feels as if, after his first lapses from truth and goodness, there is still a possibility of his reforming, if only his soft, pleasure-loving nature were not driven on, almost in spite of himself, by his shuddering dread of shame or suffering in any form. "For," writes George Eliot, "Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil which gradually determines character." The description of the married life of Romola and Tito is unsurpassed in George Eliot's novels for subtlety and depth of insight: notably the young wife's fond striving after complete inner harmony, her first, faint, unavowed sense of something wanting, her instinctive efforts to keep fast hold of her love and trust, and her violent, irrevocable recoil on the discovery of Tito's first faithless action. Perhaps there is something cold, almost stern, in Romola's loathing alienation from her husband, and the instantaneous death of her passionate love. One cannot quite hinder the impression that a softer woman might have forgiven and won from him a confession of his wrong-doing; a confession which would have averted the committal of his worst and basest deeds. Indeed, it is Tito's awe of his grand, noble wife, and his dread of her judgment, which first of all incite him to prevarication and lies. It is curious to compare George Sand's theory of love, in this instance, with George Eliot's. In 'Leon Leoni,' and in many of her novels besides, the Frenchwoman seems to imply that for a woman to love once is to love always, and that there is nothing so base, or mean, or cruel, but she will forgive the man on whom she has placed her affections. In the story mentioned above she has worked out this idea to an extent which, in many of its details, is simply revolting. Love is there described as a magnetic attraction, unresisted and irresistible, to which the heroine absolutely surrenders pride, reason, and conscience. Just the opposite kind of love is that which we find portrayed in 'Romola:' it is a love identical with the fullest belief in the truth and goodness of the beloved object, so that at the first realisation of moral obliquity the repulsion created extinguishes that love, although there is no outward severance of the marriage bond. This great novel closes with these significant words, which Romola addresses to Lillo, Tito's child, but not her own: "And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly, and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of man, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born!'" CHAPTER XII. HER POEMS. Few are the external events to be now recorded of George Eliot's life. The publication of her successive works forms the chief landmarks. But the year 1865 is distinguished by circumstances of some importance. In this year Mr. Lewes, after assisting to found the _Fortnightly Review_, assumed its editorship; and among the contributions to the first number of the new Review was a short article from the pen of George Eliot on Mr. Lecky's important work 'The Influence of Rationalism.' In the course of the same year Mr. and Mrs. Lewes moved from 16 Blandford Square to the Priory, a commodious house in North Bank, St. John's Wood, which has come to be intimately associated with the memory of George Eliot. Here, in the pleasant dwelling-rooms decorated by Owen Jones, might be met, at her Sunday afternoon receptions, some of the most eminent men in literature, art, and science. For the rest, her life flowed on its even tenor, its routine being rigidly regulated. The morning till lunch time was invariably devoted to writing: in the afternoon she either went out for a quiet drive of about two hours, or she took a walk with Lewes in Regent's Park. There the strange-looking couple--she with a certain weird, sibylline air, he not unlike some unkempt Polish refugee of vivacious manners--might be seen, swinging their arms, as they hurried along at a pace as rapid and eager as their talk. Besides these walks, George Eliot's chief recreation consisted in frequenting concerts and picture galleries. To music she was passionately devoted, hardly ever failing to attend at the Saturday afternoon concerts at St. James's Hall, besides frequenting various musical réunions, such as the following extract from one of her letters will show: "The other night we went to hear the Bach choir--a society of ladies and gentlemen got together by Jenny Lind, who sings in the middle of them, her husband acting as conductor. It is pretty to see people who might be nothing but simply fashionables taking pains to sing fine music in tune and time, with more or less success. One of the baritones we know is a G----, who used to be a swell guardsman, and has happily taken to good courses while still quite young. Another is a handsome young G----, not of the unsatisfactory Co., but of the R---- G---- kin. A soprano is Mrs. P----, wife of the Queen's Secretary, General P----, the granddaughter of Earl Grey, and just like him in the face--and so on. These people of 'high' birth are certainly reforming themselves a little." She likewise never omitted to visit the "Exhibition of Old Masters" at Burlington House. To most people few things exercise so great a strain on their mental and physical powers of endurance as the inspection of a picture gallery, with its incessant appeal to the most concentrated attention. Yet, in spite of physical weakness, George Eliot possessed such inexhaustible mental energy that she could go on, hour after hour, looking with the same unflagging interest at whatever possessed any claim to attention, tiring out even vigorous men that were in her company. In her works the allusions to art are much less frequent than to music; but from a few hints here and there, it is possible to form some idea of her taste, one very significant passage in 'Adam Bede' showing her peculiar love of Dutch paintings, and her readiness to turn without shrinking "from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flowerpot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her." Another favourite resort of George Eliot's was the Zoological Gardens. She went there a great deal to study the animals, and was particularly fond of the "poor dear ratel" that used to turn somersaults. In fact her knowledge of, and sympathy with, animals was as remarkable as that which she showed for human nature. Thus she astonished a gentleman farmer by drawing attention to the fine points of his horses. Her intimate acquaintance with the dog comes out in a thousand touches in her novels, and her humorous appreciation of little pigs led her to watch them attentively, and to pick out some particular favourite in every litter. In her country rambles, too, she was fond of turning over stones to inspect the minute insect life teeming in moist, dark places; and she was as interested as Lewes himself in the creatures, frogs, etc., he kept for scientific purposes, and which would sometimes, like the frog in the fairy tale, surprise the household by suddenly making their entrance into the dining-room. Her liking for the "poor brutes," as she calls them, had its origin no doubt in the same source of profound pity which she feels for "the twists and cracks" of imperfect human beings. Her evenings were usually passed at home, and spent in reading, or in playing and singing; but she and Lewes used to go to the theatre on any occasion of special interest, as when Salvini appeared in 'Othello,' a performance attended repeatedly by both with enthusiastic delight. Otherwise they rarely left home, seldom visiting at other people's houses, although they made an exception in the case of a favoured few. They were both fond of travelling, and, whenever it was possible, would take trips to the Continent, or seek some quiet English rural retreat away from the sleepless tumult of London. "For," says Lewes incidentally in a letter, "Mrs. Lewes never seems at home except under a broad sweep of sky and the _greenth_ of the uplands round her." So we find them frequently contriving a change of scene; and the visits to foreign countries, the pleasant sauntering on long summer days through Continental towns, "dozing round old cathedrals," formed delightful episodes in George Eliot's strenuously active life. The residence in Germany in 1854, and again in 1858, has already been alluded to. Now, in the year 1865, they paid a short visit to France, in the course of which they saw Normandy, Brittany, and Touraine, returning much refreshed at the beginning of the autumn. Two years afterwards they went to Spain, a country that must have possessed a peculiar interest for both; for in 1846 Lewes had published a charming, if one-sided, little book on 'The Spanish Drama,' with especial reference to Lope de Vega and Calderon; and in 1864, only a year after the appearance of 'Romola,' George Eliot produced the first draught of 'The Spanish Gypsy.' On becoming personally acquainted with this land of "old romance," however, her impressions were so far modified and deepened that she re-wrote and amplified her poem, which was not published till 1868. The subject of the gypsies was probably suggested to George Eliot by her own memorable adventure in childhood, which thus became the germ of a very impressive poem. Be that as it may, it is worth noticing that the conception of 'The Spanish Gypsy' should have followed so closely on the completion of the Italian novel, both being foreign subjects, belonging to much the same period of history. In both the novelist has departed from her habitual track, seeking for "pastures new" in a foreign soil. After inculcating on the artist the desirability of giving "the loving pains of a life to the faithful representation of commonplace things," she remarks in 'Adam Bede' that "there are few prophets in the world, few sublimely beautiful women, few heroes," and that we cannot afford to give all our love and reverence to such rarities. But having followed this rule, and given the most marvellously truthful delineations of her fellow-men as they are ordinarily to be met with, she now also felt prompted to draw the exceptional types of human character, the rare prophets, and the sublime heroes. To her friend Miss Simcox, George Eliot one day mentioned a plan of giving "the world an ideal portrait of an actual character in history, whom she did not name, but to whom she alluded as an object of possible reverence unmingled with disappointment." This idea was never carried out, but at any rate Dinah Morris, Savonarola, Zarca, and Mordecai are all exceptional beings--beings engrossed by an impersonal aim, having the spiritual or national regeneration of their fellow-men for its object. Dinah and Savonarola are more of the nature of prophets; Zarca and Mordecai of that of patriots. Among these the fair Methodist preacher, whose yearning piety is only a more sublimated love of her kind, is the most vividly realised; while Mordecai, the patriot of an ideal country, is but the abstraction of a man, entirely wanting in that indefinable solidity of presentation which gives a life of its own to the creations of art. On the whole, Zarca, the gipsy chief, is perhaps the most vividly drawn of George Eliot's purely ideal characters--characters which never have the flesh-and-blood reality of her Mrs. Poysers, her Silas Marners, and her dear little Totties and Eppies. Yet there is an unmistakable grandeur and power of invention in the heroic figure of Zarca, although, in spite of this power, we miss the convincing stamp of reality in him, and not only in him, but more or less in all the characters of the 'Spanish Gypsy.' George Eliot's feeling for the extraordinary and romantic was very subordinate to that which she entertained for the more familiar aspects of our life. For, although she here chose one of the most romantic of periods and localities, the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, with the mingled horror and magnificence of its national traditions, she does not really succeed in resuscitating the spirit which animated those devout, cruel, fanatical, but ultra-picturesque times. The Castilian noble, the Jewish astrologer, Zarca, and the Spanish Inquisitor, even the bright, gloriously-conceived Fedalma herself, think and speak too much like sublimated modern positivists. For example, would, could, or should any gipsy of the fifteenth century have expressed himself in the following terms: "Oh, it is a faith Taught by no priest, but by this beating heart: Faith to each other: the fidelity Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place, Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share The scanty water: the fidelity Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, The speech that even in lying tells the truth Of heritage inevitable as birth, Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel The mystic stirring of a common life Which makes the many one: fidelity To the consecrating oath our sponsor Fate Made through our infant breath when we were born The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. Fear thou that oath, my daughter--nay, not fear, But love it; for the sanctity of oaths Lies not in lightning that avenges them, But in the injury wrought by broken bonds And in the garnered good of human trust." The poetic mode of treatment corresponds to the exalted theme of the 'Spanish Gypsy,' a subject certainly more fitted for drama or romance rather than for the novel, properly so called. Nothing could apparently be better adapted for the purposes of a noble, historical poem than the conception of a great man such as Zarca, whose aim is nothing less than the fusion of the scattered, wandering, lawless gypsy tribes into one nation, with common traditions and a common country: the romantic incident of the discovery of his lost daughter in the affianced bride of Silva, Duke of Bedmar: the supreme conflict in Fedalma's breast between love and duty, her renunciation of happiness in order to cast in her lot with that of her outcast people: Silva's frantic grief, his desertion of his country, his religion, and all his solemn responsibilities to turn gypsy for Fedalma's sake, and having done so, his agony of remorse on seeing the fortress committed to his trust taken by the gypsies he has joined, his dearest friends massacred, his nearest of kin, Isidor, the inquisitor, hanged before his very eyes, a sight so maddening that, hardly conscious of his act, he slays Zarca, and so divides himself for ever, by an impassable gulf, from the woman for whose sake he had turned apostate. Clearly a subject containing the highest capabilities, and, if great thoughts constituted a great poem, this should be one of the greatest. But with all its high merits, its sentiments imbued with rare moral grandeur, its felicitous descriptions, the work lacks that best and incommunicable gift which comes by nature to the poet. Here, as in her novels, we find George Eliot's instinctive insight into the primary passions of the human heart, her wide sympathy and piercing keenness of vision; but her thoughts, instead of being naturally winged with melody, seem mechanically welded into song. This applies to all her poetic work, although some of it, especially the 'Legend of Jubal,' reaches a much higher degree of metrical and rhythmical excellence. But although George Eliot's poems cannot be considered on a par with her prose, they possess a distinctive interest, and should be carefully studied by all lovers of her genius, as affording a more intimate insight into the working of her own mind. Nowhere do we perceive so clearly as here the profound sadness of her view of life; nowhere does she so emphatically reiterate the stern lesson of the duty of resignation and self-sacrifice; or that other doctrine that the individual is bound absolutely to subordinate his personal happiness to the social good, that he has no rights save the right of fulfilling his obligations to his age, his country, and his family. This idea is perhaps more completely incorporated in Fedalma than in any other of her characters--Fedalma, who seems so bountifully endowed with the fullest measure of beauty, love and happiness, that her renunciation may be the more absolute. She who, in her young joy suddenly knows herself as "an aged sorrow," exclaiming: "I will not take a heaven Haunted by shrieks of far-off misery. This deed and I have ripened with the hours: It is a part of me--a wakened thought That, rising like a giant, masters me, And grows into a doom. O mother life, That seemed to nourish me so tenderly, Even in the womb you vowed me to the fire, Hung on my soul the burden of men's hopes, And pledged me to redeem!--I'll pay the debt. You gave me strength that I should pour it all Into this anguish. I can never shrink Back into bliss--my heart has grown too big With things that might be." This sacrifice is the completer for being without hope; for not counting "on aught but being faithful;" for resting satisfied in such a sublime conviction as-- "The grandest death, to die in vain--for love Greater than sways the forces of the world." Limit forbids me dwell longer on this poem, which contains infinite matter for discussion, yet some of the single passages are so full of fine thoughts felicitously expressed that it would be unfair not to allude to them. Such a specimen as this exposition of the eternal dualism between the Hellenic and the Christian ideals, of which Heine was the original and incomparable expounder, should not be left unnoted: "For evermore With grander resurrection than was feigned Of Attila's fierce Huns, the soul of Greece Conquers the bulk of Persia. The maimed form Of calmly-joyous beauty, marble-limbed, Yet breathing with the thought that shaped its limbs, Looks mild reproach from out its opened grave At creeds of terror; and the vine-wreathed god Fronts the pierced Image with the crown of thorns." And again how full of deep mysterious suggestion is this line-- "Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken." And this grand saying-- "What times are little? To the sentinel That hour is regal when he mounts on guard." Quotations of this kind might be indefinitely multiplied; while showing that exaltation of thought properly belonging to poetry, they at the same time indubitably prove to the delicately-attuned ear the absence of that subtle intuitive music, that "linked sweetness" of sound and sense which is the birthright of poets. If an intimate and profound acquaintance with the laws and structure of metre could bestow this quality, which appertains to the elemental, George Eliot's verse ought to have achieved the highest success. For in mere technical knowledge concerning rhyme, assonance, alliteration, and the manipulation of blank verse according to the most cunning distribution of pauses, she could hold her own with the foremost contemporary poets, being no doubt far more versed than either Shelley or Byron in the laws governing these matters. How incalculable she felt the poet's influence to be, and how fain she would have had him wield this influence only for the loftiest ends, is well shown in a beautiful letter, hitherto unpublished, now possessing an added pathos as addressed to one who has but lately departed, at the very time when his rare poetic gifts were beginning to be more widely recognised. James Thomson, the author of "The City of Dreadful Night," a poem which appeared first in the pages of the 'National Reformer,' with the signature of "B. V.," was thus addressed by George Eliot: "DEAR POET,--I cannot rest satisfied without telling you that my mind responds with admiration to the distinct vision and grand utterance in the poem which you have been so good as to send me. "Also, I trust that an intellect informed by so much passionate energy as yours will soon give us more heroic strains, with a wider embrace of human fellowship, such as will be to the labourers of the world what, the Odes of Tyrtæus were to the Spartans, thrilling them with the sublimity of the social order and the courage of resistance to all that would dissolve it. To accept life and write much fine poetry, is to take a very large share in the quantum of human good, and seems to draw with it necessarily some recognition, affectionate, and even joyful, of the manifold willing labours which have made such a lot possible." These words are of peculiar interest, because, although the writer of them is almost as much of a pessimist as its recipient, they are so with a difference. The pessimism of "The City of Dreadful Night," in its blank hopelessness, paralyses the inmost nerve of life by isolating the individual in cold obstruction. Whereas George Eliot, while recognising to the utmost "the burthen of a world, where even the sunshine has a heart of care," insists the more on the fact that this common suffering binds man more indissolubly to man; that so far from justifying him in ending his life "when he will," the groaning and travailing generations exact that he should stand firm at his post, regardless of personal consideration or requital, so long only as he can help towards making the fate of his fellow mortals less heavy for them to bear. In fact, the one is a theory of life, the other a disease of the soul. The same stoic view, in a different form, finds expression in this answer to a dear friend's query: "I cannot quite agree that it is hard to see what has been the good of your life. It seems to me very clear that you have been a good of a kind that would have been sorely missed by those who have been nearest to you, and also by some who are more distant. And it is this kind of good which must reconcile us to life, and not any answer to the question, 'What would the universe have been without me?' The point one has to care for is, 'Are A, B, and C the better for me?' And there are several letters of the alphabet that could not have easily spared you in the past, and that can still less spare you in the present." This lesson of resignation, which is enforced more and more stringently in her writings, is again dwelt upon with peculiar emphasis in the interesting dramatic sketch entitled 'Armgart.' The problem here is not unlike that in 'Silas Marner.' It is that of an individual, in exceptional circumstances, brought back to the average condition of humanity; but whereas Silas, having sunk below the common standard, is once more united to his fellow-men by love, the magnificently endowed Armgart, who seems something apart and above the crowd, is reduced to the level of the undistinguished million by the loss of her peerless voice. 'Armgart' is the single instance, excepting, perhaps, the Princess Halm-Eberstein, where George Eliot has attempted to depict the woman-artist, to whom life's highest object consists in fame-- "The benignant strength of one, transformed To joy of many." But in the intoxicating flush of success, the singer, who has refused the love of _one_ for that "sense transcendent which can taste the joy of swaying multitudes," loses her glorious gift, and so sinks irretrievably to a "drudge among the crowd." In the first delirium of despair she longs to put an end to herself, "sooner than bear the yoke of thwarted life;" but is painfully startled from her defiant mood by the indignant query of Walpurga, her humble cousin-- "Where is the rebel's right for you alone? Noble rebellion lifts a common load; But what is he who flings his own load off And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right? Say rather the deserter's. Oh, you smiled From your clear height on all the million lots Which yet you brand as abject." It may seem singular that having once, in 'Armgart,' drawn a woman of the highest artistic aims and ambitions, George Eliot should imply that what is most valuable in her is not the exceptional gift, but rather that part of her nature which she shares with ordinary humanity. This is, however, one of her leading beliefs, and strongly contrasts her, as a teacher, with Carlyle. To the author of 'Hero Worship' the promiscuous mass--moiling and toiling as factory hands and artisans, as miners and labourers--only represents so much raw material, from which is produced that final result and last triumph of the combination of human forces--the great statesman, great warrior, great poet, and so forth. To George Eliot, on the contrary--and this is the democratic side of her nature--it is the multitude, so charily treated by destiny, which claims deepest sympathy and tenderest compassion; so that all greatness, in her eyes, is not a privilege, but a debt, which entails on its possessor a more strenuous effort, a completer devotion to the service of average humanity. CHAPTER XIII. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH. In 'Felix Holt,' which was published in 1866, George Eliot returned once more to her own peculiar field, where she stands supreme and unrivalled--the novel of English provincial life. This work, which, however, is not equal to her earlier or later fictions, yet possesses a double interest for us. It is the only one of her writings from which its author's political views may be inferred, if we exclude a paper published in _Blackwood's Magazine_ in January 1868, which, indeed, seems to be part of the novel, seeing that it is entitled, "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt." The paper contains, in a more direct and concise form, precisely the same general views as regards the principles of government which were previously enunciated through Felix the Radical. It was an appeal to the operative classes who had been only recently enfranchised by the Reform Bill. Its advice is mainly to the effect that genuine political and social improvements, to be durable, must be the result of inward change rather than of outward legislation. The writer insists on the futility of the belief that beneficial political changes can be effected by revolutionary measures. She points out the necessity of a just discrimination between what is curable in the body politic and what has to be endured. She dwells once again, with solemn insistence, on the "aged sorrow," the inheritance of evil transmitted from generation to generation, an evil too intimately entwined with the complex conditions of society to be violently uprooted, but only to be gradually eradicated by the persistent cultivation of knowledge, industry, judgment, sobriety, and patience. "This is only one example," she says, "of the law by which human lives are linked together; another example of what we complain of when we point to our pauperism, to the brutal ignorance of multitudes among our fellow-countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on us by blamable wars, to the wasteful channels made for the public money, to the expense and trouble of getting justice, and call these the effects of bad rule. This is the law that we all bear the yoke of; the law of no man's making, and which no man can undo. Everybody now sees an example of it in the case of Ireland. We who are living now are sufferers by the wrong-doing of those who lived before us; we are sufferers by each other's wrong-doing; and the children who come after us will be sufferers from the same causes." To remedy this long-standing wrong-doing and suffering, so argues Felix Holt, is not in the power of any one measure, class, or period. It would be childish folly to expect any Reform Bill to possess the magical property whereby a sudden social transformation could be accomplished. On the contrary, abrupt transitions should be shunned as dangerous to order and law, which alone are certain to insure a steady collective progress; the only means to this end consisting in the general spread of education, to secure which, at least for his children, the working man should spare no pains. Without knowledge, the writer continues, no political measures will be of any benefit, ignorance with or without vote always of necessity engendering vice and misery. But, guided by a fuller knowledge, the working classes would be able to discern what sort of men they should choose for their representatives, and instead of electing "platform swaggerers, who bring us nothing but the ocean to make our broth with," they would confide the chief power to the hands of the truly wise, those who know how to regulate life "according to the truest principles mankind is in possession of." The "Felix Holt" of the story is described by George Eliot as shaping his actions much according to the ideas which are here theoretically expressed. His knowledge and aptitude would enable him to choose what is considered a higher calling. But he scorns the vulgar ambition called "getting on in the world;" his sense of fellowship prompting him to remain a simple artisan that he may exert an elevating influence on the class to which he belongs. Class differences, so argues this Radical-Conservative, being inherent in the constitution of society, it becomes something of a desertion to withdraw what abilities one may have from the medium where they are urgently needed, in order to join, for the sake of selfish aims, some other body of men where they may be superfluous. The other distinctive feature of 'Felix Holt' consists in its elaborate construction, ranking it, so to speak, amongst sensation novels. As a rule, George Eliot's stories have little or no plot, the incidents seeming not so much invented by the writer for the sake of producing an effective work, as to be the natural result of the friction between character and circumstance. This simplicity of narrative belongs, no doubt, to the highest class of novel, the class to which 'The Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Waverley,' and 'Vanity Fair' belong. In 'Felix Holt,' however, the intricate network of incident in which the characters seem to be enmeshed, is not unlike the modern French art of story-telling, with its fertility of invention, as is also the strangely repellent intrigue which forms the nucleus of the whole. All the elements which go to make up a thrilling narrative--such as a dubious inheritance, the disappearance of the rightful claimant, a wife's guilty secret, the involvements of the most desperate human fates in a perplexing coil through sin and error--are interwoven in this story of 'Felix Holt the Radical.' Though ingeniously invented, the different incidents seem not so much naturally to have grown the one from the other as to be constructed with too conscious a seeking for effect. There is something forced, uneasy, and inadequate in the laborious contrivance of fitting one set of events on to another, and the machinery of the disputed Transome claim is so involved that the reader never masters the "ins" and "outs" of that baffling mystery. Still, the groundwork of the story is deeply impressive: its interest is, notwithstanding the complex ramification of events, concentrated with much power upon a small group of personages, such as Mrs. Transome, her son Harold, the little dissenting minister, Rufus Lyon, Esther, and Felix Holt. Here, as elsewhere, the novelist reveals the potent qualities of her genius. Not only does this story contain such genuine humorous portraiture as the lachrymose Mrs. Holt, and the delightfully quaint Job Tudge, but it is also enriched by some descriptions of rural scenery and of homely existence in remote country districts as admirable as any to be found in her writings. Rufus Lyon is a worthy addition to that long gallery of clerical portraits which are among the triumphs of George Eliot's art. This "singular-looking apostle of the meeting in Skipper's Lane"--with his rare purity of heart, his unworldliness, his zeal in the cause of dissent, his restless argumentative spirit, and the moving memories of romance and passion hidden beneath the odd, quaint _physique_ of the little minister encased in rusty black--is among the most loving and lovable of characters, and recalls more particularly that passage in the poem entitled 'A Minor Prophet,' which I cannot but think one of the author's finest, the passage beginning-- "The pathos exquisite of lovely minds Hid in harsh forms--not penetrating them Like fire divine within a common bush Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest, So that men put their shoes off; but encaged Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell, Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars, But having shown a little dimpled hand, Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls." Esther, on the other hand, is one of those fortunate beings whose lovely mind is lodged in a form of corresponding loveliness. This charming Esther, though not originally without her feminine vanities and worldly desires, is one of those characters dear to George Eliot's heart, who renounce the allurements of an easy pleasurable existence for the higher satisfactions of a noble love or a nobler ideal. It is curious to notice that Eppie, Esther, Fedalma, and Daniel Deronda are all children that have been reared in ignorance of their real parentage, and that to all of them there comes a day when a more or less difficult decision has to be made, when for good or evil they have to choose, once for all, between two conflicting claims. Like Eppie, Esther rejects the advantages of birth and fortune, and elects to share the hard but dignified life of the high-minded Felix. But this decision in her case shows even higher moral worth, because by nature she is so keenly susceptible to the delicate refinements and graceful elegancies which are the natural accompaniment of rank and wealth. The most curious feature of this book consists, perhaps, in its original treatment of illicit passion. Novelists, as a rule, when handling this subject, depict its fascinations in brilliant contrast to the sufferings and terrors which follow in its train. But George Eliot contents herself with showing us the reverse side of the medal. Youth has faded, joy is dead, love has turned to loathing, yet memory, like a relentless fury, pursues the grey-haired Mrs. Transome, who hides within her breast such a heavy load of shame and dread. The power and intensity with which this character of the haughty, stern, yet inwardly quailing woman is drawn are unsurpassed in their way, and there is tragic horror in the recoil of her finest sensibilities from the vulgar, mean, self-complacent lawyer, too thick-skinned ever to know that in his own person he is a daily judgment on her whose life has been made hideous for his sake. Never more impressively than here does the novelist enforce her teaching that the deed follows the doer, being imbued with an incalculable vitality of its own, shaping all after life, and subduing to its guise the nature that is in bondage to it. Like those fabled dragon's teeth planted by Cadmus, which spring up again as armed men, spreading discord and ruin, so a man's evil actions seem endowed with independent volition, and their consequences extend far beyond the individual life where they originated. If 'Felix Holt' is the most intricately constructed of George Eliot's novels, 'Middlemarch,' which appeared five years afterwards, is, on the other hand, a story without a plot. In fact, it seems hardly appropriate to call it a novel. Like Hogarth's serial pictures representing the successive stages in their progress through life of certain typical characters, so in this book there is unrolled before us, not so much the history of any particular individual, as a whole phase of society portrayed with as daring and uncompromising a fidelity to Nature as that of Hogarth himself. In 'Middlemarch,' English provincial life in the first half of the nineteenth century is indelibly fixed in words "holding a universe impalpable" for the apprehension and delight of the furthest generations of English-speaking nations. Here, as in some kind of panorama, sections of a community and groups of character pass before the mind's eye. To dwell on the separate, strongly-individualised figures which constitute this great crowd would be impossible within the present limits. But from the county people such as the Brookes and Chettams, to respectable middle-class families of the Vincy and Garth type, down to the low, avaricious, harpy-tribes of the Waules and Featherstones, every unit of this complex social agglomeration is described with a life-like vividness truly amazing, when the number and variety of the characters especially are considered. I know not where else in literature to look for a work which leaves such a strong impression on the reader's mind of the intertexture of human lives. Seen thus in perspective, each separate individuality, with its specialised consciousness, is yet as indissolubly connected with the collective life as that of the indistinguishable zoophyte which is but a sentient speck necessarily moved by the same vital agency which stirs the entire organism. Among the figures which stand out most prominently from the crowded background are Dorothea, Lydgate, Casaubon, Rosamond Vincy, Ladislaw, Bulstrode, Caleb, and Mary Garth. Dorothea belongs to that stately type of womanhood, such as Romola and Fedalma, a type which seems to be specifically George Eliot's own, and which has perhaps more in common with such Greek ideals as Antigone and Iphigenia, than with more modern heroines. But Dorothea, however lofty her aspirations, has not the Christian heroism of Romola, or the antique devotion of Fedalma. She is one of those problematic natures already spoken of; ill-adjusted to her circumstances, and never quite adjusting circumstances to herself. It is true that her high aims and glorious possibilities are partially stifled by a social medium where there seems no demand for them: still the resolute soul usually finds some way in which to work out its destiny. "Many 'Theresas'" says George Eliot, "have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet, and sank unwept into oblivion. With dim lights and tangled circumstance they tried to shape their thought and deed in noble agreement; but, after all, to common eyes, their struggles seemed mere inconsistency and formlessness; for these later-born 'Theresas' were helped by no coherent social faith and order which could perform the function of knowledge for the ardently willing soul. "Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women; if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of woman might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure, and the favourite love stories in prose and verse." Such a life of mistakes is that of the beautiful Dorothea, the ill-starred wife of Casaubon. In his way the character of Casaubon is as great a triumph as that of Tito himself. The novelist seems to have crept into the inmost recesses of that uneasy consciousness, to have probed the most sensitive spots of that diseased vanity, and to lay bare before our eyes the dull labour of a brain whose ideas are stillborn. In an article by Mr. Myers it is stated, however incredible it may sound, that an undiscriminating friend once condoled with George Eliot on the melancholy experience which, from her knowledge of Lewes, had taught her to depict the gloomy character of Casaubon; whereas, in fact, there could not be a more striking contrast than that between the pedant groping amid dim fragments of knowledge, and the vivacious littérateur and thinker with his singular mental energy and grasp of thought. On the novelist's laughingly assuring him that such was by no means the case, "From whom, then," persisted he, "did you draw 'Casaubon'?" With a humorous solemnity, which was quite in earnest, she pointed to her own heart. She confessed, on the other hand, having found the character of Rosamond Vincy difficult to sustain, such complacency of egoism, as has been pointed out, being alien to her own habit of mind. But she laid no claim to any such natural magnanimity as could avert Casaubon's temptations of jealous vanity, and bitter resentment. If there is any character in whom one may possibly trace some suggestions of Lewes, it is in the versatile, brilliant, talented Ladislaw, who held, that while genius must have the utmost play for its spontaneity, it may await with confidence "those messages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work, only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances." But however charming, the impression Ladislaw produces is that of a somewhat shallow, frothy character, so that he seems almost as ill-fitted for Dorothea as the dreary Casaubon himself. Indeed the heroine's second marriage seems almost as much a failure as the stultifying union of Lydgate with Rosamond Vincy, and has altogether a more saddening effect than the tragic death of Maggie, which is how much less pitiful than that death in life of the fashionable doctor, whose best aims and vital purposes have been killed by his wife. Much might be said of Bulstrode, the sanctimonious hypocrite, who is yet not altogether a hypocrite, but has a vein of something resembling goodness running through his crafty character; of Farebrother, the lax, amiable, genuinely honourable vicar of St. Botolph's; of Mrs. Cadwallader, the glib-tongued, witty, meddling rector's wife, a kind of Mrs. Poyser of high life; of Caleb Garth, whose devotion to work is a religion, and whose likeness to Mr. Robert Evans has already been pointed out; of the wholehearted, sensible Mary, and of many other supremely vivid characters, whom to do justice to would carry us too far. 'Middlemarch' is the only work of George Eliot's, I believe, in which there is a distinct indication of her attitude towards the aspirations and clearly formulated demands of the women of the nineteenth century. Her many sarcastic allusions to the stereotyped theory about woman's sphere show on which side her sympathies were enlisted. On the whole, she was more partial to the educational movement than to that other agitation which aims at securing the political enfranchisement of women. How sincerely she had the first at heart is shown by the donation of 50l. "From the author of 'Romola,'" when Girton College was first started. And in a letter to a young lady who studied there, and in whose career she was much interested, she says, "the prosperity of Girton is very satisfactory." Among her most intimate friends, too, were some of the ladies who had initiated and organised the Women's Suffrage movement. Likewise writing to Miss Phelps, she alludes to the Woman's Lectureship in Boston, and remarks concerning the new University: "An office that may make a new precedent in social advance, and which is at the very least an experiment that ought to be tried. America is the seed-ground and nursery of new ideals, where they can grow in a larger, freer air than ours." In 1871, the year when 'Middlemarch' was appearing in parts, George Eliot spent part of the spring and summer months at Shottermill, a quaint Hampshire village situated amid a landscape that unites beauties of the most varied kind. Here we may imagine her and Mr. Lewes, after their day's work was done, either seeking the vast stretch of heath and common only bounded by the horizon, or strolling through the deep-sunk lanes, or finding a soothing repose in "places of nestling green for poets made." They had rented Brookbank, an old-fashioned cottage with tiled roof and lattice-paned windows, belonging to Mrs. Gilchrist, the widow of the distinguished biographer of William Blake. The description of Mrs. Meyrick's house in 'Daniel Deronda' "where the narrow spaces of wall held a world-history in scenes and heads," may have been suggested by her present abode, rich in original drawings by Blake, and valuable prints, and George Eliot writes: "If I ever steal anything in my life, I think it will be the two little Sir Joshuas over the drawing-room mantelpiece." At this time she and Mr. Lewes also found intense interest in reading the 'Life of Blake.' Some correspondence, kindly placed at my disposal by Mrs. Gilchrist, passed between this lady and the Leweses in connection with the letting of the house, giving interesting glimpses into the domesticities of the latter. Their habits here, as in London, were of clockwork regularity, household arrangements being expected to run on wheels. "Everything," writes George Eliot, "goes on slowly at Shottermill, and the mode of narration is that typified in 'This is the house that Jack built.' But there is an exquisite stillness in the sunshine and a sense of distance from London hurry, which encourages the growth of patience. "Mrs. G----'s" (their one servant) "pace is proportionate to the other slownesses, but she impresses me as a worthy person, and her cooking--indeed, all her attendance on us--is of satisfactory quality. But we find the awkwardness of having only one person in the house, as well as the advantage (this latter being quietude). The butcher does not bring the meat, everybody grudges selling new milk, eggs are scarce, and an expedition we made yesterday in search of fowls, showed us nothing more hopeful than some chickens six weeks old, which the good woman observed were sometimes 'eaten by the gentry with asparagus.' Those eccentric people, the gentry! "But have we not been reading about the siege of Paris all the winter, and shall we complain while we get excellent bread and butter and many etceteras?... Mrs. S---- kindly sent us a dish of asparagus, which we ate (without the skinny chicken) and had a feast. "You will imagine that we are as fond of eating as Friar Tuck--I am enlarging so on our commissariat. But you will also infer that we have no great evils to complain of, since I make so much of the small." George Eliot rarely went out in the day-time during her stay at Shottermill, but in the course of her rambles she would sometimes visit such cottagers in remote places as were not likely to know who she was. She used also to go and see a farmer's wife living at a short distance from Brookbank, with whom she would freely chat about the growth of fruits and vegetables and the quality of butter, much to the astonishment of the simple farm people. Speaking of her recollection of the great novelist to an American lady by whom these facts are recorded, the old countrywoman remarked: "It were wonderful, just wonderful, the sight o' green peas that I sent down to that gentleman and lady every week." After the lapse of a few months spent in this sweet rural retreat, George Eliot again writes to Mrs. Gilchrist: "I did not imagine that I should ever be so fond of the place as I am now. The departure of the bitter winds, some improvement in my health, and the gradual revelation of fresh and fresh beauties in the scenery, especially under a hopeful sky such as we have sometimes had--all these conditions have made me love our little world here, and wish not to quit it until we can settle in our London home. I have the regret of thinking that it was my original indifference about it (I hardly ever like things until they are familiar) that hindered us from securing the cottage until the end of September." George Eliot's conscientiousness and precision in the small affairs of life are exemplified in her last note to Mrs. Gilchrist: "After Mr. Lewes had written to you, I was made aware that a small dessert or bread-and-butter dish had been broken. That arch-sinner, the cat, was credited with the guilt. I am assured by Mrs. G---- that nothing else has been injured during her reign, and Mrs. L---- confirmed the statement to me yesterday. I wish I could replace the unfortunate dish.... This note, of course, needs no answer, and it is intended simply to make me a clean breast about the crockery." About this time George Eliot was very much out of health: indeed, both she and Lewes repeatedly speak of themselves as "two nervous, dyspeptic creatures, two ailing, susceptible bodies," to whom slight inconveniences are injurious and upsetting. Although it was hot summer weather, Mrs. Lewes suffered much from cold, sitting always with artificial heat to her feet. One broiling day in August, after she had left Brookbank, and taken another place in the neighbourhood, an acquaintance happening to call on her, found her sitting in the garden writing, as was her wont, her head merely shaded by a deodara, on the lawn. Being expostulated with by her visitor for her imprudence in exposing herself to the full blaze of the midday sun, she replied, "Oh, I like it! To-day is the first time I have felt warm this summer." They led a most secluded life, George Eliot being at this time engaged with the continuation of 'Middlemarch;' and Lewes, alluding to their solitary habits, writes at this date: "Work goes on smoothly away from all friendly interruptions. Lord Houghton says that it is incomprehensible how we can live in such Simeon Stylites fashion, as we often do, all alone--but the fact is we never _are_ alone when alone. And I sometimes marvel how it is I have contrived to get through so much work living in London. It's true I'm a London child." Occasionally, however, they would go and see Tennyson, whose house is only three miles from Shottermill, but the road being all uphill made the ride a little tedious and uncomfortable, especially to George Eliot who had not got over her old nervousness. The man who used to drive them on these occasions was so much struck by this that he told the lady who has recorded these details in the _Century Magazine_: "Withal her being such a mighty clever body, she were very nervous in a carriage--allays wanted to go on a smooth road, and seemed dreadful feared of being thrown out." On one of these occasional meetings with Tennyson, the poet got involved in a conversation with the novelist concerning evolution and such weighty questions. They had been walking together in close argument, and as the Poet-Laureate bade George Eliot farewell, he called to her, already making her way down the hill, "Well, good-by, you and your molecules!" And she, looking back, said in her deep low voice (which always got lower when she was at all roused), "I am quite content with my molecules." The country all around Shottermill with its breezy uplands, its pine-clad hills, its undulating tracts of land purpled with heath in the autumn, became more and more endeared to George Eliot, who, indeed, liked it better than any scenery in England. Here she could enjoy to the full that "sense of standing on a round world," which, she writes to Mrs. Gilchrist who had used the phrase, "was precisely what she most cared for amongst out-of-door delights." Some years afterwards we find her and Mr. Lewes permanently taking a house not far off, at Witley in Surrey, which has the same kind of beautiful open scenery. Writing from her town residence about it to her old friend Mrs. Bray, George Eliot says: "We, too, are thinking of a new settling down, for we have bought a house in Surrey about four miles from Godalming on a gravelly hill among the pine-trees, but with neighbours to give us a sense of security. Our present idea is that we shall part with this house and give up London except for occasional visits. We shall be on the same line of railway with some good friends at Weybridge and Guildford." CHAPTER XIV. DANIEL DERONDA. 'Daniel Deronda,' which appeared five years after 'Middlemarch,' occupies a place apart among George Eliot's novels. In the spirit which animates it, it has perhaps the closest affinity with the 'Spanish Gypsy.' Speaking of this work to a young friend of Jewish extraction (in whose career George Eliot felt keen interest), she expressed surprise at the amazement which her choice of a subject had created. "I wrote about the Jews," she remarked, "because I consider them a fine old race who have done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as I do for the Florentines. Only lately I have heard to my great satisfaction that an influential member of the Jewish community is going to start an emigration to Palestine. You will also be glad to learn that Helmholtz is a Jew." These observations are valuable as affording a key to the leading motive of 'Daniel Deronda.' Mordecai's ardent desire to found a new national state in Palestine is not simply the author's dramatic realisation of the feeling of an enthusiast, but expresses her own very definite sentiments on the subject. The Jewish apostle is, in fact, more or less the mouthpiece of George Eliot's own opinions on Judaism. For so great a master in the art of creating character, this type of the loftiest kind of man is curiously unreal. Mordecai delivers himself of the most eloquent and exalted views and sentiments, yet his own personality remains so vague and nebulous that it has no power of kindling the imagination. Mordecai is meant for a Jewish Mazzini. Within his consciousness he harbours the future of a people. He feels himself destined to become the saviour of his race; yet he does not convince us of his greatness. He convinces us no more than he does the mixed company at the "Hand and Banner," which listens with pitying incredulity to his passionate harangues. Nevertheless the first and final test of the religious teacher or of the social reformer is the magnetic force with which his own intense beliefs become binding on the consciences of others, if only of a few. It is true Mordecai secures one disciple--the man destined to translate his thought into action, Daniel Deronda, as shadowy, as puppet-like, as lifeless as Ezra Mordecai Cohen himself. These two men, of whom the one is the spiritual leader and the other the hero destined to realise his aspirations, are probably the two most unsuccessful of George Eliot's vast gallery of characters. They are the representatives of an idea, but the idea has never been made flesh. A succinct expression of it may be gathered from the following passage: "Which among the chief of the Gentile nations has not an ignorant multitude? They scorn our people's ignorant observance; but the most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance--sunk to the cunning greed of the fox, to which all law is no more than a trap or the cry of the worrying hound. There is a degradation deep down below the memory that has withered into superstition. For the multitude of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity the Lord of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking towards a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West; which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race, so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories." This notion that the Jews should return to Palestine in a body, and once more constitute themselves into a distinct nation, is curiously repugnant to modern feelings. As repugnant as that other doctrine, which is also implied in the book, that Jewish separateness should be still further insured by strictly adhering to their own race in marriage--at least Mirah, the most faultless of George Eliot's heroines, whose character expresses the noblest side of Judaism, "is a Jewess who will not accept any one but a Jew." Mirah Lapidoth and the Princess Halm-Eberstein, Deronda's mother, are drawn with the obvious purpose of contrasting two types of Jewish women. Whereas the latter, strictly brought up in the belief and most minute observances of her Hebrew father, breaks away from the "bondage of having been born a Jew," from which she wishes to relieve her son by parting from him in infancy, Mirah, brought up in disregard, "even in dislike of her Jewish origin," clings with inviolable tenacity to the memory of that origin and to the fellowship of her people. The author leaves one in little doubt as towards which side her own sympathies incline to. She is not so much the artist here, impartially portraying different kinds of characters, as the special pleader proclaiming that one set of motives are righteous, just, and praiseworthy, as well as that the others are mischievous and reprehensible. This seems carrying the principle of nationality to an extreme, if not pernicious length. If there were never any breaking up of old forms of society, any fresh blending of nationalities and races, we should soon reduce Europe to another China. This unwavering faithfulness to the traditions of the past may become a curse to the living. A rigidity as unnatural as it is dangerous would be the result of too tenacious a clinging to inherited memories. For if this doctrine were strictly carried out, such a country as America, where there is a slow amalgamation of many allied and even heterogeneous races into a new nation, would practically become impossible. Indeed, George Eliot does not absolutely hold these views. She considers them necessary at present in order to act as a drag to the too rapid transformations of society. In the most interesting paper of 'Theophrastus Such,' that called 'The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!' she remarks: "The tendency of things is towards quicker or slower fusion of races. It is impossible to arrest this tendency; all we can do is to moderate its course so as to hinder it from degrading the moral status of societies by a too rapid effacement of those national traditions and customs which are the language of the national genius--the deep suckers of healthy sentiment. Such moderating and guidance of inevitable movement is worthy of all effort." Considering that George Eliot was convinced of this modern tendency towards fusion, it is all the more singular that she should, in 'Daniel Deronda,' have laid such stress on the reconstruction, after the lapse of centuries, of a Jewish state; singular, when one considers that many of the most eminent Jews, so far from aspiring towards such an event, hardly seem to have contemplated it as a desirable or possible prospect. The sympathies of Spinoza, the Mendelssohns, Rahel, Meyerbeer, Heine, and many others, are not distinctively Jewish but humanitarian. And the grandest, as well as truest thing that has been uttered about them is that saying of Heine's: "The country of the Jews is the ideal, is God." Indeed, to have a true conception of Jewish nature and character, of its brilliant lights and deep shadows, of its pathos, depth, sublimity, degradation, and wit; of its infinite resource and boundless capacity for suffering--one must go to Heine and not to 'Daniel Deronda.' In 'Jehuda-ben-Halevy' Heine expresses the love and longing of a Jewish heart for Jerusalem in accents of such piercing intensity that compared with it, "Mordecai's" fervid desire fades into mere abstract rhetoric. Nature and experience were the principal sources of George Eliot's inspiration. And though she knew a great deal about the Jews, her experience had not become sufficiently incorporated with her consciousness. Otherwise, instead of portraying such tame models of perfection as Deronda and Mirah, she would have so mixed her colours as to give us that subtle involvement of motive and tendency--as of cross-currents in the sea--which we find in the characters of nature's making and in her own finest creations, such as Maggie, Silas Marner, Dorothea Casaubon, and others. In turning to the English portion of the story there is at once greater play of spontaneity in the people depicted. Grandcourt, Gascoigne, Rex, Mrs. Davilow, Sir Hugh Mallinger, and especially Gwendolen, show all the old cunning in the psychological rendering of human nature. Curiously enough, this novel consists of two perfectly distinct narratives; the only point of junction being Daniel Deronda himself, who, as a Jew by birth and an English gentleman by education, stands related to both sets of circumstances. The influence he exerts on the spiritual development of Gwendolen seems indeed the true _motif_ of the story. Otherwise there is no intrinsic connection between the group of people clustering round Mordecai, and that of which Gwendolen is the centre: unless it be that the author wished to show the greater intensity of aim and higher moral worth of the Jews as contrasted with these purposeless, worldly, unideal Christians of the nineteenth century. Compared with the immaculate Mirah, Gwendolen Harleth is a very naughty, spoiled, imperfect specimen of maidenhood. But she has life in her; and one speculates as to what she will say and do next, as if she were a person among one's acquaintances. On that account most readers of 'Daniel Deronda' find their interest engrossed by the fate of Gwendolen, and the conjugal relations between her and Grandcourt. This is so much the case, that one suspects her to have been the first idea of the story. She is at any rate its most attractive feature. In Gwendolen, George Eliot once remarked, she had wished to draw a girl of the period. Fascinating, accomplished, of siren-like beauty, she has every outward grace combined with a singular inward vacuity. The deeper aspects of life are undreamed of in her philosophy. Her religion consists in a vague awe of the unknown and invisible, and her ambition in the acquisition of rank, wealth, and personal distinction. She is selfish, vain, frivolous, worldly, domineering, yet not without sudden impulses of generosity, and jets of affection. Something there is in her of Undine before she had a soul--something of a gay, vivacious, unfeeling sprite, who recks nothing of human love or of human misery, but looks down with utter indifference on the poor humdrum mortals around her, whom she inspires at once with fear and fondness: something, also, of the "princess in exile, who in time of famine was to have her breakfast-roll made of the finest bolted flour from the seven thin ears of wheat, and in a general decampment was to have her silver fork kept out of the baggage." How this bewitching creature, whose "iridescence of character" makes her a psychological problem, is gradually brought to accept Henleigh Grandcourt, in spite of the promise she has given to Lydia Glasher (his discarded victim), and her own fleeting presentiments, is described with an analytical subtlety unsurpassed in George Eliot's works. So, indeed, is the whole episode of the married life of Grandcourt. This territorial magnate, who possesses every worldly advantage that Gwendolen desired, is worthy, as a study of character, to be placed beside that of Casaubon himself. Gwendolen's girlish type of egoism, which loves to be the centre of admiration, here meets with that far other deadlier form of an "exorbitant egoism," conspicuous for its intense obstinacy and tenacity of rule, "in proportion as the varied susceptibilities of younger years are stripped away." This cold, negative nature lies with a kind of withering blight on the susceptible Gwendolen. Roused from the complacent dreams of girlhood by the realities of her married life, shrinking in helpless repulsion from the husband whom she meant to manage, and who holds her as in a vice, the unhappy woman has nothing to cling to in this terrible inward collapse of her happiness, but the man, who, from the first moment when his eye arrests hers at the gaming table at Leubronn, becomes, as it were, a conscience visibly incarnate to her. This incident, which is told in the first chapter of the novel, recalls a sketch by Dante Rossetti, where Mary Magdalene, in the flush of joyous life, is held by the Saviour's gaze, and in a sudden revulsion from her old life, breaks away from companions that would fain hold her back, with a passionate movement towards the Man of Sorrow. This impressive conception may have unconsciously suggested a somewhat similar situation to the novelist, for that George Eliot was acquainted with this drawing is shown by the following letter addressed in 1870 to Dante Rossetti: "I have had time now to dwell on the photographs. I am especially grateful to you for giving me the head marked June 1861: it is exquisite. But I am glad to possess every one of them. The subject of the Magdalene rises in interest for me, the more I look at it. I hope you will keep in the picture an equally passionate type for her. Perhaps you will indulge me with a little talk about the modifications you intend to introduce." The relation of Deronda to Gwendolen is of a Christlike nature. He is her only moral hold in the fearful temptations that assail her now and again under the intolerable irritations of her married life, temptations which grow more urgent when Grandcourt leads his wife captive, after his fashion, in a yacht on the Mediterranean. For "the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, which compels to silence, and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the detested object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance, with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect--rather with the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with dread of her husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse." The evil wish at last finds fulfilment, the murderous thought is outwardly realised. And though death is not eventually the result of the criminal desire, it yet seems to the unhappy wife as if it had a determining power in bringing about the catastrophe. But it is precisely this remorse which is the redeeming quality of her nature, and awakens a new life within her. In this quickening of the moral consciousness through guilt we are reminded, although in a different manner, of a similar process, full of pregnant suggestions, described in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'Transformation.' It will be remembered that Donatello leads a purely instinctive, that is to say animal, existence, till the commission of a crime awakens the dormant conscience, and a soul is born in the throes of anguish and remorse. In 'Daniel Deronda' there is an entire absence of that rich, genial humour which seemed spontaneously to bubble up and overflow her earlier works. Whether George Eliot's conception of the Jews as a peculiarly serious race had any share in bringing about that result, it is difficult to say. At any rate, in one of her essays she remarks that, "The history and literature of the ancient Hebrews gives the idea of a people who went about their business and pleasure as gravely as a society of beavers." Certainly Mordecai, Deronda, and Mirah, are preternaturally solemn; even the Cohen family are not presented with any of those comic touches one would have looked for in this great humorist; only in the boy Jacob are there gleams of drollery, such as in this description of him by Hans Meyrick: "He treats me with the easiest familiarity, and seems in general to look at me as a second-hand Christian commodity, likely to come down in price; remarking on my disadvantages with a frankness which seems to imply some thoughts of future purchase. It is pretty, though, to see the change in him if Mirah happens to come in. He turns child suddenly--his age usually strikes one as being like the Israelitish garments in the desert, perhaps near forty, yet with an air of recent production." A certain subdued vein of humour is not entirely absent from the portraiture of the Meyrick family, a delightful group, who "had their little oddities, streaks of eccentricity from the mother's blood as well as the father's, their minds being like mediæval houses with unexpected recesses and openings from this into that, flights of steps, and sudden outlooks." But on the whole, instead of the old humour, we find in 'Daniel Deronda' a polished irony and epigrammatic sarcasm, which were afterwards still more fully developed in the 'Impressions of Theophrastus Such.' Soon after the publication of this novel, we find the following allusion to it in one of George Eliot's letters to Mrs. Bray: "I don't know what you refer to in the _Jewish World_. Perhaps the report of Dr. Hermann Adler's lecture on 'Deronda' to the Jewish working-men, given in the _Times_. Probably the Dr. Adler whom you saw is Dr. Hermann's father, still living as Chief Rabbi. I have had some delightful communications from Jews and Jewesses, both at home and abroad. Part of the Club scene in 'D. D.' is flying about in the Hebrew tongue through the various Hebrew newspapers, which have been copying the 'Maga.' in which the translation was first sent to me three months ago. The Jews naturally are not indifferent to themselves." This Club scene gave rise at the time to quite a controversy. It could not fail to be identified with that other club of philosophers out at elbows so vividly described by G. H. Lewes in the 'Fortnightly Review' of 1866. Nor was it possible not to detect an affinity between the Jew Cohen, the poor consumptive journeyman watchmaker, with his weak voice and his great calm intellect, and Ezra Mordecai Cohen, in precisely similar conditions; the difference being that the one is penetrated by the philosophical idea of Spinozism, and the other by the political idea of reconstituting a Jewish State in Palestine. This difference of mental bias, no doubt, forms a contrast between the two characters, without, however, invalidating the surmise that the fictitious enthusiast may have been originally suggested by the noble figure of the living Jew. Be that as it may, Lewes often took the opportunity in conversation of "pointing out that no such resemblance existed, Cohen being a keen dialectician and a highly impressive man, but without any specifically Jewish enthusiasm." When she undertook to write about the Jews, George Eliot was deeply versed in Hebrew literature, ancient and modern. She had taught herself Hebrew when translating the _Leben Jesu_, and this knowledge now stood her in good stead. She was also familiar with the splendid utterances of Jehuda-ben-Halevy; with the visionary speculations of the Cabbalists, and with the brilliant Jewish writers of the Hispano-Arabic epoch. She had read portions of the Talmud, and remarked one day in conversation that Spinoza had really got something from the Cabbala. On her friend humbly suggesting that by ordinary accounts it appeared to be awful nonsense, she said "that it nevertheless contained fine ideas, like Plato and the Old Testament, which, however, people took in the lump, being accustomed to them." CHAPTER XV. LAST YEARS. 'Daniel Deronda' is the last great imaginative work with which George Eliot was destined to enrich the world. It came out in small volumes, the appearance of each fresh number being hailed as a literary event. In allusion to an author's feeling on the conclusion of a weighty task, George Eliot remarks in one of her letters: "As to the great novel which remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future books.... Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I can never again produce anything worth giving to the world. The responsibility of the writer grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as the world grows older, and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to oneself to do it." This singular diffidence, arising from a sense of the tremendous responsibility which her position entailed, was one of the most noticeable characteristics of this great woman, and struck every one who came in contact with her. Her conscientiousness made her even painfully anxious to enter sympathetically into the needs of every person who approached her, so as to make her speech a permanently fruitful influence in her hearer's life. Such an interview, for example, as that between Goethe and Heine--where the younger poet, after thinking all the way what fine things to say to Goethe, was so disconcerted by the awe-inspiring presence of the master, that he could find nothing better to say than that the plums on the road-side between Jena and Weimar were remarkably good--would have been impossible with one so eager always to give of her best. This deep seriousness of nature made her Sunday afternoon receptions, which became more and more fashionable as time went on, something of a tax to one who preferred the intimate converse of a few to that more superficially brilliant talk which a promiscuous gathering brings with it. Among the distinguished visitors to be met more or less frequently at the Priory maybe mentioned Mr. Herbert Spencer, Professor Huxley, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Professor Beesly, Dr. and Mrs. Congreve, Madame Bodichon, Lord Houghton, M. Tourguénief, Mr. Ralston, Sir Theodore and Lady Martin (better known as Helen Faucit), Mr. Burton of the National Gallery, Mr. George Howard and his wife, Mr. C. G. Leland, Mr. Moncure Conway, Mr. Justin McCarthy, Dr. Hueffer, Mr. and Mrs. Buxton Forman, Mr. F. Myers, Mr. Sully, Mr. Du Maurier, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Pattison, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford, Lady Castletown and her daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Burne Jones, Mr. John Everett Millais, Mr. Robert Browning, and Mr. Tennyson. Persons of celebrity were not the only ones, however, that were made welcome at the Priory. The liveliest sympathy was shown by both host and hostess in many young people as yet struggling in obscurity, but in whom they delighted to recognise the promise of some future excellence. If a young man were pursuing some original scientific inquiry, or striking out a new vein of speculation, in all London there was none likely to enter with such zest into his ideas as G. H. Lewes. His generous appreciation of intellectual gifts is well shown in the following lines to the late Professor W. K. Clifford: "Few things have given us more pleasure than the intimation in your note that you had a _fiancée_. May she be the central happiness and motive force of your career, and, by satisfying the affections, leave your _rare_ intellect free to work out its glorious destiny. For, if you don't become a glory to your age and time, it will be a sin and a shame. Nature doesn't often send forth such gifted sons, and when she does, Society usually cripples them. Nothing but marriage--a happy marriage--has seemed to Mrs. Lewes and myself wanting to your future." On the Sunday afternoon receptions just mentioned, G. H. Lewes acted, so to speak, as a social cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the fascination of his manners, diffused that general sense of ease and _abandon_ so requisite to foster an harmonious flow of conversation. He was inimitable as a _raconteur_, and Thackeray, Trollope, and Arthur Helps were fond of quoting some of the stories which he would dramatise in the telling. One of the images which, on these occasions, recurs oftenest to George Eliot's friends, is that of the frail-looking woman who would sit with her chair drawn close to the fire, and whose winning womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one who had the privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with its strongly-marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of expression, especially softening the too prominent under-lip and massive jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with grey, whose smooth bands made a kind of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with lappets of rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her grey-blue eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute sensitiveness as her long, thin, beautifully-shaped hands. She had a pleasant laugh and smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely sympathetic in quality: it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang or played before more than one or two friends. Though her conversation was perfectly easy, each sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed, as the style of her published works. Indeed, she laid great stress on the value of correct speaking and clearness of enunciation; and in 'Theophrastus Such' she laments "the general ambition to speak every language except our mother English, which persons 'of style' are not ashamed of corrupting with slang, false foreign equivalents, and a pronunciation that crushes out all colour from the vowels, and jams them between jostling consonants." Besides M. d'Albert's Genevese portrait of George Eliot, we have a drawing by Mr. Burton, and another by Mr. Lawrence, the latter taken soon after the publication of 'Adam Bede.' In criticising the latter likeness, a keen observer of human nature remarked that it conveyed no indication of the infinite depth of her observant eye, nor of that cold, subtle, and unconscious cruelty of expression which might occasionally be detected there. George Eliot had an unconquerable aversion to her likeness being taken: once, however, in 1860, she was photographed for the sake of her "dear sisters" at Rosehill. But she seems to have repented of this weakness, for, after the lapse of years, she writes: "Mr. Lewes has just come to me after reading your letter, and says, 'For God's sake tell her not to have the photograph reproduced!' and I had nearly forgotten to say that the fading is what I desired. I should not like this image to be perpetuated. It needs the friendly eyes that regret to see it fade, and must not be recalled into emphatic black and white for indifferent gazers. Pray let it vanish." Those who knew George Eliot were even more struck by the force of her entire personality than by her writings. Sympathetic, witty or learned in turn, her conversation deeply impressed her hearers, being enriched by such felicities of expression as: "The best lesson of tolerance we have to learn is to tolerate intolerance." In answer to a friend's surprise that a clever man should allow himself to be contradicted by a stupid one, without dropping down on him, she remarked: "He is very liable to drop down as a baked apple would." And of a very plain acquaintance she said: "He has the most dreadful kind of ugliness one can be afflicted with, because it takes on the semblance of beauty." Poetry, music, and art naturally absorbed much attention at the Priory. Here Mr. Tennyson has been known to read 'Maud' aloud to his friends: Mr. Browning expatiated on the most recondite metrical rules: and Rossetti sent presents of poems and photographs. In the following unpublished letters George Eliot thanks the latter for his valued gifts--"We returned only the night before last from a two months' journey to the Continent, and among the parcels awaiting me I found your generous gift. I am very grateful to you both as giver and poet. "In cutting the leaves, while my head is still swimming from the journey, I have not resisted the temptation to read many things as they ought not to be read--hurriedly. But even in this way I have received a stronger impression than any fresh poems have for a long while given me, that to read once is a reason for reading again. The sonnets towards 'The House of Life' attract me peculiarly. I feel about them as I do about a new cahier of music which I have been 'trying' here and there with the delightful conviction that I have a great deal to become acquainted with and to like better and better." And again, in acknowledgment of some photographs: "The 'Hamlet' seems to me perfectly intelligible, and altogether admirable in conception, except in the type of the man's head. I feel sure that 'Hamlet' had a square anterior lobe. "Mr. Lewes says, this conception of yours makes him long to be an actor who has 'Hamlet' for one of his parts, that he might carry out this scene according to your idea. "One is always liable to mistake prejudices for sufficient inductions, about types of head and face, as well as about all other things. I have some impressions--perhaps only prejudices dependent on the narrowness of my experience--about forms of eyebrow and their relation to passionate expression. It is possible that such a supposed relation has a real anatomical basis. But in many particulars facial expression is like the expression of hand-writing: the relations are too subtle and intricate to be detected, and only shallowness is confident." George Eliot read but little contemporary fiction, being usually absorbed in the study of some particular subject. "For my own spiritual good I need all other sort of reading," she says, "more than I need fiction. I know nothing of contemporary English novelists with the exception of ----, and a few of ----'s works. My constant groan is that I must leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have sifted for me unread for want of time." For the same reason, on being recommended by a literary friend to read Walt Whitman, she hesitated on the ground of his not containing anything spiritually needful for her, but, having been induced to take him up, she changed her opinion and admitted that he _did_ contain what was "good for her soul." As to lighter reading, she was fond of books of travel, pronouncing "'The Voyage of the Challenger' a splendid book." Among foreign novelists she was very partial to Henry Gréville, and speaks of 'Les Koumiassine' as a pleasant story. Persons who were privileged enough to be admitted to the intimacy of George Eliot and Mr. Lewes could not fail to be impressed by the immense admiration which they had for one another. Lewes's tenderness, always on the watch lest the great writer, with her delicately poised health, should over-exert herself, had something of doglike fidelity. On the other hand, in spite of George Eliot's habitually retiring manner, if any one ever engaged on the opposite side of an argument to that maintained by the brilliant _savant_, in taking his part, she usually had the best of it, although in the most gentle and feminine way. Although there was entire oneness of feeling between them, there was no unanimity of opinion. George Eliot had the highest regard for Lewes's opinions, but held to her own. One of the chief subjects of difference consisted in their attitude towards Christianity: whereas he was its uncompromising opponent, she had the greatest sympathy with its various manifestations, from Roman Catholic asceticism to Evangelical austerity and Methodist fervour. Her reverence for every form of worship in which mankind has more or less consciously embodied its sense of the mystery of all "this unintelligible world" increased with the years. She was deeply penetrated by that tendency of the Positivist spirit which recognises the beneficial element in every form of religion, and sees the close, nay indissoluble, connection between the faith of former generations and the ideal of our own. She herself found ample scope for the needs and aspirations of her spiritual nature in the religion of humanity. As has already been repeatedly pointed out, there runs through all her works the same persistent teaching of "the Infinite Nature of Duty." And with Comte she refers "the obligations of duty, as well as all sentiments of devotion, to a concrete object, at once ideal and real; the Human Race, conceived as a continuous whole, including the past, the present, and the future." Though George Eliot drew many of her ideas of moral cultivation from the doctrines of Comte's _Philosophie Positive_, she was not a Positivist in the strict sense of the word. Her mind was far too creative by nature to give an unqualified adhesion to such a system as Comte's. Indeed, her devotion to the idea of mankind, conceived as a collective whole, is not so much characteristic of Positivists as of the greatest modern minds, minds such as Lessing, Bentham, Shelley, Mill, Mazzini, and Victor Hugo. Inasmuch as Comte co-ordinated these ideas into a consistent doctrine, George Eliot found herself greatly attracted to his system; and Mr. Beesly, after an acquaintance of eighteen years, considered himself justified in stating that her powerful intellect had accepted the teaching of Auguste Comte, and that she looked forward to the reorganisation of belief on the lines which he had laid down. Still her adherence, like that of G. H. Lewes, was only partial, and applied mainly to his philosophy, and not to his scheme of social policy. She went farther than the latter, however, in her concurrence. For Mr. Lewes, speaking of the _Politique Positive_ in his 'History of Philosophy,' admits that his antagonistic attitude had been considerably modified on learning from the remark of one very dear to him, "to regard it as an Utopia, presenting hypotheses rather than doctrines--suggestions for future inquiries rather than dogmas for adepts." On the whole, although George Eliot did not agree with Comte's later theories concerning the reconstruction of society, she regarded them with sympathy "as the efforts of an individual to anticipate the work of future generations." This sympathy with the general Positivist movement she showed by subscribing regularly to Positivist objects, especially to the fund of the Central Organisation presided over by M. Laffitte, but she invariably refused all membership with the Positivist community. In conversation with an old and valued friend, she also repeatedly expressed her objection to much in Comte's later speculations, saying on one occasion, "I cannot submit my intellect or my soul to the guidance of Comte." The fact is that, although George Eliot was greatly influenced by the leading Positivist ideas, her mind was too original not to work out her own individual conception of life. What this conception is has been already indicated, so far as space would permit, in the discussion of her successive works. Perhaps in the course of time her moralising analytical tendency encroached too much on the purely artistic faculty. Her eminently dramatic genius--which enabled her to realise characters the most varied and opposite in type, somewhat in the manner of Shakespeare--became hampered by theories and abstract views of life. This was especially shown in her latest work, 'The Impressions of Theophrastus Such,' a series of essays chiefly satirising the weaknesses and vanities of the literary class. In these unattractive "impressions" the wit is often laboured, and does not play "beneficently round the changing facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice, as the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows." Its cutting irony and incisive ridicule are no longer tempered by the humorous laugh, but have the corrosive quality of some acrid chemical substance. One of the papers, however, that entitled 'Debasing the Moral Currency,' expresses a strongly marked characteristic of George Eliot's mind. It is a pithy protest against the tendency of the present generation to turn the grandest deeds and noblest works of art into food for laughter. For she hated nothing so much as mockery and ridicule of what other people reverenced, often remarking that those who considered themselves freest from superstitious fancies were the most intolerant. She carried this feeling to such a pitch that she even disliked a book like 'Alice in Wonderland' because it laughed at the things which children had had a kind of belief in. In censuring this vicious habit of burlesquing the things that ought to be regarded with awe and admiration, she remarks, "Let a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, majesty and pathos, and the more you heap up the desecrated symbols, the greater will be the lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering, and make ambition one with virtue." 'Looking Backward' is the only paper in 'Theophrastus Such' quite free from cynicism. It contains, under a slightly veiled form, pathetically tender reminiscences of her own early life. This volume, not published till May 1879, was written before the incalculable loss which befell George Eliot in the autumn of the preceding year. After spending the summer of 1878 in the pleasant retirement of Witley, Lewes and George Eliot returned to London. A severe cold taken by Lewes proved the forerunner of a serious disorder, and, after a short illness, this bright, many-sided, indefatigable thinker, passed away in his sixty-second year. He had frequently said to his friends that the most desirable end of a well-spent life was a painless death; and although his own could not be called painless, his sufferings were at least of short duration. Concerning the suffering and anguish of her who was left behind to mourn him, one may most fitly say, in her own words, that, "for the first sharp pangs there is no comfort--whatever goodness may surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain." In her case, also, the "clinging companionship with the dead" was gradually linked with her living affections, and she found alleviation for her sorrow in resuming those habits of continuous mental occupation which had become second nature with her. In a letter addressed to a friend, who, only a few short months afterwards, suffered a like heavy bereavement, there breathes the spirit in which George Eliot bore her own sorrow: "I understand it all.... There is but one refuge--the having much to do. You have the mother's duties. Not that these can yet make your life other than a burden to be patiently borne. Nothing can, except the gradual adaptation of your soul to the new conditions.... It is among my most cherished memories that I knew your husband, and from the first delighted in him.... All blessing--and even the sorrow that is a form of love has a heart of blessing--is tenderly wished for you." On seeing this lady for the first time after their mutual loss, George Eliot asked her eagerly: "Do the children help? Does it make any difference?" Some help there was for the widowed heart of this sorrowing woman in throwing herself, with all her energies, into the work which Lewes had left unfinished at his death, and preparing it for publication, with the help of an expert. Another subject which occupied her thoughts at this time, was the foundation of the "George Henry Lewes Studentship," in order to commemorate the name of one who had done so much to distinguish himself in the varied fields of literature, science, and philosophy. The value of the studentship is slightly under £200 a year. It is worth noticing that persons of both sexes are received as candidates. The object of the endowment is to encourage the prosecution of original research in physiology, a science to whose study Lewes had devoted himself most assiduously for many years. Writing of this matter to a young lady, one of the Girton students, George Eliot says: "I know ... will be glad to hear also that both in England and Germany the type, or scheme, on which the studentship is arranged has been regarded with satisfaction, as likely to be a useful model." Amid such preoccupations, and the preparation of 'Theophrastus Such' for the press, the months passed on, and George Eliot was beginning to see her friends again, when one day she not only took the world, but her intimate circle by surprise, by her marriage with Mr. John Walter Cross, on the 6th of May, 1880. The acquaintance with this gentleman, dating from the year 1867, had long ago grown into the warmest friendship, and his boundless devotion to the great woman whose society was to him as his daily bread, no doubt induced her to take a step which could not fail to startle even those who loved her the most. But George Eliot's was a nature that needed some one especially to love. And though that precious companionship, at once stimulating and sympathetic, which she had so long enjoyed, was taken from her, she could still find comfort during the remainder of her life in the love, the appreciation, and the tender care which were proffered to her by Mr. Cross. Unfortunately her life was not destined to be prolonged. Although seeming fairly well at this date, George Eliot's health, always delicate, had probably received a shock, from which it never recovered. Only six months before her marriage three eminent medical men were attending her for a painful disease. However, there seemed still a prospect of happiness for her when she and Mr. Cross went for a tour in Italy, settling, on their return, at her favourite country house at Witley. In the autumn they once more made their home in London, at Mr. Cross's town house at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and Mrs. Cross, who was again beginning to receive her friends, seemed, to all appearances, well and happy, with a prospect of domestic love and unimpaired mental activity stretching out before her. But it was not to be. On Friday, the 17th of December, George Eliot attended a representation of the 'Agamemnon,' in Greek, by Oxford undergraduates, and was so stirred by the grand words of her favourite Æschylus, that she was contemplating a fresh perusal of the Greek dramatists with her husband. On the following day she went to the Saturday popular concert, and on returning home played through some of the music she had been hearing. Her fatal cold was probably caught on that occasion, for, although she received her friends, according to custom, on the Sunday afternoon, she felt indisposed in the evening, and on the following day an affection of the larynx necessitated medical advice. There seemed no cause for alarm at first, till on Wednesday it was unexpectedly discovered that inflammation had arisen in the heart, and that no hope of recovery remained. Before midnight of the 22nd of December, 1880, George Eliot, who died at precisely the same age as Lewes, had passed quietly and painlessly away; and on Christmas Eve the announcement of her death was received with general grief. She was buried by the side of George Henry Lewes, in the cemetery at Highgate. George Eliot's career has been habitually described as uniform and uneventful. In reality nothing is more misleading. On the contrary, her life, from its rising to its setting, describes an astonishingly wide orbit. If one turns back in imagination from the little Staffordshire village whence her father sprang, to the simple rural surroundings of her own youth, and traces her history to the moment when a crowd of mourners, consisting of the most distinguished men and women in England, followed her to the grave, one cannot help realising how truly eventful was the life of her who now joined in spirit the "Choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end in self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues." LONDON: PRINTED BY WM. CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS. 
43044	----	Transcriber's Note: This is Volume II of a three volume set: Volume I--Unknown Volume II--Famous Volume III--Sunset A combined index to the entire set is located at the end of Volume III. Narrative content written by J. Cross and material quoted from writers other than George Eliot are interspersed throughout the text. Their content is placed in block quotes. Remaining transcriber's notes are located at the end of the text. * * * * * GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE VOL. II.--FAMOUS "OUR FINEST HOPE IS FINEST MEMORY" [Illustration: Portrait of George Eliot. Engraved by G. J. Stodart.] GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE _as related in her Letters and Journals_ ARRANGED AND EDITED BY HER HUSBAND J. W. CROSS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN THREE VOLUMES.--VOLUME II NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS. _LIBRARY EDITION._ ADAM BEDE. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. DANIEL DERONDA. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. ROMOLA. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. HARPER & BROTHERS _will send any of the above volumes by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. For other editions of George Eliot's works published by Harper & Brothers see advertisement at end of third volume_. CONTENTS OF VOL. II. CHAPTER VIII. JANUARY, 1858, TO DECEMBER, 1858. Success of "Scenes of Clerical Life"--"Adam Bede" Page 1 CHAPTER IX. JANUARY, 1859, TO MARCH, 1860. "The Mill on the Floss" 58 CHAPTER X. MARCH TO JUNE, 1860. First Journey to Italy 120 CHAPTER XI. JULY, 1860, TO DECEMBER, 1861. "Silas Marner"--"Romola" begun 185 CHAPTER XII. JANUARY, 1862, TO DECEMBER, 1865. "Romola"--"Felix Holt" 238 CHAPTER XIII. JANUARY, 1866, TO DECEMBER, 1866. Tour in Holland and on the Rhine 303 ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. II. PORTRAIT OF GEORGE ELIOT. Engraved by G. J. Stodart _Frontispiece._ THE PRIORY--DRAWING-ROOM _To face p._ 266 FAC-SIMILE OF GEORGE ELIOT'S HAND-WRITING " 280 GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE. CHAPTER VIII. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Jan. 2._--George has returned this evening from a week's visit to Vernon Hill. On coming up-stairs he said, "I have some very pretty news for you--something in my pocket." I was at a loss to conjecture, and thought confusedly of possible opinions from admiring readers, when he drew the _Times_ from his pocket--to-day's number, containing a review of the "Scenes of Clerical Life." He had happened to ask a gentleman in the railway carriage, coming up to London, to allow him to look at the _Times_, and felt quite agitated and tremulous when his eyes alighted on the review. Finding he had time to go into town before the train started, he bought a copy there. It is a highly favorable notice, and, as far as it goes, appreciatory. When G. went into town he called at Nutt's, and Mrs. Nutt said to him, "I think you don't know our curate. _He_ says the author of 'Clerical Scenes' is a High Churchman; for though Mr. Tryan is said to be Low Church, his feelings and _actions_ are those of a High Churchman." (The curate himself being of course High Church.) There were some pleasant scraps of admiration also gathered for me at Vernon Hill. Doyle happening to mention the treatment of children in the stories, Helps said, "Oh, he is a great writer!" I wonder how I shall feel about these little details ten years hence, if I am alive. At present I value them as grounds for hoping that my writing may succeed, and so give value to my life; as indications that I can touch the hearts of my fellow-men, and so sprinkle some precious grain as the result of the long years in which I have been inert and suffering. But at present fear and trembling still predominate over hope. _Jan. 5._--To-day the "Clerical Scenes" came in their two-volume dress, looking very handsome. _Jan. 8._--News of the subscription--580, with a probable addition of 25 for Longmans. Mudie has taken 350. When we used to talk of the probable subscription, G. always said, "I dare say it will be 250!" (The final number subscribed for was 650.) I ordered copies to be sent to the following persons: Froude, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Ruskin, Faraday, the author of "Companions of my Solitude," Albert Smith, Mrs. Carlyle. On the 20th of January I received the following letter from Dickens: [Sidenote: Letter from Charles Dickens to George Eliot, 17th Jan. 1858.] "TAVISTOCK HOUSE, LONDON, _Monday, 17th Jan. 1858_. "MY DEAR SIR,--I have been so strongly affected by the two first tales in the book you have had the kindness to send me, through Messrs. Blackwood, that I hope you will excuse my writing to you to express my admiration of their extraordinary merit. The exquisite truth and delicacy, both of the humor and the pathos of these stories, I have never seen the like of; and they have impressed me in a manner that I should find it very difficult to describe to you, if I had the impertinence to try. "In addressing these few words of thankfulness to the creator of the Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, and the sad love-story of Mr. Gilfil, I am (I presume) bound to adopt the name that it pleases that excellent writer to assume. I can suggest no better one: but I should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman. I have observed what seemed to me such womanly touches in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title-page is insufficient to satisfy me even now. If they originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever before had the art of making himself mentally so like a woman since the world began. "You will not suppose that I have any vulgar wish to fathom your secret. I mention the point as one of great interest to me--not of mere curiosity. If it should ever suit your convenience and inclination to show me the face of the man, or woman, who has written so charmingly, it will be a very memorable occasion to me. If otherwise, I shall always hold that impalpable personage in loving attachment and respect, and shall yield myself up to all future utterances from the same source, with a perfect confidence in their making me wiser and better.--Your obliged and faithful servant and admirer, "CHARLES DICKENS. "GEORGE ELIOT, ESQ." [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Jan. 21._--To-day came the following letter from Froude: [Sidenote: Letter from J. A. Froude to George Eliot, 17th Jan. 1858.] "NORTHDOWN HOUSE, BIDEFORD, _17th Jan. 1858_. "DEAR SIR,--I do not know when I have experienced a more pleasant surprise than when, on opening a book parcel two mornings ago, I found it to contain 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' 'From the author.' I do not often see _Blackwood_; but in accidental glances I had made acquaintance with 'Janet's Repentance,' and had found there something extremely different from general magazine stories. When I read the advertisement of the republication, I intended fully, at my leisure, to look at the companions of the story which had so much struck me, and now I find myself sought out by the person whose workmanship I had admired, for the special present of it. "You would not, I imagine, care much for flattering speeches, and to go into detail about the book would carry me farther than at present there is occasion to go. I can only thank you most sincerely for the delight which it has given me; and both I myself, and my wife, trust that the acquaintance which we seem to have made with you through your writings may improve into something more tangible. I do not know whether I am addressing a young man or an old--a clergyman or a layman. Perhaps, if you answer this note, you may give us some information about yourself. But at any rate, should business or pleasure bring you into this part of the world, pray believe that you will find a warm welcome if you will accept our hospitality.--Once more, with my best thanks, believe me, faithfully yours, J. A. FROUDE." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 17th Jan. 1858.] I have long ceased to feel any sympathy with mere antagonism and destruction; and all crudity of expression marks, I think, a deficiency in subtlety of thought as well as in breadth of moral and poetic feeling. Mr. William Smith, the author of "Thorndale," is an old acquaintance of Mr. Lewes's. I should say an old _friend_, only I don't like the too ready use of that word. Mr. Lewes admires and esteems him very highly. He is a very accomplished man--a bachelor, with a small independent income; used to write very effective articles on miscellaneous subjects in _Blackwood_. I shall like to know what you think of "Thorndale." I don't know whether you look out for Ruskin's books whenever they appear. His little book on the "Political Economy of Art" contains some magnificent passages, mixed up with stupendous specimens of arrogant absurdity on some economical points. But I venerate him as one of the great teachers of the day. The grand doctrines of truth and sincerity in art, and the nobleness and solemnity of our human life, which he teaches with the inspiration of a Hebrew prophet, must be stirring up young minds in a promising way. The two last volumes of "Modern Painters" contain, I think, some of the finest writing of the age. He is strongly akin to the sublimest part of Wordsworth--whom, by-the-bye, we are reading with fresh admiration for his beauties and tolerance for his faults. Our present plans are: to remain here till about the end of March, then to go to Munich, which I long to see. We shall live there several months, seeing the wonderful galleries in leisure moments. Our living here is so much more expensive than living abroad that we save more than the expenses of our journeying; and as our work can be as well done there as here for some months, we lay in much more capital, in the shape of knowledge and experience, by going abroad. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Jan. 18._--I have begun the "Eumenides," having finished the "Choephoræ." We are reading Wordsworth in the evening. At least G. is reading him to me. I am still reading aloud Miss Martineau's History. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Jan. 1858.] I am sure you will be interested in Dickens's letter, which I enclose, begging you to return it as soon as you can, and not to allow any one besides yourself and Major Blackwood to share in the knowledge of its contents. There can be no harm, of course, in every one's knowing that Dickens admires the "Scenes," but I should not like any more specific allusion made to the words of a private letter. There can hardly be any climax of approbation for me after this; and I am so deeply moved by the finely felt and finely expressed sympathy of the letter, that the iron mask of my _incognito_ seems quite painful in forbidding me to tell Dickens how thoroughly his generous impulse has been appreciated. If you should have an opportunity of conveying this feeling of mine to him in any way, you would oblige me by doing so. By-the-bye, you probably remember sending me, some months ago, a letter from the Rev. Archer Gurney--a very warm, simple-spoken letter--praising me for qualities which I most of all care to be praised for. I should like to send him a copy of the "Scenes," since I could make no acknowledgment of his letter in any other way. I don't know his address, but perhaps Mr. Langford would be good enough to look it out in the Clergy List. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Jan. 23._--There appeared a well-written and enthusiastic article on "Clerical Scenes" in the _Statesman_. We hear there was a poor article in the _Globe_--of feebly written praise--the previous week, but beyond this we have not yet heard of any notices from the press. _Jan. 26._--Came a very pleasant letter from Mrs. Carlyle, thanking the author of "Clerical Scenes" for the present of his book, praising it very highly, and saying that her husband had promised to read it when released from his mountain of history. [Sidenote: Letter from Mrs. Carlyle to George Eliot, 21st Jan. 1858.] "5 CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, _21st Jan. 1858_. "DEAR SIR,--I have to thank you for a surprise, a pleasure, and a--consolation (!) all in one book! And I do thank you most sincerely. I cannot divine what inspired the good thought to send _me_ your book; since (if the name on the title-page be your real name) it could not have been personal regard; there has never been a George Eliot among my friends or acquaintance. But neither, I am sure, could _you_ divine the circumstances under which I should read the book, and the particular benefit it should confer on me! I read it--at least the first volume--during one of the most (physically) wretched nights of my life--sitting up in bed, unable to get a wink of sleep for fever and sore throat--and it helped me through that dreary night as well--better than the most sympathetic helpful friend watching by my bedside could have done! "You will believe that the book needed to be something more than a 'new novel' for me; that I _could_ at my years, and after so much reading, read it in positive torment, and be beguiled by it of the torment! that it needed to be the one sort of book, however named, that still takes hold of me, and that grows rarer every year--a _human_ book--written out of the heart of a live man, not merely out of the brain of an author--full of tenderness and pathos, without a scrap of sentimentality, of sense without dogmatism, of earnestness without twaddle--a book that makes one _feel friends_ at once and for always with the man or woman who wrote it! "In guessing at why you gave me this good gift, I have thought amongst other things, 'Oh, perhaps it was a delicate way of presenting the novel to my husband, he being over head and ears in _history_.' If that was it, I compliment you on your _tact_! for my husband is much likelier to read the 'Scenes' on _my_ responsibility than on a venture of his own--though, as a general rule, never opening a novel, he has engaged to read this one whenever he has some leisure from his present task. "I hope to know some day if the person I am addressing bears any resemblance in external things to the idea I have conceived of him in my mind--a man of middle age, with a wife, from whom he has got those beautiful _feminine_ touches in his book--a good many children, and a dog that he has as much fondness for as I have for my little Nero! For the rest--not just a clergyman, but brother or first cousin to a clergyman! How ridiculous all this _may_ read beside the reality. Anyhow--I honestly confess I am very curious about you, and look forward with what Mr. Carlyle would call 'a good, healthy, genuine desire' to shaking hands with you some day.--In the meanwhile, I remain, your obliged JANE W. CARLYLE." [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Jan. 30._--Received a letter from Faraday, thanking me very gracefully for the present of the "Scenes." Blackwood mentions, in enclosing this letter, that Simpkin & Marshall have sent for twelve additional copies--the first sign of a move since the subscription. The other night we looked into the life of Charlotte Brontë, to see how long it was before "Jane Eyre" came into demand at the libraries, and we found it was not until six weeks after publication. It is just three weeks now since I heard news of the subscription for my book. [Sidenote: Letter from M. Faraday to George Eliot, 28th Jan. 1858.] "ROYAL INSTITUTION, _28th Jan. 1858_. "SIR,--I cannot resist the pleasure of thanking you for what I esteem a great kindness: the present of your thoughts embodied in the two volumes you have sent me. They have been, and will be again, a very pleasant relief from mental occupation among my own pursuits. Such rest I find at times not merely agreeable, but essential.--Again thanking you, I beg to remain, your very obliged servant, M. FARADAY. "GEORGE ELIOT, Esq., &c., &c." [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Feb. 3._--Gave up Miss Martineau's History last night, after reading some hundred pages in the second volume. She has a sentimental, rhetorical style in this history which is fatiguing and not instructive. But her history of the Reform movement is very interesting. _Feb. 4._--Yesterday brought the discouraging news, that though the book is much talked of, it moves very slowly. Finished the "Eumenides." Bessie Parkes has written asking me to contribute to the _Englishwoman's Journal_--a new monthly which, she says, "We are beginning with £1000, and great social interest." _Feb. 16._--To-day G. went into the City and saw Langford, for the sake of getting the latest news about our two books--his "Sea-side Studies" having been well launched about a fortnight or ten days ago, with a subscription of 800. He brought home good news. The "Clerical Scenes" are moving off at a moderate but steady pace. Langford remarked, that while the press had been uniformly favorable, not one _critical_ notice had appeared. G. went to Parker's in the evening, and gathered a little gossip on the subject. Savage, author of the "Falcon Family," and now editor of the _Examiner_, said he was reading the "Scenes"--had read some of them already in _Blackwood_--but was now reading the volume. "G. Eliot was a writer of great merit." A barrister named Smythe said he had seen "the Bishop" reading them the other day. As a set-off against this, Mrs. Schlesinger "Couldn't bear the book." She is a regular novel reader; but hers is the first unfavorable opinion we have had. _Feb. 26._--We went into town for the sake of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Call, and having our photographs taken by Mayall. _Feb. 28._--Mr. John Blackwood called on us, having come to London for a few days only. He talked a good deal about the "Clerical Scenes" and George Eliot, and at last asked, "Well, am I to see George Eliot this time?" G. said, "Do you wish to see him?" "As he likes--I wish it to be quite spontaneous." I left the room, and G. following me a moment, I told him he might reveal me. Blackwood was kind, came back when he found he was too late for the train, and said he would come to Richmond again. He came on the following Friday and chatted very pleasantly--told us that Thackeray spoke highly of the "Scenes," and said _they were not written by a woman_. Mrs. Blackwood is _sure_ they are not written by a woman. Mrs. Oliphant, the novelist, too, is confident on the same side. I gave Blackwood the MS. of my new novel, to the end of the second scene in the wood. He opened it, read the first page, and smiling, said, "This will do." We walked with him to Kew, and had a good deal of talk. Found, among other things, that he had lived two years in Italy when he was a youth, and that he admires Miss Austen. Since I wrote these last notes several encouraging fragments of news about the "Scenes" have come to my ears--especially that Mrs. Owen Jones and her husband--two very different people--are equally enthusiastic about the book. But both have detected the woman. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d March, 1858.] Perhaps we may go to Dresden, perhaps not: we leave room for the _imprévu_, which Louis Blanc found so sadly wanting in Mr. Morgan's millennial village. You are among the exceptional people who say pleasant things to their friends, and don't feel a too exclusive satisfaction in their misfortunes. We like to hear of your interest in Mr. Lewes's books--at least, _I_ am very voracious of such details. I keep the pretty letters that are written to him; and we have had some really important ones from the scientific big-wigs about the "Sea-side Studies." The reception of the book in that quarter has been quite beyond our expectations. Eight hundred copies were sold at once. There is a great deal of close hard work in the book, and every one who knows what scientific work is necessarily perceives this; happily many have been generous enough to express their recognition in a hearty way. I enter so deeply into everything you say about your mother. To me that old, old popular truism, "We can never have but one mother," has worlds of meaning in it, and I think with more sympathy of the satisfaction you feel in at last being allowed to wait on her than I should of anything else you could tell me. I wish we saw more of that sweet human piety that feels tenderly and reverently towards the aged. [_Apropos_ of some incapable woman's writing she adds.] There is something more piteous almost than soapless poverty in this application of feminine incapacity to literature. We spent a very pleasant couple of hours with Mr. and Mrs. Call last Friday. It was worth a journey on a cold dusty day to see two faces beaming kindness and happiness. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th March, 1858.] I enclose a letter which will interest you. It is affecting to see how difficult a matter it often is for the men who would most profit by a book to purchase it, or even get a reading of it, while stupid Jopling of Reading or elsewhere thinks nothing of giving a guinea for a work which he will simply put on his shelves. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, March, 1858.] When do you bring out your new poem? I presume you are already in the sixth canto. It is true you never told me you intended to write a poem, nor have I heard any one say so who was likely to know. Nevertheless I have quite as active an imagination as you, and I don't see why I shouldn't suppose you are writing a poem as well as you suppose that I am writing a novel. Seriously, I wish you would not set rumors afloat about me. They are injurious. Several people, who seem to derive their notions from Ivy Cottage,[1] have spoken to me of a supposed novel I was going to bring out. Such things are damaging to me. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 31st March, 1858.] Thanks for your disclaimer. It shows me that you take a right view of the subject. There is no undertaking more fruitful of absurd mistakes than that of "guessing" at authorship; and as I have never communicated to any one so much as an _intention_ of a literary kind, there can be none but imaginary data for such guesses. If I withhold anything from my friends which it would gratify them to know, you will believe, I hope, that I have good reasons for doing so, and I am sure those friends will understand me when I ask them to further my object--which is not a whim but a question of solid interest--by complete silence. I can't afford to indulge either in vanity or sentimentality about my work. I have only a trembling anxiety to do what is in itself worth doing, and by that honest means to win very necessary profit of a temporal kind. "There is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed" in due time. But till that time comes--till I tell you myself, "This is the work of my hand and brain"--don't believe anything on the subject. There is no one who is in the least likely to know what I can, could, should, or would write. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _April 1, 1858._--Received a letter from Blackwood containing warm praise of "Adam Bede," but wanting to know the rest of the story in outline before deciding whether it should go in the Magazine. I wrote in reply refusing to tell him the story. On Wednesday evening, April 7th, we set off on our journey to Munich, and now we are comfortably settled in our lodgings, where we hope to remain three months at least. I sit down in my first leisure moments to write a few recollections of our journey, or rather of our twenty-four hours' stay at Nürnberg; for the rest of our journey was mere endurance of railway and steamboat in cold and sombre weather, often rainy. I ought to except our way from Frankfort to Nürnberg, which lay for some distance--until we came to Bamberg--through a beautifully varied country. Our view both of Würzburg and Bamberg, as we hastily snatched it from our railway carriage, was very striking--great old buildings, crowning heights that rise up boldly from the plain in which stand the main part of the towns. From Bamberg to Nürnberg the way lay through a wide rich plain sprinkled with towns. We had left all the hills behind us. At Bamberg we were joined in our carriage by a pleasant-looking elderly couple, who spoke to each other and looked so affectionately that we said directly, "Shall we be so when we are old?" It was very pretty to see them hold each other's gloved hands for a minute like lovers. As soon as we had settled ourselves in our inn at Nürnberg--the Baierische Hof--we went out to get a general view of the town. Happily it was not raining, though there was no sun to light up the roof and windows. [Sidenote: Journal, April, 1858.] How often I had thought I should like to see Nürnberg, and had pictured to myself narrow streets with dark quaint gables! The reality was not at all like my picture, but it was ten times better. No sombre coloring, except the old churches: all was bright and varied, each _façade_ having a different color--delicate green, or buff, or pink, or lilac--every now and then set off by the neighborhood of a rich reddish brown. And the roofs always gave warmth of color with their bright red or rich purple tiles. Every house differed from its neighbor, and had a physiognomy of its own, though a beautiful family likeness ran through them all, as if the burghers of that old city were of one heart and one soul, loving the same delightful outlines, and cherishing the same daily habits of simple ease and enjoyment in their balcony-windows when the day's work was done. The balcony window is the secondary charm of the Nürnberg houses; it would be the principal charm of any houses that had not the Nürnberg roofs and gables. It is usually in the centre of the building, on the first floor, and is ornamented with carved stone or wood, which supports it after the fashion of a bracket. In several of these windows we saw pretty family groups--young fair heads of girls or of little children, with now and then an older head surmounting them. One can fancy that these windows are the pet places for family joys--that papa seats himself there when he comes home from the warehouse, and the little ones cluster round him in no time. But the glory of the Nürnberg houses is the roofs, which are no blank surface of mere tiling, but are alive with lights and shadows, cast by varied and beautiful lines of windows and pinnacles and arched openings. The plainest roof in Nürnberg has its little windows lifting themselves up like eyelids, and almost everywhere one sees the pretty hexagonal tiles. But the better houses have a central, open sort of pavilion in the roof, with a pinnacle surmounted by a weathercock. This pavilion has usually a beautifully carved arched opening in front, set off by the dark background which is left by the absence of glass. One fancies the old Nürnbergers must have gone up to these pavilions to smoke in the summer and autumn days. There is usually a brood of small windows round this central ornament, often elegantly arched and carved. A wonderful sight it makes to see a series of such roofs surmounting the tall, delicate-colored houses. They are always high-pitched, of course, and the color of the tiles was usually of a bright red. I think one of the most charming vistas we saw was the Adler-Gasse, on the St. Lorenz side of the town. Sometimes, instead of the high-pitched roof, with its pavilion and windows, there is a richly ornamented gable fronting the street; and still more frequently we get the gables at right angles with the street at a break in the line of houses. Coming back from the Burg we met a detachment of soldiers, with their band playing, followed by a stream of listening people; and then we reached the market-place, just at the point where stands "The Beautiful Fountain"--an exquisite bit of florid Gothic which has been restored in perfect conformity with the original. Right before us stood the Frauen-Kirche, with its fine and unusual _façade_, the chief beauty being a central chapel used as the choir, and added by Adam Krafft. It is something of the shape of a mitre, and forms a beautiful gradation of ascent towards the summit of _façade_. We heard the organ and were tempted to enter, for this is the one Catholic Church in Nürnberg. The delicious sound of the organ and voices drew us farther and farther in among the standing people, and we stayed there I don't know how long, till the music ceased. How the music warmed one's heart! I loved the good people about me, even to the soldier who stood with his back to us, giving us a full view of his close-cropped head, with its pale yellowish hair standing up in bristles on the crown, as if his hat had acted like a forcing-pot. Then there was a little baby in a close-fitting cap on its little round head, looking round with bright black eyes as it sucked its bit of bread. Such a funny little complete face--rich brown complexion and miniature Roman nose. And then its mother lifted it up that it might see the rose-decked altar, where the priests were standing. How music, that stirs all one's devout emotions, blends everything into harmony--makes one feel part of one whole which one loves all alike, losing the sense of a separate self. Nothing could be more wretched as art than the painted St. Veronica opposite me, holding out the sad face on her miraculous handkerchief. Yet it touched me deeply; and the thought of the Man of Sorrows seemed a very close thing--not a faint hearsay. We saw Albert Dürer's statue by Rauch, and Albert Dürer's house--a striking bit of old building, rich dark-brown, with a truncated gable and two wooden galleries running along the gable end. My best wishes and thanks to the artists who keep it in repair and use it for their meetings. The vistas from the bridges across the muddy Pegnitz, which runs through the town, are all quaint and picturesque; and it was here that we saw some of the _shabbiest_-looking houses--almost the only houses that carried any suggestion of poverty, and even here it was doubtful. The town has an air of cleanliness and well-being, and one longs to call one of those balconied apartments one's own home, with their flower-pots, clean glass, clean curtains, and transparencies turning their white backs to the street. It is pleasant to think there is such a place in the world where many people pass peaceful lives. On arriving at Munich, after much rambling, we found an advertisement of "Zwei elegant möblirte Zimmer," No. 15 Luitpold Strasse; and to our immense satisfaction found something that looked like cleanliness and comfort. The bargain was soon made--twenty florins per month. So here we came last Tuesday, the 13th April. We have been taking sips of the Glyptothek and the two Pinacotheks in the morning, not having settled to work yet. Last night we went to the opera--Fra Diavolo--at the Hof-Theatre. The theatre ugly, the singing bad. Still, the orchestra was good, and the charming music made itself felt in spite of German throats. On Sunday, the 11th, we went to the Pinacothek, straight into the glorious Rubens Saal. Delighted afresh in the picture of "Samson and Delilah," both for the painting and character of the figures. Delilah, a magnificent blonde, seated in a chair, with a transparent white garment slightly covering her body, and a rich red piece of drapery round her legs, leans forward, with one hand resting on her thigh, the other, holding the cunning shears, resting on the chair--a posture which shows to perfection the full, round, living arms. She turns her head aside to look with sly triumph at Samson--a tawny giant, his legs caught in the red drapery, shorn of his long locks, furious with the consciousness that the Philistines are upon him, and that this time he cannot shake them off. Above the group of malicious faces and grappling arms a hand holds a flaming torch. Behind Delilah, and grasping her arm, leans forward an old woman, with hard features full of exultation. This picture, comparatively small in size, hangs beside the "Last Judgment," and in the corresponding space, on the other side of the same picture, hangs the sublime "Crucifixion." Jesus alone, hanging dead on the Cross, darkness over the whole earth. One can desire nothing in this picture--the grand, sweet calm of the dead face, calm and satisfied amidst all the traces of anguish, the real, livid flesh, the thorough mastery with which the whole form is rendered, and the isolation of the supreme sufferer, make a picture that haunts one like a remembrance of a friend's death-bed. _April 12 (Monday)._--After reading Anna Mary Howitt's book on Munich and Overbeck on Greek art, we turned out into the delicious sunshine to walk in the Theresien Wiese, and have our first look at the colossal "Bavaria," the greatest work of Schwanthaler. Delightful it was to get away from the houses into this breezy meadow, where we heard the larks singing above us. The sun was still too high in the west for us to look with comfort at the statue, except right in front of it, where it eclipsed the sun; and this front view is the only satisfactory one. The outline made by the head and arm on a side view is almost painfully ugly. But in front, looking up to the beautiful, calm face, the impression it produces is sublime. I have never seen anything, even in ancient sculpture, of a more awful beauty than this dark, colossal head, looking out from a background of pure, pale-blue sky. We mounted the platform to have a view of her back, and then walking forward, looked to our right hand and saw the snow-covered Alps! Sight more to me than all the art in Munich, though I love the _art_ nevertheless. The great, wide-stretching earth and the all-embracing sky--the birthright of us all--are what I care most to look at. And I feel intensely the new beauty of the sky here. The blue is so exquisitely clear, and the wide streets give one such a broad canopy of sky. I felt more inspirited by our walk to the Theresien Platz than by any pleasure we have had in Munich. _April 16._--On Wednesday we walked to the Theresien Wiese to look at the "Bavaria" by sunset, but a shower came on and drove us to take refuge in a pretty house built near the Ruhmeshalle, whereby we were gainers, for we saw a charming family group: a mother with her three children--the eldest a boy with his book, the second a three-year-old maiden, the third a sweet baby-girl of a year and a half; two dogs, one a mixture of the setter and pointer, the other a turn-spit; and a relation or servant ironing. The baby cried at the sight of G. in beard and spectacles, but kept her eyes turning towards him from her mother's lap, every now and then seeming to have overcome her fears, and then bursting out crying anew. At last she got down and lifted the table-cloth to peep at his legs, as if to see the monster's nether parts. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 17th April, 1858.] We have been just to take a sip at the two Pinacotheks and at the Glyptothek. At present the Rubens Saal is what I most long to return to. Rubens gives me more pleasure than any other painter, whether that is right or wrong. To be sure, I have not seen so many pictures, and pictures of so high a rank, by any other great master. I feel sure that when I have seen as much of Raphael I shall like him better; but at present Rubens, more than any one else, makes me feel that painting is a great art, and that he was a great artist. His are such real, breathing men and women, moved by passions, not mincing and grimacing, and posing in mere aping of passion! What a grand, glowing, forceful thing life looks in his pictures--the men such grand-bearded, grappling beings, fit to do the work of the world; the women such real mothers. We stayed at Nürnberg only twenty-four hours, and I felt sad to leave it so soon. A pity the place became Protestant, so that there is only one Catholic church where one can go in and out as one would. We turned into the famous St. Sebald's for a minute, where a Protestant clergyman was reading in a cold, formal way under the grand Gothic arches. Then we went to the Catholic church, the Frauen-Kirche, where the organ and voices were giving forth a glorious mass; and we stood with a feeling of brotherhood among the standing congregation till the last note of the organ had died out. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _April 23._--Not being well enough to write, we determined to spend our morning at the Glyptothek and Pinacothek. A glorious morning--all sunshine and blue sky. We went to the Glyptothek first, and delighted ourselves anew with the "Sleeping Faun," the "Satyr and Bacchus," and the "Laughing Faun" (Fauno colla Macchia). Looked at the two young satyrs reposing with the pipe in their hands--one of them charming in the boyish, good-humored beauty of the face, but both wanting finish in the limbs, which look almost as if they could be produced by a turning-machine. But the conception of this often-repeated figure is charming: it would make a garden seem more peaceful in the sunshine. Looked at the old Silenus too, which is excellent. I delight in these figures, full of droll animation, flinging some nature, in its broad freedom, in the eyes of small-mouthed, mincing narrowness. We went into the modern Saal also, glancing on our way at the Cornelius frescoes, which seem to me stiff and hideous. An Adonis, by Thorwaldsen, is very beautiful. Then to the Pinacothek, where we looked at Albert Dürer's portrait again, and many other pictures, among which I admired a group by Jordaens: "A satyr eating, while a peasant shows him that he can blow hot and cold at the same time;" the old grandmother nursing the child, the father with the key in his hand, with which he has been amusing baby, looking curiously at the satyr, the handsome wife, still more eager in her curiosity, the quiet cow, the little boy, the dog and cat--all are charmingly conceived. _April 24._--As we were reading this afternoon Herr Oldenbourg came in, invited us to go to his house on Tuesday, and chatted pleasantly for an hour. He talked of Kaulbach, whom he has known very intimately, being the publisher of the "Reineke Fuchs." The picture of the "Hunnen Schlacht" was the first of Kaulbach's on a great scale. It created a sensation, and the critics began to call it a "Weltgeschichtliches Bild." Since then Kaulbach has been seduced into the complex, wearisome, symbolical style, which makes the frescoes at Berlin enormous puzzles. When we had just returned from our drive in the Englische Garten, Bodenstedt pleasantly surprised us by presenting himself. He is a charming man, and promises to be a delightful acquaintance for us in this strange town. He chatted pleasantly with us for half an hour, telling us that he is writing a work, in five volumes, on the "Contemporaries of Shakspeare," and indicating the nature of his treatment of the Shakspearian drama--which is historical and analytical. Presently he proposed that we should adjourn to his house and have tea with him; and so we turned out all together in the bright moonlight, and enjoyed his pleasant chat until ten o'clock. His wife was not at home, but we were admitted to see the three sleeping children--one a baby about a year and a half old, a lovely waxen thing. He gave the same account of Kaulbach as we had heard from Oldenbourg; spoke of Genelli as superior in genius, though he has not the fortune to be recognized; recited some of Hermann Lingg's poetry, and spoke enthusiastically of its merits. There was not a word of detraction about any one--nothing to jar on one's impression of him as a refined, noble-hearted man. _April 27._--This has been a red-letter day. In the morning Professor Wagner took us over his "Petrifacten Sammlung," giving us interesting explanations; and before we left him we were joined by Professor Martius, an animated, clever man, who talked admirably, and invited us to his house. Then we went to Kaulbach's studio, talked with him, and saw with especial interest the picture he is preparing as a present to the New Museum. In the evening, after walking in the Theresien Wiese, we went to Herr Oldenbourg's, and met Liebig the chemist, Geibel and Heyse the poets, and Carrière, the author of a work on the Reformation. Liebig is charming, with well-cut features, a low, quiet voice, and gentle manners. It was touching to see his hands, the nails black from the roots, the skin all grimed. Heyse is like a painter's poet, ideally beautiful; rather brilliant in his talk, and altogether pleasing. Geibel is a man of rather coarse texture, with a voice like a kettledrum, and a steady determination to deliver his opinions on every subject that turned up. But there was a good deal of ability in his remarks. _April 30._--After calling on Frau Oldenbourg, and then at Professor Bodenstedt's, where we played with his charming children for ten minutes, we went to the theatre to hear Prince Radziwill's music to the "Faust." I admired especially the earlier part, the Easter morning song of the spirits, the Beggar's song, and other things, until after the scene in Auerbach's cellar, which is set with much humor and fancy. But the scene between Faust and Marguerite is bad--"Meine Ruh ist hin" quite pitiable, and the "König im Thule" not good. Gretchen's second song, in which she implores help of the Schmerzensreiche, touched me a good deal. _May 1._--In the afternoon Bodenstedt called, and we agreed to spend the evening at his house--a delightful evening. Professor Löher, author of "Die Deutschen in America," and another much younger _Gelehrter_, whose name I did not seize, were there. _May 2._--Still rainy and cold. We went to the Pinacothek, and looked at the old pictures in the first and second Saal. There are some very bad and some fine ones by Albert Dürer: of the latter, a full length figure of the Apostle Paul, with the head of Mark beside him, in a listening attitude, is the one that most remains with me. There is a very striking "Adoration of the Magi," by Johannes van Eyck, with much merit in the coloring, perspective, and figures. Also, "Christ carrying his Cross," by Albert Dürer, is striking. "A woman raised from the dead by the imposition of the Cross" is a very elaborate composition, by Böhms, in which the faces are of first-rate excellence. In the evening we went to the opera and saw the "Nord Stern." _May 10._--Since Wednesday I have had a wretched cold and cough, and been otherwise ill, but I have had several pleasures nevertheless. On Friday, Bodenstedt called with Baron Schack to take us to Genelli's, the artist of whose powers Bodenstedt had spoken to us with enthusiastic admiration. The result to us was nothing but disappointment; the sketches he showed us seemed to us quite destitute of any striking merit. On Sunday we dined with Liebig, and spent the evening at Bodenstedt's, where we met Professor Bluntschli, the jurist, a very intelligent and agreeable man, and Melchior Meyr, a maker of novels and tragedies, otherwise an ineffectual personage. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th May, 1858.] Our life here is very agreeable--full of pleasant novelty, although we take things quietly and observe our working hours just as if we were at Richmond. People are so kind to us that we feel already quite at home, sip _baierisch Bier_ with great tolerance, and talk bad German with more and more _aplomb_. The place, you know, swarms with professors of all sorts--all _gründlich_, of course, and one or two of them great. There is no one we are more charmed with than Liebig. Mr. Lewes had no letter to him--we merely met him at an evening party; yet he has been particularly kind to us, and seems to have taken a benevolent liking to me. We dined with him and his family yesterday, and saw how men of European celebrity may put up with greasy cooking in private life. He lives in very good German style, however; has a handsome suite of apartments, and makes a greater figure than most of the professors. His manners are charming--easy, graceful, benignant, and all the more conspicuous because he is so quiet and low spoken among the loud talkers here. He looks best in his laboratory, with his velvet cap on, holding little phials in his hand, and talking of Kreatine and Kreatinine in the same easy way that well-bred ladies talk scandal. He is one of the professors who has been called here by the present king--Max--who seems to be a really sensible man among kings; gets up at five o'clock in the morning to study, and every Saturday evening has a gathering of the first men in science and literature, that he may benefit by their opinions on important subjects. At this _Tafel-rund_ every man is required to say honestly what he thinks; every one may contradict every one else; and if the king suspects any one of a polite insincerity, the too polished man is invited no more. Liebig, the three poets--Geibel, Heyse, and Bodenstedt--and Professor Löher, a writer of considerable mark, are always at the _Tafel-rund_ as an understood part of their functions; the rest are invited according to the king's direction. Bodenstedt is one of our best friends here--enormously instructed, after the fashion of Germans, but not at all stupid with it. We were at the Siebolds' last night to meet a party of celebrities, and, what was better, to see the prettiest little picture of married life--the great comparative anatomist (Siebold) seated at the piano in his spectacles playing the difficult accompaniments to Schubert's songs, while his little round-faced wife sang them with much taste and feeling. They are not young. Siebold is gray, and probably more than fifty; his wife perhaps nearly forty; and it is all the prettier to see their admiration of each other. She said to Mr. Lewes, when he was speaking of her husband, "Ja, er ist ein netter Mann, nicht wahr?"[2] We take the art in very small draughts at present--the German hours being difficult to adjust to our occupations. We are obliged to dine at _one!_ and of course when we are well enough must work till then. Two hours afterwards all the great public exhibitions are closed, except the churches. I _cannot_ admire much of the modern German art. It is for the most part elaborate lifelessness. Kaulbach's great compositions are huge charades; and I have seen nothing of his equal to his own "Reineke Fuchs." It is an unspeakable relief, after staring at one of his pictures--the "Destruction of Jerusalem," for example, which is a regular child's puzzle of symbolism--to sweep it all out of one's mind--which is very easily done, for nothing grasps you in it--and call up in your imagination a little Gerard Dow that you have seen hanging in a corner of one of the cabinets. We have been to his _atelier_, and he has given us a proof of his "Irrenhaus,"[3] a strange sketch, which he made years ago--very terrible and powerful. He is certainly a man of great faculty, but is, I imagine, carried out of his true path by the ambition to produce "Weltgeschichtliche Bilder," which the German critics may go into raptures about. His "Battle of the Huns," which is the most impressive of all his great pictures, was the first of the series. He painted it simply under the inspiration of the grand myth about the spirits of the dead warriors rising and carrying on the battle in the air. Straightway the German critics began to smoke furiously that vile tobacco which they call _æsthetik_, declared it a "Weltgeschichtliches Bild," and ever since Kaulbach has been concocting these pictures in which, instead of taking a single moment of reality and trusting to the infinite symbolism that belongs to all nature, he attempts to give you at one view a succession of events--each represented by some group which may mean "Whichever you please, my little dear." I must tell you something else which interested me greatly, as the first example of the kind that has come under my observation. Among the awful mysterious names, hitherto known only as marginal references whom we have learned to clothe with ordinary flesh and blood, is Professor Martius (Spix and Martius), now an old man, and rich after the manner of being rich in Germany. He has a very sweet wife--one of those women who remain pretty and graceful in old age--and a family of three daughters and one son, all more than grown up. I learned that she is Catholic, that her daughters are Catholic, and her husband and son Protestant--the children having been so brought up according to the German law in cases of mixed marriage. I can't tell you how interesting it was to me to hear her tell of her experience in bringing up her son conscientiously as a Protestant, and then to hear her and her daughters speak of the exemplary priests who had shown them such tender fatherly care when they were in trouble. They are the most harmonious, affectionate family we have seen; and one delights in such a triumph of human goodness over the formal logic of theorists. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _May 13._--Geibel came and brought me the two volumes of his poems, and stayed chatting for an hour. We spent the evening quietly at home. _May 14._--After writing, we went for an hour to the Pinacothek, and looked at some of the Flemish pictures. In the afternoon we called at Liebig's, and he went a long walk with us--the long chain of snowy mountains in the hazy distance. After supper I read Geibel's "Junius Lieder." _May 15._--Read the 18th chapter of "Adam Bede" to G. He was much pleased with it. Then we walked in the Englische Garten, and heard the band, and saw the Germans drinking their beer. The park was lovely. _May 16._--We were to have gone to Grosshesselohe with the Siebolds, and went to Frühstück with them at 12, as a preliminary. Bodenstedt was there to accompany us. But heavy rain came on, and we spent the time till 5 o'clock in talking, hearing music, and listening to Bodenstedt's "Epic on the destruction of Novgorod." About seven, Liebig came to us and asked us to spend the evening at his house. We went and found Voelderndorff, Bischoff and his wife, and Carrière and Frau. _May 20._--As I had a feeble head this morning, we gave up the time to seeing pictures, and went to the _Neue Pinacothek_. A "Lady with Fruit, followed by three Children," pleased us more than ever. It is by Wichmann. The two interiors of Westminster Abbey by Ainmueller admirable. Unable to admire Rothmann's Greek Landscapes, which have a room to themselves. Ditto Kaulbach's "Zerstörung von Jerusalem." We went for the first time to see the collection of porcelain paintings, and had really a rich treat. Many of them are admirable copies of great pictures. The sweet "Madonna and Child," in Raphael's early manner; a "Holy Family," also in the early manner, with a Madonna the exact type of the St. Catherine; and a "Holy Family" in the later manner, something like the Madonna Delia Sedia, are all admirably copied. So are two of Andrea del Sarto's--full of tenderness and calm piety. _May 23._--Through the cold wind and white dust we went to the Jesuits' Church to hear the music. It is a fine church in the Renaissance style, the vista terminating with the great altar very fine, with all the crowd of human beings covering the floor. Numbers of men! In the evening we went to Bodenstedt's, and saw his wife for the first time--a delicate creature who sang us some charming Bavarian _Volkslieder_. On Monday we spent the evening at Löher's--Baumgarten, _ein junger Historiker_, Oldenbourg, and the Bodenstedts meeting us. Delicious _Mai-trank_, made by putting the fresh _Waldmeister_--a cruciferous plant with a small white flower, something like Lady's Bedstraw--into mild wine, together with sugar, and occasionally other things. _May 26._--This evening I have read aloud "Adam Bede," chapter xx. We have begun Ludwig's "Zwischen Himmel und Erde." _May 27._--We called on the Siebolds to-day, then walked in the Theresien Wiese, and saw the mountains gloriously. Spent the evening at Prof. Martius's, where Frau Erdl played Beethoven's Andante and the Moonlight Sonata admirably. _May 28._--We heard from Blackwood this morning. Good news in general, but the sale of our books not progressing at present. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th May, 1858.] It is invariably the case that when people discover certain points of coincidence in a fiction with facts that happen to have come to their knowledge, they believe themselves able to furnish a key to the whole. That is amusing enough to the author, who knows from what widely sundered portions of experience--from what a combination of subtle, shadowy suggestions, with certain actual objects and events, his story has been formed. It would be a very difficult thing for me to furnish a key to my stories myself. But where there is no exact memory of the past, any story with a few remembered points of character or of incident may pass for a history. We pay for our sight of the snowy mountains here by the most capricious of climates. English weather is steadfast compared with Munich weather. You go to dinner here in summer and come away from it in winter. You are languid among trees and feathery grass at one end of the town, and are shivering in a hurricane of dust at the other. This inconvenience of climate, with the impossibility of dining (well) at any other hour than one o'clock is not friendly to the stomach--that great seat of the imagination. And I shall never advise an author to come to Munich except _ad interim_. The great Saal, full of Rubens's pictures, is worth studying; and two or three precious bits of sculpture, and the sky on a fine day, always puts one in a good temper--it is so deliciously clear and blue, making even the ugliest buildings look beautiful by the light it casts on them. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _May 30._--We heard "William Tell"--a great enjoyment to me. _June 1._--To Grosshesselohe with a party. Siebold and his wife, Prof. Löher, Fräulein von List, Fräulein Thiersch, Frau von Schaden and her pretty daughter. It was very pretty to see Siebold's delight in nature--the Libellulæ, the Blindworm, the crimson and black Cicadæ, the Orchidæ. The strange whim of Schwanthaler's--the Burg von Schwaneck--was our destination. _June 10._--For the last week my work has been rather scanty owing to bodily ailments. I am at the end of chapter xxi., and am this morning going to begin chapter xxii. In the interim our chief pleasure had been a trip to Starnberg by ourselves. _June 13._--This morning at last free from headache, and able to write. I am entering on my history of the birthday with some fear and trembling. This evening we walked, between eight and half-past nine, in the Wiese, looking towards Nymphenburg. The light delicious--the west glowing; the faint crescent moon and Venus pale above it; the larks filling the air with their songs, which seemed only a little way above the ground. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th June, 1858.] Words are very clumsy things. I like less and less to handle my friends' sacred feelings with them. For even those who call themselves intimate know very little about each other--hardly ever know just _how_ a sorrow is felt, and hurt each other by their very attempts at sympathy or consolation. We can bear no hand on our bruises. And so I feel I have no right to say that I know _how_ the loss of your mother--"the only person who ever leaned on you"--affects you. I only know that it must make a deeply-felt crisis in your life, and I know that the better from having felt a great deal about my own mother and father, and from having the keenest remembrance of all that experience. But for this very reason I know that I can't measure what the event is to you; and if I were near you I should only kiss you and say nothing. People talk of the feelings dying out as one gets older; but at present my experience is just the contrary. All the serious relations of life become so much more real to me--pleasure seems so slight a thing, and sorrow and duty and endurance so great. I find the least bit of real human life touch me in a way it never did when I was younger. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _June 17._--This evening G. left me to set out on his journey to Hofwyl to see his boys. _June 18._--Went with the Siebolds to Nymphenburg; called at Professor Knapp's, and saw Liebig's sister, Frau Knapp--a charming, gentle-mannered woman, with splendid dark eyes. _June 22._--Tired of loneliness, I went to the Frau von Siebold, chatted with her over tea, and then heard some music. _June 23._--My kind little friend (Frau von Siebold) brought me a lovely bouquet of roses this morning, and invited me to go with them in the evening to the theatre to see the new comedy, the "Drei Candidaten," which I did: a miserably poor affair. _June 24._--G. came in the evening, at 10 o'clock--after I had suffered a great deal in thinking of the possibilities that might prevent him from coming. _June 25._--This morning I have read to G. all I have written during his absence, and he approves it more than I expected. _July 7._--This morning we left Munich, setting out in the rain to Rosenheim by railway. The previous day we dined, and sat a few hours with the dear, charming Siebolds, and parted from them with regret--glad to leave Munich, but not to leave the friends who had been so kind to us. For a week before I had been ill--almost a luxury, because of the love that tended me. But the general languor and sense of depression produced by Munich air and way of life was no luxury, and I was glad to say a last good-bye to the quaint pepper-boxes of the Frauen-Kirche. [Sidenote: Munich to Dresden, 1858.] At the Rosenheim station we got into the longest of omnibuses, which took us to the _Gasthof_, where we were to dine and lunch, and then mount into the _Stell-wagen_, which would carry us to Prien, on the borders of the Chiem See. Rosenheim is a considerable and rather quaint-looking town, interrupted by orchards and characterized in a passing glance by the piazzas that are seen everywhere fronting the shops. It has a grand view of the mountains, still a long way off. The afternoon was cloudy, with intermittent rain, and did not set off the landscape. Nevertheless, I had much enjoyment in this four or five hours' journey to Prien. The little villages, with picturesque, wide gables, projecting roofs, and wooden galleries--with abundant orchards--with felled trunks of trees and stacks of fir-wood, telling of the near neighborhood of the forest--were what I liked best in this ride. We had no sooner entered the steamboat to cross the Chiem See than it began to rain heavily, and I kept below, only peeping now and then at the mountains and the green islands, with their monasteries. From the opposite bank of the See we had a grand view of the mountains, all dark purple under the clouded sky. Before us was a point where the nearer mountains opened and allowed us a view of their more distant brethren receding in a fainter and fainter blue--a marsh in the foreground, where the wild-ducks were flying. Our drive from this end of the lake to Traunstein was lovely--through fertile, cultivated land, everywhere married to bits of forest. The green meadow or the golden corn sloped upward towards pine woods, or the bushy greenness seemed to run with wild freedom far out into long promontories among the ripening crops. Here and there the country had the aspect of a grand park from the beautiful intermingling of wood and field, without any line of fence. Then came the red sunset, and it was dark when we entered Traunstein, where we had to pass the night. Among our companions in the day's journey had been a long-faced, cloaked, slow and solemn man, whom George called the author of "Eugene Aram," and I Don Quixote, he was so given to serious remonstrance with the vices he met on the road. We had been constantly deceived in the length of our stages--on the principle, possibly, of keeping up our spirits. The next morning there was the same tenderness shown about the starting of the _Stell-wagen_: at first it was to start at seven, then at half-past, then when another _Wagen_ came with its cargo of passengers. This was too much for Don Quixote; and when the stout, red-faced _Wirth_ had given him still another answer about the time of starting, he began, in slow and monotonous indignation, "Warum lügen sie so? Sie werden machen dass kein Mensch diesen Weg kommen wird,"[4] etc. Whereupon the _Wirth_ looked red-faced, stout, and unwashed as before, without any perceptible expression of face supervening. The next morning the weather looked doubtful, and so we gave up going to the König See for that day, determining to ramble on the Mönchsberg and enjoy the beauties of Salzburg instead. The morning brightened as the sun ascended, and we had a delicious ramble on the Mönchsberg--looking down on the lovely, peaceful plain, below the grand old Untersberg, where the sleeping Kaiser awaits his resurrection in that "good time coming;" watching the white mist floating along the sides of the dark mountains, and wandering under the shadow of the plantation, where the ground was green with luxuriant hawkweed, as at Nymphenburg, near Munich. The outline of the castle and its rock is remarkably fine, and reminded us of Gorey in Jersey. But we had a still finer view of it when we drove out to Aigen. On our way thither we had sight of the Watzmann, the highest mountain in Bavarian Tyrol--emerging from behind the great shoulder of the Untersberg. It was the only mountain within sight that had snow on its summit. Once at Aigen, and descended from our carriage, we had a delicious walk, up and up, along a road of continual steps, by the course of the mountain-stream, which fell in a series of cascades over great heaps of bowlders; then back again, by a round-about way, to our vehicle and home, enjoying the sight of old Watzmann again, and the grand mass of Salzburg Castle on its sloping rock. We encountered a _table-d'hôte_ acquaintance who had been to Berchtesgaden and the König See, driven through the salt-mine, and had had altogether a perfect expedition on this day, when we had not had the courage to set off. Never mind! we had enjoyed our day. We thought it wisest the next morning to renounce the König See, and pursue our way to Ischl by the _Stell-wagen_. We were fortunate enough to secure two places in the _coupé_, and I enjoyed greatly the quiet outlook, from my comfortable corner, on the changing landscape--green valley and hill and mountain; here and there a picturesque Tyrolese village, and once or twice a fine lake. The greatest charm of charming Ischl is the crystal Traun, surely the purest of streams. Away again early the next morning in the _coupé_ of the _Stell-wagen_, through a country more and more beautiful--high, woody mountains sloping steeply down to narrow, fertile, green valleys, the road winding amongst them so as to show a perpetual variety of graceful outlines where the sloping mountains met in the distance before us. As we approached the Gmunden See the masses became grander and more rocky, and the valley opened wider. It was Sunday, and when we left the _Stell-wagen_ we found quite a crowd in Sunday clothes standing round the place of embarkation for the steamboat that was to take us along the lake. Gmunden is another pretty place at the head of the lake, but apart from this one advantage inferior to Ischl. We got on to the slowest of railways here, getting down at the station near the falls of the Traun, where we dined at the pleasant inn, and fed our eyes on the clear river again hurrying over the rocks. Behind the great fall there is a sort of inner chamber, where the water rushes perpetually over a stone altar. At the station, as we waited for the train, it began to rain, and the good-natured looking woman asked us to take shelter in her little station-house--a single room not more than eight feet square, where she lived with her husband and two little girls all the year round. The good couple looked more contented than half the well-lodged people in the world. He used to be a _drozchky_ driver; and after that life of uncertain gains, which had many days quite penniless and therefore dinnerless, he found his present position quite a pleasant lot. On to Linz, when the train came, gradually losing sight of the Tyrolean mountains and entering the great plain of the Danube. Our voyage the next day in the steamboat was unfortunate: we had incessant rain till we had passed all the finest parts of the banks. But when we had landed, the sun shone out brilliantly, and so our entrance into Vienna, through the long suburb, with perpetual shops and odd names (Prschka, for example, which a German in our omnibus thought not at all remarkable for consonants!) was quite cheerful. We made our way through the city and across the bridge to the Weissen Ross, which was full; so we went to the Drei Rosen, which received us. The sunshine was transient; it began to rain again when we went out to look at St. Stephen's, but the delight of seeing that glorious building could not be marred by a little rain. The tower of this church is worth going to Vienna to see. The aspect of the city is that of an inferior Paris; the shops have an elegance that one sees nowhere else in Germany; the streets are clean, the houses tall and stately. The next morning we had a view of the town from the Belvedere Terrace; St. Stephen's sending its exquisite tower aloft from among an almost level forest of houses and inconspicuous churches. It is a magnificent collection of pictures at the Belvedere; but we were so unfortunate as only to be able to see them once, the gallery being shut up on the Wednesday; and so, many pictures have faded from my memory, even of those which I had time to distinguish. Titian's Danae was one that delighted us; besides this I remember Giorgione's Lucrezia Borgia, with the cruel, cruel eyes; the remarkable head of Christ; a proud Italian face in a red garment, I think by Correggio; and two heads by Denner, the most wonderful of all his wonderful heads that I have seen. There is an Ecce Homo by Titian which is thought highly of, and is splendid in composition and color, but the Christ is abject, the Pontius Pilate vulgar: amazing that they could have been painted by the same man who conceived and executed the Christo della Moneta! There are huge Veroneses, too, splendid and interesting. The Liechtenstein collection we saw twice, and that remains with me much more distinctly--the room full of Rubens's history of Decius, more magnificent even than he usually is in color; then his glorious Assumption of the Virgin, and opposite to it the portraits of his two boys; the portrait of his lovely wife going to the bath with brown drapery round her; and the fine portraits by Vandyke, especially the pale, delicate face of Wallenstein, with blue eyes and pale auburn locks. Another great pleasure we had at Vienna--next after the sight of St. Stephen's and the pictures--was a visit to Hyrtl, the anatomist, who showed us some of his wonderful preparations, showing the vascular and nervous systems in the lungs, liver, kidneys, and intestinal canal of various animals. He told us the deeply interesting story of the loss of his fortune in the Vienna revolution of '48. He was compelled by the revolutionists to attend on the wounded for three days' running. When at last he came to his house to change his clothes he found nothing but four bare walls! His fortune in Government bonds was burned along with the house, as well as all his precious collection of anatomical preparations, etc. He told us that since that great shock his nerves have been so susceptible that he sheds tears at the most trifling events, and has a depression of spirits which often keeps him silent for days. He only received a very slight sum from Government in compensation for his loss. One evening we strolled in the Volksgarten and saw the "Theseus killing the Centaur," by Canova, which stands in a temple built for its reception. But the garden to be best remembered by us was that at Schönbrunn, a labyrinth of stately avenues with their terminal fountains. We amused ourselves for some time with the menagerie here, the lions especially, who lay in dignified sleepiness till the approach of feeding-time made them open eager eyes and pace impatiently about their dens. We set off from Vienna in the evening with a family of Wallachians as our companions, one of whom, an elderly man, could speak no German, and began to address G. in Wallachian, as if that were the common language of all the earth. We managed to sleep enough for a night's rest, in spite of intense heat and our cramped positions, and arrived in very good condition at Prague in the fine morning. Out we went after breakfast, that we might see as much as possible of the grand old city in one day; and our morning was occupied chiefly in walking about and getting views of striking exteriors. The most interesting things we saw were the Jewish burial-ground (the Alter Friedhof) and the old synagogue. The Friedhof is unique--with a wild growth of grass and shrubs and trees, and a multitude of quaint tombs in all sorts of positions, looking like the fragments of a great building, or as if they had been shaken by an earthquake. We saw a lovely dark-eyed Jewish child here, which we were glad to kiss in all its dirt. Then came the sombre old synagogue, with its smoked groins, and lamp forever burning. An intelligent Jew was our _cicerone_, and read us some Hebrew out of the precious old book of the law. After dinner we took a carriage and went across the wonderful bridge of St. Jean Nepomuck, with its avenue of statues, towards the Radschin--an ugly, straight-lined building, but grand in effect from its magnificent site, on the summit of an eminence crowded with old, massive buildings. The view from this eminence is one of the most impressive in the world--perhaps as much from one's associations with Prague as from its visible grandeur and antiquity. The cathedral close to the Radschin is a melancholy object on the outside--left with unfinished sides like scars. The interior is rich, but sadly confused in its ornamentation, like so many of the grand old churches--hideous altars of bastard style disgracing exquisite Gothic columns--cruellest of all in St. Stephen's at Vienna! We got our view from a _Damen Stift_[5] (for ladies of family), founded by Maria Theresa, whose blond beauty looked down on us from a striking portrait. Close in front of us, sloping downwards, was a pleasant orchard; then came the river, with its long, long bridge and grand gateway; then the sober-colored city, with its surrounding plain and distant hills. In the evening we went to the theatre--a shabby, ugly building--and heard Spohr's Jessonda. [Sidenote: Dresden, 1858.] The next morning early by railway to Dresden--a charming journey, for it took us right through the Saxon Switzerland, with its castellated rocks and firs. At four o'clock we were dining comfortably at the Hotel de Pologne, and the next morning (Sunday) we secured our lodgings--a whole apartment of six rooms, all to ourselves, for 18_s._ per week! By nine o'clock we were established in our new home, where we were to enjoy six weeks' quiet work, undisturbed by visits and visitors. And so we did. We were as happy as princes--are not--George writing at the far corner of the great _salon_, I at my _Schrank_ in my own private room, with closed doors. Here I wrote the latter half of the second volume of "Adam Bede" in the long mornings that our early hours--rising at six o'clock--secured us. Three mornings in the week we went to the Picture Gallery from twelve till one. The first day we went was a Sunday, when there is always a crowd in the Madonna Cabinet. I sat down on the sofa opposite the picture for an instant, but a sort of awe, as if I were suddenly in the living presence of some glorious being, made my heart swell too much for me to remain comfortably, and we hurried out of the room. On subsequent mornings we always came in, the last minutes of our stay, to look at this sublimest picture, and while the others, except the Christo della Moneta and Holbein's Madonna, lost much of their first interest, this became harder and harder to leave. Holbein's Madonna is very exquisite--a divinely gentle, golden haired blonde, with eyes cast down, in an attitude of unconscious, easy grace--the loveliest of all the Madonnas in the Dresden Gallery except the Sistine. By the side of it is a wonderful portrait by Holbein, which I especially enjoyed looking at. It represents nothing more lofty than a plain, weighty man of business, a goldsmith; but the eminently fine painting brings out all the weighty, calm, good sense that lies in a first-rate character of that order. We looked at the Zinsgroschen (Titian's), too, every day, and after that at the great painter's Venus, fit for its purity and sacred loveliness to hang in a temple with Madonnas. Palma's Venus, which hangs near, was an excellent foil, because it is pretty and pure in itself; but beside the Titian it is common and unmeaning. Another interesting case of comparison was that between the original Zinsgroschen and a copy by an Italian painter, which hangs on the opposite wall of the cabinet. This is considered a fine copy, and would be a fine picture if one had never seen the original; but all the finest effects are gone in the copy. The four large Correggios hanging together--the _Nacht_; the Madonna with St. Sebastian, of the smiling graceful character, with the little cherub riding astride a cloud; the Madonna with St. Hubert; and a third Madonna, very grave and sweet--painted when he was nineteen--remained with me very vividly. They are full of life, though the life is not of a high order; and I should have surmised, without any previous knowledge, that the painter was among the first masters of _technique_. The Magdalen is sweet in conception, but seems to have less than the usual merit of Correggio's pictures as to painting. A picture we delighted in extremely was one of Murillo's--St. Rodriguez, fatally wounded, receiving the Crown of Martyrdom. The attitude and expression are sublime, and strikingly distinguished from all other pictures of saints I have ever seen. He stands erect in his scarlet and white robes, with face upturned, the arms held simply downward, but the hands held open in a receptive attitude. The silly cupid-like angel holding the martyr's crown in the corner spoils all. I did not half satisfy my appetite for the rich collection of Flemish and Dutch pictures here--for Teniers, Ryckart, Gerard Dow, Terburg, Mieris, and the rest. Rembrandt looks great here in his portraits, but I like none of the other pictures by him; the Ganymede is an offence. Guido is superlatively odious in his Christs, in agonized or ecstatic attitudes--much about the level of the accomplished London beggar. Dear, grand old Rubens does not show to great advantage, except in the charming half-length Diana returning from Hunting, the Love Garden, and the sketch of his Judgment of Paris. The most popular Murillo, and apparently one of the most popular Madonnas in the gallery, is the simple, sad mother with her child, without the least divinity in it, suggesting a dead or sick father, and imperfect nourishment in a garret. In that light it is touching. A fellow-traveller in the railway to Leipzig told us he had seen this picture in 1848 with nine bullet holes in it! The firing from the hotel of the Stadt Rom bore directly on the Picture Gallery. Veronese is imposing in one of the large rooms--the Adoration of the Magi, the Marriage at Cana, the Finding of Moses, etc., making grand masses of color on the lower part of the walls; but to me he is ignoble as a painter of human beings. It was a charming life--our six weeks at Dresden. There were the open-air concerts at the Grosser Garten and the Brühl'sche Terrace; the Sommer Theater, where we saw our favorite comic actor Merbitz; the walks into the open country, with the grand stretch of sky all round; the Zouaves, with their wondrous make-ups as women; Räder, the humorous comedian at the Sink'sche Bad Theater; our quiet afternoons in our pleasant _salon_--all helping to make an agreeable fringe to the quiet working time. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th July, 1858.] Since I wrote to you last I have lived through a great deal of exquisite pleasure. First an attack of illness during our last week at Munich, which I reckon among my pleasures because I was nursed so tenderly. Then a fortnight's unspeakable journey to Salzburg, Ischl, Linz, Vienna, Prague, and finally Dresden, which is our last resting-place before returning to Richmond, where we hope to be at the beginning of September. Dresden is a proper climax; for all other art seems only a preparation for feeling the superiority of the Madonna di San Sisto the more. We go three days a week to the gallery, and every day--after looking at other pictures--we go to take a parting draught of delight at Titian's Zinsgroschen and the _Einzige_ Madonna. In other respects I am particularly enjoying our residence here--we are so quiet, having determined to know no one and give ourselves up to work. We both feel a happy change in our health from leaving Munich, though I am reconciled to our long stay there by the fact that Mr. Lewes gained so much from his intercourse with the men of science there, especially Bischoff, Siebold, and Harless. I remembered your passion for autographs, and asked Liebig for his on your account. I was not sure that you would care enough about the handwriting of other luminaries; for there is such a thing as being European and yet obscure--a fixed star visible only from observatories. You will be interested to hear that I saw Strauss at Munich. He came for a week's visit before we left. I had a quarter of an hour's chat with him alone, and was very agreeably impressed by him. He looked much more serene, and his face had a far sweeter expression, than when I saw him in that dumb way at Cologne. He speaks with very choice words, like a man strictly truthful in the use of language. Will you undertake to tell Mrs. Call from me that he begged me to give his kindest remembrances to her and to her father,[6] of whom he spoke with much interest and regard as his earliest English friend? I dare not begin to write about other things or people that I have seen in these crowded weeks. They must wait till I have you by my side again, which I hope will happen some day. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] From Dresden, one showery day at the end of August, we set off to Leipzig, the first stage on our way home. Here we spent two nights; had a glimpse of the old town with its fine market; dined at Brockhaus's; saw the picture-gallery, carrying away a lasting delight in Calame's great landscapes and De Dreux's dogs, which are far better worth seeing than De la Roche's "Napoleon at Fontainebleau"--considered the glory of the gallery; went with Victor Carus to his museum and saw an Amphioxus; and finally spent the evening at an open-air concert in Carus's company. Early in the morning we set off by railway, and travelled night and day till we reached home on the 2d September. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 5th Sept. 1858.] Will you not write to the author of "Thorndale" and express your sympathy? He is a very diffident man, who would be susceptible to that sort of fellowship; and one should give a gleam of happiness where it is possible. I shall write you nothing worth reading for the next three months, so here is an opportunity for you to satisfy a large appetite for generous deeds. You can write to me a great many times without getting anything worth having in return. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Oct. 1858.] Thanks for the verses on Buckle. I'm afraid I feel a malicious delight in them, for he is a writer who inspires me with a personal dislike; not to put too fine a point on it, he impresses me as an irreligious, conceited man. Long ago I had offered to write about Newman, but gave it up again. The second volume of "Adam Bede" had been sent to Blackwood on 7th September, the third had followed two months later, and there are the following entries in the Journal in November: [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Nov. 1._--I have begun Carlyle's "Life of Frederic the Great," and have also been thinking much of my own life to come. This is a moment of suspense, for I am awaiting Blackwood's opinion and proposals concerning "Adam Bede." _Nov. 4._--Received a letter from Blackwood containing warm praise of my third volume, and offering £800 for the copyright of "Adam Bede" for four years. I wrote to accept. _Nov. 10._--Wilkie Collins and Mr. Pigott came to dine with us after a walk by the river. I was pleased with Wilkie Collins--there is a sturdy uprightness about him that makes all opinion and all occupation respectable. _Nov. 16._--Wrote the last word of "Adam Bede" and sent it to Mr. Langford. _Jubilate._ [Sidenote: History of "Adam Bede."] The germ of "Adam Bede" was an anecdote told me by my Methodist Aunt Samuel (the wife of my father's younger brother)--an anecdote from her own experience. We were sitting together one afternoon during her visit to me at Griff, probably in 1839 or 1840, when it occurred to her to tell me how she had visited a condemned criminal--a very ignorant girl, who had murdered her child and refused to confess; how she had stayed with her praying through the night, and how the poor creature at last broke out into tears and confessed her crime. My aunt afterwards went with her in the cart to the place of execution; and she described to me the great respect with which this ministry of hers was regarded by the official people about the jail. The story, told by my aunt with great feeling, affected me deeply, and I never lost the impression of that afternoon and our talk together; but I believe I never mentioned it, through all the intervening years, till something prompted me to tell it to George in December, 1856, when I had begun to write the "Scenes of Clerical Life." He remarked that the scene in the prison would make a fine element in a story; and I afterwards began to think of blending this and some other recollections of my aunt in one story, with some points in my father's early life and character. The problem of construction that remained was to make the unhappy girl one of the chief _dramatis personæ_, and connect her with the hero. At first I thought of making the story one of the series of "Scenes," but afterwards, when several motives had induced me close these with "Janet's Repentance," I determined on making what we always called in our conversation "My Aunt's Story" the subject of a long novel, which I accordingly began to write on the 22d October, 1857. The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when she could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods--once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once at my father's last residence, Foleshill. The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father's early life; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in Adam Bede--only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and their mutual relations to Hetty--_i.e._, to the girl who commits child-murder--the scene in the prison being, of course, the climax towards which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah's ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the reader's interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view. The first volume was written at Richmond, and given to Blackwood in March. He expressed great admiration of its freshness and vividness, but seemed to hesitate about putting it in the Magazine, which was the form of publication he as well as myself had previously contemplated. He still _wished_ to have it for the Magazine, but desired to know the course of the story. At _present_ he saw nothing to prevent its reception in "Maga," but he would like to see more. I am uncertain whether his doubts rested solely on Hetty's relation to Arthur, or whether they were also directed towards the treatment of Methodism by the Church. I refused to tell my story beforehand, on the ground that I would not have it judged apart from my _treatment_, which alone determines the moral quality of art; and ultimately I proposed that the notion of publication in "Maga" should be given up, and that the novel should be published in three volumes at Christmas, if possible. He assented. I began the second volume in the second week of my stay at Munich, about the middle of April. While we were at Munich George expressed his fear that Adam's part was too passive throughout the drama, and that it was important for him to be brought into more direct collision with Arthur. This doubt haunted me, and out of it grew the scene in the wood between Arthur and Adam; the fight came to me as a _necessity_ one night at the Munich opera, when I was listening to "William Tell." Work was slow and interrupted at Munich, and when we left I had only written to the beginning of the dance on the Birthday Feast; but at Dresden I wrote uninterruptedly and with great enjoyment in the long, quiet mornings, and there I nearly finished the second volume--all, I think, but the last chapter, which I wrote here in the old room at Richmond in the first week of September, and then sent the MS. off to Blackwood. The opening of the third volume--Hetty's journey--was, I think, written more rapidly than the rest of the book, and was left without the slightest alteration of the first draught. Throughout the book I have altered little; and the only cases I think in which George suggested more than a verbal alteration, when I read the MS. aloud to him, were the first scene at the Farm, and the scene in the wood between Arthur and Adam, both of which he recommended me to "space out" a little, which I did. When, on October 29, I had written to the end of the love-scene at the Farm between Adam and Dinah, I sent the MS. to Blackwood, since the remainder of the third volume could not affect the judgment passed on what had gone before. He wrote back in warm admiration, and offered me, on the part of the firm, £800 for four years' copyright. I accepted the offer. The last words of the third volume were written and despatched on their way to Edinburgh, November the 16th, and now on the last day of the same month I have written this slight history of my book. I love it very much, and am deeply thankful to have written it, whatever the public may say to it--a result which is still in darkness, for I have at present had only four sheets of the proof. The book would have been published at Christmas, or rather early in December, but that Bulwer's "What will he do with it?" was to be published by Blackwood at that time, and it was thought that this novel might interfere with mine. The manuscript of "Adam Bede" bears the following inscription: "To my dear husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a work which would never have been written but for the happiness which his love has conferred on my life." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Nov. 1858.] I shall be much obliged if you will accept for me Tauchnitz's offer of £30 for the English reprint of "Clerical Scenes." And will you also be so good as to desire that Tauchnitz may register the book in Germany, as I understand that is the only security against its being translated without our knowledge; and I shudder at the idea of my books being turned into hideous German by an incompetent translator. I return the proofs by to-day's post. The dialect must be toned down all through in correcting the proofs, for I found it impossible to keep it subdued enough in writing. I am aware that the spelling which represents a dialect perfectly well to those who know it by the ear, is likely to be unintelligible to others. I hope the sheets will come rapidly and regularly now, for I dislike lingering, hesitating processes. Your praise of my ending was very warming and cheering to me in the foggy weather. I'm sure, if I have written well, your pleasant letters have had something to do with it. Can anything be done in America for "Adam Bede?" I suppose not--as my name is not known there. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Nov. 25._--We had a visit from Mr. Bray, who told us much that interested us about Mr. Richard Congreve, and also his own affairs. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 26th Nov. 1858.] I am very grateful to you for sending me a few authentic words from your own self. They are unspeakably precious to me. I mean that quite literally, for there is no putting into words any feeling that has been of long growth within us. It is easy to say how we love _new_ friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibres that knit us to the old. I have been thinking of you incessantly in the waking hours, and feel a growing hunger to know more precise details about you. I am of a too sordid and anxious disposition, prone to dwell almost exclusively on fears instead of hopes, and to lay in a larger stock of resignation than of any other form of confidence. But I try to extract some comfort this morning from my consciousness of this disposition, by thinking that nothing is ever so bad as my imagination paints it. And then I know there are incommunicable feelings within us capable of creating our best happiness at the very time others can see nothing but our troubles. And so I go on arguing with myself, and trying to live inside _you_ and looking at things in all the lights I can fancy you seeing them in, for the sake of getting cheerful about you in spite of Coventry. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, Christmas Day, 1858.] The well-flavored mollusks came this morning. It was very kind of you; and if you remember how fond I am of oysters, your good-nature will have the more pleasure in furnishing my _gourmandise_ with the treat. I have a childish delight in any little act of genuine friendliness towards us--and yet not childish, for how little we thought of people's goodness towards us when we were children. It takes a good deal of experience to tell one the rarity of a thoroughly disinterested kindness. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Dec. 1858.] I see with you entirely about the preface: indeed I had myself anticipated the very effects you predict. The deprecatory tone is not one I can ever take willingly, but I am conscious of a shrinking sort of pride which is likely to warp my judgment in many personal questions, and on that ground I distrusted my own opinion. Mr. Lewes went to Vernon Hill yesterday for a few days' change of air, but before he went he said, "Ask Mr. Blackwood what he thinks of putting a mere advertisement at the beginning of the book to this effect: As the story of 'Adam Bede' will lose much of its effect if the development is foreseen, the author requests those critics who may honor him with a notice to abstain from telling the story." I write my note of interrogation accordingly "?" Pray do not begin to read the second volume until it is all in print. There is necessarily a lull of interest in it to prepare for the crescendo. I am delighted that you like my Mrs. Poyser. I'm very sorry to part with her and some of my other characters--there seems to be so much more to be done with them. Mr. Lewes says she gets better and better as the book goes on; and I was certainly conscious of writing her dialogue with heightening gusto. Even in our imaginary worlds there is the sorrow of parting. I hope the Christmas weather is as bright in your beautiful Edinburgh as it is here, and that you are enjoying all other Christmas pleasures too without disturbance. I have not yet made up my mind what my next story is to be, but I must not lie fallow any longer when the new year is come. [Sidenote: Journal, 1858.] _Dec. 25 (Christmas Day)._--George and I spent this wet day very happily alone together. We are reading Scott's life in the evenings with much enjoyment. I am reading through Horace in this pause. _Dec. 31._--The last day of the dear old year, which has been full of expected and unexpected happiness. "Adam Bede" has been written, and the second volume is in type. The first number of George's "Physiology of Common Life"--a work in which he has had much happy occupation--is published to-day; and both his position as a scientific writer and his inward satisfaction in that part of his studies have been much heightened during the past year. Our double life is more and more blessed--more and more complete. I think this chapter cannot more fitly conclude than with the following extract from Mr. G. H. Lewes's Journal, with which Mr. Charles Lewes has been good enough to furnish me: _Jan. 28, 1859._--Walked along the Thames towards Kew to meet Herbert Spencer, who was to spend the day with us, and we chatted with him on matters personal and philosophical. I owe him a debt of gratitude. My acquaintance with him was the brightest ray in a very dreary, _wasted_ period of my life. I have given up all ambition whatever, lived from hand to mouth, and thought the evil of each day sufficient. The stimulus of his intellect, especially during our long walks, roused my energy once more and revived my dormant love of science. His intense theorizing tendency was contagious, and it was only the stimulus of a _theory_ which could then have induced me to work. I owe Spencer another and a deeper debt. It was through him that I learned to know Marian--to know her was to love her--and since then my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosperity and all my happiness. God bless her! _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1858, TO DECEMBER, 1858. _Times_ reviews "Scenes of Clerical Life"--Helps's opinion--Subscription to the "Scenes"--Letter from Dickens, 18th Jan. 1858--Letter from Froude, 17th Jan.--Letter to Miss Hennell--Mr. Wm. Smith, author of "Thorndale"--Ruskin--Reading the "Eumenides" and Wordsworth--Letter to John Blackwood on Dickens's Letter--Letter from Mrs. Carlyle--Letter from Faraday--"Clerical Scenes" moving--John Blackwood calls, and George Eliot reveals herself--Takes MS. of first part of "Adam Bede"--Letters to Charles Bray on reports of authorship--Visit to Germany--Description of Nürnberg--The Frauen-Kirche--Effect of the music--Albert Dürer's house--Munich--Lodgings--Pinacothek--Rubens--Crucifixion--Theresien Wiese--Schwanthaler's "Bavaria"--The Alps--Letter to Miss Hennell--Contrast between Catholic and Protestant worship--Glyptothek--Pictures--Statues--Cornelius frescoes--Herr Oldenburg--Kaulbach--Bodenstedt--Professor Wagner--Martius--Liebig--Geibel--Heyse--Carrière--Prince Radziwill's "Faust"--Professor Löher--Baron Schack--Genelli--Professor Bluntschli--Letter to Miss Hennell--Description of Munich life--Kaulbach's pictures--The Siebolds--The Neue Pinacothek--Pictures and porcelain painting--Mme. Bodenstedt--Letter to Blackwood--Combinations of artist in writing--Hears "William Tell"--Expedition to Grosshesselohe--Progress with "Adam Bede"--Letter to Miss Hennell on death of her mother--Mr. Lewes goes to Hofwyl--Frau Knapp--Mr. Lewes returns--Leave Munich for Traunstein--Salzburg--Ischl--Linz--By Danube to Vienna--St. Stephen's--Belvedere pictures--Liechtenstein collection--Hyrtl the anatomist--Prague--Jewish burial-ground and the old synagogue--To Dresden--Latter half of second volume of "Adam Bede" written--First impression of Sistine Madonna--The Tribute money--Holbein's Madonna--The Correggios--Dutch school--Murillo--Letter to Miss Hennell--Description of life at Dresden--Health improved--Mention of Strauss at Munich--Dresden to Leipzig--Home to Richmond--Letter to Miss Hennell--Opinion of Buckle--Blackwood offers £800 for "Adam Bede"--Wilkie Collins and Mr. Pigott--History of "Adam Bede"--Letter to Charles Bray--Disinterested kindness--Letter to Blackwood suggesting preface to "Adam Bede"--Reading Scott's Life and Horace--Review of year--Extract from G. H. Lewes's Journal. FOOTNOTES: [1] The Brays' new house. [2] He is really a charming man, is he not? [3] Picture of interior of a Lunatic Asylum. [4] "Why do you tell such lies? The result of it will be that no one will travel this way." [5] Charitable Institution for Ladies. [6] Dr. Brabant. CHAPTER IX. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Jan. 12._--We went into town to-day and looked in the "Annual Register" for cases of _inundation_. Letter from Blackwood to-day, speaking of renewed delight in "Adam Bede," and proposing 1st Feb. as the day of publication. Read the article in yesterday's _Times_ on George's "Sea-side Studies"--highly gratifying. We are still reading Scott's life with great interest; and G. is reading to me Michelet's book "De l'Amour." _Jan. 15._--I corrected the last sheets of "Adam Bede," and we afterwards walked to Wimbledon to see our new house, which we have taken for seven years. I hired the servant--another bit of business done: and then we had a delightful walk across Wimbledon Common and through Richmond Park homeward. The air was clear and cold--the sky magnificent. _Jan. 31._--Received a check for £400 from Blackwood, being the first instalment of the payment for four years' copyright of "Adam Bede." To-morrow the book is to be subscribed, and Blackwood writes very pleasantly--confident of its "great success." Afterwards we went into town, paid money into the bank, and ordered part of our china and glass towards house-keeping. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 31st Jan. 1859.] Enclosed is the formal acknowledgment, bearing my signature, and with it let me beg you to accept my thanks--_not_ formal but heartfelt--for the generous way in which you have all along helped me with words and with deeds. The impression "Adam Bede" has made on you and Major Blackwood--of whom I have always been pleased to think as concurring with your views--is my best encouragement, and counterbalances, in some degree, the depressing influences to which I am peculiarly sensitive. I perceive that I have not the characteristics of the "popular author," and yet I am much in need of the warmly expressed sympathy which only popularity can win. A good subscription would be cheering, but I can understand that it is not decisive of success or non-success. Thank you for promising to let me know about it as soon as possible. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Feb. 6._--Yesterday we went to take possession of Holly Lodge, Wandsworth, which is to be our dwelling, we expect, for years to come. It was a deliciously fresh bright day--I will accept the omen. A letter came from Blackwood telling me the result of the subscription to "Adam Bede," which was published on the 1st: 730 copies, Mudie having taken 500 on the publisher's terms--_i.e._, ten per cent. on the sale price. At first he had stood out for a larger reduction, and would only take 50, but at last he came round. In this letter Blackwood told me the first _ab extra_ opinion of the book, which happened to be precisely what I most desired. A cabinet-maker (brother to Blackwood's managing clerk) had read the sheets, and declared that the writer must have been brought up to the business, or at least had listened to the workmen in their workshop. _Feb. 12._--Received a cheering letter from Blackwood, saying that he finds "Adam Bede" making just the impression he had anticipated among his own friends and connections, and enclosing a parcel from Dr. John Brown "to the author of 'Adam Bede.'" The parcel contained "Rab and his Friends," with an inscription. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 13th Feb. 1859.] Will you tell Dr. John Brown that when I read an account of "Rab and his Friends" in a newspaper, I wished I had the story to read at full length; and I thought to myself the writer of "Rab" would perhaps like "Adam Bede." When you have told him this, he will understand the peculiar pleasure I had on opening the little parcel with "Rab" inside, and a kind word from Rab's friend. I have read the story twice--once aloud, and once to myself, very slowly, that I might dwell on the pictures of Rab and Ailie, and carry them about with me more distinctly. I will not say any commonplace words of admiration about what has touched me so deeply; there is no adjective of that sort left undefiled by the newspapers. The writer of "Rab" _knows_ that I must love the grim old mastiff with the short tail and the long dewlaps--that I must have felt present at the scenes of Ailie's last trial. Thanks for your cheering letter. I will be hopeful--if I can. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Feb. 1859.] You have the art of writing just the sort of letters I care for--sincere letters, like your own talk. We are tolerably settled now, except that we have only a temporary servant; and I shall not be quite at ease until I have a trustworthy woman who will manage without incessant dogging. Our home is very comfortable, with far more of vulgar indulgences in it than I ever expected to have again; but you must not imagine it a snug place, just peeping above the holly bushes. Imagine it rather as a tall cake, with a low garnish of holly and laurel. As it is, we are very well off, with glorious breezy walks, and wide horizons, well ventilated rooms, and abundant water. If I allowed myself to have any longings beyond what is given, they would be for a nook quite in the country, far away from palaces--Crystal or otherwise--with an orchard behind me full of old trees, and rough grass and hedge-row paths among the endless fields where you meet nobody. We talk of such things sometimes, along with old age and dim faculties, and a small independence to save us from writing drivel for dishonest money. In the mean time the business of life shuts us up within the environs of London and within sight of human advancements, which I should be so very glad to believe in without seeing. Pretty Arabella Goddard we heard play at Berlin--play the very things you heard as a _bonne bouche_ at the last--none the less delightful from being so unlike the piano playing of Liszt and Clara Schumann, whom we had heard at Weimar--both great, and one the greatest. Thank you for sending me that authentic word about Miss Nightingale. I wonder if she would rather rest from her blessed labors, or live to go on working? Sometimes, when I read of the death of some great, sensitive human being, I have a triumph in the sense that they are at rest; and yet, along with that, such deep sadness at the thought that the rare nature is gone forever into darkness, and we can never know that our love and reverence can reach him, that I seem to have gone through a personal sorrow when I shut the book and go to bed. I felt in that way the other night when I finished the life of Scott aloud to Mr. Lewes. He had never read the book before, and has been deeply stirred by the picture of Scott's character, his energy and steady work, his grand fortitude under calamity, and the spirit of strict honor to which he sacrificed his declining life. He loves Scott as well as I do. We have met a pleasant-faced, bright-glancing man, whom we set down to be worthy of the name, Richard Congreve. I am curious to see if our _Ahnung_ will be verified. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 24th Feb. 1859.] One word of gratitude to _you_ first before I write any other letters. Heaven and earth bless you for trying to help me. I have been blasphemous enough sometimes to think that I had never been good and attractive enough to win any little share of the honest, disinterested friendship there is in the world: one or two examples of late had given that impression, and I am prone to rest in the least agreeable conviction the premisses will allow. I need hardly tell you what I want, you know it so well: a servant who will cause me the least possible expenditure of time on household matters. I wish I were not an anxious, fidgety wretch, and could sit down content with dirt and disorder. But anything in the shape of an _anxiety_ soon grows into a monstrous vulture with me, and makes itself more present to me than my rich sources of happiness--such as too few mortals are blessed with. You know me. Since I wrote this, I have just had a letter from my sister Chrissey--ill in bed, consumptive--regretting that she ever ceased to write to me. It has ploughed up my heart. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Feb. 1859.] Mrs. Carlyle's ardent letter will interest and amuse you. I reckon it among my best triumphs that she found herself "in charity with the whole human race" when she laid the book down. I want the philosopher himself to read it, because the _pre_-philosophic period--the childhood and poetry of his life--lay among the furrowed fields and pious peasantry. If he _could_ be urged to read a novel! I should like, if possible, to give him the same sort of pleasure he has given me in the early chapters of "Sartor," where he describes little Diogenes eating his porridge on the wall in sight of the sunset, and gaining deep wisdom from the contemplation of the pigs and other "higher animals" of _Entepfuhl_. Your critic was _not_ unjustly severe on the "Mirage Philosophy"--and I confess the "Life of Frederic" was a painful book to me in many respects; and yet I shrink, perhaps superstitiously, from any written or spoken word which is as strong as my inward criticism. I needed your letter very much--for when one lives apart from the world, with no opportunity of observing the effect of books except through the newspapers, one is in danger of sinking into the foolish belief that the day is past for the recognition of genuine, truthful writing, in spite of recent experience that the newspapers are no criterion at all. One such opinion as Mr. Caird's outweighs a great deal of damnatory praise from ignorant journalists. It is a wretched weakness of my nature to be so strongly affected by these things; and yet how is it possible to put one's best heart and soul into a book and be hardened to the result--be indifferent to the proof whether or not one has really a vocation to speak to one's fellow-men in that way? Of course one's vanity is at work; but the main anxiety is something entirely distinct from vanity. You see I mean you to understand that my feelings are very respectable, and such as it will be virtuous in you to gratify with the same zeal as you have always shown. The packet of newspaper notices is not come yet. I will take care to return it when it _has_ come. The best news from London hitherto is that Mr. Dallas is an enthusiastic admirer of Adam. I ought to except Mr. Langford's reported opinion, which is that of a person who has a voice of his own, and is not a mere echo. Otherwise, Edinburgh has sent me much more encouraging breezes than any that have come from the sweet South. I wonder if all your other authors are as greedy and exacting as I am. If so, I hope they appreciate your attention as much. Will you oblige me by writing a line to Mrs. Carlyle for me. I don't like to leave her second letter (she wrote a very kind one about the "Clerical Scenes") without any sort of notice. Will you tell her that the sort of effect she declares herself to have felt from "Adam Bede" is just what I desire to produce--gentle thoughts and happy remembrances; and I thank her heartily for telling me, so warmly and generously, what she has felt. That is not a pretty message: revise it for me, pray, for I am weary and ailing, and thinking of a sister who is slowly dying. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Feb. 1859.] The folio of notices duly came, and are returned by to-day's post. The friend at my elbow ran through them for me, and read aloud some specimens to me, some of them ludicrous enough. The _Edinburgh Courant_ has the ring of sincere enjoyment in its tone; and the writer there makes himself so amiable to me that I am sorry he has fallen into the mistake of supposing that Mrs. Poyser's original sayings are remembered proverbs! I have no stock of proverbs in my memory; and there is not one thing put into Mrs. Poyser's mouth that is not fresh from my own mint. Please to correct that mistake if any one makes it in your hearing. I have not ventured to look into the folio myself; but I learn that there are certain threatening marks, in ink, by the side of such stock sentences as "best novel of the season," or "best novel we have read for a long time," from such authorities as the _Sun_, or _Morning Star_, or other orb of the newspaper firmament--as if these sentences were to be selected for reprint in the form of advertisement. I shudder at the suggestion. Am I taking a liberty in entreating you to keep a sharp watch over the advertisements, that no hackneyed puffing phrase of this kind may be tacked to my book? One sees them garnishing every other advertisement of trash: surely no being "above the rank of an idiot" can have his inclination coerced by them? and it would gall me, as much as any trifle could, to see my book recommended by an authority who doesn't know how to write decent English. I believe that your taste and judgment will concur with mine in the conviction that no quotations of this vulgar kind can do credit to a book; and that unless something looking like the real opinion of a tolerably educated writer, in a respectable journal, can be given, it would be better to abstain from "opinions of the press" altogether. I shall be grateful to you if you will save me from the results of any agency but your own--or at least of any agency that is not under your rigid criticism in this matter. Pardon me if I am overstepping the author's limits in this expression of my feelings. I confide in your ready comprehension of the irritable class you have to deal with. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Feb. 26._--Laudatory reviews of "Adam Bede" in the _Athenæum_, _Saturday_, and _Literary Gazette_. The _Saturday_ criticism is characteristic: Dinah is not mentioned! The other day I received the following letter, which I copy, because I have sent the original away: [Sidenote: Letter from E. Hall to George Eliot.] "To the Author of 'Adam Bede,' "CHESTER ROAD, SUNDERLAND. "DEAR SIR,--I got the other day a hasty read of your 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' and since that a glance at your 'Adam Bede,' and was delighted more than I can express; but being a poor man, and having enough to do to make 'ends meet,' I am unable to get a read of your inimitable books. "Forgive, dear sir, my boldness in asking you to give us a cheap edition. You would confer on us a great boon. I can get plenty of trash for a few pence, but I am sick of it. I felt so different when I shut your books, even though it was but a kind of 'hop-skip-and-jump' read. "I feel so strongly in this matter that I am determined to risk being thought rude and officious, and write to you. "Many of my working brethren feel as I do, and I express their wish as well as my own. Again asking your forgiveness for intruding myself upon you, I remain, with profoundest respect, yours, etc., "E. HALL." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Feb. 1859.] I have written to Chrissey, and shall hear from her again. I think her writing was the result of long, quiet thought--the slow return of a naturally just and affectionate mind to the position from which it had been thrust by external influence. She says: "My object in writing to you is to tell you how very sorry I have been that I ceased to write, and neglected one who, under all circumstances, was kind to me and mine. _Pray believe_ me when I say it will be the greatest comfort I can receive to know that you are _well_ and _happy_. Will you write once more?" etc. I wrote immediately, and I desire to avoid any word of reference to anything with which she associates the idea of alienation. The past is abolished from my mind. I only want her to feel that I love her and care for her. The servant trouble seems less mountainous to me than it did the other day. I was suffering physically from unusual worrit and muscular exertion in arranging the house, and so was in a ridiculously desponding state. I have written no end of letters in answer to servants' advertisements, and we have put our own advertisement in the _Times_--all which amount of force, if we were not philosophers and therefore believers in the conservation of force, we should declare to be lost. It is so pleasant to know these high doctrines--they help one so much. Mr. and Mrs. Richard Congreve have called on us. We shall return the call as soon as we can. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _March 8._--Letter from Blackwood this morning saying that "'Bedesman' has turned the corner and is coming in a winner." Mudie has sent for 200 additional copies (making 700), and Mr. Langford says the West End libraries keep sending for more. _March 14._--My dear sister wrote to me about three weeks ago, saying she regretted that she had ever ceased writing to me, and that she has been in a consumption for the last eighteen months. To-day I have a letter from my niece Emily, telling me her mother had been taken worse, and cannot live many days. _March 14._--Major Blackwood writes to say "Mudie has just made up his number of 'Adam Bede' to 1000. Simpkins have sold their subscribed number, and have had 12 to-day. Every one is talking of the book." _March 15._--Chrissey died this morning at a quarter to 5. _March 16._--Blackwood writes to say I am "a popular author as well as a great author." They printed 2090 of "Adam Bede," and have disposed of more than 1800, so that they are thinking about a second edition. A very feeling letter from Froude this morning. I happened this morning to be reading the 30th Ode, B. III. of Horace--"Non omnis moriar." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 17th March, 1859.] The news you have sent me is worth paying a great deal of pain for, past and future. It comes rather strangely to me, who live in such unconsciousness of what is going on in the world. I am like a deaf person, to whom some one has just shouted that the company round him have been paying him compliments for the last half hour. Let the best come, you will still be the person outside my own home who _first_ gladdened me about "Adam Bede;" and my success will always please me the better because you will share the pleasure. Don't think I mean to worry you with many such requests--but will you copy for me the enclosed short note to Froude? I know you will, so I say "thank you." [Sidenote: Letter to J. A. Froude from George Eliot.] DEAR SIR,--My excellent friend and publisher, Mr. Blackwood, lends me his pen to thank you for your letter, and for his sake I shall be brief. Your letter has done me real good--the same sort of good as one has sometimes felt from a silent pressure of the hand and a grave look in the midst of smiling congratulations. I have nothing else I care to tell you that you will not have found out through my books, except this one thing: that, so far as I am aware, you are only the _second_ person who has shared my own satisfaction in Janet. I think she is the least popular of my characters. You will judge from that, that it was worth your while to tell me what you felt about her. I wish I could help you with words of equal value; but, after all, am I not helping you by saying that it was well and generously done of you to write to me?--Ever faithfully yours, GEORGE ELIOT. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st March, 1859.] It was worth your while to write me those feeling words, for they are the sort of things that I keep in my memory and feel the influence of a long, long while. Chrissey's death has taken from the possibility of many things towards which I looked with some hope and yearning in the future. I had a very special feeling towards her--stronger than any third person would think likely. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _March 24._--Mr. Herbert Spencer brought us word that "Adam Bede" had been quoted by Mr. Charles Buxton in the House of Commons: "As the farmer's wife says in 'Adam Bede,' 'It wants to be hatched over again and hatched different.'" _March 26._--George went into town to-day and brought me home a budget of good news that compensated for the pain I had felt in the coldness of an old friend. Mr. Langford says that Mudie "thinks he must have another hundred or two of 'Adam'--has read the book himself, and is delighted with it." Charles Reade says it is "the finest thing since Shakespeare"--placed his finger on Lisbeth's account of her coming home with her husband from their marriage--praises enthusiastically the style--the way in which the author handles the Saxon language. Shirley Brooks also delighted. John Murray says there has never been such a book. Mr. Langford says there must be a second edition, in 3 vols., and they will print 500: whether Mudie takes more or not, they will have sold all by the end of a month. Lucas delighted with the book, and will review it in the _Times_ the first opportunity. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th March, 1859.] I should like you to convey my gratitude to your reviewer. I see well he is a man whose experience and study enable him to relish parts of my book, which I should despair of seeing recognized by critics in London back drawing-rooms. He has gratified me keenly by laying his finger on passages which I wrote either with strong feeling or from intimate knowledge, but which I had prepared myself to find entirely passed over by reviewers. Surely I am not wrong in supposing him to be a clergyman? There was one exemplary lady Mr. Langford spoke of, who, after reading "Adam," came the next day and bought a copy both of that and the "Clerical Scenes." I wish there may be three hundred matrons as good as she! It is a disappointment to me to find that "Adam" has given no impulse to the "Scenes," for I had sordid desires for money from a second edition, and had dreamed of its coming speedily. About my new story, which will be a novel as long as "Adam Bede," and a sort of companion picture of provincial life, we must talk when I have the pleasure of seeing you. It will be a work which will require time and labor. Do write me good news as often as you can. I owe thanks to Major Blackwood for a very charming letter. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 10th April, 1859.] The other day I received a letter from an old friend in Warwickshire, containing some striking information about the author of "Adam Bede." I extract the passage for your amusement: "I want to ask you if you have read 'Adam Bede,' or the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' and whether you know that the author is Mr. Liggins?... A deputation of dissenting parsons went over _to ask him to write for the 'Eclectic,'_ and they found him washing his slop-basin at a pump. He has no servant, and does everything for himself; but one of the said parsons said that he inspired them with a reverence that would have made any impertinent question impossible. The son of a baker, of no mark at all in his town, so that it is possible you may not have heard of him. You know he calls himself 'George Eliot.' It sounds strange to hear the _Westminster_ doubting whether he is a woman, when _here he is so well known_. But I am glad it has mentioned him. _They say he gets no profit out of 'Adam Bede,' and gives it freely to Blackwood, which is a shame._ We have not read him yet, but the extracts are irresistible." Conceive the real George Eliot's feelings, conscious of being a base worldling--not washing his own slop-basin, and _not_ giving away his MS.! not even intending to do so, in spite of the reverence such a course might inspire. I hope you and Major Blackwood will enjoy the myth. Mr. Langford sent me a letter the other day from Miss Winkworth, a grave lady, who says she never reads novels, except a few of the most famous, but that she has read "Adam" three times running. One likes to know such things--they show that the book tells on people's hearts, and may be a real instrument of culture. I sing my Magnificat in a quiet way, and have a great deal of deep, silent joy; but few authors, I suppose, who have had a real success, have known less of the flush and the sensations of triumph that are talked of as the accompaniments of success. I think I should soon begin to believe that _Liggins_ wrote my books--it is so difficult to believe what the world does _not_ believe, so easy to believe what the world keeps repeating. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 11th April, 1859.] The very day you wrote we were driving in an open carriage from Ryde to the Sandrock Hotel, taking in a month's delight in the space of five hours. Such skies--such songs of larks--such beds of primroses! _I_ am quite well now--set up by iron and quinine, and polished off by the sea-breezes. I have lost my _young_ dislike to the spring, and am as glad of it as the birds and plants are. Mr. Lewes has read "Adam Bede," and is as dithyrambic about it as others appear to be, so _I_ must refresh my soul with it now as well as with the spring-tide. Mr. Liggins I remember as a vision of my childhood--a tall, black-coated, genteel young clergyman-in-embryo. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th April, 1859.] Mr. Lewes is "making himself into four" in writing answers to advertisements and other exertions which he generously takes on himself to save me. A model husband! We both like your literal title, "Thoughts in Aid of Faith," very much, and hope to see a little book under that title before the year is out--a book as thorough and effective in its way as "Christianity and Infidelity." _Re_writing is an excellent process, frequently both for the book and its author; and to prevent you from grudging the toil, I will tell you that so old a writer as Mr. Lewes now _re_writes everything of _importance_, though in all the earlier years of his authorship he would never take that trouble. We are so happy in the neighborhood of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Congreve. She is a sweet, intelligent, gentle woman. I already love her: and his fine, beaming face does me good, like a glimpse of an Olympian. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _April 17._--I have left off recording the history of "Adam Bede" and the pleasant letters and words that came to me--the success has been so triumphantly beyond anything I had dreamed of that it would be tiresome to put down particulars. Four hundred of the second edition (of 750) sold in the first week, and twenty besides ordered when there was not a copy left in the London house. This morning Hachette has sent to ask my terms for the liberty of translation into French. There was a review in the _Times_ last week, which will naturally give a new stimulus to the sale; and yesterday I sent a letter to the _Times_ denying that Mr. Liggins is the author, as the world and Mr. Anders had settled it. But I must trust to the letters I have received and preserved for giving me the history of the book if I should live long enough to forget details. Shall I ever write another book as true as "Adam Bede?" The weight of the future presses on me, and makes itself felt even more than the deep satisfaction of the past and present. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 20th April, 1859.] This myth about Liggins is getting serious, and must be put a stop to. We are bound not to allow sums of money to be raised on a false supposition of this kind. Don't you think it would be well for _you_ to write a letter to the _Times_, to the effect that, as you find in some stupid quarters my letter has not been received as a _bonâ-fide_ denial, you declare Mr. Liggins not to be the author of "Clerical Scenes" and "Adam Bede;" further, that any future applications to you concerning George Eliot will not be answered, since that writer is not in need of public benevolence. Such a letter might save us from future annoyance and trouble, for I am rather doubtful about Mr. Liggins's character. The last report I heard of him was that he spent his time in smoking and drinking. I don't know whether that is one of the data for the Warwickshire logicians who have decided him to be the author of my books. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _April 29._--To-day Blackwood sent me a letter from Bulwer, which I copy because I have to send back the original, and I like to keep in mind the generous praise of one author for another. [Sidenote: Letter from E. B. Lytton to John Blackwood.] "MALVERN, _April 24, 1859_. "MY DEAR SIR,--I ought long since to have thanked you for 'Adam Bede.' But I never had a moment to look at it till arriving here, and ordered by the doctors to abstain from all 'work.' "I owe the author much gratitude for some very pleasing hours. The book indeed is worthy of great admiration. There are touches of beauty in the conception of human character that are exquisite, and much wit and much poetry embedded in the 'dialect,' which nevertheless the author over-uses. "The style is remarkably good whenever it is English and not provincial--racy, original, and nervous. "I congratulate you on having found an author of such promise, and published one of the very ablest works of fiction I have read for years.-- Yours truly, E. B. L. "I am better than I was, but thoroughly done up." [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _April 29._--Finished a story--"The Lifted Veil"--which I began one morning at Richmond as a resource when my head was too stupid for more important work. Resumed my new novel, of which I am going to rewrite the two first chapters. I shall call it provisionally "The Tullivers," for the sake of a title _quelconque_, or perhaps "St. Ogg's on the Floss." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 29th April, 1859.] Thank you for sending me Sir Edward Lytton's letter, which has given me real pleasure. The praise is doubly valuable to me for the sake of the generous feeling that prompted it. I think you judged rightly about writing to the _Times_. I would abstain from the remotest appearance of a "dodge." I am anxious to know of any _positive_ rumors that may get abroad; for while I would willingly, if it were possible--which it clearly is not--retain my _incognito_ as long as I live, I can suffer no one to bear my arms on his shield. There is _one_ alteration, or rather an addition--merely of a sentence--that I wish to make in the 12_s._ edition of "Adam Bede." It is a sentence in the chapter where Adam is making the coffin at night, and hears the willow wand. Some readers seem not to have understood what I meant--namely, that it was in Adam's peasant blood and nurture to believe in this, and that he narrated it with awed belief to his dying day. That is not a fancy of my own brain, but a matter of observation, and is, in my mind, an important feature in Adam's character. There is nothing else I wish to touch. I will send you the sentence some day soon, with the page where it is to be inserted. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _May 3._--I had a letter from Mrs. Richard Congreve, telling me of her safe arrival, with her husband and sister,[7] at Dieppe. This new friend, whom I have gained by coming to Wandsworth, is the chief charm of the place to me. Her friendship has the same date as the success of "Adam Bede"--two good things in my lot that ought to have made me less sad than I have been in this house. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th May, 1859.] Your letter came yesterday at tea-time, and made the evening happier than usual. We had thought of you not a little as we listened to the howling winds, especially as the terrible wrecks off the Irish coast had filled our imaginations disagreeably. _Now_ I can make a charming picture of you all on the beach, except that I am obliged to fancy _your_ face looking still too languid after all your exertion and sleeplessness. I remember the said face with peculiar vividness, which is very pleasant to me. "Rough" has been the daily companion of our walks, and wins on our affections, as other fellow mortals do, by a mixture of weaknesses and virtues--the weaknesses consisting chiefly in a tendency to become invisible every ten minutes, and in a forgetfulness of reproof, which, I fear, is the usual accompaniment of meekness under it. All this is good discipline for us selfish solitaries, who have been used to stroll along, thinking of nothing but ourselves. We walked through your garden to-day, and I gathered a bit of your sweetbrier, of which I am at this moment enjoying the scent as it stands on my desk. I am enjoying, too, another sort of sweetness, which I also owe to you--of that subtle, haunting kind which is most like the scent of my favorite plants--the belief that you do really care for me across the seas there, and will associate me continually with your home. Faith is not easy to me, nevertheless I believe everything you say and write. Write to me as often as you can--that is, as often as you feel any prompting to do so. You were a dear presence to me, and will be a precious thought to me all through your absence. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _May 4._--To-day came a letter from Barbara Bodichon, full of joy in my success, in the certainty that "Adam Bede" was mine, though she had not read more than extracts in reviews. This is the first delight in the book as _mine_, over and above the fact that the book is good. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th May, 1859.] God bless you, dearest Barbara, for your love and sympathy. You are the first friend who has given any symptom of knowing me--the first heart that has recognized me in a book which has come from my heart of hearts. But keep the secret solemnly till I give you leave to tell it; and give way to no impulses of triumphant affection. You have sense enough to know how important the _incognito_ has been, and we are anxious to keep it up a few months longer. Curiously enough my old Coventry friends, who have certainly read the _Westminster_ and the _Times_, and have probably by this time read the book itself, have given no sign of recognition. But a certain Mr. Liggins, whom rumor has fixed on as the author of my books, and whom _they_ have believed in, has probably screened me from their vision. I am a very blessed woman, am I not, to have all this reason for being glad that I have lived? I have had no time of exultation; on the contrary, these last months have been sadder than usual to me, and I have thought more of the future and the much work that remains to be done in life than of anything that has been achieved. But I think your letter to-day gave me more joy--more heart-glow--than all the letters or reviews or other testimonies of success that have come to me since the evenings when I read aloud my manuscript to my dear, dear husband, and he laughed and cried alternately, and then rushed to me to kiss me. He is the prime blessing that has made all the rest possible to me, giving me a response to everything I have written--a response that I could confide in, as a proof that I had not mistaken my work. [Sidenote: Letter to Major Blackwood, 6th May, 1859.] You must not think me too soft-hearted when I tell you that it would make me uneasy to leave Mr. Anders without an assurance that his apology is accepted. "Who with repentance is not satisfied," etc.; that doctrine is bad for the sinning, but good for those sinned against. Will you oblige me by allowing a clerk to write something to this effect in the name of the firm?--"We are requested by George Eliot to state, in reply to your letter of the 16th, that he accepts your assurance that the publication of your letter to the reviewer of 'Adam Bede' in the _Times_ was unintentional on your part." Yes, I _am_ assured now that "Adam Bede" was worth writing--worth living through long years to write. But now it seems impossible to me that I shall ever write anything so good and true again. I have arrived at faith in the past, but not at faith in the future. A friend in Algiers[8] has found me out--"will go to the stake on the assertion that I wrote 'Adam Bede'"--simply on the evidence of a few extracts. So far as I know, this is the first case of detection on purely internal evidence. But the secret is safe in that quarter. I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again during some visit that you will pay to town before very long. It would do me good to have you shake me by the hand as the ascertained George Eliot. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _May 9._--We had a delicious drive to Dulwich, and back by Sydenham. We stayed an hour in the gallery at Dulwich, and I satisfied myself that the St. Sebastian is no exception to the usual "petty prettiness" of Guido's conceptions. The Cuyp glowing in the evening sun, the Spanish beggar boys of Murillo, and Gainsborough's portrait of Mrs. Sheridan and her sister, are the gems of the gallery. But better than the pictures was the fresh greenth of the spring--the chestnuts just on the verge of their flowering beauty, the bright leaves of the limes, the rich yellow-brown of the oaks, the meadows full of buttercups. We saw for the first time Clapham Common, Streatham Common, and Tooting Common--the two last like parks rather than commons. _May 19._--A letter from Blackwood, in which he proposes to give me another £400 at the end of the year, making in all £1200, as an acknowledgment of "Adam Bede's" success. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th May, 1859.] Mrs. Congreve is a sweet woman, and I feel that I have acquired a friend in her--after recently declaring that we would never have any _friends_ again, only _acquaintances_. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st May, 1859.] Thank you: first, for acting with that fine integrity which makes part of my faith in you; secondly, for the material sign of that integrity. I don't know which of those two things I care for most--that people should act nobly towards me, or that I should get honest money. I certainly care a great deal for the money, as I suppose all anxious minds do that love independence and have been brought up to think debt and begging the two deepest dishonors short of crime. I look forward with quite eager expectation to seeing you--we have so much to say. Pray give us the first day at your command. The excursion, as you may imagine, is not ardently longed for in this weather, but when "merry May" is quite gone, we may surely hope for some sunshine; and then I have a pet project of rambling along by the banks of a river, not without artistic as well as hygienic purposes. Pray bring me all the Liggins Correspondence. I have an amusing letter or two to show you--one from a gentleman who has sent me his works; happily the only instance of the kind. For, as Charles Lamb complains, it is always the people whose books _don't_ sell who are anxious to send them to one, with their "foolish autographs" inside. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st May, 1859.] We don't think of going to the festival, not for want of power to enjoy Handel--there are few things that I care for more in the way of music than his choruses, performed by a grand orchestra--but because we are neither of us fit to encounter the physical exertion and inconveniences. It is a cruel thing the difficulty and dearness of getting any music in England--concerted music, which is the only music I care for much now. At Dresden we could have thoroughly enjoyable instrumental music every evening for two-pence; and I owed so many thoughts and inspirations of feeling to that stimulus. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _May 27._--Blackwood came to dine with us on his arrival in London, and we had much talk. A day or two before he had sent me a letter from Professor Aytoun, saying that he had neglected his work to read the first volume of "Adam Bede;" and he actually sent the other two volumes out of the house to save himself from temptation. Blackwood brought with him a correspondence he has had with various people about Liggins, beginning with Mr. Bracebridge, who will have it that Liggins is the author of "Adam Bede" in spite of all denials. _June 5._--Blackwood came, and we concocted two letters to send to the _Times_, in order to put a stop to the Liggins affair. [Sidenote: Letter to Major Blackwood, 6th June, 1859.] The "Liggins business" _does_ annoy me, because it subjects you and Mr. John Blackwood to the reception of insulting letters, and the trouble of writing contradictions. Otherwise, the whole affair is really a subject for a Molière comedy--"The Wise Men of Warwickshire," who might supersede "The Wise Men of Gotham." The letter you sent me was a very pleasant one from Mrs. Gaskell, saying that since she came up to town she has had the compliment paid her of being suspected to have written "Adam Bede." "I have hitherto denied it; but really, I think, that as you want to keep your real name a secret, it would be very pleasant for me to blush acquiescence. Will you give me leave?" I hope the inaccuracy with which she writes my name is not characteristic of a genius for fiction, though I once heard a German account for the bad spelling in Goethe's early letters by saying that it was "genial"--their word for whatever is characteristic of genius. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 8th June, 1859.] I was glad you wrote to me from Avignon of all the places you have visited, because Avignon is one of my most vivid remembrances from out the dimness of ten years ago. Lucerne would be a strange region to me but for Calame's pictures. Through them I have a vision of it, but of course when I see it 'twill be another Luzern. Mr. Lewes obstinately nurses the project of carrying me thither with him, and depositing me within reach of you while he goes to Hofwyl. But at present I say "No." We have been waiting and waiting for the skies to let us take a few days' ramble by the river, but now I fear we must give it up till all the freshness of young summer is gone. July and August are the two months I care least about for leafy scenery. However, we are kept at home this month partly by pleasures: the Handel Festival, for which we have indulged ourselves with tickets, and the sight of old friends--Mrs. Bodichon among the rest, and for her we hope to use your kind loan of a bedroom. We are both of us in much better condition than when you said good-bye to us, and I have many other sources of gladness just now--so I mean to make myself disagreeable no longer by caring about petty troubles. If one could but order cheerfulness from the druggist's! or even a few doses of coldness and distrust, to prevent one from foolish confidence in one's fellow-mortals! I want to get rid of this house--cut cables and drift about. I dislike Wandsworth, and should think with unmitigated regret of our coming here if it were not for you. But you are worth paying a price for. There! I have written about nothing but ourselves this time! _You_ do the same, and then I think I will promise ... not to write again, but to ask you to go on writing to me without an answer. How cool and idle you are this morning! I am warm and busy, but always, at all temperatures, yours affectionately. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _June 20._--We went to the Crystal Palace to hear the "Messiah," and dined afterwards with the Brays and Sara Hennell. I told them I was the author of "Adam Bede" and "Clerical Scenes," and they seemed overwhelmed with surprise. This experience has enlightened me a good deal as to the ignorance in which we all live of each other. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 24th June, 1859.] There is always an after sadness belonging to brief and interrupted intercourse between friends--the sadness of feeling that the blundering efforts we have made towards mutual understanding have only made a new veil between us--still more, the sadness of feeling that some pain may have been given which separation makes a permanent memory. We are quite unable to represent ourselves truly. Why should we complain that our friends see a false image? I say this because I am feeling painfully this morning that, instead of helping you when you brought before me a matter so deeply interesting to you, I have only blundered, and that I have blundered, as most of us do, from too much egoism and too little sympathy. If my mind had been more open to receive impressions, instead of being in over-haste to give them, I should more readily have seen what your object was in giving me that portion of your MS., and we might have gone through the necessary part of it on Tuesday. It seems no use to write this now, and yet I can't help wanting to assure you that if I am too imperfect to do and feel the right thing at the right moment, I am not without the slower sympathy that becomes all the stronger from a sense of previous mistake. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 27th June, 1859.] I am told peremptorily that I am to go to Switzerland next month, but now I have read your letter, I can't help thinking more of your illness than of the pleasure in prospect--according to my foolish nature, which is always prone to live in past pain. We shall not arrive at Lucerne till the 12th, at the earliest, I imagine, so I hope we are secured from the danger of alighting precisely on the days of your absence. That would be cruel, for I shall only be left at Lucerne for three days. You must positively have nothing more interesting to do than to talk to me and let me look at you. Tell your sister I shall be all ears and eyes and no tongue, so she will find me the most _amiable_ of conversers. I think it must be that the sunshine makes your absence more conspicuous, for this place certainly becomes drearier to me as the summer advances. The dusty roads are all longer, and the shade is farther off. No more now about anything--except that Mr. Lewes commands me to say he has just read the "Roman Empire of the West" with much interest, and is going now to flesh his teeth in the "Politique" (Auguste Comte's). [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Monday evening, end of June, 1859.] "DEAR FRIENDS,--All three of you--thanks for your packet of heartfelt kindness. That is the best of your kindness--there is no sham in it. It was inevitable to me to have that outburst when I saw you for a little while after the long silence, and felt that I must tell you then or be forestalled, and leave you to gather the truth amidst an inextricable mixture of falsehood. But I feel that the influence of talking about my books, even to you and Mrs. Bodichon, has been so bad to me that I should like to be able to keep silence concerning them for evermore. If people were to buzz round me with their remarks, or compliments, I should lose the repose of mind and truthfulness of production without which no good, healthy books can be written. Talking about my books, I find, has much the same malign effect on me as talking of my feelings or my religion. "I should think Sara's version of my brother's words concerning 'Adam Bede' is the correct one--_'that there are things in it about my father'_ (_i.e._, being interpreted, things my father told us about his early life), not 'portrait' of my father. There is not a single portrait in the book, nor will there be in any future book of mine. There are portraits in the 'Clerical Scenes;' but that was my first bit of art, and my hand was not well in. I did not know so well how to manipulate my materials. As soon as the Liggins falsehood is annihilated, of course there will be twenty new ones in its place; and one of the first will be that I was not the sole author. The only safe thing for my mind's health is to shut my ears and go on with my work. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 5th July, 1859.] "Thanks for your letters. They have given me one pleasure--that of knowing that Mr. Liggins has not been _greatly_ culpable--though Mr. Bracebridge's statement, that only 'some small sums' have been collected, does not accord with what has been written to Mr. Blackwood from other counties. But 'O, I am sick!' Take no more trouble about me--and let every one believe--as they will, in spite of your kind efforts--_what they like to believe_. I can't tell you how much melancholy it causes me that people are, for the most part, so incapable of comprehending the state of mind which cares for that which is essentially human in all forms of belief, and desires to exhibit it under all forms with loving truthfulness. Freethinkers are scarcely wider than the orthodox in this matter--they all want to see themselves and their own opinions held up as the true and the lovely. On the same ground that an idle woman, with flirtations and flounces, likes to read a French novel, because she can imagine herself the heroine, grave people, with opinions, like the most admirable character in a novel to be their mouth-piece. If art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally. I have had heart-cutting experience that _opinions_ are a poor cement between human souls: and the only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings is, that those who read them should be better able to _imagine_ and to _feel_ the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling, erring, human creatures. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 6th July, 1859.] "We shall not start till Saturday, and shall not reach Lucerne till the _evening_ of the 11th. There is a project of our returning through Holland, but the attractions of Lucerne are sure to keep us there as long as possible. We have given up Zurich in spite of Moleschott and science. The other day I said to Mr. Lewes, 'Every now and then it comes across me, like the recollection of some precious little store laid by, that there is Mrs. Congreve in the world.' That is how people talk of you in your absence." [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _July 9._--We started for Switzerland. Spent a delightful day in Paris. To the Louvre first, where we looked chiefly at the Marriage at Cana, by Paul Veronese. This picture, the greatest I have seen of his, converted me to high admiration of him. _July 12._--Arrived at Lucerne in the evening. Glad to make a home at the charming Schweizerhof on the banks of the Lake. G. went to call on the Congreves, and in the afternoon Mrs. Congreve came to chat with us. In the evening we had a boat on the Lake. _July 13._--G. set off for Hofwyl at five o'clock, and the three next days were passed by me in quiet chat with the Congreves and quiet resting on my own sofa. _July 19._--Spent the morning in Bâle, chiefly under the chestnut-trees, near the Cathedral, I reading aloud Flourens's sketch of Cuvier's labors. In the afternoon to Paris. _July 21._--Holly Lodge, Wandsworth. Found a charming letter from Dickens, and pleasant letters from Blackwood; nothing to annoy us. Before we set off we had heard the excellent news that the fourth edition of "Adam Bede" (5000) had all been sold in a fortnight. The fifth edition appeared last week. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 23d July, 1859.] We reached here last evening, and though I was a good deal overdone in getting to Lucerne, I have borne the equally rapid journey back without headache--a proof that I am strengthened. I had three quiet days of talk with the Congreves at Lucerne, while Mr. Lewes went to Hofwyl. Mrs. Congreve is one of those women of whom there are few--rich in intelligence, without pretension, and quivering with sensibility, yet calm and quiet in her manners. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 23d July, 1859.] I thank you for your offer about the money for "Adam," but I have intentions of stern thrift, and mean to want as little as possible. When "Maggie" is done, and I have a month or two of leisure, I should like to transfer our present house, into which we were driven by haste and economy, to some one who likes houses full of eyes all round him. I long for a house with some shade and grass close round it--I don't care how rough--and the sight of Swiss houses has heightened my longing. But at present I say Avaunt to all desires. While I think of it, let me beg of you to mention to the superintendent of your printing-office, that in case of another reprint of "Adam," I beg the word "sperrit" (for "spirit") may be particularly attended to. Adam never said "speerit," as he is made to do in the cheaper edition, at least in one place--his speech at the birthday dinner. This is a small matter, but it is a point I care about. Words fail me about the not impossible Pug, for some compunction at having mentioned my unreasonable wish will mingle itself paradoxically with the hope that it may be fulfilled. I hope we shall have other interviews to remember this time next year, and that you will find me without aggravated symptoms of the "author's malady"--a determination of talk to my own books, which I was alarmingly conscious of when you and the Major were here. After all, I fear authors must submit to be something of monsters--not quite simple, healthy human beings; but I will keep my monstrosity within bounds if possible. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 26th July, 1859.] The things you tell me are just such as I need to know--I mean about the help my book is to the people who read it. The weight of my future life--the self-questioning whether my nature will be able to meet the heavy demands upon it, both of personal duty and intellectual production, presses upon me almost continually in a way that prevents me even from tasting the quiet joy I might have in the _work done_. Buoyancy and exultation, I fancy, are out of the question when one has lived so long as I have. But I am the better for every word of encouragement, and am helped over many days by such a note as yours. I often think of my dreams when I was four or five and twenty. I thought then how happy fame would make me! I feel no regret that the fame, as such, brings no pleasure; but it _is_ a grief to me that I do not constantly feel strong in thankfulness that my past life has vindicated its uses and given me reason for gladness that such an unpromising woman-child was born into the world. I ought not to care about small annoyances, and it is chiefly egoism that makes them annoyances. I had quite an _enthusiastic_ letter from Herbert Spencer the other day about "Adam Bede." He says he feels the better for reading it--really words to be treasured up. I can't bear the idea of appearing further in the papers. And there is no one now except people who would not be convinced, though one rose from the dead, to whom any statement _apropos_ of Liggins would be otherwise than superfluous. I dare say some "investigator" of the Bracebridge order will arise after I am dead and revive the story--and perhaps posterity will believe in Liggins. Why not? A man a little while ago wrote a pamphlet to prove that the Waverley novels were chiefly written, not by Walter Scott, but by Thomas Scott and his wife Elizabeth. The main evidence being that several people thought Thomas cleverer than Walter, and that in the list of the Canadian regiment of Scots to which Thomas belonged many of the _names_ of the Waverley novels occurred--among the rest _Monk_--and in "Woodstock" there is a _General Monk_! The writer expected to get a great reputation by his pamphlet, and I think it might have suggested to Mr. B. his style of critical and historical inference. I must tell you, _in confidence_, that Dickens has written to me the noblest, most touching words about "Adam"--not hyperbolical compliments, but expressions of deep feeling. He says the reading made an epoch in his life. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th July, 1859.] Pug is come! come to fill up the void left by false and narrow-hearted friends. I see already that he is without envy, hatred, or malice--that he will betray no secrets, and feel neither pain at my success nor pleasure in my chagrin. I hope the photograph does justice to his physiognomy. It is expressive: full of gentleness and affection, and radiant with intelligence when there is a savory morsel in question--a hopeful indication of his mental capacity. I distrust all intellectual pretension that announces itself by obtuseness of palate! I wish you could see him in his best _pose_--when I have arrested him in a violent career of carpet-scratching, and he looks at me with fore-legs very wide apart, trying to penetrate the deep mystery of this arbitrary, not to say capricious, prohibition. He is snoring by my side at this moment, with a serene promise of remaining quiet for any length of time; he couldn't behave better if he had been expressly educated for me. I am too lazy a lover of dogs and all earthly things to like them when they give me much trouble, preferring to describe the pleasure other people have in taking trouble. Alas! the shadow that tracks all earthly good--the possibility of loss. One may lose one's faculties, which will not always fetch a high price; how much more a _Pug_ worth unmentionable sums--a PUG which some generous-hearted personage in some other corner of Great Britain than Edinburgh may even now be sending emissaries after, being bent on paying the kindest, most delicate attention to a sensitive mortal not sufficiently reticent of wishes. All I can say of that generous-hearted personage No. 2 is, that I wish he may get--somebody else's Pug, not mine. And all I will say of the sensitive, insufficiently reticent mortal No. 2 is, that I hope he may be as pleased and as grateful as George Eliot. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 30th July, 1859.] I look forward to playing duets with you as one of my future pleasures; and if I am able to go on working, I hope we shall afford to have a fine grand-piano. I have none of Mozart's Symphonies, so that you can be guided in your choice of them entirely by your own taste. I know Beethoven's Sonata in E flat well; it is a very charming one, and I shall like to hear you play it. That is one of my luxuries--to sit still and hear some one playing my favorite music; so that you may able sure you will find willing ears to listen to the fruits of your industrious practising. There are ladies in the world, not a few, who play the violin, and I wish I were one of them, for then we could play together sonatas for the piano and violin, which make a charming combination. The violin gives that _keen edge_ of tone which the piano wants. I like to know that you were gratified by getting a watch so much sooner than you expected; and it was the greater satisfaction to me to send it you, because you had earned it by making good use of these precious years at Hofwyl. It is a great comfort to your father and me to think of that, for we, with our old grave heads, can't help talking very often of the need our boys will have for all sorts of good qualities and habits in making their way through this difficult life. It is a world, you perceive, in which cross-bows _will_ be _launisch_ sometimes, and frustrate the skill of excellent marksmen--how much more of lazy bunglers? The first volume of the "Physiology of Common Life" is just published, and it is a great pleasure to see so much of your father's hard work successfully finished. He has been giving a great deal of labor to the numbers on the physiology of the nervous system, which are to appear in the course of two or three months, and he has enjoyed the labor in spite of the drawback of imperfect health, which obliges him very often to leave the desk with a hot and aching head. It is quite my worst trouble that he has so much of this discomfort to bear; and we must all try and make everything else as pleasant to him as we can, to make up for it. Tell Thornton he shall have the book he asks for, if possible--I mean the book of moths and butterflies; and tell Bertie I expect to hear about the wonderful things he has done with his pocket-knife. Tell him he is equipped well enough to become king of a desert island with that pocket-knife of his; and if, as I think I remember, it has a corkscrew attached, he would certainly have more implements than he would need in that romantic position. We shall hope to hear a great deal of your journey, with all its haps and mishaps. The mishaps are just as pleasant as the haps when they are past--that is one comfort for tormented travellers. You are an excellent correspondent, so I do not fear you will flag in writing to me; and remember, you are always giving a pleasure when you write to me. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Aug. 11._--Received a letter from an American--Mr. J. C. Evans--asking me to write a story for an American periodical. Answered that I could not write one for less than £1000, since, in order to do it, I must suspend my actual work. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 11th Aug. 1859.] I do wish much to see more of human life: how can one see enough in the short years one has to stay in the world? But I meant that at present my mind works with the most freedom and the keenest sense of poetry in my remotest past, and there are many strata to be worked through before I can begin to use, _artistically_, any material I may gather in the present. Curiously enough, _apropos_ of your remark about "Adam Bede," there is much less "out of my own life" in that book--_i.e._, the materials are much more a combination from imperfectly known and widely sundered elements than the "Clerical Scenes." I'm so glad you have enjoyed these--so thankful for the words you write me. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Aug. 12._--Mr. J. C. Evans wrote again, declaring his willingness to pay the £1000, and asking for an interview to arrange preliminaries. _Aug. 15._--Declined the American proposition, which was to write a story of twelve parts (weekly parts) in the _New York Century_ for £1200. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Aug. 1859.] I have re-read your whole proof, and feel that every serious reader will be impressed with the indications of real truth-seeking and heart-experience in the tone. Beginnings are always troublesome. Even Macaulay's few pages of introduction to his Introduction in the English History are the worst bit of writing in the book. It was no trouble to me to read your proof, so don't talk as if it had been. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Aug. 17._--Received a letter from Blackwood, with check for £200 for second edition of "Clerical Scenes." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 17th Aug. 1859.] I'm glad my story cleaves to you. At present I have no hope that it will affect people as strongly as "Adam" has done. The characters are on a lower level generally, and the environment less romantic. But my stories grow in me like plants, and this is only in the leaf-bud. I have faith that the flower will come. Not enough faith, though, to make me like the idea of beginning to print till the flower is fairly out--till I know the end as well as the beginning. Pug develops new charms every day. I think, in the prehistoric period of his existence, before he came to me, he had led a sort of Caspar Hauser life, shut up in a kennel in Bethnal Green; and he has had to get over much astonishment at the sight of cows and other rural objects on a large scale, which he marches up to and surveys with the gravity of an "Own Correspondent," whose business it is to observe. He has absolutely no bark; but, _en revanche_, he sneezes powerfully, and has speaking eyes, so the _media_ of communication are abundant. He sneezes at the world in general, and he looks affectionately at me. I envy you the acquaintance of a genuine non-bookish man like Captain Speke. I wonder when men of that sort will take their place as heroes in our literature, instead of the inevitable "genius?" [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Aug. 20._--Letter from the troublesome Mr. Quirk of Attleboro, still wanting satisfaction about Liggins. I did not leave it unanswered, because he is a friend of Chrissey's, but G. wrote for me. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Aug. 1859.] Our great difficulty is _Time_. I am little better than a sick nigger with the lash behind him at present. If we go to Penmaenmawr we shall travel all through by night, in order not to lose more than one day; and we shall pause at Lichfield on our way back. To pause at Coventry would be a real pleasure to me; but I think, even if we could do it on our way home, it would be better economy to wait until the sense of hurry is past, and make it a little reward for work done. The going to the coast seems to be a wise measure, quite apart from indulgence. We are both so feeble; but otherwise I should have kept my resolution and remained quiet here for the next six months. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Aug. 25._--In the evening of this day we set off on our journey to Penmaenmawr. We reached Conway at half-past three in the morning; and finding that it was hopeless to get a bed anywhere, we walked about the town till the morning began to dawn, and we could see the outline of the fine old castle's battlemented walls. In the morning we went to Llandudno, thinking that might suit us better than Penmaenmawr. We found it ugly and fashionable. Then we went off to Penmaenmawr, which was beautiful to our hearts' content--or rather discontent--for it would not receive us, being already filled with visitors. Back again in despair to Conway, where we got temporary lodgings at one of the numerous Joneses. This particular Jones happened to be honest and obliging, and we did well enough for a few days in our in-door life, but out-of-doors there were cold winds and rain. One day we went to Abergele and found a solitary house called Beach House, which it seemed possible we might have at the end of a few days. But no! And the winds were so cold on this northerly coast that George was not sorry, preferring rather to take flight southward. So we set out again on 31st, and reached Lichfield about half-past five. Here we meant to pass the night, that I might see my nieces--dear Chrissey's orphan children--Emily and Kate. I was much comforted by the sight of them, looking happy, and apparently under excellent care in Miss Eborall's school. We slept at the "Swan," where I remember being with my father and mother when I was a little child, and afterwards with my father alone, in our last journey into Derbyshire. The next morning we set off again, and completed our journey to Weymouth. Many delicious walks and happy hours we had in our fortnight there. A letter from Mr. Langford informed us that the subscription for the sixth edition of "Adam Bede" was 1000. Another pleasant incident was a letter from my old friend and school-fellow, Martha Jackson, asking if the author of "Adam Bede" was _her_ Marian Evans. _Sept. 16._--We reached home, and found letters awaiting us--one from Mr. Quirk, finally renouncing Liggins!--with tracts of an ultra-evangelical kind for me, and the Parish Mag., etc., from the Rev. Erskine Clark of St. Michael's, Derby, who had written to me to ask me to help him in this sort of work. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 17th Sept. 1859.] I have just been reading, with deep interest and heart-stirring, the article on the Infant Seamstresses in the _Englishwoman's Journal_. I am one among the grateful readers of that moving description--moving because the writer's own soul was moved by love and pity in the writing of it. These are the papers that will make the "Journal" a true organ with a _function_. I am writing at the end of the day, on the brink of sleep, too tired to think of anything but that picture of the little sleeping slop-worker who had pricked her tiny finger so. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Sept. 18._--A volume of devotional poetry from the authoress of "Visiting my Relations," with an inscription admonishing me not to be beguiled by the love of money. _In much anxiety and doubt about my new novel._ _Oct. 7._--Since the last entry in my Journal various matters of interest have occurred. Certain "new" ideas have occurred to me in relation to my novel, and I am in better hope of it. At Weymouth I had written to Blackwood to ask him about terms, supposing I published in "Maga." His answer determined me to decline. On Monday, the 26th, we set out on a three days' journey to Lincolnshire and back--very pleasant and successful both as to weather and the object I was in search of. A less pleasant business has been a correspondence with a _crétin_--a Warwickshire magistrate, who undertakes to declare the process by which I wrote my books--and who is the chief propagator and maintainer of the story that Liggins is at the bottom of the "Clerical Scenes" and "Adam Bede." It is poor George who has had to conduct the correspondence, making his head hot by it, to the exclusion of more fructifying work. To-day, in answer to a letter from Sara, I have written her an account of my interviews with my Aunt Samuel. This evening comes a letter from Miss Brewster, full of well-meant exhortation. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 7th Oct. 1859.] The very best bit of news I can tell you to begin with is that your father's "Physiology of Common Life" is selling remarkably well, being much in request among medical students. You are not to be a medical student, but I hope, nevertheless, you will by-and-by read the work with interest. There is to be a new edition of the "Sea-side Studies" at Christmas, or soon after--a proof that this book also meets with a good number of readers. I wish you could have seen to-day, as I did, the delicate spinal cord of a dragon-fly--like a tiny thread with tiny beads on it--which your father had just dissected! He is so wonderfully clever now at the dissection of these delicate things, and has attained this cleverness entirely by devoted practice during the last three years. I hope _you_ have some of his resolution and persistent regularity in work. I think you have, if I may judge from your application to music, which I am always glad to read of in your letters. I was a very idle practiser, and I often regret now that when I had abundant time and opportunity for hours of piano playing I used them so little. I have about eighteen Sonatas and Symphonies of Beethoven, I think, but I shall be delighted to find that you can play them better than I can. I am very sensitive to blunders and wrong notes, and instruments out of tune; but I have never played much from ear, though I used to play from memory a great deal. The other evening Mr. Pigott, whom you remember, Mr. Redford, another friend of your father's, and Mr. Wilkie Collins dined with us, and we had a charming musical evening. Mr. Pigott has a delicious tenor voice, and Mr. Redford a fine barytone. The latter sings "Adelaide," that exquisite song of Beethoven's, which I should like you to learn. Schubert's songs, too, I especially delight in; but, as you say, they are difficult. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th Oct. 1859.] It is pleasant to have to tell you that Mr. Bracebridge has been at last awakened to do the right thing. This morning came a letter enclosing the following to me: "Madame, I have much pleasure on receiving your declaration that 'etc., etc.,' in replying that I frankly accept your declaration as the truth, and I shall repeat it if the contrary is again asserted to me." This is the first symptom we have had from him of common-sense. I am very thankful--for it ends transactions with him. Mr. Lewes is of so sensitive a temperament, and so used to feeling more angry and more glad on my behalf than his own, that he has been made, several mornings, quite unable to go on with his work by this irritating correspondence. It is all my fault, for if he didn't see in the first instance that I am completely upset by anything that arouses unloving emotions, he would never feel as he does about outer sayings and doings. No one is more indifferent than he is to what is said about himself. No more about my business, let us hope, for a long while to come! The Congreves are settled at home again now--blessing us with the sight of kind faces--Mr. Congreve beginning his medical course. Delicious confusion of ideas! Mr. Lewes, walking in Wandsworth, saw a good woman cross over the street to speak to a blind man. She accosted him with, "Well, _I_ knew you, _though you are dark_!" [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 16th Oct. 1859.] I wish you had read the letter you enclosed to me; it is really curious. The writer, an educated person, asks me to perfect and extend the benefit "Adam Bede" has "conferred on society" by writing a _sequel_ to it, in which I am to tell all about Hetty after her reprieve, "Arthur's efforts to obtain the reprieve, and his desperate ride after obtaining it--Dinah on board the convict ship--Dinah's letters to Hetty--and whatever the author might choose to reveal concerning Hetty's years of banishment. Minor instances of the incompleteness which induces an unsatisfactory feeling may be alleged in the disposal of the _locket and earrings_--which everybody expects to re-appear--and in the incident of the pink silk neckerchief, of which all would like to hear a little more!!" I do feel more than I ought about outside sayings and doings, and I constantly rebuke myself for all that part of my susceptibility, which I know to be weak and egoistic; still what is said about one's art is not merely a personal matter--it touches the very highest things one lives for. _Truth_ in art is so startling that no one can believe in it as art, and the specific forms of religious life which have made some of the grandest elements in human history are looked down upon as if they were not within the artist's sympathy and veneration and intensely dramatic reproduction. "I do well to be angry" on that ground, don't I? The simple fact is, that I never saw anything of my aunt's writing, and Dinah's words came from me "as the tears come because our heart is full, and we can't help them." If you were living in London instead of at Edinburgh, I should ask you to read the first volume of "Sister Maggie" at once, for the sake of having your impression, but it is inconvenient to me to part with the MS. The great success of "Adam" makes my writing a matter of more anxiety than ever. I suppose there is a little sense of responsibility mixed up with a great deal of pride. And I think I should worry myself still more if I began to print before the thing is essentially complete. So on all grounds it is better to wait. How clever and picturesque the "Horsedealer in Syria" is! I read him with keen interest, only wishing that he saw the seamy side of things rather less habitually. Excellent Captain Speke can't write so well, but one follows him out of grave sympathy. That a man should live through such things as that beetle in his ear! Such papers as that make the _specialité_ of _Blackwood_--one sees them nowhere else. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Oct. 16._--Yesterday came a pleasant packet of letters: one from Blackwood, saying that they are printing a seventh edition of "Adam Bede" (of 2000), and that "Clerical Scenes" will soon be exhausted. I have finished the first volume of my new novel, "Sister Maggie;" have got my legal questions answered satisfactorily, and when my headache has cleared off must go at it full speed. _Oct. 25._--The day before yesterday Herbert Spencer dined with us. We have just finished reading aloud "Père Goriot"--a hateful book. I have been reading lately and have nearly finished Comte's "Catechism." _Oct. 28._--Received from Blackwood a check for £400, the last payment for "Adam Bede" in the terms of the agreement. But in consequence of the great success, he proposes to pay me £800 more at the beginning of next year. Yesterday Smith, the publisher, called to make propositions to G. about writing in the _Cornhill Magazine_. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Oct. 1859.] I beg that you and Major Blackwood will accept my thanks for your proposal to give me a further share in the success of "Adam Bede," beyond the terms of our agreement, which are fulfilled by the second check for £400, received this morning. Neither you nor I ever calculated on half such a success, thinking that the book was too quiet, and too unflattering to dominant fashion, ever to be very popular. I hope that opinion of ours is a guarantee that there is nothing hollow or transient in the reception "Adam" has met with. Sometimes when I read a book which has had a great success, and am unable to see any valid merits of an artistic kind to account for it, I am visited with a horrible alarm lest "Adam," too, should ultimately sink into the same class of outworn admirations. But I always fall back on the fact that no shibboleth and no vanity is flattered by it, and that there is no novelty of mere form in it which can have delighted simply by startling. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Nov. 10._--Dickens dined with us to-day, for the first time, and after he left I went to the Congreves, where George joined me, and we had much chat--about George Stephenson, religion, etc. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 11th Nov. 1859.] A very beautiful letter--beautiful in feeling--that I have received from Mrs. Gaskell to-day, prompts me to write to you and let you know how entirely she has freed herself from any imputation of being unwilling to accept the truth when it has once clearly presented itself as truth. Since she has known "on authority" that the two books are mine, she has re-read them, and has written to me, apparently on the prompting they gave in that second reading: very sweet and noble words they are that she has written to me. Yesterday Dickens dined with us, on _his_ return from the country. That was a great pleasure to me: he is a man one can thoroughly enjoy talking to--there is a strain of real seriousness along with his keenness and humor. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th Nov. 1859.] The Liggins affair is concluded so far as any _action_ of ours is concerned, since Mr. Quirk (the inmost citadel, I presume) has surrendered by writing an apology to Blackwood, saying he now believes he was imposed on by Mr. Liggins. As to Miss Martineau, I respect her so much as an authoress, and have so pleasant a recollection of her as a hostess for three days, that I wish that distant impression from herself and her writings to be disturbed as little as possible by mere personal details. Anything she may do or say or feel concerning me personally is a matter of entire indifference: I share her bitterness with a large number of far more blameless people than myself. It can be of no possible benefit to me, or any one else, that I should know more of those things, either past, present, or to come. "I do owe no man anything" except to write honestly and religiously what comes from my inward promptings; and the freer I am kept of all knowledge of that comparatively small circle who mingle personal regards or hatred with their judgment or reception of my writings, the easier it will be to keep my motives free from all indirectness and write truly. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Nov. 18._--On Monday Dickens wrote, asking me to give him, after I have finished my present novel, a story to be printed in _All the Year Round_--to begin four months after next Easter, and assuring me of my own terms. The next day G. had an interview by appointment with Evans (of Bradbury & Evans), and Lucas, the editor of _Once a Week_, who, after preliminary pressing of G. himself to contribute, put forward their wish that I should give them a novel for their Magazine. They were to write and make an offer, but have not yet done so. We have written to Dickens, saying that _time_ is an insurmountable obstacle to his proposition, as he puts it. I am reading Thomas à Kempis. _Nov. 19._--Mr. Lockhart Clarke and Mr. Herbert Spencer dined with us. _Nov. 22._--We have been much annoyed lately by Newby's advertisement of a book called "Adam Bede, Junior," a sequel; and to-day Dickens has written to mention a story of the tricks which are being used to push the book under the pretence of its being mine. One librarian has been forced to order the book against his will, because the public have demanded it. Dickens is going to put an article on the subject in _Household Words_, in order to scarify the rascally bookseller. _Nov. 23._--We began Darwin's book on "The Origin of Species" to-night. Though full of interesting matter, it is not impressive, from want of luminous and orderly presentation. _Nov. 24._--This morning I wrote the scene between Mrs. Tulliver and Wakem. G. went into town and saw young Evans (of Bradbury & Evans), who agreed that it would be well to have an article in _Punch_ on this scoundrelly business of "Adam Bede, Junior." A divine day. I walked out, and Mrs. Congreve joined me. Then music, "Arabian Nights," and Darwin. _Nov. 25._--I am reading old Bunyan again, after the long lapse of years, and am profoundly struck with the true genius manifested in the simple, vigorous, rhythmic style. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 25th Nov. 1859.] Thanks for _Bentley_. Some one said the writer of the article on "Adam Bede" was a Mr. Mozeley, a clergyman, and a writer in the _Times_; but these reports about authorship are as often false as true. I think it is, on the whole, the best review we have seen, unless we must except the one in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, by Emile Montégut. I don't mean to read _any_ reviews of my next book; so far as they would produce any effect, they would be confusing. Everybody admires something that somebody else finds fault with; and the miller with his donkey was in a clear and decided state of mind compared with the unfortunate writer who should set himself to please all the world of review writers. I am compelled, in spite of myself, to be annoyed with this business of "Adam Bede, Junior." You see I am well provided with thorns in the flesh, lest I should be exalted beyond measure. To part with the copyright of a book which sells 16,000 in one year--to have a Liggins and an unknown writer of one's "Sequel" all to one's self--is excellent discipline. We are reading Darwin's book on Species, just come out after long expectation. It is an elaborate exposition of the evidence in favor of the Development Theory, and so makes an epoch. Do you see how the publishing world is going mad on periodicals? If I could be seduced by such offers, I might have written three poor novels, and made my fortune in one year. Happily, I have no need to exert myself when I say "Avaunt thee, Satan!" Satan, in the form of bad writing and good pay, is not seductive to me. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Nov. 26._--Letter from Lucas, editor of _Once a Week_, anxious to come to terms about my writing for said periodical. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 26th Nov. 1859.] It was very pretty and generous of you to send me a nice long letter out of your turn, and I think I shall give you, as a reward, other opportunities of being generous in the same way for the next few months, for I am likely to be a poor correspondent, having my head and hands full. We have the whole of Vilmar's "Literatur Geschichte," but not the remainder of the "Deutsche Humoristik." I agree with you in liking the history of German literature, especially the earlier ages--the birth-time of the legendary poetry. Have you read the "Nibelungenlied" yet? Whereabouts are you in algebra? It would be very pleasant to study it with you, if I could possibly find time to rub up my knowledge. It is now a good while since I looked into algebra, but I was very fond of it in old days, though I dare say I never went so far as you have now gone. Tell me your latitude and longitude. I have no memory of an autumn so disappointing as this. It is my favorite season. I delight especially in the golden and red tints under the purple clouds. But this year the trees were almost stripped of their leaves before they had changed color--dashed off by the winds and rain. We have had _no_ autumnal beauty. I am writing at night--very tired--so you must not wonder if I have left out words, or been otherwise incoherent. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Nov. 29._--Wrote a letter to the _Times_, and to Delane about Newby. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th Dec. 1859.] I took no notice of the extract you sent me from a letter of Mrs. Gaskell's, being determined not to engage in any writing on the topic of my authorship, except such as was absolutely demanded of us. But since then I have had a very beautiful letter from Mrs. Gaskell, and I will quote some of her words, because they do her honor, and will incline you to think more highly of her. She begins in this way: "Since I heard, on authority, that you were the author of 'Scenes of Clerical Life' and 'Adam Bede,' I have read them again, and I must once more tell you how earnestly, fully, and _humbly_ I admire them. I never read anything so complete and beautiful in fiction in my life before." Very sweet and noble of her, was it not? She went on to speak of her having held to the notion of Liggins, but she adds, "I was never such a goose as to believe that books like yours were a mosaic of real and ideal." The "Seth Bede" and "Adam Bede, Junior," are speculations of those who are always ready to fasten themselves like leeches on a popular fame. Such things must be endured: they are the shadow to the bright fact of selling 16,000 in one year. As to the silly falsehoods and empty opinions afloat in some petty circles, I have quite conquered my temporary irritation about them--indeed, I feel all the more serene now for that very irritation; it has impressed on me more deeply how entirely the rewards of the artist lie apart from everything that is narrow and personal: there is no peace until that lesson is thoroughly learned. I shall go on writing from my inward promptings--writing what I love and believe, what I feel to be true and good, if I can only render it worthily--and then leave all the rest to take its chance: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be" with those who are to produce any art that will lastingly touch the generations of men. We have been reading Darwin's book on the "Origin of Species" just now: it makes an epoch, as the expression of his thorough adhesion, after long years of study, to the Doctrine of Development--and not the adhesion of an anonym like the author of the "Vestiges," but of a long-celebrated naturalist. The book is sadly wanting in illustrative facts--of which he has collected a vast number, but reserves them for a future book, of which this smaller one is the _avant-coureur_. This will prevent the work from becoming popular as the "Vestiges" did, but it will have a great effect in the scientific world, causing a thorough and open discussion of a question about which people have hitherto felt timid. So the world gets on step by step towards brave clearness and honesty! But to me the Development Theory, and all other explanations of processes by which things came to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery that lies under the processes. It is nice to think of you reading our great, great favorite Molière, while, for the present, we are not taking him down from the shelves--only talking about him, as we do very often. I get a good deal of pleasure out of the sense that some one I love is reading and enjoying my best-loved writers. I think the "Misanthrope" the finest, most complete production _of its kind_ in the world. I know you enjoy the "sonnet" scene, and the one between Arsinoé and Célimène. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Monday evening, 5th Dec. 1859.] In opposition to most people who love to _read_ Shakspeare, I like to see his plays acted better than any others; his great tragedies thrill me, let them be acted how they may. I think it is something like what I used to experience in old days in listening to uncultured preachers--the emotions lay hold of one too strongly for one to care about the medium. Before all other plays I find myself cold and critical, seeing nothing but actors and "properties." I like going to those little provincial theatres. One's heart streams out to the poor devils of actors who get so little clapping, and will go home to so poor a supper. One of my pleasures lately has been hearing repeatedly from my Genevese friends M. and Mme. d'Albert, who were so good to me during my residence with them. M. d'Albert had read the "Scenes of Clerical Life" before he knew they were mine, and had been so much struck with them that he had wanted to translate them. One likes to feel old ties strengthened by fresh sympathies. The _Cornhill Magazine_ is going to lead off with great spirit, and promises to eclipse all the other new-born periodicals. Mr. Lewes is writing a series of papers for it--"Studies in Animal Life"--which are to be subsequently published in a book. It is quite as well that your book should not be ready for publication just yet. February is a much better time than Christmas. I shall be one of your most eager readers--for every book that comes from the heart of hearts does me good, and I quite share your faith that what you yourself feel so deeply and find so precious will find a home in some other minds. Do not suspect that I impose on you the task of writing letters to answer my _dilettante_ questions. "Am I on a bed of roses?" I have four children to correspond with--the three boys in Switzerland, and Emily at Lichfield. [Sidenote: Journal, 1859.] _Dec. 15._--Blackwood proposes to give me for "The Mill on the Floss" £2000 for 4000 copies of an edition at 31_s._ 6_d._, and after the same rate for any more that may be printed at the same price: £150 for 1000 at 12_s._, and £60 for 1000 at 6_s._ I have accepted. _Dec. 25._--Christmas-day. We all, including Pug, dined with Mr. and Mrs. Congreve, and had a delightful day. Mr. Bridges was there too. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 30th Dec. 1859.] I don't like Christmas to go by without sending you a greeting, though I have really nothing to say beyond that. We spent our Christmas-day with the Congreves, shutting up our house and taking our servant and Pug with us. And so we ate our turkey and plum-pudding in very social, joyous fashion with those charming friends. Mr. Bridges was there too. We are meditating flight to Italy when my present work is done, as our last bit of vagrancy for a long, long while. We shall only stay two months, doing nothing but absorb. I don't think I have anything else to tell, except that we, being very happy, wish all mortals to be in like condition, and especially the mortals we know in the flesh. Human happiness is a web with many threads of pain in it--that is always _sub auditum_--Twist ye, twine ye, even so, etc., etc. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 3d Jan. 1860.] I never before had so pleasant a New Year's greeting as your letter containing a check for £800, for which I have to thank you to-day. On every ground--including considerations that are not at all of a monetary kind--I am deeply obliged to you and to Major Blackwood for your liberal conduct in relation to "Adam Bede." As, owing to your generous concession of the copyright of "Adam Bede," the three books will be henceforth on the same footing, we shall be delivered from further discussion as to terms. We are demurring about the title. Mr. Lewes is beginning to prefer "The House of Tulliver; or, Life on the Floss," to our old notion of "Sister Maggie." "The Tullivers; or, Life on the Floss," has the advantage of slipping easily off the lazy English tongue, but it is after too common a fashion ("The Newcomes," "The Bertrams," etc., etc.). Then there is "The Tulliver Family; or, Life on the Floss." Pray meditate, and give us your opinion. I am very anxious that the "Scenes of Clerical Life" should have every chance of impressing the public with its existence: first, because I think it of importance to the estimate of me as a writer that "Adam Bede" should not be counted as my only book; and secondly, because there are ideas presented in these stories about which I care a good deal, and am not sure that I can ever embody again. This latter reason is my private affair, but the other reason, if valid, is yours also. I must tell you that I had another cheering letter to-day besides yours: one from a person of mark in your Edinburgh University,[9] full of the very strongest words of sympathy and encouragement, hoping that my life may long be spared "to give pictures of the deeper life of this age." So I sat down to my desk with a delicious confidence that my audience is not made up of reviewers and literary clubs. If there is any truth in me that the world wants, nothing will hinder the world from drinking what it is athirst for. And if there is no needful truth in me, let me, howl as I may in the process, be hurled into the Dom Daniel, where I wish all other futile writers to sink. Your description of the "curling" made me envy you the sight. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 4th Jan. 1860.] The sun is shining with us too, and your pleasant letter made it seem to shine more brightly. I am not going to be expansive in this appendix to your father's chapter of love and news, for my head is tired with writing this morning--it is not so young as yours, you know, and, besides, is a feminine head, supported by weaker muscles and a weaker digestive apparatus than that of a young gentleman with a broad chest and hopeful whiskers. I don't wonder at your being more conscious of your attachment to Hofwyl now the time of leaving is so near. I fear you will miss a great many things in exchanging Hofwyl, with its snowy mountains and glorious spaces, for a very moderate home in the neighborhood of London. You will have a less various, more arduous life: but the time of _Entbehrung_ or _Entsagung_ must begin, you know, for every mortal of us. And let us hope that we shall all--father and mother and sons--help one another with love. What jolly times you have had lately! It did us good to read of your merrymaking. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 6th Jan. 1860.] "The Mill on the Floss" be it then! The only objections are, that the mill is not _strictly_ on the Floss, being on its small tributary, and that the title is of rather laborious utterance. But I think these objections do not deprive it of its advantage over "The Tullivers; or, Life on the Floss"--the only alternative, so far as we can see. Pray give the casting-vote. Easter Monday, I see, is on the 8th April, and I wish to be out by the middle or end of March. Illness apart, I intend to have finished Vol. III. by the beginning of that month, and I hope no obstacle will impede the rapidity of the printing. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Jan. 11._--I have had a very delightful letter of sympathy from Professor Blackie of Edinburgh, which came to me on New Year's morning, and a proposal from Blackwood to publish a third edition of "Clerical Scenes" at 12_s._ George's article in the _Cornhill Magazine_--the first of a series of "Studies in Animal Life"--is much admired, and in other ways our New Year opens with happy omens. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 12th Jan. 1860.] Thank you for letting me see the specimen advertisements; they have helped us to come to a decision--namely, for "The Mill on the Floss." I agree with you that it will be well not to promise the book in March--not because I do not desire and hope to be ready, but because I set my face against all pledges that I am not _sure_ of being able to fulfil. The third volume is, I fancy, always more rapidly written than the rest. The third volume of "Adam Bede" was written in six weeks, even with headaching interruptions, because it was written under a stress of emotion, which first volumes cannot be. I will send you the first volume of "The Mill" at once. The second is ready, but I would rather keep it as long as I can. Besides the advantage to the book of being out by Easter, I have another reason for wishing to have done in time for that. We want to get away for two months to Italy, if possible, to feed my mind with fresh thoughts, and to assure ourselves of that fructifying holiday before the boys are about us, making it difficult for us to leave home. But you may rely on it that no amount of horse-power would make me _hurry_ over my book, so as not to do my best. If it is written fast, it will be because I can't help writing it fast. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Jan. 16._--Finished my second volume this morning, and am going to send off the MS. of the first volume to-morrow. We have decided that the title shall be "The Mill on the Floss." We have been reading "Humphrey Clinker" in the evenings, and have been much disappointed in it, after the praise of Thackeray and Dickens. _Jan. 26._--Mr. Pigott, Mr. Redford, and Mr. F. Chapman dined with us, and we had a musical evening. Mrs. Congreve and Miss Bury[10] joining us after dinner. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Jan. 1860.] Thanks for your letter of yesterday, with the Genevese enclosure. No promise, alas! of smallest watch expressing largest admiration, but a desire for "permission to translate." I have been invalided for the last week, and, of course, am a prisoner in the castle of Giant Despair, who growls in my ear that "The Mill on the Floss" is detestable, and that the last volume will be the climax of that general detestableness. Such is the elation attendant on what a self-elected lady correspondent of mine from Scotland calls my "exciting career!" I have had a great pleasure this week. Dr. Inman of Liverpool has dedicated a new book ("Foundation for a New Theory and Practice of Medicine") "to G. H. Lewes, as an acknowledgment of benefit received from noticing his close observation and clear inductive reasoning in 'Sea-side Studies' and the 'Physiology of Common Life.'" That is really gratifying, coming from a _physician_ of some scientific mark, who is _not_ a personal friend. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Feb. 4._--Came this morning a letter from Blackwood announcing the despatch of the first eight sheets of proof of "The Mill on the Floss," and expressing his delight in it. To-night G. has read them, and says, "_Ganz famos!_" Ebenezer! _Feb. 23._--Sir Edward Lytton called on us. Guy Darrell in _propriâ personâ_. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 23d Feb. 1860.] Sir Edward Lytton called on us yesterday. The conversation lapsed chiefly into monologue, from the difficulty I found in making him hear, but under all disadvantages I had an agreeable impression of his kindness and sincerity. He thinks the two defects of "Adam Bede" are the dialect and Adam's marriage with Dinah; but, of course, I would have my teeth drawn rather than give up either. Jacobi told Jean Paul that unless he altered the _dénouement_ of his Titan he would withdraw his friendship from him; and I am preparing myself for your lasting enmity on the ground of the tragedy in my third volume. But an unfortunate duck can only lay blue eggs, however much white ones may be in demand. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Feb. 29._--G. has been in the town to-day, and has agreed for £300 for "The Mill on the Floss" from Harpers of New York. This evening, too, has come a letter from Williams & Norgate, saying that Tauchnitz will give £100 for the German reprint; also, that "Bede Adam" is translated into Hungarian. _March 5._--Yesterday Mr. Lawrence, the portrait-painter, lunched with us, and expressed to G. his wish to take my portrait. _March 9._--Yesterday a letter from Blackwood, expressing his strong delight in my third volume, which he had read to the beginning of "Borne on the tide." To-day young Blackwood called, and told us, among other things, that the last copies of "Clerical Scenes" had gone to-day--twelve for export. Letter came from Germany, announcing a translation of G.'s "Biographical History of Philosophy." _March 11._--To-day the first volume of the German translation of "Adam Bede" came. It is done by Dr. Frese, the same man who translated the "Life of Goethe." _March 20._--Professor Owen sent me his "Palæontology" to-day. Have missed two days of work from headache, and so have not yet finished my book. _March 21._--Finished this morning "The Mill on the Floss," writing from the moment when Maggie, carried out on the water, thinks of her mother and brother. We hope to start for Rome on Saturday, 24th. _Magnificat anima mea!_ The manuscript of "The Mill on the Floss" bears the following inscription: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21st March, 1860." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 22d March, 1860.] Your letter yesterday morning helped to inspire me for the last eleven pages, if they have any inspiration in them. They were written in a _furor_, but I dare say there is not a word different from what it would have been if I had written them at the slowest pace. We expect to start on Saturday morning, and to be in Rome by Palm Sunday, or else by the following Tuesday. Of course we shall write to you when we know what will be our address in Rome. In the meantime news will gather. I don't mean to send "The Mill on the Floss" to any one except to Dickens, who has behaved with a delicate kindness in a recent matter, which I wish to acknowledge. I am grateful and yet rather sad to have finished--sad that I shall live with my people on the banks of the Floss no longer. But it is time that I should go and absorb some new life and gather fresh ideas. _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1859, TO MARCH, 1860. Looking for cases of _inundation_ in _Annual Register_--New House--Holly Lodge, Wandsworth--Letter to John Blackwood--George Eliot fears she has not characteristics of "the popular author"--Subscription to "Adam Bede" 730 copies--Appreciation by a cabinet-maker--Dr. John Brown sends "Rab and his Friends" with an inscription--Letter to Blackwood thereon--Tries to be hopeful--Letters to Miss Hennell--Description of Holly Lodge--Miss Nightingale--Thoughts on death--Scott--Mrs. Clarke writes--Mr. and Mrs. Congreve--Letter to Mrs. Bray on effects of anxiety--Mrs. Clarke dying--Letter to John Blackwood--Wishes Carlyle to read "Adam Bede"--"Life of Frederic" painful--Susceptibility to newspaper criticism--Edinburgh more encouraging than London--Letter to Blackwood to stop puffing notices--Letter from E. Hall, working-man, asking for cheap editions--Sale of "Adam Bede"--Death of Mrs. Clarke--1800 copies of "Adam Bede" sold--Letter to Blackwood--Awakening to fame--Letter to Froude--Mrs. Poyser quoted in House of Commons by Mr. Charles Buxton--Opinions of Charles Reade, Shirley Brooks, and John Murray--Letter to John Blackwood--Warwickshire correspondent insists that Liggins is author of "Adam Bede"--Not flushed with success--Visit to Isle of Wight--Letter to Miss Hennell on rewriting, and pleasure in Mr. and Mrs. Congreve--Letter to _Times_, denying that Liggins is the author--Letter to Blackwood--The Liggins myth--Letter from Bulwer--Finished "The Lifted Veil"--Writing "The Tullivers"--Mrs. Congreve--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Faith in her--Letter from Madame Bodichon--Reply breathing joy in sympathy--Letter to Major Blackwood--Mr. Anders's apology for the Liggins business--"Adam Bede" worth writing--Dulwich gallery--Blackwood gives £400 more in acknowledgment of "Adam Bede's" success--Letter to Miss Hennell on Mrs. Congreve--On difficulty of getting cheap music in England--Professor Aytoun on "Adam Bede"--Letter to Major Blackwood--Liggins--Mrs. Gaskell--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Dislike of Wandsworth--To Crystal Palace to hear "Messiah," and reveals herself to Brays as author of "Adam Bede"--Letter to Brays--Bad effect of talking of her books--Letter to Charles Bray--Melancholy that her writing does not produce effect intended--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--To Switzerland by Paris--At Schweizerhof, Lucerne, with Congreves--Mr. Lewes goes to Hofwyl--Return to Richmond by Bâle and Paris--Fourth edition of "Adam Bede" (5000) sold in a fortnight--Letter to Mrs. Bray on Mrs. Congreve--On the effect of her books and fame--Herbert Spencer on "Adam Bede"--Pamphlet to prove that Scott's novels were written by Thomas Scott--Letter from Dickens on "Adam Bede" referred to--Letter to John Blackwood on "Pug"--Letter to Charles Lewes--"The Physiology of Common Life"--American proposition for a story for £1200--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Distance from experience artistically necessary--Letter to John Blackwood--Development of stories--Visit to Penmaenmawr--Return by Lichfield to Weymouth--Sixth edition of "Adam Bede"--Back to Richmond--Anxiety about new novel--Journey to Gainsboro', Lincolnshire--Letter to Miss Hennell--End of Liggins business--Letter to John Blackwood--A correspondent suggests a sequel to "Adam Bede"--Susceptibility to outside opinion--Seventh edition of "Adam Bede"--Blackwood proposes to pay £800 beyond the bargain for success of "Adam Bede"--Dickens dines at Holly Lodge--Letter to Miss Hennell--Quotes letter from Mrs. Gaskell--Miss Martineau--Dickens asks for story for _All the Year Round_--"Adam Bede, Junior"--Reading Darwin on "Origin of Species"--Bunyan--Letter to Mr. Bray--Article on "Adam Bede" in _Bentley_--In _Revue des Deux Mondes_, by Emile Montégut--Reviews generally--16,000 of "Adam Bede" sold in year--Darwin's book--Letter to Charles Lewes--Mentions fondness of algebra--Letter to Madame Bodichon quoting Mrs. Gaskell's letter--Rewards of the artist lie apart from everything personal--Darwin's book--Molière--Letter to Miss Hennell--Likes to see Shakspeare acted--Hears from M. and Mme. d'Albert--_Cornhill Magazine_--Blackwood's terms for "Mill on the Floss"--Christmas-day with Congreves--Letter of sympathy from Professor Blackie--Third edition of "Clerical Scenes"--Letters to Blackwood--Thanks for concession of copyright of "Adam Bede"--Title of new novel considered--Suggestion of the "Mill on the Floss" accepted--The third volume of "Adam Bede" written in six weeks--Depression with the "Mill"--Sir Edward Lytton--"Adam Bede" translated into Hungarian and German--"Mill on the Floss" finished--Letter to Blackwood--Sad at finishing--Start for Italy. FOOTNOTES: [7] Miss Emily Bury, now Mrs. Geddes. [8] Madame Bodichon. [9] Professor Blackie. [10] Mrs. Congreve's sister. CHAPTER X. [Sidenote: Italy, 1860.] We have finished our journey to Italy--the journey I had looked forward to for years, rather with the hope of the new elements it would bring to my culture than with the hope of immediate pleasure. Travelling can hardly be without a continual current of disappointment, if the main object is not the enlargement of one's general life, so as to make even weariness and annoyances enter into the sum of benefit. One great deduction to me from the delight of seeing world-famous objects is the frequent double consciousness which tells me that I am not enjoying the actual vision enough, and that, when higher enjoyment comes with the reproduction of the scenes in my imagination, I shall have lost some of the details, which impress me too feebly in the present, because the faculties are not wrought up into energetic action. I have no other journal than the briefest record of what we did each day, so I shall put down my recollections whenever I happen to have leisure and inclination--just for the sake of making clear to myself the impressions I have brought away from our three months' travel. The first striking moment in our journey was when we arrived, I think about eleven o'clock at night, at the point in the ascent of the Mont Cenis where we were to quit the diligences and take to the sledges. After a hasty drink of hot coffee in the roadside inn, our large party--the inmates of three diligences--turned out into the starlight to await the signal for getting into the sledges. That signal seemed to be considerably on in the future--to be arrived at through much confusion of luggage-lifting, voices, and leading about of mules. The human bustle and confusion made a poetic contrast with the sublime stillness of the starlit heavens spread over the snowy table-land and surrounding heights. The keenness of the air contributed strongly to the sense of novelty; we had left our every-day, conventional world quite behind us, and were on a visit to Nature in her private home. Once closely packed in our sledge, congratulating ourselves that, after all, we were no more squeezed than in our diligence, I gave myself up to as many naps as chose to take possession of me, and actually slept without very considerable interruption till we were near the summit of the mighty pass. Already there was a faint hint of the morning in the starlight, which showed us the vast, sloping snow-fields as we commenced the descent. I got a few glimpses of the pure, far-stretching whiteness before the sharpening edge of cold forced us to close the window. Then there was no more to be seen till it was time to get out of the sledge and ascend the diligence once more; not, however, without a preliminary struggle with the wind, which fairly blew me down on my slippery standing-ground. The rest of our descent showed us fine, varied scenes of mountain and ravine till we got down at Susa, where breakfast and the railway came as a desirable variety after our long mountain journey and long fast. One of our companions had been a gigantic French soldier, who had in charge a bag of government money. He was my _vis-à-vis_ for some time, and cramped my poor legs not a little with his precious bag, which he would by no means part from. The approach to Turin by the railway gave us a grand view of snowy mountains surrounding the city on three sides. A few hours of rest spent there could leave no very vivid impression. A handsome street, well broken by architectural details, with a glimpse of snowy mountains at the end of the vista, colonnades on each side, and flags waving their bright colors in sign of political joy, is the image that usually rises before me at the mention of Turin. I fancy the said street is the principal one, but in our walk about the town we saw everywhere a similar character of prosperous, well-lodged town existence--only without the colonnades and without the balconies and other details, which make the principal street picturesque. This is the place that Alfieri lived in through many of his young follies, getting tired of it at last for the Piedmontese pettiness of which it was the centre. And now, eighty years later, it is the centre of a widening life which may at last become the life of resuscitated Italy. At the railway station, as we waited to take our departure for Genoa, we had a sight of the man whose name will always be connected with the story of that widening life--Count Cavour--"imitant son portrait," which we had seen in the shops, with unusual closeness. A man pleasant to look upon, with a smile half kind, half caustic; giving you altogether the impression that he thinks of "many matters," but thanks Heaven and makes no boast of them. He was there to meet the Prince de Carignan, who was going to Genoa on his way towards Florence by the same train as ourselves. The prince is a notability with a thick waist, bound in by a gold belt, and with a fat face, predominated over by a large mustache--"Non ragionam di lui." The railway journey from Turin was chiefly distinguished by dust; but I slept through the latter half, without prejudice, however, to the satisfaction with which I lay down in a comfortable bedroom in the Hotel Feder. In Genoa again on a bright, warm spring morning! I was here eleven years ago, and the image that visit had left in my mind was surprisingly faithful, though fragmentary. The outlook from our hotel was nearly the same as before--over a low building with a colonnade, at the masts of the abundant shipping. But there was a striking change in the interior of the hotel. It was like the other, a palace adapted to the purposes of an inn; but be-carpeted and be-furnished with an exaggeration of English fashion. We lost no time in turning out, after breakfast, into the morning sunshine. George was enchanted with the aspect of the place, as we drove or walked along the streets. It was his first vision of anything corresponding to his preconception of Italy. After the Adlergasse, in Nürnberg, surely no streets can be more impressive than the Strada Nuova and Strada Nuovissima, at Genoa. In street architecture I can rise to the highest point of the admiration given to the Palladian style. And here in these chief streets of Genoa the palaces have two advantages over those of Florence: they form a series, creating a general impression of grandeur of which each particular palace gets the benefit; and they have the open gateway, showing the _cortile_ within--sometimes containing grand stone staircases. And all this architectural splendor is accompanied with the signs of actual prosperity. Genova la Superba is not a name of the past merely. We ascended the tower of Santa Maria di Carignano to get a panoramic view of the city, with its embosoming hills and bay--saw the cathedral, with its banded black-and-white marble--the churches of the Annunziata and San Ambrogio, with their wealth of gilding and rich pink-brown marbles--the Palazzo Rosso, with its collection of eminently forgettable pictures--and the pretty gardens of the Palazzo Doria, with their flourishing green close against the sea. A drive in the direction of the Campo Santo, along the dry, pebbly bed of the river, showed us the terraced hills planted with olives, and many picturesque groups of the common people with mules or on carts; not to mention what gives beauty to every corner of the inhabited world--the groups of children squatting against walls or trotting about by the side of their elders or grinning together over their play. One of the personages we were pleased to encounter in the streets here was a quack--a Dulcamara--mounted on his carriage and holding forth with much _brio_ before proceeding to take out the tooth of a negro, already seated in preparation. We left Genoa on the second evening--unhappily, a little too long after sundown, so that we did not get a perfect view of the grand city from the sea. The pale starlight could bring out no color. We had a prosperous passage to Leghorn. Leghorn on a brilliant, warm morning, with five or six hours before us to fill as agreeably as possible! Of course, the first thought was to go to Pisa, but the train would not start till eleven; so, in the meantime, we took a drive about the prosperous-looking town, and saw the great reservoir which receives the water brought from the distant mountains; a beautiful and interesting sight--to look into the glassy depth and see columns and grand arches reflected as if in mockery and frustration of one's desire to see the bottom. But in one corner the light fell so as to reveal that reality instead of the beautiful illusion. On our way back we passed the Hebrew synagogue, and were glad of our coachman's suggestion that we should enter, seeing it was the Jews' Sabbath. At Pisa we took a carriage and drove at once to the cathedral, seeing as we went the well-looking lines of building on each side of the Arno. A wonderful sight is that first glimpse of the cathedral, with the leaning campanile on one side and the baptistery on the other, green turf below, and a clear, blue sky above! The structure of the campanile is exquisitely light and graceful--tier above tier of small circular arches, supported by delicate, round pillars narrowing gradually in circumference, but very slightly, so that there is no striking difference of size between the base and summit. The campanile is all of white marble, but the cathedral has the bands of black and white, softened in effect by the yellowing which time has given to the white. There is a family likeness among all these structures: they all have the delicate little colonnades and circular arches. But the baptistery has stronger traits of the Gothic style in the pinnacles that crown the encircling colonnade. After some dusty delay outside the railway station we set off back again to Livorno, and forthwith got on board our steamboat again--to awake next morning (being Palm-Sunday) at Civita Vecchia. Much waiting before we were allowed to land; and again much waiting for the clumsy process of "visiting" our luggage. I was amused while sitting at the _Dogana_, where almost every one was cross and busy, to see a dog making his way quietly out with a bone in his mouth. Getting into our railway carriage, our _vis-à-vis_--a stout, amiable, intelligent Livornian, with his wife and son, named Dubreux--exclaimed, "C'en est fini d'un peuple qui n'est pas capable de changer une bêtise comme ça!" George got into pleasant talk with him, and his son, about Edinburgh and the scientific men there--the son having been there for some time in order to go through a course of practical science. The father was a naturalist--an entomologist, I think. It was an interesting journey from Civita Vecchia to Rome: at first, a scene of rough, hilly character, then a vast plain, frequently marshy, crowded with asphodels, inhabited by buffaloes; here and there a falcon or other slow, large-winged bird floating and alighting. At last we came in sight of Rome, but there was nothing imposing to be seen. The chief object was what I afterwards knew to be one of the aqueducts, but which I then, in the vagueness of my conceptions, guessed to be the ruins of baths. The railway station where we alighted looked remote and countrified; only the omnibuses and one family carriage were waiting, so that we were obliged to take our chance in one of the omnibuses--that is, the chance of finding no place left for us in the hotels. And so it was. Every one wanted to go to the Hotel d'Angleterre, and every one was disappointed. We, at last, by help of some fellow-travellers, got a small room _au troisième_ at the Hotel d'Amérique; and as soon as that business was settled we walked out to look at Rome--not without a rather heavy load of disappointment on our minds from the vision we had of it from the omnibus windows. A weary length of dirty, uninteresting streets had brought us within sight of the dome of St. Peter's, which was not impressive, seen in a peeping, makeshift manner, just rising above the houses; and the Castle of St. Angelo seemed but a shabby likeness of the engravings. Not one iota had I seen that corresponded with my preconceptions. Our hotel was in the Strada Babuino, which leads directly from the Piazza del Popolo to the Piazza di Spagna. We went to the latter for our first walk, and arriving opposite the high, broad flights of stone steps which lead up to the Trinità di Monte, stopped for the first time with a sense that here was something not quite common and ugly. But I think we got hardly any farther, that evening, than the tall column at the end of the piazza, which celebrates the final settlement by Pius IX. of the Virgin's Immaculate Conception. Oh, yes; I think we wandered farther among narrow and ugly streets, and came into our hotel again still with some dejection at the probable relation our "Rome visited" was to bear to our "Rome unvisited." Discontented with our little room at an extravagant height of stairs and price, we found and took lodgings the next day in the Corso opposite St. Carlo, with a well-mannered Frenchman named Peureux and his little, dark, Italian wife--and so felt ourselves settled for a month. By this time we were in better spirits; for in the morning we had been to the Capitol (Campidoglio, the modern variant for Capitolium), had ascended the tower, and had driven to the Coliseum. The scene, looking along the Forum to the Arch of Titus, resembled strongly that mixture of ruined grandeur with modern life which I had always had in my imagination at the mention of Rome. The approach to the Capitol from the opposite side is also impressive: on the right hand the broad, steep flight of steps leading up to the Church and Monastery of Ara Coeli, placed, some say, on the site of the Arx; in the front a less steep flight of steps _à cordon_ leading to that lower, flatter portion of the hill which was called the _Intermontium_, and which now forms a sort of piazza, with the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the centre, and on three sides buildings designed, or rather modified, by Michael Angelo--on the left the Museum, on the right the Museo dei Conservatori, and, on the side opposite the steps, the building devoted to public offices (Palazzo dei Senatori), in the centre of which stands the tower. On each hand, at the summit of the steps, are the two Colossi, less celebrated but hardly less imposing in their calm grandeur than the Colossi of the Quirinal. They are strangely streaked and disfigured by the blackening weather; but their large-eyed, mild might gives one a thrill of awe, half like what might have been felt by the men of old who saw the divine twins watering their steeds when they brought the news of victory. Perhaps the world can hardly offer a more interesting outlook than that from the tower of the Capitol. The eye leaps first to the mountains that bound the Campagna--the Sabine and Alban Hills and the solitary Soracte farther on to the left. Then, wandering back across the Campagna, it searches for the Sister Hills, hardly distinguishable now as hills. The Palatine is conspicuous enough, marked by the ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars, and rising up beyond the extremity of the Forum. And now, once resting on the Forum, the eye will not readily quit the long area that begins with the Clivus Capitolinus and extends to the Coliseum--an area that was once the very focus of the world. The Campo Vaccino, the site probably of the Comitium, was this first morning covered with carts and animals, mingling a simple form of actual life with those signs of the highly artificial life that had been crowded here in ages gone by: the three Corinthian pillars at the extremity of the Forum, said to have belonged to the Temple of Jupiter Stator; the grand temple of Antoninus and Faustina; the white arch of Titus; the Basilica of Constantine; the temple built by Adrian, with its great, broken granite columns scattered around on the green, rising ground; the huge arc of the Coliseum and the arch of Constantine. The scenes of these great relics remained our favorite haunt during our stay at Rome; and one day, near the end of it, we entered the enclosure of the Clivus Capitolinus and the excavated space of the Forum. The ruins on the Clivus--the façade of massive columns on the right, called the temple of Vespasian; the two Corinthian columns, called the temple of Saturn, in the centre; and the arch of Septimius Severus on the left--have their rich color set off by the luxuriant green, clothing the lower masonry, which formed the foundations of the crowded buildings on this narrow space, and, as a background to them all, the rough solidity of the ancient wall forming the back of the central building on the Intermontium, and regarded as one of the few remains of Republican constructions. On either hand, at another angle from the arch, the ancient road forming the double ascent of the Clivus is seen, firm and level, with its great blocks of pavement. The arch of Septimius Severus is particularly rich in color; and the poorly executed bas-reliefs of military groups still look out in the grotesque completeness of attitude and expression, even on the sides exposed to the weather. From the Clivus a passage, underneath the present road, leads into the Forum, whose immense pinkish granite columns lie on the weather-worn white marble pavement. The column of Phocas, with its base no longer "buried," stands at the extreme corner nearest the Clivus; and the three elegant columns of the temple (say some) of Jupiter Stator, mark the opposite extremity; between lie traces, utterly confused to all but erudite eyes, of marble steps and of pedestals stripped of their marble. Let me see what I most delighted in, in Rome. Certainly this drive from the Clivus to the Coliseum was, from first to last, one of the chief things; but there are many objects and many impressions of various kinds which I can reckon up as of almost equal interest: the Coliseum itself, with the view from it; the drive along the Appian Way to the tomb of Cecilia Metella, and the view from thence of the Campagna bridged by the aqueduct; the baths of Titus, with the remnants of their arabesques, seen by the light of torches, in the now damp and gloomy spaces; the glimpse of the Tarpeian rock, with its growth of cactus and rough herbage; the grand, bare arch brickwork of the Palace of the Cæsars rising in huge masses on the Palatine; the theatre of Marcellus bursting suddenly into view from among the crowded mean houses of the modern city, and still more the Temple of Minerva and Temple of Nerva, also set in the crowded city of the present; and the exterior of the Pantheon, if it were not marred by the Papal belfries--these are the traces of ancient Rome that have left the strongest image of themselves in my mind. I ought not to leave out Trajan's column, and the forum in which it stands; though the severe cold tint of the gray granite columns, or fragments of columns, gave this forum rather a dreary effect to me. For vastness there is perhaps nothing more impressive in Rome than the Baths of Caracalla, except the Coliseum; and I remember that it was among them that I first noticed the lovely effect of the giant fennel, luxuriant among the crumbling brickwork. Among the ancient sculptures I think I must place on a level the Apollo, the Dying Gladiator, and the Lateran Antinous: they affected me equally in different ways. After these I delighted in the Venus of the Capitol, and the Kissing Children in the same room; the Sophocles at the Lateran Museum; the Nile; the black, laughing Centaur at the Capitol; the Laughing Faun in the Vatican; and the _Sauroktonos_, or Boy with the Lizard, and the sitting statue called Menander. The Faun of Praxiteles, and the old Faun with the infant Bacchus, I had already seen at Munich, else I should have mentioned them among my first favorites. Perhaps the greatest treat we had at the Vatican was the sight of a few statues, including the Apollo, by torchlight--all the more impressive because it was our first sight of the Vatican. Even the mere hurrying along the vast halls, with the fitful torchlight falling on the innumerable statues and busts and bas-reliefs and sarcophagi, would have left a sense of awe at these crowded, silent forms which have the solemnity of suddenly arrested life. Wonderfully grand these halls of the Vatican are; and there is but one complaint to be made against the home provided for this richest collection of antiquities--it is that there is no historical arrangement of them, and no catalogue. The system of classification is based on the history of their collection by the different popes, so that for every other purpose but that of securing to each pope his share of glory, it is a system of helter-skelter. Of Christian Rome, St. Peter's is, of course, the supreme wonder. The piazza, with Bernini's colonnades, and the gradual slope upward to the mighty temple, gave me always a sense of having entered some millennial new Jerusalem, where all small and shabby things were unknown. But the exterior of the cathedral itself is even ugly; it causes a constant irritation by its partial concealment of the dome. The first impression from the interior was, perhaps, at a higher pitch than any subsequent impression, either of its beauty or vastness; but then, on later visits, the lovely marble, which has a tone at once subdued and warm, was half-covered with hideous red drapery. There is hardly any detail one cares to dwell on in St. Peter's. It is interesting, for once, to look at the mosaic altar-pieces, some of which render with marvellous success such famous pictures as the Transfiguration, the Communion of St. Jerome, and the Entombment or Disentombment of St. Petronilla. And some of the monuments are worth looking at more than once, the chief glory of that kind being Canova's Lions. I was pleased one day to watch a group of poor people looking with an admiration that had a half-childish terror in it at the sleeping lion, and with a sort of daring air thrusting their fingers against the teeth of the waking "mane-bearer." We ascended the dome near the end of our stay, but the cloudy horizon was not friendly to our distant view, and Rome itself is ugly to a bird's-eye contemplation. The chief interest of the ascent was the vivid realization it gave of the building's enormous size, and after that the sight of the inner courts and garden of the Vatican. Our most beautiful view of Rome and the Campagna was one we had much earlier in our stay, before the snow had vanished from the mountains; it was from the terrace of the Villa Pamfili Doria. Of smaller churches I remember especially Santa Maria degli Angeli, a church formed by Michael Angelo by additions to the grand hall in the Baths of Diocletian--the only remaining hall of ancient Rome; and the Church of San Clemente, where there is a chapel painted by Masaccio, as well as a perfect specimen of the ancient enclosure near the tribune, called the presbytery, with the _ambones_ or pulpits from which the lessons and gospel were read. Santa Maria Maggiore is an exquisitely beautiful basilica, rich in marbles from a pagan temple; and the reconstructed San Paolo fuori le Mura is a wonder of wealth and beauty, with its lines of white-marble columns--if one could possibly look with pleasure at such a perverted appliance of money and labor as a church built in an unhealthy solitude. After St. Peter's, however, the next great monument of Christian art is the Sistine Chapel; but since I care for the chapel solely for the sake of its ceiling, I ought rather to number it among my favorite paintings than among the most memorable buildings. Certainly this ceiling of Michael Angelo's is the most wonderful fresco in the world. After it come Raphael's School of Athens and Triumph of Galatea, so far as Rome is concerned. Among oil-paintings there I like best the Madonna di Foligno, for the sake of the cherub who is standing and looking upward; the Perugino also, in the Vatican, and the pretty Sassoferrato, with the clouds budding angels; at the Barberini Palace, Beatrice Cenci, and Una Schiava, by Titian; at the Sciarra Palace, the Joueurs de Violon, by Raphael, another of Titian's golden-haired women, and a sweet Madonna and Child with a bird, by Fra Bartolomeo; at the Borghese Palace, Domenichino's Chase, the Entombment, by Raphael, and the Three Ages--a copy of Titian, by Sassoferrato. We should have regretted entirely our efforts to get to Rome during the Holy Week, instead of making Florence our first resting-place, if we had not had the compensation for wearisome, empty ceremonies and closed museums in the wonderful spectacle of the illumination of St. Peter's. That, really, is a thing so wondrous, so magically beautiful, that one can't find in one's heart to say it is not worth doing. I remember well the first glimpse we had as we drove out towards it, of the outline of the dome like a new constellation on the black sky. I thought _that_ was the final illumination, and was regretting our tardy arrival, from the _détour_ we had to make, when, as our carriage stopped in front of the cathedral, the great bell sounded, and in an instant the grand illumination flashed out and turned the outline of stars into a palace of gold. Venus looked out palely. One of the finest positions in Rome is the Monte Cavallo (the Quirinal), the site of the pope's palace, and of the fountain against which are placed the two Colossi--the Castor and Pollux, ascribed, after a lax method of affiliation, to Phidias and Praxiteles. Standing near this fountain one has a real sense of being on a hill; city and distant ridge stretching below. Close by is the Palazzo Rospigliosi, where we went to see Guido's Aurora. Another spot where I was struck with the view of modern Rome (and _that_ happened rarely) was at San Pietro in Vincoli, on the Esquiline, where we went to see Michael Angelo's Moses. Turning round before one enters the church, a palm-tree in the high foreground relieves very picturesquely the view of the lower distance. The Moses did not affect me agreeably; both the attitude and the expression of the face seemed to me, in that one visit, to have an exaggeration that strained after effect without reaching it. The failure seemed to me of this kind: Moses was an angry man trying to frighten the people by his mien, instead of being rapt by his anger, and terrible without self-consciousness. To look at the statue of Christ, after the other works of Michael Angelo at Rome, was a surprise; in this the fault seems to incline slightly to the namby-pamby. The Pietà in St. Peter's has real tenderness in it. The visit to the Farnesina was one of the most interesting among our visits to Roman palaces. It is here that Raphael painted the Triumph of Galatea, and here this wonderful fresco is still bright upon the wall. In the same room is a colossal head, drawn by Michael Angelo with a bit of charcoal, by way of _carte-de-visite_, one day that he called on Daniele di Volterra, who was painting detestably in this room, and happened to be absent. In the entrance-hall, preceding the Galatea room, are the frescoes by Raphael representing the story of Cupid and Psyche; but we did not linger long to look at them, as they disappointed us. We visited only four artists' studios in Rome: Gibson's, the sculptor; Frey's, the landscape painter; Riedel's, genre painter, and Overbeck's. Gibson's was entirely disappointing to me, so far as his own sculptures are concerned; except the Cacciatore, which he sent to the Great Exhibition, I could see nothing but feeble imitations of the antique--no spontaneity and no vigor. Miss Hosmer's Beatrice Cenci is a pleasing and new conception; and her little Puck a bit of humor that one would like to have if one were a grand seigneur. Frey is a very meritorious landscape painter--finished in execution and poetic in feeling. His Egyptian scenes--the Simoon, the Pair in the Light of Sunset, and the Island of Philæ--are memorable pictures; so is the View of Athens, with its blue, island-studded sea. Riedel interested us greatly with his account of the coincidence between the views of light and colors at which he had arrived through his artistic experience, and Goethe's theory of colors, with which he became acquainted only after he had thought of putting his own ideas into shape for publication. He says the majority of painters continue their work when the sun shines from the north--they paint with _blue_ light. But it was our visit to Overbeck that we were most pleased not to have missed. The man himself is more interesting than his pictures: a benevolent calm and quiet conviction breathes from his person and manners. He has a thin, rather high-nosed face, with long gray hair, set off by a maroon velvet cap, and a gray scarf over his shoulders. Some of his cartoons pleased me: one large one of our Saviour passing from the midst of the throng who were going to cast him from the brow of the hill at Capernaum--one foot resting on a cloud borne up by cherubs; and some smaller round cartoons representing the Parable of the Ten Virgins, and applying it to the function of the artist. We drove about a great deal in Rome, but were rather afflicted in our drives by the unending walls that enclose everything like a garden, even outside the city gates. First among our charming drives was that to the Villa Pamfili Doria--a place which has the beauties of an English park and gardens, with views such as no English park can show; not to speak of the columbarium or ancient Roman burying-place, which has been disinterred in the grounds. The compactest of all burying-places must these columbaria be: little pigeon-holes, tier above tier, for the small urns containing the ashes of the dead. In this one traces of peacocks and other figures in fresco, ornamenting the divisions between the rows, are still visible. We sat down in the sunshine by the side of the water, which is made to fall in a cascade in the grounds fronting the house, and then spreads out into a considerable breadth of mirror for the plantation on the slope which runs along one side of it. On the opposite side is a broad, grassy walk, and here we sat on some blocks of stone, watching the little green lizards. Then we walked on up the slope on the other side, and through a grove of weird ilexes, and across a plantation of tall pines, where we saw the mountains in the far distance. A beautiful spot! We ought to have gone there again. Another drive was to the Villa Albani, where, again, the view is grand. The precious sculptures once there are all at Munich now; and the most remarkable remnants of the collection are the bas-relief of Antinous, and the Æsop. The Antinous is the least beautiful of all the representations of that sad loveliness that I have seen--be it said in spite of Winckelmann; attitude and face are strongly Egyptian. In an outside pavilion in the garden were some interesting examples of Greek masks. Our journey to Frascati by railway was fortunate. The day was fine, except, indeed, for the half hour that we were on the heights of Tusculum, and longed for a clear horizon. But the weather was so generally gloomy during our stay in Rome that we were "thankful for small mercies" in the way of sunshine. I enjoyed greatly our excursion up the hill on donkey-back to the ruins of Tusculum--in spite of our loquacious guide, who exasperated George. The sight of the Campagna on one side, and of Mount Algidus, with its snow-capped fellows, and Mount Albano, with Rocca di Papa on its side, and Castel Gandolfo below on the other side, was worth the trouble--to say nothing of the little theatre, which was the most perfect example of an ancient theatre I had then seen in that pre-Pompeian period of my travels. After lunching at Frascati we strolled out to the Villa Aldobrandini, and enjoyed a brighter view of the Campagna in the afternoon sunlight. Then we lingered in a little croft enclosed by plantations, and enjoyed this familiar-looking bit of grass with wild-flowers perhaps more, even, than the greatest novelties. There are fine plantations on the hill behind the villa, and there we wandered till it was time to go back to the railway. A literally grotesque thing in these plantations is the opening of a grotto in the hillside, cut in the form of a huge Greek comic mask. It was a lovely walk from the town downward to the railway station--between the olive-clad slopes looking towards the illimitable plain. Our best view of the aqueducts was on this journey, but it was the tantalizing sort of view one gets from a railway carriage. Our excursion to Tivoli, reserved till nearly the end of our stay, happened on one of those cruel, seductive days that smile upon you at five o'clock in the morning, to become cold and cloudy at eight, and resolutely rainy at ten. And so we ascended the hill through the vast, venerable olive grove, thinking what would be the effect of sunshine among those gray, fantastically twisted trunks and boughs; and paddled along the wet streets under umbrellas to look at the Temple of the Sibyl, and to descend the ravine of the waterfalls. Yet it was enjoyable; for the rain was not dense enough to shroud the near view of rock and foliage. We looked for the first time at a rock of Travertine, with its curious petrified vegetable forms, and lower down at a mighty cavern, under which the smaller cascade rushes--an awful hollow in the midst of huge, rocky masses. But--rain, rain, rain! No possibility of seeing the Villa of Hadrian, chief wonder of Tivoli: and so we had our carriage covered up and turned homeward in despair. The last week of our stay we went for the first time to the picture-gallery of the Capitol, where we saw the famous Guercino--the Entombment of Petronilla--which we had already seen in mosaic at St. Peter's. It is a stupendous piece of painting, about which one's only feeling is that it might as well have been left undone. More interesting is the portrait of Michael Angelo, by himself--a deeply melancholy face. And there is also a picture of a bishop, by Giovanni Bellini, which arrested us a long while. After these, I remember most distinctly Veronese's Europa, superior to that we afterwards saw at Venice; a delicious mythological Poussin, all light and joy; and a Sebastian, by Guido, exceptionally beautiful among the many detestable things of his in this gallery. The Lateran Museum, also, was a sight we had neglected till this last week, though it turned out to be one of the most memorable. In the classical museum are the great Antinous, a Bacchus, and the Sophocles; besides a number of other remains of high interest, especially in the department of architectural decoration. In the museum of Christian antiquities there are, besides sculptures, copies of the frescoes in the Catacombs--invaluable as a record of those perishable remains. If we ever go to Rome again the Lateran Museum will be one of the first places I shall wish to revisit. We saw the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, on the Appian Way--the long, dark passages, with great oblong hollows in the rock for the bodies long since crumbled, and the one or two openings out of the passages into a rather wider space, called chapels, but no indications of paintings or other detail--our monkish guide being an old man, who spoke with an indistinct grunt that would not have enlightened us if we had asked any questions. In the church through which we entered there is a strangely barbarous reclining statue of St. Sebastian, with arrows sticking all over it. A spot that touched me deeply was Shelley's grave. The English cemetery in which he lies is the most attractive burying-place I have seen. It lies against the old city walls, close to the Porta San Paolo and the pyramid of Caius Cestius--one of the quietest spots of old Rome. And there, under the shadow of the old walls on one side, and cypresses on the other, lies the _Cor cordium_, forever at rest from the unloving cavillers of this world, whether or not he may have entered on other purifying struggles in some world unseen by us. The grave of Keats lies far off from Shelley's, unshaded by wall or trees. It is painful to look upon, because of the inscription on the stone, which seems to make him still speak in bitterness from his grave.[11] [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th April, 1860.] A wet day for the first time since we left Paris! That assists our consciences considerably in urging us to write our letters on this fourth day at Rome, for I will not pretend that writing a letter, even to you, can be anything more alluring than a duty when there is a blue sky over the Coliseum and the Arch of Constantine, and all the other marvels of this marvellous place. Since our arrival, in the middle of Sunday, I have been gradually rising from the depth of disappointment to an intoxication of delight; and that makes me wish to do for you what no one ever did for me--warn you that you must expect no grand impression on your first entrance into Rome, at least, if you enter it from Civita Vecchia. My heart sank, as it would if you behaved shabbily to me, when I looked through the windows of the omnibus as it passed through street after street of ugly modern Rome, and in that mood the dome of St. Peter's and the Castle of St. Angelo--the only grand objects on our way--could only look disappointing to me. I believe the impression on entering from the Naples side is quite different; there one must get a glimpse of the broken grandeur and Renaissance splendor that one associates with the word "Rome." So keep up your spirits in the omnibus when your turn comes, and believe that you will mount the Capitol the next morning, as we did, and look out on the Forum and the Coliseum, far on to the Alban mountains, with snowy Apennines behind them, and feel--what I leave you to imagine, because the rain has left off, and my husband commands me to put on my bonnet. (Two hours later.) Can you believe that I have not had a headache since we set out? But I would willingly have endured more than one to be less anxious than I am about Mr. Lewes's health. Now that we are just come in from our walk to the Pantheon he is obliged to lie down with terrible oppression of the head; and since we have been in Rome he has been nearly deaf on one side. That is the dark "crow that flies in heaven's sweetest air" just now; everything else in our circumstances here is perfect. We are glad to have been driven into apartments, instead of remaining at the hotel, as we had intended; for we enjoy the abundance of room and the quiet that belong to this mode of life, and we get our cooking and all other comforts in perfection at little more than a third of the hotel prices. Most of the visitors to Rome this season seem to come only for a short stay; and, as apartments can't be taken for less than a month, the hotels are full and the lodgings are empty. Extremely unpleasant for the people who have lodgings to let, but very convenient for us, since we get excellent rooms in a good situation for a moderate price. We have a good little landlady, who can speak nothing but Italian, so that she serves as a _parlatrice_ for us, and awakens our memory of Italian dialogue--a memory which consists chiefly of recollecting Italian words without knowing their meaning, and English words without knowing the Italian for them. I shall tell you nothing of what we have seen. Have you not a husband who has seen it all, and can tell you much better? Except, perhaps, one sight which might have had some interest for him, namely, Count Cavour, who was waiting with other eminences at the Turin station to receive the Prince de Carignan, the new Viceroy of Tuscany. A really pleasant sight--not the prince, who is a large, stout "mustache," squeezed in at the waist with a gold belt, looking like one of those dressed-up personages who are among the chessmen that the Cavours of the world play their game with. The pleasant sight was Count Cavour, in plainest dress, with a head full of power, mingled with _bonhomie_. We had several fellow-travellers who belonged to Savoy, and were full of chagrin at the prospect of the French annexation. Our most agreeable companion was a Baron de Magliano, a Neapolitan who has married a French wife with a large fortune, and has been living in France for years, but has now left his wife and children behind for the sake of entering the Sardinian army, and, if possible, helping to turn out the Neapolitan Bourbons. I feel some stirrings of the insurrectionary spirit myself when I see the red pantaloons at every turn in the streets of Rome. I suppose Mrs. Browning could explain to me that this is part of the great idea nourished in the soul of the modern saviour, Louis Napoleon, and that for the French to impose a hateful government on the Romans is the only proper sequence to the story of the French Revolution. Oh, the beautiful men and women and children here! Such wonderful babies with wise eyes! such grand-featured mothers nursing them! As one drives along the streets sometimes, one sees a madonna and child at every third or fourth upper window; and on Monday a little crippled girl, seated at the door of a church, looked up at us with a face full of such pathetic sweetness and beauty that I think it can hardly leave me again. Yesterday we went to see dear Shelley's tomb, and it was like a personal consolation to me to see that simple outward sign that he is at rest, where no hatred can ever reach him again. Poor Keats's tombstone, with that despairing, bitter inscription, is almost as painful to think of as Swift's. And what have you been doing, being, or suffering in these long twelve days? While we were standing with weary impatience in the custom-house at Civita Vecchia, Mr. Congreve was delivering his third lecture, and you were listening. And what else? _Friday._--Since I wrote my letter we have not been able to get near the post-office. Yesterday was taken up with seeing ceremonies, or, rather, with waiting for them. I knelt down to receive the pope's blessing, remembering what Pius VII. said to the soldier--that he would never be the worse for the blessing of an old man. But, altogether, these ceremonies are a melancholy, hollow business, and we regret bitterly that the Holy Week has taken up our time from better things. I have a cold and headache this morning, and in other ways am not conscious of improvement from the pope's blessing. I may comfort myself with thinking that the King of Sardinia is none the worse for the pope's curse. It is farcical enough that the excommunication is posted up at the Church of St. John Lateran, out of everybody's way, and yet there are police to guard it. [Sidenote: Italy, 1860.] How much more I have to write about Rome! How I should like to linger over every particular object that has left an image in my memory! But here I am only to give a hasty sketch of what we saw and did at each place at which we paused in our three months' life in Italy. It was on the 29th of April that we left Rome, and on the morning of the 30th we arrived at Naples--under a rainy sky, alas! but not so rainy as to prevent our feeling the beauty of the city and bay, and declaring it to surpass all places we had seen before. The weather cleared up soon after our arrival at the Hotel des Étrangers, and after a few days it became brilliant, showing us the blue sea, the purple mountains, and bright city, in which we had almost disbelieved as we saw them in the pictures. Hardly anything can be more lovely than Naples seen from Posilippo under a blue sky: the irregular outline with which the town meets the sea, jutting out in picturesque masses, then lifted up high on a basis of rock, with the grand Castle of St. Elmo and the monastery on the central height crowning all the rest; the graceful outline of purple Vesuvius rising beyond the Molo, and the line of deeply indented mountains carrying the eye along to the Cape of Sorrento; and, last of all, Capri sleeping between sea and sky in the distance. Crossing the promontory of Posilippo, another wonderful scene presents itself: white Nisida on its island rock; the sweep of bay towards Pozzuoli; beyond that, in fainter colors of farther distance, the Cape of Miseno and the peaks of Ischia. Our first expedition was to Pozzuoli and Miseno, on a bright, warm day, with a slipshod Neapolitan driver, whom I christened Baboon, and who acted as our charioteer throughout our stay at Naples. Beyond picturesque Pozzuoli, jutting out with precipitous piles of building into the sea, lies Baiæ. Here we halted to look at a great circular temple, where there was a wonderful echo that made whispers circulate and become loud on the opposite side to that on which they were uttered. Here, for our amusement, a young maiden and a little old man danced to the sound of a tambourine and fife. On our way to Baiæ we had stopped to see the Lake Avernus, no longer terrible to behold, and the amphitheatre of Cumæ, now grown over with greensward, and fringed with garden stuff. From Baiæ we went to Miseno--the Misenum where Pliny was stationed with the fleet--and looked out from the promontory on the lovely isles of Ischia and Procida. On the approach to this promontory lies the Piscina Mirabilis, one of the most striking remains of Roman building. It is a great reservoir, into which one may now descend dryshod and look up at the lofty arches festooned with delicate plants, while the sunlight shoots aslant through the openings above. It was on this drive, coming back towards Pozzuoli, that we saw the Mesembryanthemum in its greatest luxuriance--a star of amethyst with its golden tassel in the centre. The amphitheatre at Pozzuoli is the most interesting in Italy after the Coliseum. The seats are in excellent preservation, and the subterranean structures for water and for the introduction of wild beasts are unique. The temple of Jupiter Serapis is another remarkable ruin, made more peculiar by the intrusion of the water, which makes the central structure, with its great columns, an island to be approached by a plank bridge. In the views from Capo di Monte--the king's summer residence--and from St. Elmo one enjoys not only the view towards the sea, but the wide, green plain sprinkled with houses and studded with small towns or villages, bounded on the one hand by Vesuvius, and shut in, in every other direction, by the nearer heights close upon Naples, or by the sublimer heights of the distant Apennines. We had the view from St. Elmo on a clear, breezy afternoon, in company with a Frenchman and his wife, come from Rome with his family after a two years' residence there--worth remembering for the pretty bondage the brusque, stern, thin father was under to the tiny, sickly looking boy. It was a grand drive up to Capo di Monte--between rich plantations, with glimpses, as we went up, of the city lying in picturesque irregularity below; and as we went down, in the other direction, views of distant mountain rising above some pretty accident of roof or groups of trees in the foreground. One day we went, from this drive, along the Poggio Reale to the cemetery--the most ambitious burying-place I ever saw, with building after building of elaborate architecture, serving as tombs to various _Arci-confraternità_ as well as to private families, all set in the midst of well-kept gardens. The humblest kind of tombs there were long niches for coffins, in a wall bordering the carriage-road, which are simply built up when the coffin is once in--the inscription being added on this final bit of masonry. The lines of lofty sepulchres suggested to one very vividly the probable appearance of the Appian Way when the old Roman tombs were in all their glory. Our first visit to the Museo Borbonico was devoted to the sculpture, of which there is a precious collection. Of the famous Balbi family, found at Herculaneum, the mother, in grand drapery, wound round her head and body, is the most unforgetable--a really grand woman of fifty, with firm mouth and knitted brow, yet not unbenignant. Farther on in this transverse hall is a Young Faun with the Infant Bacchus--a different conception altogether from the fine Munich statue, but delicious for humor and geniality. Then there is the Aristides--more real and speaking and easy in attitude even than the Sophocles at Rome. Opposite is a lovely Antinous, in no mythological character, but in simple, melancholy beauty. In the centre of the deep recess, in front of which these statues are placed, is the colossal Flora, who holds up her thin dress in too finicking a style for a colossal goddess; and on the floor--to be seen by ascending a platform--is the precious, great mosaic representing the Battle of the Issus, found at Pompeii. It is full of spirit, the _ordonnance_ of the figures is very much after the same style as in the ancient bas-reliefs, and the colors are still vivid enough for us to have a just idea of the effect. In the halls on each side of this central one there are various Bacchuses and Apollos, Atlas groaning under the weight of the Globe, the Farnese Hercules, the Toro Farnese, and, among other things less memorable, a glorious Head of Jupiter. The bronzes here are even more interesting than the marbles. Among them there is Mercury Resting, the Sleeping Faun, the little Dancing Faun, and the Drunken Faun snapping his fingers, of which there is a marble copy at Munich, with the two remarkable Heads of Plato and Seneca. But our greatest treat at the Museo Borbonico could only be enjoyed after our visit to Pompeii, where we went, unhappily, in the company of some Russians whose acquaintance G. had made at the _table d'hôte_. I hope I shall never forget the solemnity of our first entrance into that silent city, and the walk along the street of tombs. After seeing the principal houses we went, as a proper climax, to the Forum, where, among the lines of pedestals and the ruins of temples and tribunal, we could see Vesuvius overlooking us; then to the two theatres, and finally to the amphitheatre. This visit prepared us to enjoy the collection of _piccoli bronzi_, of paintings and mosaics at the Museo. Several of the paintings have considerable positive merit. I remember particularly a large one of Orestes and Pylades, which in composition and general conception might have been a picture of yesterday. But the most impressive collection of remains found at Pompeii and Herculaneum is that of the ornaments, articles of food and domestic utensils, pieces of bread, loaves with the bakers' names on them, fruits, corn, various seeds, paste in the vessel, imperfectly mixed, linen just wrung in washing, eggs, oil consolidated in a glass bottle, wine mixed with the lava, and a piece of asbestos; gold lace, a lens, a lantern with sides of talc, gold ornaments of Etruscan character, patty-pans (!), moulds for cakes; ingenious portable cooking apparatus, urn for hot water, portable candelabrum, to be raised or lowered at will, bells, dice, theatre-checks, and endless objects that tell of our close kinship with those old Pompeians. In one of the rooms of this collection there are the Farnese cameos and engraved gems, some of them--especially of the latter--marvellously beautiful, complicated, and exquisitely minute in workmanship. I remember particularly one splendid yellow stone engraved with an elaborate composition of Apollo and his chariot and horses--a masterpiece of delicate form. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 5th May, 1860.] We left Rome a week ago, almost longing, at last, to come southward in search of sunshine. Every one likes to boast of peculiar experience, and we can boast of having gone to Rome in the very worst spring that has been known for the last twenty years. Here, at Naples, we have had some brilliant days, though the wind is still cold, and rain has often fallen heavily in the night. It is the very best change for us after Rome; there is comparatively little art to see, and there is nature in transcendent beauty. We both think it the most beautiful place in the world, and are sceptical about Constantinople, which has not had the advantage of having been seen by us. That is the fashion of travellers, as you know: for you must have been bored many times in your life by people who have insisted on it that you _must_ go and see the thing _they_ have seen--there is nothing like it. We shall bore you in that way, I dare say--so prepare yourself. Our plan at present is to spend the next week in seeing Pæstum, Amalfi, Castellamare, and Sorrento, and drinking in as much of this Southern beauty, in a quiet way, as our souls are capable of absorbing. The calm blue sea, and the mountains sleeping in the afternoon light, as we have seen them to-day from the height of St. Elmo, make one feel very passive and contemplative, and disinclined to bustle about in search of meaner sights. Yet I confess Pompeii, and the remains of Pompeian art and life in the Museum, have been impressive enough to rival the sea and sky. It is a thing never to be forgotten--that walk through the silent city of the past, and then the sight of utensils and eatables and ornaments and half-washed linen and hundreds of other traces of life so startlingly like our own in its minutest details, suddenly arrested by the fiery deluge. All that you will see some day, and with the advantage of younger eyes than mine. We expect to reach Florence (by steamboat, alas!) on the 17th, so that if you have the charity to write to me again, address to me there. We thought the advance to eighteen in the number of hearers was very satisfactory, and rejoiced over it. The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life--the work at home after the holiday is done--is to help in some small, nibbling way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation, and misery on the face of this beautiful earth. I am writing at night--Mr. Lewes is already asleep, else he would say, "Send my kind regards to them all." We have often talked of you, and the thought of seeing you again makes the South Fields look brighter in our imagination than they could have looked from the dreariest part of the world if you had not been living in them. [Sidenote: Italy, 1860.] The pictures at Naples are worth little: the Marriage of St. Catherine, a small picture by Correggio; a Holy Family, by Raphael, with a singularly fine St. Ann, and Titian's Paul the Third, are the only paintings I have registered very distinctly in all the large collection. The much-praised frescoes of the dome in a chapel of the cathedral, and the oil-paintings over the altars, by Domenichino and Spagnoletto, produced no effect on me. Worth more than all these are Giotto's frescoes in the choir of the little old Church of l'Incoronata, though these are not, I think, in Giotto's ripest manner, for they are inferior to his frescoes in the Santa Croce at Florence--more uniform in the type of face. We went to a Sunday-morning service at the cathedral, and saw a detachment of silver busts of saints ranged around the tribune, Naples being famous for gold and silver sanctities. When we had been a week at Naples we set off in our carriage with Baboon on an expedition to Pæstum, arriving the first evening at Salerno--beautiful Salerno, with a bay as lovely, though in a different way, as the bay of Naples. It has a larger sweep; grander piles of rocky mountain on the north and northeast; then a stretch of low plain, the mountains receding; and, finally, on the south, another line of mountain coast extending to the promontory of Sicosa. From Salerno we started early in the morning for Pæstum, with no alloy to the pleasure of the journey but the dust, which was capable of making a simoon under a high wind. For a long way we passed through a well-cultivated plain, the mountains on our left and the sea on our right; but farther on came a swampy, unenclosed space of great extent, inhabited by buffaloes, who lay in groups, comfortably wallowing in the muddy water, with their grand, stupid heads protruding horizontally. On approaching Pæstum, the first thing one catches sight of is the Temple of Vesta, which is not beautiful either for form or color, so that we began to tremble lest disappointment were to be the harvest of our dusty journey. But the fear was soon displaced by almost rapturous admiration at the sight of the great Temple of Neptune--the finest thing, I verily believe, that we had yet seen in Italy. It has all the requisites to make a building impressive: First, _form_. What perfect satisfaction and repose for the eye in the calm repetition of those columns; in the proportions of height and length, of front and sides; the right thing is _found_--it is not being sought after in uneasy labor of detail or exaggeration. Next, _color_. It is built of Travertine, like the other two temples; but while they have remained, for the most part, a cold gray, this Temple of Neptune has a rich, warm, pinkish brown, that seems to glow and deepen under one's eyes. Lastly, _position_. It stands on the rich plain, covered with long grass and flowers, in sight of the sea on one hand, and the sublime blue mountains on the other. Many plants caress the ruins; the acanthus is there, and I saw it in green life for the first time; but the majority of the plants on the floor, or bossing the architrave, are familiar to me as home flowers--purple mallows, snapdragons, pink hawksweed, etc. On our way back we saw a herd of buffaloes clustered near a pond, and one of them was rolling himself in the water like a gentleman enjoying his bath. The next day we went in the morning from Salerno to Amalfi. It is an unspeakably grand drive round the mighty rocks with the sea below; and Amalfi itself surpasses all imagination of a romantic site for a city that once made itself famous in the world. We stupidly neglected seeing the cathedral, but we saw a macaroni-mill and a paper-mill from among the many that are turned by the rushing stream, which, with its precipitous course down the ravine, creates an immense water-power; and we climbed up endless steps to the Capuchin Monastery, to see nothing but a cavern where there are barbarous images and a small cloister with double Gothic arches. Our way back to La Cava gave us a repetition of the grand drive we had had in the morning by the coast, and beyond that an inland drive of much loveliness, through Claude-like scenes of mountain, trees, and meadows, with picturesque accidents of building, such as single round towers, on the heights. The valley beyond La Cava, in which our hotel lay, is of quite paradisaic beauty; a rich, cultivated spot, with mountains behind and before--those in front varied by ancient buildings that a painter would have chosen to place there; and one of pyramidal shape, steep as an obelisk, is crowned by a monastery, famous for its library of precious MSS. and its archives. We arrived too late for everything except to see the shroud of mist gather and gradually envelop the mountains. In the morning we set off, again in brightest weather, to Sorrento, coasting the opposite side of the promontory to that which we had passed along the day before, and having on our right hand Naples and the distant Posilippo. The coast on this side is less grand than on the Amalfi side, but it is more friendly as a place for residence. The most charming spot on the way to Sorrento, to my thinking, is Vico, which I should even prefer to Sorrento, because there is no town to be traversed before entering the ravine and climbing the mountain in the background. But I will not undervalue Sorrento, with its orange-groves embalming the air, its glorious sunsets over the sea, setting the gray olives aglow on the hills above us, its walks among the groves and vineyards out to the solitary coast. One day of our stay there we took donkeys and crossed the mountains to the opposite side of the promontory, and saw the Siren Isles--very palpable, unmysterious bits of barren rock now. A great delight to me, in all the excursions round about Naples, was the high cultivation of the soil and the sight of the vines, trained from elm to elm, above some other precious crop carpeting the ground below. On our way back to Naples we visited the silent Pompeii again. That place had such a peculiar influence over me that I could not even look towards the point where it lay on the plain below Vesuvius without a certain thrill. Amid much dust we arrived at Naples again on Sunday morning, to start by the steamboat for Leghorn on the following Tuesday. But before I quit Naples I must remember the Grotto of Posilippo, a wonderful monument of ancient labor; Virgil's tomb, which repaid us for a steep ascent only by the view of the city and bay; and a villa on the way to Posilippo, with gardens gradually descending to the margin of the sea, where there is a collection of animals, both stuffed and alive. It was there we saw the flying-fish, with their lovely blue fins. One day and night voyage to Civita Vecchia, and another day and night to Leghorn--wearisome to the flesh that suffers from nausea even on the summer sea! We had another look at dear Pisa under the blue sky, and then on to Florence, which, unlike Rome, looks inviting as one catches sight from the railway of its cupolas and towers and its embosoming hills--the greenest of hills, sprinkled everywhere with white villas. We took up our quarters at the Pension Suisse, and on the first evening we took the most agreeable drive to be had round Florence--the drive to Fiesole. It is in this view that the eye takes in the greatest extent of green, billowy hills, besprinkled with white houses, looking almost like flocks of sheep; the great, silent, uninhabited mountains lie chiefly behind; the plain of the Arno stretches far to the right. I think the view from Fiesole the most beautiful of all; but that from San Miniato, where we went the next evening, has an interest of another kind, because here Florence lies much nearer below, and one can distinguish the various buildings more completely. It is the same with Bellosguardo, in a still more marked degree. What a relief to the eye and the thought, among the huddled roofs of a distant town, to see towers and cupolas rising in abundant variety, as they do at Florence! There is Brunelleschi's mighty dome, and close by it, with its lovely colors not entirely absorbed by distance, Giotto's incomparable Campanile, beautiful as a jewel. Farther on, to the right, is the majestic tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, with the flag waving above it; then the elegant Badia and the Bargello close by; nearer to us the grand Campanile of Santo Spirito and that of Santa Croce; far away, on the left, the cupola of San Lorenzo and the tower of Santa Maria Novella; and, scattered far and near, other cupolas and campaniles of more insignificant shape and history. Even apart from its venerable historical glory, the exterior of the Duomo is pleasant to behold when the wretched, unfinished _façade_ is quite hidden. The soaring pinnacles over the doors are exquisite; so are the forms of the windows in the great semicircle of the apsis; and on the side where Giotto's Campanile is placed, especially, the white marble has taken on so rich and deep a yellow that the black bands cease to be felt as a fault. The entire view on this side, closed in by Giotto's tower, with its delicate pinkish marble, its delicate Gothic windows with twisted columns, and its tall lightness carrying the eye upward, in contrast with the mighty breadth of the dome, is a thing not easily to be forgotten. The Baptistery, with its paradisaic gates, is close by; but, except in those gates, it has no exterior beauty. The interior is almost awful, with its great dome covered with gigantic early mosaics--the pale, large-eyed Christ surrounded by images of paradise and perdition. The interior of the cathedral is comparatively poor and bare; but it has one great beauty--its colored lanceolate windows. Behind the high-altar is a piece of sculpture--the last under Michael Angelo's hand, intended for his own tomb, and left unfinished. It represents Joseph of Arimathea holding the body of Jesus, with Mary, his mother, on one side, and an apparently angelic form on the other. Joseph is a striking and real figure, with a hood over the head. For external architecture it is the palaces, the old palaces of the fifteenth century, that one must look at in the streets of Florence. One of the finest was just opposite our hotel, the Palazzo Strozzi, built by Cronaca; perfect in its massiveness, with its iron cressets and rings, as if it had been built only last year. This is the palace that the Pitti was built to outvie (so tradition falsely pretends), and to have an inner court that would contain it. A wonderful union is that Pitti Palace of cyclopean massiveness with stately regularity. Next to the Pitti, I think, comes the Palazzo Riccardi--the house of the Medici--for size and splendor. Then that unique Laurentian library, designed by Michael Angelo; the books ranged on desks in front of seats, so that the appearance of the library resembles that of a chapel with open pews of dark wood. The precious books are all chained to the desk; and here we saw old manuscripts of exquisite neatness, culminating in the Virgil of the fourth century, and the Pandects, said to have been recovered from oblivion at Amalfi, but falsely so said, according to those who are more learned than tradition. Here, too, is a little chapel covered with remarkable frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli. Grander still, in another style, is the Palazzo Vecchio, with its unique _cortile_, where the pillars are embossed with arabesque and floral tracery, making a contrast in elaborate ornament with the large simplicity of the exterior building. Here there are precious little works in ivory by Benvenuto Cellini, and other small treasures of art and jewelry, preserved in cabinets in one of the great upper chambers, which are painted all over with frescoes, and have curious inlaid doors showing buildings or figures in wooden mosaic, such as is often seen in great beauty in the stalls of the churches. The great council-chamber is ugly in its ornaments--frescoes and statues in bad taste all round it. Orcagna's Loggia de' Lanzi is disappointing at the first glance, from its sombre, dirty color; but its beauty grew upon me with longer contemplation. The pillars and groins are very graceful and chaste in ornamentation. Among the statues that are placed under it there is not one I could admire, unless it were the dead body of Ajax with the Greek soldier supporting it. Cellini's Perseus is fantastic. The Bargello, where we went to see Giotto's frescoes (in lamentable condition) was under repair, but I got glimpses of a wonderful inner court, with heraldic carvings and stone stairs and gallery. Most of the churches in Florence are hideous on the outside--piles of ribbed brickwork awaiting a coat of stone or stucco--looking like skinned animals. The most remarkable exception is Santa Maria Novella, which has an elaborate facing of black and white marble. Both this church and San Lorenzo were under repair in the interior, unfortunately for us; but we could enter Santa Maria so far as to see Orcagna's frescoes of Paradise and Hell. The Hell has been repainted, but the Paradise has not been maltreated in this way; and it is a splendid example of Orcagna's powers--far superior to his frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. Some of the female forms on the lowest range are of exquisite grace. The splendid chapel in San Lorenzo, containing the tombs of the Medici, is ugly and heavy, with all its precious marbles; and the world-famous statues of Michael Angelo on the tombs in another smaller chapel--the Notte, the Giorno, and the Crepuscolo--remained to us as affected and exaggerated in the original as in copies and casts. The two churches we frequented most in Florence were Santa Croce and the Carmine. In this last are the great frescoes of Masaccio--chief among them the Raising of the Dead Youth. In the other are Giotto's frescoes revealed from under the whitewash by which they were long covered, like those in the Bargello. Of these the best are the Challenge to Pass through the Fire, in the series representing the history of St. Francis, and the rising of some saint (unknown to me) from his tomb, while Christ extends his arms to receive him above, and wondering venerators look on, on each side. There are large frescoes here of Taddeo Gaddi's also, but they are not good; one sees in him a pupil of Giotto, and nothing more. Besides the frescoes, Santa Croce has its tombs to attract a repeated visit; the tombs of Michael Angelo, Dante, Alfieri, and Machiavelli. Even those tombs of the unknown dead under our feet, with their effigies quite worn down to a mere outline, were not without their interest. I used to feel my heart swell a little at the sight of the inscription on Dante's tomb--"Onorate l'altissimo poeta." In the Church of the Trinità also there are valuable frescoes by the excellent Domenico Ghirlandajo, the master of Michael Angelo. They represent the history of St. Francis, and happily the best of them is in the best light; it is the death of St. Francis, and is full of natural feeling, with well-marked gradations from deepest sorrow to indifferent spectatorship. The frescoes I cared for most in all Florence were the few of Fra Angelico's that a _donna_ was allowed to see, in the Convent of San Marco. In the chapter-house, now used as a guard-room, is a large Crucifixion, with the inimitable group of the fainting mother, upheld by St. John and the younger Mary, and clasped round by the kneeling Magdalene. The group of adoring, sorrowing saints on the right hand are admirable for earnest truthfulness of representation. The Christ in this fresco is not good, but there is a deeply impressive original crucified Christ outside in the cloisters; St. Dominic is clasping the cross and looking upward at the agonized Saviour, whose real, pale, calmly enduring face is quite unlike any other Christ I have seen. I forgot to mention, at Santa Maria Novella, the chapel which is painted with very remarkable frescoes by Simone Memmi and Taddeo Gaddi. The best of these frescoes is the one in which the Dominicans are represented by black and white dogs--_Domini Canes_. The human groups have high merit for conception and lifelikeness; and they are admirable studies of costume. At this church, too, in the sacristy, is the Madonna della Stella,[12] with an altar-step by Fra Angelico--specimens of his minuter painting in oil. The inner part of the frame is surrounded with his lovely angels, with their seraphic joy and flower-garden coloring. Last of all the churches we visited San Michele, which had been one of the most familiar to us on the outside, with its statues in niches, and its elaborate Gothic windows, designed by the genius of Orcagna. The great wonder of the interior is the shrine of white marble made to receive the miracle-working image which first caused the consecration of this mundane building, originally a corn-market. Surely this shrine is the most wonderful of all Orcagna's productions; for the beauty of the reliefs he deserves to be placed along with Nicolo Pisano, and for the exquisite Gothic design of the whole he is a compeer of Giotto. For variety of treasures the Uffizi Gallery is pre-eminent among all public sights in Florence; but the variety is in some degree a cause of comparative unimpressiveness, pictures and statues being crowded together and destroying each other's effect. In statuary it has the great Niobe group; the Venus de Medici; the Wrestlers; the admirable statue of the Knife-Sharpener, supposed to represent the flayer of Marsyas; the Apollino; and the Boy taking a Thorn out of his Foot; with numerous less remarkable antiques. And besides these it has what the Vatican has not--a collection of early Italian sculpture, supreme among which is Giovanni di Bologna's Mercury.[13] Then there is a collection of precious drawings; and there is the cabinet of gems, quite alone in its fantastic, elaborate minuteness of workmanship in rarest materials; and there is another cabinet containing ivory sculptures, cameos, intaglios, and a superlatively fine Niello, as well as Raffaelle porcelain. The pictures here are multitudinous, and among them there is a generous proportion of utterly bad ones. In the entrance gallery, where the early paintings are, is a great Fra Angelico--a Madonna and Child--a triptych, the two side compartments containing very fine figures of saints, and the inner part of the central frame a series of unspeakably lovely angels.[14] Here I always paused with longing, trying to believe that a copyist there could make an imitation angel good enough to be worth buying. Among the other paintings that remain with me, after my visit to the Uffizi, are the portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, by himself; the portrait of Dante, by Filippino Lippi;[15] the Herodias of Luini; Titian's Venus, in the Tribune; Raphael's Madonna and Child with the Bird; and the portrait falsely called the Fornarina; the two remarkable pictures by Ridolfo Ghirlandajo; and the Salutation, by Albertinelli, which hangs opposite; the little prince in pink dress, with two recent teeth, in the next room, by Angelo Bronzino (No. 1155); the small picture of Christ in the Garden, by Lorenzo Credi; Titian's Woman with the Golden Hair, in the Venetian room; Leonardo's Medusa head; and Michael Angelo's ugly Holy Family--these, at least, rise up on a rapid retrospect. Others are in the background; for example, Correggio's Madonna adoring the Infant Christ, in the Tribune. For pictures, however, the Pitti Palace surpasses the Uffizi. Here the paintings are more choice and not less numerous. The Madonna della Sedia leaves me, with all its beauty, impressed only by the grave gaze of the Infant; but besides this there is another Madonna of Raphael--perhaps the most beautiful of all his earlier ones--the Madonna del Gran Duca, which has the sweet grace and gentleness of its sisters without their sheeplike look. Andrea del Sarto is seen here in his highest glory of oil-painting. There are numerous large pictures of his--Assumptions and the like--of great technical merit; but better than all these I remember a Holy Family, with a very fine St. Ann, and the portraits of himself and his fatal, auburn-haired wife. Of Fra Bartolomeo there is a Pietà of memorable expression,[16] a Madonna enthroned with saints, and his great St. Mark. Of Titian, a Marriage of St. Catherine, of supreme beauty; a Magdalen, failing in expression; and an exquisite portrait of the same woman, who is represented as Venus at the Uffizi. There is a remarkable group of portraits by Rubens--himself, his brother, Lipsius, and Grotius--and a large landscape by him. The only picture of Veronese's that I remember here is a portrait of his wife when her beauty was gone. There is a remarkably fine sea-piece by Salvator Rosa; a striking portrait of Aretino, and a portrait of Vesalius, by Titian; one of Inghirami, by Raphael; a delicious, rosy baby--future cardinal--lying in a silken bed;[17] a placid, contemplative young woman, with her finger between the leaves of a book, by Leonardo da Vinci;[18] a memorable portrait of Philip II., by Titian; a splendid Judith, by Bronzino; a portrait of Rembrandt, by himself, etc., etc. Andrea del Sarto is seen to advantage at the Pitti Palace; but his _chef-d'oeuvre_ is a fresco, unhappily much worn--the Madonna del Sacco--in the cloister of the Annunziata. For early Florentine paintings the most interesting collection is that of the Accademia. Here we saw a Cimabue, which gave us the best idea of his superiority over the painters who went before him: it is a colossal Madonna enthroned. And on the same wall there is a colossal Madonna by Giotto, which is not only a demonstration that he surpassed his master, but that he had a clear vision of the noble in art. A delightful picture--very much restored, I fear--of the Adoration of the Magi made me acquainted with Gentile da Fabriano. The head of Joseph in this picture is masterly in the delicate rendering of the expression; the three kings are very beautiful in conception; and the attendant group, or rather crowd, shows a remarkable combination of realism with love of the beautiful and splendid. There is a fine Domenico Ghirlandajo--the Adoration of the Shepherds; a fine Lippo Lippi; and an Assumption, by Perugino, which I like well for its cherubs and angels, and for some of the adoring figures below. In the smaller room there is a lovely Pietà by Fra Angelico; and there is a portrait of Fra Angelico himself by another artist. One of our drives at Florence, which I have not mentioned, was that to Galileo's Tower, which stands conspicuous on one of the hills close about the town. We ascended it for the sake of looking out over the plain from the same spot as the great man looked from, more than two centuries ago. His portrait is in the Pitti Palace--a grave man with an abbreviated nose, not unlike Mr. Thomas Adolphus Trollope. One fine day near the end of our stay we made an expedition to Siena--that fine old town built on an abrupt height overlooking a wide, wide plain. We drove about a couple of hours or more, and saw well the exterior of the place--the peculiar piazza or campo in the shape of a scallop-shell, with its large old Palazzo _publico_, the Porta Ovile and Porta Romana, the archbishop's palace, and the cemetery. Of the churches we saw only the cathedral, the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, and San Domenico. The cathedral has a highly elaborate Gothic façade, but the details of the upper part are unsatisfactory--a square window in the centre shocks the eye, and the gables are not slim and aspiring enough. The interior is full of interest: there is the unique pavement in a sort of marble Niello, presenting Raffaellesque designs by Boccafumi, carrying out the example of the older portions, which are very quaint in their drawing; there is a picture of high interest in the history of early art--a picture by Guido of Siena, who was rather earlier than Cimabue; fine carved stalls and screens in dark wood; and in an adjoining chapel a series of frescoes by Pinturicchio, to which Raphael is said to have contributed designs and workmanship, and wonderfully illuminated old choir-books. The Chapel of St. John the Baptist has a remarkable Gothic façade, and a baptismal font inside, with reliefs wrought by Ghiberti and another Florentine artist. To San Domenico we went for the sake of seeing the famous Madonna by Guido da Siena; I think we held it superior to any Cimabue we had seen. There is a considerable collection of the Siennese artists at the Accademia, but the school had no great genius equal to Giotto to lead it. The Three Graces--an antique to which Canova's modern triad bears a strong resemblance in attitude and style--are also at the Accademia. An interesting visit we made at Florence was to Michael Angelo's house--Casa Buonarotti--in the Via Ghibellina. This street is striking and characteristic: the houses are all old, with broad eaves, and in some cases with an open upper story, so that the roof forms a sort of pavilion supported on pillars. This is a feature one sees in many parts of Florence. Michael Angelo's house is preserved with great care by his descendants--only one could wish their care had not been shown in giving it entirely new furniture. However, the rooms are the same as those he occupied, and there are many relics of his presence there--his stick, his sword, and many of his drawings. In one room there is a very fine Titian of small size--the principal figure a woman fainting. The Last Supper--a fresco believed to be by Raphael--is in a room at the Egyptian Museum.[19] The figure of Peter--of which, apparently, there exists various sketches by Raphael's hand--is memorable. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th May, 1860.] Things really look so threatening in the Neapolitan kingdom that we begin to think ourselves fortunate in having got our visit done. Tuscany is in the highest political spirits for the moment, and of course Victor Emanuel stares at us at every turn here, with the most loyal exaggeration of mustache and intelligent meaning. But we are selfishly careless about dynasties just now, caring more for the doings of Giotto and Brunelleschi than for those of Count Cavour. On a first journey to the greatest centres of art one must be excused for letting one's public spirit go to sleep a little. As for me, I am thrown into a state of humiliating passivity by the sight of the great things done in the far past--it seems as if life were not long enough to learn, and as if my own activity were so completely dwarfed by comparison that I should never have courage for more creation of my own. There is only one thing that has an opposite and stimulating effect: it is the comparative rarity, even here, of great and truthful art, and the abundance of wretched imitation and falsity. Every hand is wanted in the world that can do a little genuine, sincere work. We are at the quietest hotel in Florence, having sought it out for the sake of getting clear of the stream of English and Americans, in which one finds one's self in all the main tracks of travel, so that one seems at last to be in a perpetual, noisy picnic, obliged to be civil, though with a strong inclination to be sullen. My philanthropy rises several degrees as soon as we are alone. [Sidenote: Letter to Major Blackwood, 27th May, 1860.] I am much obliged to you for writing at once, and so scattering some clouds which had gathered over my mind in consequence of an indication or two in Mr. John Blackwood's previous letter. The _Times_ article arrived on Sunday. It is written in a generous spirit, and with so high a degree of intelligence that I am rather alarmed lest the misapprehensions it exhibits should be due to my defective presentation, rather than to any failure on the part of the critic. I have certainly fulfilled my intention very badly if I have made the Dodson honesty appear "mean and uninteresting," or made the payment of one's debts appear a contemptible virtue in comparison with any sort of "Bohemian" qualities. So far as my own feeling and intention are concerned, no one class of persons or form of character is held up to reprobation or to exclusive admiration. Tom is painted with as much love and pity as Maggie; and I am so far from hating the Dodsons myself that I am rather aghast to find them ticketed with such very ugly adjectives. We intend to leave this place on Friday (3d), and in four days after that we shall be at Venice, in a few days from that time at Milan, and then, by a route at present uncertain, at Berne, where we take up Mr. Lewes's eldest boy, to bring him home with us. We are particularly happy in our weather, which is unvaryingly fine without excessive heat. There has been a crescendo of enjoyment in our travels; for Florence, from its relation to the history of modern art, has roused a keener interest in us even than Rome, and has stimulated me to entertain rather an ambitious project, which I mean to be a secret from every one but you and Mr. John Blackwood. Any news of "Clerical Scenes" in its third edition? Or has its appearance been deferred? The smallest details are acceptable to ignorant travellers. We are wondering what was the last good article in _Blackwood_, and whether Thackeray has gathered up his slack reins in the _Cornhill_. Literature travels slowly even to this Italian Athens. Hawthorne's book is not to be found here yet in the Tauchnitz edition. [Sidenote: Italy, 1860.] We left Florence on the evening of the 1st of June, by diligence, travelling all night and until eleven the next morning to get to Bologna. I wish we could have made that journey across the Apennines by daylight, though in that case I should have missed certain grand, startling effects that came to me in my occasional wakings. Wonderful heights and depths I saw on each side of us by the fading light of the evening. Then, in the middle of the night, while the lightning was flashing and the sky was heavy with threatening storm-clouds, I waked to find the six horses resolutely refusing or unable to move the diligence--till, at last, two meek oxen were tied to the axle, and their added strength dragged us up the hill. But one of the strangest effects I ever saw was just before dawn, when we seemed to be high up on mighty mountains, which fell precipitously, and showed us the awful, pale horizon far, far below. The first thing we did at Bologna was to go to the Accademia, where I confirmed myself in my utter dislike of the Bolognese school--the Caraccis and Domenichino _et id genus omne_--and felt some disappointment in Raphael's St. Cecilia. The pictures of Francia here, to which I had looked forward as likely to give me a fuller and higher idea of him, were less pleasing to me than the smaller specimens of him that I had seen in the Dresden and other galleries. He seems to me to be more limited even than Perugino; but he is a faithful, painstaking painter, with a religious spirit. Agostino Caracci's Communion of St. Jerome is a remarkable picture, with real feeling in it--an exception among all the great pieces of canvas that hang beside it. Domenichino's figure of St. Jerome is a direct plagiarism from that of Agostino; but in other points the two pictures are quite diverse. The following morning we took a carriage and were diligent in visiting the churches. San Petronio has the melancholy distinction of an exquisite Gothic façade, which is carried up only a little way above the arches of the doorways; the sculptures on these arches are of wonderful beauty. The interior is of lofty, airy, simple Gothic, and it contains some curious old paintings in the various side-chapels--pre-eminent among which are the great frescoes by the so-called Buffalmacco. The Paradise is distinguished in my memory by the fact that the blessed are ranged in seats like the benches of a church or chapel. At Santa Cecilia--now used as a barrack or guard-room--there are two frescoes by Francia, the Marriage and Burial of St. Cecilia, characteristic, but miserably injured. At the great Church of San Domenico the object of chief interest is the tomb of the said saint, by the ever-to-be-honored Nicolo Pisano. I believe this tomb was his first great work, and very remarkable it is; but there is nothing on it equal to the Nativity on the pulpit at Pisa. On this tomb stands a lovely angel, by Michael Angelo. It is small in size, holding a small candle-stick, and is a work of his youth; it shows clearly enough how the feeling for grace and beauty were strong in him, only not strong enough to wrestle with his love of the grandiose and powerful. The ugly, painful leaning towers of Bologna made me desire not to look at them a second time; but there are fine bits of massive palatial building here and there in the colonnaded streets. We trod the court of the once famous university, where the arms of the various scholars ornament the walls above and below an interior gallery. This building is now, as far as I could understand, a communal school, and the university is transported to another part of the town. We left Bologna in the afternoon, rested at Ferrara for the night, and passed the Euganean Mountains on our left hand as we approached Padua in the middle of the next day. After dinner and rest from our dusty journeying we took a carriage and went out to see the town, desiring most of all to see Giotto's Chapel. We paused first, however, at the great Church of San Antonio, which is remarkable both externally and internally. There are two side chapels opposite each other, which are quite unique for contrasted effect. On the one hand is a chapel of oblong form, covered entirely with white marble _relievi_, golden lamps hanging from the roof; while opposite is a chapel of the same form, covered with frescoes by Avanzi, the artist who seems to have been the link of genius between Giotto and Masaccio. Close by, in a separate building, is the Capella di San Giorgio, also covered with Avanzi's frescoes; and here one may study him more completely, because the light is better than in the church. He has quite a Veronese power of combining his human groups with splendid architecture. The Arena Chapel stands apart, and is approached, at present, through a pretty garden. Here one is uninterruptedly with Giotto. The whole chapel was designed and painted by himself alone; and it is said that, while he was at work on it, Dante lodged with him at Padua. The nave of the chapel is in tolerably good preservation, but the apsis has suffered severely from damp. It is in this apsis that the lovely Madonna, with the Infant at her breast, is painted in a niche, now quite hidden by some altar-piece or woodwork, which one has to push by in order to see the tenderest bit of Giotto's painting. This chapel must have been a blessed vision when it was fresh from Giotto's hand--the blue, vaulted roof; the exquisite bands of which he was so fond, representing inlaid marble, uniting roof and walls, and forming the divisions between the various frescoes which cover the upper part of the wall. The glory of Paradise at one end, and the histories of Mary and Jesus on the two sides; and the subdued effect of the series of monochromes representing the Virtues and Vices below. There is a piazza with a plantation and circular public walk, with wildly affected statues of small and great notorieties, which remains with one as a peculiarity of Padua; in general the town is merely old and shabbily Italian, without anything very specific in its aspect. From Padua to Venice! It was about ten o'clock on a moonlight night--the 4th of June--that we found ourselves apparently on a railway in the midst of the sea; we were on the bridge across the Lagoon. Soon we were in a gondola on the Grand Canal, looking out at the moonlit buildings and water. What stillness! What beauty! Looking out from the high window of our hotel on the Grand Canal I felt that it was a pity to go to bed. Venice was more beautiful than romances had feigned. And that was the impression that remained, and even deepened, during our stay of eight days. That quiet which seems the deeper because one hears the delicious dip of the oar (when not disturbed by clamorous church bells) leaves the eye in full liberty and strength to take in the exhaustless loveliness of color and form. We were in our gondola by nine o'clock the next morning, and, of course, the first point we sought was the Piazza di San Marco. I am glad to find Ruskin calling the Palace of the Doges one of the two most perfect buildings in the world; its only defects, to my feeling, are the feebleness or triviality of the frieze or cornice, and the want of length in the Gothic windows with which the upper wall is pierced. This spot is a focus of architectural wonders; but the palace is the crown of them all. The double tier of columns and arches, with the rich sombreness of their finely outlined shadows, contrast satisfactorily with the warmth and light and more continuous surface of the upper part. Even landing on the Piazzetta, one has a sense, not only of being in an entirely novel scene, but one where the ideas of a foreign race have poured themselves in without yet mingling indistinguishably with the pre-existent Italian life. But this is felt yet more strongly when one has passed along the Piazzetta and arrived in front of San Marco, with its low arches and domes and minarets. But perhaps the most striking point to take one's stand on is just in front of the white marble guard-house flanking the great tower--the guard-house with Sansovino's iron gates before it. On the left is San Marco, with the two square pillars from St. Jean d'Acre standing as isolated trophies; on the right the Piazzetta extends between the Doge's Palace and the Palazzo Reale to the tall columns from Constantinople; and in front is the elaborate gateway leading to the white marble Scala di Giganti, in the courtyard of the Doge's Palace. Passing through this gateway and up this staircase, we entered the gallery which surrounds the court on three sides, and looked down at the fine sculptured vase-like wells below. Then into the great Sala, surrounded with the portraits of the doges; the largest oil-painting here--or perhaps anywhere else--is the Gloria del Paradiso, by Tintoretto, now dark and unlovely. But on the ceiling is a great Paul Veronese--the Apotheosis of Venice--which looks as fresh as if it were painted yesterday, and is a miracle of color and composition--a picture full of glory and joy of an earthly, fleshly kind, but without any touch of coarseness or vulgarity. Below the radiant Venice on her clouds is a balcony filled with upward-looking spectators; and below this gallery is a group of human figures with horses. Next to this Apotheosis, I admire another Coronation of Venice on the ceiling of another Sala, where Venice is sitting enthroned above the globe with her lovely face in half shadow--a creature born with an imperial attitude. There are other Tintorettos, Veroneses, and Palmas in the great halls of this palace; but they left me quite indifferent, and have become vague in my memory. From the splendors of the palace we crossed the Bridge of Sighs to the prisons, and saw the horrible, dark, damp cells that would make the saddest life in the free light and air seem bright and desirable. The interior of St. Mark's is full of interest, but not of beauty; it is dark and heavy, and ill-suited to the Catholic worship, from the massive piers that obstruct the view everywhere, shut out the sight of ceremony and procession, as we witnessed at our leisure on the day of the great procession of Corpus Christi. But everywhere there are relics of gone-by art to be studied, from mosaics of the Greeks to mosaics of later artists than the Zuccati; old marble statues, embrowned like a meerschaum pipe; amazing sculptures in wood; Sansovino doors, ambitious to rival Ghiberti's; transparent alabaster columns; an ancient Madonna, hung with jewels, transported from St. Sophia, in Constantinople; and everywhere the venerable pavement, once beautiful with its starry patterns in rich marble, now deadened and sunk to unevenness, like the mud floor of a cabin. Then outside, on the archway of the principal door, there are sculptures of a variety that makes one renounce the study of them in despair at the shortness of one's time--blended fruits and foliage, and human groups and animal forms of all kinds. On our first morning we ascended the great tower, and looked around on the island city and the distant mountains and the distant Adriatic. And on the same day we went to see the Pisani palace--one of the grand old palaces that are going to decay. An Italian artist who resides in one part of this palace interested us by his frank manner, and the glimpse we had of his domesticity with his pretty wife and children. After this we saw the Church of San Sebastiano, where Paul Veronese is buried, with his own paintings around, mingling their color with the light that falls on his tombstone. There is one remarkably fine painting of his here: it represents, I think, some saints going to martyrdom, but, apart from that explanation, is a composition full of vigorous, spirited figures, in which the central ones are two young men leaving some splendid dwelling, on the steps of which stands the mother, pleading and remonstrating--a marvellous figure of an old woman with a bare neck. But supreme among the pictures at Venice is the Death of Peter the Martyr,[20] now happily removed from its original position as an altar-piece, and placed in a good light in the sacristy of San Giovanni and Paolo (or San Zani Polo, as the Venetians conveniently abbreviate it). In this picture, as in that of the Tribute-money at Dresden, Titian seems to have surpassed himself, and to have reached as high a point in expression as in color. In the same sacristy there was a Crucifixion, by Tintoretto, and a remarkable Madonna with Saints, by Giovanni Bellini; but we were unable to look long away from the Titian to these, although we paid it five visits during our stay. It is near this church that the famous equestrian statue stands, by Verocchio. Santa Maria della Salute, built as an _ex voto_ by the Republic on the cessation of the plague, is one of the most conspicuous churches in Venice, lifting its white cupolas close on the Grand Canal, where it widens out towards the Giudecca. Here there are various Tintorettos, but the only one which is not blackened so as to be unintelligible is the _Cena_, which is represented as a bustling supper party, with attendants and sideboard accessories, in thoroughly Dutch fashion! The great scene of Tintoretto's greatness is held to be the Scuola di San Rocco, of which he had the painting entirely to himself, with his pupils; and here one must admire the vigor and freshness of his conceptions, though I saw nothing that delighted me in expression, and much that was preposterous and ugly. The Crucifixion here is certainly a grand work, to which he seems to have given his best powers; and among the smaller designs, in the two larger halls, there were several of thorough originality--for example, the Annunciation, where Mary is seated in a poor house, with a carpenter's shop adjoining; the Nativity, in the upper story of a stable, of which a section is made so as to show the beasts below; and the Flight into Egypt, with a very charming (European) landscape. In this same building of San Rocco there are some exquisite iron gates, a present from Florence, and some singularly painstaking wood-carving, representing, in one compartment of wainscot, above the seats that surrounded the upper hall, a bookcase filled with old books, an inkstand and pen set in front of one shelf _à s'y méprendre_. But of all Tintoretto's paintings the best preserved, and perhaps the most complete in execution, is the Miracle of St. Mark, at the Accademia. We saw it the oftener because we were attracted to the Accademia again and again by Titian's Assumption, which we placed next to Peter the Martyr among the pictures at Venice. For a thoroughly rapt expression I never saw anything equal to the Virgin in this picture; and the expression is the more remarkable because it is not assisted by the usual devices to express spiritual ecstasy, such as delicacy of feature and temperament, or pale meagreness. Then what cherubs and angelic heads bathed in light! The lower part of the picture has no interest; the attitudes are theatrical; and the Almighty above is as unbeseeming as painted Almighties usually are; but the middle group falls short only of the Sistine Madonna. Among the Venetian painters Giovanni Bellini shines with a mild, serious light that gives one an affectionate respect towards him. In the Church of the Scalzi there is an exquisite Madonna by him--probably his _chef-d'oeuvre_--comparable to Raphael's for sweetness. And Palmo Vecchio, too, must be held in grateful reverence for his Santa Barbara, standing in calm, grand beauty above an altar in the Church of Santa Maria Formosa. It is an almost unique presentation of a hero-woman, standing in calm preparation for martyrdom, without the slightest air of pietism, yet with the expression of a mind filled with serious conviction. We made the journey to Chioggia, but with small pleasure, on account of my illness, which continued all day. Otherwise that long floating over the water, with the forts and mountains looking as if they were suspended in the air, would have been very enjoyable. Of all dreamy delights that of floating in a gondola along the canals and out on the Lagoon is surely the greatest. We were out one night on the Lagoon when the sun was setting, and the wide waters were flushed with the reddened light. I should have liked it to last for hours; it is the sort of scene in which I could most readily forget my own existence and feel melted into the general life. Another charm of evening-time was to walk up and down the Piazza of San Marco as the stars were brightening and look at the grand, dim buildings, and the flocks of pigeons flitting about them; or to walk on to the Bridge of La Paglia and look along the dark canal that runs under the Bridge of Sighs--its blackness lit up by a gaslight here and there, and the plash of the oar of blackest gondola slowly advancing. One of our latest visits was to the Palazzo Mamfrini, where there are still the remains of a magnificent collection of pictures--remains still on sale. The young proprietor was walking about transacting business in the rooms as we passed through them--a handsome, refined-looking man. The chief treasure left--the Entombment, by Titian--is perhaps a superior duplicate of the one in the Louvre. After this we went to a private house (once the house of Bianca Capello) to see a picture which the joint proprietors are anxious to prove to be a Leonardo da Vinci. It is a remarkable--an unforgetable--picture. The subject is the Supper at Emmaus; and the Christ, with open, almost tearful eyes, with loving sadness spread over the regular beauty of his features, is a masterpiece. This head is _not_ like the Leonardo sketch at Milan; and the rest of the picture impressed me strongly with the idea that it is of German, not Italian, origin. Again, the head is not like that of Leonardo's Christ in the National Gallery--it is far finer, to my thinking. Farewell, lovely Venice! and away to Verona, across the green plains of Lombardy, which can hardly look tempting to an eye still filled with the dreamy beauty it has left behind. Yet I liked our short stay at Verona extremely. The Amphitheatre had the disadvantage of coming after the Coliseum and the Pozzuoli Amphitheatre, and would bear comparison with neither; but the Church of San Zenone was equal in interest to almost any of the churches we had seen in Italy. It is a beautiful specimen of Lombard architecture, undisguised by any modern barbarisms in the interior; and on the walls--now that they have been freed from their coat of whitewash--there are early frescoes of high historical value, some of them--apparently of the Giotto school--showing a remarkable striving after human expression. More than this, there is in one case an under layer of yet older frescoes, partly laid bare, and showing the lower part of figures in mummy-like degradation of drawing; while above these are the upper portion of the later figures in striking juxtaposition with the dead art from which they had sprung with the vitality of a hidden germ. There is a very fine crypt to the church, where the fragments of some ancient sculptures are built in wrong way upwards. This was the only church we entered at Verona; for we contented ourselves with a general view of the town, driving about to get _coups d'oeil_ of the fine old walls, the river, the bridges, and surrounding hills, and mounting up to a high terrace for the sake of a bird's-eye view; this, with a passing sight of the famous tombs of the Scaligers, was all gathered in our four or five hours at Verona. Heavy rain came on our way to Milan, putting an end to the brilliant weather we had enjoyed ever since our arrival at Naples. The line of road lies through a luxuriant country, and I remember the picturesque appearance of Bergamo--half of it on the level, half of it lifted up on the green hill. In this second visit of mine to Milan my greatest pleasures were the Brera Gallery and the Ambrosian Library, neither of which I had seen before. The cathedral no longer satisfied my eye in its exterior; and though the interior has very grand effects, there are still disturbing elements. At the Ambrosian Library we saw MSS. surpassing in interest any even of those we had seen in the Laurentian Library at Florence--illuminated books, sacred and secular, a little Koran, rolled up something after the fashion of a measuring-tape, private letters of Tasso, Galileo, Lucrezia Borgia, etc., and a book full of Leonardo da Vinci's engineering designs. Then, up-stairs, in the picture-gallery, we saw a delicious Holy Family by Luini, of marvellous perfection in its execution, the Cartoon for Raphael's School of Athens, and a precious collection of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Michael Angelo. Among Leonardo's are amazingly grotesque faces, full of humor; among Michael Angelo's is the sketch of the unfortunate Biagio, who figures with ass's ears, in the lower corner of the Last Judgment. At the Brera, among a host of pictures to which I was indifferent, there were several things that delighted me. Some of Luini's frescoes--especially the burial or transportation of the body of St. Catherine by angels--some single figures of young cherubs, and Joseph and Mary going to their Marriage; the drawing in pastel by Leonardo of the Christ's head, supposed to be a study for the _Cena_; the Luini Madonna among trellises--an exquisite oil-painting; Gentile Bellini's picture of St. Mark preaching at Alexandria; and the Sposalizio by Raphael. At the Church of San Maurizio Maggiore we saw Luini's power tested by an abundant opportunity. The walls are almost covered with frescoes by him; but the only remarkable felicity he has is his female figures, which are eminently graceful. He has not power enough for a composition of any high character. We visited, too, the interesting old Church of San Ambrogio, with its court surrounded by cloisters, its old sculptured pulpit, chair of St. Ambrose, and illuminated choir-books; and we drove to look at the line of old Roman columns, which are almost the solitary remnant of antiquity left in this ancient city--ancient, at least, in its name and site. We left Milan for Como on a fine Sunday morning, and arrived at beautiful Bellagio by steamer in the evening. Here we spent a delicious day--going to the Villa Somma Riva in the morning, and in the evening to the Serbellone Gardens, from the heights of which we saw the mountain-peaks reddened with the last rays of the sun. The next day we reached lovely Chiavenna, at the foot of the Splügen Pass, and spent the evening in company with a glorious mountain torrent, mountain peaks, huge bowlders, with rippling miniature torrents and lovely young flowers among them, and grassy heights with rich Spanish chestnuts shadowing them. Then, the next morning, we set off by post and climbed the almost perpendicular heights of the Pass--chiefly in heavy rain that would hardly let us discern the patches of snow when we reached the table-land of the summit. About five o'clock we reached grassy Splügen and felt that we had left Italy behind us. Already our driver had been German for the last long post, and now we had come to a hotel where host and waiters were German. Swiss houses of dark wood, outside staircases and broad eaves, stood on the steep, green, and flowery slope that led up to the waterfall; and the hotel and other buildings of masonry were thoroughly German in their aspect. In the evening we enjoyed a walk between the mountains, whose lower sides down to the torrent bed were set with tall, dark pines. But the climax of grand--nay, terrible--scenery came the next day as we traversed the Via Mala. After this came open green valleys, dotted with white churches and homesteads. We were in Switzerland, and the mighty wall of the Valtelline Alps shut us out from Italy on the 21st of June. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 23d June, 1860, from Berne.] Your letter to Florence reached me duly, and I feel as if I had been rather unconscionable in asking for another before our return; but to us, who have been seeing new things every day, a month seems so long a space of time that we can't help fancying there must be a great accumulation of news for us at the end of it. We had hoped to be at home by the 25th; but we were so enchanted with Venice that we were seduced into staying there a whole week instead of three or four days, and now we must not rob the boys of their two days' holiday with us. We have had a wonderful journey. From Florence we went to Bologna, Ferrara, and Padua, on our way to Venice; and from Venice we have come by Verona, Milan, and Como, and across the Splügen to Zurich, where we spent yesterday, chiefly in the company of Moleschott the physiologist--an interview that has helped to sharpen Mr. Lewes's appetite for a return to his microscope and dissecting-table. We ought to be forever ashamed of ourselves if we don't work the better for this great holiday. We both feel immensely enriched with new ideas and new veins of interest. I don't think I can venture to tell you what my great project is by letter, for I am anxious to keep it secret. It will require a great deal of study and labor, and I am athirst to begin. As for "The Mill," I am in repose about it now I know it has found its way to the great public. Its comparative rank can only be decided after some years have passed, when the judgment upon it is no longer influenced by the recent enthusiasm about "Adam," and by the fact that it has the misfortune to be written by me instead of by Mr. Liggins. I shall like to see Bulwer's criticism, if you will be kind enough to send it me; but I particularly wish _not_ to see any of the newspaper articles. _SUMMARY._ MARCH TO JUNE, 1860.--FIRST JOURNEY TO ITALY. Crossing Mont Cenis by night in diligence--Turin--Sees Count Cavour--Genoa--Leghorn--Pisa--Civita Vecchia--Disappointment with first sight of Rome--Better spirits after visit to Capitol--View from Capitol--Points most struck with in Rome--Sculpture at Capitol--Sculpture at Vatican first seen by torchlight--St. Peter's--Other churches--Sistine Chapel--Paintings--Illumination of St. Peter's--Disappointment with Michael Angelo's Moses--Visits to artists' studios--Riedel and Overbeck--Pamfili Doria Gardens--Frascati--Tivoli--Pictures at Capitol--Lateran Museum--Shelley's and Keats's graves--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Pope's blessing--Easter ceremonies--From Rome to Naples--Description--Museo Borbonico--Visit to Pompeii--Solemnity of street of tombs--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--From Naples to Salerno and Pæstum--Temple of Vesta--Temple of Neptune fulfils expectations--Amalfi--Drive to Sorrento--Back to Naples--By steamer to Leghorn--To Florence--Views from Fiesole and Bellosguardo--The Duomo--Baptistery--Palaces--Churches--Dante's tomb--Frescoes--Pictures at the Uffizi--Pictures at the Pitti--Pictures at the Accademia--Expedition to Siena--Back to Florence--Michael Angelo's house--Letter to Blackwood--Dwarfing effect of the past--Letter to Major Blackwood on _Times'_ criticism of "The Mill on the Floss," and first mention of an Italian novel--Leave Florence for Bologna--Churches and pictures--To Padua by Ferrara--The Arena Chapel--Venice by moonlight--Doge's Palace--St. Mark's--Pictures--Scuola di San Rocco--Accademia--Gondola to Chioggia--From Venice to Verona--Milan--Brera Gallery and Ambrosian Library--Disappointment with cathedral--Bellagio--Over Splügen to Switzerland--Letter to Blackwood--Saw Moleschott at Zurich--Home by Berne and Geneva. FOOTNOTES: [11] "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." [12] Now in cell No. 33 in the Museo di San Marco. [13] Now in the Museo Nazionale. [14] Now in Sala Lorenzo Monaco, Uffizi. [15] The only portraits of Dante in the Uffizi are No. 1207 in the room opening out of the Tribune, by an unknown painter (Scuola Toscana); and No. 553, in the passage to the Pitti--also by an unknown painter. [16] No. 81. Pitti Gallery. [17] No. 49, by Tiberio Titti. Pitti Gallery. [18] No. 140. Pitti Gallery. [19] No. 56 Via de Faenza, Capella di Foligno. [20] Since burned. CHAPTER XI. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _July 1._--We found ourselves at home again, after three months of delightful travel. From Berne we brought our eldest boy Charles, to begin a new period in his life, after four years at Hofwyl. During our absence "The Mill on the Floss" came out (April 4), and achieved a greater success than I had ever hoped for it. The subscription was 3600 (the number originally printed was 4000); and shortly after its appearance, Mudie having demanded a second thousand, Blackwood commenced striking off 2000 more, making 6000. While we were at Florence I had the news that these 6000 were all sold, and that 500 more were being prepared. From all we can gather, the votes are rather on the side of "The Mill" as a better book than "Adam." [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 1st July, 1860.] We reached home by starlight at one o'clock this morning; and I write in haste, fear, and trembling lest you should already be gone to Surrey. You know what I should like--that you and your husband should come to us the first day possible, naming any hour and conditions. We would arrange meals and everything else as would best suit you. Of course I would willingly go to London to see _you_, if you could not come to me. But I fear lest neither plan should be practicable, and lest this letter should have to be sent after you. It is from your note only that I have learned your loss.[21] It has made me think of you with the sense that there is more than ever a common fund of experience between us. But I will write nothing more now. I am almost ill with fatigue, and have only courage to write at all because of my anxiety not to miss you. Affectionate regards from both of _us_ to both of _you_. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d July, 1860.] I opened your letters and parcel a little after one o'clock on Sunday morning, for that was the unseasonable hour of our return from our long, long journey. Yesterday was almost entirely employed in feeling very weary indeed, but this morning we are attacking the heap of small duties that always lie before one after a long absence. It is pleasant to see your book[22] fairly finished after all delays and anxieties; but I will say nothing to you about _that_ until I have read it. I shall read it the first thing before plunging into a course of study which will take me into a different region of thought. We have had an unspeakably delightful journey--one of those journeys that seem to divide one's life in two, by the new ideas they suggest and the new veins of interest they open. We went to Geneva, and spent two days with my old, kind friends, the d'Alberts--a real pleasure to me, especially as Mr. Lewes was delighted with "Maman," as I used to call Madame d'Albert. She is as bright and upright as ever; the ten years have only whitened her hair--a change which makes her face all the softer in coloring. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 3d July, 1860.] We did not reach home till past midnight on Saturday, when you, I suppose, had already become used to the comfort of having fairly got through your London season. Self-interest, rightly understood of course, prompts us to a few virtuous actions in the way of letter-writing to let the few people we care to hear from know at once of our whereabouts; and you are one of the first among the few. At Berne Mr. Lewes supped with Professors Valentin and Schiff, two highly distinguished physiologists, and I was much delighted to find how much attention and interest they had given to his views in the "Physiology of Common Life." A French translation of "Adam Bede," by a Genevese gentleman[23] well known to me, is now in the press; and the same translator has undertaken "The Mill on the Floss." He appears to have rendered "Adam" with the most scrupulous care. I think these are all the incidents we gathered on our homeward journey that are likely to interest you. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th July, 1860.] I have finished my first rather rapid reading of your book, and now I thank you for it: not merely for the special gift of the volume and inscription, but for that of which many others will share the benefit with me--the "thoughts" themselves. So far as my reading in English books of similar character extends, yours seems to me quite unparalleled in the largeness and insight with which it estimates Christianity as an "organized experience"--a grand advance in the moral development of the race. I especially delight in the passage, p. 105, beginning, "And how can it be otherwise," and ending with, "formal rejection of it."[24] On this and other supremely interesting matters of thought--perhaps I should rather say of experience--your book has shown me that we are much nearer to each other than I had supposed. At p. 174, again, there is a passage beginning, "These sentiments," and ending with "heroes,"[25] which, for me, expresses the one-half of true human piety. That thought is one of my favorite altars where I oftenest go to contemplate, and to seek for invigorating motive. Of the work as a whole I am quite incompetent to judge on a single cursory reading. I admire--I respect--the breadth and industry of mind it exhibits; and I should be obliged to give it a more thorough study than I can afford at present before I should feel warranted to urge, in the light of a criticism, my failure to perceive the logical consistency of your language in some parts with the position you have adopted in others. In many instances your meaning is obscure to me, or at least lies wrapped up in more folds of abstract phraseology than I have the courage or the industry to open for myself. I think you told me that some one had found your treatment of great questions "cold-blooded." I am all the more delighted to find, for my own part, an unusual fulness of sympathy and heart experience breathing throughout your book. The ground for that epithet perhaps lay in a certain professorial tone which could hardly be avoided, in a work filled with criticism of other people's theories, except by the adoption of a simply personal style of presentation, in which you would have seemed to be looking up at the oracles, and trying to reconcile their doctrines for your own behoof, instead of appearing to be seated in a chair above them. But you considered your own plan more thoroughly than any one else can have considered it for you; and I have no doubt you had good reasons for preferring the more impersonal style. Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards, and when Du Bois Reymond's book on Johannes Müller, with other preoccupations of a like thrilling kind, no longer stand in the way, he will open _his_ copy of the "Thoughts in Aid of Faith." He has felt a new interest aroused towards it since he has learned something about it from me and the reviewer in the _Westminster_. Madame Bodichon, who was here the other day, told me that Miss Nightingale and Miss Julia Smith had mentioned their pleasure in your book; but you will hear further news of all that from themselves. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 9th July, 1860.] I return Sir Edward Lytton's critical letter, which I have read with much interest. On two points I recognize the justice of his criticism. First, that Maggie is made to appear too passive in the scene of quarrel in the Red Deeps. If my book were still in MS. I should--now that the defect is suggested to me--alter, or rather expand, that scene. Secondly, that the tragedy is not adequately prepared. This is a defect which I felt even while writing the third volume, and have felt ever since the MS. left me. The _Epische Breite_ into which I was beguiled by love of my subject in the two first volumes, caused a want of proportionate fulness in the treatment of the third, which I shall always regret. The other chief point of criticism--Maggie's position towards Stephen--is too vital a part of my whole conception and purpose for me to be converted to the condemnation of it. If I am wrong there--if I did not really know what my heroine would feel and do under the circumstances in which I deliberately placed her, I ought not to have written this book at all, but quite a different book, if any. If the ethics of art do not admit the truthful presentation of a character essentially noble, but liable to great error--error that is anguish to its own nobleness--then, it seems to me, the ethics of art are too narrow, and must be widened to correspond with a widening psychology. But it is good for me to know how my tendencies as a writer clash with the conclusions of a highly accomplished mind, that I may be warned into examining well whether my discordance with those conclusions may not arise rather from an idiosyncrasy of mine than from a conviction which is argumentatively justifiable. I hope you will thank Sir Edward on my behalf for the trouble he has taken to put his criticism into a form specific enough to be useful. I feel his taking such trouble to be at once a tribute and a kindness. If printed criticisms were usually written with only half the same warrant of knowledge, and with an equal sincerity of intention, I should read them without fear of fruitless annoyance. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 10th July, 1860.] The little envelope with its address of "Marian" was very welcome, and as Mr. Lewes is sending what a Malaproprian friend once called a "missile" to Sara, I feel inclined to slip in a word of gratitude--less for the present than for the past goodness, which came back to me with keener remembrance than ever when we were at Genoa and at Como--the places I first saw with you. How wretched I was then--how peevish, how utterly morbid! And how kind and forbearing you were under the oppression of my company. I should like you now and then to feel happy in the thought that you were always perfectly good to me. That I was not good to you is my own disagreeable affair; the bitter taste of that fact is mine, not yours. Don't you remember Bellagio? It is hardly altered much except in the hotels, which the eleven years have wondrously multiplied and bedizened for the accommodation of the English. But if I begin to recall the things we saw in Italy, I shall write as long a letter as Mr. Lewes's, which, by-the-bye, now I have read it, seems to be something of a "missile" in another sense than the Malaproprian. But Sara is one of the few people to whom candor is acceptable as the highest tribute. And private criticism has more chance of being faithful than public. We must have mercy on critics who are obliged to make a figure in printed pages. They must by all means say striking things. Either we should not read printed criticisms at all (_I don't_), or we should read them with the constant remembrance that they are a fugitive kind of work which, in the present stage of human nature, can rarely engage a very high grade of conscience or ability. The fate of a book, which is not entirely ephemeral, is never decided by journalists or reviewers of any but an exceptional kind. Tell Sara her damnation--if it ever comes to pass--will be quite independent of Nationals and Westminsters. Let half a dozen competent people read her book, and an opinion of it will spread quite apart from either praise or blame in reviews and newspapers. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Tuesday evening, July, 1860.] Our big boy is a great delight to us, and makes our home doubly cheery. It is very sweet as one gets old to have some young life about one. He is quite a passionate musician, and we play Beethoven duets with increasing appetite every evening. The opportunity of hearing some inspiring music is one of the chief benefits we hope for to counterbalance our loss of the wide common and the fields. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 14th July, 1860.] We shall certainly read the parts you suggest in the "Education of the Feelings,"[26] and I dare say I shall read a good deal more of it, liking to turn over the leaves of a book which I read first in our old drawing-room at Foleshill, and then lent to my sister, who, with a little air of maternal experience, pronounced it "very sensible." There is so much that I want to do every day--I had need cut myself into four women. We have a great extra interest and occupation just now in our big boy Charlie, who is looking forward to a Government examination, and wants much help and sympathy in music and graver things. I think we are quite peculiarly blest in the fact that this eldest lad seems the most entirely lovable human animal of seventeen and a half that I ever met with or heard of: he has a sweetness of disposition which is saved from weakness by a remarkable sense of duty. We are going to let our present house, if possible--that is, get rid of it altogether on account of its inconvenient situation--other projects are still in a floating, unfixed condition. The water did not look quite so green at Como--perhaps, as your remark suggests, because there was a less vivid green to be reflected from my personality as I looked down on it. I am eleven years nearer to the sere and yellow leaf, and my feelings are even more autumnal than my years. I have read no reviews of the "Mill on the Floss" except that in the _Times_ which Blackwood sent me to Florence. I abstain not from superciliousness, but on a calm consideration of the probable proportion of benefit on the one hand, and waste of thought on the other. It was certain that in the notices of my first book, after the removal of my _incognito_, there would be much _ex post facto_ wisdom, which could hardly profit me since _I_ certainly knew who I was beforehand, and knew also that no one else knew who had not been told. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 18th July, 1860.] We are quite uncertain about our plans at present. Our second boy, Thornie, is going to leave Hofwyl, and to be placed in some more expensive position, in order to the carrying on of his education in a more complete way, so that we are thinking of avoiding for the present any final establishment of ourselves, which would necessarily be attended with additional outlay. Besides, these material cares draw rather too severely on my strength and spirits. But until Charlie's career has taken shape we frame no definite projects. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Aug. 1860.] If Cara values the article on Strikes in the _Westminster Review_, she will be interested to know--if she has not heard it already--that the writer is _blind_. I dined with him the other week, and could hardly keep the tears back as I sat at table with him. Yet he is cheerful and animated, accepting with graceful quietness all the minute attentions to his wants that his blindness calls forth. His name is Fawcett, and he is a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I am sitting for my portrait--for the last time, I hope--to Lawrence, the artist who drew that chalk-head of Thackeray, which is familiar to you. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, Friday, Aug. 1860.] I know you will rejoice with us that Charlie has won his place at the Post-office, having been at the head of the list in the examination. The dear lad is fairly launched in life now. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, Saturday evening, Aug. 1860.] I am thoroughly vexed that we didn't go to Lawrence's to-day. We made an effort, but it was raining too hard at the only time that would serve us to reach the train. That comes of our inconvenient situation, so far off the railway; and alas! no one comes to take our house off our hands. We may be forced to stay here after all. One of the things I shall count upon, if we are able to get nearer London, is to see more of your schools and other good works. That would help me to do without the fields for many months of the year. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th Aug. 1860.] I am very sorry that anything I have written should have pained you. _That_, certainly, is the result I should seek most to avoid in the very slight communication which we are able to keep up--necessarily under extremely imperfect acquaintance with each other's present self. My first letter to you about your book, after having read it through, was as simple and sincere a statement of the main impressions it had produced on me as I knew how to write in few words. My second letter, in which I unhappily used a formula in order to express to you, in briefest phrase, my difficulty in discerning the justice of your _analogical_ argument, _as I understood it_, was written from no other impulse than the desire to show you that I did not neglect your abstract just sent to me. The said formula was entirely deprived of its application by the statement in your next letter that you used the word "essence" in another sense than the one hitherto received in philosophical writing, on the question as to the nature of our knowledge; and the explanation given of your meaning in your last letter shows me--unless I am plunging into further mistake--that you mean nothing but what I fully believe. My offensive formula was written under the supposition that your conclusion meant something which it apparently did _not_ mean. It is probable enough that I was stupid; but I should be distressed to think that the discipline of life had been of so little use to me as to leave me with a tendency to leap at once to the attitude of a critic, instead of trying first to be a learner from every book written with sincere labor. Will you tell Mr. Bray that we are quitting our present house in order to be _nearer_ town for Charlie's sake, who has an appointment in the Post-office, and our time will be arduously occupied during the next few weeks in arrangements to that end, so that our acceptance of the pleasant proposition to visit Sydenham for a while is impossible. We have advertised for a house near Regent's Park, having just found a gentleman and lady ready to take our present one off our hands. They want to come in on quarter-day, so that we have no time to spare. I have been reading this morning for my spiritual good Emerson's "Man the Reformer," which comes to me with fresh beauty and meaning. My heart goes out with venerating gratitude to that mild face, which I dare say is smiling on some one as beneficently as it one day did on me years and years ago. Do not write again about opinions on large questions, dear Sara. The liability to mutual misconception which attends such correspondence--especially in my case, who can only write with brevity and haste--makes me dread it greatly; and I think there is no benefit derivable to you to compensate for the presence of that dread in me. You do not know me well enough as I _am_ (according to the doctrine of development which you have yourself expounded) to have the materials for interpreting my imperfect expressions. I think you would spare yourself some pain if you would attribute to your friends a larger comprehension of ideas, and a larger acquaintance with them, than you appear to do. I should imagine that many of them, or at least _some_ of them, share with you, much more fully than you seem to suppose, in the interest and hope you derive from the doctrine of development, with its geometrical progression towards fuller and fuller being. Surely it is a part of human piety we should all cultivate, not to form conclusions, on slight and dubious evidence, as to other people's "tone of mind," or to regard particular mistakes as a proof of general moral incapacity to understand us. I suppose such a tendency (to large conclusions about others) is part of the original sin we are all born with, for I have continually to check it in myself. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Aug. 1860.] I think I must tell you the secret, though I am distrusting my power to make it grow into a published fact. When we were in Florence I was rather fired with the idea of writing an historical romance--scene, Florence; period, the close of the fifteenth century, which was marked by Savonarola's career and martyrdom. Mr. Lewes has encouraged me to persevere in the project, saying that I should probably do something in historical romance rather different in character from what has been done before. But I want first to write another English story, and the plan I should like to carry out is this: to publish my next English novel when my Italian one is advanced enough for us to begin its publication a few months afterwards in "Maga." It would appear without a name in the Magazine, and be subsequently reprinted with the name of George Eliot. I need not tell you the wherefore of this plan. You know well enough the received phrases with which a writer is greeted when he does something else than what was expected of him. But just now I am quite without confidence in my future doings, and almost repent of having formed conceptions which will go on lashing me now until I have at least tried to fulfil them. I am going to-day to give my last sitting to Lawrence, and we were counting on the Major's coming to look at the portrait and judge of it. I hope it will be satisfactory, for I am quite set against going through the same process a second time. We are a little distracted just now with the prospect of removal from our present house, which some obliging people have at last come to take off our hands. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th Sept. 1860.] My fingers have been itching to write to you for the last week or more, but I have waited and waited, hoping to be able to tell you that we had decided on our future house. This evening, however, I have been reading your description of Algiers, and the desire to thank you for it moves me too strongly to be resisted. It is admirably written, and makes me _see_ the country. I am so glad to think of the deep draughts of life you get from being able to spend half your life in that fresh, grand scenery. It must make London and English green fields all the more enjoyable in their turn. As for us, we are preparing to renounce the delights of roving, and to settle down quietly, as old folks should do, for the benefit of the young ones. We have let our present house. Is it not cheering to have the sunshine on the corn, and the prospect that the poor people will not have to endure the suffering that comes on them from a bad harvest? The fields that were so sadly beaten down a little while ago on the way to town are now standing in fine yellow shocks. I wish you could know how much we felt your kindness to Charley. He is such a dear good fellow that nothing is thrown away upon him. Write me a scrap of news about yourself, and tell me how you and the doctor are enjoying the country. I shall get a breath of it in that way. I think I love the fields and shudder at the streets more and more every month. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Sept. 27._--To-day is the third day we have spent in our new home here at 10 Harewood Square. It is a furnished house, in which we do not expect to stay longer than six months at the utmost. Since our return from Italy I have written a slight tale, "Mr. David Faux, Confectioner" ("Brother Jacob"), which G. thinks worth printing. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 27th Sept. 1860.] The precious check arrived safely to-day. I am much obliged to you for it, and also for the offer to hasten further payments. I have no present need of that accommodation, as we have given up the idea of buying the house which attracted us, dreading a step that might fetter us to town, or to a more expensive mode of living than might ultimately be desirable. I hope Mr. Lewes will bring us back a good report of Major Blackwood's progress towards re-established health. In default of a visit from him, it was very agreeable to have him represented by his son,[27] who has the happy talent of making a morning call one of the easiest, pleasantest things in the world. I wonder if you know who is the writer of the article in the _North British_, in which I am reviewed along with Hawthorne. Mr. Lewes brought it for me to read this morning, and it is so unmixed in its praise that if I had any friends I should be uneasy lest a friend should have written it. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Oct. 1860.] Since there is no possibility of my turning in to see you on my walk, as in the old days, I cannot feel easy without writing to tell you my regret that I missed you when you came. In changing a clearer sky for a foggy one we have not changed our habits, and we walk after lunch, as usual; but I should like very much to stay indoors any day with the expectation of seeing you, if I could know beforehand of your coming. It is rather sad not to see your face at all from week to week, and I hope you know that I feel it so. But I am always afraid of falling into a disagreeable urgency of invitation, since we have nothing to offer beyond the familiar, well-worn entertainment of our own society. I hope you and Mr. Congreve are quite well now and free from cares. Emily, I suppose, is gone with the sunshine of her face to Coventry. There is sadly little sunshine except that of young faces just now. Still we are flourishing, in spite of damp and dismalness. We were glad to hear that the well-written article in the _Westminster_ on the "Essays and Reviews" was by your friend Mr. Harrison.[28] Though I don't quite agree with his view of the case, I admired the tone and style of the writing greatly. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 19th Oct. 1860.] There is no objection to Wednesday but this--that it is our day for hearing a course of lectures, and the lecture begins at eight. Now, since you can't come often, we want to keep you as long as we can, and we have a faint hope that Mr. Congreve might be able to come from his work and dine with us and take you home. But if that were impossible, could you not stay all night? There is a bed ready for you. Think of all that, and if you can manage to give us the longer visit, choose another day when our evening will be unbroken. I will understand by your silence that you can only come for a shorter time, and that you abide by your plan of coming on Wednesday. I am really quite hungry for the sight of you. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 2d Nov. 1860.] I agree with you in preferring to put simply "New Edition;" and I see, too, that the practice of advertising numbers is made vulgar and worthless by the doubtful veracity of some publishers, and the low character of the books to which they affix this supposed guarantee of popularity. _Magna est veritas_, etc. I can't tell you how much comfort I feel in having publishers who believe that. You have read the hostile article in the _Quarterly_, I dare say. I have not seen it; but Mr. Lewes's report of it made me more cheerful than any review I have heard of since "The Mill" came out. You remember Lord John Russell was once laughed at immensely for saying that he felt confident he was right, because all parties found fault with him. I really find myself taking nearly the same view of my position, with the Freethinkers angry with me on one side and the writer in the _Quarterly_ on the other--_not_ because my representations are untruthful, but because they are impartial--because I don't _load_ my dice so as to make their side win. The parenthetical hint that the classical quotations in my books might be "more correctly printed," is an amusing sample of the grievance that belongs to review-writing in general, since there happens to be only _one_ classical quotation in them all--the Greek one from the Philoctetes in "Amos Barton." By-the-bye, will you see that the readers have not allowed some error to creep into that solitary bit of pedantry? [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th Nov. 1860.] I understand your paradox of "expecting disappointments," for that is the only form of hope with which I am familiar. I should like, for your sake, that you should rather see us in our _own_ house than in this; for I fear your carrying away a general sense of _yellow_ in connection with us--and I am sure that is enough to set you against the thought of us. There are some staring yellow curtains which you will hardly help blending with your impression of our moral sentiments. In our own drawing-room I mean to have a paradise of greenness. I have lately re-read your "Thoughts," from the beginning of the "Psychical Essence of Christianity" to the end of the "History of Philosophy," and I feel my original impression confirmed--that the "Psychical Essence" and "General Review of the Christian System" are the most valuable portions. I think you once expressed your regret that I did not understand the analogy you traced between Feuerbach's theory and Spencer's. I don't know what gave you that impression, for _I_ never said so. I see your meaning distinctly in that parallel. If you referred to something in Mr. Lewes's letter, let me say, once for all, that you must not impute _my_ opinions to _him_ nor _vice versâ_. The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions. In this respect I know _no_ man so great as he--that difference of opinion rouses no egoistic irritation in him, and that he is ready to admit that another argument is the stronger the moment his intellect recognizes it. I am glad to see Mr. Bray contributing his quota to the exposure of that odious trickery--spirit-rapping. It was not headache that I was suffering from when Mr. Bray called, but extreme languor and unbroken fatigue from morning to night--a state which is always accompanied in me, psychically, by utter self-distrust and despair of ever being equal to the demands of life. We should be very pleased to hear some news of Mr. and Mrs. Call. I feel their removal from town quite a loss to us. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Nov. 28._--Since I last wrote in this Journal I have suffered much from physical weakness, accompanied with mental depression. The loss of the country has seemed very bitter to me, and my want of health and strength has prevented me from working much--still worse, has made me despair of ever working well again. I am getting better now by the help of tonics, and shall be better still if I could gather more bravery, resignation, and simplicity of striving. In the meantime my cup is full of blessings: my home is bright and warm with love and tenderness, and in more material, vulgar matters we are very fortunate. Last Tuesday--the 20th--we had a pleasant evening. Anthony Trollope dined with us, and made me like him very much by his straightforward, wholesome _Wesen_. Afterwards Mr. Helps came in, and the talk was extremely agreeable. He told me the queen had been speaking to him in great admiration of my books--especially "The Mill on the Floss." It is interesting to know that royalty can be touched by that sort of writing, and I was grateful to Mr. Helps for his wish to tell me of the sympathy given to me in that quarter. To-day I have had a letter from M. d'Albert, saying that at last the French edition of "Adam Bede" is published. He pleases me very much by saying that he finds not a sentence that he can retrench in the first volume of "The Mill." I am engaged now in writing a story--the idea of which came to me after our arrival in this house, and which has thrust itself between me and the other book I was meditating. It is "Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe." I am still only at about the 62d page, for I have written slowly and interruptedly. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 7th Dec. 1860.] The sight of sunshine usually brings you to my mind, because you are my latest association with the country; but I think of you much oftener than I see the sunshine, for the weather in London has been more uninterruptedly dismal than ever for the last fortnight. Nevertheless _I_ am brighter; and since I believe your goodness will make that agreeable news to you, I write on purpose to tell it. Quinine and steel have at last made me brave and cheerful, and I really don't mind a journey up-stairs. If you had not repressed our hope of seeing you again until your sister's return, I should have asked you to join us for the Exeter Hall performance of the "Messiah" this evening, which I am looking forward to with delight. The Monday Popular Concerts at St. James's Hall are our easiest and cheapest pleasures. I go in my bonnet; we sit in the shilling places in the body of the hall, and hear to perfection for a shilling! That is agreeable when one hears Beethoven's quartets and sonatas. Pray bear in mind that these things are to be had when you are more at liberty. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Dec. 17._--We entered to-day our new home--16 Blandford Square--which we have taken for three years, hoping by the end of that time to have so far done our duty by the boys as to be free to live where we list. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Dec. 1860.] Your vision of me as "settled" was painfully in contrast with the fact. The last virtue human beings will attain, I am inclined to think, is scrupulosity in promising and faithfulness in fulfilment. We are still far off our last stadium of development, and so it has come to pass that, though we were in the house on Monday last, our curtains are not up and our oilcloth is not down. Such is life, seen from the furnishing point of view! I can't tell you how hateful this sort of time-frittering work is to me, who every year care less for houses and detest shops more. To crown my sorrows, I have lost my pen--my old, favorite pen, with which I have written for eight years--at least, it is not forth-coming. We have been reading the proof of Mr. Spencer's second part, and I am supremely gratified by it, because he brings his argument to a point which I did not anticipate from him. It is, as he says, a result of his riper thought. After all the bustle of Monday I went to hear Sims Reeves sing "Adelaide"--that _ne plus ultra_ of passionate song--and I wish you had been there for one quarter of an hour, that you might have heard it too. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 26th Dec. 1860.] The bright point in your letter is that you are in a happy state of mind yourself. For the rest, we must wait, and not be impatient with those who have their inward trials, though everything outward seems to smile on them. It seems to those who are differently placed that the time of freedom from strong ties and urgent claims must be very precious for the ends of self-culture and good, helpful work towards the world at large. But it hardly ever is so. As for the forms and ceremonies, I feel no regret that any should turn to them for comfort if they can find comfort in them; sympathetically I enjoy them myself. But I have faith in the working-out of higher possibilities than the Catholic or any other Church has presented; and those who have strength to wait and endure are bound to accept no formula which their whole souls--their intellect as well as their emotions--do not embrace with entire reverence. The "highest calling and election" is to _do without opium_, and live through all our pain with conscious, clear-eyed endurance. We have no sorrow just now, except my constant inward "worrit" of unbelief in any future of good work on my part. Everything I do seems poor and trivial in the doing; and when it is quite gone from me, and seems no longer my own, then I rejoice in it and think it fine. That is the history of my life. I have been wanting to go to your school again, to refresh myself with the young voices there, but I have not been able to do it. My walks have all been taken up with shopping errands of late; but I hope to get more leisure soon. We both beg to offer our affectionate remembrances to the doctor. Get Herbert Spencer's new work--the two first quarterly parts. It is the best thing he has done. [Sidenote: Journal, 1860.] _Dec. 31._--This year has been marked by many blessings, and, above all, by the comfort we have found in having Charles with us. Since we set out on our journey to Italy on 25th March, the time has not been fruitful in work: distractions about our change of residence have run away with many days; and since I have been in London my state of health has been depressing to all effort. May the next year be more fruitful! [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 12th Jan. 1861.] I am writing a story which came _across_ my other plans by a sudden inspiration. I don't know at present whether it will resolve itself into a book short enough for me to complete before Easter, or whether it will expand beyond that possibility. It seems to me that nobody will take any interest in it but myself, for it is extremely unlike the popular stories going; but Mr. Lewes declares that I am wrong, and says it is as good as anything I have done. It is a story of old-fashioned village life, which has unfolded itself from the merest millet-seed of thought. I think I get slower and more timid in my writing, but perhaps worry about houses and servants and boys, with want of bodily strength, may have had something to do with that. I hope to be quiet now. [Sidenote: Journal, 1861.] _Feb. 1._--The first month of the New Year has been passed in much bodily discomfort, making both work and leisure heavy. I have reached page 209 of my story, which is to be in one volume, and I want to get it ready for Easter, but I dare promise myself nothing with this feeble body. The other day I had charming letters from M. and Mme. d'Albert, saying that the French "Adam" goes on very well, and showing an appreciation of "The Mill" which pleases me. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 6th Feb. 1861.] I was feeling so ill on Friday and Saturday that I had not spirit to write and thank you for the basket of eggs--an invaluable present. I was particularly grateful this morning at breakfast, when a fine large one fell to my share. On Saturday afternoon we were both so utterly incapable that Mr. Lewes insisted on our setting off forthwith into the country. But we only got as far as Dorking, and came back yesterday. I felt a new creature as soon as I was in the country; and we had two brilliant days for rambling and driving about that lovely Surrey. I suppose we must keep soul and body together by occasional flights of this sort; and don't you think an occasional flight to town will be good for you? [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 8th Feb. 1861.] I have destroyed almost all my friends' letters to me, because they were only intended for my eyes, and could only fall into the hands of persons who knew little of the writers, if I allowed them to remain till after my death. In proportion as I love every form of piety--which is venerating love--I hate hard curiosity; and, unhappily, my experience has impressed me with the sense that hard curiosity is the more common temper of mind. But enough of that. The reminders I am getting from time to time of Coventry distress have made me think very often yearningly and painfully of the friends who are more immediately affected by it, and I often wonder if more definite information would increase or lessen my anxiety for them. Send me what word you can from time to time, that there may be some reality in my image of things round your hearth. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Feb. 1861.] I send you by post to-day about two hundred and thirty pages of MS. I send it because, in my experience, printing and its preliminaries have always been rather a slow business; and as the story--if published at Easter at all--should be ready by Easter week, there is no time to lose. We are reading "Carlyle's Memoirs" with much interest; but, so far as we have gone, he certainly does seem to me something of a "Sadducee"--a very handsome one, judging from the portrait. What a memory and what an experience for a novelist! But, somehow, experience and finished faculty rarely go together. Dearly beloved Scott had the greatest combination of experience and faculty, yet even he never made the most of his treasures, at least in his _mode_ of presentation. Send us better news of Major Blackwood, if you can. We feel so old and rickety ourselves that we have a peculiar interest in invalids. Mr. Lewes is going to lecture for the Post-office this evening, by Mr. Trollope's request. I am rather uneasy about it, and wish he were well through the unusual excitement. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Feb. 1861.] I have been much relieved by Mr. Lewes having got through his lecture at the Post-office[29] with perfect ease and success, for I had feared the unusual excitement for him. _I_ am better. I have not been working much lately; indeed, this year has been a comparatively idle one. I think my _malaise_ is chiefly owing to the depressing influence of town air and town scenes. The Zoological Gardens are my one outdoor pleasure now, and we can take it several times a week, for Mr. Lewes has become a fellow. My love is often visiting you. Entertain it well. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Feb. 1861.] I am glad to hear that Mr. Maurice impressed you agreeably. If I had strength to be adventurous on Sunday I should go to hear him preach as well as others. But I am unequal to the least exertion or irregularity. My only pleasure away from our own hearth is going to the Zoological Gardens. Mr. Lewes is a fellow, so we turn in there several times a week; and I find the birds and beasts there most congenial to my spirit. There is a Shoebill, a great bird of grotesque ugliness, whose topknot looks brushed up to a point with an exemplary deference to the demands of society, but who, I am sure, has no idea that he looks the handsomer for it. I cherish an unrequited attachment to him. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 23d Feb. 1861.] If you are in London this morning, in this fine, dun-colored fog, you know how to pity me. But I feel myself wicked for implying that I have any grievances. Only last week we had a circular from the clergyman at Attleboro, where there is a considerable population entirely dependent on the ribbon-trade, telling us how the poor weavers are suffering from the effects of the Coventry strike. And these less-known, undramatic tales of want win no wide help, such as has been given in the case of the Hartley colliery accident. Your letter was a contribution towards a more cheerful view of things, for whatever may be the minor evils you hint at, I know that Mr. Congreve's better health, and the satisfaction you have in his doing effective work, will outweigh them. We have had a Dr. Wyatt here lately, an Oxford physician, who was much interested in hearing of Mr. Congreve again, not only on the ground of Oxford remembrances, but from having read his writings. I was much pleased with the affectionate respect that was expressed in all the notices of Mr. Clough[30] that I happened to see in the newspapers. They were an indication that there must be a great deal of private sympathy to soothe poor Mrs. Clough, if any soothing is possible in such cases. That little poem of his which was quoted in the _Spectator_ about parted friendships touched me deeply. You may be sure we are ailing, but I am ashamed of dwelling on a subject that offers so little variety. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Feb. 1861.] I don't wonder at your finding my story, as far as you have read it, rather sombre; indeed, I should not have believed that any one would have been interested in it but myself (since Wordsworth is dead) if Mr. Lewes had not been strongly arrested by it. But I hope you will not find it at all a sad story, as a whole, since it sets--or is intended to set--in a strong light the remedial influences of pure, natural human relations. The Nemesis is a very mild one. I have felt all through as if the story would have lent itself best to metrical rather than to prose fiction, especially in all that relates to the psychology of Silas; except that, under that treatment, there could not be an equal play of humor. It came to me first of all quite suddenly, as a sort of legendary tale, suggested by my recollection of having once, in early childhood, seen a linen-weaver with a bag on his back; but, as my mind dwelt on the subject, I became inclined to a more realistic treatment. My chief reason for wishing to publish the story now is that I like my writings to appear in the order in which they are written, because they belong to successive mental phases, and when they are a year behind me I can no longer feel that thorough identification with them which gives zest to the sense of authorship. I generally like them better at that distance, but then I feel as if they might just as well have been written by somebody else. It would have been a great pleasure to me if Major Blackwood could have read my story. I am very glad to have the first part tested by the reading of your nephew and Mr. Simpson, and to find that it can interest them at all. [Sidenote: Journal, 1861.] _March 10._--Finished "Silas Marner," and sent off the last thirty pages to Edinburgh. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 19th Mch. 1861, from Hastings.] Your letter came to me just as we were preparing to start in search of fresh air and the fresh thoughts that come with it. I hope you never doubt that I feel a deep interest in knowing all facts that touch you nearly. I should like to think that it was some small comfort to Cara and you to know that, wherever I am, there is one among that number of your friends--necessarily decreasing with increasing years--who enter into your present experience with the light of memories; for kind feeling can never replace fully the sympathy that comes from memory. My disposition is so faultily anxious and foreboding that I am not likely to forget anything of a saddening sort. Tell Sara we saw Mr. William Smith, author of "Thorndale," a short time ago, and he spoke of her and her book with interest; he thought her book "suggestive." He called on us during a visit to London, made for the sake of getting married. The lady is, or rather was, a Miss Cumming, daughter of a blind physician of Edinburgh. He said they had talked to each other for some time of the "impossibility" of marrying, because they were both too poor. "But," he said, "it is dangerous, Lewes, to talk even of the impossibility." The difficulties gradually dwindled, and the advantages magnified themselves. She is a nice person, we hear; and I was particularly pleased with _him_--he is modest to diffidence, yet bright and keenly awake. I am just come in from our first good blow on the beach, and have that delicious sort of numbness in arms and legs that comes from walking hard in a fresh wind. "Silas Marner" is in one volume. It was quite a sudden inspiration that came across me in the midst of altogether different meditations. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Mch. 1861.] The latest number I had heard of was three thousand three hundred, so that your letter brought me agreeable information. I am particularly gratified, because this spirited subscription must rest on my character as a writer generally, and not simply on the popularity of "Adam Bede." There is an article on "The Mill" in _Macmillan's Magazine_ which is worth reading. I cannot, of course, agree with the writer in all his regrets; if I could have done so I should not have written the book I did write, but quite another. Still, it is a comfort to me to read any criticism which recognizes the high responsibilities of literature that undertakes to represent life. The ordinary tone about art is that the artist may do what he will, provided he pleases the public. I am very glad to be told--whenever you can tell me--that the major is not suffering heavily. I know so well the preciousness of those smiles that tell one the mind is not held out of all reach of soothing. We are wavering whether we shall go to Florence this spring or wait till the year and other things are more advanced. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 1st April, 1861.] It gave me pleasure to have your letter, not only because of the kind expressions of sympathy it contains, but also because it gives me an opportunity of telling you, after the lapse of years, that I remember gratefully how you wrote to me with generous consideration and belief at a time when most persons who knew anything of me were disposed (naturally enough) to judge me rather severely. Only a woman of rare qualities would have written to me as you did on the strength of the brief intercourse that had passed between us. It was never a trial to me to have been cut off from what is called the world, and I think I love none of my fellow-creatures the less for it; still, I must always retain a peculiar regard for those who showed me any kindness in word or deed at that time, when there was the least evidence in my favor. The list of those who did so is a short one, so that I can often and easily recall it. For the last six years I have ceased to be "Miss Evans" for any one who has personal relations with me--having held myself under all the responsibilities of a married woman. I wish this to be distinctly understood; and when I tell you that we have a great boy of eighteen at home, who calls me "mother," as well as two other boys, almost as tall, who write to me under the same name, you will understand that the point is not one of mere egoism or personal dignity, when I request that any one who has a regard for me will cease to speak of me by my maiden name. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 4th April, 1861.] I am much obliged to you for your punctuality in sending me my precious check. I prize the money fruit of my labor very highly as the means of saving us dependence, or the degradation of writing when we are no longer able to write well, or to write what we have not written before. Mr. Langford brought us word that he thought the total subscription (including Scotland and Ireland) would mount to five thousand five hundred. That is really very great. And letters drop in from time to time, giving me words of strong encouragement, especially about "The Mill;" so that I have reason to be cheerful, and to believe that where one has a large public, one's words must hit their mark. If it were not for that, special cases of misinterpretation might paralyze me. For example, pray notice how one critic attributes to me a disdain for Tom; as if it were not _my_ respect for Tom which infused itself into my reader; as if he could have respected Tom if I had not painted him with respect; the exhibition of the right on both sides being the very soul of my intention in the story. However, I ought to be satisfied if I have roused the feeling that does justice to both sides. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 6th April, 1861.] I feel more at ease in omitting formalities with you than I should with most persons, because I know you are yourself accustomed to have other reasons for your conduct than mere fashion, and I believe you will understand me without many words when I tell you what Mr. Lewes felt unable to explain on the instant when you kindly expressed the wish to see us at your house; namely, that I have found it a necessity of my London life to make the rule of _never_ paying visits. Without a carriage, and with my easily perturbed health, London distances would make any other rule quite irreconcilable for me with any efficient use of my days; and I am obliged to give up the _few_ visits which would be really attractive and fruitful in order to avoid the _many_ visits which would be the reverse. It is only by saying, "I never pay visits," that I can escape being ungracious or unkind--only by renouncing all social intercourse but such as comes to our own fireside, that I can escape sacrificing the chief objects of my life. I think it very good of those with whom I have much fellow-feeling, if they will let me have the pleasure of seeing them without their expecting the usual reciprocity of visits; and I hope I need hardly say that you are among the visitors who would be giving me pleasure in this way. I think your imagination will supply all I have left unsaid, all the details that run away with our hours when our life extends at all beyond our own homes; and I am not afraid of your misinterpreting my stay-at-home rule into churlishness. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th April, 1861.] We went to hear Beethoven's "Mass in D" last night, and on Wednesday to hear Mendelssohn's "Walpurgis Nacht" and Beethoven's "Symphony in B," so that we have had two musical treats this week; but the enjoyment of such things is much diminished by the gas and bad air. Indeed, our long addiction to a quiet life, in which our daily walk among the still grass and trees was a _fête_ to us, has unfitted us for the sacrifices that London demands. Don't think about reading "Silas Marner" just because it is come out. I hate _obligato_ reading and _obligato_ talk about my books. _I never send them to any one_, and never wish to be spoken to about them, except by an unpremeditated, spontaneous prompting. They are written out of my deepest belief, and, as well as I can, for the great public, and every sincere, strong word will find its mark in that public. Perhaps the annoyance I suffered (referring to the Liggins' affair) has made me rather morbid on such points; but, apart from my own weaknesses, I think the less an author hears about himself the better. Don't mistake me: I am writing a general explanation, _not_ anything applicable to you. [Sidenote: Journal, 1861.] _April 19._--We set off on our second journey to Florence, through France and by the Cornice Road. Our weather was delicious, a little rain, and we suffered neither from heat nor from dust. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 25th April, 1861.] We have had a paradisaic journey hitherto. It does one good to look at the Provençals--men and women. They are quite a different race from the Northern French--large, round-featured, full-eyed, with an expression of _bonhomie_, calm and suave. They are very much like the pleasantest Italians. The women at Arles and Toulon are remarkably handsome. On Tuesday morning we set out about ten on our way to Nice, hiring a carriage and taking post-horses. The sky was gray, and after an hour or so we had rain; nevertheless our journey to Vidauban, about half-way to Nice, was enchanting. Everywhere a delicious plain, covered with bright green corn, sprouting vines, mulberry-trees, olives, and here and there meadows sprinkled with buttercups, made the nearer landscapes, and, in the distance, mountains of varying outline. _Mutter_ felt herself in a state of perfect bliss from only looking at this peaceful, generous nature; and you often came across the green blades of corn, and made her love it all the better. We had meant to go on to Fréjus that night, but no horses were to be had; so we made up our minds to rest at Vidauban, and went out to have a stroll before our six-o'clock dinner. Such a stroll! The sun had kindly come out for us, and we enjoyed it all the more for the grayness of the morning. There is a crystally clear river flowing by Vidauban, called the Argent: it rushes along between a fringe of aspens and willows; and the sunlight lay under the boughs, and fell on the eddying water, making Pater and me very happy as we wandered. The next morning we set off early, to be sure of horses before they had been used up by other travellers. The country was not quite so lovely, but we had the sunlight to compensate until we got past Fréjus, where we had our first view of the sea since Toulon, and where the scenery changes to the entirely mountainous, the road winding above gorges of pine-clad masses for a long way. To heighten the contrast, a heavy storm came, which thoroughly laid the dust for us, if it had no other advantage. The sun came out gloriously again before we reached Cannes, and lit up the yellow broom, which is now in all its splendor, and clothes vast slopes by which our road wound. We had still a four-hours' journey to Nice, where we arrived at six o'clock, with headaches that made us glad of the luxuries to be found in a great hotel. [Sidenote: Journal, 1861.] _May 5._--Dear Florence was lovelier than ever on this second view, and ill-health was the only deduction from perfect enjoyment. We had comfortable quarters in the Albergo della Vittoria, on the Arno; we had the best news from England about the success of "Silas Marner;" and we had long letters from our dear boy to make us feel easy about home. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 5th May, 1861.] Your pleasant news had been ripening at the post-office several days before we enjoyed the receipt of it; for our journey lasted us longer than we expected, and we didn't reach this place till yesterday evening. We have come with _vetturino_ from Toulon--the most delightful (and the most expensive) journey we have ever had. I dare say you know the Cornice; if not, _do_ know it some time, and bring Mrs. Blackwood that way into Italy. Meanwhile I am glad to think that you are having a less fatiguing change to places where you can "carry the comforts o' the Saut Market" with you, which is not quite the case with travellers along the Mediterranean coast. I hope I shall soon hear that you are thoroughly set up by fresh air and fresh circumstances, along with pleasant companionship. Except a thunderstorm, which gave a grand variety to the mountains, and a little gentle rain, the first day from Toulon, which made the green corn all the fresher, we have had unbroken sunshine, without heat and without dust. I suppose this season and late autumn must be the perfect moments for taking this supremely beautiful journey. We must be forever ashamed of ourselves if we don't work the better for it. It was very good of you to write to me in the midst of your hurry, that I might have good news to greet me. It really did lighten our weariness, and make the noisy streets that prevented sleep more endurable. I was amused with your detail about Professor Aytoun's sovereigns. There can be no great paintings of misers under the present system of paper money--checks, bills, scrip, and the like--nobody can handle that dull property as men handled the glittering gold. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 17th May, 1861.] The Florentine winds, being of a grave and earnest disposition, have naturally a disgust for trivial _dilettanti_ foreigners, and seize on the peculiarly feeble and worthless with much virulence. In consequence we had a sad history for nearly a week--Pater doing little else than nurse me, and I doing little else but feel eminently uncomfortable, for which, as you know, I have a faculty "second to none." I feel very full of thankfulness for all the creatures I have got to love--all the beautiful and great things that are given me to know; and I feel, too, much younger and more hopeful, as if a great deal of life and work were still before me. Pater and I have had great satisfaction in finding our impressions of admiration more than renewed in returning to Florence; the things we cared about when we were here before seem even more worthy than they did in our memories. We have had delightful weather since the cold winds abated; and the evening lights on the Arno, the bridges, and the quaint houses, are a treat that we think of beforehand. Your letters, too, are thought of beforehand. We long for them, and when they come they don't disappoint us: they tell us everything, and make us feel at home with you after a fashion. I confess to some dread of Blandford Square in the abstract. I fear London will seem more odious to me than ever; but I think I shall bear it with more fortitude. After all, that is the best place to live in where one has a strong reason for living. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 19th May, 1861.] We have been industriously foraging in old streets and old books. I feel very brave just now, and enjoy the thought of work--but don't set your mind on my doing just what I have dreamed. It may turn out that I can't work freely and fully enough in the medium I have chosen, and in that case I must give it up; for I will never write anything to which my whole heart, mind, and conscience don't consent, so that I may feel that it was something--however small--which wanted to be done in this world, and that I am just the organ for that small bit of work. I am very much cheered by the way in which "Silas" is received. I hope it has made some slight pleasure for you too, in the midst of incomparably deeper feelings of sadness.[31] Your quiet tour among the lakes was the best possible thing for you. What place is not better "out of the season"?--although I feel I am almost wicked in my hatred of being where there are many other people enjoying themselves. I am very far behind Mr. Buckle's millennial prospect, which is, that men will be more and more congregated in cities and occupied with human affairs, so as to be less and less under the influence of Nature--_i.e._, the sky, the hills, and the plains; whereby superstition will vanish and statistics will reign for ever and ever. Mr. Lewes is kept in continual distraction by having to attend to my wants--going with me to the Magliabecchian Library, and poking about everywhere on my behalf--I having very little self-help about me of the pushing and inquiring kind. I look forward with keen anxiety to the next outbreak of war--longing for some turn of affairs that will save poor Venice from being bombarded by those terrible Austrian forts. Thanks for your letters: we both say, "More--give us more." [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 27th May, 1861.] Florence is getting hot, and I am the less sorry to leave it because it has agreed very ill with the dear Paterculus. This evening we have been mounting to the top of Giotto's tower--a very sublime getting up-stairs, indeed--and our muscles are much astonished at the unusual exercise; so you must not be shocked if my letter seems to be written with dim faculties as well as with a dim light. We have seen no one but Mrs. Trollope and her pretty little girl Beatrice, who is a musical genius. She is a delicate fairy, about ten years old, but sings with a grace and expression that make it a thrilling delight to hear her. We have had glorious sunsets, shedding crimson and golden lights under the dark bridges across the Arno. All Florence turns out at eventide, but we avoid the slow crowds on the Lung' Arno, and take our way "up all manner of streets." [Sidenote: Journal, 1861.] _May_ and _June_.--At the end of May Mr. T. Trollope came back and persuaded us to stay long enough to make the expedition to Camaldoli and La Vernia in his company. We arrived at Florence on the 4th May, and left it on the 7th June--thirty-four days of precious time spent there. Will it be all in vain? Our morning hours were spent in looking at streets, buildings, and pictures, in hunting up old books at shops or stalls, or in reading at the Magliabecchian Library. Alas! I could have done much more if I had been well; but that regret applies to most years of my life. Returned by Lago Maggiore and the St. Gothard; reached home June 14. Blackwood having waited in town to see us, came to lunch with us, and asked me if I would go to dine at Greenwich on the following Monday, to which I said "Yes," by way of exception to my resolve that I will go nowhere for the rest of this year. He drove us there with Colonel Stewart, and we had a pleasant evening--the sight of a game at golf in the park, and a hazy view of the distant shipping, with the Hospital finely broken by trees in the foreground. At dinner Colonel Hamley and Mr. Skene joined us; Delane, who had been invited, was unable to come. The chat was agreeable enough, but the sight of the gliding ships darkening against the dying sunlight made me feel chat rather importunate. _June 16._--This morning, for the first time, I feel myself quietly settled at home. I am in excellent health, and long to work steadily and effectively. If it were possible that I should produce _better_ work than I have yet done! At least there is a possibility that I may make greater efforts against indolence and the despondency that comes from too egoistic a dread of failure. _June 19._--This is the last entry I mean to make in my old book, in which I wrote for the first time at Geneva in 1849. What moments of despair I passed through after that--despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity; and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th June, 1861.] Some of one's first thoughts on coming home after an absence of much length are about the friends one had left behind--what has happened to them in the meantime, and how are they now? And yet, though we came home last Friday evening, I have not had the quiet moment for writing these thoughts until this morning. I know I need put no questions to you, who always divine what I want to be told. We have had a perfect journey except as regards health--a large, large exception. The cold winds alternating with the hot sun, or some other cause, laid very unkind hold on Mr. Lewes early after our arrival at Florence, and he was ailing with sore throat and cough continually, so that he has come back looking thin and delicate, though the ailments seem to be nearly passed away. I wish you could have shared the pleasures of our last expedition from Florence--to the Monasteries of Camaldoli and La Vernia; I think it was just the sort of thing you would have entered into with thorough zest. Imagine the Franciscans of La Vernia, which is perched upon an abrupt rock rising sheer on the summit of a mountain, turning out at midnight (and when there is deep snow for their feet to plunge in), and chanting their slow way up to the little chapel perched at a lofty distance above their already lofty monastery! This they do every night throughout the year, in all weathers. Give my loving greeting to Cara and Mr. Bray, and then sit down and write me one of your charming letters, making a little picture of everybody and everything about you. God bless you! is the old-fashioned summing up of sincere affection, without the least smirk of studied civility. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th July, 1861.] Your letter gave me a pleasant vision of Sunday sunshine on the flowers, and you among them, with your eyes brightened by busy and enjoyable thoughts. Yes, I hope we are well out of that phase in which the most philosophic view of the past was held to be a smiling survey of human folly, and when the wisest man was supposed to be one who could sympathize with no age but the age to come. When I received your Monday packet I was fresh from six quarto volumes on the history of the monastic orders, and had just begun a less formidable modern book on the same subject--Montalembert's "Monks of the West." Our reading, you see, lay in very different quarters, but I fancy our thoughts sometimes touched the same ground. I am rather puzzled and shocked, however, by your high admiration of the articles on the "Study of History," in the _Cornhill_. I should speak with the reserve due to the fact that I have only read the second article; and this, I confess, did not impress me as exhibiting any mastery of the question, while its tone towards much abler thinkers than the writer himself is to me extremely repulsive. Such writing as, "We should not be called upon to believe that every crotchet which tickled the insane vanity of a conceited Frenchman was an eternal and self-evident truth," is to me simply disgusting, though it were directed against the father of lies. It represents no fact except the writer's own desire to be bitter, and is worthily finished by the dull and irreverent antithesis of "the eternal truth and infernal lie." I quite agree with you--so far as I am able to form a judgment--in regarding Positivism as one-sided; but Comte was a great thinker, nevertheless, and ought to be treated with reverence by all smaller fry. I have just been reading the "Survey of the Middle Ages" contained in the fifth volume of the "Philosophie Positive," and to my apprehension few chapters can be fuller of luminous ideas. I am thankful to learn from it. There may be more profundity in the _Cornhill's_ exposition than I am able to penetrate, or, possibly, the first article may contain weightier matter than the second. Mrs. Bodichon is near us now, and one always gets good from contact with her healthy, practical life. Mr. Lewes is gone to see Mrs. Congreve and carry his net to the Wimbledon ponds. I hope he will get a little strength as well as grist for his microscope. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 18th July, 1861.] The English "Imitation" I told you of, which is used by the Catholics, is Challoner's. I have looked into it again since I saw you, and I think, if you want to give the book away, this translation is as good as any you are likely to get among current editions. If it were for yourself, an old bookstall would be more likely to furnish what you want. Don't ever think of me as valuing either you or Mr. Congreve less instead of more. You naughtily implied something of that kind just when you were running away from me. How could any goodness become less precious to me unless my life had ceased to be a growth, and had become mere shrinking and degeneracy? I always imagine that if I were near you now I should profit more by the gift of your presence--just as one feels about all past sunlight. [Sidenote: Diary, 1861.] _July 24._--Walked with George over Primrose Hill. We talked of Plato and Aristotle. _July 26._--In the evening went to see Fechter as Hamlet, and sat next to Mrs. Carlyle. _July 30._--Read little this morning--my mind dwelling with much depression on the probability or improbability of my achieving the work I wish to do. I struck out two or three thoughts towards an English novel. I am much afflicted with hopelessness and melancholy just now, and yet I feel the value of my blessings. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 30th July, 1861.] Thornie, our second boy, is at home from Edinburgh for his holidays, and I am apt to give more thought than is necessary to any little change in our routine. We had a treat the other night which I wished you could have shared with us. We saw Fechter in Hamlet. His conception of the part is very nearly that indicated by the critical observations in "Wilhelm Meister," and the result is deeply interesting--the naturalness and sensibility of the _Wesen_ overcoming in most cases the defective intonation. And even the intonation is occasionally admirable; for example, "And for my soul, what can he do to that?" etc., is given by Fechter with perfect simplicity, whereas the herd of English actors imagine themselves in a pulpit when they are saying it. _À propos_ of the pulpit, I had another failure in my search for edification last Sunday. Mme. Bodichon and I went to Little Portland Street Chapel, and lo! instead of James Martineau there was a respectable old Unitarian gentleman preaching about the dangers of ignorance and the satisfaction of a good conscience, in a tone of amiable propriety which seemed to belong to a period when brains were untroubled by difficulties, and the lacteals of all good Christians were in perfect order. I enjoyed the fine selection of collects he read from the Liturgy. What an age of earnest faith, grasping a noble conception of life and determined to bring all things into harmony with it, has recorded itself in the simple, pregnant, rhythmical English of those collects and of the Bible! The contrast when the good man got into the pulpit and began to pray in a borrowed, washy lingo--extempore in more senses than one! [Sidenote: Diary, 1861.] _Aug. 1._--Struggling constantly with depression. _Aug. 2._--Read Boccaccio's capital story of Fra Cipolla--one of his few good stories--and the Little Hunchback in the "Arabian Nights," which is still better. _Aug. 10._--Walked with G. We talked of my Italian novel. In the evening, Mr. Pigott and Mr. Redford. _Aug. 12._--Got into a state of so much wretchedness in attempting to concentrate my thoughts on the construction of my story that I became desperate, and suddenly burst my bonds, saying, I will not think of writing! [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Aug. 1861.] That doctrine which we accept rather loftily as a commonplace when we are quite young--namely, that our happiness lies entirely within, in our own mental and bodily state, which determines for us the influence of everything outward--becomes a daily lesson to be learned, and learned with much stumbling, as we get older. And until we know our friends' private thoughts and emotions we hardly know what to grieve or rejoice over for them. [Sidenote: Diary, 1861.] _Aug. 17._--Mr. Pigott and Mr. Redford came, who gave us some music. _Aug. 20._--This morning I conceived the plot of my novel with new distinctness. _Aug. 24._--Mr. Pigott and Mr. Redford came, and we had music. These have been placid, ineffective days, my mind being clouded and depressed. _Aug. 26._--Went with Barbara to her school, and spent the afternoon there. _Aug. 31._--In the evening came Mr. Pigott and Mr. Redford, and we had some music. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 11th Sept. 1861, from Malvern.] Your letter was a great delight to us, as usual; and the check, too, was welcome to people under hydropathic treatment, which appears to stimulate waste of coin as well as of tissue. Altogether, we are figures in keeping with the landscape when it is well damped or "packed" under the early mist. We thought rather contemptuously of the hills on our arrival; like travelled people, we hinted at the Alps and Apennines, and smiled with pity at our long-past selves, that had felt quite a thrill at the first sight of them. But now we have tired our limbs by walking round their huge shoulders we begin to think of them with more respect. We simply looked at them at first; we feel their presence now, and creep about them with due humility--whereby, you perceive, there hangs a moral. I do wish you could have shared for a little while with us the sight of this place. I fear you have never seen England under so lovable an aspect. On the southeastern side, where the great green hills have their longest slope, Malvern stands, well nestled in fine trees--chiefly "sounding sycamores"--and beyond there stretches to the horizon, which is marked by a low, faint line of hill, a vast level expanse of grass and cornfields, with hedge-rows everywhere plumed with trees, and here and there a rolling mass of wood; it is one of the happiest scenes the eyes can look on--_freundlich_, according to the pretty German phrase. On the opposite side of this main range of hills there is a more undulated and more thickly wooded country which has the sunset all to itself, and is bright with departing lights when our Malvern side is in cold evening shadow. We are so fortunate as to look out over the wide southeastern valley from our sitting-room window. Our landlady is a quaint old personage, with a strong Cheshire accent. She is, as she tells us, a sharp old woman, and "can see most things pretty quick;" and she is kind enough to communicate her wisdom very freely to us less crisply baked mortals. [Sidenote: Diary, 1861.] _Sept. 11._--Yesterday we returned from Malvern (having gone there on 4th). During our stay I read Mrs. Jameson's book on the "Legends of the Monastic Orders," corrected the first volume of "Adam Bede" for the new edition, and began Marchese's "Storia di San Marco." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Sept. 1861.] I enter into your and Cara's furniture-adjusting labors and your enjoyment of church and chapel afterwards. One wants a temple besides the outdoor temple--a place where human beings do not ramble apart, but _meet_ with a common impulse. I hope you have some agreeable lens through which you can look at circumstances--good health, at least. And really I begin to think people who are robust are in a position to pity all the rest of the world--except, indeed, that there are certain secrets taught only by pain, which are, perhaps, worth the purchase. [Sidenote: Diary, 1861.] _Sept. 23._--I have been unwell ever since we returned from Malvern, and have been disturbed, from various causes, in my work, so that I have scarcely done anything except correct my own books for a new edition. To-day I am much better, and hope to begin a more effective life to-morrow. _Sept. 28._--In the evening Mr. Spencer, Mr. Pigott, and Mr. Redford came. We talked with Mr. Spencer about his chapter on the "Direction of Force"--_i.e._, line of least resistance. _Sept. 29_ (Sunday).--Finished correcting "Silas Marner." I have thus corrected all my books for a new and cheaper edition, and feel my mind free for other work. Walked to the Zoo with the boys. _Oct. 3._--To-day our new grand piano came--a great addition to our pleasures. _Oct. 4._--My mind still worried about my plot--and without any confidence in my ability to do what I want. _Oct. 5._--In the evening Mr. Redford and Mr. Spencer came, and we had much music. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Oct. 1861.] We are enjoying a great pleasure, a new grand piano, and last evening we had a Beethoven night. We are looking out for a violinist: we have our violoncello, who is full of sensibility, but with no negative in him--_i.e._, no obstinate sense of time--a man who is all assent and perpetual _rallentando_. We can enjoy the pleasure the more because Mr. Lewes's health is promising. [Sidenote: Diary, 1861.] _Oct. 7._--Began the first chapter of my novel ("Romola"). _Oct. 9._--Read Nerli. _Oct. 11._--Nardi's "History of Florence." In the afternoon walked with Barbara, and talked with her from lunch till dinner-time. _Oct. 12._--In the evening we had our usual Saturday mixture of visitors, talk, and music; an agreeable addition being Dr. M'Donnell of Dublin. _Oct. 14._--Went with Barbara to her school to hear the children sing. _Oct. 18._--Walked with G. and Mr. Spencer to Hampstead, and continued walking for more than five hours. In the evening we had music. Mrs. Bodichon and Miss Parkes were our additional visitors. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 23d Oct. 1861.] I am rather jealous of the friends who get so much of you--especially when they are so unmeritorious as to be evangelical and spoil your rest. But I will not grumble. I am in the happiest, most contented mood, and have only good news to tell you. I have hardly any trouble nearer to me than the American War and the prospects of poor cotton weavers. While you were shivering at Boulogne we were walking fast to avoid shivering at Malvern, and looking slightly blue after our sitz baths. Nevertheless that discipline answered admirably, and Mr. Lewes's health has been steadily improving since our Malvern expedition. As for me, imagine what I must be to have walked for five hours the other day! Or, better still, imagine me always cheerful, and infer the altered condition of my mucous membrane. The difference must be there; for it is not in my moral sentiments or in my circumstances, unless, indeed, a new grand piano, which tempts me to play more than I have done for years before, may be reckoned an item important enough to have contributed to the change. We talk of you very often, and the image of you is awakened in my mind still oftener. You are associated by many subtile, indescribable ties with some of my most precious and most silent thoughts. I am so glad you have the comfort of feeling that Mr. Congreve is prepared for his work again. I am hoping to hear, when we see you, that the work will be less and less fagging, now the introductory years are past. Charley is going to Switzerland for his holiday next month. We shall enjoy our dual solitude; yet the dear boy is more and more precious to us from the singular rectitude and tenderness of his nature. Make signs to us as often as you can. You know how entirely Mr. Lewes shares my delight in seeing you and hearing from you. [Sidenote: Diary, 1861.] _Oct. 28_ and _30_.--Not very well. Utterly desponding about my book. _Oct. 31._--Still with an incapable head--trying to write, trying to construct, and unable. _Nov. 6._--So utterly dejected that, in walking with G. in the Park, I almost resolved to give up my Italian novel. _Nov. 10_ (Sunday).--New sense of things to be done in my novel, and more brightness in my thoughts. Yesterday I was occupied with ideas about my next English novel; but this morning the Italian scenes returned upon me with fresh attraction. In the evening read "Monteil." A marvellous book; crammed with erudition, yet not dull or tiresome. _Nov. 14._--Went to the British Museum reading-room for the first time--looking over costumes. _Nov. 20._--Mrs. Congreve, Miss Bury, and Mr. Spencer to lunch. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1861.] Your loving words of remembrance find a very full answer in my heart--fuller than I can write. The years seem to _rush_ by now, and I think of death as a fast-approaching end of a journey--double and treble reason for loving as well as working while it is day. We went to see Fechter's Othello the other night. It is lamentably bad. He has not weight and passion enough for deep tragedy; and, to my feeling, the play is so degraded by his representation that it is positively demoralizing--as, indeed, all tragedy must be when it fails to move pity and terror. In this case it seems to move only titters among the smart and vulgar people who always make the bulk of a theatre audience. We had a visit from our dear friend Mrs. Congreve on Wednesday--a very infrequent pleasure now; for between our own absences from home and hers, and the fatigue of London journeying, it is difficult for us to manage meetings. Mr. Congreve is, as usual, working hard in his medical studies--toiling backward and forward daily. What courage and patience are wanted for every life that aims to produce anything! [Sidenote: Journal, 1861.] _Nov. 30._--In the evening we had Wilkie Collins, Mr. Pigott, and Mr. Spencer, and talked without any music. _Dec. 3-7._--I continued very unwell until Saturday, when I felt a little better. In the evening Dr. Baetcke, Mr. Pigott, and Mr. Redford. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Dec. 1861.] Miss Marshall came to see us yesterday. That is always a pleasure to me, not only from the sense I have of her goodness, but because she stirs so many remembrances. The first time I saw her was at Rufa's[32] wedding; and don't you remember the evening we spent at Mrs. Dobson's? How young we all were then--how old now! She says you are all under the impression that Mr. Lewes is still very ailing. Thank all good influences it is not so. He has been mending ever since we went to Malvern, and is enjoying life and work more than he has done before for nearly a year. He has long had it in his mind to write a history of science--a great, great undertaking, which it is happiness to both of us to contemplate as possible for him. And now he is busy with Aristotle, and works with all the zest that belongs to fresh ideas. Strangely enough, after all the ages of writing about Aristotle, there exists no fair appreciation of his position in natural science. I am particularly grumbling and disagreeable to myself just now, and I think no one bears physical pain so ill as I do, or is so thoroughly upset by it mentally. Bulwer has behaved very nicely to me, and I have a great respect for the energetic industry with which he has made the most of his powers. He has been writing diligently in very various departments for more than thirty years, constantly improving his position, and profiting by the lessons of public opinion and of other writers. I'm sorry you feel any degeneracy in Mr. George Dawson. There was something very winning about him in old days, and even what was not winning, but the reverse, affected me with a sort of kindly pity. With such a gift of tongue as he had, it was inevitable that speech should outrun feeling and experience, and I could well imagine that his present self might look back on that self of 21-27 with a sort of disgust. It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow. It would interest me a good deal to know just how Mr. Dawson preaches now. I am writing on my knees with my feet on the fender, and in that attitude I always write very small--but I hope your sight is not teased by small writing. Give my best love to Cara, and sympathy with her in the pleasure of grasping an old friend by the hand, and having long talks after the distance of years. I know Mr. Bray will enjoy this too--and the new house will seem more like the old one for this warming. [Sidenote: Journal, 1861.] _Dec. 8_ (Sunday).--G. had a headache, so we walked out in the morning sunshine. I told him my conception of my story, and he expressed great delight. Shall I ever be able to carry out my ideas? Flashes of hope are succeeded by long intervals of dim distrust. Finished the eighth volume of Lastri and began the ninth chapter of Varchi, in which he gives an accurate account of Florence. _Dec. 12._--Finished writing my plot, of which I must make several other draughts before I begin to write my book. _Dec. 13._--Read Poggiana. In the afternoon walked to Molini's and brought back Savonarola's "Dialogus de Veritate Prophetica," and "Compendium Revelationum," for £4! _Dec. 14._--In the evening came Mr. Huxley, Mr. Pigott, and Mr. Redford. _Dec. 17._--Studied the topography of Florence. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 31st Dec. 1861.] It was pleasant to have a greeting from you at this season, when all signs of human kindness have a double emphasis. As one gets older epochs have necessarily some sadness, even for those who have, as I have, much family joy. The past, that one would like to mend, spreads behind one so lengthily, and the years of retrieval keep shrinking--the terrible _peau de chagrin_ whose outline narrows and narrows with our ebbing life. I hardly know whether it would be agreeable to you, or worth your while, ever to come to us on a Saturday evening, when we are always at home to any friend who may be kind enough to come to us. It would be very pleasant to us if it were pleasant to you. During the latter half of 1861, I find the following among the books read: "Histoire des Ordres Religieux," Sacchetti's "Novelle," Sismondi's "History of the Italian Republics," "Osservatore Fiorentino," Tennemann's "History of Philosophy," T. A. Trollope's "Beata," Sismondi's "Le Moyen Age Illustré," "The Monks of the West," "Introduction to Savonarola's Poems," by Audin de Réans, Renan's "Études d'Histoire Religieuse," Virgil's "Eclogues," Buhle's "History of Modern Philosophy," Hallam on the "Study of Roman Law in the Middle Ages," Gibbon on the "Revival of Greek Learning," Nardi, Bulwer's "Rienzi," Burlamacchi's "Life of Savonarola," Pulci, Villari's "Life of Savonarola," Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art," "Hymni and Epigrammati" of Marullus, Politian's "Epistles," Marchese's Works, Tiraboschi, Rock's "Hierurgia," Pettigrew "On Medical Superstition," Manni's "Life of Burchiello," Machiavelli's Works, Ginguené, Muratori "On Proper Names," Cicero "De Officiis," Petrarch's Letters, Craik's "History of English Literature," "Conti Carnivaleschi," Letters of Filelfo, Lastri, and Varchi, Heeren on the Fifteenth Century. _SUMMARY._ JULY, 1860, TO DECEMBER, 1861. Return from Italy to Wandsworth, accompanied by Charles Lewes--"Mill on the Floss" success--6000 sold--Letter to John Blackwood--French translation of "Adam Bede," by M. d'Albert of Geneva--Letter to Miss Hennell on her "Thoughts in Aid of Faith"--Letter to John Blackwood on Sir Edward Lytton's criticism of "The Mill on the Floss"--Letter to Mrs. Bray, recalling feelings on journey to Italy in 1849--Letter to Miss Sara Hennell--Article on Strikes, by Henry Fawcett, in _Westminster_--Sitting to Lawrence for portrait--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Interest in her schools--Letter to Miss Hennell, explaining criticism of "Thoughts in Aid of Faith"--Reading Emerson's "Man the Reformer"--Deprecates writing about opinions on large questions in letters--Letter to John Blackwood--Italian novel project--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Love of the country--Removal to 10 Harewood Square--"Brother Jacob" written--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Frederic Harrison's article in _Westminster_ on "Essays and Reviews"--Letter to John Blackwood--Religious party standpoint--Classical quotations--Letter to Miss Hennell on re-reading "Thoughts in Aid of Faith"--Tribute to Mr. Lewes's dispassionate judgment--Suffering from loss of the country--Independence secured--Anthony Trollope and Arthur Helps--Queen's admiration of "Mill on the Floss"--Writing "Silas Marner" a sudden inspiration--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Monday Popular Concerts--Moved to 16 Blandford Square--Waste of time in furnishing--Letter to Madame Bodichon--On religious forms and ceremonies--Herbert Spencer's new work, the best thing he has done--Letter to John Blackwood--"Silas Marner"--Letters to Mrs. Congreve--Zoological Gardens--Visit to Dorking--Letter to John Blackwood--Scott--Letters to Miss Hennell--Private correspondence--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Arthur Clough's death--Letter to John Blackwood--"Silas Marner"--Books belong to successive mental phases--"Silas Marner" finished--Visit to Hastings--Letter to Charles Bray--Marriage of Mr. William Smith--Letter to John Blackwood--Subscription to "Silas Marner" 3300--Article in _Macmillan_ on "The Mill"--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Position--Letter to John Blackwood--Total Subscription to "Silas Marner" 5500--Criticism on "The Mill"--Letter to Mrs. P. Taylor--Never pays visits--Letter to Miss Hennell--Hearing Beethoven and Mendelssohn music--Start on second journey to Italy--Letter to Charles Lewes, describing drive from Toulon to Nice--Arrival at Florence--Letter to John Blackwood--No painting of misers with paper money--Letter to Charles Lewes--Feels hopeful about future work--Letter to John Blackwood--Italian novel simmering--Letter to Charles Lewes--Beatrice Trollope--Expedition to Camaldoli and La Vernia with Mr. T. A. Trollope--Return home by Lago Maggiore and St. Gothard--Dinner at Greenwich with John Blackwood, Colonel Hamley, etc.--Reflections on waste of youth--Letters to Miss Hennell describing La Vernia--Improvement in general philosophic attitude--Articles on "Study of History" in the _Cornhill_--Positivism one-sided--Admiration of Comte--Letter to Miss Hennell--Fechter in Hamlet--The Liturgy of the English Church--Depression--Musical Evenings with Mr. Pigott and Mr. Redford--Trip to Malvern--Letter to Miss Hennell--New grand piano--Began "Romola"--Saturday visitors--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Better spirits--Renewed depression--Letter to Miss Hennell--Time flying--Fechter as Othello--Letter to Miss Hennell--Lewes busy with Aristotle--Bulwer--George Dawson--Reading towards "Romola"--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on the Past--Books read. FOOTNOTES: [21] Death of Madame Bodichon's father. [22] "Thoughts in Aid of Faith." [23] M. d'Albert. [24] "And how can it be otherwise than real to us, this belief that has nourished the souls of us all, and seems to have moulded actually anew their internal constitution, as well as stored them up with its infinite variety of external interests and associations! What other than a very real thing has it been in the life of the world--sprung out of, and again causing to spring forth, such volumes of human emotion--making a current, as it were, of feeling, that has drawn within its own sphere all the moral vitality of so many ages! In all this reality of influence there is indeed the testimony of Christianity having truly formed an integral portion of the organic life of humanity. The regarding it as a mere excrescence, the product of morbid, fanatical humors, is a reaction of judgment, that, it is to be hoped, will soon be seen on all hands to be in no way implied of necessity in the formal rejection of it."--_Thoughts in Aid of Faith_, p. 105. [25] "These sentiments, which are born within us, slumbering as it were in our nature, ready to be awakened into action immediately they are roused by hint of corresponding circumstances, are drawn out of the whole of previous human existence. They constitute our treasured inheritance out of all the life that has been lived before us, to which no age, no human being who has trod the earth and laid himself to rest, with all his mortal burden upon her maternal bosom, has failed to add his contribution. No generation has had its engrossing conflict, sorely battling out the triumphs of mind over material force, and through forms of monstrous abortions concurrent with its birth, too hideous for us now to bear in contemplation, moulding the early intelligence by every struggle, and winning its gradual powers--no single soul has borne itself through its personal trial--without bequeathing to us of its fruit. There is not a religious thought that we take to ourselves for secret comfort in our time of grief, that has not been distilled out of the multiplicity of the hallowed tears of mankind; not an animating idea is there for our fainting courage that has not gathered its inspiration from the bravery of the myriad armies of the world's heroes."--_Thoughts in Aid of Faith_, p. 174. [26] "Education of the Feelings." By Charles Bray. Published 1839. [27] Mr. William Blackwood. [28] Mr. Frederic Harrison, the now well-known writer, and a member of the Positivist body. [29] Lecture on Cell Forms. [30] Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet. [31] The death of Major Blackwood. [32] Mrs. Charles Hennell (now Mrs. Call). CHAPTER XII. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _January 1._--Mr. Blackwood sent me a note enclosing a letter from Montalembert about "Silas Marner." _I began again my novel of "Romola."_ [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 7th Jan. 1862.] It is not unlikely that our thoughts and wishes met about New-year's Day, for I was only prevented from writing to you in that week by the fear of saying decidedly that we could _not_ go to you, and yet finding afterwards that a clear sky, happening to coincide with an absence of other hinderances, would have made that pleasure possible for us. I think we believe in each other's thorough affection, and need not dread misunderstanding. But you must not write again, as you did in one note, a sort of apology for coming to us when you were tired, as if we didn't like to see you anyhow and at any time! And we especially like to think that our house can be a rest to you. For the first winter in my life I am hardly ever free from cold. As soon as one has departed with the usual final stage of stuffiness, another presents itself with the usual introduction of sore throat. And Mr. Lewes just now is a little ailing. But we have nothing serious to complain of. You seemed to me so bright and brave the last time I saw you, that I have had cheerful thoughts of you ever since. Write to me always when anything happens to you, either pleasant or sad, that there is no reason for my not knowing, so that we may not spend long weeks in wondering how all things are with you. And do come to us whenever you can, without caring about my going to you, for this is too difficult for me in chill and doubtful weather. Are you not looking anxiously for the news from America? [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 13th Jan. 1862.] As for the brain being useless after fifty, that is no general rule; witness the good and hard work that has been done in plenty after that age. I wish I could be inspired with just the knowledge that would enable me to be of some good to you. I feel so ignorant and helpless. The year _is_ opening happily for us, except--alas! the exception is a great one--in the way of health. Mr. Lewes is constantly ailing, like a delicate headachy woman. But we have abundant blessings. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th Jan. 1862.] I hope you are able to enjoy Max Müller's great and delightful book during your imprisonment. It tempts me away from other things. I have read most of the numbers of "Orley Farm," and admire it very much, with the exception of such parts as I have read about Moulder & Co. Anthony Trollope is admirable in the presentation of even average life and character, and he is so thoroughly wholesome-minded that one delights in seeing his books lie about to be read. Have you read "Beata" yet--the first novel written by his brother at Florence, who is our especial favorite? Do read it when you can, if the opportunity has not already come. I am going to be taken to a pantomime in the daytime, like a good child, for a Christmas treat, not having had my fair share of pantomime in the world. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Jan. 18_ (Saturday).--We had an agreeable evening. Mr. Burton[33] and Mr. Clark[34] of Cambridge made an acceptable variety in our party. _Jan. 19-20._--Head very bad--producing terrible depression. _Jan. 23._--Wrote again, feeling in brighter spirits. Mr. Smith the publisher called and had an interview with G. He asked if I were open to "a magnificent offer." This made me think about money--but it is better for me not to be rich. _Jan. 26_ (Sunday).--Detained from writing by the necessity of gathering particulars: 1st, about Lorenzo de Medici's death; 2d, about the possible retardation of Easter; 3d, about Corpus Christi day; 4th, about Savonarola's preaching in the Quaresima of 1492. Finished "La Mandragola"--second time reading for the sake of Florentine expressions--and began "La Calandra." _Jan. 31._--Have been reading some entries in my note-book of past times in which I recorded my _malaise_ and despair. But it is impossible to me to believe that I have ever been in so unpromising and despairing a state as I now feel. After writing these words I read to G. the Proem and opening scene of my novel, and he expressed great delight in them. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 3d Feb. 1862.] I was taken to see my pantomime. How pretty it is to see the theatre full of children! Ah, what I should have felt in my real child days to have been let into the further history of Mother Hubbard and her Dog! George Stephenson is one of my great heroes--has he not a dear old face? [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 3d Feb. 1862.] I think yours is the instinct of all delicate natures--not to speak to authors about their writings. It is better for us all to hear as little about ourselves as possible; to do our work faithfully, and be satisfied with the certainty that if it touches many minds, it cannot touch them in a way quite aloof from our intention and hope. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Feb. 7._--A week of February already gone! I have been obliged to be very moderate in work from feebleness of head and body; but I have rewritten, with additions, the first chapter of my book. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 8th Feb. 1862.] I am wondering whether you could spare me, _for a few weeks_, the Tempest music, and any other vocal music of that or of a kindred species? I don't want to buy it until our singers have experimented upon it. Don't think of sending me anything that you are using at all, but if said music be lying idle, I should be grateful for the loan. We have several operas--Don Giovanni, Figaro, the Barbiere, Flauto Magico, and also the music of Macbeth; but I think that is all our stock of concerted vocal music. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Feb. 11._--We set off to Dorking. The day was lovely, and we walked through Mr. Hope's park to Betchworth. In the evening I read aloud Sybel's "Lectures on the Crusades." _Feb. 12._--The day was gray, but the air was fresh and pleasant. We walked to Wootton Park--Evelyn's Wootton--lunched at a little roadside inn there, and returned to Dorking to dine. During stay at Dorking finished the first twelve cantos of Pulci. _Feb. 13._--Returned home. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 15th Feb. 1862.] I think it is a reasonable law that the one who takes wing should be the first to write--not the bird that stays in the old cage, and may be supposed to be eating the usual seed and groundsel, and looking at the same slice of the world through the same wires. I think the highest and best thing is rather to suffer with real suffering than to be happy in the imagination of an unreal good. I would rather know that the beings I love are in some trouble, and suffer because of it, even though I can't help them, than be fancying them happy when they are not so, and making myself comfortable on the strength of that false belief. And so I am impatient of all ignorance and concealment. I don't say "that is wise," but simply "that is my nature." I can enter into what you have felt, for serious illness, such as seems to bring death near, makes one feel the simple human brother and sisterhood so strongly that those we were apt to think almost indifferent to us before, touch the very quick of our hearts. I suppose if we happened only to hold the hand of a hospital patient when she was dying, her face, and all the memories along with it, would seem to lie deeper in our experience than all we knew of many old friends and blood relations. We have had no troubles but the public troubles--anxiety about the war with America and sympathy with the poor Queen. My best consolation is that an example on so tremendous a scale (as the war) of the need for the education of mankind through the affections and sentiments, as a basis for true development, will have a strong influence on all thinkers, and be a check to the arid, narrow antagonism which, in some quarters, is held to be the only form of liberal thought. George has fairly begun what we have long contemplated as a happiness for him--a History of Science, and has written so thorough an analysis and investigation of Aristotle's Natural Science that he feels it will make an epoch for the men who are interested at once in the progress of modern science and in the question how far Aristotle went both in the observation of facts and in their theoretic combination--a question never yet cleared up after all these ages. This work makes him "very jolly," but his dear face looks very pale and narrow. Those only can thoroughly feel the meaning of death who know what is perfect love. God bless you--that is not a false word, however many false ideas may have been hidden under it. No--not false ideas, but temporary ones--caterpillars and chrysalids of future ideas. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Feb. 17._--I have written only the two first chapters of my novel besides the Proem, and I have an oppressive sense of the far-stretching task before me, health being feeble just now. I have lately read again with great delight Mrs. Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows." It contains, amongst other admirable things, a very noble expression of what I believe to be the true relation of the religious mind to the past. _Feb. 26._--I have been very ailing all this last week, and have worked under impeding discouragement. I have a distrust in myself, in my work, in others' loving acceptance of it, which robs my otherwise happy life of all joy. I ask myself, without being able to answer, whether I have ever before felt so chilled and oppressed. I have written now about sixty pages of my romance. Will it ever be finished? Ever be worth anything? _Feb. 27._--George Smith, the publisher, brought the proof of G.'s book, "Animal Studies," and laid before him a proposition to give me £10,000 for my new novel--_i.e._, for its appearance in the _Cornhill_, and the entire copyright at home and abroad. _March 1._--The idea of my novel appearing in the _Cornhill_ is given up, as G. Smith wishes to have it commenced in May, and I cannot consent to begin publication until I have seen nearly to the end of the work. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 10th March, 1862, from Englefield Green.] We had agreeable weather until yesterday, which was wet and blustering, so that we could only snatch two short walks. Pater is better, I think; and I, as usual, am impudently flourishing in country air and idleness. On Friday Mr. Bone, our landlord, drove us out in his pony carriage to see the "meet" of the stag-hounds, and on Saturday ditto to see the fox-hunters; so you perceive we have been leading rather a grand life. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _March 11._--On Wednesday last, the 5th, G. and I set off to Englefield Green, where we have spent a delightful week at the Barley Mow Inn. I have finished Pulci there, and read aloud the "Château d'If." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th March, 1862.] We returned from our flight into the country yesterday, not without a sigh at parting with the pure air and the notes of the blackbirds for the usual canopy of smoke and the sound of cab-wheels. I am not going out again, and our life will have its old routine--lunch at half-past one, walk till four, dinner at five. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _March 24._--After enjoying our week at Egham, I returned to protracted headache. Last Saturday we received as usual, and our party was joined by Mr. and Mrs. Noel. I have begun the fourth chapter of my novel, but have been working under a weight. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th March, 1862.] I congratulate you on being out of London, which is more like a pandemonium than usual. The fog and rain have been the more oppressive because I have seen them through Mr. Lewes's almost constant discomfort. I think he has had at least five days of sick headache since you saw him. But then he is better tempered and more cheerful _with_ headache than most people are without it; and in that way he lightens his burden. Have you noticed in the _Times_ Mr. Peabody's magnificent deed?--the gift of £150,000 for the amelioration (body and soul, I suppose) of the poorer classes in London. That is a pleasant association to have with an American name. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _April 1._--Much headache this last week. _April 2._--Better this morning; writing with enjoyment. At the seventy-seventh page. Read Juvenal this morning and Nisard. _April 16._--As I had been ailing for a fortnight or more, we resolved to go to Dorking, and set off to-day. _May 6._--We returned from Dorking after a stay of three weeks, during which we have had delicious weather. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, May, 1862.] Our life is the old accustomed duet this month. We enjoy an interval of our double solitude. Doesn't the spring look lovelier every year to eyes that want more and more light? It was rather saddening to leave the larks and all the fresh leaves to come back to the rolling of cabs and "the blacks;" but in compensation we have all our conveniences about us. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _May 23._--Since I wrote last, very important decisions have been made. I am to publish my novel of "Romola" in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for £7000, paid in twelve monthly payments. There has been the regret of leaving Blackwood, who has written me a letter in the most perfect spirit of gentlemanliness and good-feeling. _May 27._--Mr. Helps, Mr. Burton, and Mr. T. A. Trollope dined with us. _May 31._--Finished the second part, extending to page 183. _June 30._--I have at present written only the scene between Romola and her brother in San Marco towards Part IV. This morning I had a delightful, generous letter from Mr. Anthony Trollope about "Romola." _July 6._--The past week has been unfruitful from various causes. The consequence is that I am no further on in my MS., and have lost the excellent start my early completion of the third part had given me. _July 10._--A dreadful palsy has beset me for the last few days. I have scarcely made any progress. Yet I have been very well in body. I have been reading a book often referred to by Hallam--Meiners's "Lives of Mirandula and Politian." They are excellent. They have German industry, and are succinctly and clearly written. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Sept. 1862, from Littlehampton.] Imagine me--not fuming in imperfect resignation under London smoke, but--with the wide sky of the coast above me, and every comfort positive and negative around me, even to the absence of staring eyes and crinolines. Worthing was so full that it rejected us, and, to our great good-fortune, sent us here. We were pleased to hear that you had seen Mr. Spencer. We always feel him particularly welcome when he comes back to town; there is no one like him for talking to about certain things. You will come and dine or walk with us whenever you have nothing better to do in your visit to town. I take that for granted. We lie, you know, on the way _between_ the Exhibition and Mr. Noel's. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Sept. 23._--Returned from our stay in the country, first at the Beach Hotel, Littlehampton, and for the last three days at Dorking. _Sept. 26._--At page 62, Part VI. Yesterday a letter came from Mr. T. A. Trollope, full of encouragement for me. _Ebenezer._ _Oct. 2._--At page 85. Scene between Tito and Romola. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 2d Oct. 1862.] Welcome to your letter, and welcome to the hope of seeing you again! I have an engagement on Monday from lunch till dinner. Apart from that, I know of nothing that will take us farther than for our daily walk, which, you know, begins at two. But we will alter the order of any day for the sake of seeing you. Mr. Lewes's absence of a fortnight at Spa was a great success. He has been quite brilliant ever since. Ten days ago we returned from a stay of three weeks in the country--chiefly at Littlehampton, and we are both very well. Everything is prosperous with us; and we are so far from griefs that if we had a wonderful emerald ring we should perhaps be wise to throw it away as a propitiation of the envious gods. So much in immediate reply to your kind anxiety. Everything else when we meet. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Oct. 31._--Finished Part VII., having determined to end at the point where Romola has left Florence. _Nov. 14._--Finished reading "Boccaccio" through for the second time. _Nov. 17._--Read the "Orfeo and Stanze" of Poliziano. The latter are wonderfully fine for a youth of sixteen. They contain a description of a Palace of Venus, which seems the suggestion of Tennyson's Palace of Art in many points. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Nov. 1862.] I wish I knew that this birthday has found you happier than any that went before. There are so many things--best things--that only come when youth is past that it may well happen to many of us to find ourselves happier and happier to the last. We have been to a Monday Pop. this week to hear Beethoven's Septett, and an amazing thing of Bach's, played by the amazing Joachim. But there is too much "Pop." for the thorough enjoyment of the chamber music they give. You will be interested to know that there is a new muster of scientific and philosophic men lately established, for the sake of bringing people who care to know and speak the truth, as well as they can, into regular communication. Mr. Lewes was at the first meeting at Clunn's Hotel on Friday last. The plan is to meet and dine moderately and cheaply, and no one is to be admitted who is not "thorough" in the sense of being free from the suspicion of temporizing and professing opinions on official grounds. The plan was started at Cambridge. Mr. Huxley is president and Charles Kingsley is vice. If they are sufficiently rigid about admissions, the club may come to good--bringing together men who think variously, but have more hearty feelings in common than they give each other credit for. Mr. Robert Chambers (who lives in London now) is very warm about the matter. Mr. Spencer, too, is a member. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 26th Nov. 1862.] Pray don't ever ask me again not to rob a man of his religious belief, as if you thought my mind tended to such robbery. I have too profound a conviction of the efficacy that lies in all sincere faith, and the spiritual blight that comes with no faith, to have any negative propagandism in me. In fact I have very little sympathy with Freethinkers as a class, and have lost all interest in mere antagonism to religious doctrines. I care only to know, if possible, the lasting meaning that lies in all religious doctrine from the beginning till now. That speech of Carlyle's,[35] which sounds so odious, must, I think, have been provoked by something in the _manner_ of the statement to which it came as an answer--else it would hurt me very much that he should have uttered it. You left a handkerchief at our house. I will take care of it till next summer. I look forward with some longing to that time when I shall have lightened my soul of one chief thing I wanted to do, and be freer to think and feel about other people's work. We shall see you oftener, I hope, and have a great deal more talk than ever we have had before to make amends for our stinted enjoyment of you this summer. God bless you, dear Barbara. You are very precious to us. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Nov. 30_ (Sunday).--Finished Part VIII. Mr. Burton came. _Dec. 16._--In the evening Browning paid us a visit for the first time. _Dec. 17._--At page 22 only. I am extremely spiritless, dead, and hopeless about my writing. The long state of headache has left me in depression and incapacity. The constantly heavy-clouded and often wet weather tend to increase the depression. I am inwardly irritable, and unvisited by good thoughts. Reading the "Purgatorio" again, and the "Compendium Revelationum" of Savonarola. After this record I read aloud what I had written of Part IX. to George, and he, to my surprise, entirely approved of it. _Dec. 24._--Mrs. F. Malleson brought me a beautiful plant as a Christmas offering. In the evening we went to hear the Messiah at Her Majesty's Theatre. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 24th Dec. 1862.] I am very sensitive to words and looks and all signs of sympathy, so you may be sure that your kind wishes are not lost upon me. As you will have your house full, the wish for a "Merry Christmas" may be literally fulfilled for you. We shall be quieter, with none but our family trio, but that is always a happy one. We are going to usher in the day by hearing the Messiah to-night at Her Majesty's. Evening will be a pleasanter time for a little genial talk than "calling hours;" and if you will come to us without ceremony, you will hardly run the risk of not finding us. We go nowhere except to concerts. We are longing to run away from London, but I dare say we shall not do so before March. Winter is probably yet to come, and one would not like to be caught by frost and snow away from one's own hearth. Always believe, without my saying it, that it gladdens me to know when anything I do has value for you. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Dec. 1862.] It is very sweet to me to have any proof of loving remembrance. That would have made the book-marker precious even if it had been ugly. But it is perfectly beautiful--in color, words, and symbols. Hitherto I have been discontented with the Coventry book-marks; for at the shop where we habitually see them they have all got--"Let the people praise Thee, O God," on them, and nothing else. But I can think of no motto better than those three words. I suppose no wisdom the world will ever find out will make Paul's words obsolete--"Now abide, etc., but the greatest of these is Charity." Our Christmas, too, has been quiet. Mr. Lewes, who talks much less about goodness than I do, but is always readier to do the right thing, thinks it rather wicked for us to eat our turkey and plum-pudding without asking some forlorn person to eat it with us. But I'm afraid we were glad, after all, to find ourselves alone with "the boy." On Christmas-eve a sweet woman, remembering me as you have done, left a beautiful plant at the door, and after that we went to hear the Messiah at Her Majesty's. We felt a considerable _minus_ from the absence of the organ, contrary to advertisement: nevertheless it was good to be there. What pitiable people those are who feel no poetry in Christianity! Surely the acme of poetry hitherto is the conception of the suffering Messiah and the final triumph, "He shall reign for ever and for ever." The Prometheus is a very imperfect fore-shadowing of that symbol wrought out in the long history of the Jewish and Christian ages. Mr. Lewes and I have both been in miserable health during all this month. I have had a fortnight's incessant _malaise_ and feebleness; but as I had had many months of tolerable health, it was my turn to be uncomfortable. If my book-marker were just a little longer, I should keep it in my beautiful Bible in large print, which Mr. Lewes bought for me in prevision for my old age. He is not fond of reading the Bible himself, but "sees no harm" in my reading it. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 29th Dec. 1862.] I am not quite sure what you mean by "charity" when you call it humbug. If you mean that attitude of mind which says "I forgive my fellow-men for not being as good as I am," I agree with you in hoping that it will vanish, as also the circumstantial form of alms-giving. But if you are alluding to anything in my letter, I meant what charity meant in the elder English, and what the translators of the Bible meant in their rendering of the thirteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians--_Caritas_, the highest love or fellowship, which I am happy to believe that no philosophy will expel from the world. [Sidenote: Journal, 1862.] _Dec. 31_ (Last day of the kind old year).--Clear and pleasantly mild. Yesterday a pleasant message from Mr. Hannay about "Romola." We have had many blessings this year. Opportunities which have enabled us to acquire an abundant independence; the satisfactory progress of our two eldest boys; various grounds of happiness in our work; and ever-growing happiness in each other. I hope with trembling that the coming year may be as comforting a retrospect--with trembling because my work is not yet done. Besides the finishing of "Romola," we have to think of Thornie's passing his final examination, and, in case of success, his going out to India; of Bertie's leaving Hofwyl, and of our finding a new residence. I have had more than my average amount of comfortable health until this last month, in which I have been constantly ailing, and my work has suffered proportionately. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d Feb. 1863.] The letter with the one word in it, like a whisper of sympathy, lay on my plate when I went down to lunch this morning. The generous movement that made you send it has gladdened me all day. I have had a great deal of pretty encouragement from immense big-wigs--some of them saying "Romola" is the finest book they ever read; but the opinion of big-wigs has one sort of value, and the fellow-feeling of a long known friend has another. One can't do quite well without both. _En revanche_, I am a feeble wretch, with eyes that threaten to get bloodshot on the slightest provocation. We made a rush to Dorking for a day or two, and the quiet and fresh air seemed to make a new creature of me; but when we get back to town, town sensations return. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th March, 1863.] That scheme of a sort of Philosophical Club that I told you of went to pieces before it was finished, like a house of cards. So it will be to the end, I fancy, with all attempts at combinations that are not based either on material interests or on opinions that are not merely opinions but _religion_. Doubtless you have been interested in the Colenso correspondence, and perhaps in Miss Cobbe's rejoinder to Mrs. Stowe's remonstrating answer to the women of England. I was glad to see how free the answer was from all tartness or conceit. Miss Cobbe's introduction to the new edition of Theodore Parker is also very honorable to her--a little too metaphorical here and there, but with real thought and good feeling. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 18th April, 1863.] It is a comfort to hear of you again, and to know that there is no serious trouble to mar the spring weather for you. I must carry that thought as my consolation for not seeing you on Tuesday--not quite a sufficient consolation, for my eyes desire you very much after these long months of almost total separation. The reason I cannot have that pleasure on Tuesday is that, according to a long arranged plan, I am going on Monday to Dorking again for a fortnight. I should be still more vexed to miss you if I were in better condition, but at present I am rather like a shell-less lobster, and inclined to creep out of sight. I shall write to you, or try to see you, as soon as I can after my return. I wish you could have told me of a more decided return to ordinary health in Mr. Congreve, but I am inclined to hope that the lecturing may rather benefit than injure him, by being a moral tonic. How much there is for us to talk about! But only to look at dear faces that one has seen so little of for a long while seems reason enough for wanting to meet. Mr. Lewes is better than usual just now, and you must not suppose that there is anything worse the matter with me than you have been used to seeing in me. Please give my highest regards to Mr. Congreve, and love to Emily, who, I hope, has quite got back the roses which had somewhat paled. My pen straggles as if it had a stronger will than I. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 28th April, 1863, from Dorking.] Glad you enjoyed "Esmond." It is a fine book. Since you have been interested in the historical suggestions, I recommend you to read Thackeray's "Lectures on the English Humorists," which are all about the men of the same period. There is a more exaggerated estimate of Swift and Addison than is implied in "Esmond;" and the excessive laudation of men who are considerably below the tip-top of human nature, both in their lives and genius, rather vitiates the Lectures, which are otherwise admirable, and are delightful reading. The wind is high and cold, making the sunshine seem hard and unsympathetic. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _May 6._--We have just returned from Dorking, whither I went a fortnight ago to have solitude while George took his journey to Hofwyl to see Bertie. The weather was severely cold for several days of my stay, and I was often ailing. That has been the way with me for a month and more, and in consequence I am backward with my July number of "Romola"--the last part but one. I remember my wife telling me, at Witley, how cruelly she had suffered at Dorking from working under a leaden weight at this time. The writing of "Romola" ploughed into her more than any of her other books. She told me she could put her finger on it as marking a well-defined transition in her life. In her own words, "I began it a young woman--I finished it an old woman." [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 12th May, 1863.] Yes! we shall be in town in June. Your coming would be reason good enough, but we have others--chiefly, that we are up to the ears in boydom and imperious parental duties. All is as happy and prosperous with us as heart can lawfully desire, except my health. I have been a mere wretch for several months past. You will come to me like the morning sunlight, and make me a little less of a flaccid cabbage-plant. It is a very pretty life you are leading at Hastings, with your painting all morning, and fair mothers and children to look at the rest of the day. I am terribly frightened about Mrs. ----. She wrote to me, telling me that we were sure to suit each other, neither of us holding the opinions of the _Moutons de Panurge_. Nothing could have been more decisive of the opposite prospect to me. If there is one attitude more odious to me than any other of the many attitudes of "knowingness," it is that air of lofty superiority to the vulgar. However, she will soon find out that I am a very commonplace woman. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _May 16._--Finished Part XIII. Killed Tito in great excitement. _May 18._--Began Part XIV.--the last! Yesterday George saw Count Arrivabene, who wishes to translate "Romola," and says the Italians are indebted to me. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1st June, 1863.] Health seems, to those who want it, enough to make daylight a gladness. But the explanation of evils is never consoling except to the explainer. We are just as we were, thinking about the questionable house (The Priory), and wondering what would be the right thing to do; hardly liking to lock up any money in land and bricks, and yet frightened lest we should not get a quiet place just when we want it. But I dare say we shall have it after all. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _June 6._--We had a little evening party with music, intended to celebrate the completion of "Romola," which, however, is not absolutely completed, for I have still to alter the epilogue. _June 9._--Put the last stroke to "Romola." _Ebenezer!_ Went in the evening to hear La Gazza Ladra. The manuscript of "Romola" bears the following inscription: "To the Husband whose perfect love has been the best source of her insight and strength, this manuscript is given by his devoted wife, the writer." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th June, 1863.] How impossible it is for strong, healthy people to understand the way in which bodily _malaise_ and suffering eats at the root of one's life! The philosophy that is true--the religion that is strength to the healthy--is constantly emptiness to one when the head is distracted and every sensation is oppressive. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _June 16._--George and I set off to-day to the Isle of Wight, where we had a delightful holiday. On Friday, the 19th, we settled for a week at Niton, which, I think, is the prettiest place in all the island. On the following Friday we went on to Freshwater, and failed, from threatening rain, in an attempt to walk to Alum Bay, so that we rather repented of our choice. The consolation was that we shall know better than to go to Freshwater another time. On the Saturday morning we drove to Ryde, and remained there until Monday the 29th. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st June, 1863.] Your letter was a welcome addition to our sunshine this Sabbath morning. For in this particular we seem to have been more fortunate than you, having had almost constant sunshine since we arrived at Sandown, on Tuesday evening. This place is perfect, reminding me of Jersey, in its combination of luxuriant greenth with the delights of a sandy beach. At the _end_ of our week, if the weather is warmer, we shall go on to Freshwater for our remaining few days. But the wind at present is a little colder than one desires it, when the object is to get rid of a cough, and unless it gets milder we shall go back to Shanklin. I am enjoying the hedge-row grasses and flowers with something like a released prisoner's feeling--it is so long since I had a bit of real English country. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 21st June, 1863.] I am very happy in my holiday, finding quite a fresh charm in the hedge-row grasses and flowers after my long banishment from them. We have a flower-garden just round us, and then a sheltered grassy walk, on which the sun shines through the best part of the day; and then a wide meadow, and beyond that trees and the sea. Moreover, our landlady has cows, and we get the quintessence of cream--excellent bread and butter also, and a young lady, with a large crinoline, to wait upon us--all for 25_s._ per week; or, rather, we get the apartment in which we enjoy those primitive and modern blessings for that moderate sum. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _July 4._--Went to see Ristori in Adrienne Lecouvreur and did not like it. I have had hemicrania for several days, and have been almost idle since my return home. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 11th July, 1863.] Constant languor from the new heat has made me shirk all exertion not imperative. And just now there are not only those excitements of the season, which even we quiet people get our share of, but there is an additional boy to be cared for--Thornie, who is this week passing his momentous examination. A pretty thing has happened to an acquaintance of mine, which is quite a tonic to one's hope. She has all her life been working hard in various ways, as house-keeper, governess, and several et ceteras that I can't think of at this moment--a dear little dot, about four feet eleven in height; pleasant to look at, and clever; a working-woman, without any of those epicene queernesses that belong to the class. Her life has been a history of family troubles, and she has that susceptible nature which makes such troubles hard to bear. More than once she has told me that courage quite forsook her. She felt as if there were no good in living and striving; it was difficult to discern or believe in any results for others, and there seemed none worth having for herself. Well! a man of fortune and accomplishments has just fallen in love with her, now she is thirty-three. It is the prettiest story of a swift decided passion, and made me cry for joy. Madame Bodichon and I went with her to buy her wedding-clothes. The future husband is also thirty-three--old enough to make his selection an honor. Fond of travelling and science and other good things, such as a man deserves to be fond of who chooses a poor woman in the teeth of grand relatives: brought up a Unitarian, just turned Catholic. If you will only imagine everything I have not said, you will think this a very charming fairy tale. We are going this evening to see the French actress in Juliet (Stella Colas), who is astonishing the town. Last week we saw Ristori, the other night heard the Faust, and next week we are going to hear the Elisir d'Amore and Faust again! So you see we are trying to get some compensation for the necessity of living among bricks in this sweet summer time. I can bear the opera better than any other evening entertainment, because the house is airy and the stalls are comfortable. The opera is a great, great product--pity we can't always have fine _Weltgeschichtliche_ dramatic motives wedded with fine music, instead of trivialities or hideousnesses. Perhaps this last is too strong a word for anything except the Traviata. Rigoletto is unpleasant, but it is a superlatively fine tragedy in the Nemesis. I think I don't know a finer. We are really going to buy the Priory after all. You would think it very pretty if you saw it now, with the roses blooming about it. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _July 12._--I am now in the middle of G.'s "Aristotle," which gives me great delight. _July 23._--Reading Mommsen and Story's "Roba di Roma;" also Liddell's "Rome," for a narrative to accompany Mommsen's analysis. _July 29._--In the evening we went to Covent Garden to hear Faust for the third time. On our return we found a letter from Frederick Maurice--the greatest, most generous tribute ever given to me in my life.[36] [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 30th July, 1863.] I have wanted for several days to make some feeble sign in writing that I think of your trouble. But one claim after another has arisen as a hinderance. Conceive us, please, with three boys at home, all bigger than their father! It is a congestion of youthfulness on our mature brains that disturbs the course of our lives a little, and makes us think of most things as good to be deferred till the boys are settled again. I tell you so much to make you understand that "omission" is not with me equivalent to "neglect," and that I _do_ care for what happens to you. Renan is a favorite with me. I feel more kinship with his mind than with that of any other living French author. But I think I shall not do more than look through the Introduction to his "Vie de Jésus"--unless I happen to be more fascinated by the constructive part than I expect to be from the specimens I have seen. For minds acquainted with the European culture of this last half-century, Renan's book can furnish no new result; and they are likely to set little store by the too facile construction of a life from materials of which the biographical significance becomes more dubious as they are more closely examined. It seems to me the soul of Christianity lies not at all in the facts of an individual life, but in the ideas of which that life was the meeting-point and the new starting-point. We can never have a satisfactory basis for the history of the man Jesus, but that negation does not affect the Idea of the Christ either in its historical influence or its great symbolic meanings. Still, such books as Renan's have their value in helping the popular imagination to feel that the sacred past is, of one woof with that human present, which ought to be sacred too. You mention Renan in your note, and the mention has sent me off into rather gratuitous remarks, you perceive. But such scrappy talk about great subjects may have a better excuse than usual, if it just serves to divert your mind from the sad things that must be importuning you now. [Sidenote: Letter to R. H. Hutton, 8th Aug. 1863.] After reading your article on "Romola," with careful reference to the questions you put to me in your letter, I can answer sincerely that I find nothing fanciful in your interpretation. On the contrary, I am confirmed in the satisfaction I felt, when I first listened to the article, at finding that certain chief elements of my intention have impressed themselves so strongly on your mind, notwithstanding the imperfect degree in which I have been able to give form to my ideas. Of course, if I had been called on to expound my own book, there are other things that I should want to say, or things that I should say somewhat otherwise; but I can point to nothing in your exposition of which my consciousness tells me that it is erroneous, in the sense of saying something which I neither thought nor felt. You have seized with a fulness which I had hardly hoped that my book could suggest, what it was my effort to express in the presentation of Bardo and Baldasarre; and also the relation of the Florentine political life to the development of Tito's nature. Perhaps even a judge so discerning as yourself could not infer from the imperfect result how strict a self-control and selection were exercised in the presentation of details. I believe there is scarcely a phrase, an incident, an allusion, that did not gather its value to me from its supposed subservience to my main artistic objects. But it is likely enough that my mental constitution would always render the issue of my labor something excessive--wanting due proportion. It is the habit of my imagination to strive after as full a vision of the medium in which a character moves as of the character itself. The psychological causes which prompted me to give such details of Florentine life and history as I have given, are precisely the same as those which determined me in giving the details of English village life in "Silas Marner," or the "Dodson" life, out of which were developed the destinies of poor Tom and Maggie. But you have correctly pointed out the reason why my tendency to excess in this effort after artistic vision makes the impression of a fault in "Romola" much more perceptibly than in my previous books. And I am not surprised at your dissatisfaction with Romola herself. I can well believe that the many difficulties belonging to the treatment of such a character have not been overcome, and that I have failed to bring out my conception with adequate fulness. I am sorry she has attracted you so little; for the great problem of her life, which essentially coincides with a chief problem in Savonarola's, is one that readers need helping to understand. But with regard to that and to my whole book, my predominant feeling is--not that I have achieved anything, but--that great, great facts have struggled to find a voice through me, and have only been able to speak brokenly. That consciousness makes me cherish the more any proof that my work has been seen to have some true significance by minds prepared not simply by instruction, but by that religious and moral sympathy with the historical life of man which is the larger half of culture. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _Aug. 10._--Went to Worthing. A sweet letter from Mrs. Hare, wife of Julius Hare, and Maurice's sister. _Aug. 18._--Returned home much invigorated by the week of change, but my spirits seem to droop as usual now I am in London again. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 19th Aug. 1863.] I was at Worthing when your letter came, spending all my daylight hours out-of-doors, and trying with all my might to get health and cheerfulness. I will tell you the true reason why I did not go to Hastings. I thought you would be all the better for not having that solicitation of your kindness that the fact of my presence there might have caused. What you needed was precisely to get away from people to whom you would inevitably want to be doing something friendly, instead of giving yourself up to passive enjoyment. Else, of course, I should have liked everything you write about and invite me to. We only got home last night, and I suppose we shall hardly be able to leave town again till after the two younger boys have left us, and after we have moved into the new house. Since I saw you I have had some sweet woman's tenderness shown me by Mrs. Hare, the widow of Archdeacon Hare, and the sister of Frederick Maurice. I _know_ how you are enjoying the country. I have just been having the joy myself. The wide sky, the _not_ London, makes a new creature of me in half an hour. I wonder, then, why I am ever depressed--why I am so shaken by agitations. I come back to London, and again the air is full of demons. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray and Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Sept. 1863.] I think I get a little freshness from the breeze that blows on you--a little lifting of heart from your wide sky and Welsh mountains. And the edge of autumn on the morning air makes even London a place in which one can believe in beauty and delight. Delicate scent of dried rose-leaves and the coming on of the autumnal airs are two things that make me feel happy before I know why. The Priory is all scaffolding and paint; and we are still in a nightmare of uncertainty about our boys. But then I have by my side a dear companion, who is a perpetual fountain of courage and cheerfulness, and of considerate tenderness for my lack of those virtues. And besides that I have Roman history! Perhaps that sounds like a bitter joke to you, who are looking at the sea and sky and not thinking of Roman history at all. But this too, read aright, has its gospel and revelation. I read it much as I used to read a chapter in the Acts or Epistles. Mommsen's "History of Rome" is so fine that I count all minds graceless who read it without the deepest stirrings. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, Oct. 1863.] I cannot be quite easy without sending this little sign of love and good wishes on the eve of your journey. I shall think of you with all the more delight, because I shall imagine you winding along the Riviera and then settling in sight of beautiful things not quite unknown to me. I hope your life will be enriched very much by these coming months; but above all, I hope that Mr. Congreve will come back strong. Tell him I have been greatly moved by the "Discours Préliminaire."[37] [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Oct. 1863.] If I wait to write until I have anything very profitable to say, you will have time to think that I have forgotten you or else to forget me--and both consequences would be unpleasant to me. Well, our poor boy Thornie parted from us to-day and set out on his voyage to Natal. I say "poor," as one does about all beings that are gone away from us for a long while. But he went away in excellent spirits, with a large packet of recommendatory letters to all sorts of people, and with what he cares much more for, a first-rate rifle and revolver--and already with a smattering of Dutch Zulu, picked up from his grammars and dictionaries. What are you working at, I wonder? Cara says you are writing; and, though I desire not to ask prying questions, I should feel much joy in your being able to tell me that you are at work on something which gives you a life apart from circumstantial things. I am taking a deep bath of other people's thoughts, and all doings of my own seem a long way off me. But my bath will be sorely interrupted soon by the miserable details of removal from one house to another. Happily Mr. Owen Jones has undertaken the ornamentation of the drawing-room, and will prescribe all about chairs, etc. I think, after all, I like a clean kitchen better than any other room. We are far on in correcting the proofs of the new edition of "Goethe," and are about to begin the printing of the "Aristotle," which is to appear at Christmas or Easter. [Sidenote: Journal, 1863.] _Nov. 5._--We moved into our new house--The Priory, 21 North Bank, Regent's Park. _Nov. 14._--We are now nearly in order, only wanting a few details of furniture to finish our equipment for a new stage in our life's journey. I long very much to have done thinking of upholstery, and to get again a consciousness that there are better things than that to reconcile one with life. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 14th Nov. 1863.] At last we are in our new home, with only a few details still left to arrange. Such fringing away of precious life, in thinking of carpets and tables, is an affliction to me, and seems like a nightmare from which I shall find it bliss to awake into my old world of care for things quite apart from upholstery. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 28th Nov. 1863.] I have kissed your letter in sign of my joy at getting it. But the cold draughts of your Florentine room came across my joy rather harshly. I know you have good reasons for what you do, yet I cannot help saying, Why do you stay at Florence, the city of draughts rather than of flowers? Mr. Congreve's suffering during the journey and your suffering in watching him saddens me as I think of it. For a long while to come I suppose human energy will be greatly taken up with resignation rather than action. I wish my feeling for you could travel by some helpful vibrations good for pains. For ourselves, we have enough ease now to be able to give some of it away. But our removal into our new home on the 5th of November was not so easy as it might have been, seeing that I was only half recovered from a severe attack of influenza, which had caused me more terrible pains in the head and throat than I have known for years. However, the crisis is past now, and we think our little home altogether charming and comfortable. Mr. Owen Jones has been unwearied in taking trouble that everything about us may be pretty. He stayed two nights till after twelve o'clock, that he might see every engraving hung in the right place; and as you know I care even more about the fact of kindness than its effects, you will understand that I enjoy being grateful for all this friendliness on our behalf. But so tardy a business is furnishing, that it was not until Monday last that we had got everything in its place in preparation for the next day--Charlie's twenty-first birthday--which made our house-warming a doubly interesting epoch. I wish your sweet presence could have adorned our drawing-room and made it look still more agreeable in the eyes of all beholders. You would have liked to hear Jansa play on his violin, and you would perhaps have been amused to see an affectionate but dowdy friend of yours splendid in a gray moire antique--the consequence of a severe lecture from Owen Jones on her general neglect of personal adornment. I am glad to have got over this crisis of maternal and house-keeping duty. My soul never flourishes on attention to details which others can manage quite gracefully without any conscious loss of power for wider thoughts and cares. Before we began to move I was swimming in Comte and Euripides and Latin Christianity: _now_ I am sitting among puddles, and can get sight of no deep water. _Now_ I have a mind made up of old carpets fitted in new places, and new carpets suffering from accidents; chairs, tables, and prices; muslin curtains and down draughts in cold chimneys. I have made a vow never to think of my own furniture again, but only of other people's. [Illustration: Drawing-room at the Priory.] [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 4th Dec. 1863.] The book[38] is come, with its precious inscription, and I have read a great piece of it already (11 A.M.), besides looking through it to get an idea of its general plan. See how fascination shifts its quarter as our life goes on! I cannot be induced to lay aside my regular books for half an hour to read "Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings," but I pounce on a book like yours, which tries to tell me as much as it can in brief space of the "natural order," and am seduced into making it my after-breakfast reading instead of the work I had prescribed for myself in that pleasant quiet time. I read so slowly and read so few books that this small fact among my small habits seems a great matter to me. I thank you, dear Cara, not simply for giving me the book, but for having put so much faithful labor in a worthy direction, and created a lasting benefit which I can share with others. Whether the circulation of a book be large or small, there is always this supreme satisfaction about solid honest work, that as far as it goes its effect must be good, and as all effects spread immeasurably, what we have to care for is _kind_ and not quantity. I am a shabby correspondent, being in ardent practice of the piano just now, which makes my days shorter than usual. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 4th Dec. 1863.] I am rather ashamed to hear of any one trying to be useful just now, for I am doing nothing but indulging myself--enjoying being petted very much, enjoying great books, enjoying our new, pretty, quiet home, and the study of Beethoven's sonatas for piano and violin, with the mild-faced old Jansa, and not being at all unhappy as you imagine me. I sit taking deep draughts of reading--"Politique Positive," Euripides, Latin Christianity, and so forth, and remaining in glorious ignorance of "the current literature." Such is our life; and you perceive that instead of being miserable, I am rather following a wicked example, and saying to my soul, "Soul, take thine ease." I am sorry to think of you without any artistic society to help you and feed your faith. It is hard to believe long together that anything is "worth while," unless there is some eye to kindle in common with our own, some brief word uttered now and then to imply that what is infinitely precious to us is precious alike to another mind. I fancy that to do without that guarantee one must be rather insane--one must be a bad poet, or a spinner of impossible theories, or an inventor of impossible machinery. However, it is but brief space either of time or distance that divides you from those who thoroughly share your cares and joys--always excepting that portion which is the hidden private lot of every human being. In the most entire confidence even of husband and wife there is always the unspoken residue--the _undivined_ residue--perhaps of what is most sinful, perhaps of what is most exalted and unselfish. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Dec. 1863.] I get less and less inclined to write any but the briefest letters. My books seem to get so far off me when once I have written them, that I should be afraid of looking into "The Mill;" but it was written faithfully and with intense feeling when it was written, so I will hope that it will do no mortal any harm. I am indulging myself frightfully; reading everything except the "current literature," and getting more and more out of _rapport_ with the public taste. I have read Renan's book, however, which has proved to be eminently _in_ the public taste. It will have a good influence on the whole, I imagine; but this "Vie de Jésus," and still more, Renan's "Letter to Berthelot" in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, have compelled me to give up the high estimate I had formed of his mind. Judging from the indications in some other writings of his, I had reckoned him among the finest thinkers of the time. Still, his "Life of Jesus" has so much artistic merit that it will do a great deal towards the culture of ordinary minds, by giving them a sense of unity between that far off past and our present. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 26th Dec. 1863.] We are enjoying our new house--enjoying its quiet and freedom from perpetual stair-mounting--enjoying also the prettiness of coloring and arrangement; all of which we owe to our dear good friend, Mr. Owen Jones. He has determined every detail, so that we can have the pleasure of admiring what is our own without vanity. And another magnificent friend has given me the most splendid reclining chair conceivable, so that I am in danger of being envied by the gods, especially as my health is thoroughly good withal. I should like to be sure that you are just as comfortable externally and internally. I dare say you are, being less of a cormorant in your demands on life than I am; and it is _that_ difference which chiefly distinguishes human lots when once the absolute needs are satisfied. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 28th Dec. 1863.] Your affectionate greeting comes as one of the many blessings that are brightening this happy Christmas. We have been giving our evenings up to parental duties--_i.e._, to games and music for the amusement of the youngsters. I am wonderfully well in body, but rather in a self-indulgent state mentally, saying, "Soul, take thine ease," after a dangerous example. Of course I shall be glad to see your fair face whenever it can shine upon me; but I can well imagine, with your multitudinous connections, Christmas and the New Year are times when all _unappointed_ visits must be impossible to you. All good to you and yours through the coming year! and amongst the good may you continue to feel some love for me; for love is one of the conditions in which it is even better to give than to receive. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 19th Jan. 1864.] According to your plans you must be in Rome. I have been in good spirits about you ever since I last heard from you, and the foggy twilight which, for the last week, has followed the severe frost, has made me rejoice the more that you are in a better climate and amongst lovelier scenes than we are groping in. I please myself with thinking that you will all come back with stores of strength and delightful memories. Only, if this were the best of all possible worlds, Mr. Lewes and I should be able to meet you in some beautiful place before you turn your backs on Italy. As it is, there is no hope of such a meeting. March is Charlie's holiday month, and when he goes out we like to stay at home for the sake of recovering for that short time our unbroken _tête-à-tête_. We have every reason to be cheerful if the fog would let us. Last night I finished reading the last proofs of the "Aristotle," which makes an octavo volume of rather less than 400 pages. I think it is a book which will be interesting and valuable to the few, but perhaps _only_ to the few. However, George's happiness in writing his books makes him less dependent than most authors on the audience they find. He felt that a thorough account of Aristotle's science was a bit of work which needed doing, and he has given his utmost pains to do it worthily. These are the two most important conditions of authorship; all the rest belong to the "less modifiable" order of things. I have been playing energetically on the piano lately, and taking lessons in accompanying the violin from Herr Jansa, one of the old Beethoven Quartette players. It has given me a fresh kind of muscular exercise, as well as nervous stimulus, and, I think, has done its part towards making my health better. In fact I am very well physically. I wish I could be as clever and active as you about our garden, which might be made much prettier this spring if I had judgment and industry enough to do the right thing. But it is a native vice of mine to like all such matters attended to by some one else, and to fold my arms and enjoy the result. Some people are born to make life pretty, and others to grumble that it is not pretty enough. But pray make a point of liking me in spite of my deficiencies. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 21st Jan. 1864.] I comfort myself with the belief that your nature is less rebellious under trouble than mine--less craving and discontented. Resignation to trial, which can never have a _personal_ compensation, is a part of our life task which has been too much obscured for us by unveracious attempts at universal consolation. I think we should be more tender to each other while we live, if that wretched falsity which makes men quite comfortable about their fellows' troubles were thoroughly got rid of. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Jan. 1864.] I often imagine you, not without a little longing, turning out into the fields whenever you list, as we used to do in the old days at Rosehill. That power of turning out into the fields is a great possession in life--worth many luxuries. Here is a bit of news not, I think, too insignificant for you to tell Cara. The other day Mr. Spencer, senior (Herbert Spencer's father), called on us, and knowing that he has been engaged in education all his life, that he is a man of extensive and accurate knowledge, and that, on his son's showing, he is a very able teacher, I showed him Cara's "British Empire." Yesterday Herbert Spencer came, and on my inquiring told me that his father was pleased with Cara's book, and thought highly of it. Such testimonies as this, given apart from personal influence and by a practised judge, are, I should think, more gratifying than any other sort of praise to all faithful writers. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _Jan. 30._--We had Browning, Dallas, and Burton to dine with us, and in the evening a gentlemen's party. _Feb. 14._--Mr. Burton dined with us, and asked me to let him take my portrait. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 3d March, 1864.] It was pleasant to have news of you through the fog, which reduces my faith in all good and lovely things to its lowest ebb. I hope you are less abjectly under the control of the skyey influences than I am. The soul's calm sunshine in me is half made up of the outer sunshine. However, we are going on Friday to hear the Judas Maccabæus, and Handel's music always brings me a revival. I have had a great personal loss lately in the death of a sweet woman,[39] to whom I have sometimes gone, and hoped to go again, for a little moral strength. She had long been confined to her room by consumption, which has now taken her quite out of reach except to memory, which makes all dear human beings undying to us as long as we ourselves live. I am glad to know that you have been interested in "David Gray."[40] It is good for us all that these true stories should be well told. Even those to whom the power of helping rarely comes, have their imaginations instructed so as to be more just and tender in their thoughts about the lot of their fellows. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th March, 1864.] I felt it long since I had had news from you, but my days go by, each seeming too short for what I must do, and I don't like to molest you with mere questions. I have been spoiled for correspondence by Mr. Lewes's goodness in always writing letters for me where a proxy is admissible. And so it has come to be a great affair with me to write even a note, while people who keep up a large correspondence, and set apart their hour for it, find it easy to cover reams of paper with talk from the end of the pen. You say nothing of yourself, which is rather unkind. We are enjoying a perfect _tête à tête_. On Friday we are going to hear the Judas Maccabæus, and try if possible to be stirred to something heroic by "Sound an alarm." I was more sorry than it is usually possible to be about the death of a person utterly unknown to me, when I read of Maria Martineau's death. She was a person whose office in life seemed so thoroughly defined and so valuable. For an invalid like Harriet Martineau to be deprived of a beloved nurse and companion, is a sorrow that makes one ashamed of one's small grumblings. But, oh dear, oh dear! when _will_ people leave off their foolish talk about all human lots being equal; as if anybody with a sound stomach ever knew misery comparable to the misery of a dyspeptic. Farewell, dear Sara; be generous, and don't always wait an age in silence because I don't write. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 8th March, 1864.] If you were anybody but yourself I should dislike you, because I have to write letters to you. As it is, your qualities triumph even over the vice of being in Italy (too far off for a note of three lines), and expecting to hear from me, though I fear I should be graceless enough to let you expect in vain if I did not care very much to hear from _you_, and did not find myself getting uneasy when many weeks have been passed in ignorance about you. I do hope to hear that you got your fortnight of sight-seeing before leaving Rome--at least, you would surely go well over the great galleries. If not, I shall be vexed with you, and I shall only be consoled for your not going to Venice by the chance of the Austrians being driven or bought out of it--on no slighter grounds. For I suppose you will not go to Italy again for a long, long while, so as to leave any prospect of the omission being made up for by-and-by. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th March, 1864.] We run off to Scotland for the Easter week, setting out on Sunday evening; so if the spring runs away again, I hope it will run northward. We shall return on Monday, the 4th April. Some news of your inwards and outwards would be acceptable; but don't write unless you really _like_ to write. You see Strauss has come out with a _popular_ "Life of Jesus." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 25th March, 1864.] Fog, east wind, and headache: there is my week's history. But this morning, when your letter came to me, I had got up well and was reading the sorrows of the aged Hecuba with great enjoyment. I wish an immortal drama could be got out of _my_ sorrows, that people might be the better for them two thousand years hence. But fog, east wind, and headache are not great dramatic motives. Your letter was a reinforcement of the delicious sense of _bien être_ that comes with the departure of bodily pain; and I am glad, retrospectively, that beyond our fog lay your moonlight and your view of the glorious sea. It is not difficult to me to believe that you look a new creature already. Mr. Lewes tells me the country air has always a magical effect on me, even in the first hour; but it is not the air alone, is it? It is the wide sky, and the hills, and the wild-flowers which are linked with all calming thoughts, just as every object in town has its perturbing associations. I share your joy in the Federal successes--with that check that attends all joy in a war not absolutely ended. But you have worked and earned more joy than those who have been merely passives. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _April 6._--Mr. Spencer called for the first time after a long correspondence on the subject of his relation to Comte. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th April, 1864.] Yes! I am come back from Scotland--came back last Saturday night. I was much pleased to see Cara so wonderfully well and cheerful. She seems to me ten times more cheerful than in the old days. I am interested to know more about your work which is filling your life now, but I suppose I shall know nothing until it is in print--and perhaps that is the only form in which one can do any one's work full justice. It is very disappointing to me to hear that Cara has at present so little promise of monetary results from her conscientious labor. I fear the fatal system of half profits is working against her as against others. We are going to the opera to-night to hear the Favorita. It was the first opera I ever _saw_ (with you I saw it!), and I have never seen it since--that is the reason I was anxious to go to-night. This afternoon we go to see Mulready's pictures--so the day will be a full one. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _April 18._--We went to the Crystal Palace to see Garibaldi. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 30th April, 1864.] Only think! next Wednesday morning we start for Italy. The move is quite a sudden one. We need a good shake for our bodies and minds, and must take the spring-time, before the weather becomes too hot. We shall not be away more than a month or six weeks at the utmost. Our friend Mr. Burton, the artist, will be our companion for at least part of the time. He has just painted a divine picture, which is now to be seen at the old Water-Color Exhibition. The subject is from a Norse legend; but that is no matter--the picture tells its story. A knight in mailed armor and surcoat has met the fair, tall woman he (secretly) loves, on a turret stair. By an uncontrollable movement he has seized her arm and is kissing it. She, amazed, has dropped the flowers she held in her other hand. The subject might have been made the most vulgar thing in the world--the artist has raised it to the highest pitch of refined emotion. The kiss is on the fur-lined _sleeve_ that covers the arm, and the face of the knight is the face of a man to whom the kiss is a sacrament. How I should like a good long talk with you! From what you say of your book that is to come, I expect to be very much interested in it. I think I hardly ever read a book of the kind you describe without getting some help from it. It is to this strong influence that is felt in all personal statements of inward experience that we must perhaps refer the excessive publication of religious journals. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _May 4._--We started for Italy with Mr. Burton. _June 20._--Arrived at our pretty home again after an absence of seven weeks. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 25th June, 1864.] Your letter has affected me deeply. Thank you very much for writing it. It seems as if a close view of almost every human lot would disclose some suffering that makes life a doubtful good--except perhaps at certain epochs of fresh love, fresh creative activity, or unusual power of helping others. One such epoch we are witnessing in a young life that is very near to us. Our "boy" Charles has just become engaged, and it is very pretty to see the happiness of a pure first love, full at present of nothing but promise. It will interest you to know that the young lady who has won his heart, and seems to have given him her own with equal ardor and entireness, is the grand-daughter of Dr. Southwood Smith, whom he adopted when she was three years old, and brought up under his own eye. She is very handsome, and has a splendid contralto voice. Altogether Pater and I rejoice--for though the engagement has taken place earlier than we expected, or should perhaps have chosen, there are counterbalancing advantages. I always hoped Charlie would be able to choose or rather find the other half of himself by the time he was twenty-three; the event has only come a year and a half sooner. This is the news that greeted us on our return! We had seen before we went that the acquaintance, which was first made eighteen months or more ago, had become supremely interesting to Charlie. Altogether we rejoice. Our journey was delightful in spite of Mr. Lewes's frequent _malaise_; for his cheerful nature is rarely subdued even by bodily discomfort. We saw only one place that we had not seen before--namely, Brescia; but all the rest seemed more glorious to us than they had seemed four years ago. Our course was to Venice, where we stayed a fortnight, pausing only at Paris, Turin and Milan on our way thither, and taking Padua, Verona, Brescia, and again Milan, as points of rest on our way back. Our friend Mr. Burton's company was very stimulating, from his great knowledge, not of pictures only, but of almost all other subjects. He has had the advantage of living in Germany for five or six years, and has gained those large, serious views of history which are a special product of German culture, and this was his first visit to Italy, so you may imagine his eager enjoyment in finding it beautiful beyond his hopes. We crossed the Alps by the St. Gothard, and stayed a day or two at Lucerne; and this, again, was a first sight of Switzerland to him. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, July, 1864.] Looking at my little mats this morning while I was dressing, I felt very grateful for them, and remembered that I had not shown my gratitude when you gave them to me. If I were a "conceited" poet, I should say your presence was the sun, and the mats were the tapers; but now you are away, I delight in the tapers. How pretty the pattern is--and your brain counted it out! They will never be worn quite away while I live, or my little purse for coppers either. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _July 17._--Horrible scepticism about all things paralyzing my mind. Shall I ever be good for anything again? Ever do anything again? _July 19._--Reading Gibbon, Vol. I., in connection with Mosheim, also Gieseler on the condition of the world at the appearance of Christianity. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Aug. 1864.] I am distressed to find that I have let a week pass without writing in answer to your letter, which made me very glad when I got it. Remembering you just a minute ago, I started up from Max Müller's new volume, with which I was consoling myself under a sore throat, and rushed to the desk that I might not risk any further delay. It was just what I wanted to hear about you that you were having some change, and I think the freshness of the companionship must help other good influences, not to speak of the "Apologia," which breathed much life into me when I read it. Pray mark that beautiful passage in which he thanks his friend Ambrose St. John. I know hardly anything that delights me more than such evidences of sweet brotherly love being a reality in the world. I envy you your opportunity of seeing and hearing Newman, and should like to make an expedition to Birmingham for that sole end. My trouble now is George's delicate health. He gets thinner and thinner. He is going to try what horseback will do, and I am looking forward to that with some hope. Our boy's love-story runs smoothly, and seems to promise nothing but good. His attraction to Hampstead gives George and me more of our dear old _tête-à-tête_, which we can't help being glad to recover. Dear Cara and Mr. Bray! I wish they too had joy instead of sadness from the young life they have been caring for these many years. When you write to Cara, or see her, assure her that she is remembered in my most affectionate thoughts, and that I often bring her present experience before my mind--more or less truly--for we can but blunder about each other, we poor mortals. Write to me whenever you can, dear Sara; I should have answered immediately but for sickness, visitors, business, etc. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _Sept. 6.--I am reading about Spain, and trying a drama on a subject that has fascinated me--have written the prologue, and am beginning the First Act. But I have little hope of making anything satisfactory._ _Sept. 13_ to _30_.--Went to Harrogate and Scarborough, seeing York Minster and Peterborough. [Illustration: Fac-simile of George Eliot's hand-writing.] [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Sept. 1864, from Harrogate.] We journeyed hither on Tuesday, and found the place quite as pretty as we expected. The great merit of Harrogate is that one is everywhere close to lovely open walks. Your "plan" has been a delightful reference for Mr. Lewes, who takes it out of his pocket every time we walk. At present, of course, there is not much improvement in health to be boasted of, but we hope that the delicious bracing air, and also the chalybeate waters, which have not yet been tried, will not be without good effect. The journey was long. How hideous those towns of Holbeach and Wakefield are! It is difficult to keep up one's faith in a millennium within sight of this modern civilization which consists in "development of industries." Egypt and her big calm gods seems quite as good. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Sept. 1864, from Scarborough.] We migrated on Friday last from delightful Harrogate, pausing at York to see the glorious Cathedral. The weather is perfect, the sea blue as a sapphire, so that we see to utmost advantage the fine line of coast here and the magnificent breadth of sand. Even the Tenby sands are not so fine as these. Better than all, Mr. Lewes, in spite of a sad check of a few days, is strengthened beyond our most hopeful expectations by this brief trial of fresh conditions. He is wonderful for the rapidity with which he "picks up" after looking alarmingly feeble and even wasted. We paid a visit to Knaresborough the very last day of our stay at Harrogate, and were rejoiced that we had not missed the sight of that pretty characteristic northern town. There is a ruined castle here too, standing just where one's eyes would desire it on a grand line of cliff; but perhaps you know the place. Its only defect is that it is too large, and therefore a little too smoky; but except in Wales or Devonshire I have seen no sea-place on our English coast that has greater natural advantages. I don't know quite why I should write you this note all about ourselves--except that your goodness having helped us to the benefit we have got, I like you to know of the said benefit. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, Sunday, Oct. (?) 1864.] The wished-for opportunity is coming very soon. Next Saturday Charlie will go to Hastings, and will not return till Sunday evening. Will you--can you--arrange to come to us on Saturday to lunch or dinner, and stay with us till Sunday evening? We shall be very proud and happy if you will consent to put up with such travelling quarters as we can give you. You will be rejoicing our hearts by coming, and I know that for the sake of cheering others you would endure even large privations as well as small ones. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, Monday-week following.] What a pure delight it was to have you with us! I feel the better for it in spite of a cold which I caught yesterday--perhaps owing to the loss of your sunny presence all of a sudden. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d Oct. 1864.] It makes me very, very happy to see George so much better, and to return with that chief satisfaction to the quiet comforts of home. We register Harrogate among the places to be revisited. I have had a fit of Spanish history lately, and have been learning Spanish grammar--the easiest of all the Romance grammars--since we have been away. Mr. Lewes has been rubbing up his Spanish by reading Don Quixote in these weeks of _idlesse_; and I have read aloud and translated to him, like a good child. I find it so much easier to learn anything than to feel that I have anything worth teaching. All is perfectly well with us, now the "little Pater" is stronger, and we are especially thankful for Charlie's prospect of marriage. We could not have desired anything more suited to his character and more likely to make his life a good one. But this blessing which has befallen us only makes me feel the more acutely the cutting off of a like satisfaction from the friends I chiefly love. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _Oct. 5._--Finished the first draught of the First Act of my drama, and read it to George. _Oct. 15._--Went to the Maestro (Burton) for a sitting. _Nov. 4._--Read my Second Act to George. It is written in verse--my first serious attempt at blank verse. G. praises and encourages me. _Nov. 10._--I have been at a very low ebb, body and mind, for the last few days, sticking in the mud continually in the construction of my 3d, 4th, and 5th Acts. Yesterday Browning came to tell us of a bust of Savonarola in terra-cotta, just discovered at Florence. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d Nov. 1864.] I believe I have thought of you every day for the last fortnight, and I remembered the birthday--and "everything." But I was a little cross, because I had heard nothing of you since Mr. Bray's visit. And I said to myself, "If she wanted to write she _would_ write." I confess I was a little ashamed when I saw the outside of your letter ten minutes ago, feeling that I should read within it the proof that you were as thoughtful and mindful as ever. Yes, I do heartily give my greeting--_had_ given it already. And I desire very much that the work which is absorbing you may give you some happiness besides that which belongs to the activity of production. It is very kind of you to remember Charlie's date too. He is as happy as the day is long, and very good--one of those creatures to whom goodness comes naturally--not any exalted goodness, but every-day serviceable goodness, such as wears through life. Whereas exalted goodness comes in brief inspirations, and requires a man to die lest he should spoil his work. I have been ill, but now am pretty well, with much to occupy and interest me, and with no trouble except those bodily ailments. I could chat a long while with you--but I restrain myself, because I must not carry on my letter-writing into the "solid day." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, Christmas-day, 1864.] Your precious letter _did_ come last night, and crowned the day's enjoyment. Our family party went off very well, entirely by dint of George's exertions. I wish you had seen him acting charades, and heard him make an after-supper speech. You would have understood all the self-forgetful goodness that lay under the assumption of boyish animal spirits. A horrible German whom I have been obliged to see has been talking for two hours, with the hardest eyes, blind to all possibilities that he was boring us, and so I have been robbed of all the time I wanted for writing to you. I can only say now that I bore you on my heart--you and all yours known to me--even before I had had your letter yesterday. Indeed you are not apart from any delight I have in life: I long always that you should share it, if not otherwise, at least by knowing of it, which to you is a sort of sharing. Our double loves and best wishes for all of you--Rough being included, as I trust you include Ben. Are they not idlers with us? Also a title to regard as well as being _collaborateurs_. [Sidenote: Journal, 1864.] _Dec. 24._--A family party in the evening. _Dec. 25._--I read the Third Act of my drama to George, who praised it highly. We spent a perfectly quiet evening, intending to have our Christmas-day's jollity on Tuesday when the boys are at home. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Jan. 1._--The last year has been unmarked by any trouble except bad health. The bright spots in the year have been the publication of "Aristotle" and our journey to Venice. With me the year has not been fruitful. I have written three Acts of my drama, and am now in a condition of body and mind to make me hope for better things in the coming year. The last quarter has made an epoch for me, by the fact that, for the first time in my serious authorship I have written verse. In each other we are happier than ever. I am more grateful to my dear husband for his perfect love, which helps me in all good and checks me in all evil--more conscious that in him I have the greatest of blessings. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 3d Jan. 1865.] I hope the wish that this New Year may be a happy one to you does not seem to be made a mockery by any troubles or anxieties pressing on you. I enclose a check, which I shall be obliged if you will offer to Mr. Congreve, as I know he prefers that payments should be made at the beginning of the year. I shall think of you on the nineteenth. I wonder how many there really were in that "small upper room" 1866 years ago. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Jan. 8._--Mrs. Congreve staying with us for a couple of nights. Yesterday we went to Mr. Burton's to see my portrait, with which she was much pleased. Since last Monday I have been writing a poem, the matter of which was written in prose three or four years ago--"My Vegetarian Friend." _Jan. 15_ to _25_.--Visit to Paris. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, Friday (?), 27th Jan. 1865.] Are we not happy to have reached home on Wednesday before this real winter came? We enjoyed our visit to Paris greatly, in spite of bad weather, going to the theatre or opera nearly every night, and seeing sights all day long. I think the most interesting sight we saw was Comte's dwelling. Such places, that knew the great dead, always move me deeply; and I had an unexpected sight of interest in the photograph taken at the very last. M. Thomas was very friendly, and pleasant to talk to because of his simple manners. We gave your remembrances to him, and promised to assure you of his pleasure in hearing of you. I wish some truer representation of Mr. Congreve hung up in the Salon instead of that (to me) exasperating photograph. We thought the apartment very _freundlich_, and I flattered myself that I could have written better in the little study there than in my own. Such self-flattery is usually the most amiable phase of discontent with one's own inferiority. I am really stronger for the change. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Jan. 28._--Finished my poem on "Utopias." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 6th Feb. 1865.] I suspect you have come to dislike letters, but until you say so, I must write now and then to gratify myself. I want to send my love, lest all the old messages shall have lost their scent, like old lavender bags. Since I wrote to you last we have actually been to Paris! A little business was an excuse for getting a great deal of pleasure; and I, for whom change of air and scene is always the best tonic, am much brightened by our wintry expedition, which ended just in time for us to escape the heavy fall of snow. We are very happy, having almost recovered our old _tête-à-tête_, of which I am so selfishly fond that I am beginning to feel it an heroic effort when I make up my mind to invite half a dozen visitors. But it is necessary to strive against this unsocial disposition, so we are going to have some open evenings. There is great talk of a new periodical--a fortnightly apparition, partly on the plan of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. Mr. Lewes has consented to become its editor, if the preliminaries are settled so as to satisfy him. _Ecco!_ I have told you a little of our news, not daring to ask you anything about yourself, since you evidently don't want to tell me anything. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 19th Feb. 1865.] The party was a "mull." The weather was bad. Some of the invited were ill and sent regrets, others were not ardent enough to brave the damp evening--in fine, only twelve came. We had a charade, which, like our neighbors, was no better than it should have been, and some rather languid music, our best musicians half failing us--so ill is merit rewarded in this world! If the severest sense of fulfilling a duty could make one's parties pleasant, who so deserving as I? I turn my inward shudders into outward smiles, and talk fast, with a sense of lead on my tongue. However, Mr. Pigott made a woman's part in the charade so irresistibly comic that I tittered at it at intervals in my sleepless hours. I am rather uncomfortable about you, because you seemed so much less well and strong the other day than your average. Let me hear before long how you and Mr. Congreve are. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Feb. 21._--Ill and very miserable. George has taken my drama away from me. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 27th Feb. 1865.] The sun shone through my window on your letter as I read it, adding to its cheeriness. It was good of you to write it. I was ill last week, and had mental troubles besides--happily such as are unconnected with any one's experience except my own. I am still ailing, but striving hard "not to mind," and not to diffuse my inward trouble, according to Madame de Vaux's excellent maxim. I shall not, I fear, be able to get to you till near the end of next week--towards the 11th. I think of you very often, and especially when my own _malaise_ reminds me how much of your time is spent in the same sort of endurance. Mr. Spencer told us yesterday that Dr. Ransom said he had cured himself of dyspepsia by leaving off stimulants--the full benefit manifesting itself after two or three months of abstinence. I am going to try. All best regards to Mr. Congreve and tenderest sisterly love to yourself. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _March 1._--I wrote an article for the _Pall Mall Gazette_--"A Word for the Germans." _March 12._--Went to Wandsworth, to spend the Sunday and Monday with Mr. and Mrs. Congreve. Feeling very ailing; in constant dull pain, which makes all effort burdensome. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th March, 1865.] I did not promise, like Mr. Collins, that you should receive a letter of thanks for your kind entertainment of me; but I feel the need of writing a word or two to break the change from your presence to my complete absence from you. It was really an enjoyment to be with you, in spite of the bodily uneasiness which robbed me of half my mind. One thing only I regret--that in my talk with you I think I was rather merciless to other people. Whatever vices I have seem to be exaggerated by my _malaise_--such "chastening" not answering the purpose of purification in my case. Pray set down any unpleasant notions I have suggested about others to my account--_i.e._, as being _my_ unpleasantness, and not theirs. When one is bilious, other people's complexions look yellow, and one of their eyes higher than the other--all the fault of one's own evil interior. I long to hear from you that you are better, and if you are not better, still to hear from you before too long an interval. Mr. Congreve's condition is really cheering, and he goes about with me as a pleasant picture--like that Raphael the Tuscan duke chose always to carry with him. I got worse after I left you; but to-day I am better, and begin to think there is nothing serious the matter with me except the "weather," which every one else is alleging as the cause of their symptoms. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 18th March, 1865.] I believe you are one of the few who can understand that in certain crises direct expression of sympathy is the least possible to those who most feel sympathy. If I could have been with you in bodily presence, I should have sat silent, thinking silence a sign of feeling that speech, trying to be wise, must always spoil. The truest things one can say about great Death are the oldest, simplest things that everybody knows by rote, but that no one knows really till death has come very close. And when that inward teaching is going on, it seems pitiful presumption for those who are outside to be saying anything. There is no such thing as consolation when we have made the lot of another our own. I don't know whether you strongly share, as I do, the old belief that made men say the gods loved those who died young. It seems to me truer than ever, now life has become more complex, and more and more difficult problems have to be worked out. Life, though a good to men on the whole, is a doubtful good to many, and to some not a good at all. To my thought it is a source of constant mental distortion to make the denial of this a part of religion--to go on pretending things are better than they are. To me early death takes the aspect of salvation; though I feel, too, that those who live and suffer may sometimes have the greater blessedness of _being_ a salvation. But I will not write of judgments and opinions. What I want my letter to tell you is that I love you truly, gratefully, unchangeably. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _March 25._--I am in deep depression, feeling powerless. I have written nothing but beginnings since I finished a little article for the _Pall Mall_, on the Logic of Servants. Dear George is all activity, yet is in very frail health. How I worship his good humor, his good sense, his affectionate care for every one who has claims on him! That worship is my best life. _March 29._--Sent a letter on "Futile Lying," from Saccharissa to the _Pall Mall_. I have begun a novel ("Felix Holt"). [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 11th April, 1865.] We are wondering if, by any coincidence or condition of things, you could come to us on Thursday, when we have our last evening party--wondering how you are--wondering everything about you, and knowing nothing. Could you resolve some of our wonderings into cheering knowledge? It is ages since you made any sign to us. Are _we_ to be blamed or you? I hope you are not unfavorably affected by the sudden warmth which comes with the beautiful sunshine. Some word of you, in pity! [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 22d April, 1865.] If the sun goes on shining in this glorious way, I shall think of your journey with pleasure. The sight of the country _must_ be a good when the trees are bursting into leaf. But I will remember your warning to Emily, and not insist too much on the advantages of paying visits. Let us hear of you sometimes, and think of us as very busy and very happy, but always including you in our world, and getting uneasy when we are left too much to our imaginations about you. Tell Emily that Ben and I are the better for having seen her. He has added to his store of memories, and will recognize her when she comes again. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _May 4._--Sent an article on Lecky's "History of Rationalism" for the _Fortnightly_. For nearly a fortnight I have been ill, one way or other. _May 10._--Finished a letter of Saccharissa for the _Pall Mall_. Reading Æschylus, "Theatre of the Greeks," Klein's "History of the Drama," etc. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 11th May, 1865.] This note will greet you on your return, and tell you that we were glad to hear of you in your absence, even though the news was not of the brightest. Next week we are going away--I don't yet know exactly where; but it is firmly settled that we start on Monday. It will be good for the carpets, and it will be still better for us, who need a wholesome shaking, even more than the carpets do. The first number of the _Review_ was done with last Monday, and will be out on the 15th. You will be glad to hear that Mr. Harrison's article is excellent, but the "mull" which George declares to be the fatality with all first numbers is so far incurred with regard to this very article that, from overwhelming alarm at its length, George put it (perhaps too hastily) into the smaller type. I hope the importance of the subject and the excellence of the treatment will overcome that disadvantage. Nurse all pleasant thoughts in your solitude, and count our affection among them. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th May, 1865.] We have just returned from a five days' holiday at the coast, and are much invigorated by the tonic breezes. We have nothing to do with the _Fortnightly_ as a money speculation. Mr. Lewes has simply accepted the post of editor, and it was seemly that I should write a little in it. But do not suppose that I am going into periodical writing. And your friendship is not required to read one syllable for our sakes. On the contrary, you have my full sympathy in abstaining. Rest in peace, dear Sara, and finish your work, that you may have the sense of having spoken out what was within you. That is really a good--I mean, when it is done in all seriousness and sincerity. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _May 28._--Finished Bamford's "Passages from the Life of a Radical." Have just begun again Mill's "Political Economy," and Comte's "Social Science," in Miss Martineau's edition. _June 7._--Finished _Annual Register_ for 1832. Reading Blackstone. Mill's second article on "Comte," to appear in the _Westminster_, lent me by Mr. Spencer. My health has been better of late. _June 15._--Read again Aristotle's "Poetics" with fresh admiration. _June 20._--Read the opening of my novel to G. Yesterday we drove to Wandsworth. Walked together on Wimbledon Common, in outer and inner sunshine, as of old; then dined with Mr. and Mrs. Congreve, and had much pleasant talk. _June 25._--Reading English History, reign of George III.; Shakespeare's "King John." Yesterday G. dined at Greenwich with the multitude of so-called writers for the _Saturday_. He heard much commendation of the _Fortnightly_, especially of Bagehot's articles, which last is reassuring after Mr. Trollope's strong objections. _July 3._--Went to hear the "Faust" at Covent Garden: Mario, Lucca, and Graziani. I was much thrilled by the great symbolical situations, and by the music--more, I think, than I had ever been before. _July 9_ (Sunday).--We had Browning, Huxley, Mr. Warren, Mr. Bagehot, and Mr. Crompton, and talk was pleasant. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, Sunday, 10th July, 1865.] Success to the canvassing! It is "very meet and right and your bounden duty" to be with Mr. Taylor in this time of hard work, and I am glad that your health has made no impediment. I should have liked to be present when you were cheered. The expression of a common feeling by a large mass of men, when the feeling is one of good-will, moves me like music. A public tribute to any man who has done the world a service with brain or hand has on me the effect of a great religious rite, with pealing organ and full-voiced choir. I agree with you in your feeling about Mill. Some of his works have been frequently my companions of late, and I have been going through many _actions de grâce_ towards him. I am not anxious that he should be in Parliament: thinkers can do more outside than inside the House. But it would have been a fine precedent, and would have made an epoch, for such a man to have been asked for and elected solely on the ground of his mental eminence. As it is, I suppose it is pretty certain that he will _not_ be elected. I am glad you have been interested in Mr. Lewes's article. His great anxiety about the _Fortnightly_ is to make it the vehicle for sincere writing--real contributions of opinion on important topics. But it is more difficult than the inexperienced could imagine to get the sort of writing which will correspond to that desire of his. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _July 16._--Madame Bohn, niece of Professor Scherer, called. She said certain things about "Romola" which showed that she had felt what I meant my readers to feel. She said she knew the book had produced the same effect on many others. I wish I could be encouraged by this. _July 22._--Sat for my portrait--I suppose for the last time. _July 23._--I am going doggedly to work at my novel, seeing what determination can do in the face of despair. Reading Neale's "History of the Puritans." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 1st Aug. 1865.] I received yesterday the circular about the Mazzini Fund. Mr. Lewes and I would have liked to subscribe to a tribute to Mazzini, or to a fund for his use, of which the application was defined and guaranteed by his own word. As it is, the application of the desired fund is only intimated in the vaguest manner by the Florentine committee. The reflection is inevitable that the application may ultimately be the promotion of conspiracy, the precise character of which is necessarily unknown to subscribers. Now, though I believe there are cases in which conspiracy may be a sacred, necessary struggle against organized wrong, there are also cases in which it is hopeless, and can produce nothing but misery; or needless, because it is not the best means attainable of reaching the desired end; or unjustifiable, because it resorts to acts which are more unsocial in their character than the very wrong they are directed to extinguish; and in these three supposable cases it seems to me that it would be a social crime to further conspiracy even by the impulse of a little finger, to which one may well compare a small money subscription. I think many persons to whom the circular might be sent would take something like this view, and would grieve, as we do, that a proposition intended to honor Mazzini should come in a form to which they cannot conscientiously subscribe. I trouble you and Mr. Taylor with this explanation, because both Mr. Lewes and I have a real reverence for Mazzini, and could not therefore be content to give a silent negative. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 1st Aug. 1865.] I fear that my languor on Saturday prevented me from fairly showing you how sweet and precious your presence was to me then, as at all times. We have almost made up our minds to start some time in this month for a run in Normandy and Brittany. We both need the change, though when I receive, as I did yesterday, a letter from some friend, telling me of cares and trials from which I am quite free, I am ashamed of wanting anything. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Aug. 2._--Finished the "Agamemnon" second time. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 6th Aug. 1865.] When I wrote to you last I quite hoped that I should see you and Emily before we left home, but now it is settled that we start on Thursday morning, and I have so many little things to remember and to do that I dare not set apart any of the intervening time for the quiet enjoyment of a visit from you. It is not quite so cheerful a picture as I should like to carry with me, that of you and Emily so long alone, with Mr. Congreve working at Bradford. But your friends are sure to think of you, and want to see you. I hope you did not suffer so severely as we did from the arctic cold that rushed in after the oppressive heat. Mr. T. Trollope came from Italy just when it began. He says it is always the same when he comes to England, people always say it has just been very hot, and he believes that means they had a few days in which they were not obliged to blow on their fingers. When you write to Mr. Congreve pray tell him that we were very grateful for his Itinerary, which is likely useful to us--indeed, has already been useful in determining our route. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Sept. 7._--We returned home after an expedition into Brittany. Our course was from Boulogne to St. Valéry, Dieppe, Rouen, Caen, Bayeux, St. Lô, Vire, Avranches, Dol, St. Malo, Rennes, Avray, and Carnac--back by Nantes, Tours, Le Mans, Chartres, Paris, Rouen, Dieppe, Abbeville, and so again to Boulogne. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th Sept. 1865.] We came home again on Thursday night--this day week--after a month's absence in Normandy and Brittany. I have been thinking of you very often since, but believed that you did not care to have the interruption of letters just now, and would rather defer correspondence till your mind was freer. If I had _suspected_ that you would feel any want satisfied by a letter I should certainly have written. I had not heard of Miss Bonham Carter's death, else I should have conceived something of your state of mind. I think you and I are alike in this, that we can get no good out of pretended comforts, which are the devices of self-love, but would rather, in spite of pain, grow into the endurance of all "naked truths." So I say no word about your great loss, except that I love you, and sorrow with you. The circumstances of life--the changes that take place in ourselves--hem in the expression of affections and memories that live within us, and enter almost into every day, and long separations often make intercourse difficult when the opportunity comes. But the delight I had in you, and in the hours we spent together, and in all your acts of friendship to me, is really part of my life, and can never die out of me. I see distinctly how much poorer I should have been if I had never known you. If you had seen more of me in late years, you would not have such almost cruel thoughts as that the book into which you have faithfully put your experience and best convictions could make you "repugnant" to me. Whatever else my growth may have been, it has not been towards irreverence and ready rejection of what other minds can give me. You once unhappily mistook my feeling and point of view in something I wrote _à propos_ of an argument in your "Aids to Faith," and _that_ made me think it better that we should not write on large and difficult subjects in hasty letters. But it has often been painful to me--I should say, it has constantly been painful to me--that you have ever since inferred me to be in a hard and unsympathetic state about your views and your writing. But I am habitually disposed myself to the same unbelief in the sympathy that is given me, and am the last person who should be allowed to complain of such unbelief in another. And it is very likely that I may have been faulty and disagreeable in my expressions. Excuse all my many mistakes, dear Sara, and never believe otherwise than that I have a glow of joy when you write to me, as if my existence were some good to you. I know that I am, and can be, very little practically; but to have the least value for your thought is what I care much to be assured of. Perhaps, in the cooler part of the autumn, when your book is out of your hands, you will like to move from home a little and see your London friends? Our travelling in Brittany was a good deal marred and obstructed by the emperor's _fête_, which sent all the world on our track towards Cherbourg and Brest. But the Norman churches, the great cathedrals at Le Mans, Tours, and Chartres, with their marvellous painted glass, were worth much scrambling to see. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Oct. 1865.] I have read Mr. Masson's book on "Recent Philosophy." The earlier part is a useful and creditable survey, and the classification ingenious. The later part I thought poor. If, by what he says of Positivism, you mean what he says at p. 246, I should answer it is simply "stuff"--he might as well have written a dozen lines of jargon. There are a few observations about Comte, scattered here and there, which are true and just enough. But it seems to me much better to read a man's own writing than to read what others say about him, especially when the man is first-rate and the "others" are third-rate. As Goethe said long ago about Spinoza, "Ich zog immer vor von dem Menschen zu erfahren _wie er dachte_ als von einem anderen zu hören _wie er hätte denken sollen_."[41] However, I am not fond of expressing criticism or disapprobation. The difficulty is to digest and live upon any valuable truth one's self. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Nov. 15._--During the last three weeks George has been very poorly, but now he is better. I have been reading Fawcett's "Economic Condition of the Working Classes," Mill's "Liberty," looking into Strauss's second "Life of Jesus," and reading Neale's "History of the Puritans," of which I have reached the fourth volume. Yesterday the news came of Mrs. Gaskell's death. She died suddenly, while reading aloud to her daughter. _Nov. 16._--Writing Mr. Lyon's story, which I have determined to insert as a narrative. Reading the Bible. _Nov. 24._--Finished Neale's "History of the Puritans." Began Hallam's "Middle Ages." _Dec. 4._--Finished second volume of Hallam. The other day read to the end of chapter nine of my novel to George, who was much pleased and found no fault. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th Dec. 1865.] We send to-day "Orley Farm," "The Small House at Allington," and the "Story of Elizabeth." The "Small House" is rather lighter than "Orley Farm." "The Story of Elizabeth" is by Miss Thackeray. It is not so cheerful as Trollope, but is charmingly written. You can taste it and reject it if it is too melancholy. I think more of you than you are likely to imagine, and I believe we talk of you all more than of any other mortals. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th Dec. 1865.] It is worth your while to send for the last _Fortnightly_ to read an article of Professor Tyndall's "On the Constitution of the Universe." It is a splendid piece of writing on the higher physics, which I know will interest you. _À propos_ of the feminine intellect, I had a bit of experience with a superior woman the other day, which reminded me of Sydney Smith's story about his sermon on the Being of a God. He says, that after he had delivered his painstaking argument, an old parishioner said to him, "I don't agree wi' you, Mr. Smith; _I think there be a God_." [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Dec. 11._--For the last three days I have been foundering from a miserable state of head. I have written chapter ten. This evening read again Macaulay's Introduction. _Dec. 15._--To-day is the first for nearly a week on which I have been able to write anything fresh. I am reading Macaulay and Blackstone. This evening we went to hear "The Messiah" at Exeter Hall. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st Dec. 1865.] "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" is a sort of hieroglyph for I love you and wish you well all the year round. Christmas to me is like a great many other pleasures, which I am glad to imagine as enjoyed by others, but have no delight in myself. Berried holly and smiling faces and snap-dragon, grandmamma and the children, turkey and plum-pudding--they are all precious things, and I would not have the world without them; but they tire me a little. I enjoy the common days of the year more. But for the sake of those who are stronger I rejoice in Christmas. [Sidenote: Journal, 1865.] _Dec. 24._--For two days I have been sticking in the mud from doubt about my construction. I have just consulted G., and he confirms my choice of incidents. _Dec. 31._--The last day of 1865. I will say nothing but that I trust--I will strive--to add more ardent effort towards a good result from all the outward good that is given to me. My health is at a lower ebb than usual, and so is George's. Bertie is spending his holidays with us, and shows hopeful characteristics. Charles is happy. _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1862, TO DECEMBER, 1865. Begins "Romola" again--Letter to Miss Hennell--Max Müller's book--"Orley Farm"--Anthony Trollope--T. A. Trollope's "Beata"--Acquaintance with Mr. Burton and Mr. W. G. Clark--George Smith, publisher, suggests a "magnificent offer"--Depression about "Romola"--Letter to Mrs. Bray asking for loan of music--Pantomime--First visit to Dorking--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Impatience of concealment--Anxiety about war with America--Sympathy with queen--Mr. Lewes begins "History of Science"--Mrs. Browning's "Casa Guidi Windows"--Depression--George Smith offers £10,000 for "Romola" for the _Cornhill_--Idea given up--Visit to Englefield Green--Working under a weight--Second visit to Dorking for three weeks--Delight in spring--Accepts £7000 for "Romola" in _Cornhill_--Regret at leaving Blackwood--Palsy in writing--Visit to Littlehampton and to Dorking third time--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Mr. Lewes at Spa--George Eliot in better spirits--Letter to Miss Hennell--Joachim's playing--New Literary Club--Reading Poliziano--Suggestion of Tennyson's "Palace of Art"--Visit from Browning--Depression--Letter to Madame Bodichon--No negative propaganda--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--"The Messiah" on Christmas day--Letter to Miss Hennell--St. Paul's "Charity"--The Poetry of Christianity--The Bible--Adieu to year 1862--Letter to Miss Hennell--Encouragement about "Romola"--Literary Club dissolves--Miss Cobbe--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Depression--Fourth visit to Dorking for fortnight--Letter to Charles Lewes on Thackeray's Lectures--The effect of writing "Romola"--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Odiousness of intellectual superciliousness--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Thinking of the Priory--"Romola" finished--Inscription--Visit to Isle of Wight--Ristori--Letter to Miss Hennell--Thornton Lewes--London amusements--Opera--Reading Mommsen, Liddell's "Rome," and "Roba di Roma"--Letter from Frederick Maurice referred to as most generous tribute ever given--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Renan's "Vie de Jésus"--Visit to Worthing--Mrs. Hare--Return to London--Depression--Letter to R. H. Hutton on "Romola"--The importance of the medium in which characters move--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Effect of London on health--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Delight in autumn--Mommsen's History--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--The "Discours Préliminaire"--Removal to the Priory--Mr. Owen Jones decorates the house--Jansa the violinist--Letter to Mrs. Bray--"Physiology for Schools"--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Enjoying rest, and music with Jansa--Letter to Miss Hennell--Renan--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Enjoyment of Priory--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Mr. Lewes's "Aristotle" finished--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Compensation--Letter to Mrs. P. A. Taylor--Effect of sunshine--Death of Mrs. Hare--"David Gray"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Dislike of note-writing--Visit to Glasgow--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Joy in Federal successes--Crystal Palace to see Garibaldi--Mr. Burton's picture of a Legendary Knight in Armor--Third visit to Italy with Mr. Burton for seven weeks--Return to London--Charles Lewes's engagement to Miss Gertrude Hill--Pleasure in Mr. Burton's companionship in travel--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Present of mats--Depression--Reading Gibbon--Gieseler--Letter to Miss Hennell--Reading Max Müller--Reference to the "Apologia"--Newman--Reading about Spain--Trying a drama--Letter to Miss Hennell--Harrogate--Development of Industries--Scarborough--Letters to Mrs. Congreve--Pleasure in her visit--Letter to Miss Hennell--Learning Spanish--Two acts of drama written--Sticking in construction of remainder--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Christmas greeting--Retrospect of year 1864--Letter to Mrs. Congreve, first payment to Positivist Fund--Comparison with "small upper room" 1866 years ago--Mrs. Congreve staying at the Priory--Poem "My Vegetarian Friend" written--Visit to Paris--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Visit to Comte's apartment in Paris--Finished poem on "Utopias"--Letter to Miss Sara Hennell--Delight in dual solitude--_Fortnightly Review_--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Charades--Depression--Mr. Lewes takes away drama--Article for the _Pall Mall_, "A Word for the Germans"--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Visit to Wandsworth--Depression--Letter to Mrs. Congreve after visit--Letter to Mrs. Bray on a young friend's death--Deep depression--Admiration of Mr. Lewes's good spirits--"Felix Holt" begun--Article on Lecky's "History of Rationalism" in _Fortnightly_--Reading Æschylus, "Theatre of the Greeks"--Klein's "History of the Drama"--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--First number of the _Fortnightly_--Frederic Harrison's article--Reading Mill, Comte, and Blackstone--Aristotle's "Poetics"--Dine with Congreves at Wandsworth--"Faust" at Covent Garden--Sunday reception--Browning, Huxley, and Bagehot--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on J. S. Mill--The _Fortnightly Review_--Mr. Burton's portrait finished--Mazzini subscription--Letter of adieu to Mrs. Congreve--Expedition to Brittany for month--Letter to Miss Hennell--"Pretended comforts"--Recollection of early feelings--Delight in her friendship--Masson's "Recent Philosophy"--Comte--Goethe on Spinoza--Reading Fawcett's "Economic Condition of Working Classes"--Mill's "Liberty"--Strauss's second "Life of Jesus"--Neale's "History of the Puritans"--Hallam's "Middle Ages"--Letter to Miss Hennell on Tyndall's article on "The Constitution of the Universe"--View of Christmas day--Retrospect of 1865. FOOTNOTES: [33] Now Sir Frederic Burton, Director of the National Gallery, to whom we are indebted for the drawing of George Eliot now in the National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington, and who was a very intimate and valued friend of Mr. and Mrs. Lewes. [34] Mr. W. G. Clark, late Public Orator at Cambridge, well known as a scholar, and for his edition of Shakspeare in conjunction with Mr. Aldis Wright. [35] Some general remark of Carlyle's--Madame Bodichon cannot remember exactly what it was. [36] I regret that I have not been able to find this letter. [37] Auguste Comte's. [38] "Physiology for Schools." By Mrs. Bray. [39] Mrs. Julius Hare, who gave her Maurice's book on the Lord's Prayer. [40] A story by Mr. Robert Buchanan in the _Cornhill_, Feb. 1864. [41] "I always preferred to learn from the man himself what _he_ thought, rather than to hear from some one else what _he ought to have thought_." CHAPTER XIII. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 5th Jan. 1866.] I have had it in my mind to write to you for many days, wanting to tell you, yet feeling there might be some impertinence in doing so, of the delight and gratitude I felt in reading your article on "Industrial Co-operation." Certain points admirably brought out in that article would, I think, be worth the labor of a life if one could help in winning them thorough recognition. I don't mean that my thinking so is of any consequence, but simply that it is of consequence to me when I find your energetic writing confirm my own faith. It would be fortunate for us if you had nothing better to do than look in on us on Tuesday evening. Professor Huxley will be with us, and one or two others whom you know, and your presence would make us all the brighter. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _Jan. 9._--Professors Huxley and Beesley, Mr. Burton, and Mr. Spencer dined with us. Mr. Harrison in the evening. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 12th Jan. 1866.] The ample and clear statement you have sent me with kind promptness has put me in high spirits--as high spirits as can belong to an unhopeful author. Your hypothetical case of a settlement suits my needs surprisingly well. I shall be thankful to let Sugden alone, and throw myself entirely on your goodness, especially as what I want is simply a basis of legal possibilities and not any command of details. I want to be sure that my chords will not offend a critic accomplished in thorough bass--not at all to present an exercise in thorough bass. I was going to write you a long story, but, on consideration, it seems to me that I should tax your time less, and arrive more readily at a resolution of my doubts on various points not yet mentioned to you, if you could let me speak instead of writing to you. On Wednesday afternoons I am always at home; but on any day when I could be sure of your coming I would set everything aside for the sake of a consultation so valuable to me. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _Jan. 20._--For the last fortnight I have been unusually disabled by ill-health. I have been consulting Mr. Harrison about the law in my book, with satisfactory result. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 22d Jan. 1866.] I had not any opportunity, or not enough presence of mind, to tell you yesterday how much I felt your kindness in writing me that last little note of sympathy. In proportion as compliments (always beside the mark) are discouraging and nauseating, at least to a writer who has any serious aims, genuine words from one capable of understanding one's conceptions are precious and strengthening. Yet I have no confidence that the book will ever be worthily written. And now I have something else to ask. It is that if anything strikes you as untrue in cases where my drama has a bearing on momentous questions, especially of a public nature, you will do me the great kindness to tell me of your doubts. On a few moral points, which have been made clear to me by my experience, I feel sufficiently confident--without such confidence I could not write at all. But in every other direction I am so much in need of fuller instruction as to be constantly under the sense that I am more likely to be wrong than right. Hitherto I have read my MS. (I mean of my previous books) to Mr. Lewes, by forty or fifty pages at a time, and he has told me if he felt an objection to anything. No one else has had any knowledge of my writings before their publication. (I except, of course, the publishers.) But now that you are good enough to incur the trouble of reading my MS., I am anxious to get the full benefit of your participation. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 28th Jan. 1866.] We arrived here on Tuesday, and have been walking about four hours each day, and the walks are so various that each time we have turned out we have found a new one. George is already much the better for the perfect rest, quiet, and fresh air. Will you give my thanks to Mr. Congreve for the "Synthèse" which I have brought with me and am reading? I expect to understand three chapters well enough to get some edification. George had talked of our taking the train to Dover to pay you a "morning call." He observes that it would have been a "dreadful sell" if we had done so. Your letter, therefore, was providential--and without doubt it came from a dear little Providence of mine that sits in your heart. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 31st Jan. 1866.] I have received both your precious letters--the second edition of the case, and the subsequent note. The story is sufficiently in the track of ordinary probability; and the careful trouble you have so generously given to it has enabled me to feel a satisfaction in my plot which beforehand I had sighed for as unattainable. There is still a question or two which I shall want to ask you, but I am afraid of taxing your time and patience in an unconscionable manner. So, since we expect to return to town at the end of next week, I think I will reserve my questions until I have the pleasure and advantage of an interview with you, in which _pros_ and _cons_ can be more rapidly determined than by letter. It seems to me that you have fitted my phenomena with a _rationale_ quite beautifully. If there is any one who could have done it better, I am sure I know of no man who _would_. Please to put your help of me among your good deeds for this year of 1866. To-day we have resolute rain, for the first time since we came down. You don't yet know what it is to be a sickly wretch, dependent on these skyey influences. But Heine says illness "spiritualizes the members." It had need do some good in return for one's misery. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Feb. 1866.] Thanks for your kind letter. Alas! we had chiefly bad weather in the country. George was a little benefited, but only a little. He is too far "run down" to be wound up in a very short time. We enjoyed our return to our comfortable house, and, perhaps, that freshness of home was the chief gain from our absence. You see, to counterbalance all the great and good things that life has given us beyond what our fellows have, we hardly know now what it is to be free from bodily _malaise_. After the notion I have given you of my health you will not wonder if I say that I don't know when anything of mine will appear. I can never reckon on myself. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _March 7._--I am reading Mill's "Logic" again. Theocritus still, and English History and Law. _March 17._--To St. James's Hall hearing Joachim, Piatti, and Hallé in glorious Beethoven music. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th April, 1866.] Don't think any evil of me for not writing. Just now the days are short, and art is long to artists with feeble bodies. If people don't say expressly that they want anything from me, I easily conclude that they will do better without me, and have a good weight of idleness, or, rather, bodily fatigue, which puts itself into the scale of modesty. I torment myself less with fruitless regrets that my particular life has not been more perfect. The young things are growing, and to me it is not melancholy but joyous that the world will be brighter after I am gone than it has been in the brief time of my existence. You see my pen runs into very old reflections. The fact is, I have no details to tell that would much interest you. It is true that I am going to bring out another book, but just _when_ is not certain. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 10th April, 1866.] The happiness in your letter was delightful to me, as you guessed it would be. See how much better things may turn out for all mankind, since they mend for single mortals even in this confused state of the bodies social and politic. As soon as we can leave we shall go away, probably to Germany, for six weeks or so. But that will not be till June. I am finishing a book which has been growing slowly, like a sickly child, because of my own ailments; but now I am in the later acts of it I can't move till it is done. You know all the news, public and private--all about the sad cattle plague, and the reform bill, and who is going to be married and who is dead--so I need tell you nothing. You will find the English world extremely like what it was when you left it--conversation more or less trivial and insincere, literature just now not much better, and politics worse than either. Bring some sincerity and energy to make a little draught of pure air in your particular world. I shall expect you to be a heroine in the best sense, now you are happier after a time of suffering. See what a talent I have for telling other people to be good! We are getting patriarchal, and think of old age and death as journeys not far off. All knowledge, all thought, all achievement seems more precious and enjoyable to me than it ever was before in life. But as soon as one has found the key of life, "it opes the gates of death." Youth has not learned the _art_ of living, and we go on bungling till our experience can only serve us for a very brief space. That is the "external order" we must submit to. I am too busy to write except when I am tired, and don't know very well what to say, so you must not be surprised if I write in a dreamy way. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _April 21._--Sent MS. of two volumes to Blackwood. _April 25._--Blackwood has written to offer me £5000 for "Felix Holt." I have been ailing, and uncertain in my strokes, and yesterday got no further than p. 52 of Vol. III. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 25th April, 1866.] It is a great pleasure to me to be writing to you again, as in the old days. After your kind letters, I am chiefly anxious that the publication of "Felix Holt" may be a satisfaction to you from beginning to end. Mr. Lewes writes about other business matters, so I will only say that I am desirous to have the proofs as soon and as rapidly as will be practicable. They will require correcting with great care, and there are large spaces in the day when I am unable to write, in which I could be attending to my proofs. I think I ought to tell you that I have consulted a legal friend about my law, to guard against errors. The friend is a Chancery barrister, who "ought to know." After I had written the first volume, I applied to him, and he has since read through my MS. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 27th April, 1866.] How very good it was of you to write me a letter which is a guarantee to me of the pleasantest kind that I have made myself understood. The tone of the prevalent literature just now is not encouraging to a writer who at least wishes to be serious and sincere; and, owing to my want of health, a great deal of this book has been written under so much depression as to its practical effectiveness that I have sometimes been ready to give it up. Your letter has made me feel, more strongly than any other testimony, that it would have been a pity if I had listened to the tempter Despondency. I took a great deal of pains to get a true idea of the period. My own recollections of it are childish, and of course disjointed, but they help to illuminate my reading. I went through the _Times_ of 1832-33 at the British Museum, to be sure of as many details as I could. It is amazing what strong language was used in those days, especially about the Church. "Bloated pluralists," "Stall-fed dignitaries," etc., are the sort of phrases conspicuous. There is one passage of prophecy which I longed to quote, but I thought it wiser to abstain. "Now, the beauty of the Reform Bill is that, under its mature operation, the people must and will become free agents"--a prophecy which I hope is true, only the maturity of the operation has not arrived yet. Mr. Lewes is well satisfied with the portion of the third volume already written; and, as I am better in health just now, I hope to go on with spirit, especially with the help of your cordial sympathy. I trust you will see, when it comes, that the third volume is the natural issue prepared for by the first and second. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 27th April, 1866.] A thousand thanks for your note. Do not worry yourself so much about those two questions that you will be forced to hate me. On Tuesday next we are to go to Dorking for probably a fortnight. I wished you to read the first hundred pages of my third volume; but I fear now that I must be content to wait and send you a duplicate proof of a chapter or two that are likely to make a lawyer shudder by their poetic license. Please to be in great distress sometime for want of my advice, and tease me considerably to get it, that I may prove my grateful memory of these days. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th April, 1866.] To-morrow we go--Mr. Lewes's bad health driving us--to Dorking, where everything will reach me as quickly as in London. I am in a horrible fidget about certain points which I want to be sure of in correcting my proofs. They are chiefly two questions. I wish to know, 1. Whether, in Napoleon's war with England, after the breaking-up of the Treaty of Amiens, the seizure and imprisonment of civilians was exceptional, or whether it was continued throughout the war? 2. Whether, in 1833, in the case of transportation to one of the colonies, when the sentence did not involve hard labor, the sentenced person might be at large on his arrival in the colony? It is possible you may have some one near at hand who will answer these questions. I am sure you will help me if you can, and will sympathize in my anxiety not to have even an allusion that involves practical impossibilities. One can never be perfectly accurate, even with one's best effort, but the effort must be made. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _May 31._--Finished "Felix Holt." The manuscript bears the following inscription: "From George Eliot to her dear Husband, this thirteenth year of their united life, in which the deepening sense of her own imperfectness has the consolation of their deepening love." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 5th June, 1866.] My last hope of seeing you before we start has vanished. I find that the things urged upon me to be done in addition to my own small matters of preparation will leave me no time to enjoy anything that I should have chosen if I had been at leisure. Last Thursday only I finished writing, in a state of nervous excitement that had been making my head throb and my heart palpitate all the week before. As soon as I had finished I felt well. You know how we had counted on a parting sight of you; and I should have particularly liked to see Emily and witness the good effect of Derbyshire. But send us a word or two if you can, just to say how you _all three_ are. We start on Thursday evening for Brussels. Then to Antwerp, the Hague, and Amsterdam. Out of Holland we are to find our way to Schwalbach. Let your love go with us, as mine will hover about you and all yours--that group of three which the word "Wandsworth" always means for us. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 5th June, 1866.] I finished writing ("Felix Holt") on the last day of May, after days and nights of throbbing and palpitation--chiefly, I suppose, from a nervous excitement which I was not strong enough to support well. As soon as I had done I felt better, and have been a new creature ever since, though a little overdone with visits from friends and attention (_miserabile dictu!_) to petticoats, etc. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 6th June, 1866.] I can't help being a little vexed that the course of things hinders my having the great delight of seeing you again, during this visit to town. Now that my mind is quite free, I don't know anything I should have chosen sooner than to have a long, long quiet day with you. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _June 7._--Set off on our journey to Holland. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 25th June, 1866, from Schwalbach.] I wish you could know how idle I feel, how utterly disinclined to anything but mere self-indulgence; because that knowledge would enable you to estimate the affection and anxiety which prompt me to write in spite of disinclination. June is so far gone, that by the time you get this letter you will surely have some result of the examination to tell me of; and I can't bear to deprive myself of that news by not letting you know where we are. "In Paradise," George says; but the Paradise is in the fields and woods of beech and fir, where we walk in uninterrupted solitude in spite of the excellent roads and delightful resting-places, which seem to have been prepared for visitors in general. The promenade, where the ladies--chiefly Russian and German, with only a small sprinkling of English and Americans--display their ornamental petticoats and various hats, is only the outskirt of Paradise; but we amuse ourselves there for an hour or so in the early morning and evening, listening to the music and learning the faces of our neighbors. There is a deficiency of men, children, and dogs, otherwise the winding walks, the luxuriant trees and grass, and the abundant seats of the promenade have every charm one can expect at a German bath. We arrived here last Thursday, after a fortnight spent in Belgium and Holland; and we still fall to interjections of delight whenever we walk out--first at the beauty of the place, and next at our own happiness in not having been frightened away from it by the predictions of travellers and hotel-keepers, that we should find no one here--that the Prussians would break up the railways, etc., etc.--Nassau being one of the majority of small states who are against Prussia. I fear we are a little in danger of becoming like the Bürger in "Faust," and making it too much the entertainment of our holiday to have a "Gespräch von Krieg und Kriegsgeschrei Wenn hinten, weit, in der Türkei, Die Völker auf einander schlagen." Idle people are so eager for newspapers that tell them of other people's energetic enthusiasm! A few soldiers are quartered here, and we see them wisely using their leisure to drink at the Brunnen. They are the only suggestion of war that meets our eyes among these woody hills. Already we feel great benefit from our quiet journeying and repose. George is looking remarkably well, and seems to have nothing the matter with him. You know how magically quick his recoveries seem. I am too refined to say anything about our excellent quarters and good meals; but one detail, I know, will touch your sympathy. We dine in our own room! It would have marred the _Kur_ for me if I had had every day to undergo a _table d'hôte_ where almost all the guests are English, presided over by the British chaplain. Please don't suspect me of being scornful towards my fellow countrymen or women: the fault is all mine that I am miserably _gênée_ by the glances of strange eyes. We want news from you to complete our satisfaction, and no one can give it but yourself. Send us as many matter-of-fact details as you have the patience to write. We shall not be here after the 4th, but at Schlangenbad. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 3d Aug. 1866.] We got home last night, after a rough passage from Ostend. You have been so continually a recurrent thought to me ever since I had your letter at Schwalbach, that it is only natural I should write to you as soon as I am at my old desk again. The news of Mr. Congreve's examination being over made me feel for several days that something had happened which caused me unusual lightness of heart. I would not dwell on the possibility of your having to leave Wandsworth, which, I know, would cause you many sacrifices. I clung solely to the great, cheering fact that a load of anxiety had been lifted from Mr. Congreve's mind. May we not put in a petition for some of his time now? And will he not come with you and Emily to dine with us next week, on any day except Wednesday and Friday? The dinner-hour seems more propitious for talk and enjoyment than lunch-time; but in all respects choose what will best suit your health and habits--only let us see you. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 4th Aug. 1866.] We returned from our health-seeking journey on Thursday evening, and your letter was the most delightful thing that awaited me at home. Be sure it will be much read and meditated; and may I not take it as an earnest that your help, which has already done so much for me, will be continued? I mean, that you will help me by your thoughts and your sympathy--not that you will be teased with my proofs. I meant to write you a long letter about the æsthetic problem; but Mr. Lewes, who is still tormented with headachy effects from our rough passage, comes and asks me to walk to Hampstead with him, so I send these hasty lines. Come and see us soon. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 4th Aug. 1866.] We got home on Thursday evening, and are still feeling some unpleasant effects from our very rough passage--an inconvenience which we had waited some days at Ostend to avoid. But the wind took no notice of us, and went on blowing. I was much pleased with the handsome appearance of the three volumes which were lying ready for me. My hatred of bad paper and bad print, and my love of their opposites, naturally get stronger as my eyes get weaker; and certainly that taste could hardly be better gratified than it is by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons. Colonel Hamley's volume is another example of that fact. It lies now on my revolving desk as one of the books I mean first to read. I am really grateful to have such a medium of knowledge, and I expect it to make some pages of history much less dim to me. My impression of Colonel Hamley, when we had that pleasant dinner at Greenwich, and afterwards when he called in Blandford Square, was quite in keeping with the high opinion you express. Mr. Lewes liked the article on "Felix" in the Magazine very much. He read it the first thing yesterday morning, and told me it was written in a nice spirit, and the extracts judiciously made. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th Aug. 1866.] I have had a delightful holiday, and find my double self very much the better for it. We made a great round in our journeying. From Antwerp to Rotterdam, the Hague, Leyden, Amsterdam, Cologne; then up the Rhine to Coblentz, and thence to Schwalbach, where we stayed a fortnight. From Schwalbach to Schlangenbad, where we stayed till we feared the boats would cease to go to and fro; and, in fact, only left just in time to get down the Rhine to Bonn by the Dutch steamer. From Bonn, after two days, we went to Aix; then to dear old Liége, where we had been together thirteen years before; and, to avoid the King of the Belgians, ten minutes backwards to the baths of pretty Chaudfontaine, where we remained three days. Then to Louvain, Ghent, and Bruges; and, last of all, to Ostend, where we waited for a fine day and calm sea, until we secured--a very rough passage indeed. Ought we not to be a great deal wiser and more efficient personages, or else to be ashamed of ourselves? Unhappily, this last alternative is not a compensation for wisdom. I thought of you--to mention one occasion among many--when we had the good fortune, at Antwerp, to see a placard announcing that the company from the Ober-Ammergau, Bavaria, would represent, that Sunday evening, the _Lebensgeschichte_ of our Saviour Christ, at the Théatre des Variétés. I remembered that you had seen the representation with deep interest--and these actors are doubtless the successors of those you saw. Of course we went to the theatre. And the Christ was, without exaggeration, beautiful. All the rest was inferior, and might even have had a painful approach to the ludicrous; but both the person and the action of the Jesus were fine enough to overpower all meaner impressions. Mr. Lewes, who, you know, is keenly alive to everything "stagey" in physiognomy and gesture, felt what I am saying quite as much as I did, and was much moved. Rotterdam, with the grand approach to it by the broad river; the rich red brick of the houses; the canals, uniformly planted with trees, and crowded with the bright brown masts of the Dutch boats--is far finer than Amsterdam. The color of Amsterdam is ugly; the houses are of a chocolate color, almost black (an artificial tinge given to the bricks), and the woodwork on them screams out in ugly patches of cream-color; the canals have no trees along their sides, and the boats are infrequent. We looked about for the very Portuguese synagogue where Spinoza was nearly assassinated as he came from worship. But it no longer exists. There are no less than three Portuguese synagogues now--very large and handsome. And in the evening we went to see the worship there. Not a woman was present, but of devout men not a few--a curious reversal of what one sees in other temples. The chanting and the swaying about of the bodies--almost a wriggling--are not beautiful to the sense; but I fairly cried at witnessing this faint symbolism of a religion of sublime, far-off memories. The skulls of St. Ursula's eleven thousand virgins seem a modern suggestion compared with the Jewish Synagogue. At Schwalbach and Schlangenbad our life was led chiefly in the beech woods, which we had all to ourselves, the guests usually confining themselves to the nearer promenades. The guests, of course, were few in that serious time; and between war and cholera we felt our position as health--and pleasure--seekers somewhat contemptible. There is no end to what one could say, if one did not feel that long letters cut pieces not to be spared out of the solid day. I think I have earned that you should write me one of those perfect letters in which you make me see everything you like about yourself and others. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _Aug. 30._--I have taken up the idea of my drama, "The Spanish Gypsy," again, and am reading on Spanish subjects--Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, Llorante, etc. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 15th Aug. 1866.] I have read several times your letter of the 19th, which I found awaiting me on my return, and I shall read it many times again. Pray do not even say, or inwardly suspect, that anything you take the trouble to write to me will not be valued. On the contrary, please to imagine as well as you can the experience of a mind morbidly desponding, of a consciousness tending more and more to consist in memories of error and imperfection rather than in a strengthening sense of achievement--and then consider how such a mind must need the support of sympathy and approval from those who are capable of understanding its aims. I assure you your letter is an evidence of a fuller understanding than I have ever had expressed to me before. And if I needed to give emphasis to this simple statement, I should suggest to you all the miseries one's obstinate egoism endures from the fact of being a writer of novels--books which the dullest and silliest reader thinks himself competent to deliver an opinion on. But I despise myself for feeling any annoyance at these trivial things. That is a tremendously difficult problem which you have laid before me; and I think you see its difficulties, though they can hardly press upon you as they do on me, who have gone through again and again the severe effort of trying to make certain ideas thoroughly incarnate, as if they had revealed themselves to me first in the flesh and not in the spirit. I think æsthetic teaching is the highest of all teaching, because it deals with life in its highest complexity. But if it ceases to be purely æsthetic--if it lapses anywhere from the picture to the diagram--it becomes the most offensive of all teaching. Avowed Utopias are not offensive, because they are understood to have a scientific and expository character: they do not pretend to work on the emotions, or couldn't do it if they did pretend. I am sure, from your own statement, that you see this quite clearly. Well, then, consider the sort of agonizing labor to an English-fed imagination to make out a sufficiently real background for the desired picture--to get breathing, individual forms, and group them in the needful relations, so that the presentation will lay hold on the emotions as human experience--will, as you say, "flash" conviction on the world by means of aroused sympathy. I took unspeakable pains in preparing to write "Romola"--neglecting nothing I could find that would help me to what I may call the "idiom" of Florence, in the largest sense one could stretch the word to; and then I was only trying to give _some_ out of the normal relations. I felt that the necessary idealization could only be attained by adopting the clothing of the past. And again, it is my way (rather too much so, perhaps) to urge the human sanctities through tragedy--through pity and terror, as well as admiration and delight. I only say all this to show the tenfold arduousness of such a work as the one your problem demands. On the other hand, my whole soul goes with your desire that it should be done; and I shall at least keep the great possibility (or impossibility) perpetually in my mind, as something towards which I must strive, though it may be that I can do so only in a fragmentary way. At present I am going to take up again a work which I laid down before writing "Felix." It is--_but, please, let this be a secret between ourselves_--an attempt at a drama, which I put aside at Mr. Lewes's request, after writing four acts, precisely because it was in that stage of creation--or _Werden_--in which the idea of the characters predominates over the incarnation. Now I read it again, I find it impossible to abandon it; the conceptions move me deeply, and they have never been wrought out before. There is not a thought or symbol that I do not long to use: but the whole requires recasting; and, as I never recast anything before, I think of the issue very doubtfully. When one has to work out the dramatic action for one's self, under the inspiration of an idea, instead of having a grand myth or an Italian novel ready to one's hand, one feels anything but omnipotent. Not that I should have done any better if I had had the myth or the novel, for I am not a good user of opportunities. I think I have the right _locus_ and historic conditions, but much else is wanting. I have not, of course, said half what I meant to say; but I hope opportunities of exchanging thoughts will not be wanting between us. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 6th Sept. 1866.] It is so long since we exchanged letters, that I feel inclined to break the silence by telling you that I have been reading with much interest the "Operations of War," which you enriched me with. Also that I have had a pretty note, in aged handwriting, from Dean Ramsay, with a present of his "Reminiscences of Scottish Life." I suppose you know him quite well, but I never heard you mention him. Also--what will amuse you--that my readers take quite a tender care of my text, writing to me to tell me of a misprint, or of "one phrase" which they entreat to have altered, that no blemish may disfigure "Felix." Dr. Althaus has sent me word of a misprint which I am glad to know of--or, rather, of a word slipped out in the third volume. "She _saw_ streaks of light, etc. ... _and_ sounds." It must be corrected when the opportunity comes. We are very well, and I am swimming in Spanish history and literature. I feel as if I were molesting you with a letter without any good excuse, but you are not bound to write again until a wet day makes golf impossible, and creates a dreariness in which even letter-writing seems like a recreation. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 11th Sept. 1866.] I am glad to know that Dean Ramsay is a friend of yours. His sympathy was worth having, and I at once wrote to thank him. Another wonderfully lively old man--Sir Henry Holland--came to see me about two Sundays ago, to bid me good-bye before going on an excursion to--North America!--and to tell me that he had just been re-reading "Adam Bede" for the fourth time. "I often read in it, you know, besides. But this is the fourth time quite through." I, of course, with the mother's egoism on behalf of the youngest born, was jealous for "Felix." Is there any possibility of satisfying an author? But one or two things that George read out to me from an article in _Macmillan's Magazine_, by Mr. Mozley, did satisfy me. And yet I sicken again with despondency under the sense that the most carefully written books lie, both outside and inside people's minds, deep undermost in a heap of trash. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _Sept. 15._--Finished Depping's "Juifs au Moyen Âge." Reading Chaucer, to study English. Also reading on Acoustics, Musical Instruments, etc. _Oct. 15._--Recommenced "The Spanish Gypsy," intending to give it a new form. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1866.] For a wonder I remembered the day of the month, and felt a delightful confidence that I should have a letter from her who always remembers such things at the right moment. You will hardly believe in my imbecility. I can never be quite sure whether your birthday is the 21st or the 23d. I know every one must think the worse of me for this want of retentiveness that seems a part of affection; and it is only justice that they should. Nevertheless I am not quite destitute of lovingness and gratitude, and perhaps the consciousness of my own defect makes me feel your goodness the more keenly. I shall reckon it part of the next year's happiness for me if it brings a great deal of happiness to you. That will depend somewhat--perhaps chiefly--on the satisfaction you have in giving shape to your ideas. But you say nothing on that subject. We knew about Faraday's preaching, but not of his loss of faculty. I begin to think of such things as very near to me--I mean, decay of power and health. But I find age has its fresh elements of cheerfulness. Bless you, dear Sara, for all the kindness of many years, and for the newest kindness that comes to me this morning. I am very well now, and able to enjoy my happiness. One has happiness sometimes without being able to enjoy it. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _Nov. 22._--Reading Renan's "Histoire des Langues Sémitiques"--Ticknor's "Spanish Literature." _Dec. 6._--We returned from Tunbridge Wells, where we have been for a week. I have been reading Cornewall Lewis's "Astronomy of the Ancients," Ockley's "History of the Saracens," "Astronomical Geography," and Spanish ballads on Bernardo del Carpio. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th Dec. 1866.] We have been to Tunbridge Wells for a week, hoping to get plenty of fresh air, and walking in that sandy, undulating country. But for three days it rained incessantly. No; I don't feel as if my faculties were failing me. On the contrary, I enjoy all subjects--all study--more than I ever did in my life before. But that very fact makes me more in need of resignation to the certain approach of age and death. Science, history, poetry--I don't know which draws me most, and there is little time left me for any one of them. I learned Spanish last year but one, and see new vistas everywhere. That makes me think of time thrown away when I was young--time that I should be so glad of now. I could enjoy everything, from arithmetic to antiquarianism, if I had large spaces of life before me. But instead of that I have a very small space. Unfeigned, unselfish, cheerful resignation is difficult. But I strive to get it. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _Dec. 11._--Ill ever since I came home, so that the days seem to have made a muddy flood, sweeping away all labor and all growth. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 22d Dec. 1866.] Just before we received Dr. Congreve's letter we had changed our plans. George's increasing weakness and the more and more frequent intervals in which he became unable to work, made me at last urge him to give up the idea of "finishing," which often besets us vainly. It will really be better for the work as well as for himself that he should let it wait. However, I care about nothing just now except that he should be doing all he can to get better. So we start next Thursday for Bordeaux, staying two days in Paris on our way. Madame Mohl writes us word that she hears from friends of the delicious weather--mild, sunny weather--to be had now on the French southwestern and southeastern coast. You will all wish us well on our journey, I know. But _I_ wish I could carry a happier thought about you than that of your being an invalid. I shall write to you when we are at Biarritz or some other place that suits us, and when I have something good to tell. No; in any case I shall write, because I shall want to hear all about you. Tell Dr. Congreve we carry the "Politique" with us. Mr. Lewes gets more and more impressed by it, and also by what he is able to understand of the "Synthèse." I am writing in the dark. Farewell. With best love to Emily, and dutiful regards to Dr. Congreve. [Sidenote: Journal, 1866.] _Dec. 27._--Set off in the evening on our journey to the south. _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1866, TO DECEMBER, 1866. Letters to Frederic Harrison on Industrial Co-operation--Consults him about law in "Felix Holt"--Asks his opinion on other questions--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Visit to Tunbridge Wells--Reading Comte's "Synthèse"--Letter to F. Harrison on "case" for "Felix Holt"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Joy in the world getting better--Letter to Madame Bodichon--"Felix Holt" growing like a sickly child--Want of sincerity in England--Desire for knowledge increases--Blackwood offers £5000 for "Felix Holt"--Letters to John Blackwood renewing correspondence--Thanks for encouragement--Painstaking with "Felix Holt"--Letter to F. Harrison on legal points--The book finished--Inscription--Letter of adieu to Mrs. Congreve--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Excitement of finishing "Felix Holt"--Journey to Holland and Germany--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Schwalbach--Return to the Priory--Letter to F. Harrison asking for sympathy--Letter to John Blackwood--Colonel Hamley--Letter to Miss Hennell describing German trip--Miracle play at Antwerp--Amsterdam synagogue--Takes up drama "The Spanish Gypsy" again--Reading on Spanish subjects--Letter to F. Harrison--Need of sympathy--Æsthetic teaching--Tells him of the proposed drama--Letters to John Blackwood--Dean Ramsay--Sir Henry Holland--Article on "Felix Holt" in _Macmillan's Magazine_--"The Spanish Gypsy" recommenced--Reading Renan's "Histoire des Langues Sémitiques" and Ticknor's "Spanish Literature"--Visit to Tunbridge Wells for a week--Reading Cornewall Lewis's "Astronomy of the Ancients"--Ockley's "History of the Saracens," and Spanish Ballads--Letter to Miss Hennell--Enjoyment of study--Depression--Letter of adieu to Mrs. Congreve--Set off on journey to Spain. END OF VOL. II. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious typographical errors were repaired. Duplicate sidenotes (repeated at the top of continuation pages) were deleted. Latin-1 file: _underscores_ enclose italicized content. Sidenote at the bottom of p. 215, and repeated on continuation p. 216, "Letter to Miss Sara Hennell"--p. 215 sidenote (retained) shows "18th April," but continuation sidenote on p. 216 (deleted) shows "13th April." Sidenote p. 227, "Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Aug. 1861"--original reads "1860." 
43043	----	Transcriber's Note: This is Volume I of a three volume set: Volume I--Unknown Volume II--Famous Volume III--Sunset A combined index to the entire set is located at the end of Volume III. Narrative content written by J. Cross and material quoted from writers other than George Eliot are interspersed throughout the text. Their content is placed in block quotes. Remaining transcriber's notes are located at the end of the text. * * * * * GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE VOL. I.--UNKNOWN "OUR FINEST HOPE IS FINEST MEMORY" [Illustration: Portrait of George Eliot. Etched by M. Rajon.] GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE _as related in her Letters and Journals_ ARRANGED AND EDITED BY HER HUSBAND J. W. CROSS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN THREE VOLUMES.--VOLUME I NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS. _LIBRARY EDITION._ ADAM BEDE. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. DANIEL DERONDA. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. ROMOLA. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. HARPER & BROTHERS _will send any of the above volumes by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. For other editions of George Eliot's works published by Harper & Brothers see advertisement at end of third volume_. PREFACE. With the materials in my hands I have endeavored to form an _autobiography_ (if the term may be permitted) of George Eliot. The life has been allowed to write itself in extracts from her letters and journals. Free from the obtrusion of any mind but her own, this method serves, I think, better than any other open to me, to show the development of her intellect and character. In dealing with the correspondence I have been influenced by the desire to make known the woman, as well as the author, through the presentation of her daily life. On the intellectual side there remains little to be learned by those who already know George Eliot's books. In the twenty volumes which she wrote and published in her lifetime will be found her best and ripest thoughts. The letters now published throw light on another side of her nature--not less important, but hitherto unknown to the public--the side of the affections. The intimate life was the core of the root from which sprung the fairest flowers of her inspiration. Fame came to her late in life, and, when it presented itself, was so weighted with the sense of responsibility that it was in truth a rose with many thorns, for George Eliot had the temperament that shrinks from the position of a public character. The belief in the wide, and I may add in the beneficent, effect of her writing was no doubt the highest happiness, the reward of the artist which she greatly cherished: but the joys of the hearthside, the delight in the love of her friends, were the supreme pleasures in her life. By arranging all the letters and journals so as to form one connected whole, keeping the order of their dates, and with the least possible interruption of comment, I have endeavored to combine a narrative of day-to-day life, with the play of light and shade which only letters, written in various moods, can give, and without which no portrait can be a good likeness. I do not know that the particular method in which I have treated the letters has ever been adopted before. Each letter has been pruned of everything that seemed to me irrelevant to my purpose--of everything that I thought my wife would have wished to be omitted. Every sentence that remains adds, in my judgment, something (however small it may be) to the means of forming a conclusion about her character. I ought perhaps to say a word of apology for what may appear to be undue detail of travelling experiences; but I hope that to many readers these will be interesting, as reflected through George Eliot's mind. The remarks on works of art are only meant to be records of impressions. She would have deprecated for herself the attitude of an art critic. Excepting a slight introductory sketch of the girlhood, up to the time when letters became available, and a few words here and there to elucidate the correspondence, I have confined myself to the work of selection and arrangement. I have refrained almost entirely from quoting remembered sayings by George Eliot, because it is difficult to be certain of complete accuracy, and everything depends upon accuracy. Recollections of conversation are seldom to be implicitly trusted in the absence of notes made at the time. The value of spoken words depends, too, so much upon the _tone_, and on the circumstances which gave rise to their utterance, that they often mislead as much as they enlighten, when, in the process of repetition, they have taken color from another mind. "All interpretations depend upon the interpreter," and I have judged it best to let George Eliot be her own interpreter, as far as possible. I owe thanks to Mr. Isaac Evans, the brother of my wife, for much of the information in regard to her child-life; and the whole book is a long record of debts due to other friends for letters. It is not, therefore, necessary for me to recapitulate the list of names in this place. My thanks to all are heartfelt. But there is a very special acknowledgment due to Miss Sara Hennell, to Mrs. Bray, and to the late Mr. Charles Bray of Coventry, not only for the letters which they placed at my disposal, but also for much information given to me in the most friendly spirit. The very important part of the life from 1842 to 1854 could not possibly have been written without their contribution. To Mr. Charles Lewes, also, I am indebted for some valuable letters and extracts from the journals of his father, besides the letters addressed to himself. He also obtained for me an important letter written by George Eliot to Mr. R. H. Hutton; and throughout the preparation of the book I have had the advantage of his sympathetic interest, and his concurrence in the publication of all the materials. Special thanks are likewise due to Messrs. Wm. Blackwood & Sons for having placed at my disposal George Eliot's long correspondence with the firm. The letters (especially those addressed to her friend the late Mr. John Blackwood) throw a light, that could not otherwise have been obtained, on the most interesting part of her literary career. To the legal representatives of the late Charles Dickens, of the late Lord Lytton, and of Mrs. Carlyle; to Mr. J. A. Froude, and to Mr. Archer Gurney, I owe thanks for leave to print letters written by them. For all the defects that there may be in the plan of these volumes I alone am responsible. The lines were determined and the work was substantially put into shape before I submitted the manuscript to any one. While passing the winter in the south of France I had the good fortune at Cannes to find, in Lord Acton, not only an enthusiastic admirer of George Eliot, but also a friend always most kindly ready to assist me with valuable counsel and with cordial, generous sympathy. He was the first reader of the manuscript, and whatever accuracy may have been arrived at, particularly in the names of foreign books, foreign persons, and foreign places, is in great part due to his friendly, careful help. But of course he has no responsibility whatever for any of my sins of omission or commission. By the kind permission of Sir Frederic Burton, I have been enabled to reproduce as a frontispiece M. Rajon's etching of the beautiful drawing, executed in 1864, now in the National Portrait Gallery, South Kensington. The view of the old house at Rosehill is from a drawing by Mrs. Bray. It is connected with some of George Eliot's happiest experiences, and with the period of her most rapid intellectual development. For permission to use the sketch of the drawing-room at the Priory I am indebted to the Messrs. Harpers, of New York. In conclusion, it is in no conventional spirit, but from my heart, that I bespeak the indulgence of readers for my share of this work. Of its shortcomings no one can be so convinced as I am myself. J. W. C. CAMDEN HILL, _December, 1884_. CONTENTS OF VOL. I. Introductory Sketch of Childhood. Page 1 CHAPTER I. AUGUST, 1838, TO MARCH, 1841. Life at Griff 28 CHAPTER II. MARCH, 1841, TO APRIL, 1846. Coventry--Translation of Strauss 61 CHAPTER III. MAY, 1846, TO MAY, 1849. Life in Coventry till Mr. Evans's Death 106 CHAPTER IV. JUNE, 1849, TO MARCH, 1850. Geneva 150 CHAPTER V. MARCH, 1850, TO JULY, 1854. Work in London--Union with Mr. Lewes 181 CHAPTER VI. JULY, 1854, TO MARCH, 1855. Germany 239 CHAPTER VII. MARCH, 1855, TO DECEMBER, 1857. Richmond--"Scenes of Clerical Life" 273 APPENDIX 349 ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. I. PORTRAIT OF GEORGE ELIOT. Etched by M. Rajon _Frontispiece._ GRIFF--FRONT VIEW _To face p_. 6 GRIFF--WITH THE FARM OFFICES " 12 HOUSE IN FOLESHILL ROAD, COVENTRY " 62 PORTRAIT OF MR. ROBERT EVANS " 148 ROSEHILL " 182 GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE. _INTRODUCTORY SKETCH OF CHILDHOOD._ "_Nov. 22, 1819._--Mary Ann Evans was born at Arbury Farm,[1] at five o'clock this morning." This is an entry, in Mr. Robert Evans's handwriting, on the page of an old diary that now lies before me, and records, with characteristic precision, the birth of his youngest child, afterwards known to the world as George Eliot. Let us pause for a moment to pay its due homage to the precision, because it was in all probability to this most noteworthy quality of her father's nature that the future author was indebted for one of the principal elements of her own after-success--the enormous faculty for taking pains. The baby was born on St. Cecilia's day, and Mr. Evans, being a good churchman, takes her, on the 29th November, to be baptized in the church at Chilvers Coton--the parish in which Arbury Farm lies--a church destined to impress itself strongly on the child's imagination, and to be known by many people in many lands afterwards as Shepperton Church. The father was a remarkable man, and many of the leading traits in his character are to be found in Adam Bede and in Caleb Garth--although, of course, neither of these is a portrait. He was born in 1773, at Ellaston, in Staffordshire, son of a George Evans, who carried on the business of builder and carpenter there: the Evans family having come originally from Northop, in Flintshire. Robert was brought up to the business; but about 1799, or a little before, he held a farm of Mr. Francis Newdigate at Kirk Hallam, in Derbyshire, and became his agent. On Sir Roger Newdigate's death the Arbury estate came to Mr. Francis Newdigate for his life, and Mr. Evans accompanied him into Warwickshire, in 1806, in the capacity of agent. In 1801 he had married Harriott Poynton, by whom he had two children--Robert, born 1802, at Ellaston, and Frances Lucy, born 1805, at Kirk Hallam. His first wife died in 1809; and on 8th February, 1813, he married Christiana Pearson, by whom he had three children--Christiana, born 1814; Isaac, born 1816, and Mary Ann, born 1819. Shortly after the last child's birth, Robert, the son, became the agent, under his father, for the Kirk Hallam property, and lived there with his sister Frances, who afterwards married a Mr. Houghton. In March, 1820, when the baby girl was only four months old, the Evans family removed to Griff, a charming red-brick, ivy-covered house on the Arbury estate--"the warm little nest where her affections were fledged"--and there George Eliot spent the first twenty-one years of her life. Let us remember what the England was upon which this observant child opened her eyes. The date of her birth was removed from the beginning of the French Revolution by just the same period of time as separates a child, born this year, 1884, from the beginning of the Crimean War. To a man of forty-six to-day, the latter event seems but of yesterday. It took place at a very impressionable period of his life, and the remembrance of every detail is perfectly vivid. Mr. Evans was forty-six when his youngest child was born. He was a youth of sixteen when the Revolution began, and that mighty event, with all its consequences, had left an indelible impression on him, and the convictions and conclusions it had fostered in his mind permeated through to his children, and entered as an indestructible element into the susceptible soul of his youngest daughter. There are bits in the paper "Looking Backward," in "Theophrastus Such," which are true autobiography. "In my earliest remembrance of my father his hair was already gray, for I was his youngest child, and it seemed to me that advanced age was appropriate to a father, as, indeed, in all respects I considered him a parent so much to my honor that the mention of my relationship to him was likely to secure me regard among those to whom I was otherwise a stranger--his stories from his life including so many names of distant persons that my imagination placed no limit to his acquaintanceship.... Nor can I be sorry, though myself given to meditative if not active innovation, that my father was a Tory who had not exactly a dislike to innovators and dissenters, but a slight opinion of them as persons of ill-founded self-confidence.... And I often smile at my consciousness that certain Conservative prepossessions have mingled themselves for me with the influences of our Midland scenery, from the tops of the elms down to the buttercups and the little wayside vetches. Naturally enough. That part of my father's prime to which he oftenest referred had fallen on the days when the great wave of political enthusiasm and belief in a speedy regeneration of all things had ebbed, and the supposed millennial initiative of France was turning into a Napoleonic empire.... To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong government which could maintain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word 'government' in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it part of my effective religion, in contrast with the word 'rebel,' which seemed to carry the stamp of evil in its syllables, and, lit by the fact that Satan was the first rebel, made an argument dispensing with more detailed inquiry." This early association of ideas must always be borne in mind, as it is the key to a great deal in the mental attitude of the future thinker and writer. It is the foundation of the latent Conservative bias. The year 1819 is memorable as a culminating period of bad times and political discontent in England. The nation was suffering acutely from the reaction after the excitement of the last Napoleonic war. George IV. did not come to the throne till January, 1820, so that George Eliot was born in the reign of George III. The trial of Queen Caroline was the topic of absorbing public interest. Waterloo was not yet an affair of five years old. Byron had four years, and Goethe had thirteen years, still to live. The last of Miss Austen's novels had been published only eighteen months, and the first of the Waverley series only six years before. Thackeray and Dickens were boys at school, and George Sand, as a girl of fifteen, was leaving her loved freedom on the banks of the Indre for the Convent des Anglaises at Paris. That "Greater Britain" (Canada and Australia), which to-day forms so large a reading public, was then scarcely more than a geographical expression, with less than half a million of inhabitants, all told, where at present there are eight millions; and in the United States, where more copies of George Eliot's books are now sold than in any other quarter of the world, the population then numbered less than ten millions where to-day it is fifty-five millions. Including Great Britain, these English-speaking races have increased from thirty millions in 1820 to one hundred millions in 1884; and with the corresponding increase in education we can form some conception how a popular English writer's fame has widened its circle. There was a remoteness about a detached country-house, in the England of those days, difficult for us to conceive now, with our railways, penny-post, and telegraphs; nor is the Warwickshire country about Griff an exhilarating surrounding. There are neither hills nor vales, no rivers, lakes, or sea--nothing but a monotonous succession of green fields and hedgerows, with some fine trees. The only water to be seen is the "brown canal." The effect of such a landscape on an ordinary observer is not inspiring, but "effective magic is transcendent nature;" and with her transcendent nature George Eliot has transfigured these scenes, dear to Midland souls, into many an idyllic picture, known to those who know her books. In her childhood the great event of the day was the passing of the coach before the gate of Griff House, which lies at a bend of the high-road between Coventry and Nuneaton, and within a couple of miles of the mining village of Bedworth, "where the land began to be blackened with coal-pits, the rattle of hand-looms to be heard in hamlets and villages. Here were powerful men walking queerly, with knees bent outward from squatting in the mine, going home to throw themselves down in their blackened flannel and sleep through the daylight, then rise and spend much of their high wages at the alehouse with their fellows of the Benefit Club; here the pale, eager faces of hand-loom weavers, men and women, haggard from sitting up late at night to finish the week's work, hardly begun till the Wednesday. Everywhere the cottages and the small children were dirty, for the languid mothers gave their strength to the loom; pious Dissenting women, perhaps, who took life patiently, and thought that salvation depended chiefly on predestination, and not at all on cleanliness. The gables of Dissenting chapels now made a visible sign of religion, and of a meeting-place to counterbalance the alehouse, even in the hamlets.... Here was a population not convinced that old England was as good as possible; here were multitudinous men and women aware that their religion was not exactly the religion of their rulers, who might therefore be better than they were, and who, if better, might alter many things which now made the world perhaps more painful than it need be, and certainly more sinful. Yet there were the gray steeples too, and the churchyards, with their grassy mounds and venerable headstones, sleeping in the sunlight; there were broad fields and homesteads, and fine old woods covering a rising ground, or stretching far by the roadside, allowing only peeps at the park and mansion which they shut in from the working-day world. In these midland districts the traveller passed rapidly from one phase of English life to another; after looking down on a village dingy with coal-dust, noisy with the shaking of looms, he might skirt a parish all of fields, high hedges, and deep-rutted lanes; after the coach had rattled over the pavement of a manufacturing town, the scene of riots and trades-union meetings, it would take him in another ten minutes into a rural region, where the neighborhood of the town was only felt in the advantages of a near market for corn, cheese, and hay, and where men with a considerable banking account were accustomed to say that 'they never meddled with politics themselves.'"[2] [Illustration: Griff House--Front view.] We can imagine the excitement of a little four-year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother waiting, on bright frosty mornings, to hear the far-off ringing beat of the horses' feet upon the hard ground, and then to see the gallant appearance of the four grays, with coachman and guard in scarlet, outside passengers muffled up in furs, and baskets of game and other packages hanging behind the boot, as his majesty's mail swung cheerily round on its way from Birmingham to Stamford. Two coaches passed the door daily--one from Birmingham at 10 o'clock in the morning, the other from Stamford at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. These were the chief connecting links between the household at Griff and the outside world. Otherwise life went on with that monotonous regularity which distinguishes the country from the town. And it is to these circumstances of her early life that a great part of the quality of George Eliot's writing is due, and that she holds the place she has attained in English literature. Her roots were down in the pre-railroad, pre-telegraphic period--the days of fine old leisure--but the fruit was formed during an era of extraordinary activity in scientific and mechanical discovery. Her genius was the outcome of these conditions. It would not have existed in the same form deprived of either influence. Her father was busy both with his own farm-work and increasing agency business. He was already remarked in Warwickshire for his knowledge and judgment in all matters relating to land, and for his general trustworthiness and high character, so that he was constantly selected as arbitrator and valuer. He had a wonderful eye, especially for valuing woods, and could calculate with almost absolute precision the quantity of available timber in a standing tree. In addition to his merits as a man of business, he had the good fortune to possess the warm friendship and consistent support of Colonel Newdigate of Astley Castle, son of Mr. Francis Newdigate of Arbury, and it was mainly through the colonel's introduction and influence that Mr. Evans became agent also to Lord Aylesford, Lord Lifford, Mr. Bromley Davenport, and several others. His position cannot be better summed up than in the words of his daughter, writing to Mr. Bray on 30th September, 1859, in regard to some one who had written of her, after the appearance of "Adam Bede," as a "self-educated farmer's daughter." "My father did not raise himself from being an artisan to be a farmer; he raised himself from being an artisan to be a man whose extensive knowledge in very varied practical departments made his services valued through several counties. He had large knowledge of building, of mines, of plantations, of various branches of valuation and measurement--of all that is essential to the management of large estates. He was held by those competent to judge as _unique_ among land-agents for his manifold knowledge and experience, which enabled him to save the special fees usually paid by landowners for special opinions on the different questions incident to the proprietorship of land. So far as I am personally concerned I should not write a stroke to prevent any one, in the zeal of antithetic eloquence, from calling me a tinker's daughter; but if my father is to be mentioned at all--if he is to be identified with an imaginary character--my piety towards his memory calls on me to point out to those who are supposed to speak with information what he really achieved in life." Mr. Evans was also, like Adam Bede, noteworthy for his extraordinary physical strength and determination of character. There is a story told of him, that one day when he was travelling on the top of a coach, down in Kent, a decent woman sitting next him complained that a great hulking sailor on her other side was making himself offensive. Mr. Evans changed places with the woman, and, taking the sailor by the collar, forced him down under the seat, and held him there with an iron hand for the remainder of the stage: and at Griff it is still remembered that the master, happening to pass one day while a couple of laborers were waiting for a third to help to move the high, heavy ladder used for thatching ricks, braced himself up to a great effort, and carried the ladder alone and unaided from one rick to the other, to the wide-eyed wonder and admiration of his men. With all this strength, however, both of body and of character, he seems to have combined a certain self-distrust, owing, perhaps, to his early imperfect education, which resulted in a general submissiveness in his domestic relations, more or less portrayed in the character of Mr. Garth. His second wife was a woman with an unusual amount of natural force; a shrewd, practical person, with a considerable dash of the Mrs. Poyser vein in her. Hers was an affectionate, warm-hearted nature, and her children, on whom she cast "the benediction of her gaze," were thoroughly attached to her. She came of a race of yeomen, and her social position was, therefore, rather better than her husband's at the time of their marriage. Her family are, no doubt, prototypes of the Dodsons in the "Mill on the Floss." There were three other sisters married, and all living in the neighborhood of Griff--Mrs. Everard, Mrs. Johnson, and Mrs. Garner--and probably Mr. Evans heard a good deal about "the traditions in the Pearson family." Mrs. Evans was a very active, hard-working woman, but shortly after her last child's birth she became ailing in health, and consequently her eldest girl, Christiana, was sent to school, at a very early age, to Miss Lathom's, at Attleboro, a village a mile or two from Griff, while the two younger children spent some part of their time every day at the cottage of a Mrs. Moore, who kept a dame's school close to Griff gates. The little girl very early became possessed with the idea that she was going to be a personage in the world; and Mr. Charles Lewes has told me an anecdote which George Eliot related of herself as characteristic of this period of her childhood. When she was only four years old she recollected playing on the piano, of which she did not know one note, in order to impress the servant with a proper notion of her acquirements and generally distinguished position. This was the time when the love for her brother grew into the child's affections. She used always to be at his heels, insisting on doing everything he did. She was not, in these baby-days, in the least precocious in learning. In fact, her half-sister, Mrs. Houghton, who was some fourteen years her senior, told me that the child learned to read with some difficulty; but Mr. Isaac Evans says that this was not from any slowness in apprehension, but because she liked playing so much better. Mere sharpness, however, was not a characteristic of her mind. Hers was a large, slow-growing nature; and I think it is, at any rate, certain that there was nothing of the infant phenomenon about her. In her moral development she showed, from the earliest years, the trait that was most marked in her all through life, namely, the absolute need of some one person who should be all in all to her, and to whom she should be all in all. Very jealous in her affections, and easily moved to smiles or tears, she was of a nature capable of the keenest enjoyment and the keenest suffering, knowing "all the wealth and all the woe" of a pre-eminently exclusive disposition. She was affectionate, proud, and sensitive in the highest degree. The sort of happiness that belongs to this budding-time of life, from the age of three to five, is apt to impress itself very strongly on the memory; and it is this period which is referred to in the Brother and Sister Sonnet, "But were another childhood's world my share, I would be born a little sister there." When her brother was eight years old he was sent to school at Coventry, and, her mother continuing in very delicate health, the little Mary Ann, now five years of age, went to join her sister at Miss Lathom's school, at Attleboro, where they continued as boarders for three or four years, coming, occasionally, home to Griff on Saturdays. During one of our walks at Witley, in 1880, my wife mentioned to me that what chiefly remained in her recollection about this very early school-life was the difficulty of getting near enough the fire in winter to become thoroughly warmed, owing to the circle of girls forming round too narrow a fireplace. This suffering from cold was the beginning of a low general state of health; also at this time she began to be subject to fears at night--"the susceptibility to terror"--which she has described as haunting Gwendolen Harleth in her childhood. The other girls in the school, who were all, naturally, very much older, made a great pet of the child, and used to call her "little mamma," and she was not unhappy except at nights; but she told me that this liability to have "all her soul become a quivering fear," which remained with her afterwards, had been one of the supremely important influences dominating at times her future life. Mr. Isaac Evans's chief recollection of this period is the delight of the little sister at his home-coming for holidays, and her anxiety to know all that he had been doing and learning. The eldest child, who went by the name of Chrissey, was the chief favorite of the aunts, as she was always neat and tidy, and used to spend a great deal of her time with them, while the other two were inseparable playfellows at home. The boy was his mother's pet and the girl her father's. They had everything to make children happy at Griff--a delightful old-fashioned garden, a pond and the canal to fish in, and the farm-offices close to the house, "the long cow-shed, where generations of the milky mothers have stood patiently, the broad-shouldered barns, where the old-fashioned flail once made resonant music," and where butter-making and cheese-making were carried on with great vigor by Mrs. Evans. [Illustration: Griff--with the Farm Offices.] Any one, about this time, who happened to look through the window on the left-hand side of the door of Griff House would have seen a pretty picture in the dining-room on Saturday evenings after tea. The powerful, middle-aged man with the strongly marked features sits in his deep, leather-covered arm-chair, at the right-hand corner of the ruddy fireplace, with the head of "the little wench" between his knees. The child turns over the book with pictures that she wishes her father to explain to her--or that perhaps she prefers explaining to him. Her rebellious hair is all over her eyes, much vexing the pale, energetic mother who sits on the opposite side of the fire, cumbered with much service, letting no instant of time escape the inevitable click of the knitting-needles, accompanied by epigrammatic speech. The elder girl, prim and tidy, with her work before her, is by her mother's side; and the brother, between the two groups, keeps assuring himself by perpetual search that none of his favorite means of amusement are escaping from his pockets. The father is already very proud of the astonishing and growing intelligence of his little girl. From a very early age he has been in the habit of taking her with him in his drives about the neighborhood, "standing between her father's knees as he drove leisurely," so that she has drunk in knowledge of the country and of country folk at all her pores. An old-fashioned child, already living in a world of her own imagination, impressible to her finger-tips, and willing to give her views on any subject. The first book that George Eliot read, so far as I have been able to ascertain, was a little volume published in 1822, entitled "The Linnet's Life," which she gave to me in the last year of her life, at Witley. It bears the following inscription, written some time before she gave it to me: "This little book is the first present I ever remember having received from my father. Let any one who thinks of me with some tenderness after I am dead take care of this book for my sake. It made me very happy when I held it in my little hands, and read it over and over again; and thought the pictures beautiful, especially the one where the linnet is feeding her young." It must, I think, have been very shortly after she received this present that an old friend of the family, who was in the habit of coming as a visitor to Griff from time to time, used occasionally to bring a book in his hand for the little girl. I very well remember her expressing to me deep gratitude for this early ministration to her childish delights; and Mr. Burne Jones has been kind enough to tell me of a conversation with George Eliot about children's books, when she also referred to this old gentleman's kindness. They were agreeing in disparagement of some of the books that the rising generation take their pleasure in, and she recalled the dearth of child-literature in her own home, and her passionate delight and total absorption in �sop's Fables (given to her by the aforesaid old gentleman), the possession of which had opened new worlds to her imagination. Mr. Burne Jones particularly remembers how she laughed till the tears ran down her face in recalling her infantine enjoyment of the humor in the fable of Mercury and the Statue-seller. Having so few books at this time, she read them again and again, until she knew them by heart. One of them was a Joe Miller jest-book, with the stories from which she used greatly to astonish the family circle. But the beginning of her serious reading-days did not come till later. Meantime her talent for observation gained a glorious new field for employment in her first journey from home, which took place in 1826. Her father and mother took her with them on a little trip into Derbyshire and Staffordshire, where she saw Mr. Evans's relations, and they came back through Lichfield, sleeping at the Swan.[3] They were away only a week, from the 18th to the 24th of May; but "what time is little" to an imaginative, observant child of seven on her first journey? About this time a deeply felt crisis occurred in her life, as her brother had a pony given to him, to which he became passionately attached. He developed an absorbing interest in riding, and cared less and less to play with his sister. The next important event happened in her eighth or ninth year, when she was sent to Miss Wallington's school at Nuneaton with her sister. This was a much larger school than Miss Lathom's, there being some thirty girls, boarders. The principal governess was Miss Lewis, who became then, and remained for many years after, Mary Ann Evans's most intimate friend and principal correspondent, and I am indebted to the letters addressed to her from 1836 to 1842 for most of the information concerning that period. Books now became a passion with the child; she read everything she could lay hands on, greatly troubling the soul of her mother by the consumption of candles as well as of eyesight in her bedroom. From a subsequent letter it will be seen that she was "early supplied with works of fiction by those who kindly sought to gratify her appetite for reading." It must have been about this time that the episode occurred in relation to "Waverley" which is mentioned by Miss Simcox in her article in the June, 1881, number of the _Nineteenth Century Review_. It was quite new to me, and, as it is very interesting, I give it in Miss Simcox's own words: "Somewhere about 1827 a friendly neighbor lent 'Waverley' to an elder sister of little Mary Ann Evans. It was returned before the child had read to the end, and, in her distress at the loss of the fascinating volume, she began to write out the story as far as she had read it for herself, beginning naturally where the story begins with Waverley's adventures at Tully Veolan, and continuing until the surprised elders were moved to get her the book again." Miss Simcox has pointed out the reference to this in the motto of the 57th chapter of "Middlemarch:" "They numbered scarce eight summers when a name Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame At penetration of the quickening air: His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor, Making the little world their childhood knew Large with a land of mountain, lake, and scaur, And larger yet with wonder, love, belief Towards Walter Scott, who, living far away, Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. The book and they must part, but, day by day, In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran, They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan." Miss Simcox also mentions that "Elia divided her childish allegiance with Scott, and she remembered feasting with singular pleasure upon an extract in some stray almanac from the essay in commemoration of 'Captain Jackson and his slender ration of Single Gloucester.' This is an extreme example of the general rule that a wise child's taste in literature is sounder than adults generally venture to believe." We know, too, from the "Mill on the Floss" that the "History of the Devil," by Daniel Defoe, was a favorite. The book is still religiously preserved at Griff, with its pictures just as Maggie looked at them. "The Pilgrim's Progress," also, and "Rasselas" had a large share of her affections. At Miss Wallington's the growing girl soon distinguished herself by an easy mastery of the usual school-learning of her years, and there, too, the religious side of her nature was developed to a remarkable degree. Miss Lewis was an ardent Evangelical Churchwoman, and exerted a strong influence on her young pupil, whom she found very sympathetically inclined. But Mary Ann Evans did not associate freely with her schoolfellows, and her friendship with Miss Lewis was the only intimacy she indulged in. On coming home for their holidays the sister and brother began, about this time, the habit of acting charades together before the Griff household and the aunts, who were greatly impressed with the cleverness of the performance; and the girl was now recognized in the family circle as no ordinary child. Another epoch presently succeeded, on her removal to Miss Franklin's school at Coventry, in her thirteenth year. She was probably then very much what she has described her own Maggie at the age of thirteen: "A creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it." In _Our Times_ of June, 1881, there is a paper by a lady whose mother was at school with Mary Ann Evans, which gives some interesting particulars of the Miss Franklins. "They were daughters of a Baptist minister who had preached for many years in Coventry, and who inhabited, during his pastorate, a house in the chapel-yard almost exactly resembling that of Rufus Lyon in 'Felix Holt.' For this venerable gentleman Miss Evans, as a schoolgirl, had a great admiration, and I, who can remember him well, can trace in Rufus Lyon himself many slight resemblances, such as the 'little legs,' and the habit of walking up and down when composing. Miss Rebecca Franklin was a lady of considerable intellectual power, and remarkable for her elegance in writing and conversation, as well as for her beautiful calligraphy. In her classes for English Composition Mary Ann Evans was, from her first entering the school, far in advance of the rest; and while the themes of the other children were read, criticised, and corrected in class, hers were reserved for the private perusal and enjoyment of the teacher, who rarely found anything to correct. Her enthusiasm for music was already very strongly marked, and her music-master, a much-tried man, suffering from the irritability incident to his profession, reckoned on his hour with her as a refreshment to his wearied nerves, and soon had to confess that he had no more to teach her. In connection with this proficiency in music, my mother recalls her sensitiveness at that time as being painfully extreme. When there were visitors, Miss Evans, as the best performer in the school, was sometimes summoned to the parlor to play for their amusement, and though suffering agonies from shyness and reluctance, she obeyed with all readiness, but, on being released, my mother has often known her to rush to her room and throw herself on the floor in an agony of tears. Her schoolfellows loved her as much as they could venture to love one whom they felt to be so immeasurably superior to themselves, and she had playful nicknames for most of them. My mother, who was delicate, and to whom she was very kind, was dubbed by her 'Miss Equanimity.' A source of great interest to the girls, and of envy to those who lived farther from home, was the weekly cart which brought Miss Evans new-laid eggs and other delightful produce of her father's farm." In talking about these early days, my wife impressed on my mind the debt she felt that she owed to the Miss Franklins for their excellent instruction, and she had also the very highest respect for their moral qualities. With her chameleon-like nature she soon adopted their religious views with intense eagerness and conviction, although she never formally joined the Baptists or any other communion than the Church of England. She at once, however, took a foremost place in the school, and became a leader of prayer-meetings among the girls. In addition to a sound English education the Miss Franklins managed to procure for their pupils excellent masters for French, German, and music; so that, looking to the lights of those times, the means of obtaining knowledge were very much above the average for girls. Her teachers, on their side, were very proud of their exceptionally gifted scholar; and years afterwards, when Miss Evans came with her father to live in Coventry, they introduced her to one of their friends, not only as a marvel of mental power, but also as a person "sure to get something up very soon in the way of clothing-club or other charitable undertaking." This year, 1832, was not only memorable for the change to a new and superior school, but it was also much more memorable to George Eliot for the riot which she saw at Nuneaton, on the occasion of the election for North Warwickshire, after the passing of the great Reform Bill, and which subsequently furnished her with the incidents for the riot in "Felix Holt." It was an event to lay hold on the imagination of an impressionable girl of thirteen, and it is thus described in the local newspaper of 29th December, 1832: "On Friday, the 21st December, at Nuneaton, from the commencement of the poll till nearly half-past two, the Hemingites[4] occupied the poll; the numerous plumpers for Sir Eardley Wilmot and the adherents of Mr. Dugdale being constantly interrupted in their endeavors to go to the hustings to give an honest and conscientious vote. The magistrates were consequently applied to, and from the representations they received from all parties, they were at length induced to call in aid a military force. A detachment of the Scots Greys accordingly arrived; but it appearing that that gallant body was not sufficiently strong to put down the turbulent spirit of the mob, a reinforcement was considered by the constituted authorities as absolutely necessary. The tumult increasing, as the detachment of the Scots Greys were called in, the Riot Act was read from the windows of the Newdigate Arms; and we regret to add that both W. P. Inge, Esq., and Colonel Newdigate, in the discharge of their magisterial duties, received personal injuries. "On Saturday the mob presented an appalling appearance, and but for the forbearance of the soldiery numerous lives would have fallen a sacrifice. Several of the officers of the Scots Greys were materially hurt in their attempt to quell the riotous proceedings of the mob. During the day the sub-sheriffs at the different booths received several letters from the friends of Mr. Dugdale, stating that they were outside of the town, and anxious to vote for that gentleman, but were deterred from entering it from fear of personal violence. Two or three unlucky individuals, drawn from the files of the military on their approach to the poll, were cruelly beaten, and stripped literally naked. We regret to add that one life has been sacrificed during the contest, and that several misguided individuals have been seriously injured." The term ending Christmas, 1835, was the last spent at Miss Franklin's. In the first letter of George Eliot's that I have been able to discover, dated 6th January, 1836, and addressed to Miss Lewis, who was at that time governess in the family of the Rev. L. Harper, Burton Latimer, Northamptonshire, she speaks of her mother having suffered a great increase of pain, and adds-- "We dare not hope that there will be a permanent improvement. Our anxieties on my mother's account, though so great, have been since Thursday almost lost sight of in the more sudden, and consequently more severe, trial which we have been called on to endure in the alarming illness of my dear father. For four days we had no cessation of our anxiety; but I am thankful to say that he is now considered out of danger, though very much reduced by frequent bleeding and very powerful medicines." In the summer of this year--1836--the mother died, after a long, painful illness, in which she was nursed with great devotion by her daughters. It was their first acquaintance with death; and to a highly wrought, sensitive girl of sixteen such a loss seems an unendurable calamity. "To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair." Many references will be found in the subsequent correspondence to what she suffered at this time, all summed up in the old popular phrase, "We can have but one mother." In the following spring Christiana was married to Mr. Edward Clarke, a surgeon practising at Meriden, in Warwickshire. One of Mr. Isaac Evans's most vivid recollections is that on the day of the marriage, after the bride's departure, he and his younger sister had "a good cry" together over the break-up of the old home-life, which of course could never be the same with the mother and the elder sister wanting. Twenty-three years later we shall find George Eliot writing, on the death of this sister, that she "had a very special feeling for her--stronger than any third person would think likely." The relation between the sisters was somewhat like that described as existing between Dorothea and Celia in "Middlemarch"--no intellectual affinity, but a strong family affection. In fact, my wife told me, that although Celia was not in any sense a portrait of her sister, she "had Chrissey continually in mind" in delineating Celia's character. But we must be careful not to found too much on such _suggestions_ of character in George Eliot's books; and this must particularly be borne in mind in the "Mill on the Floss." No doubt the early part of Maggie's portraiture is the best autobiographical representation we can have of George Eliot's own feelings in her childhood, and many of the incidents in the book are based on real experiences of family life, but so mixed with fictitious elements and situations that it would be absolutely misleading to trust to it as a true history. For instance, all that happened in real life between the brother and sister was, I believe, that as they grew up their characters, pursuits, and tastes diverged more and more widely. He took to his father's business, at which he worked steadily, and which absorbed most of his time and attention. He was also devoted to hunting, liked the ordinary pleasures of a young man in his circumstances, and was quite satisfied with the circle of acquaintance in which he moved. After leaving school at Coventry he went to a private tutor's at Birmingham, where he imbibed strong High-Church views. His sister had come back from the Miss Franklins' with ultra-Evangelical tendencies, and their differences of opinion used to lead to a good deal of animated argument. Miss Evans, as she now was, could not rest satisfied with a mere profession of faith without trying to shape her own life--and, it may be added, the lives around her--in accordance with her convictions. The pursuit of pleasure was a snare; dress was vanity; society was a danger. "From what you know of her, you will not be surprised that she threw some exaggeration and wilfulness, some pride and impetuosity, even into her self-renunciation: her own life was still a drama for her, in which she demanded of herself that her part should be played with intensity. And so it came to pass that she often lost the spirit of humility by being excessive in the outward act; she often strove after too high a flight, and came down with her poor little half-fledged wings dabbled in the mud.... That is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of egoism--the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy honors to be gathered and worn."[5] After Christiana's marriage the entire charge of the Griff establishment devolved on Mary Ann, who became a most exemplary housewife, learned thoroughly everything that had to be done, and, with her innate desire for perfection, was never satisfied unless her department was administered in the very best manner that circumstances permitted. She spent a great deal of time in visiting the poor, organizing clothing-clubs, and other works of active charity. But over and above this, as will be seen from the following letters, she was always prosecuting an active intellectual life of her own. Mr. Brezzi, a well-known master of modern languages at Coventry, used to come over to Griff regularly to give her lessons in Italian and German. Mr. M'Ewen, also from Coventry, continued her lessons in music, and she got through a large amount of miscellaneous reading by herself. In the evening she was always in the habit of playing to her father, who was very fond of music. But it requires no great effort of imagination to conceive that this life, though full of interests of its own, and the source from whence the future novelist drew the most powerful and the most touching of her creations, was, as a matter of fact, very monotonous, very difficult, very discouraging. It could scarcely be otherwise to a young girl with a full, passionate nature and hungry intellect, shut up in a farmhouse in the remote country. For there was no sympathetic human soul near with whom to exchange ideas on the intellectual and spiritual problems that were beginning to agitate her mind. "You may try, but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl."[6] This is a point of view that must be distinctly recognized by any one attempting to follow the development of George Eliot's character, and it will always be corrected by the other point of view which she has made so prominent in all her own writing--the soothing, strengthening, sacred influences of the home life, the home loves, the home duties. Circumstances in later life separated her from her kindred, but among her last letters it will be seen that she wrote to her brother in May, 1880, that "our long silence has never broken the affection for you that began when we were little ones"[7]--and she expresses her satisfaction in the growing prosperity of himself and all his family. It was a real gratification to her to hear from some Coventry friends that her nephew, the Rev. Frederic Evans, the present rector of Bedworth, was well spoken of as a preacher in the old familiar places, and in our last summer at Witley we often spoke of a visit to Warwickshire, that she might renew the sweet memories of her child-days. No doubt, the very monotony of her life at Griff, and the narrow field it presented for observation of society, added immeasurably to the intensity of a naturally keen mental vision, concentrating into a focus what might perhaps have become dissipated in more liberal surroundings. And though the field of observation was narrow in one sense, it included very various grades of society. Such fine places as Arbury, and Packington, the seat of Lord Aylesford, where she was being constantly driven by her father, affected the imagination and accentuated the social differences--differences which had a profound significance for such a sensitive and such an intellectually commanding character, and which left their mark on it. "No one who has not a strong natural prompting and susceptibility towards such things [the signs and luxuries of ladyhood] and has, at the same time, suffered from the presence of opposite conditions, can understand how powerfully those minor accidents of rank which please the fastidious sense can preoccupy the imagination."[8] The tone of her mind will be seen from the letters written during the following years, and I remember once, after we were married, when I was urging her to write her autobiography, she said, half sighing, half smiling, "The only thing I should care much to dwell on would be the absolute despair I suffered from of ever being able to achieve anything. No one could ever have felt greater despair, and a knowledge of this might be a help to some other struggler"--adding, with a smile, "but, on the other hand, it might only lead to an increase of bad writing." _SUMMARY._ NOVEMBER 22, 1819, TO END OF 1837. Birth at Arbury Farm--Baptism--Character of father--His first marriage and children--Second marriage and children--Removal to Griff--Events at time of birth--Character of country about Griff--Coach communication--Father's position--Anecdotes of father--Character of mother--Mother's family and delicacy--Dame's school--Companionship with brother--Miss Lathom's school at Attleboro--Suffers from fear--Father's pet--Drives with him--First books read--First journey to Staffordshire--Miss Wallington's school at Nuneaton--Miss Lewis, governess--Books read--Religious impressions--Charade acting--Miss Franklin's school at Coventry--Riot at Nuneaton--First letter to Miss Lewis--Mother's illness--Mother's death--Sister Christiana married to Mr. Clarke--Relations with brother--Housekeeper at Griff--Life and studies there. FOOTNOTES: [1] The farm is also known as the South Farm, Arbury. [2] "Felix Holt"--Introduction. [3] See vol. ii. p. 96. [4] A Mr. Heming was the Radical candidate. [5] "Mill on the Floss," chap. iii. book iv. [6] "Daniel Deronda." [7] See vol. iii. [8] "Felix Holt," chap. xxxviii. p. 399. CHAPTER I. In the foregoing introductory sketch I have endeavored to present the influences to which George Eliot was subjected in her youth, and the environment in which she grew up; I am now able to begin the fulfilment of the promise on the titlepage, that the life will be related in her own letters; or, rather, in extracts from her own letters, for no single letter is printed entire from the beginning to the end. I have not succeeded in obtaining any between 6th January, 1836, and 18th August, 1838; but from the latter date the correspondence becomes regular, and I have arranged it as a continuous narrative, with the names of the persons to whom the letters are addressed in the margin. The slight thread of narrative or explanation which I have written to elucidate the letters, where necessary, will hereafter occupy an inside margin, so that the reader will see at a glance what is narrative and what is correspondence, and will be troubled as little as possible with marks of quotation or changes of type. The following opening letter of the series to Miss Lewis describes a first visit to London with her brother: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 18th Aug. 1838.] Let me tell you, though, that I was not at all delighted with the stir of the great Babel, and the less so, probably, owing to the circumstances attending my visit thither. Isaac and I went alone (that seems rather Irish), and stayed only a week, every day of which we worked hard at seeing sights. I think Greenwich Hospital interested me more than anything else. Mr. Isaac Evans himself tells me that what he remembers chiefly impressed her was the first hearing the great bell of St. Paul's. It affected her deeply. At that time she was so much under the influence of religious and ascetic ideas that she would not go to any of the theatres with her brother, but spent all her evenings alone, reading. A characteristic reminiscence is that the chief thing she wanted to buy was Josephus's "History of the Jews;" and at the same bookshop her brother got her this he bought for himself a pair of hunting sketches. In the same letter, alluding to the marriage of one of her friends, she says: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 18th Aug. 1838.] For my part, when I hear of the marrying and giving in marriage that is constantly being transacted, I can only sigh for those who are multiplying earthly ties which, though powerful enough to detach their hearts and thoughts from heaven, are so brittle as to be liable to be snapped asunder at every breeze. You will think that I need nothing but a tub for my habitation to make me a perfect female Diogenes; and I plead guilty to occasional misanthropical thoughts, but not to the indulgence of them. Still, I must believe that those are happiest who are not fermenting themselves by engaging in projects for earthly bliss, who are considering this life merely a pilgrimage, a scene calling for diligence and watchfulness, not for repose and amusement. I do not deny that there may be many who can partake with a high degree of zest of all the lawful enjoyments the world can offer, and yet live in near communion with their God--who can warmly love the creature, and yet be careful that the Creator maintains his supremacy in their hearts; but I confess that, in my short experience and narrow sphere of action, I have never been able to attain to this. I find, as Dr. Johnson said respecting his wine, total abstinence much easier than moderation. I do not wonder you are pleased with Pascal;[9] his thoughts may be returned to the palate again and again with increasing rather than diminished relish. I have highly enjoyed Hannah More's letters; the contemplation of so blessed a character as hers is very salutary. "That ye be not slothful, but followers of them who, through faith and patience, inherit the promises," is a valuable admonition. I was once told that there was nothing out of myself to prevent my becoming as eminently holy as St. Paul; and though I think that is too sweeping an assertion, yet it is very certain we are generally too low in our aims, more anxious for safety than sanctity, for place than purity, forgetting that each involves the other, and that, as Doddridge tells us, to rest satisfied with any attainments in religion is a fearful proof that we are ignorant of the very first principles of it. O that we could live only for eternity! that we could realize its nearness! I know you do not love quotations, so I will not give you one; but if you do not distinctly remember it, do turn to the passage in Young's "Infidel Reclaimed," beginning, "O vain, vain, vain all else eternity," and do love the lines for my sake. I really feel for you, sacrificing, as you are, your own tastes and comforts for the pleasure of others, and that in a manner the most trying to rebellious flesh and blood; for I verily believe that in most cases it requires more of a martyr's spirit to endure, with patience and cheerfulness, daily crossings and interruptions of our petty desires and pursuits, and to rejoice in them if they can be made to conduce to God's glory and our own sanctification, than even to lay down our lives for the truth. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 6th Nov. 1838.] I can hardly repress a sort of indignation towards second causes. That your time and energies should be expended in ministering to the petty interests of those far beneath you in all that is really elevating is about as _bienséant_ as that I should set fire to a goodly volume to light a match by! I have had a very unsettled life lately--Michaelmas, with its onerous duties and anxieties, much company (for us) and little reading, so that I am ill prepared for corresponding with profit or pleasure. I am generally in the same predicament with books as a glutton with his feast, hurrying through one course that I may be in time for the next, and so not relishing or digesting either; not a very elegant illustration, but the best my organs of ideality and comparison will furnish just now. I have just begun the "Life of Wilberforce," and I am expecting a rich treat from it. There is a similarity, if I may compare myself with such a man, between his temptations, or rather _besetments_, and my own, that makes his experience very interesting to me. O that I might be made as useful in my lowly and obscure station as he was in the exalted one assigned to him! I feel myself to be a mere cumberer of the ground. May the Lord give me such an insight into what is truly good that I may not rest contented with making Christianity a mere addendum to my pursuits, or with tacking it as a fringe to my garments! May I seek to be sanctified wholly! My nineteenth birthday will soon be here (the 22d)--an awakening signal. My mind has been much clogged lately by languor of body, to which I am prone to give way, and for the removal of which I shall feel thankful. We have had an oratorio at Coventry lately, Braham, Phillips, Mrs. Knyvett, and Mrs. Shaw--the last, I think, I shall attend. I am not fitted to decide on the question of the propriety or lawfulness of such exhibitions of talent and so forth, because I have no soul for music. "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth." I am a tasteless person, but it would not cost me any regrets if the only music heard in our land were that of strict worship, nor can I think a pleasure that involves the devotion of all the time and powers of an immortal being to the acquirement of an expertness in so useless (at least in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred) an accomplishment, can be quite pure or elevating in its tendency. The above remarks on oratorio are the more surprising because, two years later, when Miss Evans went to the Birmingham festival, in September, 1840, previous to her brother's marriage, she was affected to an extraordinary degree, so much so that Mrs. Isaac Evans--then Miss Rawlins--told me that the attention of people sitting near was attracted by her hysterical sobbing. And in all her later life music was one of the chiefest delights to her, and especially oratorio. "Not that her enjoyment of music was of the kind that indicates a great specific talent; it was rather that her sensibility to the supreme excitement of music was only one form of that passionate sensibility which belonged to her whole nature, and made her faults and virtues all merge in each other--made her affections sometimes an impatient demand, but also prevented her vanity from taking the form of mere feminine coquetry and device, and gave it the poetry of ambition."[10] The next two letters, dated from Griff--February 6th and March 5th, 1839--are addressed to Mrs. Samuel Evans, a Methodist preacher, the wife of a younger brother of Mr. Robert Evans. They are the more interesting from the fact, which will appear later, that an anecdote related by this aunt during her visit to Griff in 1839 was the germ of "Adam Bede." To what extent this Elizabeth Evans resembled the ideal character of Dinah Morris will also be seen in its place in the history of "Adam Bede." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Samuel Evans, 6th Feb. 1839.] I am so unwilling to believe that you can forget a promise, or to entertain fears respecting your health, that I persuade myself I must have mistaken the terms of the agreement between us, and that I ought to have sent you a letter before I considered myself entitled to one from Wirksworth. However this may be, I feel so anxious to hear of your well-being in every way, that I can no longer rest satisfied without using my only means of obtaining tidings of you. My dear father is not at home to-night, or I should probably have a message of remembrance to give you from him, in addition to the good news that he is as well as he has been for the last two years, and even, I think, better, except that he feels more fatigue after exertion of mind or body than formerly. If you are able to fill a sheet, I am sure both uncle and you would in doing so be complying with the precept, "Lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees." I need not tell you that this is a dry and thirsty land, and I shall be as grateful to you for a draught from your fresh spring as the traveller in the Eastern desert is to the unknown hand that digs a well for him. "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel," seems to be my character, instead of that regular progress from strength to strength that marks, even in this world of mistakes, the people that shall, in the heavenly Zion, stand before God. I shall not only suffer, but be delighted to receive, the word of exhortation, and I beg you not to withhold it. If I did not know how little you need human help, I should regret that my ignorance and want of deep feeling in spiritual things prevent me from suggesting profitable or refreshing thoughts; but I dare say I took care to tell you that my desire for correspondence with you was quite one of self-interest. I am thankful to tell you that my dear friends here are all well. I have a faint hope that the pleasure and profit I have felt in your society may be repeated in the summer: there is no place I would rather visit than Wirksworth, or the inhabitants of which have a stronger hold on my affections. In the next letter the touch about Mrs. Fletcher's life is characteristic. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Samuel Evans, 5th Mch. 1839.] My dear father is just now so plunged in business, and that of a fatiguing kind, that I should put your confidence in my love and gratitude to an unreasonably severe trial if I waited until he had leisure to unite with me in filling a sheet. You were very kind to remember my wish to see "Mrs. Fletcher's Life:" I only desire such a spiritual digestion as has enabled _you_ to derive so much benefit from its perusal. I am truly glad to hear that you are less embarrassed with respect to your congregation, etc., than you were when we saw you. I must protest against your making apologies for speaking of yourself, for nothing that relates to you can be uninteresting to me. The unprofitableness you lament in yourself, during your visit to us, had its true cause, not in your lukewarmness, but in the little improvement I sought to derive from your society, and in my lack of humility and Christian simplicity, that makes me willing to obtain credit for greater knowledge and deeper feeling than I really possess. Instead of putting my light under a bushel, I am in danger of ostentatiously displaying a false one. You have much too high an opinion, my dear aunt, of my spiritual condition, and of my personal and circumstantial advantages. My soul seems for weeks together completely benumbed, and when I am aroused from this torpid state, the intervals of activity are comparatively short. I am ever finding excuses for this in the deprivation of outward excitement and the small scope I have for the application of my principles, instead of feeling self-abasement under the consciousness that I abuse precious hours of retirement, which would be eagerly employed in spiritual exercises by many a devoted servant of God who is struggling with worldly cares and occupations. I feel that my besetting sin is the one of all others most destroying, as it is the fruitful parent of them all--ambition, a desire insatiable for the esteem of my fellow-creatures. This seems the centre whence all my actions proceed. But you will perhaps remember, my dear aunt, that I do not attach much value to a disclosure of religious feelings, owing probably to the dominant corruption I have just been speaking of, which "turns the milk of my good purpose all to curd." On 16th March, 1839, in a letter to Miss Lewis, there is a reference to good spirits, which is of the rarest occurrence all through the correspondence: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 16th Mch. 1839.] I am this morning hardly myself, owing to the insuppressible rising of my animal spirits on a deliverance from sick headache; and then the letter continues as to the expediency of reading works of fiction, in answer to a question Miss Lewis had asked: I put out of the question all persons of perceptions so quick, memories so eclectic and retentive, and minds so comprehensive that nothing less than omnivorous reading, as Southey calls it, can satisfy their intellectual man; for (if I may parody the words of Scripture without profaneness) they will gather to themselves all facts, and heap unto themselves all ideas. For such persons we cannot legislate. Again, I would put out of the question standard works, whose contents are matter of constant reference, and the names of whose heroes and heroines briefly, and therefore conveniently, describe characters and ideas--such are "Don Quixote," Butler's "Hudibras," "Robinson Crusoe," "Gil Blas," Byron's Poetical Romances, Southey's ditto, etc. Such, too, are Walter Scott's novels and poems. Such allusions as "He is a perfect Dominie Sampson," "He is as industrious in finding out antiquities, and about as successful, as Jonathan Oldbuck," are likely to become so common in books and conversation that, _always providing_ our leisure is not circumscribed by duty within narrow bounds, we should, I think, qualify ourselves to understand them. Shakespeare has a higher claim than this on our attention; but we have need of as nice a power of distillation as the bee, to suck nothing but honey from his pages. However, as in life we must be exposed to malign influences from intercourse with others, if we would reap the advantages designed for us by making us social beings, so in books. Having cleared our way of what would otherwise have encumbered us, I would ask why is one engaged in the instruction of youth to read, as a purely conscientious and self-denying performance of duty, works whose value to others is allowed to be doubtful? I can only imagine two shadows of reasons. Either that she may be able experimentally to decide on their desirableness for her pupils, or else that there is a certain power exerted by them on the mind that would render her a more efficient "tutress" by their perusal. I would not depreciate the disinterestedness of those who will make trial of the effect on themselves of a cup suspected poisonous, that they may deter another from risking life; but it appears to me a work of supererogation, since there are enough witnesses to its baneful effect on themselves already to put an end to all strife in the matter. The Scriptural declaration, "As face answereth to face in a glass, so the heart of man to man," will exonerate me from the charge of uncharitableness, or too high an estimation of myself, if I venture to believe that the same causes which exist in my own breast to render novels and romances pernicious have their counterpart in that of every fellow-creature. I am, I confess, not an impartial member of a jury in this case; for I owe the culprits a grudge for injuries inflicted on myself. When I was quite a little child I could not be satisfied with the things around me; I was constantly living in a world of my own creation, and was quite contented to have no companions, that I might be left to my own musings, and imagine scenes in which I was chief actress. Conceive what a character novels would give to these Utopias. I was early supplied with them by those who kindly sought to gratify my appetite for reading, and of course I made use of the materials they supplied for building my castles in the air. But it may be said--"No one ever dreamed of recommending children to read them: all this does not apply to persons come to years of discretion, whose judgments are in some degree matured." I answer that men and women are but children of a larger growth: they are still imitative beings. We cannot (at least those who ever read to any purpose at all)--we cannot, I say, help being modified by the ideas that pass through our minds. We hardly wish to lay claim to such elasticity as retains no impress. We are active beings too. We are each one of the _dramatis personæ_ in some play on the stage of life; hence our actions have their share in the effects of our reading. As to the discipline our minds receive from the perusal of fictions, I can conceive none that is beneficial but may be attained by that of history. It is the merit of fictions to come within the orbit of probability: if unnatural they would no longer please. If it be said the mind must have relaxation, "Truth is strange--stranger than fiction." When a person has exhausted the wonders of truth there is no other resort than fiction: till then, I cannot imagine how the adventures of some phantom conjured up by fancy can be more entertaining than the transactions of real specimens of human nature, from which we may safely draw inferences. I dare say Mr. James's "Huguenot" would be recommended as giving an idea of the times of which he writes; but as well may one be recommended to look at landscapes for an idea of English scenery. The real secret of the relaxation talked of is one that would not generally be avowed; but an appetite that wants seasoning of a certain kind cannot be indicative of health. Religious novels are more hateful to me than merely worldly ones: they are a sort of centaur or mermaid, and, like other monsters that we do not know how to class, should be destroyed for the public good as soon as born. The weapons of the Christian warfare were never sharpened at the forge of romance. Domestic fictions, as they come more within the range of imitation, seem more dangerous. For my part, I am ready to sit down and weep at the impossibility of my understanding or barely knowing a fraction of the sum of objects that present themselves for our contemplation in books and in life. Have I, then, any time to spend on things that never existed? [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 20th May, 1839.] You allude to the religious, or rather irreligious, contentions that form so prominent a feature in the aspect of public affairs--a subject, you will perhaps be surprised to hear me say, full of interest to me, and on which I am unable to shape an opinion for the satisfaction of my mind. I think no one feels more difficulty in coming to a decision on controverted matters than myself. I do not mean that I have not preferences; but, however congruous a theory may be with my notions, I cannot find that comfortable repose that others appear to possess after having made their election of a class of sentiments. The other day Montaigne's motto came to my mind (it is mentioned by Pascal) as an appropriate one for me--"Que sais-je?"--beneath a pair of balances, though, by-the-bye, it is an ambiguous one, and may be taken in a sense that I desire to reprobate, as well as in a Scriptural one, to which I do not refer. I use it in a limited sense as a representation of my oscillating judgment. On no subject do I veer to all points of the compass more frequently than on the nature of the visible Church. I am powerfully attracted in a certain direction, but, when I am about to settle there, counter-assertions shake me from my position. I cannot enter into details, but when we are together I will tell you all my difficulties--that is, if you will be kind enough to listen. I have been reading the new prize essay on "Schism," by Professor Hoppus, and Milner's "Church History," since I last wrote to you: the former ably expresses the tenets of those who deny that any form of Church government is so clearly dictated in Scripture as to possess a divine right, and, consequently, to be binding on Christians; the latter, you know, exhibits the views of a moderate Evangelical Episcopalian on the inferences to be drawn from ecclesiastical remains. He equally repudiates the loud assertion of a _jus divinum_, to the exclusion of all separatists from the visible Church, though he calmly maintains the superiority of the evidence in favor of Episcopacy, of a moderate kind both in power and extent of diocese, as well as the benefit of a national establishment. I have been skimming the "Portrait of an English Churchman," by the Rev. W. Gresley: this contains an outline of the system of those who exclaim of the Anglican Church as the Jews did of their sacred building (that they do it in as reprehensible a spirit I will not be the judge), "the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord" is exclusively theirs; while the authors of the Oxford Tracts go a step further, and evince by their compliments to Rome, as a dear though erring sister, and their attempts to give a Romish color to our ordinance, with a very confused and unscriptural statement of the great doctrine of justification, a disposition rather to fraternize with the members of a Church carrying on her brow the prophetical epithets applied by St. John to the scarlet beast, the mystery of iniquity, than with pious Nonconformists. It is true they disclaim all this, and that their opinions are seconded by the extensive learning, the laborious zeal, and the deep devotion of those who propagate them; but a reference to facts will convince us that such has generally been the character of heretical teachers. Satan is too crafty to commit his cause into the hands of those who have nothing to recommend them to approbation. According to their dogmas, the Scotch Church and the foreign Protestant Churches, as well as the non-Episcopalians of our own land, are wanting in the essentials of existence as part of the Church. In the next letter there is the first allusion to authorship, but, from the wording of the sentence, the poem referred to has evidently not been a first attempt. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 17th July, 1839.] I send you some doggerel lines, the crude fruit of a lonely walk last evening when the words of one of our martyrs occurred to me. You must be acquainted with the idiosyncrasy of my authorship, which is, that my effusions, once committed to paper, are like the laws of the Medes and Persians, that alter not. "_Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle._" --2 PETER i. 14. "As o'er the fields by evening's light I stray I hear a still, small whisper--Come away; Thou must to this bright, lovely world soon say Farewell! "The mandate I'd obey, my lamp prepare, Gird up my garments, give my soul to pray'r, And say to earth, and all that breathe earth's air, Farewell! "Thou sun, to whose parental beam I owe All that has gladden'd me while here below, Moon, stars, and covenant-confirming bow, Farewell! "Ye verdant meads, fair blossoms, stately trees, Sweet song of birds and soothing hum of bees, Refreshing odors wafted on the breeze, Farewell! "Ye patient servants of creation's Lord, Whose mighty strength is govern'd by his word, Who raiment, food, and help in toil afford, Farewell! "Books that have been to me as chests of gold, Which, miserlike, I secretly have told, And for them love, health, friendship, peace have sold, Farewell! "Blest volume! whose clear truth-writ page once known, Fades not before heaven's sunshine or hell's moan, To thee I say not, of earth's gifts alone, Farewell! "There shall my new-born senses find new joy, New sounds, new sights, my eyes and ears employ, Nor fear that word that here brings sad alloy, Farewell!" I had a dim recollection that my wife had told me that this poem had been printed somewhere. After a long search I found it in the _Christian Observer_ for January, 1840. The version there published has the two following additional verses, and is signed M. A. E.: "Ye feebler, freer tribes that people air, Ye gaudy insects, making buds your lair, Ye that in water shine and frolic there, Farewell! "Dear kindred, whom the Lord to me has given, Must the strong tie that binds us now be riven? No! say I--only till we meet in heaven, Farewell!" The editor of the _Christian Observer_ has added this note: "We do not often add a note to a poem: but if St. John found no temple in the New Jerusalem, neither will there be any need of a Bible; for we shall not then see through a glass darkly--through the veil of sacraments or the written Word--but face to face. The Bible is God's gift, but not for heaven's use. Still, on the very verge of heaven we may cling to it, after we have bid farewell to everything earthly: and this, perhaps, is what M. A. E. means." In the following letter we already see the tendency to draw illustrations from science: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 4th Sept. 1839.] I have lately led so unsettled a life, and have been so desultory in my employments, that my mind, never of the most highly organized genus, is more than usually chaotic, or, rather, it is like a stratum of conglomerated fragments, that shows here a jaw and rib of some ponderous quadruped, there a delicate alto-relievo of some fern-like plant, tiny shells and mysterious nondescripts incrusted and united with some unvaried and uninteresting but useful stone. My mind presents just such an assemblage of disjointed specimens of history, ancient and modern; scraps of poetry picked up from Shakespeare, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Milton; newspaper topics; morsels of Addison and Bacon, Latin verbs, geometry, entomology, and chemistry; reviews and metaphysics--all arrested and petrified and smothered by the fast-thickening every-day accession of actual events, relative anxieties, and household cares and vexations. How deplorably and unaccountably evanescent are our frames of mind, as various as the forms and hues of the summer clouds! A single word is sometimes enough to give an entirely new mould to our thoughts--at least, I find myself so constituted; and therefore to me it is pre-eminently important to be anchored within the veil, so that outward things may be unable to send me adrift. Write to me as soon as you can. Remember Michaelmas is coming, and I shall be engaged in matters so nauseating to me that it will be a charity to console me; to reprove and advise me no less. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 22d Nov. 1839.] I have emerged from the slough of domestic troubles, or, rather, to speak quite clearly, "malheurs de cuisine," and am beginning to take a deep breath in my own element, though with a mortifying consciousness that my faculties have become superlatively obtuse during my banishment from it. I have been so self-indulgent as to possess myself of Wordsworth at full length, and I thoroughly like much of the contents of the first three volumes, which I fancy are only the low vestibule of the three remaining ones. I never before met with so many of my own feelings expressed just as I could like them. The distress of the lower classes in our neighborhood is daily increasing, from the scarcity of employment for weavers, and I seem sadly to have handcuffed myself by unnecessary expenditure. To-day is my 20th birthday. This allusion to Wordsworth is interesting, as it entirely expresses the feeling she had to him up to the day of her death. One of the very last books we read together at Cheyne Walk was Mr. Frederick Myers's "Wordsworth" in the "English Men of Letters," which she heartily enjoyed. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 23d Mch. 1840.] I have just received my second lesson in German. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 2d May, 1840, Friday evening.] I know you will be glad to think of me as thoroughly employed, as, indeed, I am to an extent that makes me fear I shall not be able to accomplish everything well. I have engaged, if possible, to complete the chart,[11] the plan of which I sketched out last year, by November next, and I am encouraged to believe that it will answer my purpose to print it. The profits arising from its sale, if any, will go partly to Attleboro Church, and partly to a favorite object of my own. Mrs. Newdigate is very anxious that I should do this, and she permits me to visit her library when I please, in search of any books that may assist me. Will you ask Mr. Craig what he considers the best authority for the date of the apostolical writings? I should like to carry the chart down to the Reformation, if my time and resources will enable me to do so. We are going to have a clothing-club, the arrangement and starting of which are left to me. I am ashamed to run the risk of troubling you, but I should be very grateful if you could send me an abstract of the rules by which yours is regulated. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 21st May, 1840.] Our house is now, and will be for the next two months, miserably noisy and disorderly with the musical operations of masons, carpenters, and painters. You know how abhorrent all this is to my tastes and feelings, taking all the spice out of my favorite little epithet, "this working-day world:" I can no longer use it figuratively. How impressive must the gradual rise of Solomon's Temple have been! each prepared mass of virgin marble laid in reverential silence. I fancy Heber has compared it to the growth of a palm. Your nice miniature chart, which I shall carefully treasure up, has quite satisfied me that Dr. Pearson, at least, has not realized my conceptions, though it has left me still dubious as to my own power of doing so. I will just (if you can bear to hear more of the matter) give you an idea of the plan, which may have partly faded from your memory. The series of perpendicular columns will successively contain the Roman emperors, with their dates, the political and religious state of the Jews, the bishops, remarkable men, and events in the several churches, a column being devoted to each of the chief ones, the aspect of heathenism and Judaism towards Christianity, the chronology of the apostolical and patristical writings, schisms, and heresies, General Councils, eras of corruption (under which head the remarks would be general), and I thought possibly an application of the apocalyptic prophecies, which would merely require a few figures and not take up room. I think there must be a break in the chart after the establishment of Christianity as the religion of the empire, and I have come to a determination not to carry it beyond the first acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Pope by Phocas, in 606, when Mohammedanism became a besom of destruction in the hand of the Lord, and completely altered the aspect of ecclesiastical history. So much for this, at present, airy project, about which I hope never to tease you more. Mr. Harper[12] lent me a little time ago a work by the Rev. W. Gresley, begging me to read it, as he thought it was calculated to make me a proselyte to the opinions it advocates. I had skimmed the book before ("Portrait of an English Churchman"), but I read it attentively a second time, and was pleased with the spirit of piety that breathes throughout. His last work is one in a similar style ("The English Citizen"), which I have cursorily read; and, as they are both likely to be seen by you, I want to know your opinion of them. Mine is this: that they are sure to have a powerful influence on the minds of small readers and shallow thinkers, as, from the simplicity and clearness with which the author, by his _beau-idéal_ characters, enunciates his sentiments, they furnish a magazine of easily wielded weapons for _morning-calling_ and _evening-party_ controversialists, as well as that really honest minds will be inclined to think they have found a resting-place amid the footballing of religious parties. But it appears to me that there is unfairness in arbitrarily selecting a train of circumstances and a set of characters as a development of a class of opinions. In this way we might make atheism appear wonderfully calculated to promote social happiness. I remember, as I dare say you do, a very amiable atheist depicted by Bulwer in "Devereux;" and for some time after the perusal of that book, which I read seven or eight years ago,[13] I was considerably shaken by the impression that religion was not a requisite to moral excellence. Have you not alternating seasons of mental stagnation and activity? just such as the political economists say there must be in a nation's pecuniary condition--all one's precious specie, Time, going out to procure a stock of commodities, while one's own manufactures are too paltry to be worth vending. I am just in that condition--partly, I think, owing to my not having met with any steel to sharpen my edge against for the last three weeks. I am going to read a volume of the Oxford Tracts and the "Lyra Apostolica;" the former I almost shrink from the labor of conning, but the other I confess I am attracted towards by some highly poetical extracts that I have picked up in various quarters. I have just bought Mr. Keble's "Christian Year," a volume of sweet poetry that perhaps you know. The fields of poesy look more lovely than ever, now I have hedged myself in the geometrical regions of fact, where I can do nothing but draw parallels and measure differences in a double sense. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 26th May, 1840.] [14]I will only hint that there seems a probability of my being an unoccupied damsel, of my being severed from all the ties that have hitherto given my existence the semblance of a usefulness beyond that of making up the requisite quantum of animal matter in the universe. A second important intimation respecting my worthy self is one that, I confess, I impart without one sigh, though perhaps you will think my callousness discreditable. It is that Seeley & Burnside have just published a Chart of Ecclesiastical History, doubtless giving to my airy vision a local habitation and a name. I console all my little regrets by thinking that what is thus evidenced to be a desideratum has been executed much better than if left to my slow fingers and slower head. I fear I am laboriously doing nothing, for I am beguiled by the fascination that the study of languages has for my capricious mind. I could e'en give myself up to making discoveries in the world of words. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, in London, Whit-Wednesday, June, 1840.] May I trouble you to procure for me an Italian book recommended by Mr. Brezzi--Silvio Pellico's "Le mie Prigioni;" if not, "Storia d'Italia"? If they are cheap, I should like both. I shall have, I hope, a little trip with my father next week into Derbyshire, and this "lark" will probably be beneficial to me; so do not imagine I am inviting you to come and hear moaning, when you need all attainable relaxation. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 23d June, 1840.] Your letter greeted me last night on my arrival from Staffordshire. The prospectus of Mr. Henslow's work is as marvellous to my ignorant conceptions as the prophecies of the wonders of the steam-engine would have been to some British worthy in the days of Caractacus. I can only gape as he would probably have done. I hope Mr. H. has not imitated certain show-keepers, who give so exaggerated a representation of their giantess, on the outside, that the spectators have disappointment for their cash within. If I do not see you, how shall I send your "Don Quixote," which I hope soon to finish? I have been sadly interrupted by other books that have taken its scanty allowance of time, or I should have made better haste with it. Will you try to get me Spenser's "Faery Queen"? the cheapest edition, with a glossary, which is quite indispensable, together with a clear and correct type. I have had some treats on my little excursion, not the least of which was the gazing on some--albeit the smallest--of the "everlasting hills," and on those noblest children of the earth, fine, healthy trees, as independent in their beauty as virtue; set them where you will, they adorn, and need not adornment. Father indulged me with a sight of Ashborne Church, the finest mere parish church in the kingdom--in the _interior_; of Alton Gardens, where I saw actually what I have often seen mentally--the bread-fruit tree, the fan-palm, and the papyrus; and last, of Lichfield Cathedral, where, besides the exquisite architectural beauties, both external and internal, I saw Chantrey's famous monument of the Sleeping Children. There is a tasteless monument to the learned and brilliant female pedant of Lichfield, Miss Seward, with a poor epitaph by Sir Walter Scott. In the town we saw a large monument erected to Johnson's memory, showing his Titanic body, in a sitting posture, on the summit of a pedestal which is ornamented with bas-reliefs of three passages in his life: his penance in Uttoxeter Market, his chairing on the shoulders of his schoolmates, and his listening to the preaching of Sacheverel. The statue is opposite to the house in which Johnson was born--altogether inferior to that in St. Paul's, which shook me almost as much as a real glance from the literary monarch. I am ashamed to send you so many ill-clothed nothings. My excuse shall be a state of head that calls for four leeches before I can attack Mrs. Somerville's "Connection of the Physical Sciences." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, July, Monday morning, 1840.] I write with a very tremulous hand, as you will perceive; both this, and many other defects in my letter, are attributable to a very mighty cause--no other than the boiling of currant jelly! I have had much of this kind of occupation lately, and I grieve to say I have not gone through it so cheerfully as the character of a Christian who professes to do _all_, even the most trifling, duty, as the Lord demands. My mind is consequently run all wild, and bears nothing but _dog-roses_. I am truly obliged to you for getting me Spenser. How shall I send to you "Don Quixote," which I have quite finished? [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 8th July, 1840.] I believe it is decided that father and I should leave Griff and take up our residence somewhere in the neighborhood of Coventry, if we can obtain a suitable house, and this is at present a matter of anxiety. So you see I am likely still to have a home where I can independently welcome you. I am really so plunged in an abyss of books, preserves, and sundry _important trivialities_, that I must send you this bare proof that I have not cast the remembrance of you to a dusty corner of my heart. Ever believe that "my heart is as thy heart," that you may rely on me as a second self, and that I shall, with my usual selfishness, lose no opportunity of gratifying my duplicate. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 12th Aug. 1840.] The Epistle to the Colossians is pre-eminently rich in the coloring with which it portrays the divine fulness contained in the Saviour, contrasted with the beggarly elements that a spirit of self-righteousness would, in some way, mingle with the light of life, the filthy rags it would tack round the "fine raiment" of his righteousness. I have been reading it in connection with a train of thought suggested by the reading of "Ancient Christianity and the Oxford Tracts," by Isaac Taylor, one of the most eloquent, acute, and pious of writers. Five numbers only have yet appeared. Have you seen them? If not, I should like to send you an abstract of his argument. I have gulped it (pardon my coarseness) in a most reptile-like fashion. I must _chew_ it thoroughly to facilitate its assimilation with my mental frame. When your pupils can relish Church history, I venture to recommend the chart lately published by Seeley & Burnside--far superior in conception to mine--as being more compendious, yet answering the purpose of presenting epochs as nuclei round which less important events instinctively cluster. Mrs. John Cash of Coventry, who was then Miss Mary Sibree, daughter of a Nonconformist minister there, and whose acquaintance Miss Evans made a year or two later in Coventry, writes in regard to this book of Isaac Taylor's: "In her first conversations with my father and mother, they were much interested in learning in what high estimation she held the writings of Isaac Taylor. My father _thought_ she was a little disappointed on hearing that he was a Dissenter. She particularly enjoyed his 'Saturday Evening,' and spoke in years after to me of his 'Physical Theory of Another Life,' as exciting thought and leading speculation further than he would have desired. When his 'Ancient Christianity' was published in numbers, Miss Evans took it in, and kindly forwarded the numbers to us. From the impression made on my own mind by unfavorable facts about 'The Fathers,' and from her own subsequent references to this work, I am inclined to think it had its influence in unsettling her views of Christianity." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 17th Sept. 1840.] I have thought of you as _the_ one who has ever shown herself so capable of consideration for my weakness and sympathy in my warm and easily fastened affections. My imagination is an enemy that must be cast down ere I can enjoy peace or exhibit uniformity of character. I know not which of its caprices I have most to dread--that which incites it to spread sackcloth "above, below, around," or that which makes it "cheat my eye with blear illusion, and beget strange dreams" of excellence and beauty in beings and things of only working-day price. The beautiful heavens that we have lately enjoyed awaken in me an indescribable sensation of exultation in existence, and aspiration after all that is suited to engage an immaterial nature. I have not read very many of Mr. B.'s poems, nor any with much attention. I simply declare my determination not to feed on the broth of literature when I can get strong soup--such, for instance, as Shelley's "Cloud," the five or six stanzas of which contain more poetic metal than is beat out in all Mr. B.'s pages. You must know I have had bestowed on me the very pretty cognomen of Clematis, which, in the floral language, means "mental beauty." I cannot find in my heart to refuse it, though, like many other appellations, it has rather the appearance of a satire than a compliment. _Addio!_ I will send your floral name in my next, when I have received my dictionary. My hand and mind are wearied with writing four pages of German and a letter of business. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 1st Oct. 1840.] My dear Veronica--which, being interpreted, is "fidelity in friendship"--Last week I was absent from home from Wednesday to Saturday, in quest of the "coy maiden," Pleasure--at least, nominally so, the real motive being rather to gratify another's feeling.[15] I heard the "Messiah" on Thursday morning at Birmingham, and some beautiful selections from other oratories of Handel and Haydn on Friday. With a stupid, drowsy sensation, produced by standing sentinel over damson cheese and a warm stove, I cannot do better than ask you to read, if accessible, Wordsworth's short poem on the "Power of Sound," with which I have just been delighted. I have made an alteration in my plans with Mr. Brezzi, and shall henceforward take Italian and German alternately, so that I shall not be liable to the consciousness of having imperative employment for every interstice of time. There seems a greater affinity between German and my mind than Italian, though less new to me, possesses. I am reading Schiller's "Maria Stuart," and Tasso. I was pleased with a little poem I learned a week or two ago in German; and, as I want you to like it, I have just put the idea it contains into English doggerel, which quite fails to represent the beautiful simplicity and nature of the original, but yet, I hope, will give you sufficiently its sense to screen the odiousness of the translation. _Eccola_: QUESTION AND ANSWER. "'Where blooms, O my father, a thornless rose?' 'That can I not tell thee, my child; Not one on the bosom of earth e'er grows But wounds whom its charms have beguiled.' "'Would I'd a rose on my bosom to lie, But I shrink from the piercing thorn: I long, but I dare not its point defy; I long, and I gaze forlorn.' "'Not so, O my child--round the stem again Thy resolute fingers entwine; Forego not the joy for its sister, pain-- Let the rose, the sweet rose, be thine.'" Would not a parcel reach you by railway? This is the first allusion to the new means of locomotion, which would, no doubt, be attracting much interest in the Griff household, as valuation was a large part of Mr. Evans's business. Long years after, George Eliot wrote: "Our midland plains have never lost their familiar expression and conservative spirit for me; yet at every other mile, since I first looked on them, some sign of world-wide change, some new direction of human labor, has wrought itself into what one may call the speech of the landscape.... There comes a crowd of burly navvies with pickaxes and barrows, and while hardly a wrinkle is made in the fading mother's face, or a new curve of health in the blooming girl's, the hills are cut through, or the breaches between them spanned, we choose our level, and the white steam-pennon flies along it." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 27th Oct. 1840.] My only reason for writing is to obtain a timely promise that you will spend your holidays chiefly with me, that we may once more meet among scenes which, now I am called on to leave them, I find to have _grown in_ to my affections. Carlyle says that to the artisans of Glasgow the world is not one of blue skies and a green carpet, but a world of copperas-fumes, low cellars, hard wages, "striking," and whiskey; and if the recollection of this picture did not remind me that gratitude should be my reservoir of feeling, that into which all that comes from above or around should be received as a source of fertilization for my soul, I should give a lachrymose parody of the said description, and tell you all-seriously what I now tell you playfully, that mine is too often a world such as Wilkie can so well paint, a walled-in world furnished with all the details which he remembers so accurately, and the least interesting part whereof is often what I suppose must be designated the intelligent; but I deny that it has even a comparative claim to the appellation, for give me a three-legged stool, and it will call up associations--moral, poetical, mathematical--if I do but ask it, while some human beings have the odious power of contaminating the very images that are enshrined as our soul's arcana. Their baleful touch has the same effect as would a uniformity in the rays of light--it turns all objects to pale lead-color. O how luxuriously joyous to have the wind of heaven blow on one after being _stived_ in a human atmosphere--to feel one's heart leap up after the pressure that Shakespeare so admirably describes: "When a man's wit is not seconded by the forward chick understanding, it strikes a man as dead as a large reckoning in a small room." But it is time I check this Byronic invective, and, in doing so, I am reminded of Corinne's, or rather Oswald's, reproof--"La vie est un _combat_ pas un _hymne_." We should aim to be like a plant in the chamber of sickness--dispensing purifying air even in a region that turns all pale its verdure, and cramps its instinctive propensity to expand. Society is a wide nursery of plants, where the hundreds decompose to nourish the future ten, after giving collateral benefits to their contemporaries destined for a fairer garden. An awful thought! one so heavy that if our souls could once sustain its whole weight, or, rather, if its whole weight were once to drop on them, they would break and burst their tenements. How long will this continue? The cry of the martyrs heard by St. John finds an echo in every heart that, like Solomon's, groans under "the outrage and oppression with which earth is filled." Events are now so momentous, and the elements of society in so chemically critical a state, that a drop seems enough to change its whole form. I am reading Harris's "Great Teacher," and am _innig bewegt_, as a German would say, by its stirring eloquence, which leaves you no time or strength for a cold estimate of the writer's strict merits. I wish I could read some extracts to you. Isaac Taylor's work is not yet complete. When it is so, I hope to reperuse it. Since I wrote to you I have had Aimé Martin's work, "L'Education des Mères," lent to me, and I have found it to be the real Greece whence "Woman's Mission" has only imported to us a few marbles--but! Martin is a _soi-disant_ rational Christian, if I mistake him not. I send you an epitaph which he mentions on a tomb in Paris--that of a mother: "Dors en paix, O ma mère, ton fils t'obeira toujours." I am reading eclectically Mrs. Hemans's poems, and venture to recommend to your perusal, if unknown to you, one of the longest ones--"The Forest Sanctuary." I can give it my pet adjective--exquisite. I have adopted as my motto, "_Certum pete finem_"--seek a sure end.[16] [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 5th Dec. 1840.] Come when you would best like to do so: if my heart beat at all at the time, it will be with a more rapid motion than the general, from the joy of seeing you. I cannot promise you more than calmness when that flush is past, for I am aweary, aweary--longing for rest, which seems to fly from my very anticipations. But this wrought-up sensitiveness which makes me shrink from all contact is, I know, not for communication or sympathy, and is, from that very character, a kind of trial best suited for me. Whatever tends to render us ill-contented with ourselves, and more earnest aspirants after perfect truth and goodness, is gold, though it come to us all molten and burning, and we know not our treasure until we have had long smarting. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 21st Dec. 1840.] It is impossible, to me at least, to be poetical in cold weather. I understand the Icelanders have much national poetry, but I guess it was written in the neighborhood of the boiling springs. I will promise to be as cheerful and as Christmas-like as my rickety body and chameleon-like spirits will allow. I am about to commence the making of mince-pies, with all the interesting sensations characterizing young enterprise or effort. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 27th Jan. 1841.] Happily, the moody, melancholy temperament has some counterbalancing advantages to those of the sanguine: it _does_ sometimes meet with results more favorable than it expected, and by its knack of imagining the pessimus, cheats the world of its power to disappoint. The very worm-like originator of this coil of sentiment is the fact that you write more cheerfully of yourself than I had been thinking of you, and that, _ergo_, I am pleased. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 11th Feb. 1841.] On Monday and Tuesday my father and I were occupied with the sale of furniture at our new house: it is probable that we shall migrate thither in a month. I shall be incessantly hurried until after our departure, but at present I have to be grateful for a smooth passage through contemplated difficulties. Sewing is my staple article of commerce with the hard trader, Time. Now the wind has veered to the south I hope to do much more, and that with greater zest than I have done for many months--I mean, of all kinds. I have been reading the three volumes of the "Life and Times of Louis the Fourteenth," and am as eagerly waiting for the fourth and last as any voracious novel-reader for Bulwer's last. I am afraid I am getting quite martial in my spirit, and, in the warmth of my sympathy for Turenne and Condé, losing my hatred of war. Such a conflict between _individual_ and _moral_ influence is no novelty. But certainly war, though the heaviest scourge with which the divine wrath against sin is manifested in Time, has been a necessary vent for impurities and a channel for tempestuous passions that must have otherwise made the whole earth, like the land of the devoted Canaanites, to vomit forth the inhabitants thereof. Awful as such a sentiment appears, it seems to me that in the present condition of man (and I do not mean this in the sense that Cowper does), such a purgation of the body politic is probably essential to its health. A foreign war would soon put an end to our national humors, that are growing to so alarming a head. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 8th Mch. 1841.] What do you think of the progress of architecture as a subject for poetry? I am just about to set out on a purchasing expedition to Coventry: you may therefore conceive that I am full of little plans and anxieties, and will understand why I should be brief. I hope by the close of next week that we and our effects shall be deposited at Foleshill, and until then and afterwards I shall be fully occupied, so that I am sure you will not expect to hear from me for the next six weeks. One little bit of unreasonableness you must grant me--the request for a letter from yourself within that time. _SUMMARY._ AUGUST 18, 1838, TO MARCH 8, 1841. Letters to Miss Lewis--First visit to London--Religious asceticism--Pascal--Hannah More's letters--Young's "Infidel Reclaimed"--Michaelmas visitors--"Life of Wilberforce"--Nineteenth birthday--Oratorio at Coventry--Religious objections to music--Letters to Mrs. Samuel Evans--Religious reflections--Besetting sin ambition--Letters to Miss Lewis--Objections to fiction-reading--Religious contentions on the nature of the visible Church--First poem--Account of books read and studies pursued--Wordsworth--Twentieth birthday--German begun--Plan of Chart of Ecclesiastical History--Religious controversies--Oxford Tracts--"Lyra Apostolica"--"Christian Year"--Chart of Ecclesiastical History forestalled--Italian begun--Trip to Derbyshire and Staffordshire--"Don Quixote"--Spenser's "Faery Queen"--Mrs. Somerville's "Connection of the Physical Sciences"--Dislike of housekeeping work--Removal to Coventry decided--"Ancient Christianity and the Oxford Tracts," by Isaac Taylor, and Mrs. John Cash's impression of its effect--Determination not to feed on the broth of literature--Visit to Birmingham to hear the "Messiah"--Reading Schiller's "Maria Stuart," and Tasso--Translation of German poem--Depression of surroundings at Griff--Reading Harris's "Great Teacher," Aimé Martin's "L'Education des Mères," and Mrs. Hemans's Poems--Selling furniture at new house--Sewing--Reading "Life and Times of Louis XIV."--Removal to Foleshill road, Coventry. FOOTNOTES: [9] Given to her as a school prize when she was fourteen. [10] "Mill on the Floss," chap. v. book vi. [11] Of ecclesiastical history. [12] The Squire of Coton. [13] When she would be thirteen years old. [14] Written probably in view of her brother's marriage. [15] Visit to Miss Rawlins, her brother's _fiancée_. [16] By a curious coincidence, when she became Mrs. Cross, this actually was her motto. CHAPTER II. New circumstances now created a change almost amounting to a revolution in Miss Evans's life. Mr. Isaac Evans, who had been associated for some time with his father in the land-agency business, married, and it was arranged that he should take over the establishment at Griff. This led to the removal in March, 1841, of Mr. Robert Evans and his daughter to a house on the Foleshill road, in the immediate neighborhood of Coventry. The house is still standing, although considerably altered--a semi-detached house with a good bit of garden round it, and from its upper windows a wide view over the surrounding country, the immediate foreground being unfortunately, however, disfigured by the presence of mills and chimneys. It is town life now instead of country life, and we feel the effects at once in the tone of the subsequent letters. The friendships now formed with Mr. and Mrs. Bray and Miss Sara Hennell particularly, and the being brought within reach of a small circle of cultivated people generally, render this change of residence an exceedingly important factor in George Eliot's development. It chanced that the new house was next door to Mrs. Pears', a sister of Mr. Bray, and as there had been some acquaintance in days gone by between him and the family at Griff, this close neighborhood led to an exchange of visits. The following extracts from letters to Miss Lewis show how the acquaintance ripened, and will give some indications of the first impressions of Coventry life: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, Saturday evening, April, 1841.] Last evening I mentioned you to my neighbor (Mrs. Pears), who is growing into the more precious character of a friend. I have seriously to be thankful for far better health than I have possessed, I think, for years, and I am imperatively called on to trade diligently with this same talent. I am likely to be more and more busy, if I succeed in a project that is just now occupying my thoughts and feelings. I seem to be tried in a contrary mode to that in which most of my dearest friends are being tutored--tried in the most dangerous way--by prosperity. Solomon says, "In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider." It seems to me that a transposition, _vice versâ_, of the admonitions would be equally salutary and just. Truly, as the prophet of Selwyn has told us, "Heaven is formidable in its favors." Not that a wise and grateful reception of blessings obliges us to stretch our faces to the length of one of Cromwell's Barebones; nor to shun that joyous, bird-like enjoyment of things (which, though perishable as to their actual existence, will be embalmed to eternity in the precious spices of gratitude) that is distinct from levity and voluptuousness. I am really crowded with engagements just now, and I have added one to the number of my correspondents. [Illustration: House in Foleshill Road, Coventry.] [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, April, 1841] The whole of last week was devoted to a bride's-maid's[17] duties, and each day of this has been partially occupied in paying or receiving visits. I have a calm in sea and sky that I doubt not will ere long be interrupted. This is not our rest, if we are among those for whom there remaineth one, and to pass through life without tribulation (or, as Jeremy Taylor beautifully says, with only such a measure of it as may be compared to an artificial discord in music, which nurses the ear for the returning harmony) would leave us destitute of one of the marks that invariably accompany salvation, and of that fellowship in the sufferings of the Redeemer which can alone work in us a resemblance to one of the most prominent parts of his divinely perfect character, and enable us to obey the injunction, "In patience possess your souls." I have often observed how, in secular things, active occupation in procuring the necessaries of life renders the character indifferent to trials not affecting that one object. There is an analogous influence produced in the Christian by a vigorous pursuit of duty, a determination to work while it is day. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 28th April, 1841.] One of the penalties women must pay for modern deference to their intellect is, I suppose, that they must give reasons for their conduct, after the fashion of men. The days are past for pleading a woman's reason. The truth is, that the hinderances to my writing have been like the little waves of the brooks that look so lovely just now--they have arisen one after another close to my side, but when I have looked back I have found the ripples too insignificant to be marked in the distance. My father's longer _séjours_ at home than formerly, and multiplied acquaintances and engagements, are really valid excuses for me hitherto, but I do not intend to need them in future; I hope to be a "snapper-up of unconsidered" moments. I have just been interrupted by a visit from a lass of fourteen, who has despoiled me of half an hour, and I am going out to dinner, so that I cannot follow the famous advice, "Hasten slowly." I suppose that you framed your note on the principle that a sharp and sudden sound is the most rousing, but there are _addenda_ about yourself that I want to know, though I dare not ask for them. I do not feel settled enough to write more at present. How is it that Erasmus could write volumes on volumes and multifarious letters besides, while I, whose labors hold about the same relation to his as an ant-hill to a pyramid or a drop of dew to the ocean, seem too busy to write a few? A most posing query! [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, Thursday morning, June, 1841.] I have of late felt a depression that has disordered the vision of my mind's eye and made me _alive_ to what is certainly a fact (though my imagination when I am in health is an adept at concealing it), that I am _alone_ in the world. I do not mean to be so sinful as to say that I have not friends _most_ undeservedly kind and tender, and disposed to form a far too favorable estimate of me, but I mean that I have no one who enters into my pleasures or my griefs, no one with whom I can pour out my soul, no one with the same yearnings, the same temptations, the same delights as myself. I merely mention this as the impression that obtrudes itself when my body tramples on its keeper--(a metaphor borrowed from a menagerie of wild beasts, if it should happen to puzzle you!)--mysterious "connection exquisite of distant worlds" that we present! A few drops of steel will perhaps make me laugh at the simple objects that, in gloom and mist, I conjure into stalking apparitions. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, at Margate, 31st July, 1841.] I am beginning to be interlaced with multiplying ties of duty and affection, that, while they render my new home happier, forbid me to leave it on a pleasure-seeking expedition. I think, indeed, that both my heart and limbs would leap to behold the great and wide sea--that old ocean on which man can leave no trace. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 3d Sept. 1841.] I have been revelling in Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System," and have been in imagination winging my flight from system to system, from universe to universe, trying to conceive myself in such a position and with such a visual faculty as would enable me to enjoy what Young enumerates among the novelties of the "Stranger" man when he bursts the shell to "Behold an infinite of floating worlds Divide the crystal waves of ether pure In endless voyage without port." "Hospitable infinity!" Nichol beautifully says. How should I love to have a thorough-going student with me, that we might read together! We might each alternately employ the voice and the fingers, and thus achieve just twice as much as a poor solitary. I am more impressed than ever with a truth beautifully expressed in "Woman's Mission"--"Learning is only so far valuable as it serves to enlarge and enlighten the bounds of conscience." This I believe it eminently does when pursued humbly and piously, and from a belief that it is a solemn duty to cultivate every faculty of our nature so far as primary obligations allow. There is an exhortation of St. Paul's that I should love to take as my motto: "Finally, my brethren, whatsoever things are honest" (you know the continuation)--"if there be _any_ virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." I have had to lament lately that mine is not a _hard-working_ mind--it requires frequent rest. I am violently in love with the Italian fashion of repeating an adjective or adverb, and even noun, to give force to expression: there is so much more fire in it than in our circumlocutory phrases, our dull "verys" and "exceedinglys" and "extremelys." I strongly recommend Hallam to you. I shall read it again if I live. When a sort of haziness comes over the mind, making one feel weary of articulated or written signs of ideas, does not the notion of a less laborious mode of communication, of a perception approaching more nearly to intuition, seem attractive? Nathless, I love words: they are the quoits, the bows, the staves that furnish the gymnasium of the mind. Without them, in our present condition, our intellectual strength would have no implements. I have been rather humbled in thinking that if I were thrown on an uncivilized island, and had to form a literature for its inhabitants from my own mental stock, how very fragmentary would be the information with which I could furnish them! It would be a good mode of testing one's knowledge to set one's self the task of writing sketches of all subjects that have entered into one's studies entirely from the chronicles of memory. The prevalence of misery and want in this boasted nation of prosperity and glory is appalling, and really seems to call us away from mental luxury. O to be doing some little towards the regeneration of this groaning, travailing creation! I am supine and stupid--overfed with favors--while the haggard looks and piercing glance of want and conscious hopelessness are to be seen in the streets. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 1st Oct. 1841.] Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love--that makes life and nature harmonize. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 2d Nov. 1841.] I am going, I hope, to-day to effect a breach in the thick wall of indifference behind which the denizens of Coventry seem inclined to intrench themselves; but I fear I shall fail. This probably refers to the first visit paid by Miss Evans to Mr. and Mrs. Bray at their house. They had met in the previous May at Mrs. Pears'; but although they were at once mutually attracted, the acquaintance does not seem to have been immediately prosecuted further. Now, however, any time lost in the beginning was quickly made up, and it is astonishing how rapidly the most intimate relations were formed. Mr. Bray was a ribbon-manufacturer, well-to-do at that time, and had a charming house, Rosehill, with a beautiful lawn and garden, in the outskirts of Coventry. Only a part of his time was occupied with his business, and he had much leisure and opportunity, of which he availed himself, for liberal self-education and culture. His was a robust, self-reliant mind. Already, in 1839, he had published a work on the "Education of the Feelings," viewed from the phrenological standpoint; and in this year, 1841, appeared his most important book, "The Philosophy of Necessity." He always remained a sincere and complete believer in the science of phrenology. He had married Miss Caroline Hennell, sister of the Mr. Charles Hennell who published, in 1838, "An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity"--a remarkable book, which was translated into German, Strauss contributing a preface to the translation. It will be seen from subsequent letters how greatly Miss Evans was interested in this book--how much she admired it; and the reading of it, combined with the association with her new friends--with the philosophical speculations of Mr. Bray, and with Mrs. Bray's sympathy in her brother's critical and sceptical standpoint--no doubt hastened the change in her attitude towards the dogmas of the old religion. In the Analytical Catalogue of Mr. Chapman's publications, issued in 1852, there is an analysis of Hennell's "Inquiry," done by Miss Evans, which may be inserted here, as giving her idea of the book eleven years later. "The first edition of this work appeared in 1838, when the present strong current of public opinion in favor of free religious discussion had not yet set in; and it probably helped to generate the tone of thought exhibited in more recent works of the same class, to which circumstances have given a wider fame--works which, like the above, in considering questions of Biblical criticism and the philosophy of Christianity, combine high refinement, purity of aim, and candor, with the utmost freedom of investigation, and with a popularity of style which wins them the attention not only of the learned but of the practical. "The author opens his inquiry with an historical sketch, extending from the Babylonish Captivity to the end of the first century, the design of which is to show how, abstracting the idea of the miraculous, or any speciality of divine influence, the gradual development of certain elements in Jewish character, and the train of events in Jewish history, contributed to form a suitable _nidus_ for the production of a character and career like that of Jesus, and how the devoted enthusiasm generated by such a career in his immediate disciples, rendering it easier for them to modify their ideas of the Messiah than to renounce their belief in their Master's Messiahship--the accession of Gentile converts and the destruction of the last remnant of theocracy, necessitating a wider interpretation of Messianic hopes--the junction of Christian ideas with Alexandrian Platonism, and the decrepitude of polytheism, combined to associate the name of Jesus, his Messiahship, his death and his resurrection, with a great moral and religious revolution. This historical sketch, which is under the disadvantage of presenting, synthetically, ideas based on a subsequent analysis, is intended to meet the difficulty so often urged, and which might be held to nullify the value of a critical investigation, that Christianity is a fact for which, if the supposition of a miraculous origin be rejected, no adequate and probable causes can be assigned, and that thus, however defective may be the evidence of the New-Testament history, its acceptance is the least difficult alternative. "In the writer's view, the characteristics of the Essene sect, as traced by Josephus and Philo, justify the supposition that Jesus was educated in their school of philosophy; but with the elevated belief and purity of life which belonged to this sect he united the ardent patriotic ideas which had previously animated Judas of Galilee, who resisted the Roman authority on the ground that God was the only ruler and lord of the Jews. The profound consciousness of genius, a religious fervor which made the idea of the divine ever present to him, patriotic zeal, and a spirit of moral reform, together with a participation in the enthusiastic belief of his countrymen that the long-predicted exaltation of Israel was at hand, combined to produce in the mind of Jesus the gradual conviction that he was himself the Messiah, with whose reign that exaltation would commence. He began, as John the Baptist had already done, to announce 'the kingdom of heaven,' a phrase which, to the Jewish mind, represented the national glorification of Israel; and by his preaching, and the influence of his powerful personality, he won multitudes in Galilee to a participation in his belief that he was the expected Son of David. His public entrance into Jerusalem in the guise which tradition associated with the Messiah, when he sanctioned the homage of the multitude, was probably the climax of his confidence that a great demonstration of divine power, in concurrence with popular enthusiasm, would seat him triumphantly on the throne of David. No such result appearing, his views of the divine dispensation with respect to himself began to change, and he felt the presentiment that he must enter on his Messianic reign through the gates of suffering and death. Viewing Jesus as a pretender not only to spiritual but to political power, as one who really expected the subversion of the existing government to make way for his own kingship (though he probably relied on divine rather than on human means), he must necessarily have appeared in a dangerous light to those of his countrymen who were in authority, and who were anxious at any price to preserve public tranquillity in the presence of the Roman power, ready to visit with heavy vengeance any breach of order, and to deprive them of the last remnants of their independence; and hence the motives for his arrest and execution. To account for the belief of the disciples in the resurrection of their Master--a belief which appears to have been sincere--the author thinks it necessary to suppose a certain nucleus of fact, and this he finds in the disappearance of the body of Jesus, a point attested by all the four evangelists. The secret of this disappearance probably lay with Joseph of Arimathæa and Nicodemus, who were anxious to avoid implicating themselves with that fermentation of regretful enthusiasm to which a resort of the disciples to the grave might give rise. Animated by a belief in the resurrection, which, being more harmless in the eyes of the authorities than that in a living Messiah, they were permitted to preach with little molestation; the zeal of the disciples won many converts; a new impulse was given to their cause by the accession of Paul, who became the chief missionary of the new faith, as construed by himself, to the Gentiles; and the concurrence of the causes indicated above, modifying the early creed of the apostles, and blending it with trains of thought already prevalent, bore along Christianity in its conquest over the minds of men until it became the dominant religion of the Roman world. "Having sought to show, in this preliminary sketch, that a belief in miracles is not entailed on us by the fact of the early growth of Christianity, the author enters on the inquiry whether the claims of the evangelical writers on our credence are such as to sustain the miraculous part of their narratives. The answer is in the negative. He discusses, first, the date and credibility of each Gospel, and concludes that while Matthew has many marvellous stories, incongruous in themselves, and not only unsupported but contradicted by the other evangelists, he nevertheless presents the most comprehensible account of the career of Jesus; that in Mark, evidently more remote in time and circumstances, both from his events and from Jewish modes of thought, the idea conveyed of Jesus is much vaguer and less explicable; that in Luke there is a still further modification of his character, which has acquired a tinge of asceticism; while in John the style of his teaching is wholly changed, and instead of the graphic parable and the pithy apothegm, he utters long, mystical discourses in the style of the first epistle bearing the name of the same evangelist. Mr. Hennell, however, adheres to the conclusion that the substance of this Gospel came from the apostle John at an advanced age, when both the events of his early manhood and the scenes of his native land lay in the far distance. The writer then enters on a special examination of the Resurrection and Ascension, and the other miracles in the Gospels and the Acts, and inquires how far they are sustained by the apostolic Epistles. He examines the prophecies of the Old Testament supposed to have been fulfilled in Jesus, and also the predictions of Jesus himself concerning his death and resurrection; and, finally, he considers the character, views, and doctrine of Christ. According to him, an impartial study of the conduct and sayings of Jesus, as exhibited in the Gospels, produces the conviction that he was an enthusiast and a revolutionist, no less than a reformer and a moral and religious teacher. Passages are adduced from the Old Testament, and from the apocryphal and rabbinical writings, to show that there is scarcely anything absolutely original in the teaching of Jesus; but, in the opinion of the author, he manifests a freedom and individuality in the use of his materials, and a general superiority of tone and selection, which, united with the devotion of his life to what he held the highest purpose, mark him to be of an order of minds occurring but at rare intervals in the history of our race. "Shortly after the appearance of this work it was translated into German through the instrumentality of Dr. Strauss, who, in the preface he prefixed to it, says: 'Not sufficiently acquainted with German to read continuously a learned work in that language, the labors of our theologians were only accessible to him' (the author of the 'Inquiry') 'so far as they were written in Latin, or translated into English, or treated of in English writings or periodicals: especially he is unacquainted with what the Germans have effected in the criticism of the gospels since Schleiermacher's work on Luke, and even the earlier commentators he knows but imperfectly. Only so much the more remarkable is it, however, that both in the principles and in the main results of his investigation, he is on the very track which has been entered on among us in recent years.... That at certain periods, certain modes of thought lie as it were in the atmosphere, ... and come to light in the most remote places without perceptible media of communication, is shown, not only by the contents, but by the spirit, of Mr. Hennell's work. No further traces of the ridicule and scorn which characterize his countrymen of the deistical school; the subject is treated in the earnest and dignified tone of the truth-seeker, not with the rancor of a passionate polemic; we nowhere find him deriving religion from priestcraft, but from the tendencies and wants of human nature.... These elevated views, which the learned German of our day appropriates as the fruit of the religious and scientific advancement of his nation, this Englishman, to whom most of the means at our command were wanting, has been able to educe entirely from himself.... An Englishman, a merchant, a man of the world, he possesses, both by nature and by training, the practical insight, the sure tact, which lays hold on realities. The solution of problems over which the German flutters with many circuits of learned formulæ, our English author often succeeds in seizing at one spring.... To the learned he often presents things under a surprisingly new aspect; to the unlearned, invariably under that which is the most comprehensible and attractive.'" The reading of Mr. Hennell's book no doubt marks an epoch in George Eliot's development; but probably there had been a good deal of half-unconscious preparation beforehand (as indicated by Mrs. Cash's remarks on Isaac Taylor's work, in the last chapter), which was greatly stimulated now by the contact with new minds. The following extract from a letter to Miss Lewis, dated 13th November, 1841, accurately fixes the date of the first acknowledgment by herself that her opinions were undergoing so momentous a change. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 13th Nov. 1841.] My whole soul has been engrossed in the most interesting of all inquiries for the last few days, and to what result my thoughts may lead, I know not--possibly to one that will startle you; but my only desire is to know the truth, my only fear to cling to error. I venture to say our love will not decompose under the influence of separation, unless you excommunicate me for differing from you in opinion. Think--is there any _conceivable_ alteration in me that would prevent your coming to me at Christmas? I long to have a friend such as you are, I think I may say, alone to me, to unburden every thought and difficulty--for I am still a solitary, though near a city. But we have the universe to talk with, infinity in which to stretch the gaze of hope, and an all-bountiful, all-wise Creator in whom to confide--he who has given us the untold delights of which our reason, our emotion, our sensations, are the ever-springing sources. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 8th Dec. 1841.] What a pity that while mathematics are indubitable, immutable, and no one doubts the properties of a triangle or a circle, doctrines infinitely important to man are buried in a charnel-heap of bones over which nothing is heard but the barks and growls of contention! "Unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united." It was impossible for such a nature as Miss Evans's, in the enthusiasm of this first great change, to rest satisfied in compliance with the old forms, and she was so uneasy in an equivocal position that she determined to give up going to church. This was an unforgivable offence in the eyes of her father, who was a Churchman of the old school, and nearly led to a family rupture. He went so far as to put into an agent's hands the lease of the house in the Foleshill road, with the intention of going to live with his married daughter. Upon this, Miss Evans made up her mind to go into lodgings at Leamington, and to try to support herself by teaching. The first letter to Mrs. Bray refers to this incident: [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Jan. 1842.] My guardian angel, Mrs. Pears, has just sent for me to hear your kind note, which has done my aching limbs a little good. I shall be most thankful for the opportunity of going to Leamington, and Mrs. Pears is willing to go too. There is but _one_ woe, that of leaving my dear father--all else, doleful lodgings, scanty meals, and _gazing-stockism_, are quite indifferent to me. Therefore do not fear for me when I am once settled in my home--wherever it may be--and freed from wretched suspense. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Pears, Friday evening, Feb. 1842.] Far from being weary of your dear little Henry, his matin visits are as cheering to me as those of any little bird "that comes in spite of sorrow, And at my window bids good-morrow." We have not, perhaps, been so systematic as a regular tutor and pupil would have been, but we crave indulgence for some laxity. I was really touched that you should think of _me_ while among friends more closely linked with you in every way. I was beginning to get used to the conviction that, ivy-like as I am by nature, I must (as we see ivy do sometimes) shoot out into an isolated tree. Never again imagine that you need ask forgiveness for speaking or writing to me on subjects to me more interesting than aught else; on the contrary, believe that I really enjoy conversation of this nature: blank silence and cold reserve are the only bitters I care for in my intercourse with you. I can rejoice in all the joys of humanity; in all that serves to elevate and purify feeling and action; nor will I quarrel with the million who, I am persuaded, are with me in intention, though our dialects differ. Of course, I must desire the ultimate downfall of error, for no error is innocuous; but this assuredly will occur without my proselytizing aid, and the best proof of a real love of the truth--that freshest stamp of divinity--is a calm confidence in its intrinsic power to secure its own high destiny, that of universal empire. Do not fear that I will become a stagnant pool by a self-sufficient determination only to listen to my own echo; to read the yea, yea, on my own side, and be most comfortably deaf to the nay, nay. Would that all rejected _practically_ this maxim! To _fear_ the examination of any proposition appears to me an intellectual and a moral palsy that will ever hinder the firm grasping of any substance whatever. For my part, I wish to be among the ranks of that glorious crusade that is seeking to set Truth's Holy Sepulchre free from a usurped domination. We shall then see her resurrection! Meanwhile, although I cannot rank among my principles of action a fear of vengeance eternal, gratitude for predestined salvation, or a revelation of future glories as a reward, I fully participate in the belief that the only heaven here, or hereafter, is to be found in conformity with the will of the Supreme; a continual aiming at the attainment of the perfect ideal, the true _logos_ that dwells in the bosom of the one Father. I hardly know whether I am ranting after the fashion of one of the Primitive Methodist prophetesses, with a cart for her rostrum, I am writing so fast. Good-bye, and blessings on you, as they will infallibly be on the children of peace and virtue. Again about the same date in 1842 she writes to Mrs. Bray: [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Feb. 1842.] A heart full of love and gratitude to you for all your kindness in thought and act to me, undeserving. I dare say my manner belies my feelings: but friendship must live by faith and not by sight, and I shall be a great gainer by leaving you to interpret my mystic character without any other key than your own goodness. The last letter of the series to Miss Lewis also refers to the difficulties of the situation: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Lewis, 19th Feb. 1842.] I dare say you have added, subtracted, and divided suppositions until you think you have a sure product--viz., a good quantum, or, rather, a bad one, of indifference and forgetfulness, as the representation of my conduct towards you. If so, revise your arithmetic, for be it known to you that, having had my propensities, sentiments, and intellect gauged a second time, I am pronounced to possess a large organ of "adhesiveness," a still larger one of "firmness," and as large of "conscientiousness"--hence, if I should turn out a very weathercock and a most pitiful truckler, you will have data for the exercise of faith maugre common-sense, common justice, and the testimony of your eyes and ears. How do you go on for society, for communion of spirit, the drop of nectar in the cup of mortals? But why do I say the drop? The mind that feels its value will get large draughts from some source, if denied it in the most commonly chosen way. "'Mid the rich store of nature's gifts to man Each has his loves, close wedded to his soul By fine association's golden links. As the Great Spirit bids creation teem With conscious being and intelligence, So man, his miniature resemblance, gives To matter's every form a speaking soul, An emanation from his spirit's fount, The impress true of its peculiar seal. Here finds he thy best image, sympathy." Beautiful egoism, to quote one's own. But where is not this same ego? The martyr at the stake seeks its gratification as much as the court sycophant, the difference lying in the comparative dignity and beauty of the two egos. People absurdly talk of self-denial. Why, there is none in virtue, to a being of moral excellence: the greatest torture to such a soul would be to run counter to the dictates of conscience; to wallow in the slough of meanness, deception, revenge, or sensuality. This was Paul's idea in the first chapter of 2d Epistle to Timothy (I think that is the passage). I have had a weary week. At the beginning more than the usual amount of _cooled_ glances, and exhortations to the suppression of self-conceit. The former are so many hailstones that make me wrap more closely around me the mantle of determinate purpose: the latter are needful, and have a tendency to exercise forbearance, that well repays the temporary smart. The heart knoweth its own, whether bitterness or joy: let us, dearest, beware how we, _even with good intentions_, press a finger's weight on the already bruised. And about the same date she writes to Mrs. Bray: [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, end of Feb. 1842.] I must relieve my conscience before I go to bed by entering a protest against every word or accent of discontent that I uttered this morning. If I have ever complained of any person or circumstance, I do penance by eating my own words. When my real self has regained its place, I can shake off my troubles "like dewdrops from the lion's mane," and then I feel the baseness of imputing my sorrows to others rather than to my own pitiful weakness. But I do not write for your forgiveness; that I know I have. I only want to satisfy my indignation against myself. The conclusion of the matter was that Mr. Evans withdrew his house from the agent's hands, and his daughter went to stay at Griff, with Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Evans, whence she writes the following letter to Mrs. Pears: [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Pears, Thursday, Mch. 1842.] I have just been climbing up some favorite old hills, or rather hillocks, and if I could see you I should find myself in high preparation for one of my thorough chats. Oh, if I could transport myself to your dining-room, where I guess you and Mr. Pears are sitting in anticipation of tea--carrying on no "holy war," but at peace with the world and its opinions, or, if ever you do battle, in the happy ranks of the majority--I could kiss you into sublime liberality! How are you and your dear husband and children? It seems a week of years instead of days since you said to me your kind good-bye, and as I have tried your magnanimity quite long enough to be assured that you will not let me hear of you without a beseeching letter from me, I snatch half an hour from a too short day for the generous purpose of doubly qualifying myself, first, by pouring out the contents of my gossip-wallet, and then quietly awaiting the news I want to hear of you. I have here, in every way, abundant and unlooked-for blessings--delicacy and consideration from all whom I have seen; and I really begin to recant my old belief about the indifference of all the world towards me, for my acquaintances of this neighborhood seem to seek an opportunity of smiling on me in spite of my heresy. All these things, however, are but the fringe and ribbons of happiness. They are _ad_herent, not _in_herent; and, without any affectation, I feel myself to be acquiring what I must hold to be a precious possession, an independence of what is baptized by the world external good. There are externals (at least, they are such in common thought) that I could ill part with--the deep, blue, glorious heavens, bending as they do over all, presenting the same arch, emblem of a truer omnipresence, wherever we may be chased, and all the sweet, peace-breathing sights and sounds of this lovely earth. These, and the thoughts of the good and great, are an inexhaustible world of delight; and the felt desire to be one in will and design with the great mind that has laid open to us these treasures is the sun that warms and fructifies it. I am more and more impressed with the duty of _finding_ happiness. On a retrospection of the past month, I regret nothing so much as my own impetuosity both of feeling and judging. I am not inclined to be sanguine as to my dear father's future determination, and I sometimes have an intensely vivid consciousness, which I only allow to be a fleeting one, of all that is painful and that has been so. I can only learn that my father has commenced his alterations at Packington, but he only appears to be temporarily acquiescing in my brother's advice "not to be in a hurry." I do not intend to remain here longer than three weeks, or, at the very farthest, a month; and, if I am not then recalled, I shall write for definite directions. I must have a _home_, not a visiting-place. I wish you would learn something from my father, and send me word how he seems disposed. I hope you get long walks on these beautiful days. You would love to hear the choristers we have here; they are hymning away incessantly. Can you not drive over and see me? Do come by hook or by crook. Why, Mr. Pears could almost walk hither. I am becoming very hurried, for most welcome tea is in the vicinity, and I must be busy after I have imbibed its inspiration. You will write to me to-morrow, will you not? and pray insist on Mr. Pears writing an appendix. I had a note from Mrs. Bray this morning, and I liked it better than my breakfast. So do give me a little treat on Saturday. Blessings on you and yours, as all forlorn beggars have said from time immemorial to their benefactors; but real feeling, you know, will sometimes slip into a hackneyed guise. Miss Evans remained for about three weeks at Griff, at the end of which time, through the intervention of her brother, the Brays, and Miss Rebecca Franklin, the father was very glad to receive her again, and she resumed going to church as before. It will be seen from a subsequent noteworthy letter to Miss Sara Hennell, dated 19th October, 1843, that Miss Evans's views of the best course to be pursued under similar circumstances had already undergone considerable modifications, and in the last year of her life she told me that, although she did not think she had been to blame, few things had occasioned her more regret than this temporary collision with her father, which might, she thought, have been avoided with a little management. In July of this year (1842) Miss Sara Hennell--the gifted sister of Mrs. Bray--came to Rosehill, and completed the trio destined to exert the most important influence over the life of George Eliot. The individual characters of these three friends, and the relations each bore to their correspondent, will unfold themselves in the letters. It is only necessary here to say that the two ladies--Cara and Sara, as they are always addressed--now became like sisters to Miss Evans, and Mr. Bray her most intimate male friend, and the letters to them form an almost unbroken chain during all the remainder of George Eliot's life. To us Miss Sara Hennell is the most important correspondent, for it is to her that Miss Evans mainly turns now for intellectual sympathy; to Mrs. Bray when she is in pain or trouble, and wants affectionate companionship; with Mr. Bray she quarrels, and the humorous side of her nature is brought out. Every good story goes to him, with a certainty that it will be appreciated. With all three it is a beautiful and consistent friendship, running like a thread through the woof of the coming thirty-eight years. For the next twelve years, as will be seen, it is quite the most important thread; and although later it naturally became very much less important, it was never dropped except for a moment, in 1854, owing to a brief misunderstanding of letters, which will appear in its due place. The following letters to Miss Sara Hennell show what was passing from 30th August, 1842, to April, 1843: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 30th Aug. 1842.] How I have delighted in the thought that there are beings who are better than their promises, beyond the regions of waking and sleeping dreams. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday, Sept. 1842.] I have not yet accounted for my tardiness in writing, which, I assure you, is no representation of my usual habit, and has been occasioned only by a week's indisposition, the foster-parent to the ill-favored offspring of my character and circumstances, gloom and stolidity, and I could not write to you with such companions to my thought. I am anxious that you should not imagine me unhappy even in my most melancholy moods, for I hold all indulgence of sadness that has the slightest tincture of discontent to be a grave delinquency. I think there can be few who more truly feel than I that this is a world of bliss and beauty--that is, that bliss and beauty are the end, the tendency of creation; and evils are the shadows that are the only conditions of light in the picture, and I live in much, much enjoyment. I am beginning to enjoy the "Eneid," though, I suppose, much in the same way as the uninitiated enjoy wine, compared with the connoisseurs. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 3d Nov. 1842.] I have been in high displeasure with myself, have thought my soul only fit for limbo, to keep company with other abortions, and my life the shallowest, muddiest, most unblessing stream. Having got my head above this slough of despond, I feel quite inclined to tell you how much pleasure your letter gave me. You observe in your note that some persons say the unsatisfied longing we feel in ourselves for something better than the greatest perfection to be found on earth is a proof that the true object of our desires lies beyond it. Assuredly, this earth is not the home of the spirit--it will rest only in the bosom of the Infinite. But the non-satisfaction of the affections and intellect being inseparable from the unspeakable advantage of such a mind as that of man in connection with his corporal condition and _terrene_ destiny, forms not at present an argument with me for the realization of particular desires. The next letter refers to Miss Mary Hennell's[18] last illness: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th Jan. 1843.] I cannot help wishing to tell you, now that you are in trouble and anxiety, how dear you are to me, and how the recollection of you is ever freshening in my mind. You have need of all your cheeriness and energy; and if they do not fail, I think it almost enviable, as far as one's self is concerned (not, of course, when the sufferer is remembered), to have the care of a sick-room, with its twilight and tiptoe stillness and helpful activity. I have always had a peculiarly peaceful feeling in such a scene. Again, after the death of Miss Mary Hennell, there is a letter to her sister Sara: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, April, 1843.] We always find that our stock of appreciated good can never be really diminished. When the chief desire of the eyes is taken, we can afford a gaze to hitherto unnoticed possessions; and even when the topmost boughs are lopped, a thousand shoots spring from below with the energy of new life. So it will be with you; but you cannot yet look beyond the present, nor is it desirable that you should. It would not be well for us to overleap one grade of joy or suffering: our life would lose its completeness and beauty. Rosehill not only afforded a pleasant variety in the Coventry life, as most visitors to the town, of any note, found their way there, but the Brays were also frequently in the habit of making little holiday excursions, in many of which Miss Evans now joined. Thus we find them in May, 1843, all going to Stratford and Malvern, together with Mr. Charles Hennell and Miss Sara Hennell, for a week; and again, in July of that year the same party, accompanied by Miss Brabant, daughter of Dr. Brabant of Devizes, went on a fortnight's tour, visiting Tenby, among other places. This trip is chiefly memorable from the fact that it was indirectly responsible for Miss Evans undertaking the translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu." For Miss Brabant (to whom the translation had been confided by Mr. Joseph Parkes of Birmingham and a group of friends) became engaged to be married to Mr. Charles Hennell; and shortly after her marriage she handed the work over to Miss Evans. In the next two letters to Miss Sara Hennell there are allusions to the approaching marriage, which took place in London on 1st November, 1843, the Brays and Miss Evans being present. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Sept. 1843.] Many thanks for procuring me the hymns and anthems. I was right glad to play "Ancient of Ages" again, and I shall like still better to sing it with you when we meet. That that is to be so soon, and under circumstances so joyful, are among the _mirabilia_ of this changing world. To see and re-see such a cluster of not indifferent persons as the programme for the wedding gives, will be almost too large a _bonne-bouche_. I saw Robert Owen yesterday, Mr. and Mrs. Bray having kindly asked me to dine with him, and I think if his system prosper it will be in spite of its founder, and not because of his advocacy. The next letter to Mrs. Bray gives a pleasant glimpse of their studies together, and of the little musical society that was in the habit of meeting at Rosehill to play concerted pieces. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, no date, 1843.] I only wish you would change houses with the mayor, that I might get to you when I would. I send you the first part of "Wallenstein," with the proposition that we should study that in conjunction with the "Thirty Years' War," as I happen to have a loose copy. We had better omit the "Lager," and begin "Die Piccolomini." You shall have "Joan of Arc," my grand favorite, as a _bonne-bouche_ when you have got through "Wallenstein," which will amply repay you for any trouble in translating it, and is not more difficult than your reading ought to be now. I have skimmed Manzoni, who has suffered sadly in being poured out of silver into pewter. The chapter on Philosophy and Theology is worth reading. Miss Brabant sent me my "Hyperion" with a note, the other day. She had put no direction besides Coventry, and the parcel had consequently been sent to some other Miss Evans, and my choice little sentimental treasures, alas! exposed to vulgar gaze. Thank you for the manual, which I have had so long. I trust I did not bestow those scratches on the cover. I have been trying to find a French book that you were not likely to have read, but I do not think I have one, unless it be "Gil Blas," which you are perhaps too virtuous to have read, though how any one can opine it to have a vicious tendency I am at a loss to conjecture. They might as well say that to condemn a person to eat a whole plum-pudding would deprive him of all future relish for plain food. I have had a visitor ever since Saturday, and she will stay till Saturday again. I cannot desire that you should _un_ask Violin and Flute, unless a postponement would be in every way as agreeable to you and them. If you have them, you will give them much more pleasure as Piano than I, so do not think of me in the matter for a moment. Good-bye; and remember to treat your cold as if it were an orphan's cold, or a widow's cold, or any one's cold but your own. The following is the letter before referred to as containing an important and noteworthy declaration of opinion on the very interesting question of conformity: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th Oct. 1843.] The first thing I have to say to you is to entreat that you and Mrs. Hennell will not perplex yourselves for a moment about my accommodation during the night. I am so well now that a hearthrug would be as luxurious a couch as I should need, and I defy anything short of a kettledrum or my conscience to keep me awake after a long day. The subject of your conversation with Miss D---- is a very important one, and worth an essay. I will not now inflict one of mine on you, but I will tell you, as briefly as possible, my present opinion, which you know is contrary to the one I held in the first instance. I am inclined to think that such a change of sentiment is likely to happen to most persons whose views on religious matters undergo a change early in life. The first impulse of a young and ingenuous mind is to withhold the slightest sanction from all that contains even a mixture of supposed error. When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope. We think we shall run well when we have the full use of our limbs and the bracing air of independence, and we believe that we shall soon obtain something positive, which will not only more than compensate us for what we have renounced, but will be so well worth offering to others that we may venture to proselytize as fast as our zeal for truth may prompt us. But a year or two of reflection, and the experience of our own miserable weakness, which will ill afford to part even with the crutch of superstition, must, I think, effect a change. Speculative truth begins to appear but a shadow of individual minds. Agreement between intellects seems unattainable, and we turn to the _truth of feeling_ as the only universal bond of union. We find that the intellectual errors which we once fancied were a mere incrustation have grown into the living body, and that we cannot, in the majority of cases, wrench them away without destroying vitality. We begin to find that with individuals, as with nations, the only safe revolution is one arising out of the wants which their own progress has generated. It is the quackery of infidelity to suppose that it has a nostrum for all mankind, and to say to all and singular, "Swallow my opinions and you shall be whole." If, then, we are debarred by such considerations from trying to reorganize opinions, are we to remain aloof from our fellow-creatures on occasions when we may fully sympathize with the feelings exercised, although our own have been melted into another mould? Ought we not on every opportunity to seek to have our feelings in harmony, though not in union, with those who are often richer in the fruits of faith, though not in reason, than ourselves? The results of nonconformity in a family are just an epitome of what happens on a larger scale in the world. An influential member chooses to omit an observance which, in the minds of all the rest, is associated with what is highest and most venerable. He cannot make his reasons intelligible, and so his conduct is regarded as a relaxation of the hold that moral ties had on him previously. The rest are infected with the disease they imagine in him. All the screws by which order was maintained are loosened, and in more than one case a person's happiness may be ruined by the confusion of ideas which took the form of principles. But, it may be said, how then are we to do anything towards the advancement of mankind? Are we to go on cherishing superstitions out of a fear that seems inconsistent with any faith in a Supreme Being? I think the best and the only way of fulfilling our mission is to sow good seed in good (_i.e._, prepared) ground, and not to root up tares where we must inevitably gather all the wheat with them. We cannot fight and struggle enough for freedom of inquiry, and we need not be idle in imparting all that is pure and lovely to children whose minds are unbespoken. Those who can write, let them do it as boldly as they like; and let no one hesitate at proper seasons to make a full _con_fession (far better than _pro_fession). St. Paul's reasoning about the conduct of the strong towards the weak, in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of Romans, is just in point. But I have not said half what I meant to say. There are so many aspects in which the subject might be presented that it is useless to attempt to exhaust it. I fear I have written very unintelligibly, for it is rather late, and I am so cold that my thoughts are almost frozen. After Miss Brabant's marriage to Mr. Charles Hennell, Miss Evans went to stay for a week or two with Dr. Brabant at Devizes, and some time about the beginning of January, 1844, the proposition was made for the transfer of the translation of Strauss from Mrs. Charles Hennell. At the end of April, 1844, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Sara Hennell that Miss Evans is "working away at Strauss six pages a day," and the next letter from Miss Evans refers to the beginning of the undertaking. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday, May, 1844.] To begin with business, I send you on the other side the translations you wished (Strauss), but they are perhaps no improvements on what you had done. I shall be very glad to learn from you the particulars as to the mode of publication--who are the parties that will find the funds, and whether the manuscripts are to be put into the hands of any one when complete, or whether they are to go directly from me to the publishers? I was very foolish not to imagine about these things in the first instance, but ways and means are always afterthoughts with me. You will soon be settled and enjoying the blessed spring and summer time. I hope you are looking forward to it with as much delight as I. One has to spend so many years in learning how to be happy. I am just beginning to make some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove Young's theory that "as soon as we have found the key of life it opes the gates of death." Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are our happiest. What a miserable augury for the progress of the race and the destination of the individual if the more matured and enlightened state is the less happy one! Childhood is only the beautiful and happy time in contemplation and retrospect: to the child it is full of deep sorrows, the meaning of which is unknown. Witness colic and whooping-cough and dread of ghosts, to say nothing of hell and Satan, and an offended Deity in the sky, who was angry when I wanted too much plumcake. Then the sorrows of older persons, which children see but cannot understand, are worse than all. All this to prove that we are happier than when we were seven years old, and that we shall be happier when we are forty than we are now, which I call a comfortable doctrine, and one worth trying to believe! I am sitting with father, who every now and then jerks off my attention to the history of Queen Elizabeth, which he is reading. On the 1st July, 1844, there was another little trip with the Brays to the Cumberland lakes, this time returning by Manchester and Liverpool; and on reaching home, about the beginning of August, there is the following letter: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday, Aug. 1844.] Can I have the remaining volumes of Strauss, excepting any part that you may choose to keep for your own use? If you could also send me such parts of the introduction and first section as you wish me to look over, I should like to despatch that business at intervals, when I am not inspired for more thorough labor. Thank you for the encouragement you sent me. I only need it when my head is weak and I am unable to do much. Then I sicken at the idea of having Strauss in my head and on my hands for a lustrum, instead of saying good-bye to him in a year. When I can work fast I am never weary, nor do I regret either that the work has been begun or that I have undertaken it. I am only inclined to vow that I will never translate again, if I live to correct the sheets for Strauss. My first page is 257. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 31st Oct. 1844.] Pray tell Mrs. C. Hennell that no apology was needed for the very good translation she has sent me. I shall be glad to avail myself of it to the last word, for I am thoroughly tired of my own garb for Strauss's thoughts. I hope the introduction, etc., will be ready by the end of November, when I hope to have put the last words to the first volume. I am awfully afraid of my own translation, and I want you to come and comfort me. I am relapsing into heathen darkness about everything but Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. "Heaven has sent leanness into my soul"--for reviling them, I suppose. This lovely autumn! Have you enjoyed its long shadows and fresh breezes? [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, end of 1844.] I do not think it was kind to Strauss (I knew he was handsome) to tell him that a young lady was translating his book. I am sure he must have some twinges of alarm to think he was dependent on that most contemptible specimen of the human being for his English reputation. By the way, I never said that the Canons of the Council of Nice, or the Confession of Augsburg, or even the Thirty-nine Articles, are suggestive of poetry. I imagine no _dogmas_ can be. But surely Christianity, with its Hebrew retrospect and millennial hopes, the heroism and divine sorrow of its founder, and all its glorious army of martyrs, might supply, and has supplied, a strong impulse not only to poetry, but to all the Fine Arts. Mr. Pears is coming home from Malvern to-night, and the children are coming to tea with me, so that I have to make haste with my afternoon matters. Beautiful little Susan has been blowing bubbles, and looking like an angel at sport. I am quite happy, only sometimes feeling "the weight of all this unintelligible world." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Sunday, beginning of 1845.] Your books are come for the school, and I have covered them--at least those that I think you will like for the children; two or three are quite for grown-up people. What an exquisite little thing that is of Harriet Martineau's--"The Crofton Boys"! I have had some delightful crying over it. There are two or three lines in it that would feed one's soul for a month. Hugh's mother says to him, speaking of people who have permanent sorrow, "They soon had a new and delicious pleasure, which none but the bitterly disappointed can feel--the pleasure of rousing their souls to bear pain, and of _agreeing with God silently_, when nobody knows what is in their hearts." I received "Sybil" yesterday quite safely. I am not utterly disgusted with D'Israeli. The man hath good veins, as Bacon would say, but there is not enough blood in them. The 17th April this year was an interesting day, as Miss Evans went with the Brays to Atherstone Hall, and met Harriet Martineau for the first time. It will be seen that in later years there was considerable intimacy between them. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th April, 1845.] If you think any of my future manuscript too untidy for the printer, only mark it to that effect, and I will rewrite it, for I do not mind that mechanical work; and my conscience is rather uneasy lest the illegibility of my hand should increase materially the expense of the publication. Do not be alarmed because I am not well just now: I shall be better very soon, and I am not really disgusted with Strauss. I only fancy so sometimes, as I do with all earthly things. In June Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "looks all the better of her London trip. I never saw her so blooming and buoyant;" but the two next letters show a relapse. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of June, (?) 1845.] Glad am I that some one can enjoy Strauss! The million certainly will not, and I have ceased to sit down to him with any relish. I should work much better if I had some proof-sheets coming in to assure me that my soul-stupefying labor is not in vain. I am more grateful to you than I can tell you for taking the trouble you do. If it had not been for your interest and encouragement I should have been almost in despair by this time. And again, a little later: I begin utterly to despair that Strauss will ever be published, unless I can imitate the Rev. Mr. Davis, and print it myself. At the very best, if we go on according to the rate of procedure hitherto, the book will not be published within the next two years. This seems dolorous enough to me, whose only real satisfaction just now is some hope that I am not sowing the wind. It is very laughable that I should be irritated about a thing in itself so trifling as a translation, but it is the very triviality of the thing that makes delays provoking. The difficulties that attend a really grand undertaking are to be borne, but things should run smoothly and fast when they are not important enough to demand the sacrifice of one's whole soul. The second volume is quite ready. The last few sections were written under anything but favorable circumstances. They are not Strauss's best thoughts, nor are they put into his translator's best language; but I have not courage to imitate Gibbon--put my work in the fire and begin again. In July, 1845, there seems to have arisen some difficulty in getting in the cash subscriptions for the publication. Mr. Charles Hennell and Mr. Joseph Parkes, however, exerted themselves in the matter, and £300 was collected, and the following letter shows the relief it was to Miss Evans: [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Hennell, Friday evening, July, 1845.] Thank you for sending me the good news so soon, and for sympathizing in my need of encouragement. I have all I want now, and shall go forward on buoyant wing. I am glad for the work's sake, glad for your sake, and glad for "the honorable gentleman's" sake, that matters have turned out so well. Pray think no more of my pens, ink, and paper. I would gladly give much more towards the work than these and my English, if I could do so consistently with duty. The book now got into the hands of the printers, as will be seen from the next letter: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Aug. 1845.] I have just been looking over some of the _revise_, and reading again your sweet letter to me from Hastings, and an impulse of gratitude and love will not let me rest without writing you a little note, though my hand has almost done its possible for the day under this intense heat. You do not guess how much pleasure it gives me to look over your pencillings, they prove so clearly that you have really entered into the meaning of every sentence, and it always gives one satisfaction to see the evidence of brain-work. I am quite indebted to you for your care, and I feel greatly the advantage of having a friend to undertake the office of critic. There is one word I must mention--Azazel is the word put in the original of the Old Testament for the scapegoat: now I imagine there is some dubiousness about the meaning, and that Strauss would not think it right to translate _scapegoat_, because, from the tenor of his sentence, he appears to include Azazel with the evil demons. I wonder if it be supposed by any one that Azazel is in any way a distinct being from the goat. I know no Hebrew scholar, and have access to no Hebrew lexicon. Have you asked Mr. Hennell about it? Your letter describes what I _have_ felt rather than what I feel. It seems as if my affections were quietly sinking down to temperate, and I every day seem more and more to value thought rather than feeling. I do not think this is man's best estate, but it is better than what I have sometimes known. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday evening, autumn of 1845.] I am not ashamed to confess that I should like to be idle with you for a little while, more than anything else I can think of just now. But, alas! leathery brain must work at leathery Strauss for a short time before my butterfly days come. O, how I shall spread my wings then! Anent the Greek, it would produce very dreadful cold perspirations indeed in me, if there were anything amounting to a serious error, but this, I trust, there will not be. You must really expect me, if not to sleep and snore _aliquando_, at least to nod in the course of some thousand pages. I should like you to be deliberate over the _Schluss Abhandlung_. It is the only part on which I have bestowed much pains, for the difficulty was _piquing_, not piquant. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, no date, 1845.] I am never pained when I think Strauss right; but in many cases I think him wrong, as every man must be in working out into detail an idea which has general truth, but is only one element in a perfect theory--not a perfect theory in itself. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 25th Sept. 1845.] I am delighted with the proof. The type and everything else are just what I wished. To see the first sheet is the next best thing to seeing the last, which I hope we shall all have done this time next year. There is a very misty vision of a trip to the Highlands haunting us in this quarter. The vision would be much pleasanter if Sara were one of the images in it. You would surely go if we went, and then the thing would be perfect. I long to see you, for you are becoming a sort of transfigured existence, a mere ideal to me, and I have nothing to tell me of your real flesh-and-blood self but sundry very useful little pencil-marks, and a scrap of Mrs. Bray's notes now and then. So, if you would have me bear in my memory your own self, and not some aerial creation that I call by your name, you must make your appearance. In October "the misty vision" took palpable shape, and the Brays, Miss Hennell, and Miss Evans had a delightful fortnight in Scotland, visiting Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, The Trossachs, Stirling, Edinburgh, Melrose, and Abbotsford. They were away from the 14th to the 28th, and on returning to Coventry Strauss was taken up again. Miss Hennell was reading the translation, and aiding with suggestions and corrections. The next letter to her seems to be dated in November. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Nov. 1845.] Please to tell Mr. Hennell that "habits of thought" is not a translation of the word _particularismus_. This does not mean national idiosyncrasy, but is a word which characterizes that idiosyncrasy. If he decidedly objects to particularism, ask him to be so good as substitute _exclusiveness_, though there is a shade of meaning in _particularismus_ which even that does not express. It was because the word could only be translated by a circumlocution that I ventured to Anglicize it. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Tuesday morning, Dec. (?) 1845.] I have been idle, and have not done a stroke to the prefaces, but they shall be sent as soon as possible. Thanks for the copy of the Latin preface and letter. They are in preconceived harmony with my ideas of the appropriate. I will leave the titlepage to you and Mr. Hennell. Thanks for the news in your last _extra Blatt_. I am glad to find that the theological organs are beginning to deal with philosophy, but I can hardly imagine your writer to be a friend with a false cognizance on his shield. These dear orthodox people talk so simply sometimes that one cannot help fancying them satirists of their own doctrines and fears, though they mean manfully to fight against the enemy. I should like if possible to throw the emphasis on _critically_ in the titlepage. Strauss means it to be so: and yet I do not know how we can put anything better than what you say. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Dec. 1845.] I send you to-day the conclusion of the chapter you are reading, and, unless you find anything of importance to be rectified, you need not return this to me, but may forward the whole to the printer as soon as you have read it. I am not altogether satisfied with the use of the word sacrament as applied specifically to the _Abendmahl_. It seems like a vulgarism to say _the_ sacrament for one thing, and for another it does not seem _ab_original enough in the life of Jesus; but I know of no other word that can be substituted. I have altered passover to paschal meal, but [Greek: tho pascha] is used in the New Testament of the eating of the lamb _par excellence_. You remember, in the title of the first section in the _Schluss_--which I had been so careless as to omit--the expression is "Nothwendiger Uebergang der Kritik in das Dogma." Now, dogmatism will not do, as that would represent _Dogmatismus_. "Dogmatik" is the idea, I believe--_i.e._, positive theology. Is it allowable to say _dogmatics_, think you? I do not understand how the want of manuscript can be so pressing, as I have only had one proof for the last fortnight. It seems quite dispiriting to me now not to see the proofs regularly. I have had a miserable week of headache, but am better now, and ready for work, to which I must go. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Jan. 1846.] I do pity you, with the drunken Christmas workmen keeping you in this uncomfortable interregnum. But do not go distraught; the spring will really come and the birds--many having had to fly across the Atlantic, which is farther than you have to go to establish yourself. I could easily give the meaning of the Hebrew word in question, as I know where to borrow a lexicon. But observe, there are two Hebrew words untranslated in this proof. I do not think it will do to give the English in one place and not in another, where there is no reason for such a distinction, and there is not here, for the note in this proof sounds just as fee-fo-fum-ish as the other without any translation. I could not alter the "troublesome," because it is the nearest usable adjective for _schwierig_, which stands in the German. I am tired of inevitable _importants_, and cannot bear to put them when they do not represent the German. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Jan. 1846.] I have been sadly occupied for the last ten days. My father has been ill, and has required much attention, and my own head was very middling for some days, so that I send you but a poor cargo of new manuscript. Indeed, on looking through the last quire of paper this morning for the purpose of putting in the Greek, it seemed all very poor to me, but the subject is by no means inspiring, and no muse would condescend to visit such an uncertain votary as I have been for the last week or so. How is it that I have only had one proof this week? You know we are five hundred pages in advance of the printer, so you need not be dreadfully alarmed. I have been so pleased to hear some of your letters read to me, but, alas! I can reflect no pleasure at this moment, for I have a woful pain and am in a desperate hurry. On 14th February, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Sara Hennell that Miss Evans "says she is Strauss-sick--it makes her ill dissecting the beautiful story of the Crucifixion, and only the sight of the Christ-image[19] and picture make her endure it. Moreover, as her work advances nearer its public appearance, she grows dreadfully nervous. Poor thing, I do pity her sometimes, with her pale, sickly face and dreadful headaches, and anxiety, too, about her father. This illness of his has tried her so much, for all the time she had for rest and fresh air she had to read to him. Nevertheless, she looks very happy and satisfied sometimes in her work." And about the end of February there is the following letter from Miss Evans: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Feb. 1846.] Health and greeting, my Achates, in this veritable spring month. I shall send you a parcel on Monday with sixty-four new pages of German for your intellectual man. The next parcel, which will be the LAST, I shall send on the Monday following, and when you have read to the end, you may, if you think it desirable, send the whole to me. Your dull ass does not mend his pace for beating; but he _does_ mend it when he finds out that he is near his journey's end, and makes you wonder how he could pretend to find all the previous drawing so hard for him. I plead guilty to having set off in a regular scamper: but be lenient and do not scold me if you find all sorts of carelessnesses in these last hundred pages. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Feb. 1846.] I have been guilty of the most unpardonable piece of carelessness, for which I am stretched on a rack of anxiety and mortification. In the proof that came on Thursday I unwittingly drew out a quarter sheet with the blotting-paper, and did not discover the mistake until Saturday morning, when about to correct the last proof. Surely the printer would discover the absence of the four pages and wait for them--otherwise I would rather have lost one of my fingers, or all the hair from my head, than have committed such a _faux pas_. For there were three very awkward blunders to be corrected. All this vexation makes a cold and headache doubly intolerable, and I am in a most purgatorial state on this "good Sunday." I shall send the proofs, with the unfortunate quarter sheet and an explanation, to-night to Mr. Chapman, and prithee do thou inquire and see that the right thing is done. The tears are streaming from my smarting eyes--so farewell. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Mch. 1846.] I wish we could get the book out in May--why not? I suppose the binding could not be all got through--the printing and writing I should think might be managed in time. Shouldn't I like to fleet the time away with thee as they did in the Golden Age--after all our toils to lie reclined on the hills (spiritually), like gods together, careless of mankind. Sooth to speak, idleness, and idleness with thee, is just the most tempting mirage you could raise before my mind's eye--I say mirage, because I am determined from henceforth to believe in no substantiality for future time, but to live in and love the present--of which I have done too little. Still, the thought of being with you in your own home will attract me to that future; for without all controversy I love thee and miss thee. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Mch. 1846.] My soul kisses thee, dear Sara, in gratitude for those dewy thoughts of thine in this morning's note. My poor adust soul wants such refreshment. Continue to do me good--hoping for nothing again. I have had my sister with me all day--an interruption, alas! I cannot write more, but I should not be happy to let the day pass without saying one word to thee. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Mch. 1846.] The last hundred pages have certainly been totally uninteresting to me, considered as matter for translation. Strauss has inevitably anticipated in the earlier part of his work all the principles and many of the details of his criticism, and he seems fagged himself. _Mais courage!_ the neck of the difficulty is broken, and there is really very little to be done now. If one's head would but keep in anything like thinking and writing order! Mine has robbed me of half the last fortnight; but I am a little better now, and am saying to myself _Frisch zu!_ The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are, at all events, better than the bursting asunder of Judas. I am afraid I have not made this dull part of Strauss even as tolerable as it might be, for both body and mind have recoiled from it. Thank you, dearest, for all your love and patience for me and with me. I have nothing on earth to complain of but subjective maladies. Father is pretty well, and I have not a single excuse for discontent through the livelong day. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Mch. 1846.] As I believe that even your kindness cannot overcome your sincerity, I will cast aside my fear that your wish to see me in your own home is rather a plan for my enjoyment than for yours. I believe it would be an unmixed pleasure to me to be your visitor, and one that I would choose among a whole bouquet of agreeable possibilities; so I will indulge myself, and accept the good that the heavens and you offer me. I am miserably in want of you to stir up my soul and make it shake its wings, and begin some kind of flight after something good and noble, for I am in a grovelling, slothful condition, and you are the _only_ friend I possess who has an animating influence over me. I have written to Mr. Hennell anent the titlepage, and have voted for _critically examined_, from an entire conviction of its preferableness. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, beginning of April, 1846.] See what it is to have a person _en rapport_ with you, that knows all your thoughts without the trouble of communication! I am especially grateful to you for restoring the "therefore" to its right place. I was about to write to you to get you to remonstrate about this and the "dispassionate calmness," which I did not at all like; but I thought you had corrected the prefaces, as the marks against the Latin looked like yours, so I determined to indulge my _laissez-faire_ inclinations, for I hate stickling and debating unless it be for something really important. I do really like reading our Strauss--he is so _klar und ideenvoll_; but I do not know _one_ person who is likely to read the book through--do you? Next week we will be merry and sad, wise and nonsensical, devout and wicked, together. On 19th April, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans is "as happy as you may imagine at her work being done. She means to come and read Shakespeare through to us as her first enjoyment." And again, on 27th April, that she "is delighted beyond measure with Strauss's elegant preface. It is just what she likes. And what a nice letter too! The Latin is quite beyond me, but the letter shows how neatly he can express himself." _SUMMARY._ MARCH, 1841, TO APRIL, 1846. Foleshill--New friends--Mrs. Pears--Coventry life and engagements--Letters to Miss Lewis--Brother's marriage--Mental depression--Reading Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System"--Makes acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Bray--Reads Charles Hennell's book, "An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity"--Effect of this book--Gives up going to church--Family difficulties--Letters to Mrs. Pears--Visit to Griff--Returns to Foleshill and resumes going to church--Acquaintance with Miss Sara Hennell, and development of friendship with her and Mr. and Mrs. Bray--Letters to Miss Sara Hennell describing mental characteristics--Attitude towards immortality--Death of Miss Mary Hennell--Excursion with the Brays, Mr. Charles Hennell, and Miss Hennell to Stratford and Malvern, and to Tenby with same party and Miss Brabant--Meets Robert Owen--Studies German and music with Mrs. Bray--Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, with important declaration of opinion in regard to conformity--Mr. Charles Hennell's marriage--Stay with Dr. Brabant at Devizes--Arrangement for translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu"--Excursion with Brays to the Cumberland lakes, returning by Manchester and Liverpool--Weary of Strauss--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Poetry of Christianity--Admiration of Harriet Martineau's "The Crofton Boys"--Trip to London--Despair about publication of Strauss--Subscription of £300 for the work--In better heart--Minutiæ of Strauss translation--Pains taken with the _Schluss Abhandlung_--Opinion of Strauss's work--The book in print--Trip to the Highlands--Strauss difficulties--Miss Hennell reads the translation and makes suggestions--Suffering from headaches and "Strauss-sick"--The last MS. of the translation sent to Miss Hennell--Joy at finishing--Delighted with Strauss's Preface. FOOTNOTES: [17] Brother's marriage. [18] Miss Mary Hennell was the author of "An Outline of the Various Social Systems founded on the Principle of Co-operation," published in 1841. [19] This was an ivory image she had of the Crucified Christ over the desk in her study at Foleshill, where she did all her work at that time--a little room on the first floor, with a charming view over the country. CHAPTER III. The completion of the translation of Strauss is another milestone passed in the life journey of George Eliot, and the comparatively buoyant tone of the letters immediately following makes us feel that the galled neck is out of the yoke for a time. In May, Mrs. Bray had gone away from home for a visit, and the next letter is addressed to her. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Sunday (probably about 6th May), 1846.] Do not stay any longer than is necessary to do you good, lest I should lose the pleasure of loving you, for my affections are always the warmest when my friends are within an attainable distance. I think I can manage to keep respectably warm towards you for three weeks without seeing you, but I cannot promise more. Tell Mr. Bray I am getting too amiable for this world, and Mr. Donovan's wizard hand would detect a slight corrugation of the skin on my organs 5 and 6;[20] they are so totally without exercise. I had a lecture from Mr. Pears on Friday, as well as a sermon this morning, so you need be in no alarm for my moral health. Do you never think of those Caribs who, by dint of flattening their foreheads, can manage to see perpendicularly above them without so much as lifting their heads? There are some good people who remind me of them. They see everything so clearly and with so little trouble, but at the price of sad self-mutilation. On the 26th May Miss Evans went to pay a visit to Mrs. and Miss Hennell at Hackney, and she writes from there to Mrs. Bray, who was expected to join them in London. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, end of May, 1846.] I cannot deny that I am very happy without you, but perhaps I shall be happier with you, so do not fail to try the experiment. We have been to town only once, and are saving all our strength to "rake" with you; but we are as ignorant as Primitive Methodists about any of the amusements that are going. Please to come in a very mischievous, unconscientious, theatre-loving humor. Everybody I see is very kind to me, and therefore I think them all very charming; and, having everything I want, I feel very humble and self-denying. It is only rather too great a bore to have to write to my friends when I am half asleep, and I have not yet reached that pitch of amiability that makes such magnanimity easy. Don't bring us any bad news or any pains, but only nods and becks and wreathèd smiles. They stayed in London till the 5th June, and on the 15th of that month the translation of Strauss was published. On the 2d July Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "is going to Dover with her father, for a fortnight." In passing through Dover on our way to the Continent, in 1880, after our marriage, we visited the house they stayed at in 1846, and my wife then told me that she had suffered a great deal there, as her father's health began to show signs of breaking up. On returning to Coventry there is the following letter referring to Wicksteed's review of the translation of Strauss, which was advertised for the forthcoming number of the _Prospective Review_. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Thursday, Aug. (?) 1846.] Do you think it worth my while to buy the _Prospective_ for the sake of Wicksteed's review--is there anything new in it? Do you know if Mr. Chapman has any unusual facilities for obtaining cheap classics? Such things are to be got handsome and second-hand in London--if one knew but the way. I want to complete Xenophon's works. I have the "Anabasis," and I might, perhaps, get a nice edition of the "Memorabilia" and "Cyropædia" in a cheaper way than by ordering them directly from our own bookseller. I have been reading the "Fawn of Sertorius."[21] I think you would like it, though the many would not. It is pure, chaste, and classic, beyond any attempt at fiction I ever read. If it be Bulwer's, he has been undergoing a gradual transfiguration, and is now ready to be exalted into the assembly of the saints. The professor's (Strauss's) letter, transmitted through you, gave me infinite consolation, more especially the apt and pregnant quotation from Berosus. Precious those little hidden lakelets of knowledge in the high mountains, far removed from the vulgar eye, only visited by the soaring birds of love. On 25th September, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "looks very brilliant just now. We fancy she must be writing her novel;" and then come the following letters, written in October and November: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Oct. 1846.] All the world is bathed in glory and beauty to me now, and thou sharest in the radiance. Tell me whether I live for you as you do for me, and tell me how gods and men are treating you. You must send me a scrap every month--only a scrap with a dozen words in it, just to prevent me from starving on faith alone--of which you know I have the minimum of endowment. I am sinning against my daddy by yielding to the strong impulse I felt to write to you, for he looks at me as if he wanted me to read to him. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th Oct. 1846.] I do not know whether I can get up any steam again on the subject of Quinet; but I will try--when Cara comes back, however, for she has run away with "Christianity" into Devonshire, and I must have the book as a springing-board. When does the _Prospective_ come out? [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Nov. 1846.] The review of Strauss contains some very just remarks, though, on the whole, I think it shallow, and in many cases unfair. The praise it gives to the translation is just what I should have wished; indeed, I cannot imagine anything more gratifying in the way of laudation. Is it not droll that Wicksteed should have chosen one of my interpolations, or rather paraphrases, to dilate on. The expression "granite," applied to the sayings of Jesus, is nowhere used by Strauss, but is an impudent addition of mine to eke out his metaphor. Did you notice the review of Foster's Life?[22] I am reading the Life, and thinking all the time how you would like it. It is deeply interesting to study the life of a genius under circumstances amid which genius is so seldom to be found. Some of the thoughts in his journal are perfect gems. The words of the reviewer of the Strauss translation in the _Prospective_ are worth preserving: "A faithful, elegant, and scholarlike translation. Whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic, and harmonious force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought, and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which imparts to the volumes before us the air and spirit of an original. Though the translator never obtrudes himself upon the reader with any notes or comments of his own, yet he is evidently a man who has a familiar knowledge of the whole subject; and if the work be the joint production of several hands, moving in concert, the passages of a specially scholastic character, at least, have received their version from a discerning and well-informed theologian. Indeed, Strauss may well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for the English edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is 'et accurata et perspicua.'" [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Nov. 1846.] Many things, both outward and inward, have concurred to make this November far happier than the last. One's thoughts "Are widened with the process of the suns;" and if one is rather doubtful whether one is really wiser or better, it is some comfort to know that the desire to be so is more pure and dominant. I have been thinking of that most beautiful passage in Luke's Gospel--the appearance of Jesus to the disciples at Emmaus. How universal in its significance! The soul that has hopelessly followed its Jesus--its impersonation of the highest and best--all in despondency; its thoughts all refuted, its dreams all dissipated. Then comes another Jesus--another, but the same--the same highest and best, only chastened--crucified instead of triumphant--and the soul learns that this is the true way to conquest and glory. And then there is the burning of the heart, which assures that "this was the Lord!"--that this is the inspiration from above, the true comforter that leads unto truth. But I am not become a Methodist, dear Sara; on the contrary, if I am pious one day, you may be sure I was very wicked the day before, and shall be so again the next. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Dec. 1846.] I have been at Griff for the last week, or I should have written before. I thank you most heartily for sending me "Heliados"--first, because I admire it greatly in itself; and, secondly, because it is a pretty proof that I am not dissociated from your most hallowed thoughts. As yet I have read it only once, but I promise myself to read it again and again. I shall not show it to any one, for I hate "friendly criticism," as much for you as for myself; but you have a better spirit than I, and when you come I will render "Heliados" up to you, that others may have the pleasure of reading it. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Feb. 1847.] Lying in bed this morning, grievously tormented, your "Heliados" visited me and revealed itself to me more completely than it had ever done before. How true that "it is only when all portions of an individual nature, or all members of society, move forward harmoniously together that religious progress is calm and beneficial!" I imagine the sorrowful amaze of a child who had been dwelling with delight on the idea that the stars were the pavement of heaven's court, and that there above them sat the kind but holy God, looking like a venerable Father who would smile on his good little ones--when it was cruelly told, before its mind had substance enough to bear such tension, that the sky was not real, that the stars were worlds, and that even the sun could not be God's dwelling, because there were many, many suns. These ideas would introduce atheism into the child's mind, instead of assisting it to form a nobler conception of God (of course I am supposing the bare information given, and left to the child to work upon); whereas the idea it previously had of God was perfectly adapted to its intellectual condition, and formed to the child as perfect an embodiment of the all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful as the most enlightened philosopher ever formed to himself. On 21st April Miss Evans went to London with the Brays, and, among other things, heard "Elijah" at Exeter Hall. On returning to Coventry she writes: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 30th April, 1847.] I did so long to see you after hearing "Elijah," just to exchange an exclamation of delight. Last night I had a perfect treat, too, in "I Puritani." Castellar was admirable as Elvira, and Gardoni as a seraph. N.B.--I liked the Babel less--another sign of age. Mention has already been made of Miss Mary Sibree (now Mrs. John Cash of Coventry), and as the following genial letter is addressed to her, it gives an opportunity for mentioning here that Miss Evans had a high regard for all the members of the Sibree family. At the end of this year (1847) and the beginning of 1848 there will be found an interesting correspondence with Miss Sibree's brother, Mr. John Sibree, who, in 1849, published a translation of Hegel's "Lectures on the Philosophy of History," and in 1880 a volume of poems entitled "Fancy, and other Rhymes." The subjoined extract from a communication from Mrs. Cash will show upon what terms Miss Evans was with the family: "It was in the early part of the year 1841 that Miss Franklin came to see my mother at our house on the Foleshill road--about a mile and a half from Coventry--to tell her, as a piece of most interesting news, that an old pupil, of whom she herself and her sister Rebecca had always been very proud, was coming at the Lady-Day quarter to live at a house on the same road--within five minutes' walk of ours. This was Miss Evans, then twenty-one years of age. Miss Franklin dwelt with much pride on Miss Evans's mental power, on her skill in music, etc.; but the great recommendation to my mother's interest was the zeal for others which had marked her earnest piety at school, where she had induced the girls to come together for prayer, and which had led her to visit the poor most diligently in the cottages round her own home. Many years after, an old nurse of mine told me that these poor people had said, after her removal, 'We shall never have another Mary Ann Evans.' "My mother was asked to second and help her in work of this kind. 'She will be sure to get something up very soon,' was the last remark I can recall; and on her first visit to us I well remember she told us of a club for clothing, set going by herself and her neighbor Mrs. Pears, in a district to which she said 'the euphonious name of the Pudding-Pits had been given.' It was not until the winter of 1841, or early in 1842, that my mother first received (not from Miss Evans's own lips, but through a mutual friend) the information that a total change had taken place in this gifted woman's mind with respect to the evangelical religion, which she had evidently believed in up to the time of her coming to Coventry, and for which, she once told me, she had at one time sacrificed the cultivation of her intellect, and a proper regard to personal appearance. 'I used,' she said, 'to go about like an owl, to the great disgust of my brother; and I would have denied him what I now see to have been quite lawful amusements.' My mother's grief, on hearing of this change in one whom she had begun to love, was very great; but she thought argument and expostulation might do much, and I well remember a long evening devoted to it, but no more of the subject-matter than her indignant refusal to blame the Jews for not seeing in a merely spiritual Deliverer a fulfilment of promises of a temporal one; and a still more emphatic protest against my father's assertion that we had no claim on God. To Miss Evans's affectionate and pathetic speech to my mother, 'Now, Mrs. Sibree, you won't care to have anything more to do with me,' my mother rejoined, 'On the contrary, I shall feel more interested in you than ever.' But it was very evident at this time that she stood in no _need_ of sympathizing friends; that the desire for congenial society, as well as for books and larger opportunities for culture, which had led her most eagerly to seek a removal from Griff to a home near Coventry, had been met beyond her highest expectations. In Mr. and Mrs. Bray, and in the Hennell family, she had found friends who called forth her interest and stimulated her powers in no common degree. This was traceable even in externals--in the changed tone of voice and manner--from formality to a geniality which opened my heart to her, and made the next five years the most important epoch in my life. She gave me (as yet in my teens) weekly lessons in German, speaking freely on all subjects, but with no attempt to directly unsettle my evangelical beliefs, confining herself in these matters to a steady protest against the claim of the Evangelicals to an exclusive possession of higher motives to morality--or even to religion. Speaking to my mother of her dearest friend, Mrs. Bray, she said, 'She is the most religious person I know.' Of Mr. Charles Hennell, in whose writings she had great interest, she said, 'He is a perfect model of manly excellence.' "On one occasion, at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill, roused by a remark of his on the beneficial influence exercised by evangelical beliefs on the moral feelings, she said energetically, 'I say it now, and I say it once for all, that I am influenced in my own conduct at the present time by far higher considerations, and by a nobler idea of duty, than I ever was while I held the evangelical beliefs.' When, at length, after my brother's year's residence at the Hallé University (in 1842-43), my own mind having been much exercised in the matter of religion, I felt the moral difficulties press heavily on my conscience, and my whole heart was necessarily poured out to my 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' the steady turning of my attention from theoretical questions to a confession of my own want of thoroughness in arithmetic, which I pretended to teach; and the request that I would specially give attention to this study and get my conscience clear about it, and that I would not come to her again until my views of religion were also clear, is too characteristic of Miss Evans, as I knew her during those years, and too much in harmony with the moral teaching of George Eliot, to be omitted in reminiscences by one to whom that wholesome advice proved a turning-point in life. Two things more I cannot omit to mention: one, the heightened sense given to me by her of the duty of making conversation profitable, and, in general, of using time for serious purposes--of the positive immorality of frittering it away in ill-natured or in poor, profitless talk; another, the debt (so frequently acknowledged by Miss Evans to me) which she owed, during the years of her life with her father, to the intercourse she enjoyed with her friends at Rosehill. Mr. and Mrs. Bray and Miss Hennell, with their friends, were _her_ world; and on my saying to her once, as we closed the garden-door together, that we seemed to be entering a paradise, she said, 'I do indeed feel that I shut the world out when I shut that door.' It is consoling to me now to feel that in her terrible suffering through her father's illness and death, which were most trying to witness, she had such alleviations." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Mary Sibree, 10th May, 1847.] It is worth while to forget a friend for a week or ten days, just for the sake of the agreeable kind of startle it gives one to be reminded that one has such a treasure in reserve--the same sort of pleasure, I suppose, that a poor body feels who happens to lay his hand on an undreamed-of sixpence which had sunk to a corner of his pocket. When Mr. Sibree brought me your parcel, I had been to London for a week; and having been full of Mendelssohn oratorios and Italian operas, I had just this kind of delightful surprise when I saw your note and the beautiful purse. Not that I mean to compare you to a sixpence; you are a bright, golden sovereign to me, with edges all unrubbed, fit to remind a poor, tarnished, bruised piece, like me, that there are ever fresh and more perfect coinages of human nature forthcoming. I am very proud of my purse--first, because I have long had to be ashamed of drawing my old one out of my pocket; and, secondly, because it is a sort of symbol of your love for me--and who is not proud to be loved? For there is a beautiful kind of pride at which no one need frown--I may call it a sort of impersonal pride--a thrill of exultation at all that is good and lovely and joyous as a possession of our human nature. I am glad to think of all your pleasure among friends new and old. Mrs. D----'s mother is, I dare say, a valuable person; but do not, I beseech thee, go to old people as oracles on matters which date any later than their thirty-fifth year. Only trust them, if they are good, in those practical rules which are the common property of long experience. If they are governed by one special idea which circumstances or their own mental bias have caused them to grasp with peculiar firmness, and to work up into original forms, make yourself master of their thoughts and convictions, the residuum of all that long travail which poor mortals have to encounter in their threescore years and ten, but do not trust their application of their gathered wisdom; for however just old people may be their _principles_ of judgment, they are often wrong in their application of them, from an imperfect or unjust conception of the matter to be judged. Love and cherish and venerate the old; but never imagine that a worn-out, dried-up organization can be so rich in inspiration as one which is full fraught with life and energy. I am not talking like one who is superlatively jealous for the rights of the old; yet such I am, I assure thee. I heard Mendelssohn's new oratorio, "Elijah," when I was in London. It has been performed four times in Exeter Hall to as large an audience as the building would hold--Mendelssohn himself the conductor. It is a glorious production, and altogether I look upon it as a kind of sacramental purification of Exeter Hall, and a proclamation of indulgence for all that is to be perpetrated there during this month of May. This is a piece of impiety which you may expect from a lady who has been guanoing her mind with French novels. This is the impertinent expression of D'Israeli, who, writing himself much more detestable stuff than ever came from a French pen, can do nothing better to bamboozle the unfortunates who are seduced into reading his "Tancred" than speak superciliously of all other men and things--an expedient much more successful in some quarters than one would expect. But _au fond_, dear Mary, I have no impiety in my mind at this moment, and my soul heartily responds to your rejoicing that society is attaining a more perfect idea and exhibition of Paul's exhortation--"Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." I believe the Amen to this will be uttered more and more fervently, "Among all posterities for evermore." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th June, 1847.] Ask me not why I have never written all this weary time. I can only answer, "All things are full of labor--man cannot utter it"--_et seq._ See the first chapter of Ecclesiastes for my experience. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Sept. 1847.] I have read the "Inquiry" again with more than interest--with delight and high admiration. My present impression from it far surpasses the one I had retained from my two readings about five years ago. With the exception of a few expressions which seem too little discriminating in the introductory sketch, there is nothing in its whole tone, from beginning to end, that jars on my moral sense; and apart from any opinion of the book as an explanation of the existence of Christianity and the Christian documents, I am sure that no one, fit to read it at all, could read it without being intellectually and morally stronger--the reasoning is so close, the induction so clever, the style so clear, vigorous, and pointed, and the animus so candid and even generous. Mr. Hennell ought to be one of the happiest of men that he has done such a life's work. I am sure if I had written such a book I should be invulnerable to all the arrows of all spiteful gods and goddesses. I should say, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself," seeing that I have delivered such a message of God to men. The book is full of _wit_, to me. It gives me that exquisite kind of laughter which comes from the gratification of the reasoning faculties. For instance: "If some of those who were actually at the mountain doubted whether they saw Jesus or not, we may reasonably doubt whether he was to be seen at all there: especially as the words attributed to him do not seem at all likely to have been said, from the disciples paying no attention to them." "The disciples considered her (Mary Magdalene's) words idle tales, and believed them not." We have thus their example for considering her testimony alone as insufficient, and for seeking further evidence. To say "Jewish philosopher" seems almost like saying a round square; yet those two words appear to me the truest description of Jesus. I think the "Inquiry" furnishes the utmost that can be done towards obtaining a _real_ view of the life and character of Jesus, by rejecting as little as possible from the Gospels. I confess that I should call many things "shining ether," to which Mr. Hennell allows the solid angularity of facts; but I think he has thoroughly worked out the problem--subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly improbable, and what will be the remainder? At the end of September Miss Evans and her father went for a little trip to the Isle of Wight, and on their return there is the following letter: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th Oct. 1847.] I heartily wish you had been with me to see all the beauties which have gladdened my soul and made me feel that this earth is as good a heaven as I ought to dream of. I have a much greater respect for the Isle of Wight, now I have seen it, than when I knew it only by report--a compliment which one can seldom very sincerely pay to things and people that one has heard puffed and bepraised. I do long for you to see Alum Bay. Fancy a very high precipice, the strata upheaved perpendicularly in rainbow-like streaks of the brightest maize, violet, pink, blue, red, brown, and brilliant white, worn by the weather into fantastic fretwork, the deep blue sky above, and the glorious sea below. It seems an enchanted land, where the earth is of more delicate, refined materials than this dingy planet of ours is wrought out of. You might fancy the strata formed of the compressed pollen of flowers, or powder from bright insects. You can think of nothing but Calypsos, or Prosperos and Ariels, and such-like beings. I find one very great spiritual good attendant on a quiet, meditative journey among fresh scenes. I seem to have removed to a distance from myself when I am away from the petty circumstances that make up my ordinary environment. I can take myself up by the ears and inspect myself, like any other queer monster on a small scale. I have had many thoughts, especially on a subject that I should like to work out--"The superiority of the consolations of philosophy to those of (so-called) religion." Do you stare? Thank you for putting me on reading Sir Charles Grandison. I have read five volumes, and am only vexed that I have not the two last on my table at this moment, that I might have them for my _convives_. I had no idea that Richardson was worth so much. I have had more pleasure from him than from all the Swedish novels together. The morality is perfect--there is nothing for the new lights to correct. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th Nov. 1847.] How do you like "Lelia," of which you have never spoken one word? I am provoked with you for being in the least pleased with "Tancred;" but if you have found out any lofty meaning in it, or any true picturing of life, tell it me, and I will recant. I have found two new readers of Strauss. One, a lady at Leamington, who is also reading the "Inquiry," but likes Strauss better! The other is a gentleman here in Coventry; he says "it is most clever and ingenious, and that no one whose faith rests only on the _common_ foundation can withstand it." I think he may safely say that his faith rests on an _un_common foundation. The book will certainly give him a lift in the right direction, from its critical, logical character--just the opposite of his own. I was interested the other day in talking to a young lady who lives in a nest of clergymen, her brothers, but not of the evangelical school. She had been reading Blanco White's life, and seems to have had her spirit stirred within her, as every one's must be who reads the book with any power of appreciation. She is unable to account to herself for the results at which Blanco White arrived with his earnestness and love of truth; and she asked me if I had come to the same conclusions. I think "Live and teach" should be a proverb as well as "Live and learn." We must teach either for good or evil; and if we use our inward light as the Quaker tells us, always taking care to feed and trim it well, our teaching must, in the end, be for good. We are growing old together--are we not? I am growing happier too. I am amusing myself with thinking of the prophecy of Daniel as a sort of allegory. All those monstrous, "rombustical" beasts with their horns--the horn with eyes and a mouth speaking proud things, and the little horn that waxed rebellious and stamped on the stars, seem like my passions and vain fancies, which are to be knocked down one after the other, until all is subdued into a universal kingdom over which the Ancient of Days presides--the spirit of love--the Catholicism of the Universe--if you can attach any meaning to such a phrase. It _has_ a meaning for my sage noddle. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Jan. 1848.] I am reading George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur" with great delight, and hoping that they will some time do you as much good as they do me. In the meantime, I think the short letter about "Lelia" will interest you. It has a very deep meaning to my apprehension. You can send back the pages when you have duly digested them. I once said of you that yours was a sort of alkali nature which would detect the slightest acid of falsehood. You began to phiz-z-z directly it approached you. I want you as a test. I now begin to see the necessity of the arrangement (a bad word) that love should determine people's fate while they are young. It is so impossible to admire--"_s'enthousiasmer_" of--an _individual_ as one gets older. Here follows the interesting correspondence, referred to before, with Mr. John Sibree: [Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, beginning of 1848.] Begin your letter by abusing me, according to my example. There is nothing like a little gunpowder for a damp chimney; and an explosion of that sort will set the fire of your ideas burning to admiration. I hate bashfulness and modesties, as Sir Hugh Evans would say; and I warn you that I shall make no apologies, though, from my habit of writing only to people who, rather than have nothing from me, will tolerate nothings, I shall be very apt to forget that you are not one of those amiably silly individuals. I must write to you _more meo_, without taking pains or laboring to be _spirituelle_ when Heaven never meant me to be so; and it is your own fault if you bear with my letters a moment after they become an infliction. I am glad you detest Mrs. Hannah More's letters. I like neither her letters, nor her books, nor her character. She was that most disagreeable of all monsters, a blue-stocking--a monster that can only exist in a miserably false state of society, in which a woman with but a smattering of learning or philosophy is classed along with singing mice and card-playing pigs. It is some time since I read "Tancred," so that I have no very vivid recollection of its details; but I thought it very "thin," and inferior in the working up to "Coningsby" and "Sybil." Young Englandism is almost as remote from my sympathies as Jacobitism, as far as its force is concerned, though I love and respect it as an effort on behalf of the people. D'Israeli is unquestionably an able man, and I always enjoy his tirades against liberal principles as opposed to popular principles--the name by which he distinguishes his own. As to his theory of races, it has not a leg to stand on, and can only be buoyed up by such windy eloquence as--You chubby-faced, squabby-nosed Europeans owe your commerce, your arts, your religion, to the Hebrews--nay, the Hebrews lead your armies: in proof of which he can tell us that Massena, a second-rate general of Napoleon's, was a Jew, whose real name was Manasseh. Extermination up to a certain point seems to be the law for the inferior races--for the rest fusion, both for physical and moral ends. It appears to me that the law by which privileged classes degenerate, from continual intermarriage, must act on a larger scale in deteriorating whole races. The nations have been always kept apart until they have sufficiently developed their idiosyncrasies, and then some great revolutionary force has been called into action, by which the genius of a particular nation becomes a portion of the common mind of humanity. Looking at the matter æsthetically, our idea of beauty is never formed on the characteristics of a single race. I confess the types of the pure races, however handsome, always impress me disagreeably; there is an undefined feeling that I am looking not at _man_, but at a specimen of an order under Cuvier's class Bimana. The negroes certainly puzzle me. All the other races seem plainly destined to extermination, not excepting even the Hebrew Caucasian. But the negroes are too important, physiologically and geographically, for one to think of their extermination; while the repulsion between them and the other races seems too strong for fusion to take place to any great extent. On one point I heartily agree with D'Israeli as to the superiority of the Oriental races--their clothes are beautiful and their manners are agreeable. Did you not think the picture of the Barroni family interesting? I should like to know who are the originals. The fellowship of race, to which D'Israeli so exultingly refers the munificence of Sidonia, is so evidently an inferior impulse, which must ultimately be superseded, that I wonder even he, Jew as he is, dares to boast of it. My Gentile nature kicks most resolutely against any assumption of superiority in the Jews, and is almost ready to echo Voltaire's vituperation. I bow to the supremacy of Hebrew poetry, but much of their early mythology, and almost all their history, is utterly revolting. Their stock has produced a Moses and a Jesus; but Moses was impregnated with Egyptian philosophy, and Jesus is venerated and adored by us only for that wherein he transcended or resisted Judaism. The very exaltation of their idea of a national deity into a spiritual monotheism seems to have been borrowed from the other Oriental tribes. Everything specifically Jewish is of a low grade. And do you really think that sculpture and painting are to die out of the world? If that be so, let another deluge come as quickly as possible, that a new race of Glums and Gowries may take possession of this melancholy earth. I agree with you as to the inherent superiority of music--as that questionable woman, the Countess Hahn-Hahn, says painting and sculpture are but an idealizing of our actual existence. Music arches over this existence with another and a diviner. Amen, too, to that _ideenvoll_ observation of Hegel's. "We hardly know what it is to feel for human misery until we have heard a shriek; and a more perfect hell might be made out of sound than out of any preparation of fire and brimstone." When the tones of our voice have betrayed peevishness or harshness, we seem to be doubly haunted by the ghost of our sin; we are doubly conscious that we have been untrue to our part in the great Handel chorus. But I cannot assent to the notion that music is to supersede the other arts, or that the highest minds must necessarily aspire to a sort of Milton blindness, in which the _tiefste der Sinne_ is to be a substitute for all the rest. I cannot recognize the truth of all that is said about the necessity of religious fervor to high art. I am sceptical as to the real existence of such fervor in any of the greatest artists. Artistic power seems to me to resemble dramatic power--to be an intimate perception of the varied states of which the human mind is susceptible, with ability to give them out anew in intensified expression. It is true that the older the world gets originality becomes less possible. Great subjects are used up, and civilization tends evermore to repress individual predominance, highly wrought agony, or ecstatic joy. But all the gentler emotions will be ever new, ever wrought up into more and more lovely combinations, and genius will probably take their direction. Have you ever seen a head of Christ taken from a statue, by Thorwaldsen, of Christ scourged? If not, I think it would almost satisfy you. There is another work of his, said to be very sublime, of the Archangel waiting for the command to sound the last trumpet. Yet Thorwaldsen came at the fag end of time. I am afraid you despise landscape painting; but to me even the works of our own Stanfield, and Roberts, and Creswick bring a whole world of thought and bliss--"a sense of something far more deeply interfused." The ocean and the sky and the everlasting hills are spirit to me, and they will never be robbed of their sublimity. [Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, beginning of 1848.] I have tired myself with trying to write cleverly, _invitâ Minervâ_, and having in vain endeavored to refresh myself by turning over Lavater's queer sketches of physiognomies, and still queerer judgments on them, it is a happy thought of mine that I have a virtuous reason for spending my _ennui_ on you. I send you a stanza I picked up the other day in George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur," which is almost the ultimatum of human wisdom on the question of human sorrow. "Le bonheur et le malheur, Nous viennent du même auteur, Voilà la _ressemblance_. Le bonheur nous rend heureux, Et le malheur malheureux, Voilà la différence." Ah, here comes a cup of coffee to console me! When I have taken it I will tell you what George Sand says: "Sais tu bien que tout est dit devant Dieu et devant les hommes quand l'homme infortuné demande compte de ses maux et qu'il obtient cette réponse? Qu'y a-t-il de plus? Rien." But I am not a mocking pen, and if I were talking to you instead of writing, you would detect some falsity in the ring of my voice. Alas! the atrabiliar patient you describe is first cousin to me in my very worst moods, but I have a profound faith that the serpent's head will be bruised. This conscious kind of false life that is ever and anon endeavoring to form itself within us and eat away our true life, will be overcome by continued accession of vitality, by our perpetual increase in "quantity of existence," as Foster calls it. Creation is the superadded life of the intellect; sympathy, all-embracing love, the superadded moral life. These given more and more abundantly, I feel that all the demons, which are but my own egotism mopping and mowing and gibbering, would vanish away, and there would be no place for them, "For every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath." Evils, even sorrows, are they not all negations? Thus matter is in a perpetual state of decomposition; superadd the principle of life, and the tendency to decomposition is overcome. Add to this consciousness, and there is a power of self-amelioration. The passions and senses decompose, so to speak. The intellect, by its analytic power, restrains the fury with which they rush to their own destruction; the moral nature purifies, beautifies, and at length transmutes them. But to whom am I talking? You know far more _sur ce chapitre_ than I. Every one talks of himself or herself to me, and I beg you will follow every one's example in this one thing only. Individuals are precious to me in proportion as they unfold to me their intimate selves. I have just had lent me the journal of a person who died some years ago. When I was less venerable I should have felt the reading of such a thing insupportable; now it interests me, though it is the simplest record of events and feelings. Mary says she has told you about Mr. Dawson and his lecture--miserably crude and mystifying in some parts, but with a few fine passages. He is a very delightful man, but not (at least so say my impressions) a great man. How difficult it is to be great in this world, where there is a tariff for spiritualities as well as for beeves and cheese and tallow. It is scarcely possible for a man simply to give out his true inspiration--the real, profound conviction which he has won by hard wrestling, or the few-and-far-between pearls of imagination; he must go on talking or writing by rote, or he must starve. Would it not be better to take to tent-making with Paul, or to spectacle-making with Spinoza? [Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, Feb. 1848.] Write and tell you that I join you in your happiness about the French Revolution? Very fine, my good friend. If I made you wait for a letter as long as you do me, our little _échantillon_ of a millennium would be over, Satan would be let loose again, and I should have to share your humiliation instead of your triumph. Nevertheless I absolve you, for the sole merit of thinking rightly (that is, of course, just as I do) about _la grande nation_ and its doings. You and Carlyle (have you seen his article in last week's _Examiner_?) are the only two people who feel just as I would have them--who can glory in what is actually great and beautiful without putting forth any cold reservations and incredulities to save their credit for wisdom. I am all the more delighted with your enthusiasm because I didn't expect it. I feared that you lacked revolutionary ardor. But no--you are just as _sans-culottish_ and rash as I would have you. You are not one of those sages whose reason keeps so tight a rein on their emotions that they are too constantly occupied in calculating consequences to rejoice in any great manifestation of the forces that underlie our every-day existence. I should have written a soprano to your jubilate the very next day, but that, lest I should be exalted above measure, a messenger of Satan was sent in the form of a headache, and directly on the back of that a face-ache, so that I have been a mere victim of sensations, memories, and visions for the last week. I am even now, as you may imagine, in a very shattered, limbo-like mental condition. I thought we had fallen on such evil days that we were to see no really great movement; that ours was what St. Simon calls a purely critical epoch, not at all an organic one; but I begin to be glad of my date. I would consent, however, to have a year clipped off my life for the sake of witnessing such a scene as that of the men of the barricades bowing to the image of Christ, "who first taught fraternity to men." One trembles to look into every fresh newspaper lest there should be something to mar the picture; but hitherto even the scoffing newspaper critics have been compelled into a tone of genuine respect for the French people and the Provisional Government. Lamartine can act a poem if he cannot write one of the very first order. I hope that beautiful face given to him in the pictorial newspaper is really his; it is worthy of an aureole. I am chiefly anxious about Albert, the operative, but his picture is not to be seen. I have little patience with people who can find time to pity Louis Philippe and his moustachioed sons. Certainly our decayed monarchs should be pensioned off; we should have a hospital for them, or a sort of zoological garden, where these worn-out humbugs may be preserved. It is but justice that we should keep them, since we have spoiled them for any honest trade. Let them sit on soft cushions, and have their dinner regularly, but, for Heaven's sake, preserve me from sentimentalizing over a pampered old man when the earth has its millions of unfed souls and bodies. Surely he is not so Ahab-like as to wish that the revolution had been deferred till his son's days: and I think that the shades of the Stuarts would have some reason to complain if the Bourbons, who are so little better than they, had been allowed to reign much longer. I should have no hope of good from any imitative movement at home. Our working classes are eminently inferior to the mass of the French people. In France the _mind_ of the people is highly electrified; they are full of ideas on social subjects; they really desire social _reform_--not merely an acting out of Sancho Panza's favorite proverb, "Yesterday for you, to-day for me." The revolutionary animus extended over the whole nation, and embraced the rural population--not merely, as with us, the artisans of the towns. Here there is so much larger a proportion of selfish radicalism and unsatisfied brute sensuality (in the agricultural and mining districts especially) than of perception or desire of justice that a revolutionary movement would be simply destructive, not constructive. Besides, it would be put down. Our military have no notion of "fraternizing." They have the same sort of inveteracy as dogs have for the ill-dressed _canaille_. They are as mere a brute force as a battering-ram; and the aristocracy have got firm hold of them. And there is nothing in our constitution to obstruct the slow progress of _political_ reform. This is all we are fit for at present. The social reform which may prepare us for great changes is more and more the object of effort both in Parliament and out of it. But we English are slow crawlers. The sympathy in Ireland seems at present only of the water-toast kind. The Glasgow riots are more serious; but one cannot believe in a Scotch Reign of Terror in these days. I should not be sorry to hear that the Italians had risen _en masse_, and chased the odious Austrians out of beautiful Lombardy. But this they could hardly do without help, and that involves another European war. Concerning the "tent-making," there is much more to be said, but am I to adopt your rule and never speak of what I suppose we agree about? It is necessary to me, not simply to _be_ but to _utter_, and I require utterance of my friends. What is it to me that I think the same thoughts? I think them in a somewhat different fashion. No mind that has any _real_ life is a mere echo of another. If the perfect unison comes occasionally, as in music, it enhances the harmonies. It is like a diffusion or expansion of one's own life to be assured that its vibrations are repeated in another, and words are the media of those vibrations. Is not the universe itself a perpetual utterance of the one Being? So I say again, utter, utter, utter, and it will be a deed of mercy twice blessed, for I shall be a safety-valve for your communicativeness and prevent it from splitting honest people's brains who don't understand you; and, moreover, it will be fraught with ghostly comfort to me. [Sidenote: Letter to J. Sibree, Sunday evening, later in 1848.] I might make a very plausible excuse for not acknowledging your kind note earlier by telling you that I have been both a nurse and invalid; but, to be thoroughly ingenuous, I must confess that all this would not have been enough to prevent my writing but for my chronic disease of utter idleness. I have heard and thought of you with great interest, however. You have my hearty and not inexperienced sympathy; for, to speak in the style of Jonathan Oldbuck, I am _haud ignara mali_. I have gone through a trial of the same genus as yours, though rather differing in species. I sincerely rejoice in the step you have taken; it is an absolutely necessary condition for any true development of your nature. It was impossible to think of your career with hope, while you tacitly subscribed to the miserable _etiquette_ (it deserves no better or more spiritual name) of sectarianism. Only persevere; be true, firm, and loving; not too anxious about immediate usefulness to others--that can only be a result of justice to yourself. Study mental hygiene. Take long doses of _dolce far niente_, and be in no great hurry about anything in this 'varsal world! Do we not commit ourselves to sleep, and so resign all care for ourselves every night; lay ourselves gently on the bosom of Nature or God? A beautiful reproach to the spirit of some religionists and ultra good people. I like the notion of your going to Germany, as good in every way, for yourself, body and mind, and for all others. Oh, the bliss of having a very high attic in a romantic Continental town, such as Geneva, far away from morning callers, dinners, and decencies, and then to pause for a year and think _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_, and then to return to life, and work for poor stricken humanity, and never think of self again![23] I am writing nearly in the dark, with the post-boy waiting. I fear I shall not be at home when you come home, but surely I shall see you before you leave England. However that may be, I shall utter a genuine _Lebewohl_. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Feb. 1848.] In my view there are but two kinds of _regular_ correspondence possible--one of simple affection, which gives a picture of all the details, painful and pleasurable, that a loving heart pines after, and this we carry on through the medium of Cara; or one purely moral and intellectual, carried on for the sake of ghostly edification, in which each party has to put salt on the tails of all sorts of ideas on all sorts of subjects, in order to send a weekly or fortnightly packet, as so much duty and self-castigation. I have always been given to understand that such Lady-Jane-Grey-like works were your abhorrence. However, let me know what you _would_ like--what would make you continue to hold me in loving remembrance or convince you that you are a bright evergreen in my garden of pleasant plants. Behold me ready to tear off my right hand or pluck out my right eye (metaphorically, of course--I speak to an experienced exegetist, _comme dirait notre_ Strauss), or write reams of letters full of interesting falsehoods or very dull truths. We have always concluded that our correspondence should be of the _third_ possible kind--one of impulse, which is necessarily irregular as the Northern Lights. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 14th April, 1848.] I am a miserable wretch, with aching limbs and sinking spirits, but still alive enough to feel the kindness of your last note. I thoroughly enjoyed your delight in Emerson. I should have liked to see you sitting by him "with awful eye," for once in your life feeling all the bliss of veneration. I am quite uncertain about our movements. Dear father gets on very slowly, if at all. You will understand the impossibility of my forming any plans for my own pleasure. Rest is the only thing I can think of with pleasure now. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th April, 1848.] Dear father is so decidedly progressing towards recovery that I am full of quiet joy--a gentle dawning light after the moonlight of sorrow. I have found already some of the "sweet uses" that belong only to what is called trouble, which is, after all, only a deepened gaze into life, like the sight of the darker blue and the thickening host of stars when the hazy effect of twilight is gone--as our dear Blanco White said of death. I shall have less time than I have had at my own disposal, probably; but I feel prepared to accept life, nay, lovingly to embrace it, in any form in which it shall present itself. Some time in May Mr. Evans and his daughter went to St. Leonard's, and remained there till near the end of June. His mortal illness had now taken hold of him, and this was a depressing time, both for him and for her, as will be seen from the following letters: [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, May, 1848.] Your words of affection seem to make this earthly atmosphere sit less heavily on my shoulders, and in gratitude I must send you my thanks before I begin to read of Henry Gow and Fair Catharine for father's delectation. In truth, I have found it somewhat difficult to live for the last week--conscious all the time that the only additions to my lot worth having must be more strength to love in my own nature; but perhaps this very consciousness has an irritating rather than a soothing effect. I have a fit of sensitiveness upon me, which, after all, is but egotism and mental idleness. The enthusiasm without which one cannot even pour out breakfast well (at least _I_ cannot) has forsaken me. You may laugh, and wonder when my enthusiasm has displayed itself, but that will only prove that you are no seer. I can never live long without it in some form or other. I possess my soul in patience for a time, believing that this dark, damp vault in which I am groping will soon come to an end, and the fresh, green earth and the bright sky be all the more precious to me. But for the present my address is Grief Castle, on the River of Gloom, in the Valley of Dolor. I was amused to find that Castle Campbell in Scotland was called so. Truly for many seasons in my life I should have been an appropriate denizen of such a place; but I have faith that unless I am destined to insanity, I shall never again abide long in that same castle. I heartily say Amen to your dictum about the cheerfulness of "large moral regions." Where _thought_ and _love_ are active--thought the formative power, love the vitalizing--there can be no sadness. They are in themselves a more intense and extended participation of a divine existence. As they grow, the highest species of faith grows too, and all things are possible. I don't know why I should prose in this way to you. But I wanted to thank you for your note, and all this selfish grumbling was at my pen's end. And now I have no time to redeem myself. We shall not stay long away from home, I feel sure. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 31st May, 1848.] Father has done wonders in the way of walking and eating--for him--but he makes not the slightest attempt to amuse himself, so that I scarcely feel easy in following my own bent even for an hour. I have told you everything now, except that I look amiable in spite of a strong tendency to look black, and speak gently, though with a strong propensity to be snappish. Pity me, ye happier spirits that look amiable and speak gently because ye _are_ amiable and gentle. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 4th June, 1848.] Alas for the fate of poor mortals, which condemns them to wake up some fine morning and find all the poetry in which their world was bathed only the evening before utterly gone!--the hard, angular world of chairs and tables and looking-glasses staring at them in all its naked prose! It is so in all the stages of life; the poetry of girlhood goes, the poetry of love and marriage, the poetry of maternity, and at last the very poetry of duty forsakes us for a season, and we see ourselves, and all about us, as nothing more than miserable agglomerations of atoms--poor tentative efforts of the _Natur Princip_ to mould a personality. This is the state of prostration, the self-abnegation, through which the soul must go, and to which perhaps it must again and again return, that its poetry or religion, which is the same thing, may be a real, ever-flowing river, fresh from the windows of heaven and the fountains of the great deep--not an artificial basin, with grotto-work and gold-fish. I feel a sort of madness growing upon me, just the opposite of the delirium which makes people fancy that their bodies are filling the room. It seems to me as if I were shrinking into that mathematical abstraction, a point. But I am wasting this "good Sunday morning" in grumblings. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 8th June, 1848.] Poor Louis Blanc! The newspapers make me melancholy; but shame upon me that I say "poor." The day will come when there will be a temple of white marble, where sweet incense and anthems shall rise to the memory of every man and woman who has had a deep _Ahnung_--a presentiment, a yearning, or a clear vision--of the time when this miserable reign of Mammon shall end; when men shall be no longer "like the fishes of the sea," society no more like a face one half of which--the side of profession, of lip-faith--is fair and God-like; the other half--the side of deeds and institutions--with a hard, old, wrinkled skin puckered into the sneer of a Mephistopheles. I worship the man who has written as the climax of his appeal against society, "L'inegalité des talents _doit aboutir_ non à l'inegalité des retributions mais à l'inegalité des devoirs." You will wonder what has wrought me up into this fury. It is the loathsome fawning, the transparent hypocrisy, the systematic giving as little as possible for as much as possible that one meets with here at every turn. I feel that society is training men and women for hell. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d June, 1848.] All creatures about to moult, or to cast off an old skin, or enter on any new metamorphosis, have sickly feelings. It was so with me. But now I am set free from the irritating, worn-out integument. I am entering on a new period of my life, which makes me look back on the past as something incredibly poor and contemptible. I am enjoying repose, strength, and ardor in a greater degree than I have ever known, and yet I never felt my own insignificance and imperfection so completely. My heart bleeds for dear father's pains, but it is blessed to be at hand to give the soothing word and act needed. I should not have written this description of myself but that I felt your affectionate letter demanded some I-ism, which, after all, is often humility rather than pride. Paris, poor Paris--alas! alas! [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, June, 1848.] I have read "Jane Eyre," and shall be glad to know what you admire in it. All self-sacrifice is good, but one would like it to be in a somewhat nobler cause than that of a diabolical law which chains a man soul and body to a putrefying carcass. However, the book _is_ interesting; only I wish the characters would talk a little less like the heroes and heroines of police reports. About the beginning of July Miss Evans and her father returned to Coventry; and the 13th July was a memorable day, as Emerson came to visit the Brays, and she went with them to Stratford. All she says herself about it is in this note. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday, July, 1848.] I have seen Emerson--the first _man_ I have ever seen. But you have seen still more of him, so I need not tell you what he is. I shall leave Cara to tell how the day--the Emerson day--was spent, for I have a swimming head from hanging over the desk to write business letters for father. Have you seen the review of Strauss's pamphlet in the _Edinburgh_? The title is "Der Romantiker auf dem Throne der Cäsaren, oder Julian der Abtrünnige"--a sort of erudite satire on the King of Prussia; but the reviewer pronounces it to have a permanent value quite apart from this fugitive interest. The "Romantiker," or Romanticist, is one who, in literature, in the arts, in religion or politics, endeavors to revive the dead past. Julian was a romanticist in wishing to restore the Greek religion and its spirit, when mankind had entered on the new development. But you have very likely seen the review. I must copy one passage, translated from the conclusion of Strauss's pamphlet, lest you should not have met with it. "Christian writers have disfigured the death-scene of Julian. They have represented him as furious, blaspheming, despairing, and in his despair exclaiming, _Thou_ hast conquered, O Galilean!--'[Greek: nenikekas Galilaie].' This phrase, though false as history, has a truth in it. It contains a prophecy--to us a consoling prophecy--and it is this: Every Julian--_i.e._, every great and powerful man--who would attempt to resuscitate a state of society which has died, will infallibly be vanquished by the Galilean--for the Galilean is nothing less than the genius of the future!" [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Dec. 1848.] Father's tongue has just given utterance to a thought which has been very visibly radiating from his eager eyes for some minutes. "I thought you were going on with the book." I can only bless you for those two notes, which have emanated from you like so much ambrosial scent from roses and lavender. Not less am I grateful for the Carlyle eulogium.[24] I have shed some quite delicious tears over it. This is a world worth abiding in while one man can thus venerate and love another. More anon--this from my doleful prison of stupidity and barrenness, with a yawning trapdoor ready to let me down into utter fatuity. But I can even yet feel the omnipotence of a glorious chord. Poor pebble as I am, left entangled among slimy weeds, I can yet hear from afar the rushing of the blessed torrent, and rejoice that it is there to bathe and brighten other pebbles less unworthy of the polishing. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of 1848.] Thank you for a sight of our blessed St. Francis's[25] letter. There is no imaginable moment in which the thought of such a being could be an intrusion. His soul is a blessed _yea_. There is a sort of blasphemy in that proverbial phrase, "Too good to be true." The highest inspiration of the purest, noblest human soul, is the nearest expression of the truth. Those extinct volcanoes of one's spiritual life--those eruptions of the intellect and the passions which have scattered the lava of doubt and negation over our early faith--are only a glorious Himalayan chain, beneath which new valleys of undreamed richness and beauty will spread themselves. Shall we poor earthworms have sublimer thoughts than the universe, of which we are poor chips--mere effluvia of mind--shall we have sublimer thoughts than that universe can furnish out into reality? I am living unspeakable moments, and can write no more. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Jan. 1849.] I think of you perpetually, but my thoughts are all aqueous; they will not crystallize--they are as fleeting as ripples on the sea. I am suffering perhaps as acutely as ever I did in my life. Breathe a wish that I may gather strength--the fragrance of your wish will reach me somehow. The next letter is to Mrs. Houghton, who, it will be remembered, was the only daughter by Mr. Evans's first marriage. Miss Evans had more intellectual sympathy with this half-sister Fanny than with any of the other members of her family, and it is a pity that more of the letters to her have not been preserved. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, Sunday evening, 1849.] I have been holding a court of conscience, and I cannot enjoy my Sunday's music without restoring harmony, without entering a protest against that superficial soul of mine which is perpetually contradicting and belying the true inner soul. I am in that mood which, in another age of the world, would have led me to put on sackcloth and pour ashes on my head, when I call to mind the sins of my tongue--my animadversions on the faults of others, as if I thought myself to be something when I am nothing. When shall I attain to the true spirit of love which Paul has taught for all the ages? I want no one to excuse me, dear Fanny; I only want to remove the shadow of my miserable words and deeds from before the divine image of truth and goodness, which I would have all beings worship. I need the Jesuits' discipline of silence, and though my "evil speaking" issues from the intellectual point of view rather than the moral--though there may be gall in the thought while there is honey in the feeling, yet the evil speaking is wrong. We may satirize character and qualities in the abstract without injury to our moral nature, but persons hardly ever. Poor hints and sketches of souls as we are--with some slight, transient vision of the perfect and the true--we had need help each other to gaze at the blessed heavens instead of peering into each other's eyes to find out the motes there. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday morning, 4th Feb. 1849.] I have not touched the piano for nearly two months until this morning, when, father being better, I was determined to play a mass before the piano is utterly out of tune again. _Write, asking for nothing again_, like a true disciple of Jesus. I am still feeling rather shattered in brain and limbs; but do not suppose that I lack inward peace and strength. My body is the defaulter--_consciously_ so. I triumph over all things in the spirit, but the flesh is weak, and disgraces itself by headaches and backaches. I am delighted to find that you mention Macaulay, because that is an indication that Mr. Hennell has been reading him. I thought of Mr. H. all through the book, as the only person I could be quite sure would enjoy it as much as I did myself. I did not know if it would interest you: tell me more explicitly that it does. Think of Babylon being unearthed in spite of the prophecies? Truly we are looking before and after, "au jour d'aujourd'hui," as Monsieur Bricolin says. Send me the criticism of Jacques the morn's morning--only beware there are not too many blasphemies against my divinity. Paint soap-bubbles--and never fear but I will find _a_ meaning, though very likely not your meaning. Paint the Crucifixion in a bubble--after Turner--and then the Resurrection: I see them now. There has been a vulgar man sitting by while I have been writing, and I have been saying parenthetical bits of civility to him to help out poor father in his conversation, so I have not been quite sure what I have been saying to you. I have woful aches which take up half my nervous strength. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th Feb. 1849.] My life is a perpetual nightmare, and always haunted by something to be done, which I have never the time, or, rather, the energy, to do. Opportunity is kind, but only to the industrious, and I, alas! am not one of them. I have sat down in desperation this evening, though dear father is very uneasy, and his moans distract me, just to tell you that you have full absolution for your criticism, which I do not reckon of the impertinent order. I wish you thoroughly to understand that the writers who have most profoundly influenced me--who have rolled away the waters from their bed, raised new mountains and spread delicious valleys for me--are not in the least oracles to me. It is just possible that I may not embrace one of their opinions; that I may wish my life to be shaped quite differently from theirs. For instance, it would signify nothing to me if a very wise person were to stun me with proofs that Rousseau's views of life, religion, and government are miserably erroneous--that he was guilty of some of the worst _bassesses_ that have degraded civilized man. I might admit all this: and it would be not the less true that Rousseau's genius has sent that electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame which has awakened me to new perceptions; which has made man and nature a fresh world of thought and feeling to me; and this not by teaching me any new belief. It is simply that the rushing mighty wind of his inspiration has so quickened my faculties that I have been able to shape more definitely for myself ideas which had previously dwelt as dim _Ahnungen_ in my soul; the fire of his genius has so fused together old thoughts and prejudices that I have been ready to make new combinations. It is thus with George Sand. I should never dream of going to her writings as a moral code or text-book. I don't care whether I agree with her about marriage or not--whether I think the design of her plot correct, or that she had no precise design at all, but began to write as the spirit moved her, and trusted to Providence for the catastrophe, which I think the more probable case. It is sufficient for me, as a reason for bowing before her in eternal gratitude to that "great power of God manifested in her," that I cannot read six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to delineate human passion and its results, and (I must say, in spite of your judgment) some of the moral instincts and their tendencies, with such truthfulness, such nicety of discrimination, such tragic power, and, withal, such loving, gentle humor, that one might live a century with nothing but one's own dull faculties, and not know so much as those six pages will suggest. The psychological anatomy of Jacques and Fernande in the early days of their marriage seems quite preternaturally true--I mean that her power of describing it is preternatural. Fernande and Jacques are merely the feminine and the masculine nature, and their early married life an every-day tragedy; but I will not dilate on the book or on your criticism, for I am so sleepy that I should write nothing but _bêtises_. I have at last the most delightful "De imitatione Christi," with quaint woodcuts. One breathes a cool air as of cloisters in the book--it makes one long to be a saint for a few months. Verily its piety has its foundations in the depth of the divine-human soul. In March Miss Evans wrote a short notice of the "Nemesis of Faith" for the _Coventry Herald_, in which she says: "We are sure that its author is a bright, particular star, though he sometimes leaves us in doubt whether he be not a fallen 'son of the morning.'" The paper was sent to Mr. Froude, and on 23d March Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell: "Last night at dusk M. A. came running in in high glee with a most charming note from Froude, naïvely and prettily requesting her to reveal herself. He says he recognized her hand in the review in the _Coventry Herald_, and if she thinks him a fallen star she might help him to rise, but he 'believes he has only been dipped in the Styx, and is not much the worse for the bath.' Poor girl, I am so pleased she should have this little episode in her dull life." The next letter again refers to Mr. Froude's books. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Wednesday, April, 1849.] Tell me not that I am a mere prater--that feeling never talks. I will talk, and caress, and look lovingly, until death makes me as stony as the Gorgon-like heads of all the judicious people I know. What is anything worth until it is uttered? Is not the universe one great utterance? Utterance there must be in word or deed to make life of any worth. Every true pentecost is a gift of utterance. Life is too short and opportunities too meagre for many deeds--besides, the best friendships are precisely those where there is no possibility of material helpfulness--and I would take no deeds as an adequate compensation for the frigid, glassy eye and hard, indifferent tones of one's very solid and sensible and conscientious friend. You will wonder of what this is _à propos_--only of a little bitterness in my own soul just at this moment, and not of anything between you and me. I have nothing to tell you, for all the "haps" of my life are so indifferent. I spin my existence so entirely out of myself that there is a sad want of proper names in my conversation, and I am becoming a greater bore than ever. It is a consciousness of this that has kept me from writing to you. My letters would be a sort of hermit's diary. I have so liked the thought of your enjoying the "Nemesis of Faith." I quote Keats's sonnet, _à propos_ of that book. It has made me feel-- "Like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez--when with eagle eyes He stared at the Pacific, and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-- Silent, upon a peak in Darien." You must read "The Shadows of the Clouds." It produces a sort of palpitation that one hardly knows whether to call wretched or delightful. I cannot take up the book again, though wanting very much to read it more closely. Poor and shallow as one's own soul is, it is blessed to think that a sort of transubstantiation is possible by which the greater ones can live in us. Egotism apart, another's greatness, beauty, or bliss is one's own. And let us sing a _Magnificat_ when we are conscious that this power of expansion and sympathy is growing, just in proportion as the individual satisfactions are lessening. Miserable dust of the earth we are, but it is worth while to be so, for the sake of the living soul--the breath of God within us. You see I can do nothing but scribble my own prosy stuff--such chopped straw as my soul is foddered on. I am translating the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" of Spinoza, and seem to want the only friend that knows how to praise or blame. How exquisite is the satisfaction of feeling that another mind than your own sees precisely where and what is the difficulty--and can exactly appreciate the success with which it is overcome. One knows--_sed longo intervallo_--the full meaning of the "fit audience though few." How an artist must hate the noodles that stare at his picture, with a vague notion that it _is_ a clever thing to be able to paint. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Pears, 10th May, 1849.] I know it will gladden your heart to hear that father spoke of you the other day with affection and gratitude. He remembers you as one who helped to strengthen that beautiful spirit of resignation which has never left him through his long trial. His mind is as clear and rational as ever, notwithstanding his feebleness, and he gives me a thousand little proofs that he understands my affection and responds to it. These are very precious moments to me; my chair by father's bedside is a very blessed seat to me. My delight in the idea that you are being benefited after all, prevents me from regretting you, though you are just the friend that would complete my comfort. Every addition to your power of enjoying life is an expansion of mine. I partake of your ebb and flow. I am going to my post now. I have just snatched an interval to let you know that, though you have taken away a part of yourself from me, neither you nor any one else can take the whole. It will have been seen from these late letters, that the last few months of her father's illness had been a terrible strain on his daughter's health and spirits. She did all the nursing herself, and Mrs. Congreve (who was then Miss Bury, daughter of the doctor who was attending Mr. Evans--and who, it will be seen, subsequently became perhaps the most intimate and the closest of George Eliot's friends) tells me that her father told her at the time that he never saw a patient more admirably and thoroughly cared for. The translating was a great relief when she could get to it. Under date of 19th April, 1849, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell, "M. A. is happy now with this Spinoza to do: she says it is such a rest for her mind." The next letter to Rosehill pathetically describes how the end came at last to Mr. Evans's sufferings: [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, half-past nine, Wednesday morning, 31st May, 1849.] Dear friends, Mr. Bury told us last night that he thought father would not last till morning. I sat by him with my hand in his till four o'clock, and he then became quieter and has had some comfortable sleep. He is obviously weaker this morning, and has been for the last two or three days so painfully reduced that I dread to think what his dear frame may become before life gives way. My brother slept here last night, and will be here again to-night. What shall I be without my father? It will seem as if a part of my moral nature were gone. I write when I can, but I do not know whether my letter will do to send this evening. _P.S._--Father is very, very much weaker this evening. Mr. Evans died during that night, 31st May, 1849. [Illustration: Portrait of Mr. Robert Evans.] _SUMMARY._ MAY, 1846, TO MAY, 1849. Visit to Mrs. Hennell at Hackney--Letters to Mrs. Bray--Strauss translation published--Visit to Dover with father--Classical books wanted--Pleasure in Strauss's letter--Brays suspect novel-writing--Letters to Miss Sara Hennell--Good spirits--Wicksteed's review of the Strauss translation--Reading Foster's life--Visit to Griff--Child's view of God (_à propos_ of Miss Hennell's "Heliados")--Visit to London--"Elijah"--Likes London less--The Sibree family and Mrs. John Cash's reminiscences--Letter to Miss Mary Sibree--Letters to Miss Sara Hennell--Mental depression--Opinion of Charles Hennell's "Inquiry"--Visit to the Isle of Wight with father--Admiration of Richardson--Blanco White--Delight in George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur"--Letters to Mr. John Sibree--Opinion of Mrs. Hannah More's letters--"Tancred," "Coningsby," and "Sybil"--D'Israeli's theory of races--Gentile nature kicks against superiority of Jews--Bows only to the supremacy of Hebrew poetry--Superiority of music among the arts--Relation of religion to art--Thorwaldsen's Christ--Admiration of Roberts and Creswick--The intellect and moral nature restrain the passions and senses--Mr. Dawson the lecturer--Satisfaction in French Revolution of '48--The men of the barricade bowing to the image of Christ--Difference between French and English working-classes--The need of utterance--Sympathy with Mr. Sibree in religious difficulties--Longing for a high attic in Geneva--Letters to Miss Sara Hennell--Views on correspondence--Mental depression--Father's illness--Father better--Goes with him to St. Leonard's--Letter to Charles Bray--Depression to be overcome by thought and love--Admiration of Louis Blanc--Recovery from depression--"Jane Eyre"--Return to Coventry--Meets Emerson--Strauss's pamphlet on Julian the Apostate--Carlyle's eulogium on Emerson--Francis Newman--Suffering from depression--Letter to Mrs. Houghton--Self-condemnation for evil speaking--Letters to Miss Hennell--Macaulay's History--On the influence of George Sand's and Rousseau's writing--Writes review of the "Nemesis of Faith" for the _Coventry Herald_--Opinion of the "Nemesis" and the "Shadows of the Clouds"--Translating Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus"--Letter to Mrs. Pears--The consolations of nursing--Strain of father's illness--Father's death. FOOTNOTES: [20] Organs of Combativeness. [21] Afterwards acknowledged by the author, Robert Landor (brother of Walter Savage Landor), who also wrote the "Fountain of Arethusa," etc. [22] John Foster, Baptist minister, born 1770, died 1843. [23] An _Ahnung_--a presentiment--of her own future. [24] On Emerson. [25] Francis Newman. CHAPTER IV. It fortunately happened that the Brays had planned a trip to the Continent for this month of June, 1849, and Miss Evans, being left desolate by the death of her father, accepted their invitation to join them. On the 11th June they started, going by way of Paris, Lyons, Avignon, Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Milan, Como, Lago Maggiore, Martigny, and Chamounix, arriving at Geneva in the third week of July. Here Miss Evans determined to remain for some months, the Brays returning home. Before they went, however, they helped her to settle herself comfortably _en pension_, and, as will be seen from the following letters, the next eight months were quietly and peacefully happy. The _pension_ selected in the first instance was the Campagne Plongeon, which stands on a slight eminence a few hundred yards back from the road on the route d'Hermance, some ten minutes' walk from the Hôtel Métropole. From the Hôtel National on the Quai de Mont Blanc one catches a pleasant glimpse of it nestling among its trees. A good-sized, gleaming white house, with a centre, and gables at each side, a flight of steps leading from the middle window to the ground. A meadow in front, nicely planted, slopes charmingly down to the blue lake, and behind the house, on the left-hand side, there is an avenue of remarkably fine chestnut-trees, whence there is a magnificent view of the Jura mountains on the opposite side of the lake. The road to Geneva is very beautiful, by the lake-side, bordered with plane-trees. It was a delightful, soothing change after the long illness and the painful death of her father--after the monotonous dulness, too, of an English provincial town like Coventry, where there is little beauty of any sort to gladden the soul. In the first months following a great loss it is good to be alone for a time--alone, especially amidst beautiful scenes--and alone in the sense of being removed from habitual associations, but yet constantly in the society of new acquaintances, who are sufficiently interesting, but not too intimate. The Swiss correspondence which follows is chiefly addressed to the Brays collectively, and describes the life minutely. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 27th July, 1840.] About my comfort here, I find no disagreeables, and have every physical comfort that I care about. The family seems well-ordered and happy. I have made another friend, too--an elderly English lady, a Mrs. Locke, who used to live at Ryde--a pretty old lady with plenty of shrewdness and knowledge of the world. She began to say very kind things to me in rather a waspish tone yesterday morning at breakfast. I liked her better at dinner and tea, and to-day we are quite confidential. I only hope she will stay; she is just the sort of person I shall like to have to speak to--not at all "congenial," but with a character of her own. The going down to tea bores me, and I shall get out of it as soon as I can, unless I can manage to have the newspapers to read. The American lady embroiders slippers--the mamma looks on and does nothing. The marquis and his friends play at whist; the old ladies sew; and madame says things so true that they are insufferable. She is obliged to talk to all, and cap their _niaiseries_ with some suitable observation. She has been very kind and motherly to me. I like her better every time I see her. I have quiet and comfort--what more can I want to make me a healthy, reasonable being once more? I will never go near a friend again until I can bring joy and peace in my heart and in my face--but remember that friendship will be easy then. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 5th Aug. 1849.] I hope my imagination paints truly when it shows me all of you seated with beaming faces round the tea-table at Rosehill. I shall be yearning to know that things as well as people are smiling on you; but I am sure you will not let me wait for news of you longer than is necessary. My life here would be delightful if we could always keep the same set of people; but, alas! I fear one generation will go and another come so fast that I shall not care to become acquainted with any of them. My good Mrs. Locke is not going, that is one comfort. She is quite a mother to me--helps me to buy my candles and do all my shopping--takes care of me at dinner, and quite rejoices when she sees me enjoy conversation or anything else. The St. Germains are delightful people--the marquise really seems to me the most charming person I ever saw, with kindness enough to make the ultra-politeness of her manners quite genuine. She is very good to me, and says of me, "Je m'interesse vivement à mademoiselle." The marquis is the most well-bred, harmless of men. He talks very little--every sentence seems a terrible gestation, and comes forth _fortissimo_; but he generally bestows one on me, and seems especially to enjoy my poor tunes (mind you, all these trivialities are to satisfy your vanity, not mine--because you are beginning to be ashamed of having loved me). The gray-headed gentleman got quite fond of talking philosophy with me before he went; but, alas! he and a very agreeable young man who was with him are gone to Aix les Bains. The young German is the Baron de H----. I should think he is not more than two or three and twenty, very good-natured, but a most determined enemy to all gallantry. I fancy he is a Communist; but he seems to have been joked about his opinions by madame and the rest until he has determined to keep a proud silence on such matters. He has begun to talk to me, and I think we should become good friends; but he, too, is gone on an expedition to Monte Rosa. He is expecting his brother to join him here on his return, but I fear they will not stay long. The _gouvernante_ is a German, with a moral region that would rejoice Mr. Bray's eyes. Poor soul, she is in a land of strangers, and often seems to feel her loneliness. Her situation is a very difficult one; and "_die Angst_," she says, often brings on a pain at her heart. Madame is a woman of some reading and considerable talent--very fond of politics, a devourer of the journals, with an opinion ready for you on any subject whatever. It will be a serious loss to her to part with the St. Germain family. I fear that they will not stay longer than this month. I should be quite indifferent to the world that comes or goes if once I had my boxes with all my books. Last Sunday I went with madame to a small church near Plongeon, and I could easily have fancied myself in an Independent chapel at home. The spirit of the sermon was not a whit more elevated than that of our friend Dr. Harris; the text, "What shall I do to be saved?" the answer of Jesus being blinked as usual. To-day I have been to hear one of the most celebrated preachers, M. Meunier. His sermon was really eloquent--all written down, but delivered with so much energy and feeling that you never thought of the book. It is curious to notice how patriotism--_dévouement à la patrie_--is put in the sermons as the first of virtues, even before devotion to the Church. We never hear of it in England after we leave school. The good marquis goes with his family and servants, all nicely dressed, to the Catholic Church. They are a most orderly set of people: there is nothing but their language and their geniality and politeness to distinguish them from one of the best of our English aristocratic families. I am perfectly comfortable; every one is kind to me and seems to like me. Your kind hearts will rejoice at this, I know. Only remember that I am just as much interested in all that happens to you at Rosehill as you are in what happens to me at Plongeon. Pray that the motto of Geneva may become mine--"_Post tenebras lux_." [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 20th Aug. 1849.] I have no head for writing to-day, for I have been keeping my bed for the last three days; but I must remember that writing to you is like ringing a bell hung in the planet Jupiter--it is so weary a while before one's letters reach. I have been positively sickening for want of my boxes, and anxiety to hear of my relations. Your kind letter of this morning has quieted the latter a little; but my boxes, alas! have not appeared. Do not be alarmed about my health. I have only had a terrible headache--prolonged, in fact, by the assiduities of the good people here; for the first day I lay in my bed I had the whole female world of Plongeon in my bedroom, and talked so incessantly that I was unable to sleep after it; the consequence, as you may imagine, was that the next day I was very much worse; but I am getting better, and indeed it was worth while to be ill to have so many kind attentions. There is a fresh German family from Frankfurt here just now--Madame Cornelius and her children. She is the daughter of the richest banker in Frankfurt, and, what is better, full of heart and mind, with a face that tells you so before she opens her lips. She has more reading than the marquise, being German and Protestant; and it is a real refreshment to talk with her for half an hour. The dear marquise is a truly devout Catholic. It is beautiful to hear her speak of the comfort she has in the confessional--for our _têtes-à-tête_ have lately turned on religious matters. She says I am in a "mauvaise voie sous le rapport de la religion. Peut être vous vous marierez, et le mariage, chère amie, sans la foi religieuse!..." She says I have isolated myself by my studies--that I am too cold and have too little confidence in the feelings of others towards me--that I do not believe how deep an interest she has conceived in my lot. She says Signor Goldrini (the young Italian who was here for a week) told her, when he had been talking to me one evening, "Vous aimerez cette demoiselle, j'en suis sûr"--and she has found his prediction true. They are leaving for their own country on Wednesday. She hopes I shall go to Italy and see her; and when I tell her that I have no faith that she will remember me long enough for me to venture on paying her a visit if ever I should go to Italy again, she shakes her head at my incredulity. She was born at Genoa. Her father was three years Sardinian Minister at Constantinople before she was married, and she speaks with enthusiasm of her life there--"C'est là le pays de la vraie poésie ou l'on sent ce que c'est que de vivre par le coeur." M. de H---- is returned from Monte Rosa. He would be a nice person if he had another soul added to the one he has by nature--the soul that comes by sorrow and love. I stole his book while he was gone--the first volume of Louis Blanc's "History of Ten Years." It contains a very interesting account of the three days of July, 1830. His brother is coming to join him, so I hope he will not go at present. Tell Miss Sibree my address, and beg her to write to me all about herself, and to write on thin paper. I hardly know yet whether I shall like this place well enough to stay here through the winter. I have been under the disadvantage of wanting all on which I chiefly depend, my books, etc. When I have been here another month I shall be better able to judge. I hope you managed to get in the black velvet dress. The people dress, and think about dressing, here more even than in England. You would not know me if you saw me. The marquise took on her the office of _femme de chambre_ and dressed my hair one day. She has abolished all my curls, and made two things stick out on each side of my head like those on the head of the Sphinx. All the world says I look infinitely better; so I comply, though to myself I seem uglier than ever--if possible. I am fidgeted to death about my boxes, and that tiresome man not to acknowledge the receipt of them. I make no apology for writing all my peevishness and follies, because I want you to do the same--to let me know everything about you, to the aching of your fingers--and you tell me very little. My boxes, my boxes! I dream of them night and day. Dear Mr. Hennell! Give him my heartiest affectionate remembrances. Tell him I find no one here so spirited as he: there are no better jokes going than I can make myself. Mrs. Hennell and Mrs. C. Hennell, too, all are remembered--if even I have only seen them in England. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 28th Aug. 1849.] Mme. de Ludwigsdorff, the wife of an Austrian baron, has been here for two days, and is coming again. She is handsome, spirited, and clever--pure English by birth, but quite foreign in manners and appearance. She, and all the world besides, are going to winter in Italy. Nothing annoys me now; I feel perfectly at home, and shall really be comfortable when I have all my little matters about me. This place looks more lovely to me every day--the lake, the town, the _campagnes_, with their stately trees and pretty houses, the glorious mountains in the distance; one can hardly believe one's self on earth; one might live here, and forget that there is such a thing as want or labor or sorrow. The perpetual presence of all this beauty has somewhat the effect of mesmerism or chloroform. I feel sometimes as if I were sinking into an agreeable state of numbness, on the verge of unconsciousness, and seem to want well pinching to rouse me. The other day (Sunday) there was a _fête_ held on the lake--the _fête_ of Navigation. I went out, with some other ladies, in M. de H----'s boat, at sunset, and had the richest draught of beauty. All the boats of Geneva turned out in their best attire. When the moon and stars came out there were beautiful fireworks sent up from the boats. The mingling of the silver and the golden rays on the rippled lake, the bright colors of the boats, the music, the splendid fireworks, and the pale moon looking at it all with a sort of grave surprise, made up a scene of perfect enchantment; and our dear old Mont Blanc was there, in his white ermine robe. I rowed all the time, and hence comes my palsy. I can perfectly fancy dear Mrs. Pears in her Leamington house. How beautiful all that Foleshill life looks now, like the distant Jura in the morning! She was such a sweet, dear, good friend to me. My walks with her, my little visits to them in the evening--all is remembered. I am glad you have seen Fanny again; any attention you show her is a real kindness to me, and I assure you she is worth it. You know, or, you do not know, that my nature is so chameleon-like I shall lose all my identity unless you keep nourishing the old self with letters; so, pray, write as much and as often as you can. It jumps admirably with my humor to live in two worlds at once in this way. I possess my dearest friends and my old environment in my thoughts, and another world of novelty and beauty in which I am actually moving, and my contrariety of disposition always makes the world that lives in my thoughts the dearer of the two, the one in which I more truly dwell. So, after all, I enjoy my friends most when I am away from them. I shall not say so, though, if I should live to rejoin you six or seven months hence. Keep me for seven[26] years longer, and you will find out the use of me, like all other pieces of trumpery. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 6th Sept. 1849.] Have I confided too much in your generosity in supposing that you would write to me first? or is there some other reason for your silence? I suffer greatly from it--not entirely from selfish reasons, but in great part because I am really anxious to know all about you, your state of health and spirits, the aspect of things within and without you. Did Mr. Bray convey to you my earnest request that you would write to me? You know of my whereabouts and circumstances from my good friends at Rosehill, so that I have little to tell you; at least, I have not spirit to write of myself until I have heard from you, and have an assurance from yourself that you yet care about me. Sara (Mrs. Isaac Evans) has sent me word of the sad, sad loss that has befallen poor Chrissey and Edward--a loss in which I feel that I have a share; for that angelic little being had great interest for me; she promised to pay so well for any care spent on her. I can imagine poor Edward's almost frantic grief, and I dread the effect on Chrissey's weak frame of her more silent suffering. Anything you can tell me about them will be read very eagerly. I begin to feel the full value of a letter; so much so that, if ever I am convinced that any one has the least anxiety to hear from me, I shall always reckon it among the first duties to sit down without delay, giving no ear to the suggestions of my idleness and aversion to letter-writing. Indeed, I am beginning to find it really pleasant to write to my friends, now that I am so far away from them; and I could soon fill a sheet to you, if your silence did not weigh too heavily on my heart. My health is by no means good yet; seldom good enough not to be a sort of drag on my mind; so you must make full allowance for too much egotism and susceptibility in me. It seems to be three years instead of three months since I was in England and amongst you, and I imagine that all sorts of revolutions must have taken place in the interim; whereas to you, I dare say, remaining in your old home and among your every-day duties, the time has slipped away so rapidly that you are unable to understand my anxiety to hear from you. I think the climate here is not particularly healthy; I suppose, from the vicinity of the lake, which, however, becomes so dear to me that one cannot bear to hear it accused. Good-bye, dear Fanny; a thousand blessings to you, whether you write to me or not, and much gratitude if you do. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 13th Sept. 1849.] My boxes arrived last Friday. The expense was fr. 150--perfectly horrible! Clearly, I must give myself for food to the fowls of the air or the fishes of the lake. It is a consolation to a mind imbued with a lofty philosophy that, when one can get nothing to eat, one can still be eaten--the evil is only apparent. It is quite settled that I cannot stay at Plongeon; I must move into town. But, alas! I must pay fr. 200 per month. If I were there I should see more conversable people than here. Do you think any one would buy my "Encyclopædia Britannica" at half-price, and my globes? If so, I should not be afraid of exceeding my means, and I should have a little money to pay for my piano, and for some lessons of different kinds that I want to take. The "Encyclopædia" is the last edition, and cost £42, and the globes £8 10_s._ I shall never have anywhere to put them, so it is folly to keep them, if any one will buy them. No one else has written to me, though I have written to almost all. I would rather have it so than feel that the debt was on my side. When will you come to me for help, that I may be able to hate you a little less? I shall leave here as soon as I am able to come to a decision, as I am anxious to feel settled, and the weather is becoming cold. This house is like a bird-cage set down in a garden. Do not count this among my letters. I am good for nothing to-day, and can write nothing well but bitterness, so that I will not trust myself to say another word. The Baronne de Ludwigsdorff seems to have begun to like me very much, and is really kind; so you see Heaven sends kind souls, though they are by no means kindred ones. Poor Mrs. Locke is to write to me--has given me a little ring; says, "Take care of yourself, my child--have some tea of your own--you'll be quite another person if you get some introductions to clever people; you'll get on well among a certain set--that's true;" it is her way to say "that's true" after all her affirmations. She says, "You won't find any kindred spirits at Plongeon, my dear." [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 20th Sept. 1849.] I am feeling particularly happy because I have had very kind letters from my brother and sisters. I am ashamed to fill sheets about myself, but I imagined that this was precisely what you wished. Pray correct my mistake, if it be one, and then I will look over the Calvin manuscripts, and give you some information of really general interest, suited to our mutual capacities. Mme. Ludwigsdorff is so good to me--a charming creature--so anxious to see me comfortably settled--petting me in all sorts of ways. She sends me tea when I wake in the morning--orange-flower water when I go to bed--grapes--and her maid to wait on me. She says if I like she will spend the winter after this at Paris with me, and introduce me to her friends there; but she does not mean to attach herself to me, because I shall never like her long. I shall be tired of her when I have sifted her, etc. She says I have more intellect than _morale_, and other things more true than agreeable; however, she is "greatly interested" in me; has told me her troubles and her feelings, she says, in spite of herself; for she has never been able before in her life to say so much even to her old friends. It is a mystery she cannot unravel. She is a person of high culture, according to the ordinary notions of what feminine culture should be. She speaks French and German perfectly, plays well, and has the most perfect polish of manner--the most thorough refinement, both socially and morally. She is tall and handsome, a striking-looking person, but with a sweet feminine expression when she is with those she likes; dresses exquisitely; in fine, is all that I am not. I shall tire you with all this, but I want you to know what good creatures there are here as elsewhere. Miss F. tells me that the first day she sat by my side at dinner she looked at me and thought to herself, "That is a grave lady; I do not think I shall like her much;" but as soon as I spoke to her, and she looked into my eyes, she felt she could love me. Then she lent me a book written by her cousin--a religious novel--in which there is a fearful infidel who will not believe, and hates all who do, etc. Then she invited me to walk with her, and came to talk in my room; then invited me to go to the Oratoire with them, till I began to be uncomfortable under the idea that they fancied I was evangelical, and that I was gaining their affection under false pretences; so I told Miss F. that I was going to sacrifice her good opinion, and confess my heresies. I quite expected, from their manner and character, that they would forsake me in horror--but they are as kind as ever. They never go into the _salon_ in the evening, and I have almost forsaken it, spending the evening frequently in Mme. de Ludwigsdorff's room, where we have some delightful tea. The tea of the house here is execrable; or, rather, as Mrs. A. says, "How glad we ought to be that it has no taste at all; it might have a very bad one!" I like the A.'s; they are very good-natured. Mrs. A., a very ugly but lady-like little woman, who is under an infatuation "as it regards" her caps--always wearing the brightest rose-color or intensest blue--with a complexion not unlike a dirty primrose glove. The rest of the people are nothing to me, except, indeed, dear old Mlle. de Phaisan, who comes into my room when I am ill, with "Qu'est ce que vous avez, ma bonne?" in the tone of the kindest old aunt, and thinks that I am the most amiable douce creature, which will give you a better opinion of her charity than her penetration. Dear creatures! no one is so good as you yet. I have not yet found any one who can bear comparison with you; not in kindness to me--_ça va sans dire_--but in solidity of mind and in expansion of feeling. This is a very coarse thing to say, but it came to the end of my pen, and _litera scripta manet_--at least, when it comes at the end of the second page. I shall certainly stay at Geneva this winter, and shall return to England as early as the spring weather will permit, always supposing that nothing occurs to alter my plans. I am still thin; so how much will be left of me next April I am afraid to imagine. I shall be length without breadth. Cara's assurance that you are well and comfortable is worth a luncheon to me, which is just the thing I am generally most in want of, for we dine at six now. I love to imagine you in your home; and everything seems easy to me when I am not disturbed about the health or well-being of my loved ones. It is really so; I do not say it out of any sort of affectation, benevolent or otherwise. I am without carefulness, alas! in more senses than one. Thank Sara very heartily for her letter. I do not write a special sheet for her to-day, because I have to write to two or three other people, but she must not the less believe how I valued a little private morsel from her; and also that I would always rather she wrote "from herself" than "to me"--that is my theory of letter-writing. Your letters are as welcome as Elijah's ravens--I thought of saying the dinner-bell, only that would be too gross! I get impatient at the end of the ten days which it takes for our letters to go to and fro; and I have not the least faith in the necessity for keeping the sheet three or four days before Mr. Bray can find time to write his meagre bit. If you see the Miss Franklins, give my love to them; my remembrances to Mr. and Mrs. Whittem; love to Miss Sibree always. Hearty love to Clapton[27] and Woodford;[28] and a very diffusive benevolence to the world in general, without any particular attachment to A or B. I am trying to please Mr. Bray. Good-bye, dear souls. _Dominus vobiscum._ [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Thursday, 4th Oct. 1849.] I am anxious for you to know my new address, as I shall leave here on Tuesday. I think I have at last found the very thing. I shall be the only lodger. The _appartement_ is _assez joli_, with an alcove, so that it looks like a sitting-room in the daytime--the people, an artist of great respectability, and his wife, a most kind-looking, lady-like person, with two boys, who have the air of being well educated. They seem very anxious to have me, and are ready to do anything to accommodate me. I shall live with them--that is, dine with them; breakfast in my own room. The terms are fr. 150 per month, light included. M. and Mme. d'Albert are middle-aged, musical, and, I am told, have _beaucoup d'esprit_. I hope this will not exceed my means for four or five months. There is a nice, large _salon_ and a good _salle à manger_. I am told that their society is very good. Mme. de Ludwigsdorff was about going there a year ago, and it was she who recommended it to me. I hope Sara's fears are supererogatory--a proof of a too nervous solicitude about me, for which I am grateful, though it does me no good to hear of it. I want encouraging rather than warning and checking. I believe I am so constituted that I shall never be cured of my faults except by God's discipline. If human beings would but believe it, they do me the most good by saying to me the kindest things truth will permit; and really I cannot hope those will be superlatively kind. The reason I wished to raise a little extra money is that I wanted to have some lessons and other means of culture--not for my daily bread, for which I hope I shall have enough; but, since you think my scheme impracticable, we will dismiss it. _Au reste_, be in no anxiety about me. Nothing is going wrong that I know of. I am not an absolute fool and weakling. When I am fairly settled in my new home I will write again. My address will be--M. d'Albert Durade, Rue des Chanoines, No. 107. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 4th Oct. 1849.] The blessed compensation there is in all things made your letter doubly precious for having been waited for, and it would have inspired me to write to you again much sooner, but that I have been in uncertainty about settling myself for the winter, and I wished to send you my future address. I am to move to my new home on Tuesday the 9th. I shall not at all regret leaving here; the season is beginning to be rather sombre, though the glorious chestnuts here are still worth looking at half the day. You have heard of some of the people whom I have described in my letters to Rosehill. The dear little old maid, Mlle. de Phaisan, is quite a good friend to me--extremely prosy, and full of tiny details; but really people of that calibre are a comfort to one occasionally, when one has not strength enough for more stimulating things. She is a sample of those happy souls who ask for nothing but the work of the hour, however trivial; who are contented to live without knowing whether they effect anything, but who do really effect much good, simply by their calm and even _maintien_. I laugh to hear her say in a tone of remonstrance--"Mme. de Ludwigsdorff dit qu'elle s'ennuie quand les soirées sont longues: moi, je ne conçois pas comment on peut s'ennuyer quand on a de l'ouvrage ou des jeux ou de la conversation." When people who are dressing elegantly and driving about to make calls every day of their life have been telling me of their troubles--their utter hopelessness of ever finding a vein worth working in their future life--my thoughts have turned towards many whose sufferings are of a more tangible character, and I have really felt all the old commonplaces about the equality of human destinies, always excepting those spiritual differences which are apart not only from poverty and riches, but from individual affections. Dear Chrissey has found time and strength to write to me, and very precious her letter was, though I wept over it. "Deep, abiding grief must be mine," she says, and I know well it must be. The mystery of trial! It falls with such avalanche weight on the head of the meek and patient. I wish I could do something of more avail for my friends than love them and long for their happiness. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 11th Oct. 1849.] M. and Mme. d'Albert are really clever people--people worth sitting up an hour longer to talk to. This does not hinder madame from being an excellent manager--dressing scrupulously, and keeping her servants in order. She has hung my room with pictures, one of which is the most beautiful group of flowers conceivable thrown on an open Bible, painted by herself. I have a piano which I hire. There is also one in the _salon_. M. d'Albert plays and sings, and in the winter he tells me they have parties to sing masses and do other delightful things. In fact, I think I am just in the right place. I breakfast in my own room at half-past eight, lunch at half-past twelve, and dine at four or a little after, and take tea at eight. From the tea-table I have gone into the _salon_ and chatted until bedtime. It would really have been a pity to have stayed at Plongeon, out of reach of everything, and with people so little worth talking to. I have not found out the _desagrémens_ here yet. It is raining horribly, but this just saves me from the regret I should have felt at having quitted the chestnuts of Plongeon. That _campagne_ looked splendid in its autumn dress. George Eliot retained so warm an admiration and love for M. d'Albert Durade to the end of her life that it seems fitting here to mention that he still lives, carrying well the weight of eighty winters. He is _conservateur_ of the Athénée--a permanent exhibition of works of art in Geneva; and he published only last year (1883) a French translation of the "Scenes of Clerical Life," having already previously published translations of "Adam Bede," "Felix Holt," "Silas Marner," and "Romola." The description of his personal appearance, in the following letter, still holds good, save that the gray hair has become quite white. He lost his wife in 1873; and it will be seen from subsequent letters that George Eliot kept up a faithful attachment to her to the end. They were both friends after her own heart. The old apartment is now No. 18, instead of No. 107, Rue des Chanoines, and is occupied as the printing-office of the _Journal de Genève_. But half of the rooms remain just as they were five-and-thirty years ago. The _salon_, wainscoted in imitation light-oak panels, with a white China stove, and her bedroom opening off it--as she had often described it to me; and M. d'Albert has still in his possession the painting of the bunch of beautiful flowers thrown on an open Bible mentioned in the last letter. He told me that when Miss Evans first came to look at the house she was so horrified with the forbidding aspect of the stairs that she declared she would not go up above the first floor; but when she got inside the door she was reconciled to her new quarters. Calvin's house is close to the Rue des Chanoines, and she was much interested in it. It will be seen that she did some work in physics under Professor de la Rive; but she principally rested and enjoyed herself during the stay at Geneva. It was exactly the kind of life she was in need of at the time, and the letters show how much she appreciated it. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 26th Oct. 1849.] I languished for your letter before it came, and read it three times running--judge whether I care less for you than of old. It is the best of blessings to know that you are well and cheerful; and when I think of all that might happen in a fortnight to make you otherwise, especially in these days of cholera and crises, I cannot help being anxious until I get a fresh assurance that at least five days ago all was well. Before I say anything about myself, I must contradict your suspicion that I paint things too agreeably for the sake of giving you pleasure. I assure you my letters are subjectively true; the falsehood, if there be any, is in my manner of seeing things. But I will give you some _vérités positives_, in which, alas! poor imagination has hitherto been able to do little for the world. Mme. d'Albert anticipates all my wants, and makes a spoiled child of me. I like these dear people better and better--everything is so in harmony with one's moral feeling that I really can almost say I never enjoyed a more complete _bien être_ in my life than during the last fortnight. For M. d'Albert, I love him already as if he were father and brother both. His face is rather haggard-looking, but all the lines and the wavy gray hair indicate the temperament of the artist. I have not heard a word or seen a gesture of his yet that was not perfectly in harmony with an exquisite moral refinement--indeed, one feels a better person always when he is present. He sings well, and plays on the piano a little. It is delightful to hear him talk of his friends--he admires them so genuinely--one sees so clearly that there is no reflex egotism. His conversation is charming. I learn something every dinner-time. Mme. d'Albert has less of genius and more of cleverness--a really lady-like person, who says everything well. She brings up her children admirably--two nice, intelligent boys;[29]--the youngest, particularly, has a sort of Lamartine expression, with a fine head. It is so delightful to get among people who exhibit no meannesses, no worldlinesses, that one may well be enthusiastic. To me it is so blessed to find any departure from the rule of giving as little as possible for as much as possible. Their whole behavior to me is as if I were a guest whom they delighted to honor. Last night we had a little knot of their most intimate musical friends, and M. and Mme. d'Albert introduced me to them as if they wished me to know them--as if they wished me to like their friends and their friends to like me. The people and the evening would have been just after your own hearts. In fact, I have not the slightest pretext for being discontented--not the shadow of a discomfort. Even the little housemaid Jeanne is charming; says to me every morning, in the prettiest voice: "Madame a-t-elle bien dormi cette nuit?"--puts fire in my _chauffe-pied_ without being told--cleans my rooms most conscientiously. There--I promise to weary you less for the future with my descriptions. I could not resist the temptation to speak gratefully of M. and Mme. d'Albert. Give my love to Mrs. Pears--my constant, ever-fresh remembrance. My love to Miss Rebecca Franklin--tell her I have only spun my web to Geneva; it will infallibly carry me back again across the gulf, were it twice as great. If Mr. Froude preach the new word at Manchester, I hope he will preach it so as to do without an after-explanation, and not bewilder his hearers in the manner of Mephistopheles when he dons the doctor's gown of Faust. I congratulate you on the new edition,[30] and promise to read it with a disposition to admire when I am at Rosehill once more. I am beginning to lose respect for the petty acumen that sees difficulties. I love the souls that rush along to their goal with a full stream of sentiment--that have too much of the positive to be harassed by the perpetual negatives--which, after all, are but the disease of the soul, to be expelled by fortifying the principle of vitality. Good-bye, dear loves; sha'n't I kiss you when I am in England again--in England! I already begin to think of the journey as an impossibility. Geneva is so beautiful now, the trees have their richest coloring. Coventry is a fool to it--but, then, you are at Coventry, and you are better than lake, trees, and mountains. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 28th Oct. 1849.] We have had some delicious autumn days here. If the fine weather last, I am going up the Salève on Sunday with M. d'Albert. On one side I shall have a magnificent view of the lake, the town, and the Jura; on the other, the range of Mont Blanc. The walks about Geneva are perfectly enchanting. "Ah!" says poor Mlle. de Phaisan, "nous avons un beau pays si nous n'avions pas ces Radicaux!" The election of the Conseil d'�tat is to take place in November, and an _émeute_ is expected. The actual government is Radical, and thoroughly detested by all the "respectable" classes. The vice-president of the Conseil and the virtual head of the government is an unprincipled, clever fellow, horribly in debt himself, and on the way to reduce the government to the same position. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Oct. 1849.] I like my town life vastly. I shall like it still better in the winter. There is an indescribable charm to me in this form of human nest-making. You enter a by no means attractive-looking house, you climb up two or three flights of cold, dark-looking stone steps, you ring at a very modest door, and you enter a set of rooms, snug, or comfortable, or elegant. One is so out of reach of intruders, so undiverted from one's occupations by externals, so free from cold, rushing winds through hall doors--one feels in a downy nest high up in a good old tree. I have always had a hankering after this sort of life, and I find it was a true instinct of what would suit me. Just opposite my windows is the street in which the Sisters of Charity live, and, if I look out, I generally see either one of them or a sober-looking ecclesiastic. Then a walk of five minutes takes me out of all streets, within sight of beauties that I am sure you too would love, if you did not share my enthusiasm for the town. I have not another minute, having promised to go out before dinner--so, dearest, take my letter as a hasty kiss, just to let you know how constantly I love you--how, the longer I live and the more I have felt, the better I know how to value you. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 4th Dec. 1849.] I write at once to answer your questions about business. Spinoza and I have been divorced for several months. My want of health has obliged me to renounce all application. I take walks, play on the piano, read Voltaire, talk to my friends, and just take a dose of mathematics every day to prevent my brain from becoming quite soft. If you are anxious to publish the translation in question I could, after a few months, finish the "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" to keep it company; but I confess to you that I think you would do better to abstain from printing a translation. What is wanted in English is not a translation of Spinoza's works, but a true estimate of his life and system. After one has rendered his Latin faithfully into English, one feels that there is another yet more difficult process of translation for the reader to effect, and that the only mode of making Spinoza accessible to a larger number is to study his books, then shut them, and give an analysis. For those who read the very words Spinoza wrote there is the same sort of interest in his style as in the conversation of a person of great capacity who has led a solitary life, and who says from his own soul what all the world is saying by rote; but this interest hardly belongs to a translation. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 4th Dec. 1849.] Your letter is very sweet to me, giving me a picture of your quiet life. How shall I enable you to imagine mine, since you know nothing of the localities? My good friends here only change for the better. Mme. d'Albert is all affection; M. d'Albert all delicacy and intelligence; the friends to whom they have introduced me very kind in their attentions. In fact, I want nothing but a little more money, to feel more at ease about my fires, etc. I am in an atmosphere of love and refinement; even the little servant Jeanne seems to love me, and does me good every time she comes into the room. I can say anything to M. and Mme. d'Albert. M. d'A. understands everything, and if madame does not understand, she believes--that is, she seems always sure that I mean something edifying. She kisses me like a mother, and I am baby enough to find that a great addition to my happiness. _Au reste_, I am careful for nothing; I am a sort of supernumerary spoon, and there will be no damage to the set if I am lost. My heart-ties are not loosened by distance--it is not in the nature of ties to be so; and when I think of my loved ones as those to whom I can be a comforter, a help, I long to be with them again. Otherwise, I can only think with a shudder of returning to England. It looks to me like a land of gloom, of _ennui_, of platitude; but in the midst of all this it is the land of duty and affection, and the only ardent hope I have for my future life is to have given to me some woman's duty--some possibility of devoting myself where I may see a daily result of pure, calm blessedness in the life of another. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 4th Dec. 1849.] How do you look? I hope that _bandeau_ of silvery locks is not widening too fast on the head I love so well--that the eyes are as bright as ever. Your letter tells me they will beam as kindly as ever when I see them once more. Never make apologies about your letters, or your words, or anything else. It is your soul to which I am wedded; and do I not know too well how the soul is doubly belied--first, by the impossibility of being in word and act as great, as loving, as good as it wills to be; and again, by the miserable weaknesses of the friends who see the words and acts through all sorts of mists raised by their own passions and preoccupations? In all these matters I am the chief of sinners, and I am tempted to rejoice in the offences of my friends, because they make me feel less humiliation. I am quite satisfied to be at Geneva instead of Paris; in fact, I am becoming passionately attached to the mountains, the lake, the streets, my own room, and, above all, the dear people with whom I live. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 23d Dec. 1849.] A thousand Christmas pleasures and blessings to you--good resolutions and bright hopes for the New Year! Amen. People who can't be witty exert themselves to be pious or affectionate. Henceforth I tell you nothing whatever about myself; for if I speak of agreeables, and say I am contented, Mr. Bray writes me word that you are all trying to forget me. If I were to tell you of disagreeables and privations and sadness, Sara would write: "If you are unhappy now, you will be so _à fortiori_ ten years hence." Now, since I have a decided objection to doses sent by post which upset one's digestion for a fortnight, I am determined to give you no pretext for sending them. You shall not know whether I am well or ill, contented or discontented, warm or cold, fat or thin. But remember that I am so far from being of the same mind as Mr. Bray, that good news of you is necessary to my comfort. I walk more briskly, and jump out of bed more promptly, after a letter that tells me you are well and comfortable, that business is promising, that men begin to speak well of you, etc. "I am comforted in your comfort," as saith St. Paul to the troublesome Corinthians. When one is cabined, cribbed, confined in one's self, it is good to be enlarged in one's friends. Good Mr. Marshall! We wish to keep even unamiable people when death calls for them, much more good souls like him. I am glad he had had one more pleasant visit to Cara for her to think of. Dear Sara's letter is very charming--not at all physicky--rather an agreeable draught of _vin sucré_. Dear Mr. Hennell, we shall never look upon his like. I am attending a course of lectures on Experimental Physics by M. le Professeur de la Rive, the inventor, among other things, of electroplating. The lectures occur every Wednesday and Saturday. It is time for me to go. I am distressed to send you this shabby last fragment of paper, and to write in such a hurry, but the days are really only two hours long, and I have so many things to do that I go to bed every night miserable because I have left out something I meant to do. Good-bye, dear souls. Forget me if you like, you cannot oblige me to forget you; and the active is worth twice of the passive all the world over! The earth is covered with snow, and the government is levelling the fortifications. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 28th Jan. 1850.] You leave me a long time without news of you, though I told you they were necessary as a counteractive to the horrors of this terrible winter. Are you really so occupied as to have absolutely no time to think of me? I console myself, at least to-day, now we have a blue sky once more after two months of mist, with thinking that I am excluded by pleasanter ideas--that at least you are well and comfortable, and I ought to content myself with that. The fact is, I am much of Touchstone's mind--in respect my life is at Geneva, I like it very well, but in respect it is not with you, it is a very vile life. I have no yearnings to exchange lake and mountains for Bishop Street and the Radford Fields, but I have a great yearning to kiss you all and talk to you for three days running. I do not think it will be possible for me to undertake the journey before the end of March. I look forward to it with great dread. I see myself looking utterly miserable, ready to leave all my luggage behind me at Paris for the sake of escaping the trouble of it. We have had Alboni here--a very fat siren. There has been some capital acting of comedies by friends of M. d'Albert--one of them is superior to any professional actor of comedy I have ever seen. He reads _vaudevilles_ so marvellously that one seems to have a whole troupe of actors before one in his single person. He is a handsome man of fifty, full of wit and talent, and he married about a year ago. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 9th Feb. 1850.] It is one of the provoking contrarieties of destiny that I should have written my croaking letter when your own kind, consolatory one was on its way to me. I have been happier ever since it came. After mourning two or three months over Chrissey's account of your troubles, I can only dwell on that part of your letter which tells that there is a little more blue in your sky--that you have faith in the coming spring. Shall you be as glad to see me as to hear the cuckoo? I mean to return to England as soon as the Jura is passable without sledges--probably the end of March or beginning of April. I have a little _Heimweh_ "as it regards" my friends. I yearn to see those I have loved the longest, but I shall feel real grief at parting from the excellent people with whom I am living. I feel they are my _friends_; without entering into or even knowing the greater part of my views, they understand my character and have a real interest in me. I have infinite tenderness from Mme. d'Albert. I call her always "maman;" and she is just the creature one loves to lean on and be petted by. In fact, I am too much indulged, and shall go back to England as undisciplined as ever. This terribly severe winter has been a drawback on my recovering my strength. I have lost whole weeks from headache, etc., but I am certainly better now than when I came to Mme. d'Albert. You tell me to give you these details, so I obey. Decidedly England is the most comfortable country to be in in winter--at least, for all except those who are rich enough to buy English comforts everywhere. I hate myself for caring about carpets, easy-chairs, and coal fires--one's soul is under a curse, and can preach no truth while one is in bondage to the flesh in this way; but, alas! habit is the purgatory in which we suffer for our past sins. I hear much music. We have a reunion of musical friends every Monday. For the rest, I have refused _soirées_, which are as stupid and unprofitable at Geneva as in England. I save all more interesting details, that I may have them to tell you when I am with you. I am going now to a _séance_ on Experimental Physics by the celebrated Professor de la Rive. This letter will at least convince you that I am not eaten up by wolves, as they have been fearing at Rosehill. The English papers tell of wolves descending from the Jura and devouring the inhabitants of the villages, but we have been in happy ignorance of these editors' horrors. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 15th Feb. 1850.] If you saw the Jura to-day! The snow reveals its forests, ravines, and precipices, and it stands in relief against a pure blue sky. The snow is on the mountains only, now, and one is tempted to walk all day, particularly when one lies in bed till ten, as your exemplary friend sometimes does. I have had no discipline, and shall return to you more of a spoiled child than ever. Indeed, I think I am destined to be so to the end--one of the odious swarm of voracious caterpillars soon to be swept away from the earth by a tempest. I am getting better bodily. I have much less headache, but the least excitement fatigues me. Certainly, if one cannot have a malady to carry one off rapidly, the only sensible thing is to get well and fat; and I believe I shall be driven to that alternative. You know that George Sand writes for the theatre? Her "François le Champi--une Comédie," is simplicity and purity itself. The seven devils are cast out. We are going to have more acting here on Wednesday. M. Chamel's talent makes maman's _soirées_ quite brilliant. You will be amused to hear that I am sitting for my portrait--at M. d'Albert's request, not mine. If it turns out well, I shall long to steal it to give to you; but M. d'Albert talks of painting a second, and in that case I shall certainly beg one. The idea of making a study of my visage is droll enough. I have the kindest possible letters from my brother and sisters, promising me the warmest welcome. This helps to give me courage for the journey; but the strongest magnet of all is a certain little group of three persons whom I hope to find together at Rosehill. Something has been said of M. d'Albert accompanying me to Paris. I am saddened when I think of all the horrible anxieties of trade. If I had children, I would make them carpenters and shoemakers; that is the way to make them Messiahs and Jacob Boehms. As for us, who are dependent on carpets and easy-chairs, we are reprobates, and shall never enter into the kingdom of heaven. I go to the Genevese churches every Sunday, and nourish my heterodoxy with orthodox sermons. However, there are some clever men here in the Church, and I am fortunate in being here at a time when the very cleverest is giving a series of conferences. I think I have never told you that we have a long German lad of seventeen in the house--the most taciturn and awkward of lads. He said very naïvely, when I reproached him for not talking to a German young lady at a _soirée_, when he was seated next her at table--"Je ne savais que faire de mes jambes." They had placed the poor _garçon_ against one of those card-tables--all legs, like himself. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 1st March, 1850.] The weather is so glorious that I think I may set out on my journey soon after the 15th. I am not quite certain yet that M. d'Albert will not be able to accompany me to Paris; in any case, a package of so little value will get along safely enough. I am so excited at the idea of the time being so near when I am to leave Geneva--a real grief--and see my friends in England--a perfectly overwhelming joy--that I can do nothing. I am frightened to think what an idle wretch I am become. And you all do not write me one word to tell me you long for me. I have a great mind to elope to Constantinople, and never see any one any more! It is with a feeling of regret that we take leave of the pleasant town of Geneva, its lake and mountains, and its agreeable little circle of acquaintance. It was a peacefully happy episode in George Eliot's life, and one she was always fond of recurring to, in our talk, up to the end of her life. _SUMMARY._ JUNE, 1849, TO MARCH, 1850. Goes abroad with Mr. and Mrs. Bray--Geneva--Life at Campagne Plongeon--Letters to Brays describing surroundings--Mrs. Locke--The St. Germain family--Anxiety about her boxes with books, etc.--Hears M. Meunier preach--Patriotism the first of virtues--Mme. Cornelius--Mme. de Ludwigsdorff--"_Fête_ of Navigation" on the lake--Demand for letters--Prophetic anticipation of position seven years later--Wishes to sell some of her books and globes to get music lessons--Letter to Mrs. Houghton--Loss of Mrs. Clarke's child--Love of Lake of Geneva--Letters to Brays--Mme. Ludwigsdorff wishes her to spend winter in Paris--Mlle. de Phaisan--Finds apartment in Geneva, No. 107 Rue des Chanoines, with M. and Mme. d'Albert--Enjoyment of their society--Remarks on translations of Spinoza--Hope of a woman's duty--Attachment to Geneva--Yearning for friends at home--Alboni--Private theatricals--Portrait by M. d'Albert--Remarks on education of children--Leaves Geneva by Jura. FOOTNOTES: [26] It may be noted as a curious verification of this presentiment that "Scenes of Clerical Life" were published in 1856--just seven years later. [27] Mrs. Hennell. [28] Mr. and Mrs. C. Hennell. [29] Mr. Charles Lewes tells me that when he went to stay with the d'Alberts at Geneva, many years afterwards, they mentioned how much they had been struck by her extraordinary discernment of the character of these two boys. [30] "Philosophy of Necessity," by Charles Bray. CHAPTER V. M. d'Albert and his charge left Geneva towards the end of March, and as the railway was not yet opened all the way to France, they had to cross the Jura in sledges, and suffered terribly from the cold. They joined the railway at Tonnerre, and came through Paris, arriving in England on the 23d of March. After a day in London, Miss Evans went straight to her friends at Rosehill, where she stayed for a few days before going on to Griff. It will have been seen that she had set her hopes high on the delights of home-coming, and with her too sensitive, impressionable nature, it is not difficult to understand, without attributing blame to any one, that she was pretty sure to be laying up disappointment for herself. All who have had the experience of returning from a bright, sunny climate to England in March will recognize in the next letters the actual presence of the east wind, the leaden sky, the gritty dust, and _le spleen_. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Mch. 1850, from Rosehill.] No; I am not in England--I am only nearer the beings I love best. I try to forget all geography, and that I have placed myself irretrievably out of reach of nature's brightest glories and beauties to shiver in a wintry flat. I am unspeakably grateful to find these dear creatures looking well and happy, in spite of worldly cares, but your clear face and voice are wanting to me. But I must wait with patience, and perhaps by the time I have finished my visits to my relations you will be ready to come to Rosehill again. I want you to scold me, and make me good. I am idle and naughty--_on ne peut plus_--sinking into heathenish ignorance and woman's frivolity. Remember, you are one of my guardian angels. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, beginning of April, 1850, from Griff.] Will you send the enclosed note to Mrs. C. Hennell? I am not quite sure about her direction, but I am anxious to thank her for her kindness in inviting me. Will you also send me an account of Mr. Chapman's prices for lodgers, and if you know anything of other boarding-houses, etc., in London? Will you tell me what you can? I am not asking you merely for the sake of giving you trouble. I am really anxious to know. Oh, the dismal weather and the dismal country and the dismal people. It was some envious demon that drove me across the Jura. However, I am determined to sell everything I possess, except a portmanteau and carpet-bag and the necessary contents, and be a stranger and a foreigner on the earth for evermore. But I must see you first; that is a yearning I still have in spite of disappointments. From Griff she went to stay with her sister, Mrs. Clarke, at Meriden, whence she writes: [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 24th April, 1850.] Have you any engagement for the week after next? If not, may I join you on Saturday the 4th, and invite M. d'Albert to come down on the following Monday? It appears he cannot stay in England longer than until about the second week in May. I am uncomfortable at the idea of burdening even your friendship with the entertainment of a person purely for my sake. It is indeed the greatest of all the great kindnesses you have shown me. Write me two or three kind words, dear Cara. I have been so ill at ease ever since I have been in England that I am quite discouraged. Dear Chrissey is generous and sympathizing, and really cares for my happiness. [Illustration: Rosehill.] On the 4th of May Miss Evans went to Rosehill, and on the 7th M. d'Albert joined the party for a three days' visit. The strong affection existing between Mr. and Mrs. Bray and their guest, and the more congenial intellectual atmosphere surrounding them, led Miss Evans to make her home practically at Rosehill for the next sixteen months. She stayed there continuously till the 18th November, and, among other things, wrote a review of Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect." In October Mr. Mackay and Mr. Chapman, the editor of the _Westminster Review_, came to stay at Rosehill, and there was probably some talk then about her assisting in the editorial work of the _Review_, but it was not until the following spring that any definite understanding on this subject was arrived at. Meantime the article on Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect" came out in the January, 1851, number of the _Westminster_. It contains the following remarkable passages: "Our civilization, and yet more, our religion, are an anomalous blending of lifeless barbarisms, which have descended to us like so many petrifactions from distant ages, with living ideas, the offspring of a true process of development. We are in bondage to terms and conceptions, which, having had their roots in conditions of thought no longer existing, have ceased to possess any vitality, and are for us as spells which have lost their virtue. The endeavor to spread enlightened ideas is perpetually counteracted by these _idola theatri_, which have allied themselves, on the one hand, with men's better sentiments, and, on the other, with institutions in whose defence are arrayed the passions and the interests of dominant classes. Now, although the teaching of positive truth is the grand means of expelling error, the process will be very much quickened if the negative argument serve as its pioneer; if, by a survey of the past, it can be shown how each age and each race has had a faith and a symbolism suited to its need and its stage of development, and that for succeeding ages to dream of retaining the spirit, along with the forms, of the past, is as futile as the embalming of the dead body in the hope that it may one day be resumed by the living soul.... It is Mr. Mackay's faith that divine revelation is not contained exclusively or pre-eminently in the facts and inspirations of any one age or nation, but is coextensive with the history of human development, and is perpetually unfolding itself to our widened experience and investigation, as firmament upon firmament becomes visible to us in proportion to the power and range of our exploring-instruments. The master-key to this revelation is the recognition of the presence of undeviating law in the material and moral world--of that invariability of sequence which is acknowledged to be the basis of physical science, but which is still perversely ignored in our social organization, our ethics, and our religion. It is this invariability of sequence which can alone give value to experience, and render education, in the true sense, possible. The divine yea and nay, the seal of prohibition and of sanction, are effectually impressed on human deeds and aspirations, not by means of Greek and Hebrew, but by that inexorable law of consequences whose evidence is confirmed instead of weakened as the ages advance; and human duty is comprised in the earnest study of this law and patient obedience to its teaching. While this belief sheds a bright beam of promise on the future career of our race, it lights up what once seemed the dreariest region of history with new interest; every past phase of human development is part of that education of the race in which we are sharing; every mistake, every absurdity, into which poor human nature has fallen, may be looked on as an experiment of which we may reap the benefit. A correct generalization gives significance to the smallest detail, just as the great inductions of geology demonstrate in every pebble the working of laws by which the earth has become adapted for the habitation of man. In this view religion and philosophy are not merely conciliated, they are identical; or, rather, religion is the crown and consummation of philosophy--the delicate corolla which can only spread out its petals in all their symmetry and brilliance to the sun when root and branch exhibit the conditions of a healthy and vigorous life." Miss Evans seems to have been in London from the beginning of January till the end of March, 1851; and Mr. Chapman made another fortnight's visit to Rosehill at the end of May and beginning of June. It was during this period that, with Miss Evans's assistance, the prospectus of the new series of the _Westminster Review_ was determined on and put in shape. At the end of July she went with Mrs. Bray to visit Mr. and Mrs. Robert Noel, at Bishop Steignton, in Devonshire. Mrs. Bray had some slight illness there, and Miss Evans writes: [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 5th Aug. 1851.] I am grieved indeed if anything might have been written, which has not been written, to allay your anxiety about Cara. Her letter yesterday explained what has been the matter. I knew her own handwriting would be pleasanter to you than any other. I have been talking to her this morning about the going to London or to Rosehill. She seems to prefer London. A glance or two at the Exposition, she thinks, would do her no harm. To-day we are all going to Teignmouth. She seems to like the idea of sitting by the waves. The sun is shining gloriously, and all things are tolerably promising. I am going to walk on before the rest and have a bath. They went to London on the 13th of August, saw the Crystal Palace, and returned to Rosehill on the 16th. At the end of that month, Mr. George Combe (the distinguished phrenologist) arrived on a visit, and he and Mrs. Combe became good friends to Miss Evans, as will be seen from the subsequent correspondence. They came on a second visit to Rosehill the following month--Mr. Chapman being also in the house at the same time--and at the end of September Miss Evans went to stay with the Chapmans at No. 142 Strand, as a boarder, and as assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_. A new period now opens in George Eliot's life, and emphatically the most important period, for now she is to be thrown in contact with Mr. Lewes, who is to exercise so paramount an influence on all her future, with Mr. Herbert Spencer, and with a number of writers then representing the most fearless and advanced thought of the day. Miss Frederica Bremer, the authoress, was also boarding with the Chapmans at this time, as will be seen from the following letters: [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, end of Sept. 1851.] Mr. Mackay has been very kind in coming and walking out with me, and that is the only variety I have had. Last night, however, we had an agreeable enough gathering. Foxton[31] came, who, you know, is trying, with Carlyle and others, to get a chapel for Wilson at the West End--in which he is to figure as a seceding clergyman. I enclose you two notes from Empson (he is the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_) as a guarantee that I have been trying to work. Again, I proposed to write a review of Greg for the _Westminster_, not for money, but for love of the subject as connected with the "Inquiry." Mr. Hickson referred the matter to Slack again, and he writes that he shall not have room for it, and that the subject will not suit on this occasion, so you see I am obliged to be idle, and I like it best. I hope Mr. Bray is coming soon to tell me everything about you. I think I shall cry for joy to see him. But do send me a little note on Monday morning. Mrs. Follen called the other day, in extreme horror at Miss Martineau's book. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, end of Sept. 1851.] Dr. Brabant returned to Bath yesterday. He very politely took me to the Crystal Palace, the theatre, and the Overland Route. On Friday we had Foxton, Wilson, and some other nice people, among others a Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has just brought out a large work on "Social Statics," which Lewes pronounces the best book he has seen on the subject. You must see the book, if possible. Mr. Chapman is going to send you Miss Martineau's work, or rather Mr. Atkinson's,[32] which you must review in the _Herald_. Whatever else one may think of the book, it is certainly the boldest I have seen in the English language. I get nothing done here, there are so many _distractions_--moreover, I have hardly been well a day since I came. I wish I were rich enough to go to the coast, and have some plunges in the sea to brace me. Nevertheless do not suppose that I don't enjoy being here. I like seeing the new people, etc., and I am afraid I shall think the country rather dull after it. I am in a hurry to-day. I must have two hours' work before dinner, so imagine everything I have not said, or, rather, reflect that this scrap is quite as much as you deserve after being so slow to write to me. The reference, in the above letter, to Mr. Lewes must not be taken as indicating personal acquaintance yet. It is only a quotation of some opinion heard or read. Mr. Lewes had already secured for himself a wide reputation in the literary world by his "Biographical History of Philosophy," his two novels, "Ranthorpe," and "Rose, Blanche, and Violet"--all of which had been published five or six years before--and his voluminous contributions to the periodical literature of the day. He was also, at this time, the literary editor of the _Leader_ newspaper, so that any criticism of his would carry weight, and be talked about. Much has already been written about his extraordinary versatility, the variety of his literary productions, his social charms, his talent as a _raconteur_, and his dramatic faculty; and it will now be interesting, for those who did not know him personally, to learn the deeper side of his character, which will be seen, in its development, in the following pages. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, end of Sept. 1851.] I don't know how long Miss Bremer will stay, but you need not wish to see her. She is to me equally unprepossessing to eye and ear. I never saw a person of her years who appealed less to my purely instinctive veneration. I have to reflect every time I look at her that she is really Frederica Bremer. Fox is to write the article on the Suffrage, and we are going to try Carlyle for the Peerage, Ward refusing, on the ground that he thinks the improvement of the physical condition of the people so all-important that he must give all his energies to that. He says, "Life is a bad business, but we must make the best of it;" to which philosophy I say Amen. Dr. Hodgson is gone, and all the fun with him. I was introduced to Lewes the other day in Jeff's shop--a sort of miniature Mirabeau in appearance.[33] [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 2d Oct. (?) 1851.] Professor Forbes is to write us a capital scientific article, whereat I rejoice greatly. The Peerage apparently will not "get itself done," as Carlyle says. It is not an urgent question, nor does one see that, if the undue influence of the Peers on the elections for the Commons were done away with, there would be much mischief from the House of Lords remaining for some time longer _in statu quo_. I have been reading Carlyle's "Life of Sterling" with great pleasure--not for its presentation of Sterling, but of Carlyle. There are racy bits of description in his best manner, and exquisite touches of feeling. Little rapid characterizations of living men too--of Francis Newman, for example--"a man of fine university and other attainments, of the sharpest cutting and most restlessly advancing intellect, and of the mildest pious enthusiasm." There is an inimitable description of Coleridge and his eternal monologue--"To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whether one like it or not, can in the end be exhilarating to no creature." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Oct. 1851.] All the world is doing its _devoir_ to the great little authoress (Miss Bremer). I went to the exhibition on Saturday to hear the final "God save the Queen" and the three times three--"C'êtait un beau moment." Mr. Greg thought the review "well done, and in a kindly spirit," but thought there was not much in it--dreadfully true, since there was only all his book. I think he did not like the apology for his want of theological learning, which, however, was just the thing most needed, for the _Eclectic_ trips him up on that score. Carlyle was very amusing the other morning to Mr. Chapman about the Exhibition. He has no patience with the prince and "that Cole" assembling Sawneys from all parts of the land, till you can't get along Piccadilly. He has been worn to death with bores all summer, who present themselves by twos and threes in his study, saying, "Here we are," etc., etc. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Oct. 1851.] I wish you could see Miss Bremer's albums, full of portraits, flowers, and landscapes, all done by herself. A portrait of Emerson, marvellously like; one of Jenny Lind, etc. Last night we had quite a charming _soirée_--Sir David Brewster and his daughter; Mackay, author of a work on popular education you may remember to have seen reviewed in the _Leader_; the Ellises, the Hodgsons, and half a dozen other nice people. Miss Bremer was more genial than I have seen her--played on the piano, and smiled benevolently. Altogether, I am beginning to repent of my repugnance. Mackay approves our prospectus _in toto_. He is a handsome, fine-headed man, and a "good opinion." We are getting out a circular to accompany the prospectus. I have been kept down-stairs by Mr. Mackay for the last two hours, and am hurried, but it was a necessity to write _ein paar Worte_ to you. Mr. Mackay has written an account of his book for the catalogue. I have been using my powers of eloquence and flattery this morning to make him begin an article on the "Development of Protestantism." Mr. Ellis was agreeable--really witty. He and Mrs. Ellis particularly cordial to me, inviting me to visit them without ceremony. I love you all better every day, and better the more I see of other people. I am going to one of the Birkbeck schools. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 3rd Nov. 1851.] I must tell you a story Miss Bremer got from Emerson. Carlyle was very angry with him for not believing in a devil, and to convert him took him amongst all the horrors of London--the gin-shops, etc.--and finally to the House of Commons, plying him at every turn with the question, "Do you believe in a devil noo?" There is a severe attack on Carlyle's "Life of Sterling" in yesterday's _Times_--unfair as an account of the book, but with some truth in its general remarks about Carlyle. There is an article, evidently by James Martineau, in the _Prospective_, which you must read, "On the Unity of the Logical and Intuitive in the Ultimate Grounds of Religious Belief." I am reading with great amusement (!) J. H. Newman's "Lectures on the Position of Catholics." They are full of clever satire and description. My table is groaning with books, and I have done very little with them yet, but I trust in my star, which has hitherto helped me, to do all I have engaged to do. Pray remember to send the MS. translation of Schleiermacher's little book, and also the book itself. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 15th Nov. 1851.] When Mr. Noel had finished his farewell visit to-day, Mr. Flower was announced, so my morning has run away in chat. Time wears, and I don't get on so fast as I ought, but I must scribble a word or two, else you will make my silence an excuse for writing me no word of yourselves. I am afraid Mr. Noel and Mr. Bray have given you a poor report of me. The last two days I have been a little better, but I hardly think existing arrangements can last beyond this quarter. Mr. Noel says Miss L. is to visit you at Christmas. I hope that is a mistake, as it would deprive me of my hoped-for rest amongst you. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Monday, 23d Nov. 1851.] On Saturday afternoon came Mr. Spencer to ask Mr. Chapman and me to go to the theatre; so I ended the day in a godless manner, seeing the "Merry Wives of Windsor." You must read Carlyle's denunciation of the opera, published in the _Keepsake_! The _Examiner_ quotes it at length. I send you the enclosed from Harriet Martineau. Please to return it. The one from Carlyle you may keep till I come. He is a naughty fellow to write in the _Keepsake_, and not for us, after I wrote him the most insinuating letter, offering him three glorious subjects. Yesterday we went to Mr. Mackay's, Dr. Brabant being there. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 27th Nov. 1851.] Carlyle called the other day, strongly recommending Browning, the poet, as a writer for the _Review_, and saying, "We shall see," about himself. In other respects we have been stagnating since Monday, and now I must work, work, work, which I have scarcely done two days consecutively since I have been here. Lewes says his article on "Julia von Krüdener"[34] will be glorious. He sat in the same box with us at the "Merry Wives of Windsor," and helped to carry off the dolorousness of the play. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Tuesday, 22d Dec. 1851.] Alas! the work is so heavy just for the next three days, all the revises being yet to come in, and the proof of my own article;[35] and Mr. Chapman is so overwhelmed with matters of detail, that he has earnestly requested me to stay till Saturday, and I cannot refuse, but it is a deep disappointment to me. My heart will yearn after you all. It is the first Christmas Day I shall have passed without any Christmas feeling. On Saturday, if you will have me, nothing shall keep me here any longer. I am writing at a high table, on a low seat, in a great hurry. Don't you think my style is editorial? Accordingly, on Saturday, the 29th December, 1851, she did go down to Rosehill, and stayed there till 12th January, when she returned to London, and writes: [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 12th Jan. 1852.] I had a comfortable journey all alone, except from Weedon to Blisworth. When I saw a coated animal getting into my carriage, I thought of all horrible stories of madmen in railways; but his white neckcloth and thin, mincing voice soon convinced me that he was one of those exceedingly tame animals, the clergy. A kind welcome and a good dinner--that is the whole of my history at present. I am in anything but company trim, or spirits. I can do nothing in return for all your kindness, dear Cara, but love you, as I do most heartily. You and all yours, for their own sake first, but if it were not so, for yours. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st Jan. 1852.] Harriet Martineau called on Monday morning with Mr. Atkinson. Very kind and cordial. I honor her for her powers and industry, and should be glad to think highly of her. I have no doubt that she is fascinating when there is time for talk. We have had two agreeable _soirées_. Last Monday I was talking and listening for two hours to Pierre Leroux--a dreamy genius. He was expounding to me his ideas. He belongs neither to the school of Proudhon, which represents Liberty only--nor to that of Louis Blanc, which represents Equality only--nor to that of Cabet, which represents Fraternity. Pierre Leroux's system is the _synthèse_ which combines all three. He has found the true _pont_ which is to unite the love of self with love of one's neighbor. He is, you know, a very voluminous writer. George Sand has dedicated some of her books to him. He dilated on his views of the "Origin of Christianity." Strauss deficient, because he has not shown the _identity of the teaching of Jesus with that of the Essenes_. This is Leroux's favorite idea. I told him of your brother. He, moreover, traces Essenism back to Egypt, and thence to India--the cradle of all religions, etc., etc., with much more, which he uttered with an unction rather amusing in a _soirée tête-à-tête_. "Est ce que nous sommes faits pour chercher le bonheur? Est ce là votre idée--dites moi." "Mais non--nous sommes faits, je pense, pour nous développer le plus possible." "Ah! c'est ça." He is in utter poverty, going to lecture--_autrement il faut mourir_. Has a wife and children with him. He came to London in his early days, when he was twenty-five, to find work as a printer. All the world was in mourning for the Princess Charlotte. "Et moi, je me trouvais avoir _un habit vert-pomme_." So he got no work; went back to Paris; by hook or by crook founded the _Globe_ journal; knew St. Simon; disagrees with him entirely, as with all other theorists except Pierre Leroux. We are trying Mazzini to write on "Freedom _v._ Despotism," and have received an admirable article on "The New Puritanism,"[36] _i.e._, "Physical Puritanism," from Dr. Browne, the chemist of Edinburgh, which, I think, will go in the next number. I am in a miserable state of languor and low spirits, in which everything is a trouble to me. I must tell you a bit of Louis Blanc's English, which Mr. Spencer was reciting the other night. The _petit homme_ called on some one, and said, "I come to tell you how you are. I was at you the other day, but you were not." [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 2d Feb. 1852.] We went to quite a gay party at Mrs. Mackay's on Saturday. Good Mr. Mackay has been taking trouble to get me to Hastings for my health--calling on Miss Fellowes, daughter of the "Religion of the Universe," and inducing her to write me a note of invitation. Sara will be heartily welcome. Unfortunately, I had an invitation to the Parkes's, to meet Cobden, on Saturday evening. I was sorry to miss that. Miss Parkes[37] is a dear, ardent, honest creature; and I hope we shall be good friends. I have nothing else to tell you. I am steeped in dulness within and without. Heaven send some lions to-night to meet Fox, who is coming. An advertisement we found in the _Times_ to-day--"To gentlemen. A _converted_ medical man, of gentlemanly habits and fond of Scriptural conversation, wishes to meet with a gentleman of Calvinistic views, thirsty after truth, in want of a daily companion. A little temporal aid will be expected in return. Address, Verax!" [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 8th Feb. 1852.] We are going to Mr. Ellis's, at Champion Hill, to-morrow evening. I am better now. Have rid myself of all distasteful work, and am trying to love the glorious destination of humanity, looking before and after. We shall be glad to have Sara. Miss Sara Hennell arrived on a visit to the Strand next day--the 9th February--and stayed till the 17th. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, 16th Feb. 1852.] I have not merely had a headache--I have been really ill, and feel very much shattered. We (Miss Evans and Miss Sara Hennell) dined yesterday at Mrs. Peter Taylor's,[38] at Sydenham. I was not fit to go, especially to make my _début_ at a strange place; but the country air was a temptation. The thick of the work is just beginning, and I am bound in honor not to run away from it, as I have shirked all labor but what is strictly editorial this quarter. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 20th Feb. 1852.] We went to the meeting of the Association for the Abolition of the Taxes on Knowledge on Wednesday, that I might hear Cobden, in whom I was wofully disappointed. George Dawson's speech was admirable. I think it undesirable to fix on a London residence at present, as I want to go to Brighton for a month or two next quarter. I am seriously concerned at my languid body, and feel the necessity of taking some measures to get vigor. Lewes inquired for Sara last Monday, in a tone of interest. He was charmed with her, as who would not be that has any taste? Do write to me, dear Cara; I want comforting: this world looks ugly just now; all people rather worse than I have been used to think them. Put me in love with my kind again, by giving me a glimpse of your own inward self, since I cannot see the outer one. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 6th Mch. 1852.] I can sympathize with you in your troubles, having been a housekeeper myself, and known disappointment in trusted servants. Ah, well! we have a good share of the benefits of our civilization, it is but fair that we should feel some of the burden of its imperfections. Thank you a thousand times for wishing to see me again. I should really like to see you in your own nice, fresh, healthy-looking home again; but until the end of March I fear I shall be a prisoner, from the necessity for constant work. Still, it is possible that I may have a day, though I am quite unable to say when. You will be still more surprised at the notice of the _Westminster_ in _The People_, when you know that Maccoll himself wrote it. I have not seen it, but had been told of its ill-nature. However, he is too good a man to write otherwise than sincerely; and our opinion of a book often depends on the state of the liver! [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 25th Mch. 1852.] I had two offers last night--not of marriage, but of music--which I find it impossible to resist. Mr. Herbert Spencer proposed to take me on Thursday to hear "William Tell," and Miss Parkes asked me to go with her to hear the "Creation" on Friday. I have had so little music this quarter, and these two things are so exactly what I should like, that I have determined to put off, for the sake of them, my other pleasure of seeing you. So, pray, keep your precious welcome warm for me until Saturday, when I shall positively set off by the two o'clock train. Harriet Martineau has written me a most cordial invitation to go to see her before July, but that is impossible. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 27th Mch. 1852.] I am grieved to find that you have to pay for that fine temperament of yours in attacks of neuralgia. Your silence did not surprise me, after the account you had given me of your domestic circumstances, but I have wished for you on Monday evenings. Your cordial assurance that you shall be glad to see me sometimes is one of those pleasant things--those life-preservers--which relenting destiny sends me now and then to buoy me up. For you must know that I am not a little desponding now and then, and think that old friends will die off, while I shall be left without the power to make new ones. You know how sad one feels when a great procession has swept by one, and the last notes of its music have died away, leaving one alone with the fields and sky. I feel so about life sometimes. It is a help to read such a life as Margaret Fuller's. How inexpressibly touching that passage from her journal--"I shall always reign through the intellect, but the life! the life! O my God! shall that never be sweet?" I am thankful, as if for myself, that it was sweet at last. But I am running on about feelings when I ought to tell you facts. I am going on Wednesday to my friends in Warwickshire for about ten days or a fortnight. When I come back, I hope you will be quite strong and able to receive visitors without effort--Mr. Taylor too. I _did_ go to the _conversazione_; but you have less to regret than you think. Mazzini's speeches are better read than heard. Proofs are come, demanding my immediate attention, so I must end this hasty scribble. On the 3d April Miss Evans went to Rosehill, and stayed till the 14th. On her return she writes: [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, 17th April, 1852.] There was an article on the bookselling affair in the _Times_ of yesterday, which must be the knell of the Association. Dickens is to preside at a meeting in this house on the subject some day next week. The opinions on the various articles in the _Review_ are, as before, ridiculously various. The _Economist_ calls the article on Quakerism "admirably written." Greg says the article on India is "very masterly;" while he calls Mazzini's "sad stuff--mere verbiage." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st April, 1852.] If there is any change in my affection for you it is that I love you more than ever, not less. I have as perfect a friendship for you as my imperfect nature can feel--a friendship in which deep respect and admiration are sweetened by a sort of flesh-and-blood sisterly feeling and the happy consciousness that I have your affection, however undeservedly, in return. I have confidence that this friendship can never be shaken; that it must last while I last, and that the supposition of its ever being weakened by a momentary irritation is too contemptibly absurd for me to take the trouble to deny it. As to your whole conduct to me, from the first day I knew you, it has been so generous and sympathetic that, if I did not heartily love you, I should feel deep gratitude--but love excludes gratitude. It is impossible that I should ever love two women better than I love you and Cara. Indeed, it seems to me that I can never love any so well; and it is certain that I can never have any friend--not even a husband--who would supply the loss of those associations with the past which belong to you. Do believe in my love for you, and that it will remain as long as I have my senses, because it is interwoven with my best nature, and is dependent, not on any accidents of manner, but on long experience, which has confirmed the instinctive attraction of earlier days. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 22d April, 1852.] Our fortunes here are, as usual, checkered-- "Twist ye, twine ye, even so Mingle human weal and woe." Grote is very friendly, and has propitiated J. S. Mill, who will write for us when we want him. We had quite a brilliant _soirée_ yesterday evening. W. R. Greg, Forster (of Rawdon), Francis Newman, the Ellises, and Louis Blanc, were the stars of greatest magnitude. I had a pleasant talk with Greg and Forster. Greg was "much pleased to have made my acquaintance." Forster, on the whole, appeared to think that people should be glad to make _his_ acquaintance. Greg is a short man, but his brain is large, the anterior lobe very fine, and a moral region to correspond. Black, wiry, curly hair, and every indication of a first-rate temperament. We have some very nice Americans here--the Pughs--friends of the Parkes's, really refined, intellectual people. Miss Pugh, an elderly lady, is a great abolitionist, and was one of the Women's Convention that came to England in 1840, and was not allowed to join the Men's Convention. But I suppose we shall soon be able to say, _nous avons changé tout cela_. I went to the opera on Saturday--"I Martiri," at Covent Garden--with my "excellent friend, Herbert Spencer," as Lewes calls him. We have agreed that we are not in love with each other, and that there is no reason why we should not have as much of each other's society as we like. He is a good, delightful creature, and I always feel better for being with him. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 2d May, 1852.] I like to remind you of me on Sunday morning, when you look at the flowers and listen to music; so I send a few lines, though I have not much time to spare to-day. After Tuesday I will write you a longer letter, and tell you all about everything. I am going to the opera to-night to hear the "Huguenots." See what a fine thing it is to pick up people who are short-sighted enough to like one. On the 4th of May a meeting, consisting chiefly of authors, was held at the house in the Strand, for the purpose of hastening the removal of the trade restrictions on the Commerce of Literature, and it is thus described in the following letter: [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 5th May, 1852.] The meeting last night went off triumphantly, and I saluted Mr. Chapman with "See the Conquering Hero Comes" on the piano at 12 o'clock; for not until then was the last magnate, except Herbert Spencer, out of the house. I sat at the door for a short time, but soon got a chair within it, and heard and saw everything. Dickens in the chair--a position he fills remarkably well, preserving a courteous neutrality of eyebrows, and speaking with clearness and decision. His appearance is certainly disappointing--no benevolence in the face, and, I think, little in the head; the anterior lobe not by any means remarkable. In fact, he is not distinguished-looking in any way--neither handsome nor ugly, neither fat nor thin, neither tall nor short. Babbage moved the first resolution--a bad speaker, but a great authority. Charles Knight is a beautiful, elderly man, with a modest but firm enunciation; and he made a wise and telling speech which silenced one or two vulgar, ignorant booksellers who had got into the meeting by mistake. One of these began by complimenting Dickens--"views held by such worthy and important gentlemen, _which is your worthy person in the chair_." Dickens looked respectfully neutral. The most telling speech of the evening was Prof. Tom Taylor's--as witty and brilliant as one of George Dawson's. Prof. Owen's, too, was remarkably good. He had a resolution to move as to the bad effect of the trade restrictions on scientific works, and gave his own experience in illustration. Speaking of the slow and small sale of scientific books of a high class, he said, in his silvery, bland way--alluding to the boast that the retail booksellers _recommended_ the works of less known authors--"for which limited sale we are doubtless indebted to the kind recommendation of our friends, the retail booksellers"--whereupon these worthies, taking it for a _bonâ fide_ compliment, cheered enthusiastically. Dr. Lankester, Prof. Newman, Robert Bell, and others, spoke well. Owen has a tremendous head, and looked, as he was, the greatest celebrity of the meeting. George Cruikshank, too, made a capital speech, in an admirable moral spirit. He is the most homely, genuine-looking man; not unlike the pictures of Captain Cuttle. I went to hear the "Huguenots" on Saturday evening. It was a rich treat. Mario and Grisi and Formes, and that finest of orchestras under Costa. I am going to a concert to-night. This is all very fine, but, in the meantime, I am getting as haggard as an old witch under London atmosphere and influences. I shall be glad to have sent me my Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, and Wordsworth, if you will be so good as to take the trouble of packing them. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Monday, 12th(?) May, 1852.] My days have slipped away in a most mysterious fashion lately--chiefly, I suppose, in long walks and long talks. Our Monday evenings are dying off--not universally regretted--but we are expecting one or two people to-night. I have nothing to tell except that I went to the opera on Thursday, and heard "La Juive," and, moreover, fell in love with Prince Albert, who was unusually animated and prominent. He has a noble, genial, intelligent expression, and is altogether a man to be proud of. I am going next Thursday to see Grisi in "Norma." She is quite beautiful this season, thinner than she was, and really younger looking. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th May, 1852.] My brightest spot, next to my love of _old_ friends, is the deliciously calm, _new_ friendship that Herbert Spencer gives me. We see each other every day, and have delightful _camaraderie_ in everything. But for him my life would be desolate enough. What a wretched lot of old, shrivelled creatures we shall be by and by. Never mind, the uglier we get in the eyes of others the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship, and now it is in a slight degree my experience. Mme. d'Albert has sent me the sweetest letter, just like herself; and I feel grateful to have such a heart remembering and loving me on the other side of the Jura. They are very well and flourishing. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Wednesday, 2d June, 1852.] I am bothered to death with article-reading and scrap-work of all sorts: it is clear my poor head will never produce anything under these circumstances; _but I am patient_. I am ashamed to tease you so, but I must beg of you to send me George Sand's works; and also I shall be grateful if you will lend me--what I think you have--an English edition of "Corinne," and Miss Austen's "Sense and Sensibility." Harriet Martineau's article on "Niebuhr" will not go in the July number. I am sorry for it; it is admirable. After all, she is a _trump_--the only Englishwoman that possesses thoroughly the art of writing. On Thursday morning I went to St. Paul's to see the charity children assembled, and hear their singing. Berlioz says it is the finest thing he has heard in England; and this opinion of his induced me to go. I was not disappointed; it is worth doing once, especially as we got out before the sermon. I had a long call from George Combe yesterday. He says he thinks the _Westminster_, under _my_ management, the most important means of enlightenment of a literary nature in existence; the _Edinburgh_, under Jeffrey, nothing to it, etc.!!! I wish _I_ thought so too. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 21st June, 1852.] Your joint assurance of welcome strengthens the centripetal force that would carry me to you; but, on the other hand, sundry considerations are in favor of the centrifugal force, which, I suppose, will carry me to Broadstairs or Ramsgate. On the whole, I prefer to keep my visit to you as a _bonne-bouche_, when I am just in the best physical and mental state for enjoying it. I hope to get away on Saturday, or on Wednesday at the latest. I think the third number of the _Review_ will be capital; thoroughly readable, and yet not frothy. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 23d June, 1852.] I have assured Herbert Spencer that you will think it a sufficiently formal answer to the invitation you sent him through Mr. Lewes, if I tell you that he will prefer waiting for the pleasure of a visit to you until I am with you--if you will have him then. I spent the evening at Mr. Parkes's on Monday. Yesterday Herbert Spencer brought his father to see me--a large-brained, highly informed man, with a certain quaintness and simplicity, altogether very pleasing. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 25th June, (?) 1852.] After all, I begin to hope that our next number will be the best yet. Forbes is good; Froude ditto; and James Martineau, if I may judge from a glance at a few of his pages, admirable. Lewes has written us an agreeable article on "Lady Novelists." There is a mysterious contribution to the independent section. We are hoping that an article on "Edinburgh Literary Men," yet to come, will be very good. If not, we shall put in "Niebuhr;" it is capital. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, end of June, 1852.] The opera, Chiswick Flower Show, the French play, and the Lyceum, all in one week, brought their natural consequences of headache and hysterics--all yesterday. At five o'clock I felt quite sure that life was unendurable. This morning, however, the weather and I are both better, having cried ourselves out and used up all our clouds; and I can even contemplate living six months longer. Was there ever anything more dreary than this June? [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Friday morning, 2d July, 1852.] I am busy packing to-day, and am going to Mr. Parkes's to dinner. Miss Parkes has introduced me to Barbara Smith,[39] whose expression I like exceedingly, and hope to know more of her. I go to Broadstairs on Saturday. I am sadly in want of the change, and would much rather present myself to you all when I can do you more credit as a friend. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 4th July, 1852.] I warn you against Ramsgate, which is a strip of London come out for an airing. Broadstairs is perfect; and I have the snuggest little lodging conceivable, with a motherly good woman and a nice little damsel of fourteen to wait on me. There are only my two rooms in this cottage, but lodgings are plentiful in the place. I have a sitting-room about eight feet by nine, and a bedroom a little larger; yet in that small space there is almost every comfort. I pay a guinea a week for my rooms, so I shall not ruin myself by staying a month, unless I commit excesses in coffee and sugar. I am thinking whether it would not be wise to retire from the world and live here for the rest of my days. With some fresh paper on the walls, and an easy-chair, I think I could resign myself. Come and tell me your opinion. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th July, 1852.] I thought of you last night, when I was in a state of mingled rapture and torture--rapture at the sight of a glorious evening sky, torture at the sight and hearing of the belaboring given to the poor donkey which was drawing me from Ramsgate home. I had a note from Miss Florence Nightingale yesterday. I was much pleased with her. There is a loftiness of mind about her which is well expressed by her form and manner. Glad you are pleased with the _Westminster_. I do think it a rich number--matter for a fortnight's reading and thought. Lewes has not half done it justice in the _Leader_. To my mind the "Niebuhr" article is as good as any of them. If you could see me in my quiet nook! I am half ashamed of being in such clover, both spiritually and materially, while some of my friends are on the dusty highways, without a tuft of grass or a flower to cheer them. A letter from you will be delightful. We seem to have said very little to each other lately. But I always know--rejoice to know--that there is the same Sara for me as there is the same green earth and arched sky, when I am good and wise enough to like the best thing. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 21st July, 1852.] Do not be anxious about me--there is no cause. I am profiting, body and mind, from quiet walks and talks with nature, gathering "lady's bedstraw" and "rest-harrow," and other pretty things; picking up shells (not in the Newtonian sense, but literally); reading Aristotle, to find out what is the chief good; and eating mutton-chops, that I may have strength to pursue it. If you insist on my writing about "emotions," why, I must get some up expressly for the purpose. But I must own I would rather not, for it is the grand wish and object of my life to get rid of them as far as possible, seeing they have already had more than their share of my nervous energy. I shall not be in town on the 2d of August--at least, I pray Heaven to forbid it. Mrs. Bray paid a visit to Broadstairs from the 3d to the 12th August, and the next letter is addressed to her. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Thursday, 14th (?) Aug. 1852.] Are you really the better for having been here? Since you left I have been continually regretting that I could not make your visit pleasanter. I was irritable and out of sorts; but you have an apparatus for secreting happiness--that's it. Providence, seeing that I wanted weaning from this place, has sent a swarm of harvest-bugs and lady-birds. These, with the half-blank, half-dissipated feeling which comes on after having companions and losing them, make me think of returning to London on Saturday week with more resignation than I have felt before. I am very well and "plucky"--a word which I propose to substitute for happy, as more truthful. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 19th Aug. 1852.] For the last two months I have been at this pretty, quiet place, which "David Copperfield" has made classic, far away from London noise and smoke. I am sorry now that I brought with me Fox's "Lectures," which I had not managed to read before I left town. But I shall return thither at the end of next week, and I will at once forward the volume to Gary Lane. One sees no novels less than a year old at the sea-side, so I am unacquainted with the "Blithedale Romance," except through the reviews, which have whetted my curiosity more than usual. Hawthorne is a grand favorite of mine, and I shall be sorry if he do not go on surpassing himself. It is sad to hear of your only going out to consult a physician. Illness seems to me the one woe for which there is no comfort--no compensation. But perhaps you find it otherwise, for you have a less rebellious spirit than I, and suffering seems to make you look all the more gentle. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 22d Aug. 1852.] Thinking of you this morning--as I often do, though you may not suppose so--it was "borne in on my mind" that I must write to you, and I obey the inspiration without waiting to consider whether there may be a corresponding desire on your part to hear from me. I live in a world of cares and joys so remote from the one in which we used to sympathize with each other that I find positive communication with you difficult. But I am not unfaithful to old loves--they were sincere, and they are lasting. I hope you will not think it too much trouble to write me a little news of yourself. I want very much to know if your health continues good, and if there has been any change in your circumstances, that I may have something like a true conception of you. All is well with me so far as my individuality is concerned, but I have plenty of friends' troubles to sorrow over. I hope you have none to add to the number. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Aug. 1852.] I celebrated my return to London by the usual observance--that is to say, a violent headache, which is not yet gone, and of course I am in the worst spirits, and my opinion of things is not worth a straw. I tell you this that you may know why I only send you this scrap instead of the long letter which I have _in petto_ for you, and which would otherwise have been written yesterday. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d Sept. 1852.] Somehow my letters--except those which come under the inexorable imperative _must_ (the "ought" I manage well enough to shirk)--will not get written. The fact is, I am in a croaking mood, and I am waiting and waiting for it to pass by, so if my pen croaks in spite of my resolutions to the contrary, please to take no notice of it. Ever since I came back I have felt something like the madness which imagines that the four walls are contracting and going to crush one. Harriet Martineau (in a private letter shown to me), with incomprehensible ignorance, jeers at Lewes for introducing _psychology_ as a science in his Comte papers. Why, Comte himself holds psychology to be a necessary link in the chain of science. Lewes only suggests a change in its relations. There is a great, dreary article on the Colonies by my side, asking for reading and abridgment, so I cannot go on scribbling--indeed, my hands are so hot and tremulous this morning that it will be better for you if I leave off. Your little loving notes are very precious to me; but I say nothing about matters of feeling till my good genius has returned from his excursions; the evil one has possession just now. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 11th Sept. 1852.] The week has really yielded nothing worth telling you. I am a few degrees more wizened and muddle-headed; and the articles for the _Review_ are, on the whole, unsatisfactory. I fear a discerning public will think this number a sad falling-off. This is the greater pity, that said public is patronizing us well at present. Scarcely a day passes that some one does not write to order the _Review_, as a permanent subscriber. You may as well expect news from an old spider or bat as from me. I can only tell you what I think of the "Blithedale Romance," of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and the American Fishery Dispute--all which, I am very sure, you don't want to know. Do have pity on me, and make a little variety in my life, by all sending me a scrap--never mind if it be only six lines apiece. Perhaps something will befall me one day or other. As it is, nothing happens to me but the ringing of the dinner-bell and the arrival of a proof. I have no courage to walk out. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 18th Sept. 1852.] Lewes called on me the other day and told me of a conversation with Professor Owen, in which the latter declared his conviction that the cerebrum was not the organ of the mind, but the cerebellum rather. He founds on the enormous comparative size of brain in the grampus! The professor has a huge anterior lobe of his own. What would George Combe say if I were to tell him? But every great man has his paradox, and that of the first anatomist in Europe ought to be a startling one. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Saturday, Sept. 1852.] We shall make a respectable figure after all--nine articles, and two or three of them good, the rest not bad. The _Review_ has been selling well lately, in spite of its being the end of the quarter. We have made splendid provision for January--Froude, Harriet Martineau, Theodore Parker, Samuel Brown, etc., etc. The autumnal freshness of the mornings makes me dream of mellowing woods and gossamer threads. I am really longing for my journey. Bessie Parkes spent last evening with me, chatting of experience. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 2d Oct. 1852.] Pity me--I have had the headache for four days incessantly. But now I am well, and even the Strand seems an elysium by contrast. I set off on Tuesday for Edinburgh by express. This is awfully expensive, but it seems the only way of reaching there alive with my frail body. I have had the kindest notes from the Combes and from Harriet Martineau. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 7th Oct. 1852.] Here I am in this beautiful Auld Reekie once more--hardly recognizing myself for the same person as the _damozel_ who left it by the coach with a heavy heart some six years ago. The Combes are all kindness, and I am in clover--an elegant house, glorious fires, and a comfortable carriage--in short, just in the circumstances to nourish sleek optimism, convince one that this is _le meilleur des mondes possibles_, and make one shudder at the impiety of all who doubt it. Last evening Mr. Robert Cox came to tea, to be introduced to me as my _cicerone_ through the lions of Edinburgh. The talk last night was pleasant enough, though, of course, all the interlocutors besides Mr. Combe have little to do but shape elegant modes of negation and affirmation, like the people who are talked to by Socrates in Plato's dialogues--"Certainly," "that I firmly believe," etc. I have a beautiful view from my room window--masses of wood, distant hills, the Firth, and four splendid buildings, clotted far apart--not an ugly object to be seen. When I look out in the morning, it is as if I had waked up in Utopia or Icaria, or one of Owen's parallelograms. The weather is perfect--all the more delightful to me for its northern sharpness, which is just what I wanted to brace me. I have been out walking and driving all day, and have only time before dinner to send this _paar Worte_, but I may have still less time to-morrow. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 12th Oct. 1852.] Between the beauty of the weather and the scenery, and the kindness of good people, I am tipsy with pleasure. But I shall tell you nothing of what I see and do, because that would be taking off some of the edge from your pleasure in seeing me. One's dear friend who has nothing at all to tell one is a bore. Is it not so, honor bright? I enjoy talking to Mr. Combe; he can tell me many things, especially about men in America and elsewhere, which are valuable; and, besides, I sometimes manage to get in more than a negative or affirmative. He and Mrs. Combe are really affectionate to me, and the mild warmth of their regard, with the perfect order and elegance of everything about me, are just the soothing influence to do me good. They urge me to stay longer, but I shall adhere to my original determination of going to Miss Martineau's on the 20th, and I do not _mean_ to stay with her longer than the 25th. We are going to-day to Craigcrook (Jeffrey's place), a beautiful spot, which old October has mellowed into his richest tints. Such a view of Edinburgh from it! [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Oct. 1852.] Those who know the article on Whewell to be Mill's, generally think it good, but I confess to me it is unsatisfactory. The sun _does_ shine here, albeit this is the 12th October. I wish you could see the view from Salisbury Crag. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Oct. 1852.] Yes, he is an apostle. An apostle, it is true, with a back and front drawing-room, but still earnest, convinced, consistent, having fought a good fight, and now peacefully enjoying the retrospect of it. I shall leave these good friends with regret, almost with repentings, that I did not determine to pay them a longer visit. I have had a pleasant note from Miss Martineau this morning, with a vignette of her house--I suppose to make me like all the better the idea of going there. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Thursday night, 22d Oct. 1852.] The coach brought me to Miss Martineau's gate at half-past six yesterday evening, and she was there, with a beaming face, to welcome me. Mr. Atkinson joined us this morning, and is a very agreeable addition. There has been an intelligent gentleman visitor to-day, who is interested in Miss Martineau's building society; and we have been trudging about, looking at cottages and enjoying the sight of the mountains, spite of the rain and mist. The weather is not promising, that is the worst of it. Miss M. is charming in her own home--quite handsome from her animation and intelligence. She came behind me, put her hands round me, and kissed me in the prettiest way this evening, telling me she was so glad she had got me here. I send you her note that you may have an idea of "The Knoll." [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 24th Oct. 1852.] We had a fine day yesterday, and went to Borrowdale. I have not been well since I have been here. Still I manage to enjoy, certainly not myself, but my companions and the scenery. I shall set off from here on Tuesday morning, and shall be due at the Coventry station, I believe, at 5.50. After a pleasant ten days' visit to Rosehill, Miss Evans returned to London on the 3d November. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 6th Nov. 1852.] To get into a first-class carriage, fall asleep, and awake to find one's self where one would be, is almost as good as having Prince Hussein's carpet. This was my easy way of getting to London on Thursday. By 5 o'clock I had unpacked my boxes and made my room tidy, and then I began to feel some satisfaction in being settled down where I am of most use just now. After dinner came Herbert Spencer, and spent the evening. Yesterday morning Mr. Greg called on his way to Paris, to express his regret that he did not see me at Ambleside. He is very pleasing, but somehow or other he frightens me dreadfully. I am going to plunge into Thackeray's novel now ("Esmond"). [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Saturday, Nov. (?) 1852.] Oh, this hideous fog! Let me grumble, for I have had headache the last three days, and there seems little prospect of anything else in such an atmosphere. I am ready to vow that I will not live in the Strand again after Christmas. If I were not choked by the fog, the time would trot pleasantly withal, but of what use are brains and friends when one lives in a light such as might be got in the chimney? "Esmond" is the most uncomfortable book you can imagine. You remember how you disliked "François le Champi." Well, the story of "Esmond" is just the same. The hero is in love with the daughter all through the book, and marries the mother at the end. You should read the debates on the opening of Parliament in the _Times_. Lord Brougham, the greatest of English orators, perpetrates the most delicious _non sequitur_ I have seen for a long time. "My Lords, I believe that any disturbance of the repose of the world is very remote, _because it is our undeniable right and an unquestionable duty_ to be prepared with the means of defence, should such an event occur." These be thy gods, O Israel! [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Monday, 20th Nov. 1852.] I perceive your reading of the golden rule is "Do as you are done by;" and I shall be wiser than to expect a letter from you another Monday morning, when I have not earned it by my Saturday's billet. The fact is, both callers and work thicken--the former sadly interfering with the latter. I will just tell you how it was last Saturday, and that will give you an idea of my days. My task was to read an article of Greg's in the _North British_ on "Taxation," a heap of newspaper articles, and all that J. S. Mill says on the same subject. When I had got some way into this _magnum mare_, in comes Mr. Chapman, with a thick German volume. "Will you read enough of this to give me your opinion of it?" Then of course I must have a walk after lunch, and when I had sat down again, thinking that I had two clear hours before dinner, rap at the door--Mr. Lewes, who, of course, sits talking till the second bell rings. After dinner another visitor, and so behold me, at 11 P.M., still very far at sea on the subject of Taxation, but too tired to keep my eyes open. We had Bryant the poet last evening--a pleasant, quiet, elderly man. Do you know of this second sample of plagiarism by D'Israeli, detected by the _Morning Chronicle_?[40] It is worth sending for its cool impudence. Write me some news about trade, at all events. I could tolerate even Louis Napoleon, if somehow or other he could have a favorable influence on the Coventry trade. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 4th Dec. 1852.] Another week almost "with the years beyond the flood." What has it brought you? To me it has brought articles to read--for the most part satisfactory--new callers, and letters to nibble at my time, and a meeting of the Association for the Abolition of Taxes on Knowledge. I am invited to go to the Leigh Smiths on Monday evening to meet Mr. Robert Noel. Herbert Spencer is invited, too, because Mr. Noel wants especially to see him. Barbara Smith speaks of Mr. R. Noel as their "dear German friend." So the Budget is come out, and I am to pay income-tax. All very right, of course. An enlightened personage like me has no "ignorant impatience of taxation." I am glad to hear of the Lectures to Young Men and the banquet of the Laborers' Friend Society. "Be not weary in well-doing." Thanks to Sara for her letter. She must not mind paying the income-tax; it is a right principle that Dizzy is going upon; and with her great conscientiousness she ought to enjoy being flayed on a right principle. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 10th Dec. 1852.] I am not well--all out of sorts--and what do you think I am minded to do? Take a return ticket, and set off by the train to-morrow 12 o'clock, have a talk with you and a blow over the hill, and come back relieved on Monday. I the rather indulge myself in this, because I think I shall not be able to be with you until some time after Christmas. Pray forgive me for not sending you word before. I have only just made up my mind. This visit to Rosehill lasted only from the 11th to 13th December, and the following short note is the next communication: [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 19th (?) Dec. 1852.] I am very wretched to-day on many accounts, and am only able to write you two or three lines. I have heard this morning that Mr. Clarke is dangerously ill. Poor Chrissey and her children. Thank you for your kind letter. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 21st Dec. 1852.] I dare say you will have heard, before you receive this, that Edward Clarke is dead. I am to go to the funeral, which will take place on Friday. I am debating with myself as to what I ought to do now for poor Chrissey, but I must wait until I have been on the spot and seen my brother. If you hear no more from me, I shall trust to your goodness to give me a bed on Thursday night. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Christmas Day, 25th Dec. 1852, from Meriden.] Your love and goodness are a comforting presence to me everywhere, whether I am ninety or only nine miles away from you. Chrissey bears her trouble much better than I expected. We hope that an advantageous arrangement may be made about the practice; and there is a considerable sum in debts to be collected. I shall return to town on Wednesday. It would have been a comfort to see you again before going back, but there are many reasons for not doing so. I am satisfied now that my duties do not lie _here_, though the dear creatures here will be a constant motive for work and economy. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 31st Dec. 1852.] I arrived here only yesterday. I had agreed with Chrissey that, all things considered, it was wiser for me to return to town; that I could do her no substantial good by staying another week, while I should be losing time as to other matters. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 7th Jan. 1853.] I am out of spirits about the _Review_. I should be glad to run away from it altogether. But one thing is clear, that it would be a great deal worse if I were not here. This is the only thought that consoles me. We are thinking of sending Chrissey's eldest boy to Australia. A patient of his father's has offered to place him under suitable protection at Adelaide, and I strongly recommend Chrissey to accept her offer--that is, if she will let it be available a year hence; so I have bought Sidney's book on Australia, and am going to send it to Chrissey, to enlighten her about matters there, and accustom her mind to the subject. You are "jolly," I dare say, as good people have a right to be. Tell me as much of your happiness as you can, that I may rejoice in your joy, having none of my own. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, Jan. 1853.] I begin to feel for other people's wants and sorrows a little more than I used to do. Heaven help us! said the old religion; the new one, from its very lack of that faith, will teach us all the more to help one another. Tell Sara she is as good as a group of spice-islands to me; she wafts the pleasantest influences, even from a distance. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th Jan. 1853.] Pray do not lay the sins of the article on the "Atomic Theory" to poor Lewes's charge. How you could take it for his I cannot conceive. It is as remote from his style, both of thinking and writing, as anything can be. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 18th Jan. 1853.] This week has yielded nothing to me but a crop of very large headaches. The pain has gone from my head at last, but I am feeling very much shattered, and find it easier to cry than to do anything else. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 1st Feb. 1853.] My complaint, of which I am now happily rid, was rheumatism in the right arm; a sufficient reason, you will see, for my employing a scribe to write that promise which I now fulfil. I am going into the country, perhaps for a fortnight, so that, if you are kind enough to come here on Wednesday evening, I shall not have the pleasure of seeing you. All the more reason for writing to you, in spite of cold feet and the vilest pens in the world. Francis Newman is likely to come once or twice in the season; not more. He has, of course, a multitude of engagements, and many more attractive ones than a _soirée_ in the Strand. Never mention me to him in the character of editress. I think--at least, I am told--that he has no high estimate of woman's powers and functions. But let that pass. He is a very pure, noble being, and it is good only to look at such. The article on "Slavery," in the last number of the _Westminster_--which I think the best article of them all--is by W. E. Forster, a Yorkshire manufacturer, who married Dr. Arnold's daughter. He is a very earnest, independent thinker, and worth a gross of literary hacks who have the "trick" of writing. I hope you are interested in the Slavery question, and in America generally--that cradle of the future. I used resolutely to turn away from American politics, and declare that the United States was the last region of the world I should care to visit. Even now I almost loathe the _common_ American type of character. But I am converted to a profound interest in the history, the laws, the social and religious phases of North America, and long for some knowledge of them. Is it not cheering to think of the youthfulness of this little planet, and the immensely greater youthfulness of our race upon it? to think that the higher moral tendencies of human nature are yet only in their germ? I feel this more thoroughly when I think of that great western continent, with its infant cities, its huge, uncleared forests, and its unamalgamated races. I dare say you have guessed that the article on "Ireland" is Harriet Martineau's. Herbert Spencer did _not_ contribute to the last number. _� propos_ of articles, do you see the _Prospective Review_? There is an admirable critique of Kingsley's "Phaethon" in it, by James Martineau. But perhaps you may not be as much in love with Kingsley's genius, and as much "riled" by his faults, as I am. Of course you have read "Ruth" by this time. Its style was a great refreshment to me, from its finish and fulness. How women have the courage to write, and publishers the spirit to buy, at a high price, the false and feeble representations of life and character that most feminine novels give, is a constant marvel to me. "Ruth," with all its merits, will not be an enduring or classical fiction--will it? Mrs. Gaskell seems to me to be constantly misled by a love of sharp contrasts--of "dramatic" effects. She is not contented with the subdued coloring, the half-tints, of real life. Hence she agitates one for the moment, but she does not secure one's lasting sympathy; her scenes and characters do not become typical. But how pretty and graphic are the touches of description! That little attic in the minister's house, for example, which, with its pure white dimity bed-curtains, its bright-green walls, and the rich brown of its stained floor, remind one of a snowdrop springing out of the soil. Then the rich humor of Sally, and the sly satire in the description of Mr. Bradshaw. Mrs. Gaskell has, certainly, a charming mind, and one cannot help loving her as one reads her books. A notable book just come out is Wharton's "Summary of the Laws relating to Women." "Enfranchisement of women" only makes creeping progress; and that is best, for woman does not yet deserve a much better lot than man gives her. I am writing to you the last thing, and am so tired that I am not quite sure whether I finish my sentences. But your divining power will supply their deficiencies. The first half of February was spent in visits to the Brays and to Mrs. Clarke, at Attleboro, and on returning to London Miss Evans writes: [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 15th Feb. 1853.] I am only just returned to a sense of the real world about me, for I have been reading "Villette," a still more wonderful book than "Jane Eyre." There is something almost preternatural in its power. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 19th Feb. 1853.] Mrs. Follen showed me a delightful letter which she has had from Mrs. Stowe, telling all about herself. She begins by saying: "I am a little bit of a woman, rather more than forty, as withered and dry as a pinch of snuff; never very well worth looking at in my best days, and now a decidedly used-up article." The whole letter is most fascinating, and makes one love her. "Villette," "Villette"--have you read it? [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 25th Feb. 1853.] We had an agreeable evening on Wednesday--a Mr. Huxley being the centre of interest. Since then I have been headachy and in a perpetual rage over an article that gives me no end of trouble, and will not be satisfactory after all. I should like to stick red-hot skewers through the writer, whose style is as sprawling as his handwriting. For the rest, I am in excellent spirits, though not in the best health or temper. I am in for loads of work next quarter, but I shall not tell you what I am going to do. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 19th Mch. 1853.] I have been ready to tear my hair with disappointment about the next number of the _Review_. In short, I am a miserable editor. I think I shall never have the energy to move--it seems to be of so little consequence where I am or what I do. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Mch. 1853.] On Saturday I was correcting proofs literally from morning till night; yesterday ditto. The _Review_ will be better than I once feared, but not so good as I once hoped. I suppose the weather has chilled your charity as well as mine. I am very hard and Mephistophelian just now, but I lay it all to this second winter. We had a pleasant evening last Wednesday. Lewes, as always, genial and amusing. He has quite won my liking, in spite of myself. Of course, Mr. Bray highly approves the recommendation of the Commissioners on _Divorce_. I have been to Blandford Square (Leigh Smith's) to an evening party this week. Dined at Mr. Parkes's on Sunday, and am invited to go there again to-night to meet the Smiths. Lewes was describing Currer Bell to me yesterday as a little, plain, provincial, sickly looking old maid. Yet what passion, what fire in her! Quite as much as in George Sand, only the clothing is less voluptuous. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 11th April, 1853.] What do you think of my going to Australia with Chrissey and all her family?--to settle them, and then come back. I am just going to write to her, and suggest the idea. One wants _something_ to keep up one's faith in happiness--a ray or two for one's friends, if not for one's self. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 16th April, 1853.] We had an agreeable _soirée_ last Wednesday. I fell in love with Helen Faucit. She is the most poetic woman I have seen for a long time; there is the ineffable charm of a fine character which makes itself felt in her face, voice, and manner. I am taking doses of agreeable follies, as you recommend. Last night I went to the French theatre, and to-night I am going to the opera to hear "William Tell." People are very good to me. Mr. Lewes, especially, is kind and attentive, and has quite won my regard, after having had a good deal of my vituperation. Like a few other people in the world, he is much better than he seems. A man of heart and conscience, wearing a mask of flippancy. When the warm days come, and the bearskin is under the acacia, you must have me again. 6th May.--Went to Rosehill and returned on 23d to Strand. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 17th June, 1853.] On Wednesday I dined at Sir James Clark's, where the Combes are staying, and had a very pleasant evening. The Combes have taken lodgings in Oxford Terrace, where I mean to go. It is better than the Strand--trees waving before the windows, and no noise of omnibuses. Last Saturday evening I had quite a new pleasure. We went to see Rachel again, and sat on the stage between the scenes. When the curtain fell we walked about and saw the green-room, and all the dingy, dusty paraphernalia that make up theatrical splendor. I have not yet seen the "Vashti" of Currer Bell in Rachel, though there was some approach to it in Adrienne Lecouvreur. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th June, 1853.] On Saturday we will go to Ockley, near Dorking, where are staying Miss Julia Smith, Barbara Smith, and Bessie Parkes. I shall write to the Ockley party to-day and tell them of the probability that they will see you. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 3d Aug. 1853, from St. Leonards.] I never felt the delight of the thorough change that the coast gives one so much as now, and I shall be longing to be off with you again in October. I am on a delightful hill looking over the heads of the houses, and having a vast expanse of sea and sky for my only view. The bright weather and genial air--so different from what I have had for a year before--make me feel as happy and stupid as a well-conditioned cow. I sit looking at the sea and the sleepy ships with a purely animal _bien être_. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, 9th Aug. 1853.] It would have been a satisfaction to your benevolence to see me sitting on the beach laughing at the _Herald's_ many jokes, and sympathizing with your indignation against Judge Maule. It always helps me to be happy when I know that you are so; but I do not choose to vindicate myself against doubts of that, because it is unworthy of you to entertain them. I am going on as well as possible physically--really getting stout. I should like to have a good laugh with you immensely. How nice it would be to meet you and Cara on the beach this evening, and instead of sending you such a miserable interpreter of one's feelings as a letter, give you the look and the hand of warm affection! This British Channel really looks as blue as the Mediterranean to-day. What weather! [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Aug. 1853.] For the first time in my experience I am positively revelling in the _Prospective_. James Martineau transcends himself in beauty of imagery in the article on Sir William Hamilton, but I have not finished him yet. Yesterday it rained _sans_ intermission, and of course I said _cui bono?_ and found my troubles almost more than I could bear; but to-day the sun shines, and there is blue above and blue below, consequently I find life very glorious, and myself a particularly fortunate _diavolessa_. The landlord of my lodgings is a German, comes from Saxe-Weimar, knows well the Duchess of Orleans, and talked to me this morning of _Mr._ Schiller and _Mr._ Goethe. _� propos_ of Goethe, there is a most true, discriminating passage about him in the article on Shakespeare in the _Prospective_. _Mr._ Goethe is one of my companions here, and I had felt some days before reading the passage the truth which it expresses. Subjoined is the passage from the _Prospective Review_ of August, 1853: "Goethe's works are too much in the nature of literary studies; the mind is often deeply impressed by them, but one doubts if the author was. He saw them as he saw the houses of Weimar and the plants in the act of metamorphosis. He had a clear perception of their fixed condition and their successive transitions, but he did not really (at least so it seems to us) comprehend their motive power. In a word, he appreciated their life but not their liveliness.... And we trace this not to a defect in imaginative power--a defect which it would be a simple absurdity to impute to Goethe--but to the tone of his character and the habits of his mind. He moved hither and thither through life, but he was always a man apart. He mixed with unnumbered kinds of men, with courts and academies, students and women, camps and artists, but everywhere he was with them, yet not of them. In every scene he was there, and he made it clear that he was there with a reserve and as a stranger. He went there _to experience_. As a man of universal culture, and well skilled in the order and classification of human life, the fact of any one class or order being beyond his reach or comprehension seemed an absurdity; and it was an absurdity. He thought that he was equal to moving in any description of society, and he was equal to it; but then, on that account, he was absorbed in none." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Sept. 1853.] As for me, I am in the best health and spirits. I have had a letter from Mr. Combe to-day, urging me to go to Edinburgh, but I have made an engagement with Mr. Chapman to do work which will oblige me to remain in London. Mrs. P. is a very bonny, pleasant-looking woman, with a smart drawing-room and liberal opinions--in short, such a friend as self-interest, well understood, would induce one to cultivate. I find it difficult to meet with any lodgings at once tolerable and cheap. My theory is to _live_ entirely--that is, pay rent and find food--out of my positive income, and then work for as large a surplus as I can get. The next number of the _Review_ will be better than usual. Froude writes on the "Book of Job"! He at first talked of an article on the three great _subjective_ poems--Job, Faust, and Hamlet--an admirable subject--but it has shrunk to the Book of Job alone. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Oct. 1853.] I have been busied about my lodgings all afternoon. I am not going to Albion Street, but to 21 Cambridge Street, Hyde Park Square. I hope you will be pleased with our present number. If you don't think the "Universal Postulate" first-rate, I shall renounce you as a critic. Why don't you write grumbling letters to me when you are out of humor with life, instead of making me ashamed of myself for ever having grumbled to you? I have been a more good-for-nothing correspondent than usual lately; this affair of getting lodgings, added to my other matters, has taken up my time and thoughts. I have promised to do some work to-night and to-morrow for a person[41] who is rather more idle than myself, so I have not a moment to spare. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Oct. 1853.] I am reading "The Religion of the Heart" (Leigh Hunt's), and am far more pleased with it than I expected to be. I have just fallen on two passages with which you will agree. "Parker ... is full of the poetry of religion; Martineau equally so, with a closer style and incessant eloquence of expression, perhaps a perilous superabundance of it as regards the claims of matter over manner; and his assumptions of perfection in the character of Jesus are so reiterated and peremptory that in a man of less evident heart and goodness they might almost look like a very unction of insincerity or of policy, of doubt forcing itself to seem undoubting. Hennell's 'Christian Theism' is one long, beautiful discourse proclaiming the great Bible of Creation, and reconciling Pagan and Christian Philosophy." Good Sir James Clark stopped me in the Park yesterday, as I was sauntering along with eyes on the clouds, and made very fatherly inquiries about me, urging me to spend a quiet evening with him and Lady Clark next week--which I will certainly do; for they are two capital people, without any snobbery. I like my lodgings--the housekeeper cooks charming little dinners for me, and I have not one disagreeable to complain of at present, save such as are inseparable from a ground-floor. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, 29th Oct. 1853.] Last night I saw the first fine specimen of a man in the shape of a clergyman that I ever met with--Dawes, the Dean of Hereford. He is the man who has been making the experiment of mingling the middle and lower classes in schools. He has a face so intelligent and benignant that children might grow good by looking at it. Harriet Martineau called yesterday. She is going to her brother's at Birmingham soon. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 3d Nov. 1853.] Mr. Lewes was at Cambridge about a fortnight ago, and found that Herbert Spencer was a great deal talked of there for the article on the "Universal Postulate," as well as other things. Mr. Lewes himself has a knot of devotees there who make his "History of Philosophy" a private text-book. Miss Martineau's "Comte" is out now. Do you mean to _do_ it? or Mr. Lewes's? We can get no one to write an article on Comte for the next number of the _Westminster_--Bain, our last hope, refusing. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, 5th Nov. 1853.] I think you would find some capital extracts for the _Herald_ (Coventry), in the article on "Church Parties" in the _Edinburgh_. The _Record_ is attempting a reply to it, in which it talks of the truculent infidelity of _Voltaire_ AND _Robespierre_! Has A. sent you his book on the Sabbath? If ever I write a book I will make a present of it to nobody; it is the surest way of taking off the edge of appetite for it, if no more. I am as well as possible; and certainly, when I put my head into the house in the Strand, I feel that I have gained, or, rather, escaped, a great deal physically by my change. Have you known the misery of writing with a _tired_ steel pen, which is reluctant to make a mark? If so, you will know why I leave off. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 7th Nov. 1853.] Chrissey has just sent me a letter, which tells that you have been suffering severely, and that you are yet very ill. I must satisfy my own feelings by telling you that I grieve at this, though it will do you little good to know it. Still, when _I_ am suffering, I do care for sympathy, and perhaps you are of the same mind. If so, think of me as your loving sister, who remembers all your kindness to her, all the pleasant hours she has had with you, and every little particular of her intercourse with you, however long and far she may have been removed from you. Dear Fanny, I can never be indifferent to your happiness or sorrow, and in this present sad affliction my thoughts and love are with you. I shall tease you with no words about myself _now_--perhaps by and by it will amuse you to have a longer letter. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Bray, 8th Nov. 1853.] Hitherto I have been spending £9 per month--at least after that rate--but I have had frequent guests. I am exceedingly comfortable, and feel quite at home now. Harriet Martineau has been very kind--called again on Tuesday, and yesterday sent to invite me to go to Lady Compton's, where she is staying, on Saturday evening. This, too, in spite of my having vexed her by introducing Mr. Lewes to her, which I did as a desirable bit of peacemaking. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1853 (thirty-fourth birthday).] I begin this year more happily than I have done most years of my life. "Notre vraie destinée," says Comte, "se compose de _resignation_ et _d'activité_"--and I seem more disposed to both than I have ever been before. Let us hope that we shall both get stronger by the year's activity--calmer by its resignation. I know it may be just the contrary--don't suspect me of being a canting optimist. We _may_ both find ourselves at the end of the year going faster to the hell of conscious moral and intellectual weakness. Still, there is a possibility--even a probability--the other way. I have not seen Harriet Martineau's "Comte" yet--she is going to give me a copy--but Mr. Lewes tells me it seems to him admirably well done. I told Mr. Chapman yesterday that I wished to give up my connection with the editorship of the _Westminster_. He wishes me to continue the present state of things until April. I shall be much more satisfied on many accounts to have done with that affair; but I shall find the question of supplies rather a difficult one this year, as I am not likely to get any money either for "Feuerbach" or for "The Idea of a Future Life,"[42] for which I am to have "half profits"=0/0! I hope you will appreciate this _bon-mot_ as I do--"C'est un homme admirable--il se tait en sept langues!"[43] [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 2d Dec. 1853.] I am going to detail all my troubles to you. In the first place, the door of my sitting-room doesn't quite fit, and a draught is the consequence. Secondly, there is a piano in the house which has decidedly entered on its second childhood, and this piano is occasionally played on by Miss P. with a really enviable _aplomb_. Thirdly, the knocks at the door startle me--an annoyance inseparable from a ground-floor room. Fourthly, Mrs. P. scolds the servants _stringendo e fortissimo_ while I am dressing in the morning. Fifthly--there is no fifthly. I really have not another discomfort when I am well, which, alas! I have not been for the last ten days; so, while I have been up to the chin in possibilities of enjoyment, I have been too sick and headachy to use them. One thing is needful--a good digestion. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 28th Dec. 1853.] Spent Christmas Day alone at Cambridge Street. How shall I thank you enough for sending me that splendid barrel of beet-root, so nicely packed? I shall certainly eat it and enjoy it, which, I fancy, is the end you sought, and not thanks. Don't suppose that I am looking miserable--_au contraire_. My only complaints just now are idleness and dislike-to-getting-up-in-the-morningness, whereby the day is made too short for what I want to do. I resolve every day to conquer the flesh the next, and, of course, am a little later in consequence. I dined with Arthur Helps yesterday at Sir James Clark's--very snug--only he and myself. He is a sleek man, with close-snipped hair; has a quiet, humorous way of talking, like his books. At the beginning of January, 1854, there was another visit to Mrs. Clarke, at Attleboro, for ten days. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 6th Feb. 1854.] In the last number of the _Scotsman_ which I sent you there was a report of a speech by Dr. Guthrie at the Education meeting, containing a passage which I meant to have copied. He is speaking of the impossibility of teaching morality with the "Bible shut," and says that in that case the teacher would be obliged to resort to "congruity and the fitness of things," about which the boy knows nothing more than that the apple is _fit_ for his mouth. What is wanted to convince the boy of his sin is, "Thou God seest me," and "Thou bleeding Lamb, the best morality is love of thee!" Mr. Lewes came a few minutes after you left, and desired me to tell you that he was sorry to miss you. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Houghton, 6th April, 1854.] Thank you for your very kind letter, which I received this morning. It is pleasant to think of you as quite well, and enjoying your sea-breezes. But do you imagine me sitting with my hands crossed, ready to start for any quarter of the world at the shortest notice. It is not on those terms that people, not rich, live in London. I shall be deep in proof-sheets till the end of May, and shall only dismiss them to make material for new ones. I dare say you will pity me. But, as one of Balzac's characters says, after maturity, "La vie n'est que l'exercice d'une habitude dans un milieu préféré;" and I could no more live out of my _milieu_ than the haddocks I dare say you are often having for dinner. My health is better. I had got into a labyrinth of headaches and palpitations, but I think I am out of it now, and I hope to keep well. I am not the less obliged to you, dear Fanny, for wishing to have me with you. But to leave London now would not be agreeable to me, even if it were morally possible. To see you again would certainly be a pleasure, but I hope that will come to pass without my crossing the Irish Channel. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Saturday, 18th April, 1854.] I am rather overdone with the week's work, and the prospect of what is to come next. Poor Lewes is ill, and is ordered not to put pen to paper for a month; so I have something to do for him in addition to my own work, which is rather pressing. He is gone to Arthur Helps, in Hampshire, for ten days, and I really hope this total cessation from work, in obedience to a peremptory order, will end in making him better than he has been for the last year. No opera and no fun for me for the next month. Happily, I shall have no time to regret it. Plenty of bright sun on your anemone bed. How lovely your place must look, with its fresh leaves! [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 23d May, 1854.] It is quite possible that I may wish to go to the Continent, or twenty other things. Mr. Lewes is going on a walking excursion to Windsor to-day with his doctor, who pronounces him better, but not yet fit for work. However, he is obliged to do a little, and must content himself with an _approximation_ to his doctor's directions. In this world all things are approximations, and in the system of the Dog Star too, in spite of Dr. Whewell. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Friday, no date, 1854.] My troubles are purely psychical--self-dissatisfaction, and despair of achieving anything worth the doing. I can truly say they vanish into nothing before any fear for the happiness of those I love. Thank you for letting me know how things are, for indeed I could not bear to be shut out from your anxieties. When I spoke of myself as an island, I did not mean that I was so exceptionally. We are all islands-- "Each in his hidden sphere of joy or woe, Our hermit spirits dwell and roam apart"-- and this seclusion is sometimes the most intensely felt at the very moment your friend is caressing you or consoling you. But this gradually becomes a source of satisfaction instead of repining. When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business--that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives, and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time. But we begin at last to understand that these things are important only to our own consciousness, which is but as a globule of dew on a rose-leaf, that at mid-day there will be no trace of. This is no high-flown sentimentality, but a simple reflection, which I find useful to me every day. I expect to see Mr. Lewes back again to-day. His poor head--his only fortune--is not well yet; and he has had the misery of being _ennuyé_ with idleness, without perceiving the compensating physical improvement. Still, I hope the good he has been getting has been greater than he has been conscious of. I expect "Feuerbach" will be all in print by the end of next week, and there are no skippings, except such as have been made on very urgent grounds. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Tuesday, 6th June, 1854.] Thanks for your assurance of welcome. I will trust to it when the gods send favorable circumstances. But I see no probability of my being able to be with you before your other midsummer visitors arrive. I delight to think that you are all a little more cheery. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Wednesday, 28th June, 1854.] I reached the Euston Station as dusty as an old ledger, but with no other "incommodity." I went to the Lyceum last night to see "Sunshine through the Clouds,"[44] a wonderfully original and beautiful piece by Mme. de Girardin, which makes one cry rather too much for pleasure. Vestris acts finely the bereaved mother, passing through all the gradations of doubt and hope to the actual recovery of her lost son. My idea of you is rather bright just now, and really helps to make me enjoy all that is enjoyable. That is part of the benefit I have had from my pleasant visit, which was made up of sunshine, green fields, pleasant looks, and good eatables--an excellent compound. Will you be so kind as to send my books by railway, _without_ the Shelley? [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, Monday, 4th July, 1854.] Pray consider the Strauss MSS. waste paper. _I_ shall never want them again. I dined with your old acquaintance, Dr. Conolly, at Sir James Clark's, the other day. He took me down to dinner, and we talked of you. The translation of Ludwig Feuerbach's "Wesen des Christenthums" was published in July in "Chapman's Quarterly Series," with Miss Evans's name on the titlepage as the translator, the first and only time her real name appeared in print. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th July, 1854.] I am going to pack up the Hebrew Grammar, the Apocryphal Gospels, and your pretty Titian, to be sent to you. Shall I despatch them by rail or deposit them with Mr. Chapman, to be asked for by Mr. Bray when he comes to town? I shall soon send you a good-bye, for I am preparing to go abroad (?). Herbert Spencer's article on the "Genesis of Science" is a good one. He will stand in the Biographical Dictionaries of 1854 as "Spencer, Herbert, an original and profound philosophical writer, especially known by his great work, ... which gave a new impulse to psychology, and has mainly contributed to the present advanced position of that science, compared with that which it had attained in the middle of the last century. The life of this philosopher, like that of the great Kant, offers little material for the narrator. Born in the year 1820," etc. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 20th July, 1854.] Dear friends--all three--I have only time to say good-bye, and God bless you. _Poste Restante_, Weimar, for the next six weeks, and afterwards Berlin. Ever your loving and grateful Marian. We have now been led up to the most important event in George Eliot's life--her union with Mr. George Henry Lewes. Here, as elsewhere, it seems to me to be of the first importance that she should speak for herself; and there is, fortunately, a letter to Mrs. Bray, dated in September, 1855--fourteen months after the event--which puts on record the point of view from which she regarded her own action. I give this letter here (out of its place as to date); and I may add, what, I think, has not been mentioned before, that not only was Mr. Lewes's previous family life irretrievably spoiled, but his home had been wholly broken up for nearly two years. In forming a judgment on so momentous a question, it is, above all things, necessary to understand what was actually undertaken, what was actually achieved; and, in my opinion, this can best be arrived at, not from any outside statement or arguments, but by consideration of the whole tenor of the life which follows, in the development of which Mr. Lewes's true character, as well as George Eliot's, will unfold itself. No words that any one else can write, no arguments any one else can use, will, I think, be so impressive as the life itself. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 4th Sept. 1855.] If there is any one action or relation of my life which is, and always has been, profoundly serious, it is my relation to Mr. Lewes. It is, however, natural enough that you should mistake me in many ways, for not only are you unacquainted with Mr. Lewes's real character and the course of his actions, but also it is several years now since you and I were much together, and it is possible that the modifications my mind has undergone may be quite in the opposite direction of what you imagine. No one can be better aware than yourself that it is possible for two people to hold different opinions on momentous subjects with equal sincerity, and an equally earnest conviction that their respective opinions are alone the truly moral ones. If we differ on the subject of the marriage laws, I at least can believe of you that you cleave to what you believe to be good; and I don't know of anything in the nature of your views that should prevent you from believing the same of me. _How far_ we differ I think we neither of us know, for I am ignorant of your precise views; and, apparently, you attribute to me both feelings and opinions which are not mine. We cannot set each other quite right in this matter in letters, but one thing I can tell you in few words. Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties do _not_ act as I have done. That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities of life can pronounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only understand by remembering how subtile and complex are the influences that mould opinion. But I _do_ remember this: and I indulge in no arrogant or uncharitable thoughts about those who condemn us, even though we might have expected a somewhat different verdict. From the majority of persons, of course, we never looked for anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of self-indulgence, except, indeed, that, being happy in each other, we find everything easy. We are working hard to provide for others better than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfil every responsibility that lies upon us. Levity and pride would not be a sufficient basis for that. Pardon me if, in vindicating myself from some unjust conclusions, I seem too cold and self-asserting. I should not care to vindicate myself if I did not love you and desire to relieve you of the pain which you say these conclusions have given you. Whatever I may have misinterpreted before, I do not misinterpret your letter this morning, but read in it nothing else than love and kindness towards me, to which my heart fully answers yes. I should like never to write about myself again; it is not healthy to dwell on one's own feelings and conduct, but only to try and live more faithfully and lovingly every fresh day. I think not one of the endless words and deeds of kindness and forbearance you have ever shown me has vanished from my memory. I recall them often, and feel, as about everything else in the past, how deficient I have been in almost every relation of my life. But that deficiency is irrevocable, and I can find no strength or comfort except in "pressing forward towards the things that are before," and trying to make the present better than the past. But if we should never be very near each other again, dear Cara, do bear this faith in your mind, that I was not insensible or ungrateful to all your goodness, and that I am one among the many for whom you have not lived in vain. I am very busy just now, and have been obliged to write hastily. Bear this in mind, and believe that no meaning is mine which contradicts my assurance that I am your affectionate and earnest friend. _SUMMARY._ MARCH, 1850, TO JULY, 1854. Return to England with M. d'Albert--Depressing effect of change--Visit to Rosehill--Visit to brother and sister at Griff and Meriden--Deeper depression--To Rosehill again with M. d'Albert--Makes her home there for sixteen months--Reviews Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect" in _Westminster_--Meets Mr. Chapman, the editor of the _Westminster_--Helps to settle Prospectus of new series of the _Review_--Visits Robert Noel at Bishop Steignton with Mrs. Bray--Visit to London--Crystal Palace--Returns to Rosehill, and meets Mr. and Mrs. George Combe--Goes to London as assistant editor of the _Westminster Review_--Letters to Brays--Review writing: Dr. Brabant, Foxton, Wilson--Meets Mr. Herbert Spencer--Miss Martineau--Distractions of London--Low health--Miss Bremer--Introduction to Mr. Lewes--Opinion of House of Lords--Carlyle's "Life of Sterling"--Carlyle anecdotes--Mackay--James Martineau--J. H. Newman's Lectures--Translation of Schleiermacher--Letter from Carlyle--Intimacy begins with Mr. Lewes--Reviews Carlyle's "Sterling" in _Westminster_--Visit to Rosehill--Returns to Strand--Harriet Martineau--Pierre Leroux--Louis Blanc--Miss Bessie Parkes--Mrs. Peter Taylor--"Margaret Fuller's Life"--Description of _Westminster_ reviewers--Growing intimacy with Mr. Herbert Spencer--Meeting of authors and booksellers at Mr. Chapman's--Admiration of Prince Albert--Grisi--Hack work of _Review_--Appreciation of Miss Martineau's writings--Singing of charity children at St. Paul's--George Combe's opinion of _Westminster_ editing--Barbara Leigh Smith--Visit to Broadstairs--Florence Nightingale--Return to Strand--Depression--Professor Owen on the Cerebellum--Visit to Combes at Edinburgh, and to Harriet Martineau at Ambleside--Return to London--Reading "Esmond"--Lord Brougham's speech--Work in Strand--Bryant--Visit to Rosehill--Death of Edward Clarke--Visit to widowed sister at Meriden--Return to Strand--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Views on America--"Ruth"--Visit to Rosehill, and to Mrs. Clarke at Attleboro--Return to Strand--Reading "Villette"--Letter from Mrs. Stowe to Mrs. Follen--Meets Huxley--Thinks of going to Australia to settle Mrs. Clarke--Admiration of Helen Faucit--Growing regard for Mr. Lewes--Kindness of Sir James Clark--Visit to Ockley--Change to St. Leonard's--Improvement in health--Return to Strand--Spencer's "Universal Postulate"--Removal to 21 Cambridge Street--Leigh Hunt's "Religion of the Heart"--Dawes, Dean of Hereford--Harriet Martineau--Comte--Contemplates publishing "The Idea of a Future Life"--Meets Arthur Helps--Intimate relations with Mr. Lewes--Translation of Feuerbach--Visit to Rosehill--Return to London--Feuerbach completed--Estimate of Herbert Spencer--Good-bye to Brays--Union with Mr. Lewes--Letter to Mrs. Bray thereon. FOOTNOTES: [31] Frederick Foxton, author of "Popular Christianity: its Transition State and Probable Development." [32] "Man's Nature and Development," by Martineau and Atkinson. [33] This was a merely formal and casual introduction. That George Eliot was ever brought into close relations with Mr. Lewes was due to Mr. Herbert Spencer having taken him to call on her in the Strand later in this year. [34] Appeared in January, 1852, number of the _Westminster Review_, No. 1 of the New Series. [35] Review of Carlyle's "Life of Sterling" in _Westminster_, Jan. 1852. [36] Published in the April, 1852, number of the _Westminster_. [37] Now Madame Belloc, who remained to the end one of George Eliot's closest friends. [38] Mrs. Peter Taylor remained a lifelong and a valued friend of George Eliot's, and many interesting letters in this volume are addressed to her. I am glad also to take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to her for procuring for me two other sets of correspondence--the letters addressed to Mrs. Beecher Stowe and to Mrs. William Smith. [39] Afterwards Madame Bodichon--one of the three or four most intimate friends of George Eliot, whose name will very often appear in subsequent pages. [40] Funeral oration on the Duke of Wellington. [41] Correcting _Leader_ proofs for Mr. Lewes. [42] Advertised in 1853-54 as to appear by "Marian Evans" in "Chapman's Quarterly Series," but never published. [43] Lord Acton tells me he first heard this _bon-mot_, in 1855, related of Immanuel Bekker, the philologist. [44] Translated and adapted from the French, "La joie fait peur," by Mr. Lewes, under the name of Slingsby Lawrence. CHAPTER VI. [Sidenote: Journal, 20th July, 1854.] I said a last farewell to Cambridge Street on 20th July, 1854, and found myself on board the _Ravensbourne_, bound for Antwerp. The day was glorious, and our passage perfect. The sunset was lovely, but still lovelier the dawn as we were passing up the Scheldt between two and three in the morning. The crescent moon, the stars, the first faint blush of the dawn reflected in the glassy river, the dark mass of clouds on the horizon, which sent forth flashes of lightning, and the graceful forms of the boats and sailing-vessels, painted in jet-black on the reddish gold of the sky and water, made up an unforgettable picture. Then the sun rose and lighted up the sleepy shores of Belgium, with their fringe of long grass, their rows of poplars, their church spires and farm buildings. [Sidenote: 21st July.] The great treat at Antwerp was the sight of the Descent from the Cross, which, with its pendant, the Elevation of the Cross, has been undergoing restoration. In the latter the face of Jesus is sublime in its expression of agony and trust in the Divine. It is certainly the finest conception of the suffering Christ I have ever seen. The rest of the picture gave me no pleasure. But in the Descent from the Cross, color, form, and expression alike impressed me with the sense of grandeur and beauty. A little miserable copy of the picture placed near it served as an admirable foil. [Sidenote: 22d July.] We went to the museum and saw Rubens's Crucifixion, even more beautiful to me than the Descent from the Cross. These two pictures profoundly impressed me with the miserable lack of breadth and grandeur in the conceptions of our living artists. The reverence for the old masters is not all humbug and superstition. [Sidenote: 30th July.] We breakfasted in the public room at the hotel at Cologne, and were joined there by Dr. Brabant and Strauss. After a short interview with them we went on board the steamboat which was to take us to Coblentz. [Sidenote: Weimar, Description, Aug.-Oct. 1854.] It was very pretty to look out of the window, when dressing, on a garden that reminded one of an English village: the town is more like a huge village, or market-town, than the precincts of a court. G. called on Schöll, and in the afternoon he (Schöll) came and took us to the _Schloss_, where we saw the Dichter Zimmer--a suite of rooms dedicated to Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland. In each room there is the bust of the poet who is its presiding genius; and the walls of the Goethe and Schiller rooms are decorated with frescoes representing scenes from their works. The Wieland room is decorated with arabesques only. The idea of these rooms is a very pretty one, but the frescoes are badly executed. I am delighted with Schöll. He is a bright-looking, well-made man, with his head finely set on his shoulders, very little like a German. We discovered, after we had known him some time, that he is an Austrian, and so has more southern blood in his veins than the heavy Thuringians. His manners are hearty and cordial, and his conversation really instructive: his ideas are so thoroughly shaped and so admirably expressed. Sauppe is also a _Gelehrter_, director of the gymnasium, and editor of a series of classics which are being brought out; and he is evidently thought a great deal of in Weimar. We went with the Schölls and Sauppes to Tiefurt, and saw the queer little _Schloss_ which used to be Amalia's residence. Tiefurt was a favorite resort of ours, for the walk to it is a very pleasant one, and the Tiefurt park is a little paradise. The Ilm is seen here to the best advantage: it is clearer than at Weimar, and winds about gracefully among fine trees. One of the banks is a high, steep declivity, which shows the trees in all their perfection. In autumn, when the yellow and scarlet were at their brightest, these banks were fairy-like in their beauty. It was here that Goethe and his court friends got up the performance of "Die Fischerin" by torchlight. About ten days after our arrival at Weimar we made an excursion to Ettersburg, one of the duke's summer residences, interesting to us beforehand as the scene of private theatricals and _sprees_ in the Goethe days. We carried provisions with us, and Keats's poems. The morning was one of the brightest and hottest that August ever bestowed, and it required some resolution to trudge along the shadeless _chaussée_, which formed the first two or three miles of our way. One compensating pleasure was the sight of the beautiful mountain ashes in full berry, which, alternately with cherry-trees, border the road for a considerable distance. I felt a child's love for the bunches of coral standing out against the blue sky. The _Schloss_ is a house of very moderate size, and no pretension of any kind. Two flights of steps lead up to the door, and the balustrades are ornamented with beautiful creepers. A tiny sort of piazza under the steps is ornamented with creepers too, and has pretty earthenware vases filled with plants hanging from the ceiling. We felt how much beauty might be procured at small expense in looking at these things. A beautiful walk through a beech wood took us to the _Mooshütte_, before which stands the beech whereon Goethe and his friends cut their names, and from which Goethe denounced Waldemar. We could recognize some of the initials. With Ettersburg I shall always associate Arthur Helps, for he was with us on the second and last time we saw it. He came to Weimar quite unexpectedly on the 29th August, and the next evening we all three drove to Ettersburg. He said the country just round Weimar reminded him of Spain. This led him to talk of his Spanish travels, and he told us some delightful stories in a delightful way. At one inn he was considerably embarrassed in eating his dinner by the presence of a handsome woman, who sat directly opposite to him, resting on her elbows, and fixing her dark eyes on him with a fearful intensity of interest. This woman was the cook, anxious to know that her dishes were acceptable to the stranger. Under this terrible surveillance he did not dare to omit a single dish, though sorely longing to do so. Our greatest expedition from Weimar was to Ilmenau. We set out with a determination to find the Gabel-Bach and Kickel-hahn (Goethe's residence) without the encumbrance of a guide. We found the man who inhabits the simple wooden house which used to be Carl August's hunting-box. He sent a man on with us to show us the way to the Kickel-hahn, which we at last reached--I with weary legs. There is a magnificent view of hills from this spot; but Goethe's tiny wooden house is now closely shut in by fir-trees, and nothing can be seen from the windows. His room, which forms the upper floor of the house, is about ten or twelve feet square. It is now quite empty, but there is an interesting memorial of his presence in these wonderful lines, written by his own hand, near the window-frame: "Ueber allen Gipfeln Ist Ruh, In allen Wipfeln Spürest du Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde. Warte nur, balde Ruhest du auch." We wrote our names near one of the windows. About the middle of September the theatre opened, and we went to hear "Ernani." Liszt looked splendid as he conducted the opera. The grand outline of his face and floating hair were seen to advantage as they were thrown into dark relief by the stage lamps. We were so fortunate as to have all three of Wagner's most celebrated operas while we were at Weimar. G., however, had not patience to sit out more than two acts of "Lohengrin;" and, indeed, I too was weary. The declamation appeared to me monotonous, and situations, in themselves trivial or disagreeable, were dwelt on fatiguingly. Without feeling competent to pass a judgment on this opera as music, one may venture to say that it fails in one grand requisite of art, based on an unchangeable element in human nature--the need for contrast. With the "Fliegender Holländer" I was delighted; the poem and the music were alike charming. The "Tannhäuser," too, created in me a great desire to hear it again. Many of the situations, and much of the music, struck me as remarkably fine. And I appreciated these operas all the better retrospectively when we saw "Der Freischütz," which I had never before heard and seen on the stage. The effect of the delicious music, with which one is so familiar, was completely spoiled by the absence of recitative, and the terrible _lapsus_ from melody to ordinary speech. The bacchanalian song seemed simply ridiculous, sung at a little pot-house table at a party of _two_, one of whom was sunk in melancholy; and the absurdity reached a _ne plus ultra_ when Caspar climbed the tree, apparently with the sole purpose of being shot. _� propos_ of the theatre, we were immensely amused to learn that a fair, small-featured man, who somehow always looked to me as if he had just come out of the shell, had come to Weimar to fit himself for a dramatic writer by going behind the scenes! He had as yet written nothing, but was going to work in what he considered a _gründlich_ way. When we passed along the Schiller Strasse, I used to be very much thrilled by the inscription, "Hier wohnte Schiller," over the door of his small house. Very interesting it is to see his study, which is happily left in its original state. In his bedroom we saw his skull for the first time, and were amazed at the smallness of the intellectual region. There is an intensely interesting sketch of Schiller lying dead, which I saw for the first time in the study; but all pleasure in thinking of Schiller's portraits and bust is now destroyed to me by the conviction of their untruthfulness. Rauch told us that he had a _miserabled Stirne_.[45] Waagen says that Tieck the sculptor told him there was something in Schiller's whole person which reminded him of a _camel_. Goethe's house is much more important-looking, but, to English eyes, far from being the palatial residence which some German writers think it. The entrance-hall is certainly rather imposing, with its statues in niches, and broad staircase. The latter was made after his own design, and was an "after-shine" of Italian tastes. The pictures are wretched, the casts not much better--indeed, I remember nothing which seemed intrinsically worth looking at. The MS. of his "Römische Elegien," written by himself in the Italian character, is to be seen here; and one likes to look at it better than at most of the other things. G. had obtained permission from Frau v. Goethe to see the studio and Schlafzimmer, which are not open to the public, and here our feelings were deeply moved. We entered first a small room containing drawers and shelves devoted to his mineralogical collections. From these we passed into the study. It is rather a dark room, for there are only two small windows--German windows. A plain deal table stands in the middle, and near the chair, against this table, is a high basket, where, I was afterwards told, Goethe used to put his pocket-handkerchief. A long sort of writing-table and bookcase united stands against one wall. Here hangs the pin-cushion, just as he left it, with visiting-cards suspended on threads, and other trifles which greatness and death have made sacred. Against the opposite wall, where you enter the bedroom, there is a high writing-desk, on which stands a little statue of Napoleon in creamy glass. The bedroom is very small. By the side of the bed stands a stuffed arm-chair, where he used to sit and read while he drank his coffee in the morning. It was not until very late in his life that he adopted the luxury of an arm-chair. From the other side of the study one enters the library, which is fitted up in a very makeshift fashion, with rough deal shelves, and bits of paper, with Philosophy, History, etc., written on them, to mark the classification of the books. Among such memorials one breathes deeply, and the tears rush to one's eyes. There is one likeness of Goethe that is really startling and thrilling from the idea it gives one of perfect resemblance. It is painted on a cup, and is a tiny miniature, but the execution is so perfect that, on applying a magnifying glass, every minute stroke has as natural an appearance as the texture of a flower or the parts of an insect under the microscope. Equally interesting is the _Gartenhaus_, which we used to see almost every day in our walks. Within, it is a not uncomfortable, homely sort of cottage; no furniture is left in it, and the family want to sell it. It stands on a pleasant slope fronting the west, and there is a charming bit of garden and orchard attached to it. Close to the garden hedge runs the road which leads to Ober Weimar, and on the other side of this road a meadow stretches to the trees which border the Ilm. A bridge nearly opposite the Gartenhaus takes one to the Borkenhaus, Carl August's little retreat, from which he used to telegraph to Goethe. The road to Ober Weimar was one of our favorite walks, especially towards the end of our stay at Weimar, when we were glad of all the sunshine we could get. Sometimes we used to turn out of it, up a grove of weeping birches, into the ploughed fields at the top of the slope on which the Gartenhaus and other little villas stand. Here we enjoyed many a lovely sunset; one, in particular, was marvellously splendid. The whole hemisphere was golden, towards the east tinted with rose-color. From this little height we looked on the plantations of the park, in their autumnal coloring, the town, with its steep-roofed church and its castle tower, colored a gay green, the line of chestnuts along the Belvedere Chaussée, and Belvedere itself peeping from its nest of trees. Another very favorite walk of mine was the _Webicht_, a beautiful wood through which ran excellent carriage-roads and grassy footpaths. How richly have I enjoyed skirting this wood and seeing, on the other side, the sky arching grandly down over the open fields, the evening red flushing the west over the town, and the bright stars come out as if to relieve the sun in his watch over mortals. And then the winding road through the Webicht on the side towards Tiefurt, with its tall, overarching trees now bending their mossy trunks forward, now standing with stately erectness like lofty pillars; and the charming grassy paths through the heart of the wood, among its silvery-barked birches! The Webicht lies towards Tiefurt, and one side of it is bordered by the road thither. I remember, as we were returning from Tiefurt one evening, a beautiful effect of the setting sunlight pouring itself under the trees, and making the road before us almost crimson. One of our pleasantest acquaintances at Weimar was the French ambassador, the Marquis de Ferrière, a very favorable specimen of a Frenchman, but intensely French. His genial soul and perfect good-humor gave one the same sort of _bien-être_ as a well-stuffed arm-chair and a warm hearthrug. In the course of conversation, speaking of Yvan's accounts of his travels (the marquis was first secretary to the Chinese embassy which Yvan accompanied), he said, "C'était faux d'un bout à l'autre; mais c'était spirituel, paradoxal, amusant--enfin _tout ce qu'il fallait pour un journal_." Another day he observed that the famous words of Napoleon to his Egyptian army, "Forty centuries look down on you from the summits of these pyramids," were characteristic of the French national feeling, as those of Nelson, "England expects the man to make his duty" were of the English. This is a fair specimen of the correctness with which one generally hears English quoted; and we often reminded ourselves that it was a mirror in which we might see our own German. Liszt's conversation is charming. I never met with a person whose manner of telling a story was so piquant. The last evening but one that he called on us, wishing to express his pleasure in G.'s article about him, he very ingeniously conveyed that expression in a story about Spontini and Berlioz. Spontini visited Paris while Liszt was living there, and haunted the opera--a stiff, self-important personage, with high shirt-collars, the least attractive individual imaginable; Liszt turned up his own collars, and swelled out his person, so as to give us a vivid idea of the man. Every one would have been glad to get out of Spontini's way--indeed, elsewhere "on feignait de le croire mort," but at Paris, as he was a member of the Institute, it was necessary to recognize his existence. Liszt met him at Erard's more than once. On one of these occasions Liszt observed to him that Berlioz was a great admirer of his (Spontini's), whereupon Spontini burst into a terrible invective against Berlioz as a man who, with the like of him, was ruining art, etc. Shortly after the "Vestale" was performed, and forthwith appeared an enthusiastic article by Berlioz on Spontini's music. The next time Liszt met him of the high collars he said, "You see I was not wrong in what I said about Berlioz's admiration of you." Spontini swelled in his collars, and replied, "Monsieur, Berlioz a du talent comme critique!" Liszt's replies were always felicitous and characteristic. Talking of Mme. d'Agoult, he told us that when her novel "Nelida" appeared, in which Liszt himself is pilloried as a delinquent, he asked her, "Mais pourquoi avez-vous tellement maltraité ce pauvre Lehmann?" The first time we were asked to breakfast at his house, the Altenburg, we were shown into the garden, where, in a saloon formed by overarching trees, the _déjeuner_ was set out. We found Hoffmann von Fallersleben, the lyric poet, Dr. Schade--a _Gelehrter_, and Cornelius. Presently came a Herr--or Doctor--Raff, a musician, who has recently published a volume called "Wagnerfrage." Soon after we were joined by Liszt and the Princess Marie, an elegant, gentle-looking girl of seventeen, and last by the Princess Wittgenstein, with her nephew, Prince Eugène, and a young French artist, a pupil of Scheffer. The princess was tastefully dressed in a morning-robe of some semi-transparent white material, lined with orange-color, which formed the bordering and ornamented the sleeves, a black lace jacket, and a piquant cap set on the summit of her comb, and trimmed with violet color. When the cigars came, Hoffman was requested to read some of his poetry, and he gave us a bacchanalian poem with great spirit. I sat next to Liszt, and my great delight was to watch him and observe the sweetness of his expression. Genius, benevolence, and tenderness beam from his whole countenance, and his manners are in perfect harmony with it. Then came the thing I had longed for--his playing. I sat near him, so that I could see both his hands and face. For the first time in my life I beheld real inspiration--for the first time I heard the true tones of the piano. He played one of his own compositions--one of a series of religious fantasies. There was nothing strange or excessive about his manner. His manipulation of the instrument was quiet and easy, and his face was simply grand--the lips compressed, and the head thrown a little backward. When the music expressed quiet rapture or devotion a smile flitted over his features; when it was triumphant the nostrils dilated. There was nothing petty or egoistic to mar the picture. Why did not Scheffer paint him thus, instead of representing him as one of the three Magi? But it just occurs to me that Scheffer's idea was a sublime one. There are the two aged men who have spent their lives in trying to unravel the destinies of the world, and who are looking for the Deliverer--for the light from on high. Their young fellow-seeker, having the fresh inspiration of early life, is the first to discern the herald star, and his ecstasy reveals it to his companions. In this young Magus, Scheffer has given a portrait of Liszt; but even here, where he might be expected to idealize unrestrainedly, he falls short of the original. It is curious that Liszt's face is the type that one sees in all Scheffer's pictures; at least, in all I have seen. In a little room which terminates the suite at the Altenburg there is a portrait of Liszt, also by Scheffer--the same of which the engraving is familiar to every one. This little room is filled with memorials of Liszt's triumphs and the worship his divine talent has won. It was arranged for him by the princess, in conjunction with the Arnims, in honor of his birthday. There is a medallion of him by Schwanthaler, a bust by an Italian artist, also a medallion by Rietschl--very fine--and cabinets full of jewels and precious things--the Weimar gifts of the great. In the music _salon_ stand Beethoven's and Mozart's pianos. Beethoven's was a present from Broadwood, and has a Latin inscription intimating that it was presented as a tribute to his illustrious genius. One evening Liszt came to dine with us at the Erb Prinz, and introduced M. Rubinstein, a young Russian, who is about to have an opera of his performed in Weimar. Our expenses at Weimar, including wine and washing, were £2 6_s._ per week. Dear Weimar! We were sorry to say good-bye to it, with its pleasant group of friends. On the 4th of November, after a stay of just three months, we turned our backs on it "to seek fresh streets and faces new" at Berlin. [Sidenote: Berlin, Recollections, Nov. 1854 to Mch. 1855.] There are certain persons without any physiognomy, the catalogue of whose features, as, item, a Roman nose, item, a pair of black eyes, etc., gives you the entire contents of their faces. There is no difference of opinion about the looks of such people. All the world is agreed either that they are pretty or ugly. So it is with Berlin. Every one tells you it is an uninteresting modern city, with broad, monotonous streets; and when you see it, you cannot for the life of you get up an emotion of surprise, or make a remark about the place which you have not heard before. The day after our arrival was Sunday, 6th November; the sun shone brightly, and we went to walk in the Linden, elbowing our way among the _promeneurs endimanchés_, who looked remarkably smart and handsome after the Thuringians. We had not gone far when we met a nice-looking old gentleman, with an order round his neck, and a gold-headed cane in his hand, who exclaimed, on seeing G., "Ist's möglich?" and then bade him heartily welcome. I saw at once it was the Varnhagen of whom I had heard so often. His niece, arrayed in smiles and a pink bonnet, was with him. For the first six weeks, when the weather permitted, we took long walks in the Thiergarten, where the straight and uniform avenues of insignificant trees contrasted very disadvantageously with the charming variety of our beloved park at Weimar. Still, we now and then noticed a beautiful wintry effect, especially in the part most remote from the town, where the trees are finer and the arrangements more varied. One walk, which skirted the Thiergarten on the right-hand side coming from the town, we were particularly fond of, because it gave us on one side an open view, with water and a boat or two, which, touched by the magic of sunshine, was pleasant to see. At Berlin it was "a day of small things" with regard to the beautiful, and we made much of little. Our little circle of acquaintances was very agreeable and varied. Varnhagen was a real treasure to G., for his library supplied all the deficiencies of the public one, where to ask for books was generally like "sinking buckets into empty wells." He is a man of real culture, kindliness, and polish (Germanly speaking); and he has besides that thorough liberalism, social, religious, and political, which sets the mind at ease in conversation, and delivers it from the fear of running against some prejudice, or coming suddenly on the sunk fence of some miserable limitation. The first morning he called on us he talked of his terrible disappointment in Carlyle, a subject to which he often returned. He evidently felt an antipathy to the "Teufelsdröckh," which, indeed, it was not difficult to understand from the mere _manière d'étre_ of the two men. They had corresponded for years before they saw each other; and Varnhagen was, and is, a great admirer of Carlyle's best work, but he was thoroughly repelled by his rough, paradoxical talk, and, more justifiably, by the despotic doctrines which it has been his humor to teach of late. We were amused to hear that Carlyle said he should think no one could die at Berlin, "for in beds _without curtains_ what Christian could give up the ghost?" At Varnhagen's we met, for the first time, Professor Stahr, who was there with Fanny Lewald, Fräulein Solmar, Frau Muisch, Dr. Ring, Dr. Vehse, Gräfin von Kalkreuth, and Director Wilhelm Schadow, author of "Der Moderne Vasari." We talked of Goethe. Varnhagen brought out autographs and portraits, and read us an epigram of his own on the want of liberality which Goethe's family show about opening his house to the public. He showed us a portrait of Kleist, who shot himself, in company with Frau Vogel, near an inn on the way to Potsdam. There was no love-affair between them; they were both thoroughly unhappy--he poor and hopeless for the future; and she suffering from an incurable disease. In the evening they both wrote, on a single sheet of paper, letters to their friends, communicating their intention (this sheet Varnhagen possesses). Early in the morning they rose, took a cup of coffee, went to the brink of a piece of water in the neighborhood of the inn, and there shot themselves. Du Bois Reymond spoke very decidedly of the German civilization as inferior to the English. Varnhagen, when well, is a regular visitor at Fräulein Solmar's, who for many years has kept an open _salon_ for her friends every evening but one in the week. Here the three-cornered chair next the sofa was reserved for him, except when General Pfuhl was there. This General Pfuhl is a fine specimen of an old soldier, who is at the same time a man of instruction and of strong social sympathies. He has been in the service of Prussia, has been within a hair's-breadth of being frozen to death, "and so following." He spoke French admirably, and always had something interesting and characteristic to tell or say. His appreciatory groans, always in the right place, when G. was reading "Shylock" did us both good, under the chills of a German audience. Fräulein Solmar is a remarkably accomplished woman--probably between fifty and sixty, but of that agreeable _Wesen_ which is so free from anything startling in person or manner, and so at home in everything one can talk of, that you think of her simply as a delightful presence, and not as a woman of any particular age. She converses perfectly in French, well in English, and well also, as we were told, in Italian. There is not the slightest warmth of manner or expression in her, but always the same even cheerfulness and intelligence--in fact, she is the true type of the mistress of the _salon_. During the first half of our stay in Berlin we went about once a week to her house; but bad health and bad weather kept us away during the last six weeks, except for one or two evenings. Baron Sternberg, the novelist, used frequently to glide in when we were there, and cast strange, cold glances around, talking quietly to Fräulein Assing or some other lady who sat in a distant parallel of latitude. One evening a Frenchman there amused us by saying that he found in Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" the whole spirit of the epoch of Charles IX. "Lisez les Chroniques"--"de Froissart?" suggested Mlle. Solmar. "Oui, quelque chose comme ça; ou bien les Chroniques de Brantôme ou de _Mérimée_, et vous trouverez que Meyerbeer a parfaitement exprimé tout cela; du moins c'est ce que je trouve, moi." I said, "Mais peut-être, Monsieur, c'est votre génie à vous qui a fait entrer les idées dans la musique." He answered with complacent deprecation. G. looked immovably serious, but was inwardly tickled by the audacity of my compliment, and the evident acceptance of it. A still more interesting acquaintance was Professor Gruppe, who has written great books on the Greek drama and on Philosophy; has been a political writer; is a lyric and epic poet; has invented a beautiful kind of marbled paper for binding books; is an enthusiastic huntsman, and, withal, the most simple, kind-hearted creature in the world. His little wife, who is about twenty years younger than himself, seems to adore him, and it is charming to see the group they and their two little children make in their dwelling, up endless flights of stairs in the Leipziger Platz. Very pleasant evenings we had there, chatting or playing whist, or listening to readings of Gruppe's poems. We used to find him in a gray cloth _Schlafrock_, which I fancy was once a great-coat, and a brown velvet cap surmounting his thin gray hairs. I never saw a combination at all like that which makes up Gruppe's character. Talent, fertility, and versatility that seem to indicate a fervid temperament, and yet no scintillation of all this in his talk and manner; on the contrary, he seems slow at apprehending other people's ideas, and is of an almost childish _naiveté_ in the value he attaches to poor jokes, and other trivialities. _� propos_ of jokes, we noticed that during the whole seven months of our stay in Germany we never heard one witticism, or even one felicitous idea or expression, from a German! Gruppe has a delightful library, with rare books, and books too good to be rare; and we often applied to him for some of them. He lent me "Lessing," and that is an additional circumstance to remember with pleasure in connection with the Laocoon. He one evening gave us an interesting account of his work on the cosmic system of the Greeks, and read us a translation, by himself, of one of the Homeric hymns--Aphrodite--which is very beautiful, a sort of _Gegenstück_ to "Der Gott und die Bajadere:" and generally we were glad when he took up the book. He read us a specimen of his epic poem, "Firdusi," which pleased us. The fable on which this poem is founded is fine. The sultan had engaged Firdusi to write a great poem on his exploits, and had promised to pay for this one hundred thousand pieces (gold being understood). Firdusi had delighted in the thought of this sum, which he intended to devote to the benefit of his native city. When the poem was delivered, and the sack of money given to Firdusi, he found that the pieces were silver! He burst into a song of scorn against the sultan, and paid the miserable sum to his bath-man. Gruppe thinks Shakespeare more extensively sold in Germany than any other book, except the Bible and Schiller! One night we attempted "Brag" or "Pocher," but Gruppe presently became alarmed at G.'s play, and said "Das würde an zwölf Groschen reichen." He drew some Jews' faces with a pen admirably. We were invited to meet Waagen, whom we found a very intelligent and amusing man. He told us a story about Goethe, who said of some one, "I thank thee, Almighty God, that thou hast produced no second edition of this man!" and an amusing judgment passed on Goethe himself, that he was "Kein dummer Mann!" Also a story of a lady who went to see him, as an intellectual adorer, and began to spout to him, as his masterpiece, "Fest gemauert in der Erden,"[46] etc. Another pleasant friend was Edward Magnus, the portrait-painter, an acute, intelligent, kind-hearted man, with real talent in his art. He was the only German we met with who seemed conscious of his countrymen's deficiencies. He showed in every possible way a hearty desire to do us service--sent us books, came to chat with us, showed us his portraits, and, when we were going away, brought us lithographs of some paintings of his, that we might carry away a remembrance of him. He has travelled very extensively, and had much intercourse with distinguished people, and these means of culture have had some of their best effects on his fine temperament and direct, truthful mind. He told us a rich story about Carlyle. At a dinner-party, given by Magnus in his honor, Wiese and Cornelius were deploring Goethe's want of evangelical sentiment. Carlyle was visibly uneasy, fumbling with his dinner-napkin. At last he broke out thus: "Meine Herren kennen sie die Anekdote von dem Manne der die Sonne lästerte weil sie ihm sein Cigarre nicht anstecken liess?"[47] In the little room where we used to be ushered to wait for him there was a portrait of Thorwaldsen and one of Mendelssohn, both of whom he knew well. I was surprised to find in his _atelier_ the original of the portrait of Jenny Lind, with which I was so familiar. He was going to send it, together with Sontag's portrait, to the exhibition at Paris. His brother, the chemist, was also a bright, good-natured-looking man. We were invited to a large evening party at his house, and found very elegant rooms, with a remarkable assemblage of celebrated men--Johannes Müller, Du Bois Reymond, Rose, Ehrenberg, etc. Some of the women were very pretty and well dressed. The supper, brought round on trays, was well appointed; and altogether the party was well managed. We spent one evening with Professor Stahr and his wife--Fanny Lewald--after their marriage. Stahr has a copy of the charming miniature of Schiller, taken when he was about thirty--a miniature in the possession of a certain Madame von Kalb. There are the long _Gänsehals_,[48] the aquiline nose, the blue eyes and auburn hair. It is a most real and striking portrait. I saw also a portrait and bust of Madame d'Agoult here, both rather handsome. The first evening Stahr told us some of the grievances which the Prussians have to bear from their government, and among the rest the vexatious necessity for a "concession" or license, before any, the simplest vocation, can be entered on. He observed, with justice, that the English are apt to suppose the German Revolution of '48 was mere restlessness and aping of other nations, when in fact there were real oppressions which the Germans had to bear, and which they had borne with a patience that the English would not imitate for a month. By far the most distinguished-looking man we saw at Berlin, and, indeed, next to Liszt, in Germany, was Rauch the sculptor. Schöll had given G. a letter for him, and soon after it had been left at his house he called on us in the evening, and at once won our hearts by his beautiful person and the benignant and intelligent charm of his conversation. He is indeed the finest old man I ever saw--more than seventy-six, I believe, but perfectly upright, even stately, in his carriage. His features are harmonious, his complexion has a delicate freshness, his silky white hair waves gracefully round his high forehead, and his brown eyes beam with benevolence and intelligence. He is above the common height, and his stature and beauty together ennoble the gray working surtout and cap which he wears in his _atelier_ into a picturesque and distinguished costume. The evening he was with us he talked delightfully of Goethe, dwelling especially on his lovable nature. He described very graphically Goethe's way of introducing subjects, showing plates, etc., bringing in the cast of Schiller's skull, and talking of it and other little particulars of interest. We went one morning to his _atelier_, and found him superintending his pupil's work at a large group representing Moses with his hands held up by Aaron and Hur. It was extremely interesting to me to see Rauch's original little clay model of this group, for I had never seen statuary in that first stage before. The intense expression of entreaty in the face of the Moses was remarkable. But the spirit of this group is so alien to my sympathies that I could feel little pleasure in the idea of its production. On the other hand, my heart leaped at the sight of old Kant's quaint figure, of which Rauch is commissioned to produce a colossal statue for Königsberg. In another _atelier_, where the work is in a different stage, we saw a splendid marble monument, nearly completed, of the late king of Hanover. Pitiable that genius and spotless white marble should be thrown away on such human trash! Our second visit to Rauch's _atelier_ was paid shortly before we left Berlin. The group of Moses, Aaron, and Hur was clothed up, and the dark-eyed, olive-complexioned pupil was at work on a pretty little figure of Hope--a child stepping forward with upturned face, a bunch of flowers in her hand. In the other _atelier_ we saw a bust of Schleiermacher, which, with the equestrian statue of Fritz, and its pedestal, Rauch was going to send to the Paris Exhibition. Schleiermacher's face is very delicately cut, and indicates a highly susceptible temperament. The colossal head of Fritz, seen on a level with one's eye, was perfectly startling from its living expression. One can't help fancying that the head is thinking and that the eyes are seeing. Dessoir the actor was another pleasant variety in our circle of acquaintance. He created in us a real respect and regard for him, not only by his sincere devotion to his art, but by the superiority of feeling which shone through all the little details of his conduct and conversation. Of lowly birth, and entirely self-taught, he is by nature a gentleman. Without a single physical gift as an actor, he succeeds, by force of enthusiasm and conscientious study, in arriving at a representation which commands one's attention and feelings. I was very much pleased by the simplicity with which he one day said, "Shakespeare ist mein Gott; ich habe keinen anderen Gott:" and indeed one saw that his art was a religion to him. He said he found himself inevitably led into singsong declamation by Schiller, but with Shakespeare it was impossible to be declamatory. It was very agreeable to have him as a companion now and then in our walks, and to have him read or discuss Shakespeare for an hour or two in the evening. He told us an amusing story about his early days. When he was a youth of sixteen or seventeen, acting at Spandau, he walked to Berlin (about nine miles) and back in the evening, accompanied by a watchmaker named Naundorff, an enthusiast for the theatre. On their way Dessoir declaimed at the top of his voice, and was encouraged by the applause of his companion to more and more exertion of lungs and limbs, so that people stared at them, and followed them, as if they thought them two madmen. This watchmaker was Louis XVII.! Dessoir also imitated admirably Aldridge's mode of advancing to kill Duncan--like a wild Indian lurking for a not much wilder beast. He paid us the very pretty attention of getting up a dinner for us at Dietz's, and inviting Rötscher and Förster to meet us; and he supplied us with tickets for the theatre, which, however, was a pleasure we used sparingly. The first time we went was to see "Nathan der Weise"--a real enjoyment, for the elegant theatre was new to us, and the scenery was excellent; better than I saw there on any subsequent occasion. Döring performed Nathan, and we thus saw him for the first time to great advantage; for, though he drags down this part, as he does all others, the character of Nathan sets limits which he cannot overstep; and though we lose most of its elevation in Döring's acting, we get, _en revanche_, an admirable ease and naturalness. His fine, clear voice and perfect enunciation told excellently in the famous monologue, and in the whole scene with Saladin. Our hearts swelled and the tears came into our eyes as we listened to the noble words of dear Lessing, whose great spirit lives immortally in this crowning work of his. Our great anxiety was to see and hear Johanna Wagner, so we took tickets for the "Orpheus," which Mlle. Solmar told us she thought her best part. We were thoroughly delighted both with her and her music. The caricatures of the Furies, the ballet-girls, and the butcher-like Greek shades in Elysium, the ugly, screaming Eurydice, and the droll appearance of Timzek as Amor, in which she looked like a shop-girl who has donned a masquerade dress impromptu, without changing her headdress--all these absurdities were rather an amusement than a drawback to our pleasure; for the Orpheus was perfect in himself, and looked like a noble horse among mules and donkeys. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th Jan. 1855.] Our days are so accurately parcelled out that my time for letter-writing is rather restricted, and for every letter I write I have to leave out something which we have learned to think necessary. We have been to hear "Fidelio" this evening--not well executed, except so far as the orchestra was concerned; but the divine music positively triumphs over the defects of execution. One is entirely wrapped in the _idea_ of the composer. Last week we had "Orpheus and Eurydice," and I heard, for the first time, at once an opera of Gluck's and Johanna Wagner. It is one of the glories of Berlin to give Gluck's operas, and it is also something of a glory to have "die Wagner." She is really a fine actress and a fine singer; her voice is not ravishing, but she is mistress of it. I thought of you that evening, and wished you could hear and see what I know would interest you greatly--I refer rather to Gluck's opera than to Johanna Wagner. The scene in which Orpheus (Johanna Wagner) enters Tartarus, is met by the awful Shades, and charms them into ecstatic admiration till they make way for him to pass on, is very fine. The voices--except in the choruses--are all women's voices; and there are only three characters--Orpheus, Amor, and Eurydice. One wonders that Pluto does not come as a basso; and one would prefer Mercury as a tenor to Amor in the shape of an ugly German soprano; but Gluck wished it otherwise, and the music is delightful. I am reading a charming book by Professor Stahr--who is one of our acquaintances here--"Torso: Kunst, Künstler, und Kunst Werke der Alten." It feeds the fresh interest I am now feeling in art. Professor Stahr is a very erudite man, and, what is very much rarer among Germans, a good writer, who knows how to select his materials, and has, above all, a charming talent for description. We saw at his house the other night the first portrait of Schiller which _convinces_ me of a likeness to him. It is the copy of a miniature which has never been engraved. The face is less beautiful than that of the ordinary busts and portraits, but is very remarkable--the eyes blue, the complexion very fair (the picture was taken in his youth), and the hair sunny. He has the long "goose-neck" which he describes as belonging to Carl Moor in the "Robbers," and the forehead is _fuyant_ in correspondence with the skull. The piteous contrast there is between the anxiety poor Schiller is constantly expressing about a livelihood--about the thalers he has to pay for this and the thalers he has to receive for that--and Goethe's perfect ease in that respect! For the "History of the Netherlands" he got little more than fifteen shillings per sheet. I am very much interested in Professor Gruppe as a type of the German _Gelehrter_. He has written books on everything--on the Greek drama, a great book on the cosmic system of the Greeks, an epic, numberless lyric poems, etc.; he has a philosophical work and a history of literature in the press; is professor of philosophy at the university; is enthusiastic about boar-hunting, and has written a volume of hunting poems--and _ich weiss nicht was_. Withal he is as simple as a child. When we go to see them in the evening we find him wrapped in a moth-eaten gray coat and a cap on his head. Then he reads us a translation of one of the Homeric hymns, and goes into the most naïve _impersonal_ ecstasy at the beauty of his own poetry (which is really good). The other night he read us part of an epic which is still in MS., and is to be read before the king--such is the fashion here. And his little wife, who is about twenty years younger than himself, listens with loving admiration. Altogether, they and their two little children are a charming picture. [Sidenote: Berlin, Recollections, 1854-55.] We went to only one concert, for which Vivier was kind enough to send us tickets. It was given by him and Roger, assisted by Arabella Goddard and Johanna Wagner. Roger's singing of the "Erl King" was a treat not to be forgotten. He gave the full effect to Schubert's beautiful and dramatic music; and his way of falling from melody into awe-struck speech in the final words "_War todt_" abides with one. I never felt so thoroughly the beauty of that divine ballad before. The king was present in all his toothlessness and blinkingness; and the new princess from Anhalt Dessau, young and delicate-looking, was there too. Arabella Goddard played the "Harmonious Blacksmith" charmingly, and then Wagner sang badly two ineffective German songs, and Halévy's duet from the "Reine de Chypre" with Roger. Vivier is amusing. He says Germans take off their hats on all possible pretexts--not for the sake of politeness, but _pour être embarrassants_. They have wide streets, simply to embarrass you, by making it impossible to descry a shop or a friend. A German always has _three_ gloves--"On ne sait pas pourquoi." There is a dog-tax in order to maintain a narrow _trottoir_ in Berlin, and every one who keeps a dog feels authorized to keep the _trottoir_ and move aside for no one. If he has two dogs he drives out of the _trottoir_ the man who has only one: the very dogs begin to be aware of it. If you kick one when he is off the _trottoir_ he will bear it patiently, but on the _trottoir_ he resents it vehemently. He gave us quite a bit of Molière in a description of a mystification at a restaurant. He says to the waiter--"Vous voyez ce monsieur là. C'est le pauvre M. Colignon." (Il faut qu'il soit quelq'un qui prend très peu--une tasse de café ou comme ça, et qui ne dépense pas trop.) "Je suis son ami. Il est fou. Je le garde. Combien doit-il payer?" "Un franc." "Voilà." Then Vivier goes out. Presently the so-called M. Colignon asks how much he has to pay, and is driven to exasperation by the reiterated assurance of the waiter--"C'est payé, M. Colignon." The first work of art really worth looking at that one sees at Berlin is the "Rosse-bändiger" in front of the palace. It is by a sculptor named Cotes, who made horses his especial study; and certainly, to us, they eclipsed the famous Colossi at Monte Cavallo, casts of which are in the new museum. The collection of pictures at the old museum has three gems, which remain in the imagination--Titian's Daughter, Correggio's Jupiter and Io, and his Head of Christ on the Handkerchief. I was pleased also to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steen, which Goethe describes in the "Wahlverwandschaften" as the model of a _tableau vivant_, presented by Luciane and her friends. It is the daughter being reproved by her father, while the mother is emptying her wine-glass. It is interesting to see the statue of Napoleon, the worker of so much humiliation to Prussia, placed opposite that of Julius Cæsar. They were very happy months we spent at Berlin, in spite of the bitter cold which came on in January and lasted almost till we left. How we used to rejoice in the idea of our warm room and coffee as we battled our way from dinner against the wind and snow! Then came the delightful long evening, in which we read Shakespeare, Goethe, Heine, and Macaulay, with German _Pfefferkuchen_ and _Semmels_ at the end to complete the _noctes cenæque deûm_. We used often to turn out for a little walk in the evening, when it was not too cold, to refresh ourselves by a little pure air as a change from the stove-heated room. Our favorite walk was along the Linden, in the broad road between the trees. We used to pace to old Fritz's monument, which loomed up dark and mysterious against the sky. Once or twice we went along the gas-lighted walk towards Kroll's. One evening in our last week we went on to the bridge leading to the Wilhelm Stadt, and there by moon and gas light saw the only bit of picturesqueness Berlin afforded us. The outline of the Schloss towards the water is very varied, and a light in one of the windows near the top of a tower was a happy accident. The row of houses on the other side of the water was shrouded in indistinctness, and no ugly object marred the scene. The next day, under the light of the sun, it was perfectly prosaic. Our _table d'hôte_ at the Hotel de l'Europe was so slow in its progress from one course to another, and there was so little encouragement to talk to our neighbors, that we used to take our books by way of beguiling the time. Lessing's "Hamburgische Briefe," which I am not likely to take up again, will thus remain associated in my memory with my place at the _table d'hôte_. The company here, as almost everywhere else in Berlin, was sprinkled with officers. Indeed, the swords of officers threaten one's legs at every turn in the streets, and one sighs to think how these unproductive consumers of _Wurst_, with all their blue and scarlet broadcloth, are maintained out of the pockets of the community. Many of the officers and privates are startlingly tall; indeed, some of them would match, I should think, with the longest of Friedrich Wilhelm's _lange Kerle_. It was a bitterly cold, sleety morning--the 11th of March--when we set out from Berlin, leaving behind us, alas! G.'s rug, which should have kept his feet warm on the journey. Our travelling companions to Cologne were fat Madame Roger, her little daughter, and her dog, and a queen's messenger--a very agreeable man, who afterwards persuaded another of the same vocation to join us for the sake of warmth. This poor man's teeth were chattering with cold, though he was wrapped in fur; and we, all furless as we were, pitied him, and were thankful that at least we were not feverish and ill, as he evidently was. We saw the immortal old town of Wolfenbüttel at a distance, as we rolled along; beyond this there was nothing of interest in our first day's journey, and the only incident was the condemnation of poor Madame Roger's dog to the dog-box, apart from its mistress with her warm cloaks. She remonstrated in vain with a brutal German official, and it was amusing to hear him say to her in German, "Wenn sie Deutsch nicht verstehen können." "Eh bien--prenez la." "Ah! quel satan de pays!" was her final word, as she held out the shivering little beast. We stayed at Cologne, and next morning walked out to look at the cathedral again. Melancholy as ever in its impression upon me! From Cologne to Brussels we had some rather interesting companions, in two French artists who were on their way from Russia. Strange beings they looked to us at first, in their dirty linen, Russian caps, and other queer equipments; but in this, as in many other cases, I found that a first impression was an extremely mistaken one--for instead of being, as I imagined, common, uncultivated men, they were highly intelligent. At Brussels, as we took our supper, we had the pleasure of looking at Berlioz's fine head and face, he being employed in the same way on the other side of the table. The next morning to Calais. They were pleasant days those at Weimar and Berlin, and they were working days. Mr. Lewes was engaged in completing his "Life of Goethe," which had been begun some time before, but which was now for the most part rewritten. At Weimar, George Eliot wrote the article on Victor Cousin's "Madame de Sablé" for the _Westminster Review_. It was begun on 5th August, and sent off on 8th September. At Berlin she nearly finished the translation of Spinoza's "Ethics"--begun on 5th November--and wrote an article on Vehse's "Court of Austria," which was begun on 23d January, and finished 4th March, 1855. Besides this writing, I find the following among the books that were engaging their attention; and in collecting the names from George Eliot's Journal, I have transcribed any remarks she makes on them: Sainte-Beuve, Goethe's "Wahlverwandschaften," Rameau's "Neffe," "Egmont," "The Hoggarty Diamond," Moore's "Life of Sheridan"--a first-rate specimen of bad biographical writing; "Götz" and the "Bürger General," Uhland's poems, "Wilhelm Meister," Rosenkranz on the Faust Sage, Heine's poems, Shakespeare's plays ("Merchant of Venice," "Romeo and Juliet," "Julius Cæsar"--very much struck with the masculine style of this play, and its vigorous moderation, compared with "Romeo and Juliet"--"Antony and Cleopatra," "Henry IV.," "Othello," "As You Like It," "Lear"--sublimely powerful--"Taming of the Shrew," "Coriolanus," "Twelfth Night," "Measure for Measure," "Midsummer-Night's Dream," "Winter's Tale," "Richard III.," "Hamlet"); Lessing's "Laocoon"--the most un-German of all the German books that I have ever read. The style is strong, clear, and lively; the thoughts acute and pregnant. It is well adapted to rouse an interest both in the classics and in the study of art; "Emilia Galotti" seems to me a wretched mistake of Lessing's. The Roman myth of Virginius is grand, but the situation, transported to modern times and divested of its political bearing, is simply shocking. Read "Briefe über Spinoza" (Jacobi's), "Nathan der Weise," Fanny Lewald's "Wandlungen," "Minna von Barnhelm," "Italiänische Reise," the "Residence in Rome;" a beautiful description of Rome and the Coliseum by moonlight--a fire made in the Coliseum sending its smoke, silvered by the moonlight, through the arches of the mighty walls. Amusing story of Goethe's landlady's cat worshipping Jupiter by licking his beard--a miracle, in her esteem, explained by Goethe as a discovery the cat had made of the oil lodging in the undulations of the beard. "Residence in Naples"--pretty passage about a star seen through a chink in the ceiling as he lay in bed. It is remarkable that when Goethe gets to Sicily he is, for the first time in Italy, enthusiastic in his descriptions of natural beauty. Read Scherr's "Geschichte Deutscher Cultur und Sitte"--much interested in his sketch of German poetry in the Middle Ages; "Iphigenia." Looked into the "Xenien," and amused ourselves with their pointlessness. "Hermann and Dorothea," "Tasso," "Wanderjahre"--_à mourir d'ennui_; Heine's "Geständnisse"--immensely amused with the wit of it in the first fifty pages, but afterwards it burns low, and the want of principle and purpose make it wearisome. Lessing's "Hamburgische Briefe." Read Goethe's wonderful observations on Spinoza. Particularly struck with the beautiful modesty of the passage in which he says he cannot presume to say that he thoroughly understands Spinoza. Read "Dichtung und Wahrheit," Knight's "Studies of Shakespeare." Talked of the "Wahlverwandschaften" with Stahr--he finding fault with the _dénouement_, which I defended. Read Stahr's "Torso"--too long-winded a style for reading aloud. Knight's "History of Painting." Compared several scenes of "Hamlet" in Schlegel's translation with the original. It is generally very close, and often admirably well done; but Shakespeare's strong, concrete language is almost always weakened. For example, "Though this hand were _thicker than_ itself in brother's blood" is rendered, "Auch um und um in Bruder's Blut getauchet." The prose speeches of Hamlet lose all their felicity in the translation. Read Stahr on the Eginetan Sculptures, "Die Neue Melusine," "West-�stliche Divan," Gervinus on Shakespeare--found it unsatisfactory; Stahr's "Ein Jahr in Italien"--the description of Florence excellent. Read the wonderfully beautiful "Römische Elegien" again, and some of the Venetian epigrams, Vehse's "Court of Austria"--called on Miss Assing to try and borrow the book from Varnhagen. He does not possess it, so G. called on Vehse, and asked him to lend it to me. He was very much pleased to do so. Read the "Zueignung," the "Gedichte," and several of the ballads. Looked through Wraxall's "Memoirs." Read Macaulay's "History of England." Wrote article on Stahr. This writing and reading, combined with visiting, theatre-going, and opera-going, make a pretty full life for these eight months--a striking contrast to the coming months of complete social quietness in England. Both lives had their attractions, the superficial aspects of which may be summed up in a passage from the Journal, dated 13th March, 1855, on arrival at the Lord Warden Hotel, at Dover: English mutton and an English fire were likely to be appreciated by creatures who had had eight months of Germany, with its questionable meat and its stove-heated rooms. The taste and quietude of a first-rate English hotel were also in striking contrast with the heavy finery, the noise, and the indiscriminate smoking of German inns. But, after all, Germany is no bad place to live in; and the Germans, to counterbalance their want of taste and politeness, are at least free from the bigotry of exclusiveness of their more refined cousins. I even long to be among them again--to see Dresden and Munich and Nürnberg and the Rhine country. May the day soon come! _SUMMARY._ JULY, 1854, TO MARCH, 1855. Leaves London with Mr. Lewes for Antwerp--Rubens's pictures--Cologne--Dr. Brabant and Strauss--Weimar--Schöll--The Dichter Zimmer--Sauppe--Tiefurt--Ettersburg--Arthur Helps--Gabel-Bach and Kickel-hahn--Liszt--Wagner's operas--"Der Freischütz"--Schiller's house--Goethe's house--Gartenhaus--Ober Weimar--The Webicht--Marquis de Ferrière--Liszt anecdotes--Cornelius--Raff--Princess Wittgenstein--Liszt's playing--Scheffer's picture--Expenses at Weimar--Leave for Berlin--Meet Varnhagen--Thiergarten--Acquaintances in Berlin--Fräulein Solmar--Professor Gruppe--Epic of Firdusi--Waagen--Edward Magnus--Professor Stahr and Fanny Lewald--Rauch the sculptor--Kant's statue--Dessoir the actor--"Nathan der Weise"--Döring's acting--Johanna Wagner--Letter to Miss Hennell--"Fidelio"--Reading Stahr's "Torso"--Likeness of Schiller--Vivier--Roger and Arabella Goddard--The Rosse-bändiger--Pictures--Cold in Berlin--View of Schloss from bridge--Leave Berlin for England--Books read--Article written on "Madame de Sablé"--Translation of Spinoza's "Ethics"--Article on Vehse's "Court of Austria"--Article on Stahr. FOOTNOTES: [45] A wretched forehead. [46] First line of Schiller's "Song of the Bell." [47] "Gentlemen, do you know the story of the man who railed at the sun because it would not light his cigar?" [48] Goose-neck. CHAPTER VII. [Sidenote: Journal, Mch. 1855.] _March 14._--Took lodgings at 1 Sydney Place, Dover. _March 15._--A lovely day. As I walked up the Castle hill this afternoon the town, with its background of softly rounded hills shrouded in sleepy haze, its little lines of water looking golden in the sun, made a charming picture. I have written the preface to the Third Book of "Ethics," read Scherr, and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis." _March 16._--I read Shakespeare's "Passionate Pilgrim" at breakfast, and found a sonnet in which he expresses admiration of Spenser (Sonnet viii.): "Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch Upon the lute doth ravish human sense; Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such As, passing all conceit, needs no defence."[49] I must send word of this to G., who has written in his "Goethe" that Shakespeare has left no line in praise of a contemporary. I could not resist the temptation of walking out before I sat down to work. Came in at half-past ten, and translated Spinoza till nearly one. Walked out again till two. After dinner read "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and some of the "Sonnets." That play disgusted me more than ever in the final scene, where Valentine, on Proteus's mere begging pardon, when he has no longer any hope of gaining his ends, says: "All that was mine in Sylvia, I give thee!" Silvia standing by. Walked up the Castle hill again, and came in at six. Read Scherr, and found an important hint that I have made a mistake in a sentence of my article on "Austria" about the death of Franz von Sickingen. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Mch. 1855.] I dare say you will be surprised to see that I write from Dover. We left Berlin on the 11th. I have taken lodgings here for a little while, until Mr. Lewes has concluded some arrangements in London; and, with the aid of lovely weather, am even enjoying my solitude, though I don't mind how soon it ends. News of you all at Rosehill--how health and business and all other things are faring--would be very welcome to me, if you can find time for a little note of homely details. I am well and calmly happy--feeling much stronger and clearer in mind for the last eight months of new experience. We were sorry to leave our quiet rooms and agreeable friends in Berlin, though the place itself is certainly ugly, and _am Ende_ must become terribly wearisome for those who have not a vocation there. We went again and again to the new museum to look at the casts of the Parthenon Sculptures, and registered a vow that we would go to feast on the sight of the originals the first day we could spare in London. I had never cast more than a fleeting look on them before, but now I can in some degree understand the effect they produced on their first discovery. [Sidenote: Journal, 1855.] _March 25._--A note from Mr. Chapman, in which he asks me to undertake part of the Contemporary Literature for the _Westminster Review_. _April 18._--Came to town, to lodgings in Bayswater. _April 23._--Fixed on lodgings at East Sheen. _April 25._--Went to the British Museum. _April 28._--Finished article on "Weimar," for _Fraser_. During this month George Eliot was finishing the translating and revising of Spinoza's "Ethics," and was still reading Scherr's book, Schrader's "German Mythology"--a poor book--"The Tempest," "Macbeth," "Niebelungenlied," "Romeo and Juliet," article on "Dryden" in the _Westminster_, "Reineke Fuchs," "Genesis of Science," Gibbon, "Henry V.," "Henry VIII.," first, second, and third parts of "Henry VI.," "Richard II." _May 2._--Came to East Sheen, and settled in our lodgings. _May 28._--Sent Belles-lettres section to _Westminster Review_. During May several articles were written for the _Leader_. _June 13._--Began Part IV. of Spinoza's "Ethics." Began also to read Cumming, for article in the _Westminster_. We are reading in the evenings now Sydney Smith's letters, Boswell, Whewell's "History of Inductive Sciences," "The Odyssey," and occasionally Heine's "Reisebilder." I began the second book of the "Iliad," in Greek, this morning. _June 21._--Finished article on Brougham's "Lives of Men of Letters." _June 23._--Read "Lucrezia Floriani." We are reading White's "History of Selborne" in the evening, with Boswell and the "Odyssey." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d June, 1855.] I have good hope that you will be deeply interested in the "Life of Goethe." It is a book full of feeling, as well as of thought and information, and I even think will make you love Goethe as well as admire him. Eckermann's is a wonderful book, but only represents Goethe at eighty. We were fortunate enough to be in time to see poor Eckermann before his _total_ death. His mind was already half gone, but the fine brow and eyes harmonized entirely with the interest we had previously felt in him. We saw him in a small lodging, surrounded by singing birds, and tended by his son--an intelligent youth of sixteen, who showed some talent in drawing. I have written a castigation of Brougham for the _Leader_, and shall be glad if your sympathy goes along with it. Varnhagen has written "Denkwurdigkeiten," and all sorts of literature, and is, or, rather was, the husband of _Rahel_, the greatest of German women. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st July, 1855.] It was surely you who wrote the notice of the _Westminster_ in the _Herald_ (Coventry) which we received this morning. I am very much pleased with your appreciation of Mr. Lewes's article. You hardly do justice to Froude's article on "Spinoza." I don't at all agree with Froude's own views, but I think his account of Spinoza's doctrines admirable. Mr. Lewes is still sadly ailing--tormented with tooth and face ache. This is a terrible trial to us poor scribblers, to whom health is money, as well as all other things worth having. I have just been reading that Milton suffered from indigestion--quite an affecting fact to me. I send you a letter which I have had from Barbara Smith. I think you will like to see such a manifestation of her strong, noble nature. On 1st August, 1855, Mr. Lewes went down to Ramsgate for change, taking his three boys with him for a week's holiday. Meantime George Eliot was continuing her article-writing, and in this week wrote an article for the _Leader_, having written one for the same journal three weeks before. On 22d August she wrote another article for the _Leader_, and on the 24th she finished the one on Cumming for the _Westminster_. Mr. C. Lewes tells me that he remembers it was after reading this article that his father was prompted to say to George Eliot, while walking one day with her in Richmond Park, that it convinced him of the true genius in her writing. Mr. Lewes was not only an accomplished and practised literary critic, but he was also gifted with the inborn insight accompanying a fine artistic temperament, which gave unusual weight to his judgment. Up to this time he had not been quite sure of anything beyond great talent in her productions. The first three weeks in September were again busily occupied in article-writing. She contributed three papers to the _Leader_, as well as the Belles-lettres section for the October number of the _Westminster_. On the 19th September they left East Sheen, and after spending a couple of weeks at Worthing for a sea change, they took rooms at 8 Park Shot, Richmond, which remained their home for more than three years. Here some of George Eliot's most memorable literary work was accomplished. Both she and Mr. Lewes were now working very hard for what would bring immediate profit, as they had to support not only themselves but his children and their mother. They had only one sitting-room between them; and I remember, in a walk on St. George's Hill, near Weybridge, in 1871, she told me that the scratching of another pen used to affect her nerves to such an extent that it nearly drove her wild. On the 9th October she finished an article on Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft, and on the 12th October one on Carlyle for the _Leader_, and began an article on Heine for the January number of the _Westminster_. In October there are the following letters to the Brays: [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, Monday, Oct. (?) 1855.] Since you have found out the "Cumming," I write by to-day's post just to say that it _is_ mine, but also to beg that you will not mention it as such to any one likely to transmit the information to London, as we are keeping the authorship a secret. The article appears to have produced a strong impression, and that impression would be a little counteracted if the author were known to be a _woman_. I have had a letter addressed "to the author of Article No. 4," begging me to print it separately "for the good of mankind in general!" It is so kind of you to rejoice in anything I do at all well. I am dreadfully busy again, for I am going to write an article for the _Westminster Review_ again, besides my other work. We enjoy our new lodgings very much--everything is the pink of order and cleanliness. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Oct. 1855.] Why you should object to Herbert Spencer speaking of Sir William Hamilton's contributions to a theory of perception as "valuable" I am unable to conceive. Sir William Hamilton has been of service to him as well as to others; and instead of repressing acknowledgments of merit in others, I should like them to be more freely given. I see no dignity, or anything else that is good, in ignoring one's fellow-beings. Herbert Spencer's views, like every other man's views, could not have existed without the substratum laid by his predecessors. But perhaps you mean something that I fail to perceive. Your bit of theology is very fine. Here is a delicious Hibernicism in return. In a treatise on consumption, sent yesterday, the writer says: "There is now hardly any _difference_ on this subject--at least _I_ feel none." Our life has no incidents except such as take place in our own brains, and the occasional arrival of a longer letter than usual. Yours are always read aloud and enjoyed. Nevertheless our life is intensely occupied, and the days are far too short. We are reading Gall's "Anatomie et Physiologie du Cerveau," and Carpenter's "Comparative Physiology," aloud in the evenings; and I am trying to fix some knowledge about plexuses and ganglia in my soft brain, which generally only serves me to remember that there is something I ought to remember, and to regret that I did not put the something down in my note-book. For "Live and learn," we should sometimes read "Live and grow stupid." [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 21st Nov. 1855.] You will receive by rail to-morrow a copy of the "Life and Works of Goethe" (published on 1st November), which I hope you will accept as a keepsake from me. I should have been glad to send it you earlier, but as Mr. Lewes has sold the copyright of the first edition, he has only a small number of copies at his disposal, and so I doubted whether I ought to ask for one. I think you will find much to interest you in the book. I can't tell you how I value it, as the best product of a mind which I have every day more reason to admire and love. We have had much gratification in the expression of individual opinion. The press is very favorable, but the notices are for the most part too idiotic to give us much pleasure, except in a pecuniary point of view. I am going out to-day, for the first time for nearly a fortnight. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th Nov. 1855.] I have just finished a long article on Heine for the _Westminster Review_, which none of you will like. _En revanche_, Mr. Lewes has written one on "Lions and Lion Hunters," which you will find amusing. On the 12th December the Belles-lettres section for the January number of the _Westminster Review_ was finished and sent off, and the next entry in the Journal is dated: [Sidenote: Journal, 1855.] _Dec. 24, 1855._--For the last ten days I have done little, owing to headache and other ailments. Began the "Antigone," read Von Bohlen on "Genesis," and Swedenborg. Mr. Chapman wants me to write an article on "Missions and Missionaries," for the April number of the _Westminster_, but I think I shall not have it ready till the July number. In the afternoon I set out on my journey to see my sister, and arrived at her house about eight o'clock, finding her and her children well. _Dec. 29, 1855._--Returned to Richmond. G. away at Vernon Hill (Arthur Helps's), having gone thither on Wednesday. _Dec. 30, 1855._--Read the "Shaving of Shagpat" (George Meredith's). _Dec. 31, 1855._--Wrote a review of "Shagpat." [Sidenote: Journal, 1856.] _Jan. 1, 1856._--Read Kingsley's "Greek Heroes," and began a review of Von Bohlen. _Jan. 5, 1856._--G. came home. _Jan. 6, 1856._--Began to revise Book IV. of Spinoza's "Ethics," and continued this work through the week, being able to work but slowly. Finished Kahnis's "History of German Protestantism." _Jan. 16, 1856._--Received a charming letter from Barbara Smith, with a petition to Parliament that women may have a right to their earnings. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Jan. 1856.] I believe there have been at least a thousand copies of the "Goethe" sold, which is a wonderfully good sale in less than three months for a thirty-shilling book. We have a charming collection of letters, both from remarkable acquaintances and remarkable non-acquaintances, expressing enthusiastic delight in the book--letters all the more delightful because they are quite spontaneous, and spring from a generous wish to let the author know how highly the writers value his work. If you want some idle reading, get the "Shaving of Shagpat," which, I think, you will say deserves all the praise I gave it. [Sidenote: Journal, 1856.] _Feb. 19, 1856._--Since the 6th January I have been occupied with Spinoza; and, except a review of Griswold's "American Poets," have done nothing else but translate the Fifth Book of the "Ethics," and revise the whole of my translation from the beginning. This evening I have finished my revision. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Feb. 1856.] I was so glad to have a little news of you. I should like to hear much oftener, but our days are so accurately parcelled out among regular occupations that I rarely manage to do anything not included in the programme; and, without reading Mrs. Barbauld on the "Inconsistency of Human Expectations," I know that receiving letters is inconsistent with not writing any. Have you seen any numbers of the _Saturday Review_, a new journal, on which "all the talents" are engaged? It is not properly a newspaper, but--what its title expresses--a political and literary review. We are delighting ourselves with Ruskin's third volume, which contains some of the finest writing I have read for a long time (among recent books). I read it aloud for an hour or so after dinner; then we jump to the old dramatists, when Mr. Lewes reads to me as long as his voice will hold out, and after this we wind up the evening with Rymer Jones's "Animal Kingdom," by which I get a confused knowledge of branchiæ, and such things--perhaps, on the whole, a little preferable to total ignorance. These are our _noctes_--without _cenæ_ for the present--occasionally diversified by very dramatic singing of Figaro, etc., which, I think, must alarm "that good man, the clergyman," who sits below us. We have been half laughing, half indignant, over Alison's new volume of his "History of Europe," in which he undertakes to give an account of German literature. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 25th Feb. 1856.] What you tell me of Harriet Martineau interests me very much. I feel for her terrible bodily suffering, and think of her with deep respect and admiration. Whatever may have been her mistakes and weaknesses, the great and good things she has done far outweigh them; and I should be grieved if anything in her memoir should cast a momentary shadow over the agreeable image of her that the world will ultimately keep in its memory. I wish less of our piety were spent on imaginary perfect goodness, and more given to real _im_perfect goodness. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, end of Feb. 1856.] I am very happy for you to keep the sheets, and to get signatures (for the Women's Petition that they should have legal right to their own earnings). Miss Barbara Smith writes that she must have them returned to her before the 1st of March. I am glad you have taken up the cause, for I do think that, with proper provisos and safeguards, the proposed law would help to raise the position and character of women. It is one round of a long ladder stretching far beyond our lives. During March, George Eliot wrote only the Belles-lettres section for the April number of the _Westminster_, having resigned the subject of "Missions" to Harriet Martineau. She also wrote two articles for the _Saturday Review_, and two for the _Leader_. And there are the following letters in March to the Brays, in which allusion is made to their leaving the old home at Rosehill, owing to the unsatisfactory state of the Coventry business. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 26th Mch. 1856.] We are flourishing in every way except in health. Mr. Lewes's head is still infirm, but he manages, nevertheless, to do twice as much work as other people. I am always a croaker, you know, but my ailments are of a small kind, their chief symptoms being a muddled brain; and, as my pen is not of the true literary order which will run along without the help of brains, I don't get through so much work as I should like. By the way, when the Spinoza comes out, be so good as not to mention my name in connection with it. I particularly wish not to be known as the translator of the "Ethics," for reasons which it would be "too tedious to mention." You don't know what a severely practical person I am become, and what a sharp eye I have to the main chance. I keep the purse, and dole out sovereigns with all the pangs of a miser. In fact, if you were to feel my bump of acquisitiveness, I dare say you would find it in a state of inflammation, like the "veneration" of that clergyman to whom Mr. Donovan said, "Sir, you have recently been engaged in prayer." I hope you recognized your own wit about the one-eyed dissenters, which was quoted in the _Leader_ some time ago. You always said no one did so much justice to your jokes as I did. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 31st Mch. 1856.] My mind is more rebellious than yours, and I can't help being saddened by the idea of you and Cara being in any other home than the dear old one. But I know that your cheerful courage is yet stronger in deed than in word. Will not business or pleasure bring you to London soon, and will you not come to see us? We can give you a bed--not a sumptuous one, but one which you will perhaps not find intolerable for a night. I know the trip up the Thames is charming, and we should like to do it with you, but I don't think we can manage it this summer. We are going to send or take the boys (Mr. Lewes's sons) to school in Germany at midsummer, and are at present uncertain about our arrangements. If we can _send_ them, we shall go to the coast as soon as the warm weather comes, and remain there for three months. But our plans are not yet crystallized. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 1st April, 1856.] After I wrote you yesterday morning we had a letter from Germany which has made Mr. Lewes incline to defer sending the boys thither till next year. But he is anxious to remove them from their present school: and, in the course of our consultations on the subject, we thought of Mr. John Sibree as a person in whom we should feel confidence as to the moral influence he would exercise as a tutor. The risk of placing children with entire strangers is terrible. So I tease you with another letter to ask you if Mr. J. Sibree continues in the same position as formerly, and if he is still anxious to obtain pupils. What a delicious day! We are going to have a holiday at the Zoological Gardens. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th April, 1856.] Thank you for taking the trouble to write me a full account of matters so interesting to me. I hope you will be able thoroughly to enjoy this last precious summer on the pretty lawn, where it is one of my pleasures on sunshiny days to think of you all strolling about or seated on the Bearskin. We are very thankful for the Hofwyl circular, and have almost decided to send the two eldest boys there. But it is necessary to weigh all things carefully before coming to a determination; as, not being either swindlers or philanthropists, we don't like to incur obligations which there is not a reasonable certainty of our being able to meet. I am much obliged to Mr. Bray, too, for sending Mr. John Sibree's letter. Mr. Lewes had already received an answer from him declining his proposition, but we were interested to read his very characteristic letter to his sister, which proved to Mr. Lewes that I had given him a correct description of the man. The next few weeks are, perhaps, the most signally important and interesting of all in George Eliot's development. There are unmistakable signs of the rising of the sap of creative production. In the middle of April Mr. Herbert Spencer, who had been abroad for some time, returned to England, and dined with them at Park Shot on the 15th, and on the 18th they went with him to Sydenham. On the 22d April George Eliot began her article on Young; and on the 29th she began to read Riehl's book,[50] on which she was to write another article for the _Westminster_. On the 8th of May they set off for Ilfracombe, and we have the following "recollections" of that place: [Sidenote: Ilfracombe, Recollections, 1856.] It was a cold, unfriendly day--the 8th of May--on which we set out for Ilfracombe with our hamper of glass jars, which we meant for our sea-side vivarium. We had to get down at Windsor, and were not sorry that the interval was long enough to let us walk round the castle, which I had never seen before except from a distance. The famous "slopes," the avenues in the park, and the distant landscape, looked very lovely in the fresh and delicate greens of spring; and the castle is surely the most delightful royal residence in the world. We took our places from Windsor all the way to Exeter; and at Bristol, where we had to wait three hours, the misery of my terrible headache was mitigated by the interest we felt in seeing the grand old Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, forever associated with the memory of Chatterton. "It stands, the maestrie of a human hand, The pride of Bristowe and the western land." It was cheering, the next morning after our arrival at Ilfracombe, to get up with a head rather less aching, and to walk up and down the little garden of Runnymede Villa in the bright sunshine. I had a great deal of work before me--the writing of an article on Riehl's book, which I had not half read, as well as the article on Belles-lettres; but my head was still dizzy, and it seemed impossible to sit down to writing at once in these new scenes, so we determined to spend the day in explorations. From our windows we had a view of the higher part of the town, and generally it looked uninteresting enough; but what is it that light cannot transfigure into beauty? One evening, after a shower, as the sun was setting over the sea behind us, some peculiar arrangement of clouds threw a delicious evening light on the irregular cluster of houses, and merged the ugliness of their forms in an exquisite flood of color--as a stupid person is made glorious by a noble deed. A perfect rainbow arched over the picture. From one end of the Capstone we have an admirable bit for a picture. In the background rises old Helesborough, jutting out far into the sea--rugged and rocky as it fronts the waves, green and accessible landward; in front of this stands Lantern Hill, a picturesque mass of green and gray, surmounted by an old bit of building that looks as if it were the habitation of some mollusk that had secreted its shell from the material of the rock; and quite in the foreground, contrasting finely in color with the rest, are some lower perpendicular rocks of dark-brown tints, patched here and there with vivid green. In hilly districts, where houses and clusters of houses look so tiny against the huge limbs of mother earth, one cannot help thinking of man as a parasitic animal--an epizoan making his abode in the skin of the planetary organism. In a flat country, a house or a town looks imposing; there is nothing to rival it in height, and we may imagine the earth a mere pedestal for us. But when one sees a house stuck on the side of a great hill, and, still more, a number of houses, looking like a few barnacles, clustered on the side of a great rock, we begin to think of the strong family likeness between ourselves and all other building, burrowing, house-appropriating, and shell-secreting animals. The difference between a man with his house and a mollusk with its shell lies in the number of steps or phenomena interposed between the fact of individual existence and the completion of the building. Whatever other advantages we may have over mollusks and insects in our habitations, it is clear that their architecture has the advantage of ours in beauty--at least, considered as the architecture of the species. Look at man in the light of a shell-fish, and it must be admitted that his shell is generally ugly; and it is only after a great many more "steps or phenomena" that he secretes here and there a wonderful shell in the shape of a temple or a palace. On our first zoophyte hunt it was characteristic of the wide difference there is between having eyes and _seeing_, that in this region of sea-anemones, where the Mesembryanthemum especially is as plenty as blackberries, we climbed about for two hours without seeing one anemone, and went in again with scarcely anything but a few stones and weeds to put into our jars. On our next hunt, however, after we had been out some time, G. exclaimed, "I see an anemone!" and we were immensely excited by the discovery of this little red Mesembryanthemum, which we afterwards disdained to gather, as much as if it had been a nettle. It was a _crescendo_ of delight when we found a "strawberry," and a _fortissimo_ when I, for the first time, saw the pale, fawn-colored tentacles of an _Anthea cereus_ viciously waving like little serpents in a low-tide pool. But not a polype for a long, long while could even G. detect, after all his reading; so necessary is it for the eye to be educated by objects as well as ideas. Every day I gleaned some little bit of naturalistic experience, either through G.'s calling on me to look through the microscope, or from hunting on the rocks; and this in spite of my preoccupation with my article, which I worked at considerably _à contre-coeur_, despairing of it ever being worth anything. When at last, by the 17th of June, both my articles were despatched, I felt delightfully at liberty, and determined to pay some attention to seaweeds, which I had never seen in such beauty as at Ilfracombe. For hitherto I had been chiefly on chalky and sandy shores, where there were no rock-pools to show off the lovely colors and forms of the algæ. There are tide-pools to be seen almost at every other step on the shore at Ilfracombe; and I shall never forget their appearance when we first arrived there. The _Corallina officinalis_ was then in its greatest perfection, and with its purple-pink fronds threw into relief the dark olive fronds of the Laminariæ on one side, and the vivid green of the Ulva and Enteromorpha on the other. After we had been there a few weeks the Corallina was faded; and I noticed the _Mesagloia vermicularis_ and the _M. virescens_, which look very lovely in the water, from the white cilia, which make the most delicate fringe to their yellow-brown, whip-like fronds, and some of the common Polysiphoniæ. These tide-pools made me quite in love with seaweeds, so I took up Landsborough's book and tried to get a little more light on their structure and history. Our zoological expeditions alternated with delicious inland walks. I think the country looked its best when we arrived. It was just that moment in spring when the leaves are in full leaf, but still keep their delicate varieties of coloring, and that _transparency_ which belongs only to this season. And the furze was in all its golden glory! It was almost like the fading away of the evening red, when the furze blossoms died off from the hills, and the only contrast left was that of the marly soil with the green crops and woods. The primroses were the contemporaries of the furze, and sprinkled the sides of the hills with their pale stars almost as plentifully as daisies or buttercups elsewhere. But the great charm of all Devonshire lanes is the springs that you detect gurgling in shady recesses, covered with liverwort, with here and there waving tufts of fern and other broad-leaved plants that love obscurity and moisture. We seemed to make less of our evenings at Ilfracombe than we have ever done elsewhere. We used often to be tired with our hunting or walking; and we were reading books which did not make us take them up very eagerly--Gosse's "Rambles on the Devonshire Coast," for example; Trench's "Calderon," and other volumes, taken up in a desultory way. One bit of reading we had there, however, which interested me deeply. It was Masson's "Life of Chatterton," which happily linked itself with the impressions I had received from the sight of the old church at Bristol. Mr. Tugwell's (the curate) acquaintance was a real acquisition to us, not only because he was a companion and helper in zoological pursuits, but because to know him was to know of another sweet nature in the world. It is always good to know, if only in passing, a charming human being; it refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks. One Sunday evening we walked up to his pretty house to carry back some proofs of his, and he induced us to go in and have coffee with him. He played on his harmonium, and we chatted pleasantly. The last evening of our stay at Ilfracombe he came to see us in Mrs. Webster's drawing-room, and we had music till nearly eleven o'clock--a pleasant recollection! We only twice took the walk beyond Watermouth towards Berrynarbor. The road lies through what are called the "Meadows," which look like a magnificent park. A stream, fringed with wild-flowers and willows, runs along the valley, two or three yards from the side of the road. This stream is clear as crystal, and about every twenty yards it falls over a little artificial precipice of stones. The long grass was waving in all the glory of June, before the mower has come to make it suffer a "love change" from beauties into sweet odors; and the slopes on each side of us were crowned or clothed with fine trees. The last time we went through these meadows was on our last day at Ilfracombe. Such sunlight and such deep peace on the hills and by the stream! Coming back, we rested on a gate under the trees, and a blind man came up to rest also. He told us, in his slow way, what a fine, "healthy spot" this was--yes, a very healthy spot--a healthy spot. And then we went on our way, and saw his face no more. I have talked of the Ilfracombe lanes without describing them, for to describe them one ought to know the names of all the lovely wild-flowers that cluster on their banks. Almost every yard of these banks is a "Hunt" picture--a delicious crowding of mosses and delicate trefoil and wild strawberries and ferns great and small. But the crowning beauty of the lanes is the springs that gush out in little recesses by the side of the road--recesses glossy with liverwort and feathery with fern. Sometimes you have the spring when it has grown into a brook, either rushing down a miniature cataract by the lane-side, or flowing gently as a "braided streamlet" across your path. I never before longed so much to know the names of things as during this visit to Ilfracombe. The desire is part of the tendency that is now constantly growing in me to escape from all vagueness and inaccuracy into the daylight of distinct, vivid ideas. The mere fact of naming an object tends to give definiteness to our conception of it. We have then a sign which at once calls up in our minds the distinctive qualities which mark out for us that particular object from all others. We ascended the Tors only twice; for a tax of 3_d._ per head was demanded on this luxury, and we could not afford a sixpenny walk very frequently: yet the view is perhaps the very finest to be had at Ilfracombe. Bay behind bay, fringed with foam, and promontory behind promontory, each with its peculiar shades of purple light--the sweep of the Welsh coast faintly visible in the distance, and the endless expanse of sea, flecked with ships, stretching on our left. [Sidenote: Ilfracombe, Recollections, June, 1856.] One evening we went down to the shore through the "Tunnels" to see the sunset. Standing in the "Ladies' Cove," we had before us the sharp fragments of rock jutting out of the waves and standing black against the orange and crimson sky. How lovely to look into that brilliant distance and see the ship on the horizon seeming to sail away from the cold and dim world behind it right into the golden glory! I have always that sort of feeling when I look at sunset; it always seems to me that there in the West lies a land of light and warmth and love. On the 26th of June we said good-bye to Ilfracombe. The sight of the cockle-women at Swansea, where we had to wait, would make a fine subject for a painter. One of them was the grandest woman I ever saw--six feet high, carrying herself like a Greek warrior, and treading the earth with unconscious majesty. Her face was weather-beaten and wizened, but her eyes were bright and piercing, and the lines of her face, with its high cheek-bones, strong and characteristic. The guard at the railway station told us that one of the porters had been insolent the other day to a cockle-woman, and that she immediately pitched him off the platform into the road below! [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 6th June, 1856.] When we arrived here I had not even read a great book on which I had engaged to write a long article by the beginning of this month; so that between work and zoology and bodily ailments my time has been full to overflowing. We are enchanted with Ilfracombe. I really think it is the loveliest sea-place I ever saw, from the combination of fine rocky coast with exquisite inland scenery. But it would not do for any one who can't climb rocks and mount perpetual hills; for the peculiarity of this country is, that it is all hill and no valley. You have no sooner got to the foot of one hill than you begin to mount another. You would laugh to see our room decked with yellow pie-dishes, a _foot-pan_, glass jars and phials, all full of zoophytes, or mollusks, or anellides--and, still more, to see the eager interest with which we rush to our "preserves" in the morning to see if there has been any mortality among them in the night. We have made the acquaintance of a charming little zoological curate here, who is a delightful companion on expeditions, and is most good-natured in lending and giving apparatus and "critturs" of all sorts. Mr. Pigott[51] is coming here with his yacht at the end of June, and we hope then to go to Clovelly--Kingsley's Clovelly--and perhaps other places on the coast that we can't reach on foot. After this we mean to migrate to Tenby, for the sake of making acquaintance with its mollusks and medusæ. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 8th June, 1856.] I received your kind letter only yesterday, but I write a few words in answer at once, lest, as it so often happens, delay should beget delay. It is never too late to write generous words, and although circumstances are not likely to allow of our acquiring a more intimate knowledge of each other from personal intercourse, it will always be a pleasant thought to me that you have remembered me kindly, and interpreted me nobly. You are one of the minority who know how to "use their imagination in the service of charity." I have suffered so much from misunderstanding created by letters, even to old friends, that I never write on private personal matters, unless it be a rigorous duty or necessity to do so. Some little phrase or allusion is misinterpreted, and on this false basis a great fabric of misconception is reared, which even explanatory conversations will not remove. Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly on under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th June, 1856.] Yes, indeed, I do remember old Tenby days, and had set my heart on being in the very same house again; but, alas! it had just been let. It is immensely smartened up, like the place generally, since those old times, and is proportionately less desirable for quiet people who have no flounces and do not subscribe to new churches. Tenby looks insignificant in picturesqueness after Ilfracombe; but the two objects that drew us hither, zoology and health, will flourish none the worse for the absence of tall precipices and many-tinted rocks. The air is delicious--soft, but not sultry--and the sands and bathing such as are to be found nowhere else. St. Catherine's Rock, with its caverns, is our paradise. We go there with baskets, hammers and chisels, and jars and phials, and come home laden with spoils. Altogether, we are contented to have been driven away from Ilfracombe by the cold wind, since a new place is new experience, and Mr. Lewes has never been here before. To me there is the additional pleasure--half melancholy--of recalling all the old impressions and comparing them with the new. I understand your wish to have as much of Rosehill as possible this year, and I am so glad that you will associate a visit from Herbert Spencer with this last summer. I suppose he is with you now. If so, give him my very evil regards, and tell him that because he has not written to us we will diligently _not_ tell him a great many things he would have liked to know. We have a project of going into St. Catherine's caverns with lanterns, some night when the tide is low, about eleven, for the sake of seeing the zoophytes preparing for their midnight revels. The Actiniæ, like other belles, put on their best faces on such occasions. Two things we have lost by leaving Ilfracombe for which we have no compensation--the little zoological curate, Mr. Tugwell, who is really one of the best specimens of the clergyman species I have seen; and the pleasure of having Miss Barbara Smith there for a week, sketching the rocks, and putting our love of them into the tangible form of a picture. We are looking out now for Mr. Pigott in his yacht; and his amiable face will make an agreeable variety on the sands. I thought "Walden"[52] (you mean "Life in the Woods," don't you?) a charming book, from its freshness and sincerity as well as for its bits of description. It is pleasant to think that Harriet Martineau can make so much of her last days. Her energy and her habit of useful work are admirable. During the stay at Ilfracombe and Tenby not much literary work was done, except the articles on Young and on Riehl's book. There was a notice of Masson's Essays and the Belles-lettres section for the July number of the _Westminster_, and a review for the _Leader_. There is mention, too, of the reading of Beaumarchais' "Memoirs," Milne Edwards's "Zoology," Harvey's sea-side book, and "Coriolanus," and then comes this significant sentence in her Journal: [Sidenote: Journal, 1856.] _July 20, 1856._--The fortnight has slipped away without my being able to show much result for it. I have written a review of the "Lover's Seat," and jotted down some recollections of Ilfracombe; besides these trifles, and the introduction to an article already written, I have done no _visible_ work. But I have absorbed many ideas and much bodily strength; indeed, I do not remember ever feeling so strong in mind and body as I feel at this moment. On Saturday, the 12th, Barbara Smith arrived, and stayed here till Wednesday morning. We enjoyed her society very much, but were deeply touched to see that three years had made her so much older and sadder. Her activity for great objects is admirable; and contact with her is a fresh inspiration to work while it is day. We have now taken up Quatrefages again. The "Memoirs" of Beaumarchais yielded me little fruit. Mr. Chapman invites me to contribute to the _Westminster_ for this quarter. I am anxious to begin my fiction-writing, and so am not inclined to undertake an article that will give me much trouble, but, at all events, I will finish my article on Young. _July 21._--We had a delightful walk on the north sands, and hunted with success. A sunny, happy day. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th July, 1856.] Glad to hear at last some news of your Essay--hoping to hear more and better by and by. I didn't like to think that your labor would be thrown away, except so far as it must do good to yourself by clearing up your ideas. Not that your ideas were muddy, but the last degree of clearness can only come by writing. Mr. Pigott is with us just now, and we are meditating a nocturnal visit to St. Catherine's caves with him. Our visit to Tenby has been very useful zoologically, but we are not otherwise greatly in love with the place. It seems tame and vulgar after Ilfracombe. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 6th Aug. 1856.] Thank you for your kind note,[53] so like yourself. Such things encourage me, and help me to do better. I never think what I write is good for anything till other people tell me so, and even then it always seems to me as if I should never write anything _else_ worth reading. Ah, how much good we may do each other by a few friendly words, and the opportunities for them are so much more frequent than for friendly deeds! We want people to feel with us more than to act for us. Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards to you. He, too, was very pleased with your letter, for he cares more about getting approbation for me than for himself. _He_ can do very well without it. On the 8th August they left Tenby, and on 9th arrived at Richmond "with terrible headache, but enjoyed the sense of being 'at home' again." On the 18th, "walked in Kew Park, and talked with G. of my novel. Finished 'César Birotteau' aloud." On the 25th August Mr. Lewes set off for Hofwyl, near Berne, taking his two eldest boys, Charles and Thornton, to place them at school there. He returned on 4th September, and in his absence George Eliot had been busy with her article on "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists." This was finished on the 12th September, and on the 19th she sent off the Belles-lettres section for the October number of the _Westminster_. We have now arrived at the period of the new birth, and, fortunately, in the following memorandum, we have George Eliot's own words as to how it came about: [Sidenote: How I came to write fiction.] September, 1856, made a new era in my life, for it was then I began to write fiction. It had always been a vague dream of mine that some time or other I might write a novel; and my shadowy conception of what the novel was to be, varied, of course, from one epoch of my life to another. But I never went further towards the actual writing of the novel than an introductory chapter describing a Staffordshire village and the life of the neighboring farm-houses; and as the years passed on I lost any hope that I should ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about everything else in my future life. I always thought I was deficient in dramatic power, both of construction and dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive parts of a novel. My "introductory chapter" was pure description, though there were good materials in it for dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the papers I had with me in Germany, and one evening at Berlin something led me to read it to George. He was struck with it as a bit of concrete description, and it suggested to him the possibility of my being able to write a novel, though he distrusted--indeed, disbelieved in--my possession of any dramatic power. Still, he began to think that I might as well try some time what I could do in fiction, and by and by, when we came back to England, and I had greater success than he ever expected in other kinds of writing, his impression that it was worth while to see how far my mental power would go towards the production of a novel, was strengthened. He began to say very positively, "You must try and write a story," and when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at once. I deferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work that does not present itself as an absolute duty. But one morning, as I was thinking what should be the subject of my first story, my thoughts merged themselves into a dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing a story, of which the title was "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton." I was soon wide awake again and told G. He said, "Oh, what a capital title!" and from that time I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story. George used to say, "It may be a failure--it may be that you are unable to write fiction. Or, perhaps, it may be just good enough to warrant your trying again." Again, "You may write a _chef-d'oeuvre_ at once--there's no telling." But his prevalent impression was, that though I could hardly write a _poor_ novel, my effort would want the highest quality of fiction--dramatic presentation. He used to say, "You have wit, description, and philosophy--those go a good way towards the production of a novel. It is worth while for you to try the experiment." We determined that if my story turned out good enough we would send it to Blackwood; but G. thought the more probable result was that I should have to lay it aside and try again. But when we returned to Richmond I had to write my article on "Silly Novels," and my review of Contemporary Literature for the _Westminster_, so that I did not begin my story till September 22. After I had begun it, as we were walking in the park, I mentioned to G. that I had thought of the plan of writing a series of stories, containing sketches drawn from my own observation of the clergy, and calling them "Scenes from Clerical Life," opening with "Amos Barton." He at once accepted the notion as a good one--fresh and striking; and about a week afterwards, when I read him the first part of "Amos," he had no longer any doubt about my ability to carry out the plan. The scene at Cross Farm, he said, satisfied him that I had the very element he had been doubtful about--it was clear I could write good dialogue. There still remained the question whether I could command any pathos; and that was to be decided by the mode in which I treated Milly's death. One night G. went to town on purpose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I wrote the chapter from the news brought by the shepherd to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged from the bedside, and I read it to G. when he came home. We both cried over it, and then he came up to me and kissed me, saying, "I think your pathos is better than your fun." The story of the "Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton" was begun on 22d September and finished on the 5th November, and I subjoin the opening correspondence between Mr. Lewes and Mr. John Blackwood, to exhibit the first effect it produced: [Sidenote: Letter from G. H. Lewes, to John Blackwood, 6th Nov. 1856.] "I trouble you with a MS. of 'Sketches of Clerical Life' which was submitted to me by a friend who desired my good offices with you. It goes by this post. I confess that before reading the MS. I had considerable doubts of my friend's powers as a writer of fiction; but, after reading it, these doubts were changed into very high admiration. I don't know what you will think of the story, but, according to my judgment, such humor, pathos, vivid presentation, and nice observation have not been exhibited (in this style) since the 'Vicar of Wakefield;' and, in consequence of that opinion, I feel quite pleased in negotiating the matter with you. "This is what I am commissioned to say to you about the proposed series. It will consist of tales and sketches illustrative of the actual life of our country clergy about a quarter of a century ago--but solely in its _human_, and not at all in its _theological_ aspects; the object being to do what has never yet been done in our literature, for we have had abundant religious stories, polemical and doctrinal, but since the 'Vicar' and Miss Austen, no stories representing the clergy like every other class, with the humors, sorrows, and troubles of other men. He begged me particularly to add, that--as the specimen sent will sufficiently prove--the tone throughout will be sympathetic, and not at all antagonistic. "Some of these, if not all, you may think suitable for 'Maga.' If any are sent of which you do not approve, or which you do not think sufficiently interesting, these he will reserve for the separate republication, and for this purpose he wishes to retain the copyright. Should you only print one or two, he will be well satisfied; and still better, if you should think well enough of the series to undertake the separate republication." [Sidenote: Letter from John Blackwood, to G. H. Lewes, 12th Nov. 1856.] "I am happy to say that I think your friend's reminiscences of Clerical Life will do. If there is any more of the series written I should like to see it, as, until I saw more, I could not make any decided proposition for the publication of the tales, in whole or in part, in the Magazine. This first specimen, 'Amos Barton,' is unquestionably very pleasant reading. Perhaps the author falls into the error of trying too much to explain the characters of his actors by description instead of allowing them to evolve in the action of the story; but the descriptions are very humorous and good. The death of Milly is powerfully done, and affected me much. I am not sure whether he does not spoil it a little by specifying so minutely the different children and their names. The wind-up is perhaps the lamest part of the story; and there, too, I think the defect is caused by the specifications as to the fortunes of parties of whom the reader has no previous knowledge, and cannot, consequently, feel much interest. At first, I was afraid that in the amusing reminiscences of childhood in church there was a want of some softening touch, such as the remembrance of a father or mother lends, in after-years, to what was at the time considerable penance. "I hate anything of a sneer at real religious feeling as cordially as I despise anything like cant, and I should think this author is of the same way of thinking, although his clergymen, with one exception, are not very attractive specimens of the body. The revulsion of feeling towards poor Amos is capitally drawn, although the asinine stupidity of his conduct about the countess had disposed one to kick him. "I dare say I shall have a more decided opinion as to the merits of the story when I have looked at it again and thought over it; but in the meantime I am sure that there is a happy turn of expression throughout, also much humor and pathos. If the author is a new writer, I beg to congratulate him on being worthy of the honors of print and pay. I shall be very glad to hear from you or him soon." [Sidenote: Letter from G. H. Lewes to John Blackwood, Saturday, Nov. 1856.] "I have communicated your letter to my clerical friend, who, though somewhat discouraged by it, has taken my advice, and will submit the second story to you when it is written. At present he has only written what he sent you. His avocations, he informs me, will prevent his setting to work for the next three weeks or so, but as soon as he is at liberty he will begin. "I rate the story much higher than you appear to do, from certain expressions in your note, though you too appreciate the humor and pathos and the happy turn of expression. It struck me as being fresher than any story I have read for a long while, and as exhibiting, in a high degree, that faculty which I find to be the rarest of all--viz., the dramatic ventriloquism. "At the same time I told him that I thoroughly understood your editorial caution in not accepting from an unknown hand a series on the strength of one specimen." [Sidenote: Letter from John Blackwood to G. H. Lewes, 18th Nov. 1856.] "I was very far from intending that my letter should convey anything like disappointment to your friend. On the contrary, I thought the tale very good, and intended to convey as much. But I dare say I expressed myself coolly enough. Criticism would assume a much soberer tone were critics compelled _seriously to act_ whenever they expressed an opinion. Although not much given to hesitate about anything, I always think twice before I put the decisive mark 'In type for the Magazine' on any MS. from a stranger. Fancy the intense annoyance (to say nothing of more serious considerations) of publishing, month after month, a series about which the conviction gradually forces itself on you that you have made a total blunder. "I am sorry that the author has no more written, but if he cares much about a speedy appearance, I have so high an opinion of this first tale that I will waive my objections, and publish it without seeing more--not, of course, committing myself to go on with the other tales of the series unless I approved of them. I am very sanguine that I will approve, as, in addition to the other merits of 'Amos,' I agree with you that there is great freshness of style. If you think also that it would stimulate the author to go on with the other tales with more spirit, I will publish 'Amos' at once. He could divide into two parts. I am blocked up for December, but I could start him in January. "I am glad to hear that your friend is, as I supposed, a clergyman. Such a subject is best in clerical hands, and some of the pleasantest and least-prejudiced correspondents I have ever had are English clergymen. "I have not read 'Amos Barton' a second time, but the impression on my mind of the whole character, incidents, and feeling of the story is very distinct, which is an excellent sign." [Sidenote: Letter from G. H. Lewes to John Blackwood, Saturday, Nov. 1856.] "Your letter has greatly restored the shaken confidence of my friend, who is unusually sensitive, and, unlike most writers, is more anxious about _excellence_ than about appearing in print--as his waiting so long before taking the venture proves. He is consequently afraid of failure, though not afraid of obscurity; and by failure he would understand that which I suspect most writers would be apt to consider as success--so high is his ambition. "I tell you this that you may understand the sort of shy, shrinking, ambitious nature you have to deal with. I tried to persuade him that you really _did_ appreciate his story, but were only hesitating about committing yourself to a series; and your last letter has proved me to have been right--although, as he never contemplated binding you to the publication of any portion of the series to which you might object, he could not at first see your position in its true light. "All is, however, clear now. He will be gratified if you publish 'Amos Barton' in January, as it will give him ample time to get the second story ready, so as to appear when 'Barton' is finished, should you wish it. He is anxious, however, that you should publish the general title of 'Scenes of Clerical Life;' and I think you may do this with perfect safety, since it is quite clear that the writer of 'Amos Barton' is capable of writing at least one more story suitable to 'Maga;' and two would suffice to justify the general title. "Let me not forget to add that when I referred to 'my clerical friend,' I meant to designate the writer of the clerical stories--not that he was a clericus. I am not at liberty to remove the veil of anonymity, even as regards social position. Be pleased, therefore, to keep the whole secret, and not even mention _my_ negotiation, or in any way lead guessers (should any one trouble himself with such a guess--_not_ very likely) to jump from me to my friend." On Christmas Day, 1856, "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" was begun, and during December and January the following are mentioned among the books read: The "Ajax" of Sophocles, Miss Martineau's "History of the Peace," Macaulay's "History" finished, Carlyle's "French Revolution," Burke's "Reflections on the French Revolution," and "Mansfield Park." [Sidenote: Letter from John Blackwood, to the author of "Amos Barton," 29th Dec. 1856.] "Along with this I send a copy of the January number of the Magazine, in which you will find the first part of 'Amos Barton.' It gives me very great pleasure to begin the number with 'Amos,' and I put him in that position because his merits well entitle him to it, and also because it is a vital point to attract public attention to the _first_ part of a series, to which end being the first article of the first number of the year may contribute. "I have already expressed to our friend Mr. Lewes the very high opinion I entertain of 'Amos,' and the expectations I have formed of the series, should his successors prove equal to him, which I fully anticipate. "It is a long time since I have read anything so fresh, so humorous, and so touching. The style is capital, conveying so much in so few words. "Those who have seen the tale here are chiefly members of my own family, and they are all enthusiastic in praise. "You may recollect that I expressed a fear that in the affecting and highly wrought scene of poor Milly's death, the attempt to individualize the children by reiterating their names weakened the effect, as the reader had not been prepared to care for them individually, but simply as a group--the children of Milly and the sorrow-stricken curate. My brother says, 'No. Do not advise the author to touch anything so exquisite.' Of course you are the best judge. "I now send proof of the conclusion of 'Amos,' in acknowledgment of which, and of the first part, I have the pleasure of enclosing a check for £52 10_s._--fifty guineas. "If the series goes on as I anticipate, there is every prospect that a republication as a separate book, at some time or other, will be advisable. We would look upon such republication as a joint property, and would either give you a sum for your interest in it, or publish on the terms of one half of the clear profits, to be divided between author and publisher, as might be most agreeable to you. "I shall be very glad to hear from you, either direct or through Mr. Lewes; and any intelligence that the successors of 'Amos' are taking form and substance will be very acceptable. "I shall let you know what the other contributors and the public think of 'Amos' as far as I can gather a verdict, but in the meantime I may congratulate you on having achieved a preliminary success at all events." [Sidenote: Letter from the author of "Amos Barton" to John Blackwood, Jan. 1857.] Your letter has proved to me that the generous editor and publisher--generous both in word and in deed--who makes the author's path smooth and easy, is something more than a pleasant tradition. I am very sensitive to the merits of checks for fifty guineas, but I am still more sensitive to that cordial appreciation which is a guarantee to me that my work was worth doing for its own sake. If the "Scenes of Clerical Life" should be republished, I have no doubt we shall find it easy to arrange the terms. In the meantime, the most pressing business is to make them worth republishing. I think the particularization of the children in the deathbed scene has an important effect on the imagination. But I have removed all names from the "conclusion" except those of Patty and Dickey, in whom, I hope, the reader has a personal interest. I hope to send you the second story by the beginning of February. It will lie, for the most part, among quite different scenes and persons from the last--opening in Shepperton once more, but presently moving away to a distant spot and new people, whom, I hope, you will not like less than "Amos" and his friends. But if any one of the succeeding stories should seem to you unsuitable to the pages of "Maga," it can be reserved for publication in the future volume, without creating any difficulty. Thank you very warmly for the hearty acceptance you have given to my first story. [Sidenote: Journal, 1857.] The first part of "Amos Barton" appeared in the January number of _Blackwood_. Before the appearance of the Magazine, on sending me the proof, Mr. John Blackwood already expressed himself with much greater warmth of admiration; and when the first part had appeared he sent me a charming letter, with a check for fifty guineas, and a proposal about republication of the series. When the story was concluded he wrote me word how Albert Smith had sent him a letter saying he had never read anything that affected him more than Milly's death, and, added Blackwood, "The men at the club seem to have mingled their tears and their tumblers together. It will be curious if you should be a member and be hearing your own praises." There was clearly no suspicion that I was a woman. It is interesting, as an indication of the value there is in such conjectural criticism generally, to remember that when G. read the first part of "Amos" to a party at Helps's, they were all sure I was a clergyman--a Cambridge man. Blackwood seemed curious about the author, and, when I signed my letter "George Eliot," hunted up some old letters from Eliot Warburton's brother to compare the handwritings, though, he said, "'Amos' seems to me not in the least like what that good artilleryman would write." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 4th Feb. 1857.] Thank you for fulfilling your promise to let me know something of the criticisms passed on my story. I have a very moderate respect for "opinions of the press," but the private opinions of intelligent people may be valuable to me. In reference to artistic presentation much adverse opinion will, of course, arise from a dislike to the _order_ of art rather than from a critical estimate of the execution. Any one who detests the Dutch school in general will hardly appreciate fairly the merits of a particular Dutch painting. And against this sort of condemnation one must steel one's self as one best can. But objections which point out to me any vice of manner, or any failure in producing an intended effect, will be really profitable. For example, I suppose my scientific illustrations must be at fault, since they seem to have obtruded themselves disagreeably on one of my readers. But if it be a sin to be at once a man of science and a writer of fiction, I can declare my perfect innocence on that head, my scientific knowledge being as superficial as that of the most "practised writers." I hope to send you a second story in a few days, but I am rather behindhand this time, having been prevented from setting to work for some weeks by other business. Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my _incognito_, having observed that a _nom de plume_ secures all the advantages without the disagreeables of reputation. Perhaps, therefore, it will be well to give you my prospective name, as a tub to throw to the whale in case of curious inquiries; and accordingly I subscribe myself, best and most sympathizing of editors, yours very truly, GEORGE ELIOT. I may mention here that my wife told me the reason she fixed on this name was that George was Mr. Lewes's Christian name, and Eliot was a good, mouth-filling, easily pronounced word. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Feb. 1857.] First let me thank you very heartily for your letter of the 10th. Except your own very cordial appreciation, which is so much beyond a mere official acceptance, that little fact about Albert Smith has gratified me more than anything else in connection with the effect of "Amos." If you should happen to hear an opinion from Thackeray, good or bad, I should like to know it. You will see that I have availed myself of your suggestions on points of language. I quite recognize the justice of your criticisms on the French phrases. They are not in keeping with my story. But I am unable to alter anything in relation to the delineation or development of character, as my stories always grow out of my psychological conception of the _dramatis personæ_. For example, the behavior of Caterina in the gallery is essential to my conception of her nature, and to the development of that nature in the plot. My artistic bent is directed not at all to the presentation of eminently irreproachable characters, but to the presentation of mixed human beings in such a way as to call forth tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy. And I cannot stir a step aside from what I _feel_ to be _true_ in character. If anything strikes you as untrue to human nature in my delineations, I shall be very glad if you will point it out to me, that I may reconsider the matter. But, alas! inconsistencies and weaknesses are not untrue. I hope that your doubts about the plot will be removed by the further development of the story. Meanwhile, warmest thanks for your encouraging letters. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 24th Feb. 1857.] I am the more inclined to think that I shall admire your book because you are suspected of having given undue preponderance to the Christian argument: for I have a growing conviction that we may measure true moral and intellectual culture by the comprehension and veneration given to all forms of thought and feeling which have influenced large masses of mankind--and of all intolerance the intolerance calling itself philosophical is the most odious to me. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 1st Mch. 1857.] Thank you for the copy of "Maga" and for the accompanying check. One has not many correspondents whose handwriting has such agreeable associations as yours. I was particularly pleased with that extract you were so good as to send me from Mr. Swayne's letter. Dear old "Goldie" is one of my earliest and warmest admirations, and I don't desire a better fate than to lie side by side with him in people's memories. The Rev. Mr. Swayne had written to Blackwood saying that "Amos," in its charming tendencies, reminded him of the "Vicar of Wakefield." Blackwood had written, much delighted with the two first parts of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," which were sent to him together. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d Mch. 1857.] I began, oddly enough you will perhaps think, by reading through the "Answers of Infidelity,"[54] those being the most interesting parts of the book to me. Some of your own passages I think very admirable--some of them made me cry, which is always a sign of the highest pleasure writing can give me. But in many of the extracts, I think, Infidelity cuts a very poor figure. Some are feeble, some _bad_, and terribly discrepant in the tone of their thought and feeling from the passages which come fresh from your own mind. The disadvantage arising from the perpetual shifting of the point of view is a disadvantage, I suppose, inseparable from the plan, which I cannot admire or feel to be effective, though I can imagine it may be a serviceable form of presentation to some inquirers. The _execution_ I do admire. I think it shows very high and rare qualities of mind--a self-discipline and largeness of thought which are the highest result of culture. The "Objections of Christianity," which I have also read, are excellently put, and have an immense advantage over the "Answers of Infidelity" in their greater homogeneity. The first part I have only begun and glanced through, and at present have no other observation to make than that I think you might have brought a little more artillery to bear on Christian morality. But nothing is easier than to find fault--nothing so difficult as to _do_ some real work. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 5th Mch. 1857.] I think I wrote very brusquely and disagreeably to you the other day, but the impertinence was altogether in the form and not at all in the feeling. I always have uncomfortable sensations after writing objections and criticisms when they relate to things I substantially admire. It is inflicting a hurt on my own veneration. I showed the passage on the eye, p. 157, to Herbert Spencer, and he agrees with us that you have not stated your idea so as to render it a logical argument against design. You appear to imply that development and gradation in organs and functions are opposed to that conception, which they are not. I suppose you are aware that we all three hold the conception of creative design to be untenable. We only think you have not made out a good case against it. Thank you for sending me some news of Harriet Martineau. I have often said lately, "I wonder how she is." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 14th Mch. 1857.] I am glad you retain a doubt in favor of the _dagger_, and wish I could convert you to entire approval, for I am much more satisfied when your feeling is thoroughly with me. But it would be the death of my story to substitute a dream for the real scene. Dreams usually play an important part in fiction, but rarely, I think, in actual life. So many of us have reason to know that criminal impulses may be felt by a nature which is nevertheless guarded by its entire constitution from the commission of crime, that I can't help hoping that my Caterina will not forfeit the sympathy of all my readers. The answer you propose to give to curious inquirers is the best possible. For several reasons I am very anxious to retain my _incognito_ for some time to come, and, to an author not already famous, anonymity is the highest _prestige_. Besides, if George Eliot turns out a dull dog and an ineffective writer--a mere flash in the pan--I, for one, am determined to cut him on the first intimation of that disagreeable fact. The fates have willed that this shall be a very melancholy story, and I am longing to be a little merrier again. On the 16th March Mr. Lewes and George Eliot started for Plymouth, Penzance, and the Scilly Isles, and we have the following recollections of their stay there: [Sidenote: Recollections, Scilly Isles, March-May, 1857.] I had never before seen a granite coast, and on the southern side of the island of St. Mary's one sees such a coast in its most striking and characteristic forms. Rectangular crevices, the edges of which have been rounded by weather, give many of the granite masses a resemblance to bales of wool or cotton heaped on each other; another characteristic form is the mushroom-shaped mass, often lying poised on the summits of more cubical bowlders or fragments; another is the immense flat platform stretching out like a pier into the sea; another the oval basins formed by the action of the rain-water on the summits of the rocks and bowlders. The coloring of the rocks was very various and beautiful; sometimes a delicate grayish-green, from the shaggy byssus which clothes it, chiefly high up from the water; then a light, warm brown; then black; occasionally of a rich yellow; and here and there purplish. Below the rocks, on the coast, are almost everywhere heaps of white bowlders, sometimes remarkably perfect ovals, and looking like huge eggs of some monstrous bird. Hardly any weed was to be seen on the granite, except here and there in a rock-pool, green with young ulva; and no barnacles incrust the rock, no black mussels, scarcely any limpets. The waves that beat on this coast are clear as crystal, and we used to delight in watching them rear themselves like the horses of a mighty sea-god as they approached the rocks on which they were broken into eddies of milky foam. Along a great part of this southern coast there stretch heathy or furzy downs, over which I used to enjoy rambling immensely; there is a sense of freedom in those unenclosed grounds that one never has in a railed park, however extensive. Then, on the north side of the island, above Sandy Bar, what a view we used to get of the opposite islands and reefs, with their delicious violet and yellow tints--the tall ship or two anchored in the Sound, changing their aspect like living things, and when the wind was at all high the white foam prancing round the reefs and rising in fountain-like curves above the screen of rocks! Many a wet and dirty walk we had along the lanes, for the weather was often wet and almost always blustering. Now and then, however, we had a clear sky and a calm sea, and on such days it was delicious to look up after the larks that were soaring above us, or to look out on the island and reef studded sea. I never enjoyed the lark before as I enjoyed it at Scilly--never felt the full beauty of Shelley's poem on it before. A spot we became very fond of towards the close of our stay was Carne Lea, where, between two fine, jutting piles of granite, there was a soft down, gay with the pretty pink flowers of the thrift, which, in this island, carpets the ground like greensward. Here we used to sit and lie in the bright afternoons, watching the silver sunlight on the waves--bright silver, not golden--it is the morning and evening sunlight that is golden. A week or two after our arrival we made the acquaintance of Mr. Moyle, the surgeon, who became a delightful friend to us, always ready to help with the contents of his surgery or anything else at his command. We liked to have him come and smoke a cigar in the evening, and look in now and then for a little lesson in microscopy. The little indications of the social life at Scilly that we were able to pick up were very amusing. I was repeatedly told, in order to make me aware who Mr. Hall was, that he married a Miss Lemon. The people at St. Mary's imagine that the lawyers and doctors at Penzance are a sort of European characters that every one knows. We heard a great deal about Mr. Quill, an Irishman, the Controller of the Customs; and one day, when we were making a call on one of the residents, our host said two or three times, at intervals, "I wish you knew Quill!" At last, on our farewell call, we saw the distinguished Quill, with his hair plastered down, his charming smile, and his trousers with a broad stripe down each leg. Our host amused us by his contempt for curs: "Oh, I wouldn't have a cur--there's nothing to look at in a cur!"[55] [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 5th April, 1857.] The smallest details, written in the hastiest way, that will enable me to imagine you as you are, are just what I want; indeed, all I care about in correspondence. We are more and more in love with these little islands. There is not a tree to be seen, but there are grand granite hills on the coast, such as I never saw before, and furze-covered hills with larks soaring and singing above them, and zoological wonders on the shore to fill our bottles and our souls at once. For some time I have been unusually weak and knock-up-able. Our landlady is an excellent woman, but, like almost all peculiarly domestic women, has not more than rudimentary ideas of cooking; and in an island where you can get nothing but beef, except by sending to Penzance, that supreme science has its maximum value. She seems to think eating a purely arbitrary procedure--an abnormal function of mad people who come to Scilly; and if we ask her what the people live on here, is quite at a loss to tell us, apparently thinking the question relates to the abstruser portion of natural history. But I insist, and give her a culinary lecture every morning, and we do, in the end, get fed. Altogether our life here is so far better than the golden age that we work as well as play. That is the happy side of things. But there is a very sad one to me which I shall not dwell upon--only tell you of. More than a week ago I received the news that poor Chrissey had lost one of her pretty little girls of fever; that the other little one--they were the only two she had at home with her--was also dangerously ill, and Chrissey herself and her servant apparently attacked by typhus too. The thought of her in this state is a perpetual shadow to me in the sunshine. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th April, 1857.] I shudder at entering on such great subjects (as "Design") in letters; my idle brain wants lashing to work, like a negro, and will do nothing under a slighter stimulus. We are enjoying a retrogression to old-fashioned reading. I rush on the slightest pretext to Sophocles, and am as excited about blind old Oedipus as any young lady can be about the latest hero with magnificent eyes. But there is _one_ new book we have been enjoying, and so, I hope, have you--the "Life of Charlotte Brontë." Deeply affecting throughout; in the early part romantic, poetic, as one of her own novels; in the later years tragic, especially to those who know what sickness is. Mrs. Gaskell has done her work admirably, both in the industry and care with which she has gathered and selected her material, and in the feeling with which she has presented it. There is one exception, however, which I regret very much. She sets down Branwell's conduct entirely to remorse. Remorse may make sad work with a man, but it will not make such a life as Branwell's was in the last three or four years, unless the germs of vice had sprouted and shot up long before, as it seems clear they had in him. What a tragedy!--that picture of the old father and the three sisters trembling, day and night, in terror at the possible deeds of their drunken, brutal son and brother! That is the part of the life which affects me most. [Sidenote: Letter to Isaac P. Evans, 16th April, 1857.] I have been looking anxiously for some further tidings of Chrissey since your last letter, which told me that she and Kate were better, though not out of danger. I try to hope that no news is good news; but if you do not think it troublesome to write, I shall be thankful to have that hope changed into certainty. Meanwhile, to save multiplying letters--which I know you are not fond of--I mention now what will take no harm from being mentioned rather prematurely. I should like Chrissey to have £15 of my next half-year's income, due at the beginning of June, to spend in taking a change of air as soon as she is able to do so; and perhaps, if it were desirable for her to leave before the money has been paid in, you would be so kind as to advance it for a few weeks. I am writing, of course, in ignorance of her actual state; but I should think it must be good for her, as soon as she is able to move, to leave that fever-infected place for a time, and I know the money must have gone very fast in recent expenses. I only suggest the change of air as the thing that I should think best for Chrissey; but, in any case, I should like her to have the money, to do what she pleases with it. If she is well enough please to give her the enclosed note, in which I have suggested to her what I have just written to you. I am much obliged to you for your last letter, and shall be still more so if you will write me word of Chrissey's present condition. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 1st May, 1857.] Thank you for the pleasant notes of impressions concerning my story, sent to me through Lewes. I will pay attention to your caution about the danger of huddling up my stories. Conclusions are the weak point of most authors, but some of the fault lies in the very nature of a conclusion, which is at best a negation. There must be something wrong in the winding-up of "Amos," for I have heard of two persons who are disappointed with the conclusion. But the story never presented itself to me as possible to be protracted after Milly's death. The drama ends there. I am thinking of writing a short epilogue to "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," and I will send it you with the proof from Jersey, where, on a strict promise that I am not to be dissected, I shall shortly join our friend Lewes. The third story will be very different from either of the preceding, which will perhaps be an advantage, as poor Tina's sad tale was necessarily rather monotonous in its effects. The epilogue to "Mr. Gilfil" was written sitting on the Fortification Hill, Scilly Isles, one sunshiny morning. [Sidenote: Jersey, Recollections, 1857.] It was a beautiful moment (12th May) when we came to our lodgings at Gorey. The orchards were all in blossom--and this is an island of orchards. They cover the slopes; they stretch before you in shady, grassy, indefinite extent through every other gateway by the roadside; they flourish in some spots almost close to the sea. What a contrast to the Scilly Isles! There you stand on the hills like a sparrow on the housetop; here you are like the same sparrow when he is hopping about on the branches with green above him, green below, and green all round. Gorey stands in Granville Bay, where the grand old castle of Mont Orgueil stands and keeps guard on a fine rocky promontory overlooking the little harbor dotted with fishing craft. There is a charming piece of common, or down, where you can have the quietest, easiest walking, with a carpet of minute wild-flowers that are not hindered from flourishing by the sandy rain of the coast. I delighted extremely in the brownish-green softness of this undulating common, here and there varied with a patch of bright green fern--all the prettier for two little homesteads set down upon it, with their garden-fence and sheltering trees. It was pretty in all lights, but especially the evening light, to look round at the castle and harbor, the village and the scattered dwellings peeping out from among trees on the hill. The castle is built of stone which has a beautiful pinkish-gray tint, and the bright green ivy hangs oblique curtains on its turreted walls, making it look like a natural continuation or outgrowth of the rocky and grassy height on which it stands. Then the eye wanders on to the right and takes in the church standing half-way down the hill, which is clothed with a plantation, and shelters the little village, with its cloud of blue smoke; still to the right, and the village breaks off, leaving nothing but meadows in front of the slope that shuts out the setting sun, and only lets you see a hint of the golden glory that is reflected in the pink, eastern clouds. The first lovely walk we found inland was the Queen's Fern Valley, where a broad strip of meadow and pasture lies between two high slopes covered with woods and ferny wilderness. When we first saw this valley it was in the loveliest spring-time; the woods were a delicious mixture of red and tender green and purple. We have watched it losing that spring beauty and passing into the green and flowery luxuriance of June, and now into the more monotonous summer tint of July. When the blossoms fell away from the orchards my next delight was to look at the grasses mingled with the red sorrel; then came the white umbelliferous plants, making a border or inner frame for them along the hedgerows and streams. Another pretty thing here is the luxuriance of the yellow iris, that covers large pieces of moist ground with its broad blades. Everywhere there are tethered cows, looking at you with meek faces--mild-eyed, sleek, fawn-colored creatures, with delicate, downy udders. Another favorite walk of ours was round by Mont Orgueil, along the coast. Here we had the green or rocky slope on one side of us, and on the other the calm sea stretching to the coast of France, visible on all but the murkiest days. But the murky days were not many during our stay, and our evening walks round the coast usually showed us a peaceful, scarcely rippled sea, plashing gently on the purple pebbles of the little scalloped bays. There were two such bays within the boundary of our sea-side walk in that direction, and one of them was a perpetual wonder to us, in the luxuriant verdure of meadows and orchards and forest-trees that sloped down to the very shore. No distressed look about the trees as if they were ever driven harshly back by the winter winds--it was like an inland slope suddenly carried to the coast. As for the inland walks, they are inexhaustible. The island is one labyrinth of delicious roads and lanes, leading you by the most charming nooks of houses with shady grounds and shrubberies, delightful farm homesteads, and trim villas. It was a sweet, peaceful life we led here. Good creatures, the Amys, our host and hostess, with their nice boy and girl, and the little white kid--the family pet. No disagreeable sounds to be heard in the house, no unpleasant qualities to hinder one from feeling perfect love to these simple people. We have had long rambles and long readings. But our choice of literature has been rather circumscribed in this out-of-the-way place. The "Life of George Stephenson" has been a real profit and pleasure. I have read Draper's "Physiology" aloud for grave evening hours, and such books as Currer Bell's "Professor," Mlle. d'Auny's "Mariage en Province," and Miss Ferrier's "Marriage," for lighter food. The last, however, we found ourselves unable to finish, notwithstanding Miss Ferrier's high reputation. I have been getting a smattering of botany from Miss Catlow and from Dr. Thomson's little book on wild-flowers, which have created at least a longing for something more complete on the subject. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d May, 1857.] Such hedgerows in this island! Such orchards, white against the green slopes, and shady walks by the woodside, with distracting wild-flowers. We enjoy the greenery and variety of this bushy island all the better for our stay on bare Scilly, which we had gone to and fro upon till we knew it by heart. Our little lodgings are very snug--only 13_s._ a week--a nice little sitting-room, with a workroom adjoining for Mr. Lewes, who is at this moment in all the bliss of having discovered a parasitic worm in a cuttlefish. We dine at five, and our afternoons are almost exhausted in rambling. I hope to get up my strength in this delicious quiet, and have fewer interruptions to work from headache than I have been having since Christmas. I wonder if I should have had the happiness of seeing Cara if I had been at Richmond now. I would rather see her than any one else in the world--except poor Chrissey. Tell me when you have read the life of Currer Bell. Some people think its revelations in bad taste--making money out of the dead, wounding the feelings of the living, etc. What book is there that some people or other will not find abominable? We thought it admirable, cried over it, and felt the better for it. We read Cromwell's letters again at Scilly with great delight. In May Mr. Lewes writes to Mr. John Blackwood: "We were both amused with the divination of the Manx seer and his friend Liggers." This is the first mention of the individual, whose real name was Liggins of Nuneaton, who afterwards became notorious for laying claim to the authorship of the "Scenes of Clerical Life" and "Adam Bede." "Janet's Repentance" had been begun on the 18th April, and the first three parts were finished in Jersey. In reference to the "Scenes of Clerical Life" there are the following entries in the Journal: [Sidenote: Journal, 1857.] _May 2._--Received letter from Blackwood expressing his approbation of Part IX. of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." He writes very pleasantly, says the series is attributed by many to Bulwer, and that Thackeray thinks highly of it. This was a pleasant fillip to me, who am just now ready to be dispirited on the slightest pretext. _May 21._--The other day we had a pleasant letter from Herbert Spencer, saying that he had heard "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" discussed by Baynes and Dallas, as well as previously by Pigott, all expressing warm approval, and curiosity as to the author. _May 26._--Received a pleasant letter from Blackwood, enclosing one from Archer Gurney to the author of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." I subjoin this letter, as it is the first she received in her character of a creative author, and it still bears a pencil memorandum in her writing: "This letter he brought up to me at Jersey after reading it, saying, with intense joy, 'Her fame is beginning.'" [Sidenote: Letter from Rev. Archer Gurney, to the author of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," 14th May, 1857.] "BUCKINGHAM (BUCKS), _Thursday, 14th May, 1857_. "Sir,--Will you consider it impertinent in a brother author and old reviewer to address a few lines of earnest sympathy and admiration to you, excited by the purity of your style, originality of your thoughts, and absence of all vulgar seeking for effect in those 'Scenes of Clerical Life' now appearing in _Blackwood_? If I mistake not much, your muse of invention is no hackneyed one, and your style is too peculiar to allow of your being confounded with any of the already well-known writers of the day. Your great and characteristic charm is, to my mind, Nature. You frequently, indeed, express what I may call brilliant ideas, but they always seem to come unsought for, never, as in Lytton, for instance, to be elaborated and placed in the most advantageous light. I allude to such brief aphoristic sayings as 'Animals are such agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms'--'All with that brisk and cheerful air which a sermon is often observed to produce when it is quite finished.' By-the-bye. I am one of the cloth, and might take exception to certain hints, perhaps, but these are dubious. What I see plainly I admire honestly, and trust that more good remains behind. Will you always remain equally natural? That is the doubt. Will the fear of the critic, or the public, or the literary world, which spoils almost every one, never master you? Will you always write to please yourself, and preserve the true independence which seems to mark a real supremacy of intellect? But these questions are, I fear, impertinent. I will conclude. Pardon this word of greeting from one whom you may never see or know, and believe me your earnest admirer, ARCHER GURNEY. "The Author of 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story.'" [Sidenote: Journal, 1857.] _June._--Blackwood writes from London that he hears nothing but approval of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." Lord Stanley, among other people, had spoken to him about the "Clerical Scenes," at Bulwer's, and was astonished to find Blackwood in the dark as to the author. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 2d June, 1857.] I send you by the same post with this the first part of my third story, which I hope will not disappoint you. The part is, I think, rather longer than my parts have usually been, but it would have been injurious to the effect of the story to pause earlier. Pleasant letters like yours are the best possible stimulus to an author's powers, and if I don't write better and better the fault will certainly not lie in my editor, who seems to have been created in pre-established harmony with the organization of a susceptible contributor. This island, too, with its grassy valleys and pretty, indented coast is not at all a bad haunt for the Muses, if, as one may suppose, they have dropped their too scanty classical attire, and appear in long dresses and brown hats, like decent Christian women likely to inspire "Clerical Scenes." Moreover, having myself a slight zoological weakness, I am less alarmed than most people at the society of a zoological maniac. So that, altogether, your contributor is in promising circumstances, and if he doesn't behave like an animal in good condition, is clearly unworthy of his keep. I am much gratified to have made the conquest of Professor Aytoun; but with a parent's love for the depreciated child, I can't help standing up for "Amos" as better than "Gilfil." Lewes seems to have higher expectations from the third story than from either of the preceding; but I can form no judgment myself until I have quite finished a thing, and see it aloof from my actual self. I can only go on writing what I feel, and waiting for the proof that I have been able to make others feel. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 5th June, 1857.] Richmond is _not_ fascinating in "the season" or through the summer. It is hot, noisy, and haunted with Cockneys; but at other times we love the Park with an increasing love, and we have such a kind, good landlady there, that it always seems like going home when we return to Park Shot. She writes to us: "I hope you will make your fortune--but you must always live with me," which, considering that she gets less out of us than other lodgers, is a proof of affection in a landlady. Yes! we like our wandering life at present, and it is fructifying, and brings us material in many ways; but we keep in perspective the idea of a cottage among green fields and cows, where we mean to settle down (after we have once been to Italy), and buy pots and kettles and keep a dog. Wherever we are we work hard--and at work which brings _present_ money; for we have too many depending on us to be _dilettanti_ or idlers. I wish it to be understood that I should never invite any one to come and see me who did not ask for the invitation. You wonder how my face has changed in the last three years. Doubtless it is older and uglier, but it ought not to have a bad expression, for I never have anything to call out my ill-humor or discontent, which you know were always ready enough to come on slight call, and I have everything to call out love and gratitude. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. John Cash (Miss Mary Sibree), 6th June, 1857.] Your letter was very sweet to me. The sense of my deficiencies in the past often presses on me with a discouraging weight, and to know that any one can remember me lovingly, helps me to believe that there has been some good to balance the evil. I like to think of you as a happy wife and mother; and since Rosehill must have new tenants, I like to think that you and yours are there rather than any one else, not only because of my own confidence in your nature, but because our dear friends love you so much as a neighbor. You know I can never feel otherwise than sorry that they should not have ended their days in that pretty home; but the inevitable regret is softened as much as possible by the fact that the home has become yours. It is very nice to hear that Mrs. Sibree can relish anything of my writing. She was always a favorite with me; and I remember very vividly many pleasant little conversations with her. Seventy-two! How happy you are to have a dear, aged mother, whose heart you can gladden. I was a good deal touched by the letter your brother wrote to you about accepting, or, rather, declining, more pupils. I feel sure that his sensitive nature has its peculiar trials and struggles in this strange life of ours, which some thick-skinned mortals take so easily. I am very happy--happy in the highest blessing life can give us, the perfect love and sympathy of a nature that stimulates my own to healthful activity. I feel, too, that all the terrible pain I have gone through in past years, partly from the defects of my own nature, partly from outward things, has probably been a preparation for some special work that I may do before I die. That is a blessed hope, to be rejoiced in with trembling. But even if that hope should be unfulfilled, I am contented to have lived and suffered for the sake of what has already been. You see your kind letter has made me inclined to talk about myself, but, as we do not often have any communication with each other, I know it will be a gratification to your sympathetic nature to have a few direct words from me that will assure you of my moral well-being. I hope your little ones are just like you--just as fair and sweet-tempered. [Sidenote: Journal, June, 1857.] I sent off the first part of "Janet's Repentance," but to my disappointment Blackwood did not like it so well--seemed to misunderstand the characters, and to be doubtful about the treatment of clerical matters. I wrote at once to beg him to give up printing the story if he felt uncomfortable about it, and he immediately sent a very anxious, cordial letter, saying the thought of putting a stop to the series "gave him quite a turn:" he "did not meet with George Eliots every day"--and so on. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 11th June, 1857.] I am not much surprised and not at all hurt by your letter received to-day with the proof. It is a great satisfaction--in fact, my only satisfaction--that you should give me your judgment with perfect frankness. I am able, I think, to enter into an editor's doubts and difficulties, and to see my stories in some degree from your point of view as well as my own. My answer is written after considering the question as far as possible on all sides, and as I feel that I shall not be able to make any other than _superficial_ alterations in the proof, I will, first of all, say what I can in explanation of the spirit and future course of the present story. The collision in the drama is not at all between "bigoted churchmanship" and evangelicalism, but between _ir_religion and religion. Religion in this case happens to be represented by evangelicalism; and the story, so far as regards the _persecution_, is a real bit in the religious history of England, that happened about eight-and-twenty years ago. I thought I had made it apparent in my sketch of Milby feelings, on the advent of Mr. Tryan, that the conflict lay between immorality and morality--irreligion and religion. Mr. Tryan will carry the reader's sympathy. It is through him that Janet is brought to repentance. Dempster's vices have their natural evolution in deeper and deeper moral deterioration (though not without softening touches), and death from intemperance. Everything is softened from the fact, so far as art is permitted to soften and yet to remain essentially true. My sketches, both of Churchmen and Dissenters, with whom I am almost equally acquainted, are drawn from close observation of them in real life, and not at all from hearsay or from the descriptions of novelists. If I were to undertake to alter language or character. I should be attempting to represent some vague conception of what may possibly exist in other people's minds, but has no existence in my own. Such of your marginal objections as relate to a mere detail I can meet without difficulty by alteration; but as an artist I should be utterly powerless if I departed from my own conceptions of life and character. There is nothing to be done with the story, but either to let Dempster and Janet and the rest be as I _see_ them, or to renounce it as too painful. I am keenly alive at once to the scruples and alarms an editor may feel, and to my own utter inability to write under cramping influence, and on this double ground I should like you to consider whether it will not be better to close the series for the Magazine _now_. I dare say you will feel no difficulty about publishing a volume containing the story of "Janet's Repentance," and I shall accept that plan with no other feeling than that you have been to me the most liberal and agreeable of editors, and are the man of all others I would choose for a publisher. My irony, so far as I understand myself, is not directed against opinions--against any class of religious views--but against the vices and weaknesses that belong to human nature in every sort of clothing. But it is possible that I may not affect other minds as I intend and wish to affect them, and you are a better judge than I can be of the degree in which I may occasionally be offensive. I should like _not_ to be offensive--I should like to touch every heart among my readers with nothing but loving humor, with tenderness, with belief in goodness. But I may have failed in this case of "Janet," at least so far as to have made you feel its publication in the Magazine a disagreeable risk. If so, there will be no harm done by closing the series with No. 2, as I have suggested. If, however, I take your objections to be deeper than they really are--if you prefer inserting the story in spite of your partial dissatisfaction, I shall, of course, be happy to appear under "Maga's" wing still. When I remember what have been the successes in fiction, even as republications from "Maga," I can hardly believe that the public will regard my pictures as exceptionally coarse. But in any case there are too many prolific writers who devote themselves to the production of pleasing pictures, to the exclusion of all disagreeable truths, for me to desire to add to their number. In this respect, at least, I may have some resemblance to Thackeray, though I am not conscious of being in any way a disciple of his, unless it constitute discipleship to think him, as I suppose the majority of people with any intellect do, on the whole the most powerful of living novelists. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 8th June, 1857.] I feel every day a greater disinclination for theories and arguments about the origin of things in the presence of all this mystery and beauty and pain and ugliness that floods one with conflicting emotions. We are reading "Aurora Leigh" for the third time, with more enjoyment than ever. I know no book that gives me a deeper sense of communion with a large as well as beautiful mind. It is in process of appearing in a third edition, and no wonder. If I live five years longer the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will outweigh the small negative good that would have consisted in my not doing anything to shock others, and I can conceive no consequences that will make me repent the past. Do not misunderstand me, and suppose that I think myself heroic or great in any way. Far enough from that! Faulty, miserably faulty I am--but least of all faulty where others most blame. On the 24th July the pleasant sojourn at Jersey came to an end. The travellers returned to 8 Park Shot, Richmond, where Miss Sara Hennell paid them a visit at the end of the month, and Dr. and Mrs. Bodichon (_née_ Miss Barbara L. Smith) came on the 4th of August. On the 12th August there is an entry in the Journal, "Finished the 'Electra' of Sophocles, and began �schylus's 'Agamemnon,'" and then come the following letters: [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, Tuesday, 17th Aug. 1857.] Lewes has just given me your letter of the 15th, with the accompanying one from the Rev. W. P. Jones. Mr. Tryan is not a portrait of any clergyman, living or dead. He is an ideal character, but I hope probable enough to resemble more than one evangelical clergyman of his day. If Mr. Jones's deceased brother was like Mr. Tryan so much the better, for in that case he was made of human nature's finer clay. I think you will agree with me that there are few clergymen who would be depreciated by an identification with Mr. Tryan. But I should rather suppose that the old gentleman, misled by some similarity in outward circumstances, is blind to the discrepancies which must exist where no portrait was intended. As to the rest of my story, so far as its elements were suggested by real persons, those persons have been, to use good Mr. Jones's phrase, "long in eternity." I think I told you that a persecution of the kind I have described did actually take place, and belongs as much to the common store of our religious history as the Gorham Controversy, or as Bishop Blomfield's decision about wax candles. But I only know the _outline_ of the real persecution. The details have been filled in from my imagination. I should consider it a fault which would cause me lasting regret if I had used reality in any other than the legitimate way common to all artists, who draw their materials from their observation and experience. It would be a melancholy result of my fictions if I gave _just_ cause of annoyance to any good and sensible person. But I suppose there is no perfect safeguard against erroneous impressions or a mistaken susceptibility. We are all apt to forget how little there is about us that is unique, and how very strongly we resemble many other insignificant people who have lived before us. I shouldn't wonder if several nieces of pedantic maiden ladies saw a portrait of their aunt in Miss Pratt, but I hope they will not think it necessary, on that ground, to increase the already troublesome number of your correspondents. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Aug. 1857.] We went to see Rosa Bonheur's picture the other day. What power! That is the way women should assert their rights. Writing is part of my religion, and I can write no word that is not prompted from within. At the same time I believe that almost all the best books in the world have been written with the hope of getting money for them. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 1st Sept. 1857.] Unless there be any strong reason to the contrary, I should like to close the series with this story. According to my calculation, which, however, may be an erroneous one, the three stories will make two good volumes--_i.e._, good as to bulk. I have a subject in my mind which will not come under the limitations of the title "Clerical Life," and I am inclined to take a large canvas for it and write a novel. In case of my writing fiction for "Maga" again, I should like to be considerably beforehand with my work, so that you can read a thoroughly decisive portion before beginning to print. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st Sept. 1857.] The days are very peaceful--peacefully busy. One always feels a deeper calm as autumn comes on. I should be satisfied to look forward to a heaven made up of long autumn afternoon walks, quite delivered from any necessity of giving a judgment on the woman question, or of reading newspapers about Indian mutinies. I am so glad there are thousands of good people in the world who have very decided opinions, and are fond of working hard to enforce them. I like to feel and think everything and do nothing, a pool of the "deep contemplative" kind. Some people _do_ prosper--that is a comfort. The rest of us must fall back on the beatitudes--"Blessed are the poor"--that is Luke's version, you know, and it is really, on the whole, more comforting than Matthew's. I'm afraid there are few of us who can appropriate the blessings of the "poor in spirit." We are reading one of the most wonderful books in French or any other literature--Monteil's "Histoire des Français des divers �tats"--a history written on an original plan. If you see any account of it, read that account. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, Saturday, 17th Oct. 1857.] I am very much gratified that my Janet has won your heart and kept up your interest in her to the end. My new story haunts me a good deal, and I shall set about it without delay. It will be a country story--full of the breath of cows and the scent of hay. But I shall not ask you to look at it till I have written a volume or more, and then you will be able to judge whether you will prefer printing it in the Magazine, or publishing it as a separate novel when it is completed. By the way, the sheets of the "Clerical Scenes" are not come, but I shall not want to make any other than verbal and literal corrections, so that it will hardly be necessary for me to go through the sheets _and_ the proofs, which I must, of course, see. I enclose a titlepage with a motto. But if you don't like the motto, I give it up. I've not set my heart on it. I leave the number of copies to be published, and the style of getting up, entirely to your discretion. As to the terms, I wish to retain the copyright, according to the stipulation made for me by Lewes when he sent "Amos Barton;" and whatever you can afford to give me for the first edition I shall prefer having as a definite payment rather than as half profits. You stated, in a letter about "Amos Barton," your willingness to accede to either plan, so I have no hesitation in expressing my wishes. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Oct. 1857.] "Open to conviction," indeed! I should think so. I am open to conviction on all points except dinner and debts. I hold that the one must be eaten and the other paid. These are my only prejudices. I _was_ pleased with Mr. Call.[56] He is a man one really cares to talk to--has thoughts, says what he means, and listens to what others say. We should quite like to see him often. And I cannot tell you how much I have felt Mrs. Call's graceful as well as kind behavior to me. Some months ago, before the new edition of the "Biographical History of Philosophy" came out, Mr. Lewes had a letter from a working-man at Leicester, I think, who said that he and some fellow-students met together, on a Sunday, to read the book aloud and discuss it. He had marked some errors of the press and sent them to Mr. Lewes for his new edition. Wasn't that pretty? [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 30th Oct. 1857.] "Conscience goes to the hammering in of nails" is my gospel. There can be no harm in preaching _that_ to women at any rate. But I should be sorry to undertake any more specific enunciation of doctrine on a question so entangled as the "woman question." The part of the Epicurean gods is always an easy one; but because I prefer it so strongly myself, I the more highly venerate those who are struggling in the thick of the contest. "La carrière ouverte aux taléns," whether the talents be feminine or masculine, I am quite confident is a right maxim. Whether "La carrière ouverte à la Sottise" be equally just when made equally universal, it would be too much like "taking sides" for me to say. There are only three entries in the journal for October. [Sidenote: Journal, Oct. 1857.] _Oct. 9._--Finished "Janet's Repentance." I had meant to carry on the series, and especially I longed to tell the story of the "Clerical Tutor," but my annoyance at Blackwood's want of sympathy in the first part (although he came round to admiration at the third part) determined me to close the series and republish them in two volumes. _Oct. 22._--Began my new novel, "Adam Bede." _Oct. 29._--Received a letter from Blackwood offering me £120 for the first edition of "Scenes of Clerical Life." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Oct. 1857.] I am quite contented with the sum (£120) you offer me for the edition, being thoroughly confident of your disposition to do the best you can for me. I perceive your hope of success for the "Scenes" is not strong, and you certainly have excellent means of knowing the probabilities in such a case. I am not aware that the motto has been used before, but if you suspect it, we had better leave it out altogether. A stale motto would hardly be an ornament to the titlepage. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 1st Nov. 1857.] How I wish I could get to you by some magic, and have one walk over the hill with you again. Letters are poor things compared with five minutes of looking and speaking, and one kiss. Nevertheless, I do like to have a little letter now and then, though I don't for a moment ask it if you have no spontaneous impulse to give it. I can't help losing belief that people love me--the unbelief is in my nature, and no sort of fork will drive it finally out. I can't help wondering that you can think of _me_ in the past with much pleasure. It all seems so painful to me--made up of blunders and selfishness--and it only comes back upon me as a thing to be forgiven. That is honest, painful truth, and not sentimentality. But I am thankful if others found more good than I am able to remember. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th Nov. 1857.] It is pleasant to have the first sheet of one's proof--to see one's paragraphs released from the tight-lacing of double columns, and expanding themselves at their ease. I perceive clearly the desirableness of the short number--for my observation of literary affairs has gone far enough to convince me that neither critical judgment nor practical experience can guarantee any opinion as to rapidity of sale in the case of an unknown author; and I shudder at the prospect of encumbering my publisher's bookshelves. My new story is in progress--slow progress at present. A little sunshine of success would stimulate its growth, I dare say. Unhappily, I am as impressionable as I am obstinate, and as much in need of sympathy from my readers as I am incapable of bending myself to their tastes. But if I can only find a public as cordial and agreeable in its treatment of me as my editor, I shall have nothing to wish. Even my thin skin will be comfortable then. The page is not a shabby one, after all; but I fear the fact of two volumes instead of three is a fatal feature in my style in the eyes of librarians. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 9th Nov. 1857.] One is glad to have one's book (_à propos_ of review of Lewes's "History of Philosophy") spoken well of by papers of good circulation, because it is possible, though not certain, that such praise may help the sale; but otherwise it is hardly worth while to trouble one's self about newspaper reviews, unless they point out some error, or present that very rare phenomenon, a true appreciation, which is the most delicious form in which sympathy can reach one. So much sectarian feeling usually arises in discussions on the subject of phrenology that I confess the associations of the word are not agreeable to me. The last refuge of intolerance is in not tolerating the intolerant; and I am often in danger of secreting that sort of venom. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles Bray, 15th Nov. 1857.] It is pleasant to have a kind word now and then, when one is not near enough to have a kind glance or a hearty shake by the hand. It is an old weakness of mine to have no faith in affection that does not express itself; and when friends take no notice of me for a long while I generally settle down into the belief that they have become indifferent or have begun to dislike me. That is not the best mental constitution; but it might be worse--for I don't feel obliged to dislike _them_ in consequence. I, for one, ought not to complain if people think worse of me than I deserve, for I have very often reason to be ashamed of my thoughts about others. They almost always turn out to be better than I expected--fuller of kindness towards me at least. In the fundamental doctrine of your book (the philosophy of necessity)--that mind presents itself under the same conditions of invariableness of antecedent and consequent as all other phenomena (the only difference being that the true antecedent and consequent are proportionately difficult to discover as the phenomena are more complex)--I think you know that I agree. And every one who knows what science means must also agree with you that there can be no social science without the admission of that doctrine. I dislike extremely a passage in which you appear to consider the disregard of individuals as a lofty condition of mind. My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy. The fact that in the scheme of things we see a constant and tremendous sacrifice of individuals, is, it seems to me, only one of the many proofs that urge upon us our total inability to find in our own natures a key to the Divine mystery. I could more readily turn Christian, and worship Jesus again, than embrace a Theism which professes to explain the proceedings of God. But I don't feel at all wise in these matters. I have a few strong impressions which serve me for my own support and guidance, but do not in the least qualify me to speak as a theorist. Mr. Lewes sends you his kind remembrances, and will not like you any the worse for cutting him up. He has had to perform that office for his own friends sometimes. I suppose phrenology is an open question, on which everybody has a right to speak his mind. Mr. Lewes, feeling the importance of the subject, desired to give it its due place in his "History of Philosophy," and, doing so, he must, of course, say what _he_ believes to be the truth, not what other people believe to be the truth. If you will show where he is mistaken, you will be doing him a service as well as phrenology. His arguments may be bad; but I will answer for him that he has not been guilty of any intentional unfairness. With regard to their system, phrenologists seem to me to be animated by the same sort of spirit as that of religious dogmatists, and especially in this--that in proportion as a man approximates to their opinions without identifying himself with them, they think him offensive and contemptible. It is amusing to read from the opposite side complaints against Mr. Lewes for giving too high a position to phrenology, and a confident opinion that "phrenologists, by their ridiculous pretensions, merit all the contempt that has been thrown on them." Thus doctors differ! But I am much less interested in crusades for or against phrenology than in your happiness at Ivy Cottage.[57] Happiness means all sorts of love and good feeling; and that is the best result that can ever come out of science. Do you know Buckle's "History of Civilization"? I think you would find it a suggestive book. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 24th Nov. 1857.] Anniversaries are sad things--to one who has lived long and done little. Herbert Spencer dined with us the other day--looks well, and is brimful of clever talk as usual. His volume of "Essays" is to come out soon. He is just now on a crusade against the notion of "species." We are reading Harriet Martineau's history with edification, and otherwise feeding our souls, which flourish very well, notwithstanding November weather. [Sidenote: Journal, 1857.] _Nov. 28._--A glorious day, still autumnal and not wintry. We have had a delicious walk in the Park, and I think the coloring of the scenery is more beautiful than ever. Many of the oaks are still thickly covered with leaves of a rich yellow-brown; the elms, golden sometimes, still with lingering patches of green. On our way to the Park the view from Richmond hill had a delicate blue mist over it, that seemed to hang like a veil before the sober brownish-yellow of the distant elms. As we came home, the sun was setting on a fog-bank, and we saw him sink into that purple ocean--the orange and gold passing into green above the fog-bank, the gold and orange reflected in the river in more sombre tints. The other day, as we were coming home through the Park, after having walked under a sombre, heavily clouded sky, the western sun shone out from under the curtain, and lit up the trees and grass, thrown into relief on a background of dark purple cloud. Then, as we advanced towards the Richmond end of the Park, the level, reddening rays shone on the dry fern and the distant oaks, and threw a crimson light on them. I have especially enjoyed this autumn, the delicious greenness of the turf, in contrast with the red and yellow of the dying leaves. _Dec. 6_ (_Sunday_).--Finished the "Agamemnon" to-day. In the evenings of late we have been reading Harriet Martineau's "Sketch of the British Empire in India," and are now following it up with Macaulay's articles on Clive and Hastings. We have lately read Harriet Martineau's Introduction to the "History of the Peace." _Dec. 8._--I am reading "Die Familie," by Riehl, forming the third volume of the series, the two first of which, "Land und Volk" and "Die Bürgerliche Gesellschaft," I reviewed for the _Westminster_. A letter from Blackwood to-day tells us that Major Blackwood, during his brother's absence in England, having some reasons, not specified, for being more hopeful about the "Clerical Scenes," resolved to publish 1000 instead of 750; and in consequence of this Blackwood promises to pay me an additional £60 when 750 shall have been sold off. He reports that an elderly clergyman has written to him to say that "Janet's Repentance" is exquisite--another vote to register along with that of Mrs. Nutt's rector, who "cried over the story like a child." _Dec. 10._--Major Blackwood called--an unaffected, agreeable man. It was evident to us, when he had only been in the room a few minutes, that he knew I was George Eliot. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 11th Dec. 1857.] Lewes has read to me your last kind letter, and I am not insensible to the "practical cheerer" it contains. But I rejoice with trembling at the additional 250, lest you should have to repent of them. I have certainly had a good deal of encouragement to believe that there are many minds, both of the more cultured sort and of the common novel-reading class, likely to be touched by my stories; but the word "many" is very elastic, and often shrinks frightfully when measured by a financial standard. When one remembers how long it was before Charles Lamb's Essays were known familiarly to any but the elect few, the very strongest assurance of merit or originality--supposing one so happy as to have that assurance--could hardly do more than give the hope of _ultimate_ recognition. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th Dec. 1857.] Our affairs are very prosperous just now, making sunshine in a shady, or, rather, in a foggy place. It is a great happiness to me that Mr. Lewes gets more and more of the recognition he deserves; pleasant letters and speeches have been very numerous lately, especially about his "Sea-side Studies," which have appeared in _Blackwood_, and are soon to appear--very much improved and enlarged--in a separate volume. Dear Carlyle writes, _à propos_ of his "Friedrich:" "I have had such a fourteen months as was never appointed me before in this world--sorrow, darkness, and disgust my daily companions; and no outlook visible, except getting a detestable business turned off, or else being driven mad by it." That is his exaggerated way of speaking; and writing is always painful to him. Do you know he is sixty-two! I fear this will be his last book. Tell Mr. Bray I am reading a book of Riehl's, "The Family," forming the sequel to his other volumes. He will be pleased to hear that so good a writer agrees with him on several points about the occupations of women. The book is a good one; and if I were in the way of writing articles, I should write one on it. There is so much to read, and the days are so short! I get more hungry for knowledge every day, and less able to satisfy my hunger. Time is like the Sibylline leaves, getting more precious the less there remains of it. That, I believe, is the correct allusion for a fine writer to make on the occasion. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Dec. 1857.] I give up the motto, because it struck you as having been used before; and though I copied it into my note-book when I was re-reading "Amelia" a few months ago, it is one of those obvious quotations which never _appear_ fresh, though they may actually be made for the first time. I shall be curious to know the result of the subscription. There are a few persons to whom I should like a copy of the volume to be sent, and I enclose a list of them. [Sidenote: Journal, 1857.] _Dec. 17._--Read my new story to G. this evening as far as the end of the third chapter. He praised it highly. I have finished "Die Familie," by Riehl--a delightful book. I am in the "Choephoræ" now. In the evenings we are reading "History of the Thirty Years' Peace" and Béranger. Thoroughly disappointed in Béranger. _Dec. 19_ (_Saturday_).--Alone this evening with very thankful, solemn thoughts--feeling the great and unhoped-for blessings that have been given me in life. This last year, especially, has been marked by inward progress and outward advantages. In the spring George's "History of Philosophy" appeared in the new edition; his "Sea-side Studies" have been written with much enjoyment, and met with much admiration, and now they are on the verge of being published with bright prospects. Blackwood has also accepted his "Physiology of Common Life;" the "Goethe" has passed into its third German edition; and, best of all, G.'s head is well. I have written the "Scenes of Clerical Life"--my first book; and though we are uncertain still whether it will be a success as a separate publication, I have had much sympathy from my readers in _Blackwood_, and feel a deep satisfaction in having done a bit of faithful work that will perhaps remain, like a primrose root in the hedgerow, and gladden and chasten human hearts in years to come. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 23d Dec. 1857.] Buckle's is a book full of suggestive material, though there are some strangely unphilosophic opinions mixed with its hardy philosophy. For example, he holds that there is no such thing as _race_ or _hereditary transmission_ of qualities! (I should tell you, at the same time, that he is a necessitarian and a physiological-psychologist.) It is only by such negations as these that he can find his way to the position which he maintains at great length--that the progress of mankind is dependent entirely on the progress of knowledge, and that there has been no intrinsically moral advance. However, he presents that side of the subject which has, perhaps, been least adequately dwelt on. [Sidenote: Journal, 1857.] _Dec. 25_ (_Christmas Day_).--George and I spent this lovely day together--lovely as a clear spring day. We could see Hampstead from the Park so distinctly that it seemed to have suddenly come nearer to us. We ate our turkey together in a happy _solitude à deux_. _Dec. 31_ (_the last night of 1857_).--The dear old year is gone with all its _Weben_ and _Streben_. Yet not gone either; for what I have suffered and enjoyed in it remains to me an everlasting possession while my soul's life remains. This time last year I was alone, as I am now, and dear George was at Vernon Hill. I was writing the introduction to "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story." What a world of thoughts and feelings since then! My life has deepened unspeakably during the last year: I feel a greater capacity for moral and intellectual enjoyment, a more acute sense of my deficiencies in the past, a more solemn desire to be faithful to coming duties, than I remember at any former period of my life. And my happiness has deepened too; the blessedness of a perfect love and union grows daily. I have had some severe suffering this year from anxiety about my sister, and what will probably be a final separation from her--there has been no other real trouble. Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long, sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age. Our prospects are very bright too. I am writing my new novel. G. is full of his "Physiology of Common Life." He has just finished editing Johnston, for which he is to have 100 guineas, and we have both encouragement to think that our books just coming out, "Sea-side Studies" and "Scenes of Clerical Life," will be well received. So good-bye, dear 1857! May I be able to look back on 1858 with an equal consciousness of advancement in work and in heart. _SUMMARY._ MARCH, 1855, TO DECEMBER, 1857. Return to England--Dover--Bayswater--East Sheen--Books read--Articles written--Letters to Miss Hennell--"Life of Goethe"--Froude's article on Spinoza--Article-writing--"Cumming"--8 Park Shot, Richmond--Letter to Charles Bray--Effect of article on Cumming--Letter to Miss Hennell--Reading on Physiology--Article on Heine--Review for _Leader_, etc.--Books read--Visit to Mrs. Clarke at Attleboro--Sale of "Life of Goethe"--"Shaving of Shagpat"--Spinoza's "Ethics," translation finished--The _Saturday Review_--Ruskin--Alison--Harriet Martineau--Women's earnings--Articles and reviews--Wishes not to be known as translator of the "Ethics"--Article on Young begun--Visit to Ilfracombe--Description--Zoophyte hunting--Finished articles on Young and Riehl--Naturalistic experience--Delightful walks--Rev. Mr. Tugwell--Devonshire lanes and springs--Tendency to scientific accuracy--Sunsets--Cocklewomen at Swansea--Letters to Miss Hennell and Mrs. Peter Taylor--Tenby--Zoology--Thoreau's "Walden"--Feeling strong in mind and body--Barbara Leigh Smith comes to Tenby--George Eliot anxious to begin her fiction-writing--Mr. E. F. S. Pigott--Return to Richmond--Mr. Lewes takes his boys to Hofwyl--George Eliot writes article on "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"--"How I came to write fiction"--Correspondence between Mr. Lewes and Mr. John Blackwood about MS. of "Amos Barton"--"Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story" begun--Books read--Letter from John Blackwood to the author of "Amos Barton," sending copy of the January, 1857, number of the Magazine and fifty guineas--Reply--Blackwood's admiration--Albert Smith's appreciation--Letters to Blackwood--Name of George Eliot assumed--Dutch school in art--Artistic bent--Letter to Miss Hennell--Intolerance--Letter to John Blackwood on Mr. Swayne comparing writing to Goldsmith's--Letter to Miss Hennell on essay "Christianity and Infidelity"--Letter to Blackwood--Caterina and the dagger scene--Trip to Penzance and the Scilly Isles--Description of St. Mary's--Mr. Moyle, the surgeon--Social Life--Letter to Mrs. Bray, anxiety about sister--Letter to Miss Sara Hennell--"Life of Charlotte Brontë"--Letter to Isaac P. Evans--Mrs. Clarke's illness--Letter to Blackwood--Conclusions of stories--Jersey--Description of Gorey--Delightful walks--Reading Draper's "Physiology"--Miss Catlow and Dr. Thomson on wild-flowers--"Life of George Stephenson"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Life in Jersey--Liggins appears on the scene--"Janet's Repentance"--Series attributed to Bulwer--Thackeray thinks highly of it--Letter from Herbert Spencer about "Mr. Gilfil"--Letter from Archer Gurney--Lord Stanley thinks highly of the "Scenes"--Letter to Blackwood, with First Part of "Janet's Repentance"--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Richmond--Expression of face--Letter to Mrs. John Cash--Happiness in her life and hope in her work--Chilled by Blackwood's want of enthusiasm about "Janet"--Letter to John Blackwood on "Janet"--Letter to Miss Sarah Hennell--"Aurora Leigh"--Return to Richmond--Letter to John Blackwood on "Janet"--Letters to Miss Hennell--Rosa Bonheur--Thought not action--Mr. and Mrs. Call--Letter to John Blackwood--Haunted by new story--Letter to Charles Bray--"The Woman Question"--Close of "Clerical Scenes" series--"Adam Bede" begun--Receives £120 for first edition of "Scenes of Clerical Life"--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Unbelief in people's love--Letter to John Blackwood--Sheets of "Clerical Scenes"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Newspaper criticism--Letter to Charles Bray--"The Philosophy of Necessity"--Sympathy with individuals--Objection to Theism--Phrenology--Happiness the best result that can ever come out of science--Letters to Miss Hennell--Reading Riehl's "The Family"--Hunger for Knowledge--Buckle's "History of Civilization"--Autumn days at Richmond--Reading the "Agamemnon"--Harriett Martineau's "Sketch of the British Empire in India"--Macaulay's essays on Clive and Hastings--Major Blackwood calls and suspects identity of George Eliot--Reading the "Choephoræ"--"History of the Thirty Years' Peace," and Béranger--Thankfulness in reviewing experience of 1857. FOOTNOTES: [49] G. writes that this sonnet is Barnwell's.--[Note written later.] [50] "Land und Volk." [51] Mr. Edward Smyth Pigott, who remained to the end of their lives a very close and much valued friend of Mr. Lewes and George Eliot. [52] By Thoreau. [53] About the article on Riehl's book, "The Natural History of German Life." [54] "Baillie Prize Essay on Christianity and Infidelity: an Exposition of the Arguments on both Sides." By Miss Sara Hennell. [55] "Mill on the Floss," chap. iii. book iv. Bob Jakin. [56] Mr. W. M. W. Call, author of "Reverberations and other Poems," who married Mr. Charles Hennell's widow--formerly Miss Brabant. As will be seen from the subsequent correspondence, Mr. and Mrs. Call remained among the Lewes's warm friends to the end, and Mr. Call is the author of an interesting paper on George Eliot in the _Westminster Review_ of July, 1881. [57] The Brays' new house at Coventry. APPENDIX. As this volume is going through the press, I have to thank Mrs. John Cash of Coventry for the following valuable additional information in regard to the important subject of Miss Evans's change of religious belief in 1841-42, and for her further general recollections of the Coventry period of George Eliot's life: I was sixteen years of age in 1841; and, as I have already stated, my first remembrance of Miss Evans is of her call on my father and mother, with their friend and neighbor Mrs. Pears, when in conversation she gave expression to her great appreciation of the writings of Isaac Taylor. The controversy raised by the "Tracts for the Times," which gave occasion for the publication of Mr. Taylor's "Ancient Christianity," being now remote, I give the following extract from a footnote in Trench's "Notes on the Parables," to show the influence such a work as Mr. Taylor's would be likely to exercise on the mind of one who esteemed its author; and also the feeling it excited against an eminently religious man, by revelations which he desired and believed would serve the cause of New Testament Christianity. The note is on the "Tares." The quotation, containing the reference, is from Menken: "Many so-called Church historians (_authors of 'Ancient Christianity' and the like_), ignorant of the purpose and of the hidden glory of the Church, have their pleasure in the Tares, and imagine themselves wonderfully wise and useful when out of Church history (which ought to be the history of the Light and the Truth) they have made a shameful history of error and wickedness." It was upon her first or second interview with my mother that Miss Evans told her how shocked she had been by the apparent union of religious feeling with a low sense of morality among the people in the district she visited, who were mostly Methodists. She gave as an instance the case of a woman who, when a falsehood was clearly brought home to her by her visitors, said, "She did not feel that she had grieved the Spirit much." Now those readers of the letters to Miss Lewis who are acquainted with modern Evangelicalism, even in its "after-glow," especially as it was presented to the world by Church of England teaching and practice, will recognize its characteristics in the moral scrupulousness, the sense of obligation on the part of Christians to avoid the very appearance of evil, the practical piety, which those letters reveal. Mrs. Evans (Miss Lewis tells me) was a very serious, earnest-minded woman, anxiously concerned for the moral and religious training of her children: glad to place them under the care of such persons as the Misses Franklin, to whose school a mother of a different order objected, on the ground that "it was where that saint Mary Ann Evans had been." It is natural then that, early awed by and attracted towards beliefs cherished by the best persons she had known, and advocated in the best books she had read, the mind of Miss Evans should have been stirred by exhibitions of a _theoretic_ severance of religion from morality, whether presented among the disciples of "Ancient Christianity" or by the subjects of its modern revivals: it is probable that she may thereby have been led, as others have been, to a reconsideration of the creeds of Christendom, and to further inquiry concerning their origin. On the same grounds it is likely that the presentation of social virtues, apart from evangelical motives, would impress her; and I have authority for stating that to the inquiry of a friend in after-years, as to what influence she attributed the first unsettlement of her orthodox views, she quickly made answer: "Oh, Walter Scott's." Now I well remember her speaking to me of Robert Hall's confession that he had been made unhappy for a week by the reading of Miss Edgeworth's Tales, in which useful, good, and pleasant lives are lived with no reference to religious hopes and fears; and her drawing my attention to the real greatness of mind and sincerity of faith which this candid confession betokened. Such remarks, I think, throw light upon the _way_ in which her own evangelical belief had been affected by works in which its dogmas are not enforced as necessary springs of virtuous action. I give these scattered reminiscences, in evidence of the half-unconscious preparation (of which Mr. Cross speaks) for a change which was, in my judgment, more gradual in its development, as well as deeper in its character, than might be inferred from the record of its abrupt following upon Miss Evans's introduction to Mr. Hennell's "Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity." The evening's discussion with my father, to which I have referred in my previous communication in the "Life," is now vividly present to my mind. There was not only on her part a vehemence of tone, startling in one so quiet, but a crudeness in her objections, an absence of proposed solution of difficulties, which partly distressed and partly pleased me (siding as I did mentally with my father), and which was in strange contrast to the satisfied calm which marked her subsequent treatment of religious differences. Upon my father's using an argument (common enough in those days) drawn from the present condition of the Jews as a fulfilment of prophecy, and saying, "If I were tempted to doubt the truth of the Bible, I should only have to look at a Jew to confirm my faith in it." "Don't talk to me of the Jews!" Miss Evans retorted, in an irritated tone; "to think that they were deluded into expectations of a temporal deliverer, and then punished because they couldn't understand that it was a spiritual deliverer that was intended!" To something that followed from her, intimating the claim of creatures upon their Creator, my father objected, "But we have no claim upon God." "No claim upon God!" she reiterated indignantly; "we have the strongest possible claim upon him." I regret that I can recall nothing more of a conversation carried on for more than two hours; but I vividly remember how deeply Miss Evans was moved, and how, as she stood against the mantelpiece during the last part of the time, her delicate fingers, in which she held a small piece of muslin on which she was at work, trembled with her agitation. The impression allowed to remain upon the minds of her friends, for some time after she had made declaration of her heresies, was of her being in a troubled, unsettled state. So great were her simplicity and candor in acknowledging this, and so apparent was her earnest desire for truth, that no hesitation was felt in asking her to receive visits from persons of different persuasions, who were judged competent to bring forward the best arguments in favor of orthodox doctrines. One of these was a Baptist minister, introduced to her by Miss Franklin; he was said to be well read in divinity, and I remember him as an original and interesting preacher. After an interview with Miss Evans, meeting my father, he said: "That young lady must have had the devil at her elbow to suggest her doubts, for there was not a book that I recommended to her in support of Christian evidences that she had not read." Mr. Watts, one of the professors at Spring Hill College (Independent), Birmingham, a colleague of Mr. Henry Rogers, author of the "Eclipse of Faith," and who had himself studied at the Hallé University, and enjoyed the friendship of Dr. Tholück, was requested (I think by my mother) to call on Miss Evans. His acquaintance with German Rationalism (rare in England in those days) qualified him to enter into, and it was hoped to meet, difficulties raised by a critical study of the New Testament. After his first or second interview, my brother remembers his observing with emphasis, "_She_ has gone into the question;" and I can recall a reference made by him at a later date in my hearing to Miss Evans's discontent with her own solutions--or rather with her own standpoint at that time. This discontent, he said, "was so far satisfactory." Doubtless it gave him hope of the reconversion of one who had, as he told my mother, awakened deep interest in his own mind, as much by the earnestness which characterized her inquiries as by her exceptional attainments. From letters that passed between my brother and myself during his residence in Germany, I give the following extracts referring to this period. The first is from one of mine, dated September 2, 1842: "In my father's absence we (my mother and I) called on Miss Evans. She now takes up a different position. Her views are not altogether altered, but she says it would be extreme arrogance in so young a person to suppose she had obtained _yet_ any just ideas of truth. She had been reading Dr. Tholück's reply to Strauss's 'Life of Jesus,' but said Mr. Watts had advised her _not_ to read his 'Guido and Julius.'" In answer to this my brother says, in a letter dated Hallé, September 26, 1842, "You have given, doubtless, a very accurate account of Miss Evans's mode of stating her present sentiments. Mr. Watts's reason for advising that Dr. Tholück's 'Guido and Julius' be not read is, perhaps, that the reasoning is not satisfactory." In another letter, addressed to my brother at Hallé, and dated October 28, 1842, I tell him: "Last week mother and I spent an evening with Miss Evans. She seemed more settled in her views than ever, and rests her objections to Christianity on this ground, that Calvinism is Christianity, and, this granted, that it is a religion based on pure selfishness. She occupied, however, a great part of the time in pleading for works of imagination, maintaining that they perform an office for the mind which nothing else can. On the mention of Shakespeare, she praised him with her characteristic ardor, was shocked at the idea that mother should disapprove the perusal of his writings, and quite distressed lest, through her influence, I should be prevented from reading them. She could be content were she allowed no other book than Shakespeare; and in educating a child, this would be the first book she would place in its hands. "She seems to have read a great deal of Italian literature, and speaks with rapture of Metastasio's novels. She has lent me 'Le mie Prigioni' di Silvio Pellico, in his own tongue, as a book to begin with. She says there is a prevailing but very mistaken idea that Italian is an easy language, though she is exceedingly delighted with it. If at any time I wish to begin German, she would very much like to give me some instruction." In addition to the above relating to Shakespeare, I recall the protest that my mother's objection to his plays (my mother _had_ been an ardent lover of "the play"), on the ground that there were things in them that offended her, was as reasonable as the objection to walk in a beautiful garden, "because toads and weeds are to be found in it." In a letter dated March 6, 1843, I write to my brother: "Your request that you may be informed as to the precise nature of Miss Evans's philosophical views I shall find it very difficult to comply with, inasmuch as on our last interview she did not express herself so fully on this subject as formerly; indeed, I believe she is not now so desirous of controversy. She however appeared, to me at least, to have rather changed her ground on some points. For instance, she said she considered Jesus Christ as the embodiment of perfect love, and seemed to be leaning slightly to the doctrines of Carlyle and Emerson when she remarked that she considered the Bible a revelation in a certain sense, as she considered herself a revelation of the mind of Deity, etc. She was very anxious to know if you had heard Schelling." In a letter addressed to my brother at Spring Hill College, and dated October 28, 1844, I find this reference to Dr. Harris, who had been preaching a charity sermon in a chapel at Foleshill: "Miss Evans has just been reproaching me for not informing her of Dr. Harris's preaching, which she would have given anything to hear, as she says his 'Great Teacher' left more delightful impressions on her mind than anything she ever read, and is, she thinks, the best book that could be written by a man holding his principles." In the same letter I mention a second lesson in German given me by Miss Evans. In one written some time before, I tell my brother of her kind proposal, but add that my parents object "on account of her dangerous sentiments." She had, however, since called at our house one morning to renew it: and I well remember how eagerly I watched my mother, looking so affectionately at Miss Evans, and saying quietly, "You know, with your superior intellect, I cannot help fearing you might influence Mary, though you might not intend to do so. But," she went on to say, "her father does not agree with me: he does not see any danger, and thinks we ought not to refuse, as it is so very kind of you to be willing to take the trouble--and we know it would be a great advantage to her to learn German; for she will probably have to earn her living by teaching." Seeing at a glance how matters stood, Miss Evans turned round quickly to me, and said, "Come on Saturday at three o'clock, and bring what books you have." So I went, and began "Don Carlos," continuing to go, with some intervals occasioned by absence, pretty regularly on Saturday afternoons, for nearly two years; but it was not until the end of the second year, when I received Miss Evans's suggestion that the lessons were no longer necessary, and should be discontinued, that I fully realized what this companionship had been to me. The loss was like the loss of sunshine. No promise had been given that my religious belief should be undisturbed, nor was any needed. Interest was turned aside from Calvinism and Arminianism, which at an early age had engaged my attention, towards manifestations of nobility of character, and sympathy with human struggles and sufferings under varied conditions. The character of the "Marquis von Posa" (in "Don Carlos") roused an enthusiasm for heroism and virtue, which it was delightful to express to one who so fully shared it. Placing together one day the works of Schiller, which were in two or three volumes, Miss Evans said, "Oh, if _I_ had given these to the world, how happy I should be!" It must have been to confirm myself in my traditional faith by confession of it, that I once took upon myself to say to her how sure I was that there could be no true morality without evangelical belief. "Oh, it is so, is it?" she said, with the kindest smile, and nothing further passed. From time to time, however, her reverence and affection for the character of Christ and the Apostle Paul, and her sympathy with genuine religious feeling, were very clear to me. Expressing one day her horror of a crowd, she said, "I never would press through one, unless it were to see a second Jesus." The words startled me--the conception of Jesus Christ in my mind being so little associated with a human form; but they impressed me with a certain reality of feeling which I contrasted, as I did Miss Evans's abiding interest in great principles, with the somewhat factitious and occasional as well as fitful affection and concern manifest in many whom I looked up to as "converted" people. Once only do I remember such contrast being made by herself. She attended the service at the opening of a new church at Foleshill, with her father, and remarked to me the next day that, looking at the gayly dressed people, she could not help thinking how much easier life would be to her, and how much better she should stand in the estimation of her neighbors, if only she could take things as they did, be satisfied with outside pleasures, and conform to the popular beliefs without any reflection or examination. Once, too, after being in the company of educated persons "professing and calling themselves Christians," she commented to me on the _tone_ of conversation, often frivolous, sometimes ill-natured, that seemed yet to excite in no one any sense of impropriety. It must have been in those early days that she spoke to me of a visit from one of her uncles in Derbyshire, a Wesleyan, and how much she had enjoyed talking with him, finding she could enter into his feelings so much better than she had done in past times, when her views seemed more in accordance with his own, but were really less so. Among other books, I remember the "Life of Dr. Arnold" interested her deeply. Speaking of it to me one morning, she referred to a conversation she had had with a friend the evening before, and said they had agreed that it was a great good for such men to remain within the pale of orthodoxy, that so they might draw from the old doctrines the best that was to be got from them. Of criticisms on German books read with Miss Evans, I recall one or two. In the "Robbers," she criticised the attempt to enhance the horror of the situation of the abandoned father, by details of physical wretchedness, as a mistake in Art. "Wallenstein" she ranked higher from an intellectual point of view than any other work of Schiller's. The talk of the soldiers in the "Lager" she pointed out to me as "just what it would be." On my faint response, "I suppose it is!" she returned, "No, you do not _suppose_--we _know_ these things;" and then gave me a specimen of what might be a navvy's talk--"The sort of thing such people say, is, 'I'll break off your arm, and bloody your face with the stump.'" Mrs. Bray tells the following incident, as showing her quick perception of excellence from a new and unknown source. "We were sitting," Mrs. Bray says, "one summer afternoon on the lawn at Rosehill, July, 1850, when Marian came running to us from the house with the _Leader_ newspaper in her hand. 'Here is a new poet come into the world!' she exclaimed, and sitting down with us she read from the _Leader_ the poem called 'Hymn,' signed M., and ending with the fine stanza: "'When I have passed a nobler life in sorrow; Have seen rude masses grow to fulgent spheres; Seen how To-day is father of To-morrow, And how the Ages justify the Years, I praise Thee, God.' "The 'Hymn' is now reprinted in Mr. W. M. W. Call's volume of collected poems, called 'Golden Histories.'" Kingsley's "Saint's Tragedy" was not so popular as his other works, but Miss Evans was deeply moved by it. Putting it into my hands one morning, she said, "There, read it--_you_ will care for it." The "Life of Jean Paul Richter," published in the Catholic Series (in which the head of Christ, by De la Roche, so dear to her, figures as a vignette), was read and talked of with great interest, as was his "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," translated by the late Mr. Edward Noel of Hampstead. Choice little bits of humor from the latter she greatly enjoyed. Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," I think Miss Evans gave to me. I know it interested her, as did Emerson's "Essays." On his visit to Coventry, we could not, unfortunately, accept Mr. Bray's kind invitation to meet him at Rosehill; but after he had left, Miss Evans soon came up kindly to give us her impressions of him while they were fresh in her memory. She told us he had asked her what had first awakened her to deep reflection, and when she answered, "Rousseau's Confessions," he remarked that this was very interesting, inasmuch as Carlyle had told him that very book had had the same effect upon his mind. As _I_ heard Emerson's remark after his interviews with Miss Evans, it was, "That young lady has a calm, clear spirit." Intercourse, it will be seen, was kept up with my family, otherwise than through the lessons, by calls, and in little gatherings of friends in evenings, when we were favored to hear Miss Evans sing. Her voice was not strong, and I think she preferred playing on the piano; but her low notes were effective, and there was always an elevation in the rendering. As I knew Miss Evans, no one escaped her notice. In her treatment of servants, for instance, she was most considerate. "They come to me," she used to say, "with all their troubles," as indeed did her friends generally--sometimes, she would confess, to an extent that quite oppressed her. When any object of charity came under her notice, and power to help was within her reach, she was very prompt in rendering it. Our servant's brother or sister, or both of them, died, leaving children dependent on friends themselves poor. Miss Evans at once offered to provide clothing and school-fees for one of these, a chubby-faced little girl four or five years of age. Unexpectedly, however, an aunt at a distance proposed to adopt the child. I recollect taking her to say good-bye to her would-be benefactress, and can see her now, standing still and subdued in her black frock and cape, with Miss Evans kneeling down by her, and saying, after giving her some money, "Then I suppose there is nothing else we can do for her." My husband's mother, who was a member of the Society of Friends, established, with the help of her daughters and a few others interested, an Industrial Home for girls about the age of fourteen. It was in the year 1843, and was, therefore, one of the first institutions of the kind in England. The model was taken from something of the same order attempted by a young girl in France. The girls were, as far as practicable, to maintain themselves, working under conditions of comfort and protection more attainable than in their own homes. The idea was new; the Home could not be started without funds, and my mother undertook to collect for it in her own neighborhood. In a letter to me, written at this time, she tells me she is "not doing much to help dear Mrs. Cash," there being "a prejudice against the scheme;" but adds, "This morning Miss Evans called, and brought me two guineas from her father." I tell of this as one among many indications of Miss Evans's ever-growing zeal to serve humanity in a broader way, motived, as _she_ felt, by a higher aim than what she termed "desire to save one's soul by making up coarse flannel for the poor." In these broad views--in this desire to bring her less advantaged neighbors nearer to her own level, to meet them on common ground, to raise them above the liability to eleemosynary charity--she had Mr. Bray's full sympathy. To me she dwelt frequently upon his genuine benevolence, upon his ways of advancing the interests of the working men, as being, in her judgment, wise and good. She visited periodically, in turn with Mrs. Bray, myself, and a few others, an infant school which Mr. Bray had helped to start; and although this sort of work was so little suited to her, yet so much did she feel the duty of living for others, especially the less privileged, that one morning she came to Mrs. Bray, expressing strongly her desire to help in _any_ work that could be given her. The only thing that could be thought of was the illustration of some lessons in Natural History, on sheets of cardboard, needed then, when prints of the kind were not to be procured for schools. The class of animals to be illustrated by Mrs. Bray on the sheet taken by Miss Evans was the "Rodentiæ," and at the top a squirrel was to figure, the which she undertook to draw. This I have seen, half-finished--a witness to the willing mind; proof that its proper work lay otherwhere. Lectures at the Mechanics' Institute were matters of great interest to Miss Evans; and I remember the pleasure given her by the performance of the music of "Comus," with lecture by Professor Taylor, at our old St. Mary's Hall. In that hall, too, we heard the first lecture on total abstinence that I remember to have heard in Coventry, though of "Temperance Societies" we knew something. The lecturer was the Rev. Mr. Spencer, a clergyman at Hinton Charterhouse, near Bath, and uncle of Mr. Herbert Spencer. Miss Evans was present at the lecture, with Mr. Bray, who told me afterwards he had some difficulty in restraining her from going up, as soon as the lecture was over, to take the pledge, he thought, without due consideration. "I felt," she said, speaking to me afterwards of the lecturer, "that he had got hold of a power for good that was of incalculable worth." I need scarcely say that I received, along with lessons in German, some "rules and lessons for life" from Miss Evans. One of the first was an injunction to be accurate, enforced with the warning that the tendency is to grow less and less so as we get older. The other was tolerance. How well I can remember the remonstrance, "My dear child, the great lesson of life is tolerance." In the proverb, "Live and let live," she saw a principle involved, harder to act upon, she would say, than the maxims of benevolence--I think, because bringing less credit with it. The reading of dramas and romances naturally gives rise to discussion of their main theme. In treating of love and marriage, Miss Evans's feeling was so fine as to satisfy a young girl in her teens, with her impossible ideals. The conception of the union of two persons by so close a tie as marriage, without a previous union of minds as well as hearts, was to her dreadful. "How terrible it must be," she once said to me, "to find one's self tied to a being whose limitations you could see, and must know were such as to prevent your ever being understood!" She thought that though in England marriages were not professedly "arrangés," they were so too often practically: young people being brought together, and receiving intimations that mutual interest was desired and expected, were apt to drift into connections on grounds not strong enough for the wear and tear of life; and this, too, among the middle as well as in the higher classes. After speaking of these and other facts, of how things were and would be, in spite of likelihood to the contrary, she would end by saying, playfully, "Now, remember I tell you this, and I am sixty!" She thought the stringency of laws rendering the marriage-tie (at that date) irrevocable, practically worked injuriously; the effect being "that many wives took far less pains to please their husbands in behavior and appearance, because they knew their own position to be invulnerable." And at a later time she spoke of marriages on the Continent, where separations did not necessarily involve discredit, as being very frequently far happier. One claim, as she regarded it, from equals to each other was this, the right to hear from the aggrieved, "You have ill-treated me; do you not see your conduct is not fair, looked at from my side?" Such frankness would, she said, bring about good understanding better than reticent endurance. Her own filial piety was sufficiently manifest; but of the converse obligation, that of the claim of child upon parent, she was wont to speak thus strongly. "There may be," she would say, "conduct on the part of a parent which should exonerate his child from further obligation to him; but there cannot be action conceivable which should absolve the parent from obligation to serve his child, seeing that for that child's existence he is himself responsible." I did not at the time see the connection between this view and the change of a fundamental nature marked by Miss Evans's earlier contention for our "claim on God." The bearing of the above on orthodox religion I did not see. Some time ago, however, I came across this reflection, made by a clergyman of the Broad Church school--that since the _claims_ of children had, in the plea for schools, been based on the responsibility of parents towards them, a higher principle had been maintained on the platform than was preached from the pulpit, as the basis of the popular theology. In my previous communication in the "Life" I have already made mention of Miss Evans's sympathy with me in my own religious difficulties; and my obligations to her were deepened by her seconding my resolve to acknowledge how much of the traditional belief had fallen away from me and left a simpler faith. In this I found her best help when, as time passed on, my brother saw he could not conscientiously continue in the calling he had chosen. As, however, his heresies were not considered fatal, and he was esteemed by the professors and students of his college, there was for some time hesitation. In this predicament I wrote to him, a little favoring compromise. My mother also wrote. I took the letters to Miss Evans before posting them. She read mine first, with no remark, and then began my mother's, reading until she came upon these words--"In the meantime, let me entreat you not to utter any sentiments, either in the pulpit or in conversation, that you do not believe to be strictly true;" on which she said, turning to me, "Look, this is the important point, what your mother says here," and I immediately put my own letter into the fire. "What are you doing?" she quickly said; and when I answered, "You are right--my mother's letter is to the point, and that only need go," she nodded assent, and, keeping it, sent it enclosed with a few lines from herself. I knew what I had done and so did she: the giving up of the ministry to a young man without other resources was no light matter; and as I rose to go she said, "These are the tragedies for which the world cares so little, but which are so much to me." More than twenty years elapsed before I had again the privilege of seeing George Eliot, and that on one occasion only, after her final settlement in London. It touched me deeply to find how much she had retained of her kind interest in all that concerned me and mine, and I remarked on this to Mr. Lewes, who came to the door with my daughter and myself at parting. "Wonderful sympathy," I said. "Is it not?" said he; and when I added, inquiringly, "The power lies there?" "Unquestionably it does," was his answer; "she forgets nothing that has ever come within the curl of her eyelash; above all, she forgets no one who has ever spoken to her one kind word." END OF VOL. I. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious typographical errors were repaired. Duplicate sidenotes (repeated at the top of continuation pages) were deleted. Latin-1 file: _underscores_ enclose italicized content. P. 99 "[Greek: tho pascha]" and p. 139 "[Greek: nenikekas Galilaie]"--for the actual Greek script see the html version of this volume. 
43045	----	Transcriber's Note: This is Volume III of a three volume set: Volume I--Unknown Volume II--Famous Volume III--Sunset A combined index to the entire set is located at the end of Volume III. Narrative content written by J. Cross and material quoted from writers other than George Eliot are interspersed throughout the text. Their content is placed in block quotes. Remaining transcriber's notes are located at the end of the text. * * * * * GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE VOL. III.--SUNSET "OUR FINEST HOPE IS FINEST MEMORY" [Illustration: No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.] GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE _as related in her Letters and Journals_ ARRANGED AND EDITED BY HER HUSBAND J. W. CROSS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS IN THREE VOLUMES.--VOLUME III NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS. _LIBRARY EDITION._ ADAM BEDE. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. DANIEL DERONDA. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. MIDDLEMARCH. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. ROMOLA. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK. HARPER & BROTHERS _will send any of the above volumes by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. For other editions of George Eliot's works published by Harper & Brothers see advertisement at end of third volume_. CONTENTS OF VOL. III. CHAPTER XIV. JANUARY, 1867, TO DECEMBER, 1867. Tour in Spain Page 1 CHAPTER XV. JANUARY, 1868, TO DECEMBER, 1868. "The Spanish Gypsy" 24 CHAPTER XVI. JANUARY, 1869, TO DECEMBER, 1872. Poems--"Middlemarch" 55 CHAPTER XVII. JANUARY, 1873, TO DECEMBER, 1875. "Brewing," "Deronda" 138 CHAPTER XVIII. MARCH, 1876, TO NOVEMBER, 1878. "Daniel Deronda"--Illness and Death of Mr. Lewes 197 CHAPTER XIX. JANUARY, 1879, TO 22D DECEMBER, 1880. "Theophrastus Such"--Marriage with Mr. Cross--Death 249 ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOL. III. NO. 4 CHEYNE WALK, CHELSEA _Frontispiece._ THE HEIGHTS, WITLEY. From a Sketch by Mrs. Allingham _To face p. 216._ GEORGE ELIOT'S LIFE. CHAPTER XIV. The new year of 1867 opens with the description of the journey to Spain. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, Jan. 1867, from Bordeaux.] We prolonged our stay in Paris in order to see Madame Mohl, who was very good to us; invited the Scherers and other interesting people to meet us at dinner on the 29th, and tempted us to stay and breakfast with her on the 31st, by promising to invite Renan, which she did successfully, and so procured us a bit of experience that we were glad to have, over and above the pleasure of seeing a little more of herself and M. Mohl. I like them both, and wish there were a chance of knowing them better. We paid for our pleasure by being obliged to walk in the rain (from the impossibility of getting a carriage) all the way from the Rue de Rivoli--where a charitable German printer, who had taken us up in his _fiacre_, was obliged to set us down--to the Hôtel du Helder, through streets literally jammed with carriages and omnibuses, carrying people who were doing the severe social duties of the last day in the year. The rain it raineth every day, with the exception of yesterday; we can't travel away from it, apparently. But we start in desperation for Bayonne in half an hour. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Jan. 1867, from Biarritz.] Snow on the ground here, too--more, we are told, than has been seen here for fifteen years before. But it has been obliging enough to fall in the night, and the sky is glorious this morning, as it was yesterday. Sunday was the one exception since the 6th, when we arrived here to a state of weather which has allowed us to be out of doors the greater part of our daylight. We think it curious that, among the many persons who have talked to us about Biarritz, the Brownings alone have ever spoken of its natural beauties; yet these are transcendent. We agree that the sea never seemed so magnificent to us before, though we have seen the Atlantic breaking on the rocks at Ilfracombe and on the great granite walls of the Scilly Isles. In the southern division of the bay we see the sun set over the Pyrenees; and in the northern we have two splendid stretches of sand, one with huge fragments of dark rock scattered about for the waves to leap over, the other an unbroken level, firm to the feet, where the hindmost line of wave sends up its spray on the horizon like a suddenly rising cloud. This part of the bay is worthily called the Chambre de l'Amour; and we have its beauties all to ourselves, which, alas! in this stage of the world, one can't help feeling to be an advantage. The few families and bachelors who are here (chiefly English) scarcely ever come across our path. The days pass so rapidly, we can hardly believe in their number when we come to count them. After breakfast we both read the "Politique"--George one volume and I another--interrupting each other continually with questions and remarks. That morning study keeps me in a state of enthusiasm through the day--a moral glow, which is a sort of _milieu subjectif_ for the sublime sea and sky. Mr. Lewes is converted to the warmest admiration of the chapter on language in the third volume, which about three years ago he thought slightly of. I think the first chapter of the fourth volume is among the finest of all, and the most finely written. My gratitude increases continually for the illumination Comte has contributed to my life. But we both of us study with a sense of having still much to learn and to understand. About ten or half-past ten we go out for our morning walk; and then, while we plunge about in the sand or march along the cliff, George draws out a book and tries my paces in Spanish, demanding a quick-as-light translation of nouns and phrases. Presently I retort upon him, and prove that it is easier to ask than to answer. We find this system of _vivâ-voce_ mutual instruction so successful that we are disgusted with ourselves for not having used it before through all our many years of companionship; and we are making projects for giving new interest to Regent's Park by pursuing all sorts of studies in the same way there. We seldom come indoors till one o'clock, and we turn out again at three, often remaining to see the sunset. One other thing I have been reading here which I must tell you of. It is a series of three papers by Saveney, in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ of last year, on "La Physique Moderne," an excellent summary, giving a glimpse of the great vista opened in that region. I think you would like to read them when you are strong enough for that sort of exertion. We stayed three days in Paris, and passed our time very agreeably. The first day we dined with Madame Mohl, who had kindly invited Professor Scherer and his wife, Jules Simon, Lomenie, Lavergne, "and others" to meet us. That was on the Saturday, and she tempted us to stay the following Monday by saying she would invite Renan to breakfast with us. Renan's appearance is something between the Catholic priest and the dissenting minister. His manners are very amiable, his talk pleasant, but not distinguished. We are entertaining great projects as to our further journeying. It will be best for you to address _Poste Restante_, Barcelona. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d Feb. 1867.] Are you astonished to see our whereabouts? We left Biarritz for San Sebastian, where we stayed three days; and both there and all our way to Barcelona our life has been a succession of delights. We have had perfect weather, blue skies, and a warm sun. We travelled from San Sebastian to Saragossa, where we passed two nights; then to Lerida for one night, and yesterday to Barcelona. You know the scenery from San Sebastian to Alsasua, through the lower Pyrenees, because it lies on the way to Burgos and Madrid. At Alsasua we turned off through Navarre into Aragon, seeing famous Pampeluna, looking as beautiful as it did ages ago among the grand hills. At Saragossa the scene was thoroughly changed; all through Aragon, as far as we could see, I should think the country resembles the highlands of Central Spain. There is the most striking effect of hills, flanking the plain of Saragossa, I ever saw. They are of palish clay, washed by the rains into undulating forms, and some slight herbage upon them makes the shadows of an exquisite blue. These hills accompanied us in the distance all the way through Aragon, the snowy mountains topping them in the far distance. The land is all pale brown, the numerous towns and villages just match the land, and so do the sheepfolds, built of mud or stone. The herbage is all of an ashy green. Perhaps if I had been in Africa I should say, as you do, that the country reminded me of Africa; as it is, I think of all I have read about the East. The men who look on while others work at Saragossa also seem to belong to the East, with a great striped blanket wrapped grandly round them, and a kerchief tied about their hair. But though Aragon was held by the Moors longer than any part of Northern Spain, the features and skins of the people seem to me to bear less traces of the mixture there must have been than one would fairly expect. Saragossa has a grand character still, in spite of the stucco with which the people have daubed the beautiful small brick of which the houses are built. Here and there one sees a house left undesecrated by stucco; and all of them have the fluted tiles and the broad eaves beautifully ornamented. Again, one side of the old cathedral still shows the exquisite inlaid work which, in the _façade_, has been overlaid hideously. Gradually, as we left Aragon and entered Catalonia, the face of the country changed, and we had almost every sort of beauty in succession; last of all, between Monserrat and Barcelona, a perfect garden, with the richest red soil--blossoms on the plum and cherry trees, aloes thick in the hedges. At present we are waiting for the Spanish hardships to begin. Even at Lerida, a place scarcely at all affected by foreign travellers, we were perfectly comfortable--and such sights! The people scattered on the brown slopes of rough earth round the fortress--the women knitting, etc., the men playing at cards, one wonderful, gaudily dressed group; another of handsome gypsies. We are actually going by steam-boat to Alicante, and from Alicante to Malaga. Then we mean to see Granada, Cordova, and Seville. We shall only stay here a few days--if this weather continues. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 18th Feb. 1867, from Granada.] Your kind letter, written on the 5th, reached me here this morning. I had not heard of the criticism in the _Edinburgh_. Mr. Lewes read the article, but did not tell me of the reviewer's legal wisdom, thinking that it would only vex me to no purpose. However, I had felt sure that something of that sort must have appeared in one review article or another. I am heartily glad and grateful that you have helped justice in general, as well as justice to me in particular, by getting the vindication written for the _Pall Mall_. It was the best possible measure to adopt. Since we left Barcelona, a fortnight ago, we have seen no English papers, so that we have been in the dark as to English news. Were you not surprised to hear that we had come so far? The journey from San Sebastian by Saragossa and Lerida turned out to be so easy and delightful that we ceased to tremble, and determined to carry out our project of going by steamer to Alicante and Malaga. You cannot do better than follow our example; I mean, so far as coming to Spain is concerned. Believe none of the fictions that bookmakers get printed about the horrors of Spanish hotels and cookery, or the hardships of Spanish travel--still less about the rudeness of Spaniards. It is true that we have not yet endured the long railway journeys through Central Spain, but wherever we have been hitherto we have found nothing formidable, even for our rickety bodies. We came hither from Malaga in the _berlina (coupé)_ of the diligence, and have assured ourselves that Mr. Blackburne's description of a supposed hen-roost, overturned in the Alameda at Malaga, which proved to be the Granada diligence, is an invention. The vehicle is comfortable enough, and the road is perfect; and at the end of it we have found ourselves in one of the loveliest scenes on earth. We shall remain here till the 23d, and then go to Cordova first, to Seville next, and finally to Madrid, making our way homeward from thence by easy stages. We expect to be in the smoky haze of London again soon after the middle of March, if not before. I wish I could believe that you were all having anything like the clear skies and warm sun which have cheered our journeying for the last month. At Alicante we walked among the palm-trees with their golden fruit hanging in rich clusters, and felt a more delightful warmth than that of an English summer. Last night we walked out and saw the towers of the Alhambra, the wide Vega, and the snowy mountains, by the brilliant moonlight. You see, we are getting a great deal of pleasure, but we are not working, as you seem charitably to imagine. We tire ourselves, but only with seeing or going to see unforgetable things. You will say that we ought to work to better purpose when we get home. Amen. But just now we read nothing but Spanish novels--and not much of those. We said good-bye to philosophy and science when we packed up our trunks at Biarritz. Please keep some friendship warm for us, that we may not be too much chilled by the English weather when we get back. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Feb. 1867.] We are both heartily rejoiced that we came to Spain. It was a great longing of mine, for, three years ago, I began to interest myself in Spanish history and literature, and have had a work lying by me, partly written, the subject of which is connected with Spain. Whether I shall ever bring it to maturity so as to satisfy myself sufficiently to print it is a question not settled; but it is a work very near my heart. We have had perfect weather ever since the 27th of January--magnificent skies and a summer sun. At Alicante, walking among the palm-trees, with the bare brown rocks and brown houses in the background, we fancied ourselves in the tropics; and a gentleman who travelled with us assured us that the aspect of the country closely resembled Aden, on the Red Sea. Here, at Granada, of course, it is much colder, but the sun shines uninterruptedly; and in the middle of the day, to stand in the sunshine against a wall, reminds me of my sensations at Florence in the beginning of June. The aspect of Granada as we first approached it was a slight disappointment to me, but the beauty of its position can hardly be surpassed. To stand on one of the towers of the Alhambra and see the sun set behind the dark mountains of Loja, and send its after-glow on the white summits of the Sierra Nevada, while the lovely Vega spreads below, ready to yield all things pleasant to the eye and good for food, is worth a very long, long journey. We shall start to-morrow evening for Cordova; then we shall go to Seville, back to Cordova, and on to Madrid. During our short stay in Paris we went a little into society, and saw, among other people who interested us, Professor Scherer, of whom you know something. He charmed me greatly. He is a Genevese, you know, and does not talk in ready-made epigrams, like a clever Frenchman, but with well-chosen, moderate words, intended to express what he really thinks and feels. He is highly cultivated; and his wife, who was with him, is an Englishwoman of refined, simple manners. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 10th Mch. 1867, from Biarritz.] At Biarritz again, you see, after our long, delightful journey, in which we have made a great loop all round the east and through the centre of Spain. Mr. Lewes says he thinks he never enjoyed a journey so much, and you will see him so changed--so much plumper and ruddier--that if pity has entered much into your regard for him he will be in danger of losing something by his bodily prosperity. We crowned our pleasures in Spain with the sight of the pictures in the Madrid gallery. The skies were as blue at Madrid as they had been through the previous part of our journeying, but the air was bitterly cold; and naughty officials receive money for warming the museum, but find other uses for the money. I caught a severe cold the last day of our visit, and, after an uncomfortable day and night's railway journey, arrived at Biarritz, only fit for bed and coddling. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _March 16._--This evening we got home after a journey to the south of Spain. I go to my poem and the construction of two prose works--if possible. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Mch. 1867.] We got home on Saturday evening, after as fine a passage from Calais to Dover as we ever had, even in summer. Your letter was among the pleasant things that smiled at me on my return, and helped to reconcile me to the rather rude transition from summer to winter which we have made in our journey from Biarritz. This morning it is snowing hard and the wind is roaring--a sufficiently sharp contrast to the hot sun, the dust, and the mosquitoes of Seville. We have had a glorious journey. The skies alone, both night and day, were worth travelling all the way to see. We went to Cordova and Seville, but we feared the cold of the central lands in the north, and resisted the temptation to see Toledo, or anything else than the Madrid pictures, which are transcendent. Among the letters awaiting me was one from an American travelling in Europe, who gives me the history of a copy of "Felix Holt," which, he says, has been read by no end of people, and is now on its way through Ireland, "where he found many friends anxious but unable to get it." It seems people nowadays economize in nothing but books. I found also the letter of a "Conveyancer" in the _Pall Mall_, justifying the law of "Felix Holt" in answer to the _Edinburgh_ reviewer. I did not know, before I was told of this letter in reply, that the _Edinburgh_ reviewer had found fault with my law. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _March 21._--Received from Blackwood a check for £2166 13_s._ 4_d._, being the second instalment of £1666 13_s._ 4_d._ towards the £5000 for "Felix Holt," together with £500 as the first instalment of £1000 for ten years' copyright of the cheap edition of my novels. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Mch. 1867.] Your letters, with the valuable enclosure of a check for £2166 13_s._ 4_d._, have come to me this morning, and I am much obliged to you for your punctual attention. I long to see a specimen of the cheap edition of the novels. As to the illustrations, I have adjusted my hopes so as to save myself from any great shock. When I remember my own childish happiness in a frightfully illustrated copy of the "Vicar of Wakefield," I can believe that illustration may be a great good relatively, and that my own present liking has no weight in the question. I fancy that the placarding at railway stations is an effective measure, for Ruskin was never more mistaken than in asserting that people have no spare time to observe anything in such places. I am a very poor reader of advertisements, but even I am forced to get them unpleasantly by heart at the stations. It is rather a vexatious kind of tribute when people write, as my American correspondent did, to tell me of one paper-covered American copy of "Felix Holt" brought to Europe and serving for so many readers that it was in danger of being worn away under their hands. He, good man, finds it easy "to urge greater circulation by means of cheap sale," having "found so many friends in Ireland anxious but unable to obtain the book." I suppose putting it in a yellow cover with figures on it, reminding one of the outside of a show, and charging a shilling for it, is what we are expected to do for the good of mankind. Even then I fear it would hardly bear the rivalry of "The Pretty Milliner," or of "The Horrible Secret." The work connected with Spain is not a romance. It is--prepare your fortitude--it is--a poem. I conceived the plot, and wrote nearly the whole as a drama in 1864. Mr. Lewes advised me to put it by for a time and take it up again, with a view to recasting it. He thinks hopefully of it. I need not tell you that I am _not_ hopeful, but I am quite sure the subject is fine. It is not historic, but has merely historic connections. The plot was wrought out entirely as an incorporation of my own ideas. Of course, if it is ever finished to my satisfaction, it is not a work for us to get money by, but Mr. Lewes urges and insists that it shall be done. I have also my private projects about an English novel, but I am afraid of speaking as if I could depend on myself; at present I am rather dizzy, and not settled down to home habits of regular occupation. I understand that the conveyancer who wrote to the _Pall Mall_ is an excellent lawyer in his department, and the lecturer on Real Property at the Law Institution. If a reviewer ever checked himself by considering that a writer whom he thinks worth praising would take some pains to know the truth about a matter which is the very hinge of said writer's story, review articles would cut a shrunken figure. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _May 5._--We went to Bouverie Street to hear the first of a course of lectures on Positivism, delivered by Dr. Congreve. There were present seventy-five people, chiefly men. _May 11._--We had Mr. and Mrs. Call to dine with us, and an evening party afterwards. _May 12._--We went to hear Dr. Congreve's second lecture. The morning was thoroughly wet; the audience smaller, but still good. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th May, 1867.] Yesterday we went to the second of a course of lectures which Dr. Congreve is delivering on Positivism in Bouverie Street. At the first lecture on the 5th there was a considerable audience--about seventy-five, chiefly men--of various ranks, from lords and M.P.'s downwards, or upwards, for what is called social distinction seems to be in a shifting condition just now. Yesterday the wet weather doubtless helped to reduce the audience; still it was good. Curiosity brings some, interest in the subject others, and the rest go with the wish to express adhesion more or less thorough. I am afraid you have ceased to care much about pictures, else I should wish that you could see the Exhibition of Historical Portraits at Kensington. It is really worth a little fatigue to see the English of past generations in their habit as they lived--especially when Gainsborough and Sir Joshua are the painters. But even Sir Godfrey Kneller delights me occasionally with a finely conceived portrait carefully painted. There is an unforgetable portrait of Newton by him. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _May 27._--Went with G. to the Academy Exhibition. _May 29._--Went to the Exhibition of French Pictures--very agreeable and interesting. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 30th May, 1867.] I do sympathize with you most emphatically in the desire to see women socially elevated--educated equally with men, and secured as far as possible, along with every other breathing creature, from suffering the exercise of any unrighteous power. That is a broader ground of sympathy than agreement as to the amount and kind of result that may be hoped for from a particular measure. But on this special point I am far from thinking myself an oracle, and on the whole I am inclined to hope for much good from the serious presentation of women's claims before Parliament. I thought Mill's speech sober and judicious from his point of view--Karslake's an abomination. _À propos_ of what you say about Mr. Congreve, I think you have mistaken his, or rather Comte's, position. There is no denial of an unknown cause, but only a denial that such a conception is the proper basis of a practical religion. It seems to me pre-eminently desirable that we should learn not to make our personal comfort a standard of truth. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _June 1_ (Saturday).--Wrote up to the moment when Fedalma appears in the Plaça. _June 5._--Blackwood dined with us, and I read to him my poem down to page 56. He showed great delight. _June 26._--We went to Niton for a fortnight, returning July 10. _July 16._--Received £2166 13_s._ 4_d._ from Blackwood, being the final instalment for "Felix Holt," and (£500) copyright for ten years. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 28th July, 1867.] Again we take flight! To North Germany this time, and chiefly to Dresden, where we shall be accessible through the _Poste Restante_. I am ashamed of saying anything about our health--we are both "objects" for compassion or contempt, according to the disposition of the subject who may contemplate us. Mr. Beesley (I think it was he) sent us Dr. Congreve's pamphlet last night, and I read it aloud to George. We both felt a cordial satisfaction in it. We have been a good deal beset by little engagements with friends and acquaintances lately, and these, with the preparations for our journey, have been rather too much for me. Mr. Lewes is acting on the advice of Sir Henry Holland in giving up zoologizing for the present, because it obliges him to hang down his head. That is the reason we go inland, and not to the coast, as I think I hinted to you that we expected to do. You are sympathetic enough to be glad to hear that we have had thoroughly cheerful and satisfactory letters from both our boys in Natal. They are established in their purchased farm, and are very happy together in their work. Impossible for mortals to have less trouble than we. I should have written to you earlier this week--for we start to-morrow--but that I have been laid prostrate with crushing headache one half of my time, and always going out or seeing some one the other half. Farewell, dear. Don't write unless you have a real desire to gossip with me a little about yourself and our mutual friends. You know I always like to have news of you, but I shall not think it unkind--I shall only think you have other things to do--if you are silent. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _July 29._--We went to Dover this evening as the start on a journey into Germany (North). _Oct. 1._--We returned home after revisiting the scenes of cherished memories--Ilmenau, Dresden, and Berlin. Of new places we have seen Wetzlar, Cassel, Eisenach, and Hanover. At Ilmenau I wrote Fedalma's soliloquy after her scene with Silva, and the following dialogue between her and Juan. At Dresden I rewrote the whole scene between her and Zarca. _Oct. 9._--Reading "Los Judios en Espâna," Percy's "Reliques," "Isis," occasionally aloud. _Oct. 10._--Reading the "Iliad," Book III. Finished "Los Judios en Espâna," a wretchedly poor book. _Oct. 11._--Began again Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella." _Oct. 19._--George returned last evening from a walking expedition in Surrey with Mr. Spencer. This entry is an interesting one to me, as it fixes the date of the first acquaintance with my family. Mr. Herbert Spencer was an old friend of ours, and in the course of their walk he and Mr. Lewes happened to pass through Weybridge, where my mother at that time lived. They came to dinner. Mr. Lewes, with his wonderful social powers, charmed all, and they passed a delightful evening. I was myself in America at the time, where I was in business as a banker at New York. My eldest sister had just then published a little volume of poems,[1] which was kindly received by the press. On the invitation of Mr. Lewes she went shortly afterwards to see George Eliot, then in the zenith of her fame; nor did she ever forget the affectionate manner in which the great author greeted her. This was the beginning of a close friendship between the families, which lasted, and increased in intimacy, to the end. Mr. Spencer, in writing to tell me that it was he who first made Mr. Lewes acquainted with George Eliot, adds, "You will perhaps be struck by the curious coincidence that it was also by me that Lewes was introduced to your family at Weybridge and remoter issues entailed." [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Oct. 1867.] Before I got your letter I was about to write to you and direct your attention to an article in the forthcoming (October) number of the _Quarterly Review_, on the Talmud. You really must go out of your way to read it. It is written by one of the greatest Oriental scholars, the man among living men who probably knows the most about the Talmud; and you will appreciate the pregnancy of the article. There are also beautiful, soul-cheering things selected for quotation. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _Oct. 31._--I have now inserted all that I think of for the first part of the "Spanish Gypsy." On Monday I wrote three new Lyrics. I have also rewritten the first scenes in the gypsy camp, to the end of the dialogue between Juan and Fedalma. But I have determined to make the commencement of the second part continue the picture of what goes forward in Bedmar. _Nov. 1._--Began this morning Part II. "Silva was marching homeward," etc. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 9th Nov. 1867.] About putting Fedalma in type. There would be advantages, but also disadvantages; and on these latter I wish to consult you. I have more than three thousand lines ready in the order I wish them to stand in, and it would be good to have them in print to read them critically. Defects reveal themselves more fully in type, and emendations might be more conveniently made on proofs, since I have given up the idea of copying the MS. as a whole. On the other hand, _could the thing be kept private when it had once been in the printing-office_? And I particularly wish not to have it set afloat, for various reasons. Among others, I want to keep myself free from all inducements to premature publication; I mean, publication before I have given my work as much revision as I can hope to give it while my mind is still nursing it. Beyond this, delay would be useless. The theory of laying by poems for nine years may be a fine one, but it could not answer for me to apply it. I could no more live through one of my books a second time than I can live through last year again. But I like to keep checks on myself, and not to create external temptations to do what I should think foolish in another. If you thought it possible to secure us against the oozing out of proofs and gossip, the other objections would be less important. One difficulty is, that in my MS. I have frequently two readings of the same passage, and, being uncertain which of them is preferable, I wish them both to stand for future decision. But perhaps this might be managed in proof. The length of the poem is at present uncertain, but I feel so strongly what Mr. Lewes insists on, namely, the evil of making it too long, that I shall set it before me as a duty not to make it more than nine thousand lines, and shall be glad if it turns out a little shorter. Will you think over the whole question? I am sure your mind will supply any prudential considerations that I may have omitted. I am vexed by the non-success of the serial edition of the works. It is not, Heaven knows, that I read my own books or am puffed up about them, but I have been of late quite astonished by the strengthening testimonies that have happened to come to me of people who care about every one of my books, and continue to read them--especially young men, who are just the class I care most to influence. But what sort of data can one safely go upon with regard to the success of editions? "Felix Holt" is immensely tempted by your suggestion,[2] but George Eliot is severely admonished by his domestic critic not to scatter his energies. Mr. Lewes sends his best regards. He is in high spirits about the poem. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _Nov. 22._--Began an "Address to the Working Men, by Felix Holt," at Blackwood's repeated request. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1867.] Yes, indeed--when I do _not_ reciprocate "chaos is come again." I was quite sure your letter would come, and was grateful beforehand. There is a scheme on foot for a Woman's College, or, rather, University, to be built between London and Cambridge, and to be in connection with the Cambridge University, sharing its professors, examinations, and degrees! _Si muove._ [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 1st Dec. (?) 1867.] I have written to Miss Davies to ask her to come to see me on Tuesday. I am much occupied just now, but the better education of women is one of the objects about which I have _no doubt_, and shall rejoice if this idea of a college can be carried out. I see Miss Julia Smith's beautiful handwriting, and am glad to think of her as your guardian angel. The author of the glorious article on the Talmud _is_ "that bright little man" Mr. Deutsch--a very dear, delightful creature. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _Dec. 4._--Sent off the MS. of the "Address" to Edinburgh. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th Dec. 1867.] I agree with you about the phrase "Masters of the country."[3] I wrote that part twice, and originally I distinctly said that the epithet was false. Afterwards I left that out, preferring to make a stronger _argumentum ad hominem_, in case any workman believed himself a future master. I think it will be better for you to write a preliminary note, washing your hands of any over-trenchant statements on the part of the well-meaning Radical. I much prefer that you should do so. Whatever you agree with will have the advantage of not coming from one who can be suspected of being a special pleader. What you say about Fedalma is very cheering. But I am chiefly anxious about the road still untravelled--the road I have still _zurück zu legen_. Mr. Lewes has to request several proofs of Fedalma, to facilitate revision. But I will leave him to say how many. We shall keep them strictly to ourselves, you may be sure, so that three or four will be enough--one for him, one for me, and one for the resolution of our differences. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood 12th Dec. 1867.] I am very grateful to you for your generous words about my work. That you not only feel so much sympathy, but are moved to express it so fully, is a real help to me. I am very glad to have had the revise of the "Address." I feel the danger of not being understood. Perhaps, by a good deal longer consideration and gradual shaping, I might have put the ideas into a more concrete, easy form. Mr. Lewes read the proof of the poem all through to himself for the first time last night, and expressed great satisfaction in the impression it produced. Your suggestion of having it put into type is a benefit for which we have reason to be obliged to you. I cannot help saying again that it is a strong cordial to me to have such letters as yours, and to know that I have such a _first reader_ as you. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _Dec. 21._--Finished reading "Averroës and Averroisme" and "Les Médicins Juifs." Reading "First Principles." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 22d Dec. 1867.] Our Christmas will be very quiet. On the 27th Mr. Lewes means to start on a solitary journey to Bonn, and perhaps to Würzburg, for anatomical purposes. I don't mean that he is going to offer himself as an anatomical subject, but that he wants to get answers to some questions bearing on the functions of the nerves. It is a bad time for him to travel in, but he hopes to be at home again in ten days or a fortnight, and _I_ hope the run will do him good rather than harm. [Sidenote: Journal, 1867.] _Dec. 25._--George and I dined happily alone; he better for weeks than he has been all the summer before; I more ailing than usual, but with much mental consolation, part of it being the delight he expresses in my poem, of which the first part is now in print. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 26th Dec. 1867.] Thanks for the pretty remembrance. You were not unthought of before it came. Now, however, I rouse all my courage under the thick fog to tell you my inward wish--which is that the new year, as it travels on towards its old age, may bring you many satisfactions undisturbed by bodily ailment. Mr. Lewes is going to-morrow on an unprecedented expedition--a rapid run to Bonn, to make some anatomical researches with Professor Schutze there. If he needs more than he can get at Bonn, he may go to Heidelberg and Würzburg. But in any case he will not take more than a fortnight. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 28th Dec. 1867.] Public questions which, by a sad process of reduction, become piteous private questions, hang cloudily over all prospects. The state of Europe, the threat of a general war, the starvation of multitudes--one can't help thinking of these things at one's breakfast. Nevertheless, there is much enjoyment going on, and abundance of rosy children's parties. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 30th Dec. 1867.] It is very good and sweet of you to propose to come round for me on Sunday, and I shall cherish particularly the remembrance of that kindness. But, on our reading your letter, Mr. Lewes objected, on grounds which I think just, to my going to any public manifestation without him, since his absence could not be divined by outsiders. I am companioned by dyspepsia, and feel life a struggle under the leaden sky. Mme. Bodichon writes that in Sussex the air is cold and clear, and the woods and lanes dressed in wintry loveliness of fresh, grassy patches, mingled with the soft grays and browns of the trees and hedges. Mr. Harrison shed the agreeable light of his kind eyes on me yesterday for a brief space; but I hope I was more endurable to my visitors than to myself, else I think they will not come again. I object strongly to myself, as a bundle of unpleasant sensations with a palpitating heart and awkward manners. Impossible to imagine the large charity I have for people who detest me. But don't you be one of them. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Dec. 1867.] I am much obliged to you for your handsome check, and still more gratified that the "Address" has been a satisfaction to you. I am very glad to hear of your projected visit to town, and shall hope to have a good batch of MS. for you to carry back. Mr. Lewes is in an unprecedented state of delight with the poem, now that he is reading it with close care. He says he is astonished that he can't find more faults. He is especially pleased with the sense of variety it gives; and this testimony is worth the more because he urged me to put the poem by (in 1865) on the ground of monotony. He is really exultant about it now, and after what you have said to me I know this will please you. Hearty wishes that the coming year may bring you much good, and that the "Spanish Gypsy" may contribute a little to that end. _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1867, TO DECEMBER, 1867. Letter to Madame Bodichon from Bordeaux--Madame Mohl--Scherer--Renan--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Biarritz--Delight in Comte's "Politique"--Gratitude to him for illumination--Learning Spanish--Papers in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, by Saveney--Letter to Madame Bodichon from Barcelona--Description of scenery--Pampeluna--Saragossa--Lerida--Letter to F. Harrison from Granada--The vindication of the _law_ in "Felix Holt"--Spanish travelling--Letter to John Blackwood from Granada--Alicante--Granada--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Biarritz--Delight of the journey--Madrid pictures--Return to the Priory--Letter to John Blackwood--"Felix Holt"--Cheap edition of novels--"Spanish Gypsy"--Dr. Congreve's Lectures on Positivism--Letter to Miss Hennell--Historical Portraits at South Kensington--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Women's claims--Comte's position--Fortnight's Visit to the Isle of Wight--Letter of adieu to Mrs. Congreve--Two months' visit to North Germany--Return to England--Reading on Spanish subjects--Mr. Lewes and Mr. Spencer at Weybridge--Acquaintance with Mrs. Cross and family--Letter to Miss Hennell--Deutsch's article on the Talmud--Letter to Blackwood about putting "Spanish Gypsy" in type--"Address to Workingmen, by Felix Holt"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Girton College--Letter to Madame Bodichon--The higher education of women--Letter to John Blackwood on the "Address"--Christmas day at the Priory--Letter to Miss Hennell--Visit of Mr. Lewes to Bonn--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Depression--Letter to John Blackwood--Mr. Lewes on "Spanish Gypsy." FOOTNOTES: [1] "An Old Story and Other Poems," by Elizabeth D. Cross. [2] "Address to the Working Men." [3] In the "Address to the Working Men." CHAPTER XV. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 9th Jan. 1868.] There is a good genius presiding over your gifts--they are so felicitous. You always give me something of which I have felt the want beforehand, and can use continually. It is eminently so with my pretty mittens; there was no little appendage I wanted more; and they are just as warm at the wrist as I could have wished them to be--warming, too, as a mark of affection at a time when all cheering things are doubly welcome. Mr. Lewes came home last night, and you may imagine that I am glad. Between the bad weather, bad health, and solitude, I have been so far unlike the wicked that I have not flourished like the green bay-tree. To make amends, he--Mr. Lewes, not the wicked--has had a brilliant time, gained great instruction, and seen some admirable men, who have received him warmly. I go out of doors very little, but I shall open the drawer and look at my mittens on the days when I don't put them on. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _Jan._--Engaged in writing Part III. of "Spanish Gypsy." _Feb. 27._--Returned last evening from a very pleasant visit to Cambridge.[4] I am still only at p. 5 of Part IV., having had a wretched month of _malaise_. _March 1._--Finished Guillemin on the "Heavens," and the 4th Book of the "Iliad." I shall now read Grote. _March 6._--Reading Lubbock's "Prehistoric Ages." _March 8._--Saturday concert. Joachim and Piatti, with Schubert's Ottett. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 17th Mch. 1868.] We go to-morrow morning to Torquay for a month, and I can't bear to go without saying a word of farewell to you. How sadly little we have seen each other this winter! It will not be so any more, I hope, will it? We are both much in need of the change, for Mr. Lewes has got rather out of sorts again lately. When we come back I shall ask you to come and look at us before the bloom is off. I should like to know how you all are; but you have been so little inspired for note-writing lately that I am afraid to ask you to send me a line to the post-office at Torquay. I really deserve nothing of my friends at present. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Mch. 1868.] I don't know whether you have ever seen Torquay. It is pretty, but not comparable to Ilfracombe; and, like all other easily accessible sea-places, it is sadly spoiled by wealth and fashion, which leave no secluded walks, and tattoo all the hills with ugly patterns of roads and villa gardens. Our selfishness does not adapt itself well to these on-comings of the millennium. I am reading about savages and semi-savages, and think that our religious oracles would do well to study savage ideas by a method of comparison with their own. Also, I am studying that semi-savage poem, the "Iliad." How enviable it is to be a classic. When a verse in the "Iliad" bears six different meanings, and nobody knows which is the right, a commentator finds this equivocalness in itself admirable! [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, end of Mch. 1868.] Mr. Lewes quite agrees with you, that it is desirable to announce the poem. His suggestion is, that it should be simply announced as "a poem" first, and then a little later as "The Spanish Gypsy," in order to give a new detail for observation in the second announcement. I chose the title, "The Spanish Gypsy," a long time ago, because it is a little in the fashion of the elder dramatists, with whom I have perhaps more cousinship than with recent poets. Fedalma might be mistaken for an Italian name, which would create a definite expectation of a mistaken kind, and is, on other grounds, less to my taste than "The Spanish Gypsy." This place is becoming a little London, or London suburb. Everywhere houses and streets are being built, and Babbacombe will soon be joined to Torquay. I almost envy you the excitement of golf, which helps the fresh air to exhilarate, and gives variety of exercise. Walking can never be so good as a game--if one loves the game. But when a friend of Mr. Lewes's urges him angrily to play rackets for his health, the prospect seems dreary. We are afraid of being entangled in excursion trains, or crowds of Easter holiday-makers, in Easter week, and may possibly be driven back next Wednesday. But we are loath to have our stay so curtailed. Mr. Lewes sends his kind regards, and pities all of us who are less interested in ganglionic cells. He is in a state of beatitude about the poem. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th April, 1868.] We find a few retired walks, and are the less discontented because the weather is perfect. I hope you are sharing the delights of sunshine and moonlight. There are no waves here, as you know; but under such skies as we are having, sameness is so beautiful that we find no fault, and there is a particular hill at Babbacombe of the richest Spanish red. On the whole, we are glad we came here, having avoided all trouble in journeying and settling. But we should not come again without special call, for in a few years all the hills will be parts of a London suburb. How glorious this weather is for the hard workers who are looking forward to their Easter holiday! But for ourselves, we are rather afraid of the railway stations in holiday time. Certainly, we are ill prepared for what Tennyson calls the "To-be," and it is good that we shall soon pass from this objective existence. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th April, 1868.] I think Ruskin has not been encouraged about women by his many and persistent attempts to teach them. He seems to have found them wanting in real scientific interest--bent on sentimentalizing in everything. What I should like to be sure of, as a result of higher education for women--a result that will come to pass over my grave--is their recognition of the great amount of social unproductive labor which needs to be done by women, and which is now either not done at all or done wretchedly. No good can come to women, more than to any class of male mortals, while each aims at doing the highest kind of work, which ought rather to be held in sanctity as what only the few can do well. I believe, and I want it to be well shown, that a more thorough education will tend to do away with the odious vulgarity of our notions about functions and employment, and to propagate the true gospel, that the deepest disgrace is to insist on doing work for which we are unfit--to do work of any sort badly. There are many points of this kind that want being urged, but they do not come well from me. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 17th April, 1868.] Your letter came just at the right time to greet us. Thanks for that pretty remembrance. We are glad to be at home again with our home comforts around us, though we became deeply in love with Torquay in the daily heightening of spring beauties, and the glory of perpetual blue skies. The eight hours' journey (one hour more than we paid for) was rather disturbing; and, I think, Mr. Lewes has got more zoological experience than health from our month's delight--but a delight it really has been to us to have perfect quiet with the red hills, the sunshine, and the sea. I shall be absorbed for the next fortnight, so that I cannot allow myself the sort of pleasure you kindly project for us; and when May begins, I want you to come and stay a night with us. I shall be ready by and by for such holiday-making, and you must be good to me. Will you give Dr. Congreve my thanks for his pamphlet, which I read at Torquay with great interest? All protests tell, however slowly and imperceptibly, and a protest against the doctrine that England is to keep Ireland under all conditions was what I had wished to be made. But in this matter he will have much more important concurrence than mine. I am bearing much in mind the great task of the translation. When it is completed we shall be able and glad to do what we were not able to do in the case of the "Discours Préliminaire," namely, to take our share, if we may, in the expenses of publication. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _April 16._--Returned home, bringing Book IV. finished. _April 18._--Went with Mr. Pigott to see Holman Hunt's great picture, Isabella and the Pot of Basil. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st April, 1868.] I send you by to-day's post the MS. of Book IV., that it may be at hand whenever there is opportunity for getting it into print, and letting me have it in that form for correction. It is desirable to get as forward as we can, in case of the Americans asking for delay after their reception of the sheets--if they venture to make any arrangement. I shall send the MS. of Book V. (the last) as soon as headache will permit, but that is an uncertain limit. We returned from Torquay on the 16th, leaving the glorious weather behind us. We were more in love with the place on a better acquaintance: the weather, and the spring buds, and the choirs of birds, made it seem more of a paradise to us every day. The poem will be less tragic than I threatened: Mr. Lewes has prevailed on me to return to my original conception, and give up the additional development, which I determined on subsequently. The poem is rather shorter in consequence. Don't you think that my artistic deference and pliability deserve that it should also be better in consequence? I now end it as I determined to end it when I first conceived the story. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _April 25._--Finished the last dialogue between Silva and Fedalma. Mr. and Mrs. Burne Jones dined with us. _April 29._--Finished "The Spanish Gypsy." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 29th Aug. 1868.] I send you by to-day's post the conclusion of the poem in MS., and the eighteen sheets of revise. The last book is brief, but I may truly use the old epigram--that it would have taken less time to make it longer. It is a great bore that the name of my heroine is wrongly spelled in all the earlier sheets. It is a fresh proof of the fallibility of our impressions as to our own doings, that I would have confidently affirmed the name to be spelled Fedalma (as it ought to be) in my manuscript. Yet I suppose I should have affirmed falsely, for the _i_ occurs in the slips constantly. As I shall not see these paged sheets again, will you charitably assure me that the alterations are safely made? Among my wife's papers were four or five pages of MS. headed, "Notes on the Spanish Gypsy and Tragedy in General." There is no evidence as to the date at which this fragment was written, and it seems to have been left unfinished. But there was evidently some care to preserve it; and as I think she would not have objected to its presentation, I give it here exactly as it stands. It completes the history of the poem. [Sidenote: Notes on "The Spanish Gypsy."] The subject of "The Spanish Gypsy" was originally suggested to me by a picture which hangs in the Scuola di' San Rocco at Venice, over the door of the large Sala containing Tintoretto's frescoes. It is an Annunciation, said to be by Titian. Of course I had seen numerous pictures of this subject before; and the subject had always attracted me. But in this my second visit to the Scuola di' San Rocco, this small picture of Titian's, pointed out to me for the first time, brought a new train of thought. It occurred to me that here was a great dramatic motive of the same class as those used by the Greek dramatists, yet specifically differing from them. A young maiden, believing herself to be on the eve of the chief event of her life--marriage--about to share in the ordinary lot of womanhood, full of young hope, has suddenly announced to her that she is chosen to fulfil a great destiny, entailing a terribly different experience from that of ordinary womanhood. She is chosen, not by any momentary arbitrariness, but as a result of foregoing hereditary conditions: she obeys. "Behold the handmaid of the Lord." Here, I thought, is a subject grander than that of Iphigenia, and it has never been used. I came home with this in my mind, meaning to give the motive a clothing in some suitable set of historical and local conditions. My reflections brought me nothing that would serve me except that moment in Spanish history when the struggle with the Moors was attaining its climax, and when there was the gypsy race present under such conditions as would enable me to get my heroine and the hereditary claim on her among the gypsies. I required the opposition of race to give the need for renouncing the expectation of marriage. I could not use the Jews or the Moors, because the facts of their history were too conspicuously opposed to the working-out of my catastrophe. Meanwhile the subject had become more and more pregnant to me. I saw it might be taken as a symbol of the part which is played in the general human lot by hereditary conditions in the largest sense, and of the fact that what we call duty is entirely made up of such conditions; for even in cases of just antagonism to the narrow view of hereditary claims, the whole background of the particular struggle is made up of our inherited nature. Suppose for a moment that our conduct at great epochs was determined entirely by reflection, without the immediate intervention of feeling, which supersedes reflection, our determination as to the right would consist in an adjustment of our individual needs to the dire necessities of our lot, partly as to our natural constitution, partly as sharers of life with our fellow-beings. Tragedy consists in the terrible difficulty of this adjustment-- "The dire strife of poor Humanity's afflicted will, Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny." Looking at individual lots, I seemed to see in each the same story, wrought out with more or less of tragedy, and I determined the elements of my drama under the influence of these ideas. In order to judge properly of the dramatic structure it must not be considered first in the light of doctrinal symbolism, but in the light of a tragedy representing some grand collision in the human lot. And it must be judged accordingly. A good tragic subject must represent a possible, sufficiently probable, not a common, action; and to be really tragic, it must represent irreparable collision between the individual and the general (in differing degrees of generality). It is the individual with whom we sympathize, and the general of which we recognize the irresistible power. The truth of this test will be seen by applying it to the greatest tragedies. The collision of Greek tragedy is often that between hereditary, entailed Nemesis and the peculiar individual lot, awakening our sympathy, of the particular man or woman whom the Nemesis is shown to grasp with terrific force. Sometimes, as in the Oresteia, there is the clashing of two irreconcilable requirements, two duties, as we should say in these times. The murder of the father must be avenged by the murder of the mother, which must again be avenged. These two tragic relations of the individual and general, and of two irreconcilable "oughts," may be--will be--seen to be almost always combined. The Greeks were not taking an artificial, entirely erroneous standpoint in their art--a standpoint which disappeared altogether with their religion and their art. They had the same essential elements of life presented to them as we have, and their art symbolized these in grand schematic forms. The Prometheus represents the ineffectual struggle to redeem the small and miserable race of man, against the stronger adverse ordinances that govern the frame of things with a triumphant power. Coming to modern tragedies, what is it that makes Othello a great tragic subject? A story simply of a jealous husband is elevated into a most pathetic tragedy by the hereditary conditions of Othello's lot, which give him a subjective ground for distrust. Faust, Rigoletto (Le Roi s'Amuse), Brutus. It might be a reasonable ground of objection against the whole structure of "The Spanish Gypsy" if it were shown that the action is outrageously improbable--lying outside all that can be congruously conceived of human actions. It is _not_ a reasonable ground of objection that they would have done better to act otherwise, any more than it is a reasonable objection against the Iphigenia that Agamemnon would have done better not to sacrifice his daughter. As renunciations coming under the same great class, take the renunciation of marriage, where marriage cannot take place without entailing misery on the children. A tragedy has not to expound why the individual must give way to the general; it has to show that it is compelled to give way; the tragedy consisting in the struggle involved, and often in the entirely calamitous issue in spite of a grand submission. Silva presents the tragedy of entire rebellion; Fedalma of a grand submission, which is rendered vain by the effects of Silva's rebellion. Zarca, the struggle for a great end, rendered vain by the surrounding conditions of life. Now, what is the fact about our individual lots? A woman, say, finds herself on the earth with an inherited organization; she may be lame, she may inherit a disease, or what is tantamount to a disease; she may be a negress, or have other marks of race repulsive in the community where she is born, etc. One may go on for a long while without reaching the limits of the commonest inherited misfortunes. It is almost a mockery to say to such human beings, "Seek your own happiness." The utmost approach to well-being that can be made in such a case is through large resignation and acceptance of the inevitable, with as much effort to overcome any disadvantage as good sense will show to be attended with a likelihood of success. Any one may say, that is the dictate of mere rational reflection. But calm can, in hardly any human organism, be attained by rational reflection. Happily, we are not left to that. Love, pity, constituting sympathy, and generous joy with regard to the lot of our fellow-men comes in--has been growing since the beginning--enormously enhanced by wider vision of results, by an imagination actively interested in the lot of mankind generally; and these feelings become piety--_i.e._, loving, willing submission and heroic Promethean effort towards high possibilities, which may result from our individual life. There is really no moral "sanction" but this inward impulse. The will of God is the same thing as the will of other men, compelling us to work and avoid what they have seen to be harmful to social existence. Disjoined from any perceived good, the divine will is simply so much as we have ascertained of the facts of existence which compel obedience at our peril. Any other notion comes from the supposition of arbitrary revelation. That favorite view, expressed so often in Clough's poems, of doing duty in blindness as to the result, is likely to deepen the substitution of egoistic yearnings for really moral impulses. We cannot be utterly blind to the results of duty, since that cannot be duty which is not already judged to be for human good. To say the contrary is to say that mankind have reached no inductions as to what is for their good or evil. The art which leaves the soul in despair is laming to the soul, and is denounced by the healthy sentiment of an active community. The consolatory elements in "The Spanish Gypsy" are derived from two convictions or sentiments which so conspicuously pervade it that they may be said to be its very warp, on which the whole action is woven. These are: (1) The importance of individual deeds. (2) The all-sufficiency of the soul's passions in determining sympathetic action. In Silva is presented the claim of fidelity to social pledges. In Fedalma the claim constituted by an hereditary lot less consciously shared. With regard to the supremacy of love: if it were a fact without exception that man or woman never did renounce the joys of love, there could never have sprung up a notion that such renunciation could present itself as a duty. If no parents had ever cared for their children, how could parental affection have been reckoned among the elements of life? But what are the facts in relation to this matter? Will any one say that faithfulness to the marriage tie has never been regarded as a duty, in spite of the presence of the profoundest passion experienced after marriage? Is Guinivere's conduct the type of duty? [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 7th May, 1868.] Yes, I am at rest now--only a few pages of revise to look at more. My chief excitement and pleasure in the work are over: for when I have once written anything, and it is gone out of my power, I think of it as little as possible. Next to the doing of the thing, of course, Mr. Lewes's delight in it is the cream of all sympathy, though I care enough about the sympathy of others to be very grateful for any they give me. Don't you imagine how the people who consider writing simply as a money-getting profession will despise me for choosing a work by which I could only get hundreds, where for a novel I could get thousands? I cannot help asking you to admire what my husband is, compared with many possible husbands--I mean, in urging me to produce a poem rather than anything in a worldly sense more profitable. I expect a good deal of disgust to be felt towards me in many quarters for doing what was not looked for from me, and becoming unreadable to many who have hitherto found me readable and debatable. Religion and novels every ignorant person feels competent to give an opinion upon, but _en fait de poésie_, a large number of them "only read Shakespeare." But enough of that. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 25th May, 1868.] Before we set off to Germany I want to tell you that a copy of "The Spanish Gypsy" will be sent to you. If there had been time before our going away I should have written on the fly-leaf that it was offered by the author "in grateful remembrance." For I especially desire that you should understand my reasons for asking you to accept the book to be retrospective and not prospective. And I am going out of reach of all letters, so that you are free from any need to write to me, and may let the book lie till you like to open it. I give away my books only by exception, and in venturing to make you an exceptional person in this matter, I am urged by the strong wish to express my value for the help and sympathy you gave me two years ago. The manuscript of "The Spanish Gypsy" bears the following inscription: "To my dear--every day dearer--Husband." [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 26th (?) May, 1868.] Yes, indeed, I not only remember your letter, but have always kept it at hand, and have read it many times. Within these latter months I have seemed to see in the distance a possible poem shaped on your idea. But it would be better for you to encourage the growth towards realization in your own mind, rather than trust to transplantation. My own faint conception is that of a frankly Utopian construction, freeing the poet from all local embarrassments. Great epics have always been more or less of this character--only the construction has been of the past, not of the future. Write to me _Poste Restante_, Baden-Baden, within the next fortnight. My head will have got clearer then. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _May 26._--We set out this evening on our journey to Baden, spending the night at Dover. Our route was by Tournay, Liége, Bonn, and Frankfort, to Baden, where we stayed nine days; then to Petersthal, where we stayed three weeks; then to Freiburg, St. Märgen, Basle, Thun, and Interlaken. From Interlaken we came by Fribourg, Neuchâtel, Dijon, to Paris and Folkestone. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th July, 1868.] We got your letter yesterday here among the peaceful mountain-tops. After ascending gradually (in a carriage) for nearly four hours, we found ourselves in a region of grass, corn, and pine woods, so beautifully varied that we seem to be walking in a great park laid out for our special delight. The monks, as usual, found out the friendly solitude, and this place of St. Märgen was originally nothing but an Augustinian monastery. About three miles off is another place of like origin, called St. Peter's, formerly a Benedictine monastery, and still used as a place of preparation for the Catholic priesthood. The monks have all vanished, but the people are devout Catholics. At every half-mile by the roadside is a carefully kept crucifix; and last night, as we were having our supper in the common room of the inn, we suddenly heard sounds that seemed to me like those of an accordion. "Is that a zittern?" said Mr. Lewes to the German lady by his side. "No--it is prayer." The servants, by themselves--the host and hostess were in the same room with us--were saying their evening prayers, men's and women's voices blending in unusually correct harmony. The same loud prayer is heard at morning, noon, and evening, from the shepherds and workers in the fields. We suppose that the believers in Mr. Home and in Madame Rachel would pronounce these people "grossly superstitious." The land is cultivated by rich peasant proprietors, and the people here, as in Petersthal, look healthy and contented. This really adds to one's pleasure in seeing natural beauties. In North Germany, at Ilmenau, we were constantly pained by meeting peasants who looked underfed and miserable. Unhappily, the weather is too cold and damp, and our accommodations are too scanty, under such circumstances, for us to remain here and enjoy the endless walks and the sunsets that would make up for other negatives in fine, warm weather. We return to Freiburg to-morrow, and from thence we shall go on by easy stages through Switzerland, by Thun and Vevay to Geneva, where I want to see my old friends once more. We shall be so constantly on the move that it might be a vain trouble on your part to shoot another letter after such flying birds. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _July 23._--Arrived at home (from Baden journey). [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th July, 1868.] We got home last night--sooner than we expected, because we gave up the round by Geneva, as too long and exciting. I dare say the three weeks since we heard from you seem very short to you, passed amid your usual occupations. To us they seem long, for we have been constantly changing our scene. Our two months have been spent delightfully in seeing fresh natural beauties, and with the occasional cheering influence of kind people. But I think we were hardly ever, except in Spain, so long ignorant of home sayings and doings, for we have been chiefly in regions innocent even of _Galignani_. The weather with us has never been oppressively hot; and storms or quiet rains have been frequent. But our bit of burned-up lawn is significant of the dryness here. I believe I did not thank you for the offer of "Kinglake," which we gratefully accept. And will you kindly order a copy of the poem to be sent to Gerald Massey, Hemel-Hempstead. A friendly gentleman at Belfast sends me a list of emendations for some of my verses, which are very characteristic and amusing. I hope you have kept well through the heat. We are come back in great force, for such feeble wretches. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th July, 1868.] As to the reviews, we expected them to be written by omniscient personages, but we did _not_ expect so bad a review as that Mr. Lewes found in the _Pall Mall_. I have read no notice except that in the _Spectator_, which was modest in tone. A very silly gentleman, Mr. Lewes says, undertakes to admonish me in the _Westminster_; and he thinks the best _literary_ notice of the poem that has come before him is in the _Athenæum_. After all, I think there would have been good reason to doubt that the poem had either novelty or any other considerable intrinsic reason to justify its being written, if the periodicals had cried out "Hosanna!" I am sure you appreciate all the conditions better than I can, after your long experience of the relations between authors and critics. I am serene, because I only expected the unfavorable. To-day the heat is so great that it is hardly possible even to read a book that requires any thought. London is a bad exchange for the mountains. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th July, 1868.] I enclose a list of corrections for the reprint. I am indebted to my friendly correspondent from Belfast for pointing out several oversights, which I am ashamed of, after all the proof-reading. But, among the well-established truths of which I never doubt, the fallibility of my own brain stands first. I suppose Mudie and the other librarians will not part with their copies of the poems quite as soon as they would part with their more abundant copies of a novel. And this supposition, if warranted, would be an encouragement to reprint another moderate edition at the same price. Perhaps, before a cheaper edition is prepared, I may add to the corrections, but at present my mind resists strongly the effort to go back on its old work. I think I never mentioned to you that the occasional use of irregular verses, and especially verses of twelve syllables, has been a principle with me, and is found in all the finest writers of blank verse. I mention it now because, as you have a certain _solidarité_ with my poetical doings, I would not have your soul vexed by the detective wisdom of critics. Do you happen to remember that saying of Balzac's, "When I want the world to praise my novels I write a drama; when I want them to praise my drama I write a novel"? On the whole, however, I should think I have more to be grateful for than to grumble at. Mr. Lewes read me out last night some very generous passages from the _St. Paul's Magazine_. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _August._--Reading 1st book of Lucretius, 6th book of the "Iliad," "Samson Agonistes," Warton's "History of English Poetry," Grote, 2d volume, "Marcus Aurelius," "Vita Nuova," vol. iv. chap. i. of the "Politique Positive," Guest on "English Rhythms," Maurice's "Lectures on Casuistry." _Sept. 19._--We returned from a visit to Yorkshire. On Monday we went to Leeds, and were received by Dr. Clifford Allbut, with whom we stayed till the middle of the day on Wednesday. Then we went by train to Ilkley, and from thence took a carriage to Bolton. The weather had been gray for two days, but on this evening the sun shone out, and we had a delightful stroll before dinner, getting our first view of the Priory. On Thursday we spent the whole day in rambling through the woods to Barden Tower and back. Our comfortable little inn was the Red Lion, and we were tempted to lengthen our stay. But on Friday morning the sky was threatening, so we started for Newark, which we had visited in old days on our expedition to Gainsborough. At Newark we found our old inn, the Ram, opposite the ruins of the castle, and then we went for a stroll along the banks of the Trent, seeing some charming, quiet landscapes. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 20th Sept. 1868.] This note comes to greet you on your return home, but it cannot greet you so sweetly as your letter did me on our arrival from Leeds last night. I think it gave me a deeper pleasure than any I have had for a long while. I am very grateful to you for it. We went to Leeds on Monday, and stayed two days with Dr. Allbut. Dr. Bridges dined with us one day, and we had a great deal of delightful chat. But I will tell you everything when we see you. Let that be soon--will you not? We shall be glad of any arrangement that will give us the pleasure of seeing you, Dr. Congreve, and Emily, either separately or all together. Please forgive me if I seem very fussy about your all coming. I want you to understand that we shall feel it the greatest kindness in you if you will all choose to come, and also choose _how_ to come--either to lunch or dinner, and either apart or together. I hope to find that you are much the better for your journey--better both in body and soul. One has immense need of encouragement, but it seems to come more easily from the dead than from the living. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Sept. 1868.] Your letter gave an additional gusto to my tea and toast this morning. The greater confidence of the trade in subscribing for the second edition is, on several grounds, a satisfactory indication; but, as you observe, we shall be still better pleased to know that the copies are not slumbering on the counters, but having an active life in the hands of readers. I am now going carefully through the poem for the sake of correction. I have read it through once, and have at present found some ten or twelve _small_ alterations to be added to those already made. But I shall go through it again more than once, for I wish to be able to put "revised" to the third edition, and to leave nothing that my conscience is not ready to swear by. I think it will be desirable for me to see proofs. It is possible, in many closely consecutive readings, not to see errors which strike one immediately on taking up the pages after a good long interval. We are feeling much obliged for a copy of "Kinglake," which I am reading aloud to Mr. Lewes as a part of our evening's entertainment and edification, beginning again from the beginning. This week we have had perfect autumnal days, though last week, when we were in Yorkshire, we also thought that the time of outside chills and inside fires was beginning. We do not often see a place which is a good foil for London, but certainly Leeds is in a lower circle of the great town--_Inferno_. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 25th Sept. 1868.] I can imagine how delicious your country home has been under the glorious skies we have been having--glorious even in London. Yesterday we had Dr. and Mrs. Congreve, and went with them to the Zoological Gardens, and on our return, about 5 o'clock, I could not help pausing and exclaiming at the exquisite beauty of the light on Regent's Park, exalting it into something that the young Turner would have wanted to paint. We went to Leeds last week--saw your favorite, David Cox, and thought of you the while. Certainly there was nothing finer there in landscape than that Welsh funeral. Among the figure-painters, Watts and old Philip are supreme. We went on from Leeds to Bolton, and spent a day in wandering through the grand woods on the banks of the Wharfe. Altogether, our visit to Yorkshire was extremely agreeable. Our host, Dr. Allbut, is a good, clever, graceful man, enough to enable one to be cheerful under the horrible smoke of ugly Leeds; and the fine hospital, which, he says, is admirably fitted for its purpose, is another mitigation. You would like to see the tasteful, subdued ornamentation in the rooms which are to be sick wards. Each physician is accumulating ornamental objects for his own ward--chromo-lithographs, etc.--such as will soothe sick eyes. It was quite cold in that northerly region. Your picture keeps a memory of sunshine on my wall even on this dark morning. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Oct. 1868.] I have gone through the poem twice for the sake of revision, and have a crop of small corrections--only in one case extending to the insertion of a new line. But I wish to see the proof-sheets, so that "Revised by the Author" may be put in the advertisement and on the title-page. Unhappily, my health has been unusually bad since we returned from abroad, so that the time has been a good deal wasted on the endurance of _malaise_; but I am brooding over many things, and hope that coming months will not be barren. As to the criticisms, I suppose that better poets than I have gone through worse receptions. In spite of my reason and of my low expectations, I am too susceptible to all discouragement not to have been depressingly affected by some few things in the shape of criticism which I have been obliged to know. Yet I am ashamed of caring about anything that cannot be taken as strict evidence against the value of my book. So far as I have been able to understand, there is a striking disagreement among the reviewers as to what is best and what is worst; and the weight of agreement, even on the latter point, is considerably diminished by the reflection that three different reviews may be three different phases of the same gentleman, taking the opportunity of earning as many guineas as he can by making easy remarks on George Eliot. But, as dear Scott's characters say, "Let that fly stick in the wa'--when the dirt's dry, it'll rub out." I shall look at "Doubles and Quits," as you recommend. I read the two first numbers of "Madame Amelia," and thought them promising. I sympathize with your melancholy at the prospect of quitting the country; though, compared with London, beautiful Edinburgh is country. Perhaps some good, thick mists will come to reconcile you with the migration. We have been using the fine autumn days for flights into Kent between Sundays. The rich woods about Sevenoaks and Chislehurst are a delight to the eyes, and the stillness is a rest to every nerve. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _Oct. 22._--Received a letter from Blackwood, saying that "The Spanish Gypsy" must soon go into a third edition. I sent my corrections for it. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 27th Oct. 1868.] At last I have spirit enough in me to thank you for your valuable gift, which Emily kindly brought me in her hand. I am grateful for it--not only because the medallion[5] is a possession which I shall always hold precious, but also because you thought of me among those whom you would choose to be its owners. I hope you are able to enjoy some walking in these sunshiny mornings. We had a long drive round by Hendon and Finchley yesterday morning, and drank so much clear air and joy from the sight of trees and fields that I am quite a new-old creature. I think you will not be sorry to hear that the "Spanish Gypsy" is so nearly out of print again that the publishers are preparing a new, cheaper edition. The second edition was all bought up (subscribed for) by the booksellers the first day. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 30th Oct. 1868.] Your pretty letter is irresistible. May we then be with you on Tuesday somewhere about twelve, and return home on Wednesday by afternoon daylight? If the weather should be very cold or wet on Tuesday we must renounce or defer our pleasure, because we are both too rickety to run the risk of taking cold. So you see we are very much in need of such sweet friendliness as yours gives us faith in, to keep us cheerful under the burden of the flesh. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _Nov. 3._--Went to dine and sleep at the Congreves, at Wandsworth. _Nov. 4._--We set off for Sheffield, where we went over a great iron and steel factory under the guidance of Mr. Benzon. On Saturday, the 7th, we went to Matlock and stayed till Tuesday. I recognized the objects which I had seen with my father nearly thirty years before--the turn of the road at Cromford, the Arkwrights' house, and the cottages with the stone floors chalked in patterns. The landscape was still rich with autumn leaves. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, Thursday evening, 12th Nov. 1868.] We got home last night after delicious days spent at Matlock. I was so renovated that my head was clearer, and I was more unconscious of my body than at the best of times for many months. But it seemed suddenly colder when we were in London, and old uneasy sensations are revisiting us both to-day. I wonder whether you will soon want to come to town, and will send me word that you will come and take shelter with us for the night? The bed is no softer and no broader; but will you not be tempted by a new carpet and a new bit of matting for your bath?--perhaps there will even be a new fender? If you want to shop, I will take you in the brougham. I think you will be just able to make out this note, written by a sudden impulse on my knee over the fire. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 16th Nov. 1868.] No oracle would dare to predict what will be our next migration. Don't be surprised if we go to the borders of the White Sea, to escape the fitful fast and loose, hot and cold, of the London climate. We enjoyed our journey to the north. It was a great experience to me to see the stupendous iron-works at Sheffield; and then, for a variety, we went to the quiet and beauty of Matlock, and I recognized all the spots I had carried in my memory for more than five-and-twenty years. I drove through that region with my father when I was a young grig--not very full of hope about my woman's future. I am one of those perhaps exceptional people whose early, childish dreams were much less happy than the real outcome of life. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1868.] I think your birthday comes after mine; but I am determined to write beforehand to prove to you that I bear you in my thoughts without any external reminder. I suppose we are both getting too old to care about being wished _many_ happy returns of the day. We shall be content to wish each other as many more years as can carry with them some joy and calm satisfaction in the sense of living. But there is one definite prospect for you which I may fairly hope for, as I do most tenderly--the prospect that this time next year you will be looking back on your achieved work as a good seed-sowing. Some sadness there must always be in saying good-bye to a work which is done with love; but there may--I trust there _will_--be a compensating good in feeling that the thing you yearned to do is gone safely out of reach of casualties that might have cut it short. We have been to Sheffield at the seducing invitation of a friend, who showed us the miraculous iron-works there; and afterwards we turned aside to beautiful Matlock, where I found again the spots, the turns of road, the rows of stone cottages, the rushing river Derwent, and the Arkwright mills--among which I drove with my father when I was in my teens. We had glorious weather, and I was quite regenerated by the bracing air. Our friend Mr. Spencer is growing younger with the years. He really looks brighter and more enjoying than he ever did before, since he was in the really young, happy time of fresh discussion and inquiry. His is a friendship which wears well, because of his truthfulness. He always asks with sympathetic interest how you are going on. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _Nov. 22._--The return of this St. Cecilia's Day finds me in better health than has been usual with me in these last six months. But I am not yet engaged in any work that makes a higher life for me--a life that is young and grows, though in my other life I am getting old and decaying. It is a day for resolves and determinations. I am meditating the subject of Timoleon. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 30th Nov. 1868.] I like to think of you painting the physiological charts, although they tire your eyes a little; for you must be sure that the good of such work is of a kind that goes deep into young lives. "Fearfully and wonderfully made" are words quite unshaken by any theory as to the making; and I think a great awe in the contemplation of man's delicate structure, freighted with terrible destinies, is one of the most important parts of education. A much-writing acquaintance of ours one day expressed his alarm for "the masses" at the departure of a religion which had _terror_ in it. Surely terror is provided for sufficiently in this life of ours--if only the dread could be directed towards the really dreadful. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 12th Dec. 1868.] We have been having a little company, and are rejoicing to think that our duties of this sort are done for the present. We like our studies and our dual solitude too well to feel company desirable more than one day a-week. I wish our affection may be with you as some little cheering influence through the dark months. We hardly estimate enough the difference of feeling that would come to us if we did not imagine friendly souls scattered here and there in places that make the chief part of the world so far as we have known it. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 16th Dec. 1868.] Tell Dr. Congreve that the "mass of positivism," in the shape of "The Spanish Gypsy," is so rapidly finding acceptance with the public that the second edition, being all sold, the third, just published, has already been demanded to above 700. Do not think that I am becoming an egotistical author. The news concerns the doctrine, not the writer. [Sidenote: Letter to the Brays, 19th Dec. 1868.] I am moved to congratulate you on writing against the ballot with such admirably good sense--having just read your "slip" at the breakfast-table. It has been a source of amazement to me that men acquainted with practical life can believe in the suppression of bribery by the ballot, as if bribery in all its Protean forms could ever disappear by means of a single external arrangement. They might as well say that our female vanity would disappear at an order that women should wear felt hats and cloth dresses. It seems to me that you have put the main unanswerable arguments against the ballot with vigorous brevity. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 29th Dec. 1868.] Thanks for letting me know about the meeting. I shall not be able to join it bodily, but I am glad always to have the possibility of being with you in thought. I have a twofold sympathy on the occasion, for I cannot help entering specially into your own wifely anxieties, and I shall be glad to be assured that Dr. Congreve has borne the excitement without being afterwards conscious of an excessive strain. [Sidenote: Journal, 1868.] _Dec. 30._--I make to-day the last record that I shall enter of the old year 1868. It has been as rich in blessings as any preceding year of our double life, and I enjoy a more and more even cheerfulness and continually increasing power of dwelling on the good that is given to me and dismissing the thought of small evils. The chief event of the year to us has been the publication and friendly reception by the public of "The Spanish Gypsy." The greatest happiness (after our growing love) which has sprung and flowed onward during the latter part of the year is George's interest in his psychological inquiries. I have, perhaps, gained a little higher ground and firmer footing in some studies, notwithstanding the yearly loss of retentive power. We have made some new friendships that cheer us with the sense of new admiration of actual living beings whom we know in the flesh, and who are kindly disposed towards us. And we have had no real trouble. I wish we were not in a minority of our fellow-men! I desire no added blessing for the coming year but this--that I may do some good, lasting work, and make both my outward and inward habits less imperfect--that is, more directly tending to the best uses of life. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 31st Dec. 1868.] Many thanks for the check, which I received yesterday afternoon. Mr. Lewes is eminently satisfied with the sales; and, indeed, it does appear from authoritative testimony that the number sold is unusually large even for what is called a successful poem. The cheap edition of the novels is so exceptionally attractive in print, paper, and binding, for 3_s._ 6_d._, that I cannot help fretting a little at its not getting a more rapid sale. The fact rather puzzles me, too, in presence of the various proofs that the books really are liked. I suppose there is some mystery of reduced prices accounting for the abundant presentation of certain works and series on the bookstalls at the railways, and the absence of others, else surely those pretty volumes would have a good chance of being bought by the travellers whose taste shrinks from the diabolical red-and-yellow-pictured series. I am sure you must often be in a state of wonderment as to how the business of the world gets done so as not to ruin two thirds of the people concerned in it; for, judging from the silly propositions and requests sometimes made to me by bald-headed, experienced men, there must be a very thin allowance of wisdom to the majority of their transactions. Mr. Lewes is attracted by the biographical studies of George the Second's time; but last night, after he had done reading about Berkeley, I heard him laughing over "Doubles and Quits." It is agreeable to think that I have that bit of cheerful reading in store. Our first snow fell yesterday, and melted immediately. This morning the sun is warm on me as I write. The doctors say that the season has been horribly unhealthy, and that they have been afraid to perform some operations from the low state of vitality in the patients, due to the atmospheric conditions. This looks like very wise writing, and worthy of Molière's "Médecin." Mr. Lewes joins me in sincere good wishes to Mr. William Blackwood, as well as yourself, for the coming year--wishes for general happiness. The chief, particular wish would be that we should all in common look back next Christmas on something achieved in which we share each other's satisfaction. [Sidenote: Letter to Hon. Robert Lytton (now Lord Lytton). No date. Probably in 1868.] I am much obliged to you for mentioning, in your letter to Mr. Lewes, the two cases of inaccuracy (I fear there may be more) which you remembered in the "Spanish Gypsy." How I came to write Zincálo instead of Zíncalo is an instance which may be added to many sadder examples of that mental infirmity which makes our senses of little use to us in the presence of a strong prepossession. As soon as I had conceived my story with its gypsy element, I tried to learn all I could about the names by which the gypsies called themselves, feeling that I should occasionally need a musical name, remote from the vulgar English associations which cling to "gypsy." I rejected Gitana, because I found that the gypsies themselves held the name to be opprobrious; and Zíncalo--which, with a fine capacity for being wrong, I at once got into my head as Zincálo--seemed to be, both in sound and meaning, just what I wanted. Among the books from which I made notes was "Pott, die Zigeuner," etc.; and in these notes I find that I have copied the sign of the tonic accent in Romanó, while in the very same sentence I have not copied it in Zíncalo, though a renewed reference to Pott shows it in the one word as well as the other. But "my eyes were held"--by a demon prepossession--"so that I should not see it." Behold the fallibility of the human brain, and especially of George Eliot's. I have been questioned about my use of Andalus for Andalusia, but I had a sufficient authority for that in the "Mohammedan Dynasties," translated by Gayangos. It may interest you, who are familiar with Spanish literature, to know that after the first sketch of my book was written I read Cervantes' novel "La Gitanélla," where the hero turns gypsy for love. The novel promises well in the earlier part, but falls into sad commonplace towards the end. I have written my explanation partly to show how much I value your kind help towards correcting my error, and partly to prove that I was not careless, but simply stupid. For in authorship I hold carelessness to be a mortal sin. _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1868, TO DECEMBER, 1868. Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Mr. Lewes's return from Bonn--First visit to Cambridge--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Month's visit to Torquay--Letter to Miss Hennell--Reading the "Iliad"--Letter to John Blackwood--Title of "Spanish Gypsy"--Letter to Madame Bodichon--Women's work--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--England and Ireland--Translation of the "Politique"--Return to London from Torquay--Letter to John Blackwood--Ending of "Spanish Gypsy"--The poem finished--George Eliot's "Notes on the Spanish Gypsy and Tragedy in general"--Suggestion of the poem an Annunciation by Titian, at Venice--Motive--Hereditary conditions--Gypsy race--Determination of conduct--Nature of tragedy--Collision between the individual and the general--Greek tragedy--Hereditary misfortunes--Growth of human sympathy--Moral sanction is obedience to facts--Duty what tends to human good--Letter to Mrs. Bray on the writing of poetry instead of novels--Letter to F. Harrison presenting copy of "Spanish Gypsy"--Inscription on MS. of "Spanish Gypsy"--Letter to F. Harrison on suggestion of a poem--Six weeks' journey to Baden, etc.--Letter to John Blackwood from St. Märgen--Catholic worship--Return to London--Letters to John Blackwood--_Pall Mall_ review of "Spanish Gypsy"--Saying of Balzac--Letter to William Blackwood--Versification--Reading Lucretius, Homer, Milton, Warton, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, Comte, Guest, Maurice--Visit to Dr. Clifford Allbut at Leeds--Visit to Newark--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Letters to John Blackwood--Second edition of "Spanish Gypsy"--"Kinglake"--Criticisms on "Spanish Gypsy"--Visit to the Congreves--Visit to Sheffield with Mr. Benzon--Matlock--Letters to Madame Bodichon and Miss Hennell on Sheffield journey--Herbert Spencer--Meditating subject of Timoleon--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Physiological charts--Letter to Madame Bodichon on influence of friends--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Positivism in "Spanish Gypsy"--Letter to Charles Bray on vote by ballot--Retrospect of 1868--Letter to John Blackwood--The cheap edition of novels--Letter to the Hon. Robert Lytton--Pronunciation in "Spanish Gypsy"--Cervantes' "La Gitanélla." FOOTNOTES: [4] Visit to Mr. W. G. Clark. [5] Of Comte. CHAPTER XVI. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _Jan. 1._--I have set myself many tasks for the year--I wonder how many will be accomplished?--a novel called "Middlemarch," a long poem on Timoleon, and several minor poems. _Jan. 23._--Since I wrote last I have finished a little poem on old Agatha. But the last week or two I have been so disturbed in health that no work prospers. I have made a little way in constructing my new tale; have been reading a little on philology; have finished the 24th Book of the "Iliad," the 1st Book of the "Faery Queene," Clough's poems, and a little about Etruscan things, in Mrs. Grey and Dennis. Aloud to G. I have been reading some Italian, Ben Jonson's "Alchemist" and "Volpone," and Bright's speeches, which I am still reading, besides the first four cantos of "Don Juan." But the last two or three days I have seemed to live under a leaden pressure--all movement, mental or bodily, is grievous to me. In the evening read aloud Bright's fourth speech on India, and a story in Italian. In the _Spectator_ some interesting facts about loss of memory and "double life." In the _Revue des Cours_, a lecture by Sir W. Thomson, of Edinburgh, on the retardation of the earth's motion round its axis. _Jan. 27._--The last two days I have been writing a rhymed poem on Boccaccio's story of "Lisa." Aloud I have read Bright's speeches, and "I Promessi Sposi." To myself I have read Mommsen's "Rome." _Feb. 6._--We went to the third concert. Madame Schumann played finely in Mendelssohn's quintet, and a trio of Beethoven's. As a solo she played the sonata in D minor. In the evening I read aloud a short speech of Bright's on Ireland, delivered twenty years ago, in which he insists that nothing will be a remedy for the woes of that country unless the Church Establishment be annulled: after the lapse of twenty years the measure is going to be adopted. Then I read aloud a bit of the "Promessi Sposi," and afterwards the _Spectator_, in which there is a deservedly high appreciation of Lowell's poems. _Feb. 14._--Finished the poem from Boccaccio. We had rather a numerous gathering of friends to-day, and among the rest came Browning, who talked and quoted admirably _à propos_ of versification. The Rector of Lincoln thinks the French have the most perfect system of versification in these modern times! _Feb. 15._--I prepared and sent off "How Lisa Loved the King" to Edinburgh. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Feb. 1869.] I have looked back to the verses in Browning's poem about Elisha, and I find no mystery in them. The foregoing context for three pages describes that function of genius which revivifies the past. Man, says Browning (I am writing from recollection of his general meaning), cannot create, but he can restore: the poet gives forth of his own spirit, and reanimates the forms that lie breathless. His use of Elisha's story is manifestly symbolical, as his mention of Faust is--the illustration which he abandons the moment before to take up that of the Hebrew seer. I presume you did not read the context yourself, but only had the two concluding verses pointed out or quoted to you by your friends. It is one of the afflictions of authorship to know that the brains which should be used in understanding a book are wasted in discussing the hastiest misconceptions about it; and I am sure you will sympathize enough in this affliction to set any one right, when you can, about this quotation from Browning. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _Feb. 20._--A glorious concert: Hallé, Joachim, and Piatti winding up with Schubert's trio. _Feb. 21._--Mr. Deutsch and Mrs. Pattison lunched with us--he in farewell before going to the East. A rather pleasant gathering of friends afterwards. _Feb. 24._--I am reading about plants, and Helmholtz on music. A new idea of a poem came to me yesterday. _March 3._--We started on our fourth visit to Italy, viâ France and the Cornice. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th May, 1869, from Paris.] I found your letter at Florence on our arrival there (on the 23d); but until now bodily ease and leisure enough to write to you have never happened to me in the same moments. Our long journey since we left home on the 3d March, seen from a point of view which, happily, no one shares with me, has been a history of ailments. In shunning the English March, we found one quite as disagreeable, without the mitigation of home comforts; and though we went even as far as Naples in search of warmth, we never found it until we settled in Rome, at the beginning of April. Here we had many days of unbroken sunshine, and enjoyed what we were never able to enjoy during our month's stay in 1860--the many glorious views of the city and the mountains. The chief novelty to us in our long route has been the sight of Assisi and Ravenna; the rest has been a revisiting of scenes already in our memories; and to most of them we have probably said our last good-bye. Enough of us and our travels. The only remarkable thing people can tell of their doings in these days is that they have stayed at home. The _Fortnightly_ lay uncut at Mr. Trollope's, and Mr. Lewes had nothing more pressing to do than to cut it open at the reply to Professor Huxley.[6] He presently came to me, and said it was excellent. It delighted him the more because he had just before, at Rome, alighted on the _Pall Mall_ account of the article, which falsely represented it as entirely apologetic. At the first spare moment I plunged into an easy-chair, and read, with thorough satisfaction in the admirable temper and the force of the reply. We intend to start for Calais this evening; and as the rain prevents us from doing anything agreeable out of doors, I have nothing to hinder me from sitting, with my knees up to my chin, and scribbling, now that I am become a little sounder in head and in body generally than beautiful Italy allowed me to be. As beautiful as ever--more beautiful--it has looked to me on this last visit; and it is the fault of my _physique_ if it did not agree with me. Pray offer my warmest sympathy to Dr. Congreve in the anxieties of his difficult task. What hard work it seems to go on living sometimes! Blessed are the dead. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _May 5._--We reached home after our nine weeks' absence. In that time we have been through France to Marseilles, along the Cornice to Spezia, then to Pisa, Florence, Naples, Rome, Assisi, Perugia, Florence again, Ravenna, Bologna, Verona; across the Brenner Pass to Munich; then to Paris _viâ_ Strasburg. In such a journey there was necessarily much interest both in renewing old memories and recording new; but I never had such continuous bad health in travelling as I have had during these nine weeks. On our arrival at home I found a delightful letter from Mrs. H. B. Stowe, whom I have never seen, addressing me as her "dear friend." It was during this journey that I, for the first time, saw my future wife, at Rome. My eldest sister had married Mr. W. H. Bullock (now Mr. W. H. Hall), of Six-Mile-Bottom, Cambridgeshire, and they were on their wedding journey at Rome when they happened to meet Mr. and Mrs. Lewes by chance in the Pamfili Doria Gardens. They saw a good deal of one another, and when I arrived, with my mother and another sister, we went by invitation to call at the Hôtel Minerva, where Mr. Lewes had found rooms on their first arrival in Rome. I have a very vivid recollection of George Eliot sitting on a sofa with my mother by her side, entirely engrossed with her. Mr. Lewes entertained my sister and me on the other side of the room. But I was very anxious to hear also the conversation on the sofa, as I was better acquainted with George Eliot's books than with any other literature. And through the dimness of these fifteen years, and all that has happened in them, I still seem to hear, as I first heard them, the low, earnest, deep, musical tones of her voice; I still seem to see the fine brows, with the abundant auburn-brown hair framing them, the long head, broadening at the back, the gray-blue eyes, constantly changing in expression, but always with a very loving, almost deprecating, look at my mother, the finely-formed, thin, transparent hands, and a whole _Wesen_ that seemed in complete harmony with everything one expected to find in the author of "Romola." The next day Mr. and Mrs. Lewes went on to Assisi and we to Naples, and we did not meet again till the following August at Weybridge. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 8th May, 1869.] I value very highly the warrant to call you friend which your letter has given me. It lay awaiting me on our return, the other night, from a nine weeks' absence in Italy, and it made me almost wish that you could have a momentary vision of the discouragement--nay, paralyzing despondency--in which many days of my writing life have been passed, in order that you might fully understand the good I find in such sympathy as yours--in such an assurance as you give me that my work has been worth doing. But I will not dwell on any mental sickness of mine. The best joy your words give me is the sense of that sweet, generous feeling in you which dictated them, and I shall always be the richer because you have in this way made me know you better. I must tell you that my first glimpse of you as a woman came through a letter of yours, and charmed me very much. The letter was addressed to Mrs. Follen; and one morning when I called on her in London (how many years ago![7]) she was kind enough to read it to me because it contained a little history of your life, and a sketch of your domestic circumstances. I remember thinking that it was very kind of you to write that long letter in reply to the inquiries of one who was personally unknown to you; and looking back with my present experience I think it was still kinder than it then appeared. For at that time you must have been much oppressed with the immediate results of your fame. I remember, too, that you wrote of your husband as one who was richer in Hebrew and Greek than in pounds or shillings; and as the ardent scholar has always been a character of peculiar interest to me, I have rarely had your image in my mind without the accompanying image (more or less erroneous) of such a scholar by your side. I shall welcome the fruit of his Goethe studies, whenever it comes. In the meantime let me assure you that whoever else gave you that description of my husband's "History of Philosophy"--namely, "that it was to solve and settle all things"--he himself never saw it in that light. The work has been greatly altered, as well as enlarged, in three successive editions; and his mind is so far from being a captive to his own written words that he is now engaged in physiological and psychological researches which are leading him to issues at variance in some important respects with the views expressed in some of his published works. He is one of the few human beings I have known who will often, in the heat of an argument, see, and straightway confess, that he is in the wrong, instead of trying to shift his ground or use any other device of vanity. I have good hopes that your fears are groundless as to the obstacles your new book may find here from its thorough American character. Most readers who are likely to be really influenced by writing above the common order will find that special aspect an added reason for interest and study, and I dare say you have long seen, as I am beginning to see with new clearness, that if a book which has any sort of exquisiteness happens also to be a popular, widely circulated book, its power over the social mind for any good is, after all, due to its reception by a few appreciative natures, and is the slow result of radiation from that narrow circle. I mean, that you can affect a few souls, and that each of these in turn may affect a few more, but that no exquisite book tells properly and directly on a multitude, however largely it may be spread by type and paper. Witness the things the multitude will say about it, if one is so unhappy as to be obliged to hear their sayings. I do not write this cynically, but in pure sadness and pity. Both travelling abroad, and staying at home among our English sights and sports, one must continually feel how slowly the centuries work towards the moral good of men. And that thought lies very close to what you say as to your wonder or conjecture concerning my religious point of view. I believe that religion, too, has to be modified--"developed," according to the dominant phrase--and that a religion more perfect than any yet prevalent must express less care for personal consolation, and a more deeply-awing sense of responsibility to man, springing from sympathy with that which of all things is most certainly known to us, the difficulty of the human lot. I do not find my temple in Pantheism, which, whatever might be its value speculatively, could not yield a practical religion, since it is an attempt to look at the universe from the outside of our relations to it (that universe) as human beings. As healthy, sane human beings, we must love and hate--love what is good for mankind, hate what is evil for mankind. For years of my youth I dwelt in dreams of a pantheistic sort, falsely supposing that I was enlarging my sympathy. But I have travelled far away from that time. Letters are necessarily narrow and fragmentary, and, when one writes on wide subjects, are liable to create more misunderstanding than illumination. But I have little anxiety of that kind in writing to you, dear friend and fellow-laborer, for you have had longer experience than I as a writer, and fuller experience as a woman, since you have borne children and known the mother's history from the beginning. I trust your quick and long-taught mind as an interpreter little liable to mistake me. When you say, "We live in an orange grove and are planting many more," and when I think that you must have abundant family love to cheer you, it seems to me that you must have a paradise about you. But no list of circumstances will make a paradise. Nevertheless, I must believe that the joyous, tender humor of your books clings about your more immediate life, and makes some of that sunshine for yourself which you have given to us. I see the advertisement of "Old Town Folk," and shall eagerly expect it. That and every other new link between us will be reverentially valued. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _May 8_ (Saturday).--Poor Thornie arrived from Natal, sadly wasted by suffering. _May 24._--Sold "Agatha" to Fields & Osgood, for the _Atlantic Monthly_, for £300. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 26th May, 1869.] That "disturbance" in my favorite work, with which you and Dr. Congreve are good enough to sympathize, is unhappily greater now than it has been for years before. Our poor Thornie came back to us about seventeen days ago. We can never rejoice enough that we were already at home, seeing that we held it impossible for him to set out on his voyage until at least six weeks later than he did. Since he arrived our lives have been chiefly absorbed by cares for him; and though we now have a nurse to attend on him constantly, we spend several hours of the day by his side. There is joy in the midst of our trouble, from the tenderness towards the sufferer being altogether unchecked by anything unlovable in him. Thornie's disposition seems to have become sweeter than ever with the added six years; and there is nothing that we discern in his character or habits to cause us grief. Enough of our troubles. I gather from your welcome letter, received this morning, that there is a good deal of enjoyment for you in your temporary home, in spite of bad weather and faceache, which I hope will have passed away when you read this. Mr. Beesley[8] wrote to me to tell me of his engagement, and on Sunday we had the pleasure of shaking him by the hand and seeing him look very happy. His is one of a group of prospective marriages which we have had announced to us since we came home. Besides Mr. Harrison's, there is Dr. Allbut's, our charming friend at Leeds. I told Mr. Beesley that I thought myself magnanimous in really rejoicing at the engagements of men friends, because, of course, they will be comparatively indifferent to their old intimates. Dear Madame Bodichon is a precious help to us. She comes twice a week to sit with Thornie, and she is wonderfully clever in talking to young people. One finds out those who have real practical sympathy in times of trouble. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 9th June, 1869.] Your letter has fulfilled two wishes of mine. It shows me that you keep me in your kind thoughts, and that you are very happy. I had been told by our friends, the Nortons, of your engagement, but I knew nothing more than that bare fact, and your letter gives me more of a picture. A very pretty picture--for I like to think of your love having grown imperceptibly along with sweet family affections. I do heartily share in your happiness, for however space and time may keep us asunder, you will never to my mind be lost in the distance, but will hold a place of marked and valued interest quite apart from those more public hopes about you which I shall not cease to cherish. Both Mr. Lewes and I shall be delighted to see you any evening. I imagine that when you are obliged to stay in town the evening will be the easiest time for you to get out to us. Any time after eight you will find us thoroughly glad to shake hands with you. Do come when you can. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _July 3._--Finished my reading in Lucretius. Reading Victor Hugo's "L'homme qui rit;" also the Frau von Hillern's novel, "Ein Arzt der Seele." This week G. and I have been to Sevenoaks, but were driven home again by the cold winds and cloudy skies. "Sonnets on Childhood"--five--finished. _July 10._--I wrote to Mrs. Stowe, in answer to a second letter of hers, accompanied by one from her husband. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 11th July, 1869.] I hoped before this to have seen our friend, Mrs. Fields, on her return from Scotland, and to have begged her to send you word of a domestic affliction which has prevented me from writing to you since I received your and your husband's valued letters. Immediately on our return from Italy, Mr. Lewes's second son, a fine young man of five-and-twenty, returned to us from Natal, wasted by suffering from a long-standing spinal injury. This was on the 8th of May, and since then we have both been absorbed in our duties to this poor child, and have felt our own health and nervous energy insufficient for our needful activity of body and mind. He is at present no better, and we look forward to a long trial. Nothing but a trouble so great as this would have prevented me from writing again to you, not only to thank you and Professor Stowe for your letters, but also to tell you that I have received and read "Old Town Folks." I think few of your many readers can have felt more interest than I have felt in that picture of an elder generation; for my interest in it has a double root--one, in my own love for our old-fashioned provincial life, which had its affinities with a contemporary life, even all across the Atlantic, and of which I have gathered glimpses in different phases, from my father and mother, with their relations; the other is, my experimental acquaintance with some shades of Calvinistic orthodoxy. I think your way of presenting the religious convictions which are not your own, except by indirect fellowship, is a triumph of insight and true tolerance. A thorough comprehension of the mixed moral influence shed on society by dogmatic systems is rare even among writers, and one misses it altogether in English drawing-room talk. I thank you sincerely for the gift (in every sense) of this book, which, I can see, has been a labor of love. Both Mr. Lewes and I are deeply interested in the indications which the Professor gives of his peculiar psychological experience, and we should feel it a great privilege to learn much more of it from his lips. It is a rare thing to have such an opportunity of studying exceptional experience in the testimony of a truthful and in every way distinguished mind. He will, I am sure, accept the brief thanks which I can give in this letter, for all that he has generously written to me. He says, "I have had no connection with any of the modern movements, except as father confessor;" and I can well believe that he must be peculiarly sensitive to the repulsive aspects which those movements present. Your view as to the cause of that "great wave of spiritualism" which is rushing over America--namely, that it is a sort of Rachel-cry of bereavement towards the invisible existence of the loved ones, is deeply affecting. But so far as "spiritualism" (by which I mean, of course, spirit-communication, by rapping, guidance of the pencil, etc.) has come within reach of my judgment on our side of the water, it has appeared to me either as degrading folly, imbecile in the estimate of evidence, or else as impudent imposture. So far as my observation and experience have hitherto gone, it has even seemed to me an impiety to withdraw from the more assured methods of studying the open secret of the universe any large amount of attention to alleged manifestations which are so defiled by low adventurers and their palpable trickeries, so hopelessly involved in all the doubtfulness of individual testimonies as to phenomena witnessed, which testimonies are no more true objectively because they are honest subjectively, than the Ptolemaic system is true because it seemed to Tycho Brahé a better explanation of the heavenly movements than the Copernican. This is a brief statement of my position on the subject, which your letter shows me to have an aspect much more compulsory on serious attention in America than I can perceive it to have in England. I should not be as simply truthful as my deep respect for you demands, if I did not tell you exactly what is my mental attitude in relation to the phenomena in question. But whatever you print on the subject and will send me I shall read with attention, and the idea you give me of the hold which spiritualism has gained on the public mind in the United States is already a fact of historic importance. Forgive me, dear friend, if I write in the scantiest manner, unworthily responding to letters which have touched me profoundly. You have known so much of life, both in its more external trials and in the peculiar struggles of a nature which is made twofold in its demands by the yearnings of the author as well as of the woman, that I can count on your indulgence and power of understanding my present inability to correspond by letter. May I add my kind remembrances to your daughter to the high regard which I offer to your husband? [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _July 14._--Returned from Hatfield, after two days' stay. _July 15._--Began Nisard's "History of French Literature"--Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, Christine de Pisan, Philippe de Comines, Villers. _July 16._--Read the articles Phoenicia and Carthage in "Ancient Geography." Looked into Jewitt's "Universal History" again for Carthaginian religion. Looked into Sismondi's "Littérature du Midi" for Roman de la Rose; and ran through the first chapter about the formation of the Romance languages. Read about _Thallogens_ and _Acrogens_ in the "Vegetable World." Read Drayton's "Nymphidia"--a charming poem--a few pages of his "Polyolbion." Re-read Grote, v.-vii., on Sicilian affairs, down to rise of Dionysius. _July 18._--Miss Nannie Smith came, after a long absence from England; Professor Masson and Dr. Bastian, Madame Bodichon, and Dr. Payne. Some conversation about Saint-Simonism, _à propos_ of the meeting on Woman's Suffrage the day before, M. Arles Dufour being uneasy because Mill did not in his speech recognize what women owed to Saint-Simonism. _July 19._--Writing an introduction to "Middlemarch." I have just re-read the 15th Idyll of Theocritus, and have written three more sonnets. My head uneasy. We went in the afternoon to the old water-colors, finding that the exhibition was to close at the end of the week. Burne-Jones's Circe and St. George affected me, by their colors, more than any of the other pictures--they are poems. In the evening read Nisard on Rabelais and Marot. _July 22._--Read Reybaud's book on "Les Réformateurs Modernes." In the afternoon Mrs. P. Taylor came and saw Thornie, who has been more uneasy this week, and unwilling to move or come out on the lawn. _July 23._--Read Theocritus, Id. 16. Meditated characters for "Middlemarch." Mrs. F. Malleson came. _July 24._--Still not quite well and clear-headed, so that little progress is made. I read aloud Fourier and Owen, and thought of writing something about Utopists. _July 25._--Read Plato's "Republic" in various parts. After lunch Miss Nannie Smith, Miss Blythe, Mr. Burton, and Mr. Deutsch. In the evening I read Nisard, and Littré on Comte. _Aug. 1._--Since last Sunday I have had an uncomfortable week from mental and bodily disturbance. I have finished eleven sonnets on "Brother and Sister," read Littré, Nisard, part of 22d Idyll of Theocritus, Sainte-Beuve, aloud to G. two evenings. Monday evening looked through Dickson's "Fallacies of the Faculty." On Tuesday afternoon we went to the British Museum to see a new bronze, and I was enchanted with some fragments of glass in the Slade collection, with dyes of sunset in them. Yesterday, sitting in Thornie's room, I read through all Shakespeare's "Sonnets." Poor Thornie has had a miserably unsatisfactory week, making no progress. After lunch came Miss N. Smith and Miss Blythe, Mr. Burton, Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jones, and Mr. Sanderson. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 1st Aug. 1869.] My last words to you might appear to imply something laughably opposed to my real meaning. "Think of me only as an example" meant--an example to be avoided. It was an allusion in my mind to the servant-girl who, being arrested for theft, said to her fellow-servant, "Take example by me, Sally." With the usual caprice of language, we say. "Make an example of her," in that sense of holding up for a warning, which the poor girl and I intended. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _Aug. 2._--Began "Middlemarch" (the Vincy and Featherstone parts). _Aug. 5._--Thornie during the last two or three days gives much more hopeful signs: has been much more lively, with more regular appetite and quieter nights. This morning I finished the first chapter of "Middlemarch." I am reading Renouard's "History of Medicine." _Aug. 31._--We went to Weybridge, walked on St. George's Hill, and lunched with Mrs. Cross and her family. This visit to Weybridge is a very memorable one to me, because there my own first intimacy with George Eliot began, and the bonds with my family were knitted very much closer. Mr. and Mrs. Bullock were staying with us; and my sister, who had some gift for music, had set one or two of the songs from the "Spanish Gypsy." She sang one of them--"On through the woods, the pillared pines"--and it affected George Eliot deeply. She moved quickly to the piano, and kissed Mrs. Bullock very warmly, in her tears. Mr. and Mrs. Lewes were in deep trouble owing to the illness of Thornton Lewes; we were also in much anxiety as to the approaching confinement of my sister with her first child; and I was on the eve of departure for America. Sympathetic feelings were strong enough to overleap the barrier (often hard to pass) which separates acquaintanceship from friendship. A day did the work of years. Our visitors had come to the house as acquaintances, they left it as lifelong friends. And the sequel of that day greatly intensified the intimacy. For within a month my sister had died in childbirth, and her death called forth one of the most beautiful of George Eliot's letters. A month later Thornton Lewes died. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _Sept. 1._--I meditated characters and conditions for "Middlemarch," which stands still in the beginning of chapter iii. _Sept. 2._--We spent the morning in Hatfield Park, arriving at home again at half-past three. _Sept. 10._--I have achieved little during the last week, except reading on medical subjects--Encyclopædia about the "Medical Colleges," "Cullen's Life," Russell's "Heroes of Medicine," etc. I have also read Aristophanes' "Ecclesiazusoe," and "Macbeth." _Sept. 11._--I do not feel very confident that I can make anything satisfactory of "Middlemarch." I have need to remember that other things which have been accomplished by me were begun under the same cloud. G. has been reading "Romola" again, and expresses profound admiration. This is encouraging. _Sept. 15._--George and I went to Sevenoaks for a couple of nights, and had some delicious walks. _Sept. 21._--Finished studying again Bekker's "Charikles." I am reading Mandeville's Travels. As to my work, _im Stiche gerathen_. Mrs. Congreve and Miss Bury came; and I asked Mrs. Congreve to get me some information about provincial hospitals, which is necessary to my imagining the conditions of my hero. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 21st Sept. 1869.] As to the Byron subject, nothing can outweigh to my mind the heavy social injury of familiarizing young minds with the desecration of family ties. The discussion of the subject in newspapers, periodicals, and pamphlets is simply odious to me, and I think it a pestilence likely to leave very ugly marks. One trembles to think how easily that moral wealth may be lost which it has been the work of ages to produce in the refinement and differencing of the affectionate relations. As to the high-flown stuff which is being reproduced about Byron and his poetry, I am utterly out of sympathy with it. He seems to me the most _vulgar-minded_ genius that ever produced a great effect in literature. [Sidenote: Journal, 1869.] _Sept. 22._--We went down to Watford for a change. _Sept. 24._--Returned home this morning because of the unpromising weather. It is worth while to record my great depression of spirits, that I may remember one more resurrection from the pit of melancholy. And yet what love is given to me! What abundance of good I possess! All my circumstances are blessed; and the defect is only in my own organism. Courage and effort! _Oct. 5._--Ever since the 28th I have been good for little, ailing in body and disabled in mind. On Sunday an interesting Russian pair came to see us--M. and Mme. Kovilevsky: she, a pretty creature, with charming modest voice and speech, who is studying mathematics (by allowance, through the aid of Kirchhoff) at Heidelberg; he, amiable and intelligent, studying the concrete sciences apparently--especially geology; and about to go to Vienna for six months for this purpose, leaving his wife at Heidelberg! I have begun a long-meditated poem, "The Legend of Jubal," but have not written more than twenty or thirty verses. _Oct. 13._--Yesterday Mr. W. G. Clark of Cambridge came to see us, and told of his intention to give up his oratorship and renounce his connection with the Church. I have read rapidly through Max Müller's "History of Sanskrit Literature," and am now reading Lecky's "History of Morals." I have also finished Herbert Spencer's last number of his "Psychology." My head has been sadly feeble, and my whole body ailing of late. I have written about one hundred verses of my poem. Poor Thornie seems to us in a state of growing weakness. _Oct. 19._--This evening at half-past six our dear Thornie died. He went quite peacefully. For three days he was not more than fitfully and imperfectly conscious of the things around him. He went to Natal on the 17th October, 1863, and came back to us ill on the 8th May, 1869. Through the six months of his illness his frank, impulsive mind disclosed no trace of evil feeling. He was a sweet-natured boy--still a boy, though he had lived for twenty-five years and a half. On the 9th of August he had an attack of paraplegia, and although he partially recovered from it, it made a marked change in him. After that he lost a great deal of his vivacity, but he suffered less pain. This death seems to me the beginning of our own. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Dec. 1869.] The day after our dear boy's funeral we went into the quietest and most beautiful part of Surrey, four miles and a half from any railway station. I was very much shaken in mind and body, and nothing but the deep calm of fields and woods would have had a beneficent effect on me. We both of us felt, more than ever before, the blessedness of being in the country, and we are come back much restored. It will interest you, I think, to know that a friend of ours, Mr. W. G. Clark, the public orator at Cambridge, laid down his oratorship as a preparatory step to writing a letter to his bishop renouncing, or, rather, claiming to be free from, his clerical status, because he no longer believes what it presupposes him to believe. Two other men whom we know are about to renounce Cambridge fellowships on the same ground. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 31st Dec. 1869.] We shall be delighted to have you on Monday. I hope you will get your business done early enough to be by a good fire in our drawing-room before lunch. Mr. Doyle is coming to dine with us, but you will not mind that. He is a dear man, a good Catholic, full of varied sympathies and picturesque knowledge. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 15th Jan. 1870.] I am moved to write to you rather by the inclination to remind you of me than by the sense of having anything to say. On reading "The Positivist Problem"[9] a second time, I gained a stronger impression of its general value, and I also felt less jarred by the more personal part at the close. Mr. Lewes would tell you that I have an unreasonable aversion to personal statements, and when I come to like them it is usually by a hard process of _con_-version. But my second reading gave me a new and very strong sense that the last two or three pages have the air of an appendix, added at some distance of time from the original writing of the article. Some more thoroughly explanatory account of your non-adhesion seems requisite as a nexus--since the statement of your non-adhesion had to be mentioned after an argument for the system against the outer Gentile world. However, it is more important for me to say that I felt the thorough justice of your words, when, in conversation with me, you said, "I don't see why there should be any mystification; having come to a resolution after much inward debate, it is better to state the resolution." Something like that you said, and I give a hearty "Amen," praying that I may not be too apt myself to prefer the haze to the clearness. But the fact is, I shrink from decided "deliverances" on momentous subjects from the dread of coming to swear by my own "deliverances," and sinking into an insistent echo of myself. That is a horrible destiny--and one cannot help seeing that many of the most powerful men fall into it. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Mch. 1870.] Cara has told me about your republication of the "Inquiry," and I have a longing to write--not intrusively, I hope--just to say "thank you" for the good it does me to know of your being engaged in that act of piety to your brother's memory. I delight in the act itself, and in the satisfaction which I know you have in performing it. When I remember my own obligation to the book, I must believe that among the many new readers a cheap edition will reach there must be minds to whom it will bring welcome light in studying the New Testament--sober, serious help towards a conception of the past, instead of stage-lights and make-ups. And this value is, I think, independent of the opinions that might be held as to the different degrees of success in the construction of probabilities or in particular interpretations. Throughout there is the presence of grave sincerity. I would gladly have a word or two directly from yourself when you can scribble a note without feeling me a bore for wanting it. People who write many letters without being forced to do so are fathomless wonders to me, but you have a special faculty for writing such letters as one cares to read, so it is a pity that the accomplishment should lie quite unused. I wonder if you have read Emerson's new essays. I like them very much. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 3d April, 1870.] We shall leave Berlin on Tuesday, so that I must ask you to send me the much-desired news of you to Vienna, addressed to the Hon. Robert Lytton, British Embassy. We do not yet know the name of the hotel where rooms have been taken for us. Our journey has not been unfortunate hitherto. The weather has been cold and cheerless, but we expected this, and on the 1st of April the sun began to shine. As for my _Wenigkeit_, it has never known a day of real bodily comfort since we got to Berlin: headache, sore throat, and _Schnupfen_ have been alternately my companions, and have made my enjoyment very languid. But think of this as all past when you get my letter; for this morning I have a clearer head, the sun is shining, and the better time seems to be come for me. Mr. Lewes has had a good deal of satisfaction in his visits to laboratories and to the _Charité_, where he is just now gone for the third time to see more varieties of mad people, and hear more about Psychiatrie from Dr. Westphal, a quiet, unpretending little man, who seems to have been delighted with George's sympathetic interest in this (to me) hideous branch of practice. I speak with all reverence: the world can't do without hideous studies. People have been very kind to us, and have overwhelmed us with attentions, but we have felt a little weary in the midst of our gratitude, and since my cold has become worse we have been obliged to cut off further invitations. We have seen many and various men and women, but except Mommsen, Bunsen, and Du Bois Reymond, hardly any whose names would be known to you. If I had been in good health I should probably have continued to be more amused than tired of sitting on a sofa and having one person after another brought up to bow to me, and pay me the same compliment. Even as it was, I felt my heart go out to some good women who seemed really to have an affectionate feeling towards me for the sake of my books. But the sick animal longs for quiet and darkness. The other night, at Dr. Westphal's, I saw a young English lady marvellously like Emily in face, figure, and voice. I made advances to her on the strength of that external resemblance, and found it carried out in the quickness of her remarks. But new gentlemen to be introduced soon divided us. Another elegant, pretty woman there was old Boeckh's daughter. One enters on all subjects by turns in these evening parties, which are something like reading the Conversations-Lexicon in a nightmare. Among lighter entertainments we have been four times to the opera, being tempted at the very beginning of our stay by Gluck, Mozart, and an opportunity of hearing Tannhäuser for the second time. Also we have enjoyed some fine orchestral concerts, which are to be had for sixpence! Berlin has been growing very fast since our former stay here, and luxury in all forms has increased so much that one only here and there gets a glimpse of the old-fashioned German housekeeping. But though later hours are becoming fashionable, the members of the Reichstag who have other business than politics complain of having to begin their sitting at eleven, ending, instead of beginning, at four, when the solid day is almost gone. We went to the Reichstag one morning, and were so fortunate as to hear Bismarck speak. But the question was one of currency, and his speech was merely a brief winding-up. Now I shall think that I have earned a letter telling me all about you. May there be nothing but good to tell of! Pray give my best love to Emily, and my earnest wishes to Dr. Congreve, that he may have satisfaction in new work. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th May, 1870.] I gladly and gratefully keep the portrait.[10] For my own part, I should have said, without hesitation, "Prefix it to the 'Inquiry.'" One must not be unreasonable about portraits. How can a thing which is always the same be an adequate representation of a living being who is always varying--especially of a living being who is sensitive, bright, many-sided, as your brother was? But I think the impression which this portrait gives excites interest. I am often sorry for people who lose half their possible good in the world by being more alive to deficiencies than to positive merits. I like to know that you have felt in common with me while you read "Jubal." Curiously enough, Mr. Lewes, when I first read it to him, made just the remark you make about the scene of Jubal coming with the lyre. We laughed at Mr. Bray's sharp criticism. Tell him it is not the fashion for authors ever to be in the wrong. They have always justifying reasons. But also it is the fashion for critics to know everything, so that the authors don't think it needful to tell their reasons. [Sidenote: Journal, 1870.] _May 20._--I am fond of my little old book in which I have recorded so many changes, and shall take to writing in it again. It will perhaps last me all through the life that is left to me. Since I wrote in it last, the day after Thornie's death, the chief epochs have been our stay at Limpsfield, in Surrey, till near the beginning of December; my writing of "Jubal," which I finished on the 13th of January; the publication of the poem in the May number of _Macmillan's Magazine_; and our journey to Berlin and Vienna, from which we returned on the 6th of this month, after an absence of eight weeks. This is a fortnight ago, and little has been done by me in the interim. My health is in an uncomfortable state, and I seem to be all the weaker for the continual depression produced by cold and sore throat, which stretched itself all through our long journey. These small bodily grievances make life less desirable to me, though every one of my best blessings--my one perfect love, and the sympathy shown towards me for the sake of my works, and the personal regard of a few friends--have become much intensified in these latter days. I am not hopeful about future work. I am languid, and my novel languishes too. But to-morrow may be better than to-day. _May 25._--We started for Oxford, where we were to stay with the Rector of Lincoln and his wife. After luncheon G. and I walked alone through the town, which, on this first view, was rather disappointing to me. Presently we turned through Christ Church into the meadows, and walked along by the river. This was beautiful to my heart's content. The buttercups and hawthorns were in their glory, the chestnuts still in sufficiently untarnished bloom, and the grand elms made a border towards the town. After tea we went with Mrs. Pattison and the rector to the croquet-ground near the Museum. On our way we saw Sir Benjamin Brodie, and on the ground Professor Rawlinson, the "narrow-headed man;" Mrs. Thursfield and her son, who is a Fellow (I think, of Corpus); Miss Arnold, daughter of Mr. Thomas Arnold, and Professor Phillips, the geologist. At supper we had Mr. Bywater and Miss Arnold, and in chat with them the evening was passed. _May 26._--G. and I went to the Museum, and had an interesting morning with Dr. Rolleston, who dissected a brain for me. After lunch we went again to the Museum, and spent the afternoon with Sir Benjamin Brodie, seeing various objects in his laboratories; among others, the method by which weighing has been superseded in delicate matters by _measuring_ in a graduated glass tube. Afterwards Mrs. Pattison took me a drive in her little pony carriage round by their country refuge, the Firs, Haddington, and by Littlemore, where I saw J. H. Newman's little conventual dwelling. Returning, we had a fine view of the Oxford towers. To supper came Sir Benjamin and Lady Brodie. _May 27._--In the morning we walked to see the two Martyrs' Memorial, and then to Sir Benjamin Brodie's pretty place near the river and bridge. Close by their grounds is the original ford whence the place took its name. The Miss Gaskells were staying with them, and, after chatting some time, we two walked with Sir Benjamin to New College, where we saw the gardens surrounded by the old city wall; the chapel where William of Wykeham's crosier is kept; and the cloisters, which are fine, but gloomy, and less beautiful than those of Magdalen, which we saw in our walk on Thursday before going to the Museum. After lunch we went to the Bodleian, and then to the Sheldonian Theatre, where there was a meeting _à propos_ of Palestine Exploration. Captain Warren, conductor of the Exploration at Jerusalem, read a paper, and then Mr. Deutsch gave an account of the interpretation, as hitherto arrived at, of the Moabite Stone. I saw squeezes of this stone for the first time, with photographs taken from the squeezes. After tea Mrs. Thursfield kindly took us to see a boat-race. We saw it from the Oriel barge, under the escort of Mr. Crichton, Fellow of Merton, who, on our return, took us through the lovely gardens of his college. At supper were Mr. Jowett, Professor Henry Smith, and Miss Smith, his sister, Mr. Fowler, author of "Deductive Logic," etc. _May 28._--After a walk to St. John's College we started by the train for London, and arrived at home about two o'clock. _May 29._--Mr. Spencer, Mrs. Burne-Jones, and Mr. Crompton came. I read aloud No. 3 of "Edwin Drood." _May 30._--We went to see the autotypes of Michael Angelo's frescoes, at 36 Rathbone Place. I began Grove on the "Correlation of the Physical Forces"--needing to read it again--with new interest, after the lapse of years. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 13th June, 1870.] Dr. Reynolds advises Mr. Lewes to leave London again, and go to the bracing air of the Yorkshire coast. I said that we should be here till the beginning of August, but the internal order proposes and the external order disposes--if we are to be so priggish as to alter all our old proverbs into agreement with new formulas! Dickens's death came as a great shock to us. He lunched with us just before we went abroad, and was telling us a story of President Lincoln having told the Council, on the day he was shot, that something remarkable would happen, because he had just dreamt, for the third time, a dream which twice before had preceded events momentous to the nation. The dream was, that he was in a boat on a great river, all alone, and he ended with the words, "I drift--I drift--I drift." Dickens told this very finely. I thought him looking dreadfully shattered then. It is probable that he never recovered from the effect of the terrible railway accident. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 23d June, 1870, from Cromer.] We have been driven away from home again by the state of Mr. Lewes's health. Dr. Reynolds recommended the Yorkshire coast; but we wanted to know Cromer, and so we came here first, for the sake of variety. To me the most desirable thing just now seems to be to have one home, and stay there till death comes to take me away. I get more and more disinclined to the perpetual makeshifts of a migratory life, and care more and more for the order and habitual objects of home. However, there are many in the world whose whole existence is a makeshift, and perhaps the formula which would fit the largest number of lives is "a doing without, more or less patiently." The air just now is not very invigorating anywhere, I imagine, and one begins to be very anxious about the nation generally, on account of the threatening drought. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Robert Lytton (now Lady Lytton), 8th July, 1870, from Harrogate.] I did not like to write to you[11] until Mr. Lytton sent word that I might do so, because I had not the intimate knowledge that would have enabled me to measure your trouble; and one dreads, of all things, to speak or write a wrong or unseasonable word when words are the only signs of interest and sympathy that one has to give. I know now, from what your dear husband has told us, that your loss is very keenly felt by you, that it has first made you acquainted with acute grief, and this makes me think of you very much. For learning to love any one is like an increase of property--it increases care, and brings many new fears lest precious things should come to harm. I find myself often thinking of you with that sort of proprietor's anxiety, wanting you to have gentle weather all through your life, so that your face may never look worn and storm-beaten, and wanting your husband to be and do the very best, lest anything short of that should be disappointment to you. At present the thought of you is all the more with me because your trouble has been brought by death; and for nearly a year death seems to me my most intimate daily companion. I mingle the thought of it with every other, not sadly, but as one mingles the thought of some one who is nearest in love and duty with all one's motives. I try to delight in the sunshine that will be when I shall never see it any more. And I think it is possible for this sort of impersonal life to attain great intensity--possible for us to gain much more independence than is usually believed of the small bundle of facts that make our own personality. I don't know why I should say this to you, except that my pen is chatting as my tongue would if you were here. We women are always in danger of living too exclusively in the affections, and though our affections are, perhaps, the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share of the more independent life--some joy in things for their own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some sweet women when their affections are disappointed; because all their teaching has been that they can only delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal love. They have never contemplated an independent delight in ideas as an experience which they could confess without being laughed at. Yet surely women need this sort of defence against passionate affliction even more than men. Just under the pressure of grief, I do not believe there is any consolation. The word seems to me to be drapery for falsities. Sorrow must be sorrow, ill must be ill, till duty and love towards all who remain recover their rightful predominance. Your life is so full of those claims that you will not have time for brooding over the unchangeable. Do not spend any of your valuable time now in writing to me, but be satisfied with sending me news of you through Mr. Lytton when he has occasion to write to Mr. Lewes. I have lately finished reading aloud Mendelssohn's "Letters," which we had often resolved and failed to read before. They have been quite cheering to us from the sense they give of communion with an eminently pure, refined nature, with the most rigorous conscience in art. In the evening we have always a concert to listen to--a concert of modest pretensions, but well conducted enough to be agreeable. I hope this letter of chit-chat will not reach you at a wrong moment. In any case, forgive all mistakes on the part of one who is always yours sincerely and affectionately. [Sidenote: Journal, 1870.] _Aug. 4._--Two months have been spent since the last record! Their result is not rich, for we have been sent wandering again by G.'s want of health. On the 15th June we went to Cromer, on the 30th to Harrogate, and on the 18th July to Whitby, where Mrs. Burne-Jones also arrived on the same day. On Monday, August 1, we came home again for a week only, having arranged to go to Limpsfield next Monday. To-day, under much depression, I begin a little dramatic poem,[12] the subject of which engaged my interest at Harrogate. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 12th Aug. 1870.] We, too, you see, have come back to a well-tried refuge--the same place that soothed us in our troubles last October--and we especially delight in this deep country after the fuss which belongs even to quiet watering-places, such as Cromer, Harrogate, and Whitby, which are, after all, "alleys where the gentle folks live." We are excited, even among the still woods and fields, by the vicissitudes of the war, and chiefly concerned because we cannot succeed in getting the day's _Times_. We have entered into the period which will be marked in future historical charts as "The period of German ascendency." But how saddening to think of the iniquities that the great harvest-moon is looking down on! I am less grieved for the bloodshed than for the hateful trust in lies which is continually disclosed. Meanwhile Jowett's "Translation of Plato" is being prepared for publication, and he has kindly sent us the sheets of one volume. So I pass from discussions of French lying and the Nemesis that awaits it to discussions about rhetorical lying at Athens in the fourth century before Christ. The translations and introductions to the "Dialogues" seem to be charmingly done. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 25th Aug. 1870.] We shall return to town on Monday, various small reasons concurring to make us resolve on quitting this earthly paradise. I am very sorry for the sufferings of the French nation; but I think these sufferings are better for the moral welfare of the people than victory would have been. The war has been drawn down on them by an iniquitous government; but in a great proportion of the French people there has been nourished a wicked glorification of selfish pride, which, like all other conceit, is a sort of stupidity, excluding any true conception of what lies outside their own vain wishes. The Germans, it seems, were expected to stand like toy-soldiers for the French to knock them down. It is quite true that the war is in some respects the conflict of two differing forms of civilization. But whatever charm we may see in the southern Latin races, this ought not to blind us to the great contributions which the German energies have made in all sorts of ways to the common treasure of mankind. And who that has any spirit of justice can help sympathizing with them in their grand repulse of the French project to invade and divide them? If I were a Frenchwoman, much as I might wail over French sufferings, I cannot help believing that I should detest the French talk about the "Prussians." They wanted to throttle the electric eel for their own purposes. But I imagine that you and the doctor would not find us in much disagreement with you in these matters. One thing that is pleasant to think of is the effort made everywhere to help the wounded. [Sidenote: Journal, 1870.] _Oct. 27._--On Monday the 8th August we went to our favorite Surrey retreat--Limpsfield--and enjoyed three weeks there reading and walking together. The weather was perfect, and the place seemed more lovely to us than before. Aloud I read the concluding part of Walter Scott's Life, which we had begun at Harrogate; two volumes of Froude's "History of England," and Comte's "Correspondence with Valat." We returned on Monday the 29th. During our stay at Limpsfield I wrote the greater part of "Armgart," and finished it at intervals during September. Since then I have been continually suffering from headache and depression, with almost total despair of future work. I look into this little book now to assure myself that this is not unprecedented. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 18th Nov. 1870.] Yesterday, for the first time, we went to hear A. (a popular preacher). I remembered what you had said about his vulgar, false emphasis; but there remained the fact of his celebrity. I was glad of the opportunity. But my impressions fell below the lowest judgment I ever heard passed upon him. He has the gift of a fine voice, very flexible and various; he is admirably fluent and clear in his language, and every now and then his enunciation is effective. But I never heard any pulpit reading and speaking which in its level tone was more utterly common and empty of guiding intelligence or emotion; it was as if the words had been learned by heart and uttered without comprehension by a man who had no instinct of rhythm or music in his soul. And the doctrine! It was a libel on Calvinism that it should be presented in such a form. I never heard any attempt to exhibit the soul's experience that was more destitute of insight. The sermon was against fear, in the elect Christian, as being a distrust of God; but never once did he touch the true ground of fear--the doubt whether the signs of God's choice are present in the soul. We had plenty of anecdotes, but they were all poor and pointless--Tract Society anecdotes of the feeblest kind. It was the most superficial grocer's-back-parlor view of Calvinistic Christianity; and I was shocked to find how low the mental pitch of our society must be, judged by the standard of this man's celebrity. Mr. Lewes was struck with some of his tones as good actor's tones, and was not so wroth as I was. But just now, with all Europe stirred by events that make every conscience tremble after some great principle as a consolation and guide, it was too exasperating to sit and listen to doctrine that seemed to look no further than the retail Christian's tea and muffins. He said "Let us approach the throne of God" very much as he might have invited you to take a chair; and then followed this fine touch--"We feel no love to God because he hears the prayers of others; it is because he hears my prayer that I love him." You see I am relieving myself by pouring out my disgust to you. Oh, how short life--how near death--seems to me! But this is not an uncheerful thought. The only great dread is the protraction of life into imbecility or the visitation of lingering pain. That seems to me the insurmountable calamity, though there is an ignorant affectation in many people of underrating what they call bodily suffering. I systematically abstain from correspondence, yet the number of acquaintances and consequent little appeals so constantly increases that I often find myself inwardly rebelling against the amount of note-writing that I cannot avoid. Have the great events of these months interfered with your freedom of spirit in writing? One has to dwell continually on the permanent, growing influence of ideas in spite of temporary reactions, however violent, in order to get courage and perseverance for any work which lies aloof from the immediate wants of society. You remember Goethe's contempt for the Revolution of '30 compared with the researches on the Vertebrate Structure of the Skull? "My good friend, I was not thinking of those people." But the changes we are seeing cannot be doffed aside in that way. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, Nov. 1870.] Lying awake early in the morning, according to a bad practice of mine, I was visited with much compunction and self-disgust that I had ever said a word to you about the faults of a friend whose good qualities are made the more sacred by the endurance his lot has in many ways demanded. I think you may fairly set down a full half of any alleged grievances to my own susceptibility, and other faults of mine which necessarily call forth less agreeable manifestations from others than as many virtues would do, if I had them. I trust to your good sense to have judged well in spite of my errors in the presentation of any matter. But I wish to protest against myself, that I may, as much as possible, cut off the temptation to what I should like utterly to purify myself from for the few remaining years of my life--the disposition to dwell for a moment on the faults of a friend. Tell the flower and fern giver, whoever it may be, that some strength comes to me this morning from the pretty proof of sympathy. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 2d Dec. 1870.] I have it on my conscience that I may not have given you a clear impression of my wishes about the poor pensioner who was in question between us to-day, so I write at once to secure us both against a possible misunderstanding. I would rather not apply any more money in that direction, because I know of other channels[13]--especially a plan which is being energetically carried out for helping a considerable group of people without almsgiving, and solely by inducing them to work--into which I shall be glad to pour a little more aid. The repugnance to have relief from the parish was a feeling which it was good to encourage in the old days of contra-encouragement to sturdy pauperism; but I question whether one ought now to indulge it, and not rather point out the reasons why, in a case of real helplessness, there is no indignity in receiving from a public fund. After you had left me, it rang in my ears that I had spoken of my greater cheerfulness as due to a reduced anxiety about myself and my doings, and had not seemed to recognize that the deficit or evil in other lives could be a cause of depression. I was not really so ludicrously selfish while dressing myself up in the costume of unselfishness. But my strong egoism has caused me so much melancholy, which is traceable simply to a fastidious yet hungry ambition, that I am relieved by the comparative quietude of personal craving which age is bringing. That is the utmost I have to boast of, and, really, to be cheerful in these times could only be a virtue in the sense in which it was felt to be so by the old Romans when they thanked their general for not despairing of the republic. I have been reading aloud to Mr. Lewes this evening Mr. Harrison's article on "Bismarckism," which made me cry--it is in some passages movingly eloquent. [Sidenote: Journal, 1870.] _Dec. 2._--I am experimenting in a story ("Miss Brooke") which I began without any very serious intention of carrying it out lengthily. It is a subject which has been recorded among my possible themes ever since I began to write fiction, but will probably take new shapes in the development. I am to-day at p. 44. I am reading Wolf's "Prolegomena to Homer." In the evening, aloud, "Wilhelm Meister" again! _Dec. 12._--George's mother died this morning quite peacefully as she sat in her chair. _Dec. 17._--Reading "Quintus Fixlein" aloud to G. in the evening. Grote on Sicilian history. _Dec. 31._--On Wednesday the 21st we went to Ryde to see Madame Bodichon at Swanmore Parsonage, a house which she had taken for two months. We had a pleasant and healthy visit, walking much in the frosty air. On Christmas Day I went with her to the Ritualist Church which is attached to the parsonage, and heard some excellent intoning by the delicate-faced, tenor-voiced clergyman. On Wednesday last, the 28th, Barbara came up to town with us. We found the cold here more severe than at Ryde; and the papers tell us of still harder weather about Paris, where our fellow-men are suffering and inflicting horrors. Here is the last day of 1870. I have written only one hundred pages--good printed pages--of a story which I began about the opening of November, and at present mean to call "Miss Brooke." Poetry halts just now. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 2d Jan. 1871.] We spent our Christmas in the Isle of Wight, and on Christmas Day I went to a Ritualist church and heard some fine intoning of the service by a clear, strong, tenor voice, sweet singing from boys' throats, and all sorts of Catholic ceremonial in a miniature way. It is good to see what our neighbors are doing. To live in seclusion with one's own thoughts is apt to give one very false notions as to the possibilities of the present time in the matter of conversion either to superstition or anti-superstition. In this cruel time, I no sooner hear of an affliction than I see it multiplied in some one of the endless forms of suffering created by this hellish war. In the beginning I could feel entirely with the Germans, and could say of that calamity called "victory," I am glad. But now I can be glad of nothing. No people can carry on a long, fierce war without being brutalized by it, more or less, and it pains me that the educated voices have not a higher moral tone about national and international duties and prospects. But, like every one else, I feel that the war is too much with me, and am rather anxious to avoid unwise speech about it than to utter what may seem to me to be wisdom. The pain is that one can _do_ so little. I have not read "Sir Harry Hotspur," but as to your general question, I reply that there certainly are some women who love in that way, but "their sex as well as I may chide them for it." Men are very fond of glorifying that sort of dog-like attachment. It is one thing to love because you falsely imagine goodness--that belongs to the finest natures--and another to go on loving when you have found out your mistake. But married constancy is a different affair. I have seen a grandly heroic woman who, out of her view as to the responsibilities of the married relation, condoned everything, took her drunken husband to her home again, and at last nursed and watched him into penitence and decency. But there may be two opinions even about this sort of endurance--_i.e._, about its ultimate tendency, not about the beauty of nature which prompts it. This is quite distinct from mere animal constancy. It is duty and human pity. [Sidenote: Letter to Colonel Hamley (now General Sir Edward Hamley), 24th Jan. 1871.] I write to say God bless you for your letter to the _Times_, of this morning. It contains the best expression of right principle--I was almost ready to say, the only good, sensible words--that I have yet seen on the actual state of things between the Germans and the French. You will not pause, I trust, but go on doing what can be done only by one who is at once a soldier, a writer, and a clear-headed man of principle. [Sidenote: Journal, 1871.] _March 19_ (Sunday).--It is grievous to me how little, from one cause or other, chiefly languor and occasionally positive ailments, I manage to get done. I have written about two hundred and thirty-six pages (print) of my novel, which I want to get off my hands by next November. My present fear is that I have too much matter--too many _momenti_. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 3d April, 1871.] I happened to-day to be talking to a very sweet-faced woman (the sister of Dr. Bridges, whom I think you know something of), and she mentioned, _à propos_ of educating children in the love of animals, that she had felt the want of some good little book as a help in this matter. I told her of yours, and when I said that it was written by Mrs. Bray, the author of "Physiology for Schools," she said, "Oh, I know that book well." I have made her a present of my copy of "Duty to Animals," feeling that this was a good quarter in which to plant that offset. For she had been telling me of her practical interest in the infant and other schools in Suffolk, where she lives. We have had a great pleasure to-day in learning that our friend Miss Bury is engaged to be married to Mr. Geddes, a Scotch gentleman. There is a streak of sadness for her family in the fact that she is to go to India with her husband next November, but all else is bright in her prospect. It is very sweet to see, and think of, the happiness of the young. I am scribbling with an infirm head, at the end of the day, just for the sake of letting you know one proof, in addition doubtless to many others which you have already had, that your pretty little book is likely to supply a want. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Gilchrist, 19th April, 1871.] We are very much obliged to you for your kind, methodical thoughtfulness as to all which is necessary for our accommodation at Brookbank, and also for your hints about the points of beauty to be sought for in our walks. That "sense of standing on a round world," which you speak of, is precisely what I most care for among out-of-door delights. The last time I had it fully was at St. Märgen, near Freiburg, on green hilltops, whence we could see the Rhine and poor France. The garden has been, and is being, attended to, and I trust we shall not find the commissariat unendurable. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 6th June, 1871.] It seems like a resurrection of a buried-alive friendship once more to have a letter from you. Welcome back from your absorption in the Franchise! Somebody else ought to have your share of work now, and you ought to rest. Ever since the 1st of May we have been living in this queer cottage, which belongs to Mrs. Gilchrist, wife of the Gilchrist who wrote the life of William Blake the artist. We have a ravishing country round us, and pure air and water; in short, all the conditions of health, if the east wind were away. We have old prints for our dumb companions--charming children of Sir Joshua's, and large-hatted ladies of his and Romney's. I read aloud--almost all the evening--books of German science, and other gravities. So, you see, we are like two secluded owls, wise with unfashionable wisdom, and knowing nothing of pictures and French plays. I confess that I should have gone often to see Got act if I had been in town, he is so really great as an actor. And yet one is ashamed of seeking amusement in connection with anything that belongs to poor, unhappy France. I am saved from the shame by being safely shut out from the amusement. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 17th June, 1871.] How about Madame Mohl and her husband? I have been wondering through all the horrors whether M. Mohl had returned to Paris, and whether their house, containing, too probably, the results of much studious work, lies buried among ruins. But I will not further recall the sorrows in that direction. I am glad to see the words "very satisfactory" in connection with the visit to Hitchin and Cambridge. Ely Cathedral I saw last year, but too cursorily. It has more of the massive grandeur that one adores in Le Mans and Chartres than most of our English cathedrals, though I am ready to recall the comparison as preposterous. I don't know how long we shall stay here; perhaps, more or less, till the end of August, for I have given up the idea of going to the Scott Festival at Edinburgh, to which I had accepted an invitation. The fatigue of the long journey, with the crowd at the end, would be too much for me. Let us know beforehand when you are about coming. George is gloriously well, and studying, writing, walking, eating, and sleeping with equal vigor. He is enjoying the life here immensely. Our country could hardly be surpassed in its particular kind of beauty--perpetual undulation of heath and copse, and clear views of hurrying water, with here and there a grand pine wood, steep, wood-clothed promontories, and gleaming pools. If you want delightful reading get Lowell's "My Study Windows," and read the essays called "My Garden Acquaintances" and "Winter." Get the volumes of a very cheap publication--the "Deutscher Novellenschatz." Some of the tales are remarkably fine. I am reading aloud the last three volumes, which are even better than the others. I have just been so deeply interested in one of the stories--"Diethelm von Buchenberg"--that I want everybody to have the same pleasure who can read German. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Gilchrist, 3d July, 1871.] We are greatly obliged to you for the trouble you have so sympathetically taken on our behalf, and we shall prepare to quit our quiet shelter on Wednesday, the 2d of August. During the first weeks of our stay I did not imagine that I should ever be so fond of the place as I am now. The departure of the bitter winds, some improvement in my health, and the gradual revelation of fresh and fresh beauties in the scenery, especially under a hopeful sky such as we have sometimes had--all these conditions have made me love our little world here and wish not to quit it until we can settle in our London home. I have the regret of thinking that it was my original indifference about it (I hardly ever like things until they are familiar) that hindered us from securing the cottage until the end of September, for the chance of coming to it again after a temporary absence. But all regrets ought to be merged in thankfulness for the agreeable weeks we have had, and probably shall have till the end of July. And among the virtues of Brookbank we shall always reckon this, that our correspondence about it has been with you rather than with any one else, so that, along with the country, we have had a glimpse of your ready, quick-thoughted kindness. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 13th July, 1871.] One word to you in response to Emily's note, which comes to me this morning, and lets me know that by this time she is probably in the last hour of her unmarried life. My thoughts and love and tender anxiety are with her and with all of you. When you receive this she will, I suppose, be far away, and it is of little consequence that I can make no new sign to her of my joy in her joy. For the next few weeks my anxiety will be concentrated on you and yours at Yarmouth. Pray, when your mind and body are sufficiently free from absorbing occupation, remember my need of news about you, and write to me. The other day I seemed to get a glimpse of you through Mrs. Call, who told me that you looked like a new creature--so much stronger than you were wont; and she told me of Dr. Congreve's address at the school, which raised my keenest sympathy, and made me feel myself a very helpless friend. Please give my love to the children, and tell Sophy especially that I think her happy in this--that there is a place made for all the effort of her young life to fill it with something like the goodness and brightness which she has known and has just now to part with. I expect her to be your guardian angel, perhaps in a new way--namely, in saving you from some fatigue about details. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 15th July, 1871.] I still feel that I owe you my thanks for your kind letter, although Mr. Lewes undertook to deliver them in the first instance. You certainly made a seat at the Commemoration Table[14] look more tempting to me than it had done before; but I think that prudence advises me to abstain from the fatigue and excitement of a long railway journey, with a great gathering at the end of it. If there is a chance that "Middlemarch" will be good for anything, I don't want to break down and die without finishing it. And whatever "the tow on my distaff" may be, my strength to unwind it has not been abundant lately. _À propos_ of bodily prosperity, I am sincerely rejoiced to know, by your postscript this morning, that Mr. Simpson is recovered. I hope he will not object to my considering him a good friend of mine, though it is so long since I saw him. The blank that is left when thorough workers like him are disabled is felt not only near at hand, but a great way off. I often say--after the fashion of people who are getting older--that the capacity for good work, of the kind that goes on without trumpets, is diminishing in the world. The continuous absence of sunshine is depressing in every way, and makes one fear for the harvest, and so grave a fear that one is ashamed of mentioning one's private dreariness. You cannot play golf in the rain, and I cannot feel hopeful without the sunlight; but I dare say you work all the more, whereas when my spirits flag my work flags too. I should have liked to see Principal Tulloch again, and to have made the acquaintance of Captain Lockhart, whose writing is so jaunty and cheery, yet so thoroughly refined in feeling. Perhaps I may still have this pleasure in town, when he comes up at the same time with you. Please give my kind regards to Mr. William Blackwood. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th July, 1871.] Thanks for the prompt return of the MS., which arrived this morning. I don't see how I can leave anything out, because I hope there is nothing that will be seen to be irrelevant to my design, which is to show the gradual action of ordinary causes rather than exceptional, and to show this in some directions which have not been from time immemorial the beaten path--the Cremorne walks and shows of fiction. But the best intentions are good for nothing until execution has justified them. And you know I am always compassed about with fears. I am in danger in all my designs of parodying dear Goldsmith's satire on Burke, and think of refining when novel-readers only think of skipping. We are obliged to turn out of this queer cottage next week; but we have been fortunate enough to get the more comfortable house on the other side of the road, so that we can move without any trouble. Thus our address will continue to be the same until the end of August. Tennyson, who is one of the "hill-folk" about here, has found us out. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Robert Lytton[15] (now Lady Lytton), 25th July, 1871.] This morning your husband's letter came to us, but if I did not know that it would be nearly a week before any words of mine could reach you, I should abstain from writing just yet, feeling that in the first days of sorrowing it is better to keep silence. For a long while after a great bereavement our only companionship is with the lost one. Yet I hope it will not be without good to you to have signs of love from your friends, and to be reminded that you have a home in their affections, which is made larger for you by your trouble. For weeks my thought has been continually going out to you, and the absence of news has made me so fearful that I have mourned beforehand. I have been feeling that probably you were undergoing the bitterest grief you had ever known. But under the heart-stroke, is there anything better than to grieve? Strength will come back for the duty and the fellowship which gradually bring new contentments, but at first there is no joy to be desired that would displace sorrow. What is better than to love and live with the loved? But that must sometimes bring us to live with the dead; and this too turns at last into a very tranquil and sweet tie, safe from change and injury. You see, I make myself a warrant out of my regard for you, to write as if we had long been near each other. And I cannot help wishing that we were physically nearer--that you were not on the other side of Europe. We shall trust in Mr. Lytton's kindness to let us hear of you by and by. But you must never write except to satisfy your own longing. May all true help surround you, dear Mrs. Lytton, and whenever you can think of me, believe in me as yours with sincere affection. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Mary Cross, 31st July, 1871.] I read your touching story[16] aloud yesterday to Mr. Lewes, and we both cried over it. Your brother wrote to me that you had doubts about giving your name. My faith is, that signature is right in the absence of weighty special reasons against it. We think of you all very often, and feel ourselves much the richer for having a whole dear family to reckon among our friends. We are to stay here till the end of the month. When the trees are yellow, I hope you will be coming to see us in St. John's Wood. How little like the woods we have around us! I suppose Weybridge is more agreeable than other places at present, if it has any of its extra warmth in this arctic season. Our best love, to your dear mother supremely, and then to all. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 2d Aug. 1871.] I always say that those people are the happiest who have a peremptory reason for staying in one place rather than another. Else I should be sorry for you that you are kept in London--by Parliamentary business, of course. There is sunshine over our fields now, but the thermometer is only 64° in the house, and in the warmest part of the day I, having a talent for being cold, sit shivering, sometimes even with a warm-water bottle at my feet. I wonder if you went to the French plays to see the supreme Got? That is a refined pleasure which I enjoyed so much in Paris a few years ago that I was sorry to be out of reach of it this spring. About the Crystal Palace music I remember feeling just what you mention--the sublime effect of the Handel choruses, and the total futility of the solos. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 3d Aug. 1871.] Thanks for your little picture of things. Eminently acceptable in place of vague conjectures. I am a bitter enemy to make-believe about the human lot, but I think there is a true alleviation of distress in thinking of the intense enjoyment which accompanies a spontaneous, confident, intellectual activity. This may not be a counterpoise to the existing evils, but it is at least a share of mortal good, and good of an exquisite kind. Are you not happy in the long-wished-for sunshine? I have a pretty lawn before me, with hills in the background. The train rushes by every now and then to make one more glad of the usual silence. A good man writes to me from Scotland this morning, asking me if he is not right in pronouncing Rom[)o]la, in defiance of the world around him (not a large world, I hope) who _will_ say Rom[=o]la. Such is correspondence in these days; so that quantity is magnificent _en gros_ but shabby _en détail_--_i.e._, in single letters like this. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 14th Aug. 1871.] We shall stay here only till the end of this month--at least, I have no hope that our _propriétaires_ will be induced to protract their absence; and if the lingering smell of paint does not drive us away from the Priory again, we expect to stay there from the first of September, without projects of travel for many, many months. We enjoy our roomy house and pretty lawn greatly. Imagine me seated near a window, opening under a veranda, with flower-beds and lawn and pretty hills in sight, my feet on a warm-water bottle, and my writing on my knees. In that attitude my mornings are passed. We dine at two; and at four, when the tea comes in, I begin to read aloud. About six or half-past we walk on to the commons and see the great sky over our head. At eight we are usually in the house again, and fill our evening with physics, chemistry, or other wisdom if our heads are at par; if not, we take to folly, in the shape of Alfred de Musset's poems, or something akin to them. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 29th Oct. 1871.] Yesterday we returned from Weybridge, where, for a few days, I have been petted by kind friends (delightful Scotch people), and have had delicious drives in the pure autumn air. That must be my farewell to invalidism and holiday making. I am really better--not robust or fat, but perhaps as well as I am likely to be till death mends me. Your account of Mr. Main[17] sets my mind at ease about him; for in this case I would rather have your judgment than any opportunity of forming my own. The one thing that gave me confidence was his power of putting his finger on the right passages, and giving emphasis to the right idea (in relation to the author's feeling and purpose). Apart from that, enthusiasm would have been of little value. One feels rather ashamed of authoresses this week after the correspondence in the _Times_. One hardly knows which letter is in the worst taste. However, if we are to begin with marvelling at the little wisdom with which the world is governed, we can hardly expect that much wisdom will go to the making of novels. I should think it quite a compliment if the general got through "Miss Brooke." Mr. Lewes amused himself with the immeasurable contempt that Mr. Casaubon would be the object of in the general's mind. I hardly dare hope that the second part will take quite so well as the first, the effects being more subtile and dispersed; but Mr. Lewes seems to like the third part better than anything that has gone before it. But can anything be more uncertain than the reception of a book by the public? I am glad to see that the "Coming Race" has got into a fourth edition. Let us hope that the Koom Posh may be at least mitigated by the sale of a good book or two. As for me, I get more and more unable to be anything more than a feeble sceptic about all publishing plans, and am thankful to have so many good heads at work for me. _Allah illah allah!_ [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1871.] We who are getting old together have the tie of common infirmities. But I don't find that the young troubles seem lighter on looking back. I prefer my years now to any that have gone before. I wish you could tell me the same thing about yourself. And, surely, writing your book is, on the whole, a joy to you--it is a large share in the meagre lot of mankind. All hail for the morrow! How many sweet laughs, how much serious pleasure in the great things others have done, you and I have had together in a past islet of time that remains very sunny in my remembrance. [Sidenote: Journal, 1871.] _Dec. 1._--This day the first part of "Middlemarch" was published. I ought by this time to have finished the fourth part, but an illness which began soon after our return from Haslemere has robbed me of two months. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th Dec. 1871.] If you have not yet fallen in with Dickens's "Life" be on the lookout for it, because of the interest there is in his boyish experience, and also in his rapid development during his first travels in America. The book is ill organized, and stuffed with criticism and other matter which would be better in limbo; but the information about the childhood, and the letters from America, make it worth reading. We have just got a photograph of Dickens, taken when he was writing, or had just written, "David Copperfield"--satisfactory refutation of that keepsakey, impossible face which Maclise gave him, and which has been engraved for the "Life" in all its odious beautification. This photograph is the young Dickens, corresponding to the older Dickens whom I knew--the same face, without the unusually severe wear and tear of years which his latest looks exhibited. [Sidenote: Journal, 1872.] _Dec. 20._--My health has become very troublesome during the last three weeks, and I can get on but tardily. Even now I am only at page 227 of my fourth part. But I have been also retarded by construction, which, once done, serves as good wheels for progress. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 1st Jan. 1872.] Your good wishes and pleasant bits of news made the best part of my breakfast this morning. I am glad to think that, in desiring happiness for you during the new year, I am only desiring the continuance of good which you already possess. I suppose we two, also, are among the happiest of mortals, yet we have had a rather doleful Christmas, the one great lack, that of health, having made itself particularly conspicuous in the surrounding fog. Having no grandchildren to get up a Christmas-tree for, we had nothing to divert our attention from our headaches. Mr. Main's book broke the clouds a little, and now the heavens have altogether cleared, so that we are hoping to come back from a visit of three days to Weybridge with our strength renewed--if not like the eagle's, at least like a convalescent tomtit's. The "Sayings" are set off by delightful paper and print, and a binding which opens with inviting ease. I am really grateful to every one concerned in the volume, and am anxious that it should not be in any way a disappointment. The selections seem to me to be made with an exquisite sensibility to the various lights and shades of life; and all Mr. Main's letters show the same quality. It is a great help to me to have such an indication that there exist careful readers for whom no subtilest intention is lost. We have both read the story of the "Megara" with the deepest interest; indeed, with a quite exceptional enjoyment of its direct, unexaggerated painting. The prescription of two days' golfing per week will, I hope, keep up your condition to the excellent pitch at which it was on your return from Paris. Good news usually acts as a tonic when one's case is not too desperate; and I shall be glad if you and we can get it in the form of more success for "Middlemarch." Dickens's "Life," you see, finds a large public ready to pay more. But the British mind has long entertained the purchase of expensive biographies. The proofs lately given that one's books don't necessarily go out like lucifer matches, never to be taken up again, make one content with moderate immediate results, which perhaps are as much as can reasonably be expected for any writing which does not address itself either to fashions or corporate interests of an exclusive kind. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Jan. 1872.] It is like your kindness to write me your encouraging impressions on reading the third book. I suppose it is my poor health that just now makes me think my writing duller than usual. For certainly the reception of the first book by my old readers is quite beyond my most daring hopes. One of them, who is a great champion of "Adam Bede" and "Romola," told Mr. Lewes yesterday that he thought "Middlemarch" surpassed them. All this is very wonderful to me. I am thoroughly comforted as to the half of the work which is already written; but there remains the terror about the _un_written. Mr. Lewes is much satisfied with the fourth book, which opens with the continuation of the Featherstone drama. We went yesterday to the Tichborne trial, which was an experience of great interest to me. We had to come away after the third hour of Coleridge's speaking; but it was a great enjoyment to me to hear what I did. Coleridge is a rare orator--not of the declamatory, but of the argumentative order. Thanks, not formal, but sincerely felt, for the photographs. This likeness will always carry me back to the first time I saw you, in our little Richmond lodging, when I was thinking anxiously of "Adam Bede," as I now am of "Middlemarch." I felt something like a shudder when Sir Henry Maine asked me last Sunday whether this would not be a very long book; saying, when I told him it would be four good volumes, that that was what he had calculated. However, it will not be longer than Thackeray's books, if so long. And I don't see how the sort of thing I want to do could have been done briefly. I have to be grateful for the gift of "Brougham's Life," which will be a welcome addition to my means of knowing the time "when his ugliness had not passed its bloom." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 22d Jan. 1872.] Your letter seems to pierce the rainy fog with a little sunlight. Cold and clearness are the reverse of what we are usually having here. Until the last few days my chief consciousness has been that of struggling against inward as well as outward fog; but I am now better, and have only been dragged back into headachiness by a little too much fatigue from visitors. I give you this account as a preface to my renunciation of a journey to Dover, which would be very delightful, if I had not already lost too much time to be warranted in taking a holiday. Next Saturday we are going to have a party--six to dine, and a small rush of people after dinner, for the sake of music. I think it is four years at least since we undertook anything of that kind. A great domestic event for us has been the arrival of a new dog, who has all Ben's virtues, with more intelligence, and a begging attitude of irresistible charm. He is a dark-brown spaniel. You see what infantine innocence we live in! Glad you are reading my demigod Milton! We also are rather old-fashioned in our light reading just now; for I have rejected Heyse's German stories, brand new, in favor of dear old Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," which I read aloud in my old age with a delicious revival of girlish impressions. [Sidenote: Journal, 1872.] _Jan. 29._--It is now the last day but one of January. I have finished the fourth part--_i.e._, the second volume--of "Middlemarch." The first part, published on December 1, has been excellently well received; and the second part will be published the day after to-morrow. About Christmas a volume of extracts from my works was published, under the title, "Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings, in Prose and Verse." It was proposed and executed by Alexander Main, a young man of thirty, who began a correspondence with me by asking me how to pronounce Romola, in the summer, when we were at Shottermill. Blackwood proposed that we should share the profits, but we refused. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 29th Jan. 1872.] I do lead rather a crawling life under these rainy fogs and low behavior of the barometer. But I am a little better, on the whole, though just now overdone with the fatigue of company. We have been to hear Coleridge addressing the jury on the Tichborne trial--a very interesting occasion to me. He is a marvellous speaker among Englishmen; has an exquisitely melodious voice, perfect gesture, and a power of keeping the thread of his syntax to the end of his sentence, which makes him delightful to follow. We are going some other day, if possible, to hear a cross-examination of Ballantyne's. The digest of the evidence which Coleridge gives is one of the best illustrations of the value or valuelessness of testimony that could be given. I wonder if the world, which retails Guppy anecdotes, will be anything the wiser for it. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 21st Feb. 1872.] To hear of a friend's illness after he has got well through it is the least painful way of learning the bad news. I hope that your attack has been a payment of insurance. You probably know what it grieved us deeply to learn the other day--that our excellent friend Mr. William Smith is dangerously ill. They have been so entirely happy and wrapped up in each other that we cannot bear to think of Mrs. Smith's grief. Thanks for the list of sales since February 12th. Things are encouraging, and the voices that reach us are enthusiastic. But you can understand how people's interest in the book heightens my anxiety that the remainder should be up to the mark. It has caused me some uneasiness that the third part is two sheets less than the first. But Mr. Lewes insisted that the death of old Featherstone was the right point to pause at; and he cites your approbation of the part as a proof that effectiveness is secured in spite of diminished quantity. Still it irks me to ask 5_s._ for a smaller amount than that already given at the same price. Perhaps I must regard the value as made up solely by effectiveness, and certainly the book will be long enough. I am still below par in strength, and am too much beset with visitors and kind attentions. I long for the quiet spaces of time and the absence of social solicitations that one enjoys in the country, out of everybody's reach. I am glad to hear of the pleasure "Middlemarch" gives in your household: that makes quite a little preliminary public for me. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 4th Mch. 1872.] I can understand very easily that the two last years have been full for you of other and more imperative work than the writing of letters not absolutely demanded either by charity or business. The proof that you still think of me affectionately is very welcome now it is come, and all the more cheering because it enables me to think of you as enjoying your retreat in your orange orchard--your western Sorrento--the beloved Rabbi still beside you. I am sure it must be a great blessing to you to bathe in that quietude--as it always is to us when we go out of reach of London influences, and have the large space of country days to study, walk, and talk in. Last year we spent our summer months in Surrey, and did not leave England. Unhappily, the country was not so favorable to my bodily health as to my spiritual, and on our return to town I had an illness which was the climax of the summer's _malaise_. That illness robbed me of two months, and I have never quite recovered a condition in which the strict duties of the day are not felt as a weight. But just now we are having some clear spring days, and I am in hope of prospering better, the sunshine being to me the greatest visible good of life--what I call the wealth of life, after love and trust. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 8th Mch. 1872.] When I am more at liberty I will certainly read Mr. Owen's books, if he is good enough to send them to me. I desire on all subjects to keep an open mind, but hitherto the various phenomena reported or attested in connection with ideas of spirit-intercourse, "psychion," and so on, have come before me here in the painful form of the lowest _charlatanerie_. Take Mr. H. as an example of what I mean. I could not choose to enter a room where he held a _séance_. He is an object of moral disgust to me; and nothing of late reported by Mr. Crookes, Lord Lindsay, and the rest carries conviction to my mind that Mr. H. is not simply an impostor, whose professedly abnormal manifestations have varied their fashion in order to create a new market, just as if they were _papier mâché_ wares or pomades for the idle rich. But apart from personal contact with people who get money by public exhibitions as mediums, or with semi-idiots, such as those who make a court for a Mrs. Guppy or other feminine personage of that kind, I would not willingly place any barriers between my mind and any possible channel of truth affecting the human lot. The spirit in which you have written in the paper you kindly sent me is likely to teach others--to rouse them, at least, to attention in a case where you have been deeply impressed. I write to you quite openly, dear friend, but very imperfectly, for my letters are always written in shreds of time. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 14th Mch. 1872.] Thanks for the budget of this morning. The sales, we think, are very cheering, and we may well be content if they continue in the same ratio. But the Greek proverb about the beginning being the half of the whole wants as much defining and excepting from as most other proverbs. I have just had sent me a copy of the magazine _Für die Literatur des Auslander_, containing a review of "Miss Brooke," which will be good for Asher's edition, and is otherwise satisfactory as an intelligent appreciation. It mentions at the end the appearance of Mr. Main's book, "The Sayings." A Frenchman, apparently accomplished, a M. Landolphe, who has made some important translations, is going to translate the whole of "Middlemarch;" and one of the contributors to the _Revue des Deux Mondes_ has written for leave to extract Dorothea's history. I fancy we have done a good turn to English authors generally by setting off Asher's series, for we have heard that Tauchnitz has raised his offers. There is another way in which benefit might come that would be still more desirable--namely, to make him more careful in his selections of books for reprint. But I fear that this effect is not so certain. You see Franz Duncker, who publishes the German translation of "Middlemarch," has also begun an English series. This is really worth while, for the Germans are excellent readers of our books. I was astonished to find so many in Berlin who really knew one's books, and did not merely pay compliments after the fashion of the admirers who made Rousseau savage--running after him to pay him visits, and not knowing a word of his writing. You and other good readers have spoiled me, and made me rather shudder at being read only once; and you may imagine how little satisfaction I get from people who mean to please me by saying that they shall wait till "Middlemarch" is finished, and then sit up to read it "at one go-off." We are looking for a country retreat not too far from town, so that we may run up easily. There is nothing wanting to our happiness except that "Middlemarch" should be well ended without growing signs of its author's debility. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 17th March, 1872.] Before I received your letter this morning, I was going to write you a word of sympathy, knowing how deeply you would be feeling the death of Mazzini. Such a man leaves behind him a wider good than the loss of his personal presence can take away. "The greatest gift the hero leaves his race Is to have been a hero." I must be excused for quoting my own words, because they are my _credo_. I enter thoroughly into your sense of wealth in having known him. Brighton does not suit Mr. Lewes. But he was near going there for a night a little while ago to see our friends, Mr. and Mrs. William Smith. He (the author of "Thorndale," etc.) is, I fear, wasting fatally with organic disease, and we grieve much at the too-probably near parting of a husband and wife who have been among the perfectly happy couples of the world. She is a charming woman, and I wish that you may happen to know her. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d March, 1872.] Owing to my loss of two months in illness, and my infirm health ever since, I have not yet finished the writing of "Middlemarch." This payment of wintry arrears makes one prefer the comforts of a London home; but we are obliged to see more company than my health is equal to, and for this reason I dare say we shall soon migrate. To-day we have been to our last morning concert--or Saturday Pop.--held on a Friday because of the University boat-race to-morrow. These concerts are an easy pleasure which we are sorry to part with. This is one of my bad weeks, owing probably to the change in the weather, and I am constantly struggling with hemicrania and _malaise_. Even writing this scrap of a note is the feather too much, and I must leave off. You have known too much of nervous weakness not to understand this. [Sidenote: Journal, 1872.] _May 8._--I have been reposing for more than a week in the hope of getting stronger, my life having been lately a swamp of illness, with only here and there a bit of firm walking. In consequence of this incessant interruption (almost every week having been half nullified for me so far as my work has been concerned) I have only finished the fifth book, and have still three books to write--equal to a large volume and a half. The reception of the book hitherto has been quite beyond what I could have believed beforehand, people exalting it above everything else I have written. Kohn is publishing an English edition in Germany; Duncker is to publish a translation; and Harpers pay me £1200 for reprinting it in America. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 4th June, 1872.] I am glad to know that you are having a time of refreshing in fine scenery, with entire freedom to paint. I am in a corresponding state of relief from the noises and small excitements that break up the day and scatter one's nervous energy in London. We have been in our hiding-place about twelve days now, and I am enjoying it more and more--getting more bodily ease and mental clearness than I have had for the last six months. Our house is not in the least beautiful, but it is well situated and comfortable, perfectly still in the middle of a garden surrounded by fields and meadows, and yet within reach of shops and civilization. We managed to get to the Academy one day before leaving town. I was delighted with Walker's picture--were you?--and Mason's unfinished Reaper, and a few, very few, others. Also we went twice to the opera in order to save ourselves from any yearnings after it when we should have settled in the country. We tell no one our address, and have our letters sent on from the Priory. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 4th June, 1872.] We too are in a country refuge, you see, and this bit of Surrey, as I dare say you know, is full of beauty of the too garden-like sort for which you pity us. How different from your lodge in the wilderness! I have read your description three or four times--it enchants me so thoroughly--and Mr. Lewes is just as much enamoured of it. We shall never see it, I imagine, except in the mirror of your loving words; but thanks, many and warm, dear friend, for saying that our presence would be welcome. I have always had delight in descriptions of American forests since the early days when I read "Atala," which I believe that you would criticise as half unveracious. I dwelt on the descriptions in "Dred" with much enjoyment. Pray give my special thanks to the Professor for his letter. His handwriting, which does really look like Arabic--a very graceful character, surely--happens to be remarkably legible to me, and I did not hesitate over a single word. Some of the words, as expressions of fellowship, were very precious to me, and I hold it very good of him to write to me that best sort of encouragement. I was much impressed with the fact--which you had told me--that he was the original of the "visionary boy" in "Old Town Folk;" and it must be deeply interesting to talk with him on his experience. Perhaps I am inclined, under the influence of the facts, physiological and psychological, which have been gathered of late years, to give larger place to the interpretation of vision-seeing as _subjective_ than the Professor would approve. It seems difficult to limit--at least to limit with any precision--the possibility of confounding sense by impressions, derived from inward conditions, with those which are directly dependent on external stimulus. In fact, the division between within and without in this sense seems to become every year a more subtle and bewildering problem. _Your_ experience with the _planchette_ is amazing; but that the words which you found it to have written were dictated by the spirit of Charlotte Brontë is to me (whether rightly or not) so enormously improbable, that I could only accept it if every condition were laid bare, and every other explanation demonstrated to be impossible. If it were another spirit aping Charlotte Brontë--if here and there at rare spots and among people of a certain temperament, or even at many spots and among people of all temperaments, tricksy spirits are liable to rise as a sort of earth-bubbles and set furniture in movement, and tell things which we either know already or should be as well without knowing--I must frankly confess that I have but a feeble interest in these doings, feeling my life very short for the supreme and awful revelations of a more orderly and intelligible kind which I shall die with an imperfect knowledge of. If there were miserable spirits whom we could help, then I think we should pause and have patience with their trivial-mindedness; but otherwise I don't feel bound to study them more than I am bound to study the special follies of a particular phase of human society. Others who feel differently, and are attracted towards this study, are making an experiment for us as to whether anything better than bewilderment can come of it. At present it seems to me that to rest any fundamental part of religion on such a basis is a melancholy misguidance of men's minds from the true sources of high and pure emotion. I am comforted to think that you partly agree with me there. I have not time to write more than this very imperfect fragmentary sketch of _only one_ aspect which the question of spirit-communications wears to me at present--being always rather brain-weary after my morning's work, and called for by my husband to walk with him and read aloud to him. I spend nearly three hours every day in this exercise of reading aloud, which, happily, I can carry on without fatigue of lungs. Yet it takes strength as well as time. Mr. Lewes is gone into town to-day, so I have an additional hour at liberty, and have been glad to be able to send you a letter which is not worth anything, indeed, but which satisfies my need to thank you and the Professor for your sweet friendliness--very sweet to me, I assure you. Please accept my entire frankness as a proof of that high value I set on you. And do not call anything I may have written a prejudice--it is simply a statement of how certain things appear to my inward eyesight, which I am ready to have rectified by more light. About photographs--I have _no_ photograph of myself, having always avoided having one taken. That makes me seem very selfish in being particularly glad to get yours. Mrs. Fields, with the beautiful face and charming manners, sent me a letter a little while ago, inviting us in the most tempting way to go to Boston. She said that this pretty action was done at your prompting, which is just like you as you have always shown yourself to me. Dear friend, how much you have lived through, both in the flesh and in the spirit! My experience has been narrow compared with yours. I assure you I feel this, so do not misinterpret anything I say to you as being written in a flippant or critical spirit. One always feels the want of the voice and eyes to accompany a letter and give it the right tone. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 4th July, 1872.] You were very good and dear to want to give me the pleasure of knowing that the news was good, instead of leaving me to my small stock of hopefulness. Ask Emily to care a little even now, with baby on her mind, that her old friends are the better for hearing that she is well. Four or five months ago it happens that I was writing some playfulness about a baby and baby's hair, which is now in print, to appear next month. I am not afraid that Emily should be revolted by my blasphemy! Mr. Lewes had "a lovely time" from Saturday to Monday at Weybridge. He was feeling languid, and yet was tempted to sit at his desk. The little change has been very serviceable, and he is now bright. Our first book, read aloud by me after we came down, was Wallace's "Eastern Archipelago," which, I think, you had spoken well of to Mr. Lewes. It is delightful. The biography of the infant ourang-outang alone is worth getting the book for. We are now in the middle of Tylor's "Primitive Culture," which is worth studying, and useful for reference on special points, if you happen to want knowledge about the ideas of the savage tribes. Our days go by in delicious peace, unbroken except by my little inward anxieties about all unfinished work. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 19th July, 1872.] This morning came the joyful news that Gertrude has a fine healthy baby--a daughter. We have just been saying in our walk that by the end of this century our one-day-old granddaughter will probably be married and have children of her own, while we are pretty sure to be at rest. This obvious kind of wisdom does very well for discourse in the delicious sunshine, as we wander over a hilly, half fern-clad, half grassy wilderness called South Park, from which we can overlook two fertile bosky valleys. We like this bit of country better and better. As to health, I am not quite so prosperous as I was at first, but to make amends, Mr. Lewes is in a good average condition, and only now and then has a morning in which he is forced to wander about instead of going to his beloved work. We have had much happiness here, much sympathy in letters from far-off friends unknown in the flesh, and peaceful enjoyment of our occupations. But we have longed for more continuous warmth and brightness, and to-day may perhaps be the beginning of that one wanting condition. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 1st Aug. 1872(?).] The death of that honored, good creature, Mr. William Smith, touched us particularly, because of the perfect marriage-bond which had made the last eleven years of his life unspeakably precious both to him and his wife. Mr. Lewes offered to go to Brighton to see him; but he was so reduced, so very feeble in body, though he kept to the last much brightness of mind, that Mrs. Smith feared for him the excitement of seeing friends who came, specially, from a distance. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 4th Aug. 1872.] I like to think that your journey was a success. But I had felt sure, that unless bad health or bad weather overtook you, both Mrs. Blackwood and you must have great happiness in taking that bright, lovely daughter abroad and watching her fresh impressions. I imagine her laudable indignation at the crushing of the little lizard! Those little creatures darting about the stones seem part of the happiness of Italian sunshine, as the small birds hopping after the rain seem part of the moist happiness at home. I shall send Part VII. in a few days. Since Mr. Lewes tells me that the _Spectator_ considers me the most melancholy of authors, it will perhaps be a welcome assurance to you that there is no unredeemed tragedy in the solution of the story. Mr. Lewes examines the newspapers before I see them, and cuts out any criticisms which refer to me, so as to save me from these spiritual chills--though, alas! he cannot save me from the physical chills which retard my work more seriously. I had hoped to have the manuscript well out of my hands before we left this place at the end of the month, but the return of my dyspeptic troubles makes me unable to reckon on such a result. It will be a good plan, I think, to quicken the publication towards the end; but we feel convinced that the slow plan of publication has been of immense advantage to the book in deepening the impression it produces. Still I shudder a little to think what a long book it will be--not so long as "Vanity Fair" or "Pendennis," however, according to my calculation. How good the articles on French manners and domestic life are in "Maga." The spirit in which they are written is excellent. The manuscript of "Middlemarch" bears the following inscription: "To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes, in this nineteenth year of our blessed union." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, Sept. 1872.] I am tired of behaving like an ungrateful wretch--making no sign in answer to affectionate words which have come to me with cheering effect. And I want to tell you and Mr. Hall (alas! for the dear old name[18] which had such cherished associations) that I long too much to see you all at Six-Mile Bottom, to give up utterly the prospect of that good. We imagine that the place is near Ipswich, which is no more than an hour and fifty minutes from London. If so, the journey would be easily managed, and would be worth taking for the sake of one whole day and two half days with you--just as if you were the hour nearer, at Weybridge--before we set our faces towards Germany. I am not hopeless that we might do that in the second week of September, if you are not quite disgusted with the thought of me as a person who is always claiming pity for small ailments, and also if Mr. Hall can secure me against being shot from the other side of the hedge by the Prince of Wales,[19] while we are discussing plantations. I dare not count much on fulfilling any project, my life for the last year having been a sort of nightmare, in which I have been scrambling on the slippery bank of a pool, just keeping my head above water. But I shall be the happier for having told you that I delight in the double invitation for the sake of the love it assures me of, and that I do want to see you all. You are all gloriously well, I hope, and Alkie looking more and more cherubic, and Emily and Florence blooming. My best love to all. Particular regards to J., and regrets that we were not on his route from Brindisi. I read his paper on New York with much interest and satisfaction. You are often among my imaged companions both in dreaming and waking hours. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, Oct. 1872, from Homburg.] It was a delightful surprise to see your handwriting when we went to inquire at the _Poste Restante_. We had, on the whole, a fortunate journey, and are especially grateful to Mr. Hall for suggesting the route by Trèves, where we spent two nights and an exquisite day. I was continually reminded of Rome when we were wandering in the outskirts in search of the antiquities, and the river banks are a loveliness into the bargain which Rome has not. We had even an opportunity of seeing some dissipation, for there happened to be an excellent circus, where we spent our evening. The pretty country through which we passed had an additional interest for us about Libramont. The air, the waters, the plantations here are all perfect--"only man is vile." I am not fond of denouncing my fellow-sinners, but gambling being a vice I have no mind to, it stirs my disgust even more than my pity. The sight of the dull faces bending round the gaming-tables, the raking up of the money, and the flinging of the coins towards the winners by the hard-faced croupiers, the hateful, hideous women staring at the board like stupid monomaniacs--all this seems to me the most abject presentation of mortals grasping after something called a good that can be seen on the face of this little earth. Burglary is heroic compared with it. I get some satisfaction in looking on, from the sense that the thing is going to be put down. Hell is the only right name for such places. It was cruel to find the bitter cold just set in as we arrived. For two days we were as cold as in clear winter days at Berlin. There are no amusements for the evening here, and the pleasure of listening to the excellent band in the afternoons is diminished by the chillness which makes one fear to sit down in the open air. But we like being idle, and the days pass easily. It is good to have in our memories the two happy days at Six-Mile Bottom; and the love that surrounded me and took care of me there is something very precious to believe in among hard-faced strangers. Much gratitude for the anticipated letter that will come to tell us more news of you by-and-by. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 4th Oct. 1872.] At last I begin a letter which is intended not as a payment but as an acknowledgment of debt. It will have at least the recommendation of requiring no answer. After some perfect autumnal days we are languishing with headache from two days' damp and mugginess, and feel it almost as much work as we are equal to to endure our _malaise_. But on the whole we are not sorry that we came to this place rather than any other. On dry days the air is perfect, and the waters are really an enticing drink. Then there is a wood close by where we can wander in delicious privacy: which is really better than the company here, save and except a few friends whom we found at first, and who have now moved off to Baden. The Kursaal is to me a hell, not only for the gambling but for the light and heat of the gas, and we have seen enough of its monstrous hideousness. There is very little dramatic _Stoff_ to be picked up by watching or listening. The saddest thing to be witnessed is the play of a young lady, who is only twenty-six years old, and is completely in the grasp of this mean, money-making demon. It made me cry to see her young, fresh face among the hags and brutally stupid men around her. Next year, when the gambling has vanished, the place will be delightful; there is to be a subvention from Government to keep up the beautiful grounds; and it is likely that there will be increase enough in the number of decent visitors to keep the town tolerably prosperous. One attraction it has above other German baths that I have seen is the abundance of pleasant apartments to be had, where one can be as peaceful as the human lot allows in a world of pianos. Asher's cheap editions are visible everywhere by the side of Tauchnitz, but the outside is not, I think, quite equally recommendable and recommending. We brought no books with us, but have furnished our table with German books which we bought at Frankfort, from learned writing about Menschlich Sprache and Vernunft down to Kotzebue's comedies, so that we have employment for the rainy hours when once our heads are clear of aches. The certainty that the weather is everywhere else bad will help our resolution to stay here till the 12th at least. In the mean time we hope to have the proof of the finale to "Middlemarch." I am rejoiced to learn from Mr. William's letter that Mr. Simpson has returned from his excursion in good condition. That must be a comfort to you, both for friendship and for work's sake. We mean to return by Paris, and hope that the weather will not drive us away from health and pleasure-seeking until the end of the month. I fear, from the accounts of your Scottish weather, that you will have enjoyed Strathtyrum less than usual, and will be resigned to Edinburgh before your proper time. How one talks about the weather! It is excusable here where there is no grave occupation, and no amusement for us, who don't gamble, except seeking health in walks and water drinking. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 27th Oct. 1872, from Boulogne.] I had meant to write to you again from Germany, but I was hindered from doing so by the uncertainty of our plans, which vacillated between further wanderings in South Germany and the usual dreary railway journeying by Strasburg to Paris. As it was, we left Homburg on the 13th and had ten days of delicious autumnal weather and quietude at Stuttgart and Carlsruhe--ten days which made the heart of our enjoyment. We still hesitated whether we should go to Augsburg, and even Munich, making our way home through Germany and Belgium, and turning our shoulders on Paris. Our evil genius persuaded us to go to Paris and to make the journey by night--whence came headache and horrible disgust with the shops of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevard. After going to Versailles in the rain, seeing the sad ruins of the Hotel de Ville, missing the Theatre Français, and getting "Patrie" in exchange, we rushed away to this place, where we are trying to recover the sense of benefit from our change, which forsook us on quitting old Germany. We have an affinity for what the world calls "dull places," and always prosper best in them. We are sure to be at home next week, and I hope before long to have some news of you there--some dear faces coming to bring it. We shall linger here a few days and take a favorable time for crossing, but our patience will hardly last beyond Friday. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 1st Nov. 1872.] We returned yesterday evening from six weeks' absence in Germany, and I found your dear, sad letter among the many awaiting me. I prize very highly the fact that you like to write to me and bear me in your mind as one who has a certain fellowship in your sorrow; and I do trust that this letter may reach you in time to prevent you from thinking, even for a moment, that I could be indifferent about responding to any word you send me. I shall address it to the care of Blackwood & Sons, because I imagine you to be by this time in Edinburgh with that delightful friend, Mrs. Stirling, whom I had much kindness from many years ago when I was on a visit to Mr. and Mrs. George Combe. She took me to hear Dr. Guthrie and Dr. Candlish, and through her I saw Craigcrook. I like to think of those hours and her pleasant talk. Mr. Lewes, I am thankful to say, has been getting more robust for the last two years, and is very bright and active. I think there is hardly any one left to whom he would so willingly have written or talked about the subjects which are filling his mind as that dear one who is gone from your side, but is perpetually present in your consciousness. To-day I have been reading the memorial article in _Blackwood_, and have been hoping that there is nothing in it which jars on your feeling. Everybody will think as I do--that the bits from your pen are worth all the rest. I have been especially moved, though, by the two stanzas quoted at the end. Mr. Lewes judges that the writer of the article did not personally know your husband, and wishes that more special touches had been given. I know, dear friend, that the sorrow is irremediable; but the pain--the anguish--will become less sharp and life will be less difficult. You will think of things to do such as he would approve of your doing, and every day will be sacred with his memory--nay, his presence. There is no pretence or visionariness in saying that he is still part of you. Mr. Lewes sends his affectionate regards, which you will not reject. We mention your name to each other with a certain tenderness, as if your sorrow somehow belonged to our love for each other. But I hardly dare to think of what these words which I have written mean. Sometimes in the midst of happiness I cry suddenly at the thought that there must come a parting. Are not you and I very near to one another? I mean in feeling. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 19th Nov. 1872.] I found a letter from dear Mrs. William Smith on my return, and I have had another since in answer to mine. It is inevitable that her sense of loss should deepen for some time to come. I am hoping that by-and-by active interests will arise to make her feel that her life is useful. The article in _Blackwood_ was chiefly valuable for the extracts it contained from Mrs. Smith's own memoir. One felt that the writer of the article had not known Mr. William Smith personally; but her sketches did something to supply that defect. Mr. Lewes felt a peculiar attachment to him. He had always been thoroughly sympathetic, both morally and intellectually, and it was a constant regret to us that he and Mrs. Smith were so far away. There was no man with whom Mr. Lewes would have found it so pleasant to discuss questions of science and philosophy--his culture was so rare and his disposition so free from littleness: and his wife was worthy of him. Gertrude's little Blanche is a charming young lady--fat, cooing, and merry. It is a great comfort to see her with this hope fulfilled--I mean to see Gertrude with her hope fulfilled, and not Blanche, as the grammar seemed to imply. That small person's hopes are at present easy of fulfilment. We have made but one expedition since our return, and that was to see the pictures at Bethnal Green--altogether a cheering and delightful sight. Of course you saw them long ago. The Troyon is my favorite. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 19th Nov. 1872.] I will impute your total silence towards me for many, many months to your preoccupation with the work now announced, and will not believe that a greeting from me at this time of the year will be less welcome than of old. I remember that last year one of your prettily-expressed wishes was that I should write another book and--I think you added--send it to you to read. On the strength of this remembrance, you will be one of the three exceptional people to whom we order "Middlemarch" to be sent. But do not write to me about it, because until a book has quite gone away from me and become entirely of the _non-ego_--gone thoroughly from the wine-press into the casks--I would rather not hear or see anything that is said about it. Cara sent me word that you were looking, as usual, very pretty, and showing great energy on interesting occasions. But this was two months ago, and some detailed news from yourself would be a delightful gift. I am getting stronger, and showing some meagre benefit from being indulged in all possible ways. Mr. Lewes makes a martyr of himself in writing all my notes and business letters. Is not that being a sublime husband? For all the while there are studies of his own being put aside--studies which are a seventh heaven to him. Is there any one who does not need patience? For when one's outward lot is perfect, the sense of inward imperfection is the more pressing. You are never long without entering into my thoughts, though you may send nothing fresh to feed them. But I am ashamed of expressing regard for my friends, since I do no earthly thing for them. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1872.] A kiss to you on your birthday! with gratitude for your delightful letter, such as only you can write me. How impossible it is to _feel_ that we are as old as we are! Sometimes it seems a little while since you and I were walking over the Radford fields, with the youth in our limbs, talking and laughing with that easy companionship which it is difficult to find in later life. I am busy now reading Mr. Lewes's manuscript, which has been accumulating fast during my "Middlemarch" time. Did I tell you that in the last two years he has been mastering the principles of mathematics? That is an interesting fact, impersonally, at his age. Old Professor Stowe--Mrs. H. B. Stowe's husband--sent me this story, which is almost better than Topsy. He heard a school-master asking a little black girl the usual questions about creation--who made the earth, the sea, etc. At last came, "And who made you?" Some deliberation was necessary, after which she said, "Nobody; _I was so afore_." Expect to be immensely disappointed with the close of "Middlemarch." But look back to the Prelude. I wish I could take the wings of the morning every now and then to cheer you with an hour's chat, such as you feel the need of, and then fly back on the wings of the wind. I have the most vivid thoughts of you, almost like a bodily presence; but these do you no good, since you can only believe that I have them--and you are tired of believing after your work is done. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 1st Dec. 1872.] Before your letter came, Mr. Lewes had been expressing to me his satisfaction (and he is very hard to satisfy with articles on me) in the genuineness of judgment, wise moderation, and excellent selection of points in "Maga's" review of "Middlemarch." I have just now been reading the review myself--Mr. Lewes had meant at first to follow his rule of not allowing me to see what is written about myself--and I am pleased to find the right moral note struck everywhere, both in remark and quotation. Especially I am pleased with the writer's sensibility to the pathos in Mr. Casaubon's character and position, and with the discernment he shows about Bulstrode. But it is a perilous matter to approve the praise which is given to our own doings. I think that such an article as that which you hint at on the tone of the Bar is very desirable. We are usually at one on points of feeling. Is it not time now to insist that ability and not lying is the force of a barrister--that he has not to make himself a bad actor in order to put a case well, but to get the clearness and breadth of vision which will enable him to handle the evidence effectively? Untruthfulness usually ends by making men foolish. I have never read "Spiritual Wives," but judging from the extracts which have come before me, it must be a nasty book. Still, if people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by the disproportionateness of the condemnation which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking. I shall be agreeably surprised if there is a respectable subscription for the four volumes. Already the numbers taken have been satisfactorily large, considering the indisposition of the public to buy books by comparison with other wares, and especially to buy novels at a high price. I fancy every private copy has done duty for a circle. Friends of mine in the country have implied that they lent their copies to all the readers in their neighborhood. A little fuss of advertisement, together with the reviews, will perhaps create a few more curious inquirers after the book, and impress its existence on the slower part of the reading world. But really the reading world is, after all, very narrow, as, according to the _Spectator_, the "comfortable" world also is--the world able to give away a sovereign without pinching itself. Those statistics just given about incomes are very interesting. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 11th Dec. 1872.] A thousand thanks for your kind interest in our project, and for the trouble you have taken in our behalf. I fear the land buying and building[20] is likely to come to nothing, and our construction to remain entirely of the aerial sort. It is so much easier to imagine other people doing wise things than to do them one's self! Practically, I excel in nothing but paying twice as much as I ought for everything. On the whole, it would be better if my life could be done for me, and I could look on. However, it appears that the question of the land at Shere may remain open until we can discuss it with you at Weybridge; and there is no telling what we may not venture on with your eyes to see through. But, oh dear, I don't like anything that is troublesome under the name of pleasure. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 12th Dec. 1872.] I have had the news that you are safely landed at Pooree, so now I can write with some courage. I have got some comfort--I trust it is not false comfort--out of the probability that there will be much good mingled with the evil of this winter's exile for you. You must be the richer for it mentally, and your health may be the better--and then, you will be back again in the late spring. In this way I make myself contented under the incompleteness of our life without you, and I am determined not to grumble at my share of the loss which falls so sadly on Dr. Congreve and the children. Dr. Congreve kindly let me know when you had got through the trials of the Red Sea, rather better than might have been expected; and Sophie tells me that you speak of the brilliant coloring in your new world as quite equal to any description you had read. Beyond that all is a blank to me except the fact of your arrival at Pooree, and all my feeling is taken up with the joy there must have been in the meeting with Mr. Geddes. You find it very difficult to write in the heat--so don't make the thought of me disagreeable by associating it with a claim on you for a letter. I will be grateful for scraps from your correspondence with home, and wait for my turn when you come back to us. For ourselves, we think our little granddaughter, Blanche, the perfection of a baby. She is, dispassionately speaking, very pretty, and has a cooing, chanting song of her own which it makes me happy to hear. Mr. Lewes goes on at his writing with as much interest as ever, and is bringing the first part of his work into its final shape. Since we came home I have been reading his manuscript, which has been piling itself up in preparation for my leisure, and I have been wearing my gravest philosophic cap. Altogether we are dangerously happy. You remember Mrs. Blank of Coventry? You know hers was another name for astonishing cleverness in that town. Now, of course, she is old, and her cleverness seems to have a mouldy flavor. _Apropos_ of the seventh book of "Middlemarch"--which you may not have read, but never mind--Mrs. Blank, having lain awake all night from compassion for Bulstrode, said, "Poor, dear creature, after he had done so much for that wretch, sitting up at night and attending on him! _and I don't believe it was the brandy that killed him_--and what is to become of Bulstrode now, he has nobody left but Christ!" I think this is worth sending to India, you see; it is a little bit of old Coventry life that may make you and Emily laugh with all the more lively memory in the midst of your strange scenery. But there is a hovering terror while I write to you from far off, lest my trivialities should find you when you are ill or have some cause for being sad. In any case, however, you will take my letter for a simple proof that I dwell on you and Emily as images constantly present in my mind, and very often moving to the foreground in my contemplation. Mr. Lewes is one with me in many affectionate thoughts about you, and your names are often on our lips. We are going to pass the Christmas week with our friends at Weybridge; and I shall be glad to escape the London aspects of that season--aspects that are without any happy association for me. Mr. Lewes has just been in to speak to me, and begs me to say that he hopes baby is raised to the _n_^{th} power. You see the lofty point of view from which he regards the world at present. But there is enough of the sap of affection in him to withstand all the dryness of the dryest mathematics, and he has very hearty regards for you all, including Mr. Geddes, not as a matter of course, but with special emphasis. Good-bye, dear, dear friend. May it give you some little satisfaction to think of me as yours always lovingly. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 18th Dec. 1872.] Your letter was very welcome to me. I wanted to know how you were; and I think that I discern in your words some growth of courage to face the hard task--it is a hard task--of living a separate life. I reckon it a great good to me that any writing of mine has been taken into companionship by you, and seemed to speak with you of your own experience. Thank you for telling me of that. This weather, which is so melancholy in the privation it must cause to those who are worst off in the world, adds a little weight to everybody's griefs. But I trust that you find it a comfort, not an oppression, to be among friends who make a little claim on your attention. When you go to How, please tell me all about the place, and whom you have near you, because I like to be able to imagine your circumstances. I have been, and am still, reading Mr. Lewes's manuscript--and I often associate this with your dear husband, to whom I imagine mine would have liked to send his proofs when the matter had reached the printing stage. We are both very well, and Mr. Lewes is enjoying his morning at his desk. He likes very much to be included in your love, and has always thought you one of the most charming women among our acquaintance. Please not to say that he has bad taste in women. We both cherish very tender thoughts of your sorrow, dear friend. Let me always be assured that you think of me as yours affectionately. [Sidenote: Letter to Mr. Simpson, 18th Dec. 1872.] We have to thank you for two things especially. First, for the good bargain you have made for "Middlemarch" with Australia; and secondly, for the trouble you have kindly taken with the MS., which has come to us safely in its fine Russian coat. The four volumes, we imagine, must have been subscribed long ago; and we should be glad to know, if it were convenient--perhaps even if it were _in_convenient--what are the figures representing the courage of "the trade" in the matter of a 42_s._ novel, which has already been well distributed. We both hope that your health is well confirmed, and that you are prepared for Christmas pleasures, among which you would probably, like Caleb Garth, reckon the extra "business" which the jolly season carries in its hinder wallet. _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1869, TO DECEMBER, 1872. Poem on Agatha--Reading on Philology, "Iliad," "Faery Queen," Clough's Poems, Bright's Speeches, "Volpone," Lecture by Sir Wm. Thomson--Writing "How Lisa Loved the King"--Browning and Rector of Lincoln on Versification--Letter to Miss Hennell--Browning's "Elisha"--Fourth visit to Italy--Two months away--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Paris--Dr. Congreve's Reply to Professor Huxley in _Fortnightly_--Meeting in Rome with Mrs. Bullock and Mr. and Mrs. Cross--Letter to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe--Effect of books--Religion of the future--Arrival of Thornton Lewes from Natal--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Marriage engagements of Mr. Beesley, Mr. Frederic Harrison, and Dr. Clifford Allbut--Finished five "Sonnets on Childhood"--Letter to Mrs. Stowe--"Old Town Folks"--Presentation of alien religious convictions--Spiritualism--Reading Drayton and Grote--Writing Introduction to "Middlemarch"--Reading Theocritus--Burne-Jones's Pictures--Reading Littré on Comte--Sainte Beuve--Thornton Lewes's continued illness--Visit to Mrs. Cross at Weybridge--Reading for "Middlemarch"--Asks Mrs. Congreve to get information about provincial hospitals--Letter to Miss Hennell--The Byron scandal--Byron a vulgar-minded genius--The Kovilevskys--"Legend of Jubal" begun--Mr. W. G. Clark--Reading Max Müller--Lecky and Herbert Spencer--Death of Thornton Lewes--Letter to Miss Hennell describing month's visit to Limpsfield--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Mr. Doyle--Letter to F. Harrison on the Positivist Problem--Aversion to personal statements--Shrinking from deliverances--Letter to Miss Hennell on Charles Hennell's "Inquiry"--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Berlin--Sees Mommsen, Bunsen, and Du Bois Reymond--Visit to Vienna--Return to London--Three days' visit to the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, and Mrs. Pattison--Meets Sir Benjamin Brodie--Professor Rawlinson and Professor Phillips--Dr. Rolleston and the Miss Gaskells, and Miss Arnold--Mr. Jowett, Professor Henry Smith, and Mr. Fowler--Re-reading Grove "On the Correlation of the Physical Forces"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Dickens's Death, and his story of President Lincoln--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--Visit to Cromer--Growing dislike of migratory life--Letter to Mrs. Lytton on the death of Lord Clarendon--Danger of women living too exclusively in the affections--Reading Mendelssohn's letters--From Cromer to Harrogate and Whitby--Meets Mrs. Burne-Jones there--"Armgart" begun--Three weeks' visit to Limpsfield--Letter to Miss Hennell on the beginning of the war between Germany and France--Jowett's "Plato"--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--The French nation--"Armgart" finished at Limpsfield--Return to the Priory--Letter to Miss Hennell--A popular preacher--Growing influence of ideas--Goethe's contempt for revolution of 1830--Letter to Mme. Bodichon on the faults of one's friends--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Industrial schemes--Greater cheerfulness--Frederic Harrison on Bismarckism--Writing "Miss Brooke"--Reading Wolf's "Prolegomena to Homer" and "Wilhelm Meister"--Visit to Mme. Bodichon at Ryde--Letter to Miss Hennell--Ritualism at Ryde--Brutalizing effect of German war--Trollope's "Sir Harry Hotspur"--Limits of woman's constancy--Miss Bury's engagement to Mr. Geddes--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Three and a half months' visit to Petersfield--Mode of life--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--Lowell's "My Study Windows"--"Diethelm von Buchenberg" in _Deutschen Novellenschatz_--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Mrs. Geddes's marriage--Letter to John Blackwood--Relinquishment of Scott Commemoration--Captain Lockhart--Letter to John Blackwood on MS. of "Middlemarch"--Visit from Tennyson--Letter to Mrs. Lytton on death of her son--Letter to Miss Mary Cross on story in _Macmillan's Magazine_--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Suffering from cold--Got's acting--Crystal Palace music--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Delight in intellectual activity--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Enjoyment of Cherrimans--Letter to John Blackwood--Visit to Weybridge--Mr. Main, the collector of the "Sayings"--Reception of "Middlemarch"--Letters to Miss Hennell--Foster's "Life of Dickens"--Low health--Tichborne trial--Letters to John Blackwood: pleased with the "Sayings"--Visit to Weybridge--Length of "Middlemarch"--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Reading Johnson's "Lives of the Poets"--Finished second volume of "Middlemarch"--Letter to Mrs. Stowe--Spiritualistic phenomena--Letter to John Blackwood--German and French interest in "Middlemarch"--Asher's edition--German readers--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on death of Mazzini--Letter to Miss Hennell--Low health--Letter to Mrs. Stowe--Spirit communications--Letter to Mrs. Congreve on Wallace's "Eastern Archipelago"--Tylor's "Primitive Culture"--Letter to John Blackwood--"Middlemarch" finished--Letter to Mrs. Cross on invitation to Six-Mile Bottom, Cambridge--Month's visit to Homburg--Letter to Mrs. Cross--Trèves--On gambling at Homburg--Letter to John Blackwood--Play of a young lady at Homburg--German reading--Letter to Mrs. Cross from Boulogne--Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith of condolence on loss of her husband--Memorial article on Mr. Wm. Smith--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on Mr. Wm. Smith--Letters to Miss Hennell--Presentation copies of "Middlemarch"--Mr. Lewes studying mathematics--Letter to John Blackwood--"Maga's" review of "Middlemarch"--Tone of the Bar--Letter to J. W. Cross on building a house at Shere--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Happiness--Story of Coventry lady and Bulstrode--Letter to Mr. Simpson--MS. of "Middlemarch." FOOTNOTES: [6] Dr. Congreve's article, "Mr. Huxley on M. Comte," in _Fortnightly Review_, April, 1869. [7] See _ante_, vol. i. p. 220. [8] Professor Edmund Spenser Beesley, a well-known member of the Positivist body, who married Miss Crompton, daughter of Mr. Justice Crompton. [9] An article by Mr. Frederic Harrison in the _Fortnightly Review_ of November, 1869. [10] Portrait of Charles Hennell. [11] Written after the death of Lord Clarendon, who, Lady Lytton tells me, had been like a father to her. [12] "Armgart." [13] Miss Octavia Hill. Walmer Street Industrial Experiment, tried by Canon Fremantle under Miss Hill's supervision. [14] Scott Commemoration. [15] Written just before the death of Mrs. Lytton's eldest boy. [16] "Marie of Villefranche." _Macmillan's Magazine_, August, 1871. [17] The collector of "The Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings of George Eliot." [18] Mr. W. H. Bullock--changed his name to Hall. [19] The Six-Mile Bottom shooting had been let to H. R. H. that year. [20] A site offered near Shere, in Surrey. CHAPTER XVII. [Sidenote: Journal, 1873.] _Jan. 1._--At the beginning of December the eighth and last book of "Middlemarch" was published, the three final numbers having been published monthly. No former book of mine has been received with more enthusiasm--not even "Adam Bede;" and I have received many deeply affecting assurances of its influence for good on individual minds. Hardly anything could have happened to me which I could regard as a greater blessing than the growth of my spiritual existence when my bodily existence is decaying. The merely egoistic satisfactions of fame are easily nullified by toothache, and _that_ has made my chief consciousness for the last week. This morning, when I was in pain, and taking a melancholy breakfast in bed, some sweet-natured creature sent a beautiful bouquet to the door for me, bound round with the written wish that "Every year may be happier and happier, and that God's blessing may ever abide with the immortal author of 'Silas Marner.'" Happily my dear husband is well, and able to enjoy these things for me. That he rejoices in them is my most distinct personal pleasure in such tributes. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 3d Jan. 1873.] It was very pleasant to have your greeting on the New Year, though I was keeping its advent in melancholy guise. I am relieved now from the neuralgic part of my ailment, and am able to write something of the hearty response I feel to your good wishes. We both hope that the coming year may continue to you all the family joys which must make the core of your happiness, without underrating golf and good contributors to "Maga." Health has to be presupposed as the vehicle of all other good, and in this respect you may be possibly better off in '73 than in '72, for I think you have had several invalidings within the last twelve months. Mr. Langford wrote yesterday that he knew of an article on "Middlemarch" being in preparation for the _Times_, which certainly was never before so slow in noticing a book of mine. Whether such an article will affect the sale favorably seems eminently uncertain, and can only complicate Mr. Simpson's problem. We have been glad to welcome our good friend, Mr. Anthony Trollope, after his long absence. He is wonderfully full of life and energy, and will soon bring out his two thick volumes on Australian colonies. My friendly Dutch publishers lately sent us a handsome row of volumes--George Eliot's "Romantische Werke," with an introduction, in which comparisons are safely shrouded for me in the haze of Dutch, so that if they are disadvantageous, I am not pained. Please give my best wishes for the coming year to Mr. William Blackwood. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 4th Jan. 1873.] At last I break my silence, and thank you for your kind care about me. I am able to enjoy my reading at the corner of my study fire, and am at that unpitiable stage of illness which is counterbalanced by extra petting. I have been fearing that you too may be undergoing some _malaise_ of a kindred sort, and I should like to be assured that you have quite got through the troubles which threatened you. How good you have all been to me, and what a disappointing investment of affection I have turned out! But those evening drives, which perhaps encouraged the faceache, have left me a treasure of picture and poetry in my memory quite worth paying for, and in these days all prices are high. The new year began very prettily for me at half-past eight in the morning with a beautiful bouquet, left by an unknown at our door, and an inscription asking that "God's blessing might ever abide with the immortal author of 'Silas Marner.'" [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Feb. 1873.] I am much pleased with the color and the lettering of the guinea edition, and the thinner paper makes it delightfully handy. Let us hope that some people still want to read it, since a friend of ours, in one short railway bit to and fro, saw two persons reading the paper-covered numbers. Now is the moment when a notice in the _Times_ might possibly give a perceptible impulse. Kohn, of Berlin, has written to ask us to allow him to reprint the "Spanish Gypsy" for £50, and we have consented. Some Dresdener, who has translated poems of Tennyson's, asked leave to translate the "Spanish Gypsy" in 1870, but I have not heard of his translation appearing. The rain this morning is welcome, in exchange for the snow, which in London has none of its country charms left to it. Among my books, which comfort me in the absence of sunshine, is a copy of the "Handy Royal Atlas" which Mr. Lewes has got for me. The glorious index is all the more appreciable by me, because I am tormented with German historical atlases which have no index, and are covered with names swarming like ants on every map. The catalogue coming in the other day renewed my longing for the cheap edition of Lockhart's novels, though I have some compunction in teasing your busy mind with my small begging. I should like to take them into the country, where our days are always longer for reading. I have a love for Lockhart because of Scott's Life, which seems to me a perfect biography. How different from another we know of! [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 28th Feb. 1873.] After your kind words I will confess that I should very much like to have the "Manual of Geography" by Mackay, and Bayne's "Port Royal Logic." _À propos_ of the "Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea which it embodies and which justifies its painfulness. A motto which I wrote on it yesterday perhaps is a sufficient indication of that idea: "Give me no light, great heaven, but such as turns To energy of human fellowship; No powers, save the growing heritage That makes completer manhood." But it will be well to put the story in harness with some other productions of mine, and not send it forth in its dismal loneliness. There are many things in it which I would willingly say over again, and I shall never put them in any other form. But we must wait a little. The question is not in the least one of money, but of care for the best effect of writing, which often depends on circumstances, much as pictures depend on light and juxtaposition. I am looking forward with interest to "Kenelm Chillingly," and thinking what a blessed lot it is to die on just finishing a book, if it could be a good one. I mean, it is blessed only to quit activity when one quits life. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 1st Mch. 1873.] If I had been quite sure of your address I should have written to you even before receiving your dear letter, over which I have been crying this morning. The prompting to write to you came from my having ten days ago read your Memoir--brief yet full--of the precious last months before the parting. Mrs. P. Taylor brought me her copy as a loan. But may I not beg to have a copy of my own? It is to me an invaluable bit of writing; the inspiration of a great sorrow, born of a great love, has made it perfect; and ever since I read it I have felt a strengthening companionship from it. You will perhaps think it strange when I tell you that I have been more cheerful since I read the record of his sweet, mild heroism, which threw emphasis on every blessing left in his waning life, and was silent over its pangs. I have even ventured to lend this copy, which is not my own, to a young married woman of whom I am very fond, because I think it is an unforgetable picture of that union which is the ideal of marriage, and which I desire young people to have in their minds as a goal. It is a comfort in thinking of you that you have two lovable young creatures with you. I have found quite a new interest in young people since I have been conscious that I am getting older; and if all personal joy were to go from me as it has gone from you, I could perhaps find some energy from that interest, and try to teach the young. I wish, dear friend, it were possible to convey to you the sense I have of a great good in being permitted to know of your happiness, and of having some communion with the sorrow which is its shadow. Your words have a consecration for me, and my husband shares my feeling. He sends his love along with mine. He sobbed with something which is a sort of grief better worth having than any trivial gladness, as he read the printed record of your love. He, too, is capable of that supreme, self-merging love. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 14th Mch. 1873.] This is good news about the guinea edition, but I emphatically agree with you that it will be well to be cautious in further printing. I wish you could see a letter I had from California the other day, apparently from a young fellow, and beginning, "Oh, you dear lady! I who have been a Fred Vincy ever so long ... have played vagabond and ninny ever since I knew the meaning of such terms," etc., etc. I am sorry to infer, from what you say about being recommended to go to a German bath, that you have been out of health lately. There really is a good deal of curative virtue in the air, waters, and exercise one gets at such places, and if the boredom were not strong enough to counteract the better influences, it would be worth while to endure. That phrase of Miss Stuart's--"fall flat on the world"--is worth remembering. I should think it is not likely to prove prophetic, if she is at all like her cousin, whose fair, piquant face remains very vividly before me. The older one gets, the more one delights in these young things, rejoicing in their joys. The ministerial crisis interests me, though it does not bring me any practical need for thinking of it, as it does to you. I wish there were some solid, philosophical Conservative to take the reins--one who knows the true functions of stability in human affairs, and, as the psalm says, "Would also practice what he knows." [Sidenote: Letter to Edward Burne-Jones, 20th Mch. 1873.] I suppose my hesitation about writing to you to tell you of a debt I feel towards you is all vanity. If you did not know me, you might think a great deal more of my judgment than it is worth, and I should feel bold in that possibility. But when judgment is understood to mean simply one's own impression of delight, one ought not to shrink from making one's small offering of burnt clay because others can give gold statues. It would be narrowness to suppose that an artist can only care for the impressions of those who know the methods of his art as well as feel its effects. Art works for all whom it can touch. And I want in gratitude to tell you that your work makes life larger and more beautiful to me. I mean that historical life of all the world, in which our little personal share often seems a mere standing-room from which we can look all round, and chiefly backward. Perhaps the work has a strain of special sadness in it--perhaps a deeper sense of the tremendous outer forces which urge us, than of the inner impulse towards heroic struggle and achievement--but the sadness is so inwrought with pure, elevating sensibility to all that is sweet and beautiful in the story of man and in the face of the earth that it can no more be found fault with than the sadness of mid-day, when Pan is touchy, like the rest of us. Don't you agree with me that much superfluous stuff is written on all sides about purpose in art? A nasty mind makes nasty art, whether for art or any other sake; and a meagre mind will bring forth what is meagre. And some effect in determining other minds there must be, according to the degree of nobleness or meanness in the selection made by the artist's soul. Your work impresses me with the happy sense of noble selection and of power determined by refined sympathy. That is why I wanted to thank you in writing, since lip-homage has fallen into disrepute. I cannot help liking to tell you a sign that my delight must have taken a little bit of the same curve as yours. Looking, _à propos_ of your picture, into the "Iphigenia in Aulis," to read the chorus you know of, I found my blue pencil-marks made seven years ago (and gone into that forgetfulness which makes my mind seem very large and empty)--blue pencil-marks made against the dance--loving Kithara and the footsteps of the muses and the nereids dancing on the shining sands. I was pleased to see that my mind had been touched in a dumb way by what has touched yours to fine utterance. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 15th April, 1873] Welcome back to Europe! What a comfort to see your handwriting dated from San Remo--to think that Dr. Congreve's anxieties about your voyage are at an end, and that you are once more in the post which is more specially and permanently yours! Mr. Lewes finds fault with your letter for not telling enough; but the mere fact of your safety seems to fill it quite full for me, and I can think of no drawbacks--not even of the cold, which I hope is by this time passing away for you, as it is for us. You must be so rich in memories that we and our small ordinary news must appear very flat to you, but we will submit to be a little despised by you if only we can have you with us again. I have never lost the impression of Dr. Congreve's look when he paid us his farewell visit, and spoke of his anxiety about your voyage, fearing that you had started too late; and that impression gives me all the keener sympathy with the repose I trust he is feeling. About ourselves I have only good news to tell. We are happier than ever, and have no troubles. We are searching for a country-house to go to at the end of May or earlier. I long for the perfect peace and freedom of the country again. The hours seem to stretch themselves there, and to hold twice as much thought as one can get into them in town, where acquaintances and small claims inevitably multiply. Imagine us nearly as we were when we last saw you--only a little older--with unchanged affection for you and undimmed interest in whatever befalls you. Do not tax yourself to write unless you feel a pleasure in that imperfect sort of communication. I will try not to fear evil if you are silent, but you know that I am glad to have something more than hope to feed on. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 25th April, 1873.] It was a cordial to me this morning to learn that you have the project of going with your young friend to Cambridge at the end of the autumn. I could not have thought of anything better to wish for on your behalf than that you should have the consciousness of helping a younger life. I know, dear friend, that so far as you directly are concerned with this life the remainder of it can only be patience and resignation. But we are not shut up within our individual life, and it is one of the gains of advancing age that the good of young creatures becomes a more definite, intense joy to us. With that renunciation for ourselves which age inevitably brings, we get more freedom of soul to enter into the life of others; what we can never learn they will know, and the gladness which is a departed sunlight to us is rising with the strength of morning to them. I am very much interested in the fact of young women studying at Cambridge, and I have lately seen a charming specimen of the pupils at Hitchin--a very modest, lovely girl, who distinguished herself in the last examination. One is anxious that, in the beginning of a higher education for women--the immediate value of which is chiefly the social recognition of its desirableness--the students should be favorable subjects for experiment, girls or young women whose natures are large and rich enough not to be used up in their efforts after knowledge. Mr. Lewes is very well and goes on working joyously. Proofs come in slowly, but he is far from being ready with all the manuscript which will be needed for his preliminary volume--the material, which has long been gathered, requiring revision and suggesting additions. Do think it a privilege to have that fine _physique_ of yours instead of a headachy, dyspeptic frame such as many women drag through life. Even in irremediable sorrow it is a sort of blasphemy against one's suffering fellow-beings to think lightly of any good which they would be thankful for in exchange for something they have to bear. [Sidenote: Journal, 1873.] _May 19._--We paid a visit to Cambridge at the invitation of Mr. Frederick Myers, and I enjoyed greatly talking with him and some others of the "Trinity Men." In the evenings we went to see the boat-race, and then returned to supper and talk--the first evening with Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Jebb, Mr. Edmund Gurney; the second, with young Balfour, young Lyttelton, Mr. Jackson, and Edmund Gurney again. Mrs. and Miss Huth were also our companions during the visit. On the Tuesday morning we breakfasted at Mr. Henry Sidgwick's with Mr. Jebb, Mr. W. G. Clark, Mr. Myers, and Mrs. and Miss Huth. _May 22._--We went to the French play at the Princess's and saw Plessy and Desclée in "Les Idées de Madame Aubray." I am just finishing again Aristotle's "Poetics," which I first read in 1856. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 25th May, 1873.] Our plans have been upset by the impossibility of finding a house in the country that is suitable to us, and weariness of being deluded into journeys of investigation by fanciful advertisements has inclined Mr. Lewes for the present to say that we will go abroad. Still, I have nothing to tell that is absolutely settled, and I must ask you, when you return, to send a note to this house. If I am in England it will be forwarded to me, and you will get a prompt answer. If I am silent you will conclude that I am gone abroad. I think it is at the end of June that you are to come home? Here we have been wearing furs and velvet, and having fires all through the past week, chiefly occupied by Mr. Lewes and me in a visit to Cambridge. We were invited ostensibly to see the boat-race, but the real pleasure of the visit consisted in talking with a hopeful group of Trinity young men. On Monday we had a clear, cold day, more like the fine weather of mid-winter than any tradition of May time. I hope that you have had no such revisiting of winter at San Remo. How much we should enjoy having you with us to narrate everything that has happened to you in the last eventful half year! I shall feel the loss of this, as an immediate prospect, to be the greatest disadvantage in our going abroad next month--if we go. Your last news of Emily and of "baby's teeth" is cheerful. "Baby's teeth" is a phrase that enters much into our life just now. Little Blanche had a sad struggle with her first little bit of ivory, but she has been blooming again since, and is altogether a ravishing child. To-day we have had a large collection of visitors, and I have the usual Sunday evening condition of brain. But letters are so constantly coming and claiming my time to answer them, that I get fidgety lest I should neglect to write to you; and I was determined not to let another day pass without letting you have a proof that I think of you. When I am silent please believe that the silence is due to feebleness of body, which narrows my available time. Mr. Lewes often talks of you, and will value any word from you about yourself as much as I shall. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 2d June, 1873.] Thanks for sending me word of poor Miss Rebecca Franklin's death. It touches me deeply. She was always particularly good and affectionate to me, and I had much happiness in her as my teacher. In September a house near Chislehurst will be open to us--a house which we think of ultimately making our sole home, turning our backs on London. But we shall be allowed to have it, furnished, for a year on trial. [Sidenote: Journal, 1873.] _June._--In the beginning of June we paid a visit to Mr. Jowett at Oxford, meeting there Mr. and Mrs. Charles Roundell, then newly married. We stayed from Saturday to Monday, and I was introduced to many persons of interest. Professor T. Green, Max Müller, Thomson, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, a Mr. Wordsworth, the grandson of the poet, who had spent some time in India, and a host of others. _June 23._--Started for the Continent. Fontainebleau, Plombières, etc. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 9th Aug. 1873.] I feel myself guilty that I have allowed the vicissitudes of travelling to hinder me from writing to you, for the chance that a letter from me might be welcome to you in what I have been imagining as the first weeks of your return to England and the house in Mecklenburgh Square. I am sure that I should not have been guilty in this way if I had been at any time able to say where you should send me an answer which I could call for at a _Poste Restante_. But we have been invariably uncertain as to the length of our stay in any one place and as to our subsequent route; and I confess that I shrink from writing a letter full of my own doings, without the prospect of getting some news in return. I am usually in a state of fear rather than of hope about my absent friends; and I dread lest a letter written in ignorance about them should be ill-timed. But at last all fears have become weaker than the uneasy sense that I have omitted to send you a sign of your loved presence in my thoughts, and that you may have lost a gleam of pleasure through my omission. We left home on the 23d of June, with a sketch of a journey in our minds, which included Grenoble, the Grande Chartreuse, Aix-les-Bains, Chambéry, and Geneva. The last place I wished to get to, because my friend Mme. d'Albert is not likely to live much longer, and I thought that I should like to see her once more. But during a short stay at Fontainebleau I began to feel that lengthy railway journeys were too formidable for us old, weak creatures, and, moreover, that July and August were not the best months for those southern regions. We were both shattered, and needed quiet rather than the excitement of seeing friends and acquaintances--an excitement of which we had been having too much at home--so we turned aside by easy stages to the Vosges, and spent about three weeks at Plombières and Luxeuil. We shall carry home many pleasant memories of our journey--of Fontainebleau, for example, which I had never seen before. Then of the Vosges, where we count on going again. Erckmann-Chatrian's books had been an introduction to the lovely region; and several of them were our companions there. But what small experiences these are compared with yours; and how we long for the time when you will be seated with us at our country-house (Blackbrook, near Bromley, is the name of the house), and tell us as much as you can think of about this long year in which we have been deprived of you. If you receive this letter in time to write me a line, which would reach me by the 15th, I shall be most grateful if you will give me that undeserved indulgence. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Aug. 1873.] On our return yesterday from our nine-weeks' absence I found a letter from Mr. Main, in which he shows some anxiety that I should write you the "formal sanction" you justly require before admitting extracts from "Middlemarch" in the new edition of the "Sayings." I have no objection, if you see none, to such an enlargement of the volume, and I satisfy our good Mr. Main's promptitude by writing the needed consent at once. We used our plan of travel as "a good thing to wander from," and went to no single place (except Fontainebleau) to which we had beforehand projected going. Our most fortunate wandering was to the Vosges--to Plombières and Luxeuil--which have made us in love with the mode of life at the _Eaux_ of France, as greatly preferable to the ways of the German _Bad_. We happened to be at Nancy just as the Germans were beginning to quit it, and we saw good store of _tricolores_ and paper lanterns ready in the shop windows for those who wished to buy the signs of national rejoicing. I can imagine that, as a Prussian lady told us, the Germans themselves were not at all rejoiced to leave that pretty town for "les bords de la Spree," where, in French dialogue, all Germans are supposed to live. [Sidenote: Journal, 1873.] _Sept. 4._--Went to Blackbrook, near Bickley. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 17th Sept. 1873.] Thanks, dear friend, for the difficult exertion you gave to the telling of what I so much wished to know--the details of the trouble[21] which you have all had to go through either directly or sympathetically. But I will not dwell now on what it cost you, I fear, too much pain to recall so as to give me the vivid impressions I felt in reading your letter. The great practical result of such trouble is to make us all more tender to each other; this is a world in which we must pay heavy prices for love, as you know by experience much deeper than mine. I will gossip a little about ourselves now. We gave up our intention of going far southward, fearing the fatigue of long railway journeys, and the heat (which hardly ever came) of July and August in the region we had thought of visiting. So, after staying a very enjoyable time at Fontainebleau, we went to the Vosges, and at Plombières and Luxeuil we should have felt ourselves in paradise if it had not been for a sad deafness of George's, which kept us uneasy and made us hurry to that undesirable place, Frankfort, in order to consult Spiess. At Frankfort the nearest bath was the also undesirable Homburg; so we spent or wasted a fortnight there, winning little but the joy of getting away again. The journey home, which we took very easily, was interesting--through Metz, Verdun, Rheims, and Amiens. As to our house, spite of beautiful lawn, tall trees, fine kitchen-garden, and good, invigorating air, we have already made up our minds that it will not do for our home. Still, we have many things to enjoy, but we shall not probably remain here longer than to the end of October. My motherly love to all such young ones as may be around you. I do not disturb George in order to ask for messages from him, being sure that his love goes with mine. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 19th Sept. 1873.] I quite assent to your proposal that there should be a new edition of "Middlemarch" in one volume, at 7_s._ 6_d._--to be prepared at once, but not published too precipitately. I like your project of an illustration; and the financial arrangements you mention are quite acceptable to me. For one reason especially I am delighted that the book is going to be reprinted--namely, _that I can see the proof-sheets and make corrections_. Pray give orders that the sheets be sent to me. I should like the binding to be of a rich, sober color, with very plain Roman lettering. It might be called a "revised edition." Thanks for the extract from Mr. Collins's letter. I did not know that there was really a Lowick, in a Midland county too. Mr. Collins has my gratitude for feeling some regard towards Mr. Casaubon, in whose life _I_ lived with much sympathy. When I was at Oxford, in May, two ladies came up to me after dinner: one said, "How could you let Dorothea marry _that_ Casaubon?" The other, "Oh, I understand her doing that, but why did you let her marry the other fellow, whom I cannot bear?" Thus two "ardent admirers" wished that the book had been quite different from what it is. I wonder whether you have abandoned--as you seemed to agree that it would be wise to do--the project of bringing out my other books in a cheaper form than the present 3_s._ 6_d._, which, if it were not for the blemish of the figure illustrations, would be as pretty an edition as could be, and perhaps as cheap as my public requires. Somehow, the cheap books that crowd the stalls are always those which look as if they were issued from Pandemonium. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 11th Oct. 1873.] I am rather ashamed of our grumblings. We are really enjoying the country, and have more than our share of everything. George has happy mornings at his desk now, and we have fine bracing air to walk in--air which I take in as a sort of nectar. We like the bits of scenery round us better and better as we get them by heart in our walks and drives. The house, with all its defects, is very pretty, and more delightfully secluded, without being remote from the conveniences of the world, than any place we have before thought of as a possible residence for us. I am glad that you have been seeing the Cowper Temples. My knowledge of them has not gone beyond dining with them at Mrs. Tollemache's, and afterwards having a good conversational call from them, but they both struck me very agreeably. Mr. Henry Sidgwick is a chief favorite of mine--one of whom his friends at Cambridge say that they always expect him to act according to a higher standard than they think of attributing to any other chief man, or of imposing on themselves. "Though we kept our own fellowships without believing more than he did," one of them said to me, "we should have felt that Henry Sidgwick had fallen short if he had not renounced his." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 12th Oct. 1873.] Our plan is not to give up our London house, but to have a country place as a retreat. We want a good house in a lovely country, _away from rows of villas_, but within easy reach of all conveniences. This seems an immodest requirement in a world where one good is hardly to be got without renunciation of another. You perceive that we are getting very old and fastidious. I like to interpret your enjoyment of Brighton and its evening skies as a proof that you flourish there physically. All things are to be endured and counted even as a fuller life, with a body free from pain and depressing sensations of weakness; but illness is a partial death, and makes the world dim to us. We have no great strength to boast of; but we are so unspeakably happy in all other respects that we cannot grumble at this tax on us as elderly mortals. Our little Blanche grows in grace, and her parents have great delight in her--Charles being quite as fond a father as if he had beforehand been an idolizer of babies. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, Sunday, 20th Oct. 1873.] The chances of conversation were against my being quite clear to you yesterday as to the cases in which it seems to me that conformity is the higher rule. What happened to be said or not said is of no consequence in any other light than that of my anxiety not to appear what I should _hate to be_--which is surely not an ignoble, egoistic anxiety, but belongs to the worship of the Best. All the great religions of the world, historically considered, are rightly the objects of deep reverence and sympathy--they are the record of spiritual struggles, which are the types of our own. This is to me pre-eminently true of Hebrewism and Christianity, on which my own youth was nourished. And in this sense I have no antagonism towards any religious belief, but a strong outflow of sympathy. Every community met to worship the highest Good (which is understood to be expressed by God) carries me along in its main current; and if there were not reasons against my following such an inclination, I should go to church or chapel constantly for the sake of the delightful emotions of fellowship which come over me in religious assemblies--the very nature of such assemblies being the recognition of a binding belief or spiritual law, which is to lift us into willing obedience and save us from the slavery of unregulated passion or impulse. And with regard to other people, it seems to me that those who have no definite conviction which constitutes a protesting faith may often more beneficially cherish the good within them and be better members of society by a conformity, based on the recognized good in the public belief, than by a nonconformity which has nothing but negatives to utter. _Not_, of course, if the conformity would be accompanied by a consciousness of hypocrisy. That is a question for the individual conscience to settle. But there is enough to be said on the different points of view from which conformity may be regarded to hinder a ready judgment against those who continue to conform after ceasing to believe, in the ordinary sense. But with the utmost largeness of allowance for the difficulty of deciding in special cases, it must remain true that the highest lot is to have definite beliefs about which you feel that "necessity is laid upon you" to declare them, as something better which you are bound to try and give to those who have the worse. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 5th Nov. 1873.] It was a cheerful accompaniment to breakfast this morning to have a letter from you, with the pretty picture you suggested of Miss Blackwood's first ball. I am glad that I have seen the "little fairy," so as to be able to imagine her. We are both the better for the delicious air and quiet of the country. We, too, like you, were sorry to quit the woods and fields for the comparatively disturbed life which even we are obliged to lead in town. Letters requesting interviews can no longer be made void by one's absence; and I am much afflicted by these interruptions, which break up the day without any adequate result of good to any mortal. In the country the days have broad spaces, and the very stillness seems to give a delightful roominess to the hours. Is it not wonderful that the world can absorb so much "Middlemarch" at a guinea the copy? I shall be glad to hear particulars, which, I imagine, will lead to the conclusion that the time is coming for the preparation of a 7_s._ 6_d._ edition. I am not fond of reading proofs, but I am anxious to correct the sheets of this edition, both in relation to mistakes already standing, and to prevent the accumulation of others in the reprinting. I am slowly simmering towards another big book; but people seem so bent on giving supremacy to "Middlemarch" that they are sure not to like any future book so well. I had a letter from Mr. Bancroft (the American ambassador at Berlin) the other day, in which he says that everybody in Berlin reads "Middlemarch." He had to buy two copies for his house; and he found the rector of the university, a stupendous mathematician, occupied with it in the solid part of the day. I am entertaining you in this graceful way about myself because you will be interested to know what are the chances for our literature abroad. That Ashantee business seems to me hideous. What is more murderous than stupidity? To have a husband gone on such an expedition is a trial that passes my imagination of what it is possible to endure in the way of anxiety. We are looking forward to the "Inkerman" volume as something for me to read aloud. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 11th Nov. 1873.] During the latter part of our stay at Blackbrook we had become very fond of the neighborhood. The walks and drives round us were delightfully varied--commons, wooded lanes, wide pastures--and we felt regretfully that we were hardly likely to find again a country-house so secluded in a well-inhabited region. We have seen few people at present. The George Howards are come from a delicious, lonely _séjour_ in a tower of Bamborough Castle!--and he has brought many sketches home. That lodging would suit you, wouldn't it? A castle on a rock washed by the sea seems to me just a paradise for you. We have been reading John Mill's "Autobiography," like the rest of the world. The account of his early education and the presentation of his father are admirable; but there are some pages in the latter half that one would have liked to be different. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 6th Dec. 1873.] Our wish to see you after all the long months since June, added to your affectionate invitation, triumphs over our disinclination to move. So, unless something should occur to make the arrangement inconvenient to you, we will join the dear party on your hearth in the afternoon of the 24th, and stay with you till the 26th. Notwithstanding my trust in your words, I feel a lingering uneasiness lest we should be excluding some one else from enjoying Christmas with you. J.'s friend, Dr. Andrew Clark, has been prescribing for Mr. Lewes--ordering him to renounce the coffee which has been a chief charm of life to him, but being otherwise mild in his prohibitions. I hear with much comfort that you are better, and have recovered your usual activity. Please keep well till Christmas, and then love and pet me a little, for that is always very sweet. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 22d Dec. 1873.] In writing any careful presentation of human feelings, you must count on that infinite stupidity of readers who are always substituting their crammed notions of what ought to be felt for any attempt to recall truly what they themselves have felt under like circumstances. We are going to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our friends at Weybridge. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 28th Dec. 1873.] We have been spending our Christmas in the country, and it is only on my return that I got your kind note, with its pretty symbols of remembrance. Such little signs are very sweet, coming from those whom one loves well in spite of long separation. I am very glad to have seen you in your new home, and to be able to imagine you among your household treasures--especially to imagine both you and your husband in enjoyable health. We have been invalidish lately, and have put ourselves under the discipline of Dr. Andrew Clark, who is not one of the "three meat-meals and alcohol" physicians, but rather one of those who try to starve out dyspepsia. We both send our kind regards to Mr. Taylor, and hope that he may remain robust for his parliamentary campaign. Life, I trust, will deal gently with you in future, dear friend, and give you years of peace after your period of anxiety and of parting from old places and habits. [Sidenote: Journal, 1874.] _Jan. 1._--The happy old year, in which we have had constant enjoyment of life, notwithstanding much bodily _malaise_, is gone from us forever. More than in any former year of my life love has been poured forth to me from distant hearts, and in our home we have had that finish to domestic comfort which only faithful, kind servants can give. Our children are prosperous and happy--Charles evidently growing in mental efficiency; we have abundant wealth for more than our actual needs; and our unspeakable joy in each other has no other alloy than the sense that it must one day end in parting. My dear husband has a store of present and prospective good in the long work which is likely to stretch through the remaining years of his intellectual activity; and there have not been wanting signs that what he has already published is being appreciated rightly by capable persons. He is thinner than ever, but still he shows wonderful elasticity and nervous energy. I have been for a month rendered almost helpless for intellectual work by constant headache, but am getting a little more freedom. Nothing is wanting to my blessings but the uninterrupted power of work. For as to all my unchangeable imperfections I have resigned myself. _Jan. 17._--I received this morning, from Blackwood, the account of "Middlemarch" and of "The Spanish Gypsy" for 1873. Of the guinea edition of "Middlemarch," published in the spring, 2434 copies have been sold. Of "The Spanish Gypsy" 292 copies have been sold during 1873, and the remaining copies are only 197. Thus, out of 4470 which have been printed, 4273 have been distributed. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 12th Feb. 1874.] We have received the volume--your kind and valuable gift--and I have read it aloud with Mr. Lewes, all except the later pages, which we both feel too much to bear reading them in common. You have given a deeply interesting and, we think, instructive picture, and Mr. Lewes has expressed his wish that it had not been restricted to a private circulation. But I understand your shrinking from indiscriminate publicity, at least in the first instance. Perhaps, if many judges on whom you rely concur with Mr. Lewes, you will be induced to extend the possible benefit of the volume. I care so much for the demonstration of an intense joy in life on the basis of "plain living and high thinking" in this time of more and more eager scrambling after wealth and show. And then there are exquisite bits which you have rescued from that darkness to which his self-depreciation condemned them. I think I never read a more exquisite little poem than the one called "Christian Resignation;" and Mr. Lewes, when I read it aloud, at once exclaimed, "How very fine--read it again!" I am also much impressed with the wise mingling of moderation with sympathy in that passage, given in a note, from the article on Greg's "Political Essays." What must have been the effort which the writing cost you I can--not fully, but almost--imagine. But believe, dear friend, that in our judgment you have not poured out these recollections in a cry of anguish all in vain. I feel roused and admonished by what you have told, and if I--then others. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 20th Feb. 1874.] I imagined you absorbed by the political crisis, like the rest of the world except the Lord Chief-justice, who must naturally have felt his summing-up deserving of more attention. I, who am no believer in salvation by ballot, am rather tickled that the first experiment with it has turned against its adherents. I have been making what will almost certainly be my last corrections of the "Spanish Gypsy," and that causes me to look forward with special satisfaction to the probable exhaustion of the present edition. The corrections chiefly concern the quantity of the word Zincálo, which ought to be Zíncalo; but there are some other emendations; and, altogether, they make a difference to more than seventy pages. But it would still be worth while to retain the stereotypes, replacing simply the amended pages, there being about 400 in the whole book. I am sadly vexed that I did not think of having these corrections ready for the German reprint. I have been compunctious lately about my having sprinkled cold water on the proposal suggested by Mr. Simpson, of bringing out my novels in a cheaper way--on thinner paper and without illustrations. The compunction was roused by my happening, in looking at old records, to alight on some letters, one especially, written by a working-man, a certain E. Hall,[22] more than ten years ago, begging me to bring out my books in a form cheap enough to let a poor man more easily "get a read of them." Hence, if you and Mr. Simpson see good to revive the design in question, I am perfectly in accord. You did send me a copy of Lord Lytton's "Fables"--many thanks for doing so. Mr. Lewes had seen several of them in manuscript, and thought well of their merits. I am reading them gradually. They are full of graceful fancies and charming verse. So far as cleverness goes it seems to me he can do almost anything; and the leanings of his mind are towards the best things. The want I feel is of more definiteness and more weight. The two stanzas to his wife, placed before "Far and Near," are perfect. I think I have never written to you since I wanted to tell you that I admired very much the just spirit in which the notice of Mill's "Autobiography" was written in the Magazine. Poor Dickens's latter years wear a melancholy aspect, do they not? But some of the extracts from his letters in the last volume have surprisingly more freshness and naturalness of humor than any of the letters earlier given. Still, something should be done by dispassionate criticism towards the reform of our national habits in the matter of literary biography. Is it not odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk is raked, and every insignificant memorandum which he never meant for the public is printed for the gossiping amusement of people too idle to re-read his books? "He gave the people of his best. His worst he kept, his best he gave;" but there is a certain set, not a small one, who are titillated by the worst and indifferent to the best. I think this fashion is a disgrace to us all. It is something like the uncovering of the dead Byron's club-foot. Mr. Lewes is in a more flourishing condition than usual, having been helped by Dr. Andrew Clark, who ministers to all the brain-workers. I have been ill lately: weeks of _malaise_ having found their climax in lumbar-neuralgia, or something of that sort, which gave fits of pain severe enough to deserve even a finer name. My writing has not been stimulated as Scott's was under circumstances of a like sort, and I have nothing to tell you securely. Please give an expression of my well-founded sympathy to Mr. William Blackwood. My experience feelingly convinces me of the hardship there must be in his. I trust I shall hear of the lameness as a departed evil. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 6th Mch. 1874.] I send you by this post a small collection of my poems, which Mr. Lewes wishes me to get published in May. Such of them as have been already printed in a fugitive form have been received with many signs of sympathy, and every one of those I now send you represents an idea which I care for strongly, and wish to propagate as far as I can. Else I should forbid myself from adding to the mountainous heap of poetical collections. The form of volume I have in my eye is a delightful duodecimo edition of Keats's poems (without the "Endymion") published during his life: just the volume to slip in the pocket. Mine will be the least bit thicker. I should like a darkish green cover, with Roman lettering. But you will consider the physique and price of the book, and kindly let me know your thoughts. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 25th Mch. 1874.] I fear the fatal fact about your story[23] is the absence of God and hell. "My dear madam, you have not presented motives to the children!" It is really hideous to find that those who sit in the scribes' seats have got no further than the appeal to selfishness, which they call God. The old Talmudists were better teachers. They make Rachel remonstrate with God for his hardness, and remind him that she was kinder to her sister Leah than he to his people--thus correcting the traditional God by human sympathy. However, we must put up with our contemporaries, since we can neither live with our ancestors nor with posterity. It is cheering to see the programme of your new society. There certainly is an awakening of conscience about animals in general as our fellow-creatures--even the vogue of Balaam's ass is in that sense a good sign. A lady wrote to me the other day that when she went to church in the island of Sark the sermon turned on that remonstrant hero or heroine. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 27th Mch. 1874.] I can imagine how great an encouragement you feel from the enthusiasm generously expressed in Mr. C.'s letter. It is always an admirable impulse to express deeply felt admiration, but it is also possible that you have some grateful readers who do not write to you. I have heard men whose greatest delight is literature, say that they should never dream of writing to an author on the ground of his books alone. Poor Mr. Francis Newman must be aged now and rather weary of the world and explanations of the world. He can hardly be expected to take in much novelty. I have a sort of affectionate sadness in thinking of the interest which, in far-off days, I felt in his "Soul" and "Phases of Faith," and of the awe I had of him as a lecturer on mathematics at the Ladies' College. How much work he has done in the world which has left no deep, conspicuous mark, but has probably entered beneficially into many lives! [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 23d April, 1874.] How glorious this opening spring is! At this moment even London is so beautiful that I come home filled with the Park landscapes, and see them as a background to all my thoughts. Your account of Mr. George Dawson is rather melancholy. I remember him only as a bright, vigorous, young man--such as perhaps his sons are now. I imagine it is his fortune, or, rather, misfortune, to have talked too much and too early about the greatest things. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Mary Cross, 11th May, 1874.] I could not dwell on your sweet gift[24] yesterday--I should perhaps have begun to cry, which would not have been _convenable_ in a hostess. For I have been in a suffering, depressed condition lately, so your good, loving deed has come just at the right time--when I need the helpfulness that love brings me--and my heart turns to you with grateful blessing this Monday morning. I have been looking at the little paintings with a treble delight, because they were done for _me_, because you chose for them subjects of my "making," and because they are done with a promising charm of execution (which Mr. Lewes feels as well as I). It gives me special gladness that you have this sort of work before you. Some skill or other with the hands is needful for the completeness of the life, and makes a bridge over times of doubt and despondency. Perhaps it will please you to know that nineteen years ago, when Mr. Lewes and I were looking at a print of Goethe's statue by Ritzchl, which stands on a pedestal ornamented with _bassi relievi_ of his characters, I said (little believing that my wish would ever be fulfilled), "How I should like to be surrounded with creatures of my own making!" And yesterday, when I was looking at your gift, that little incident recurred to me. Your love seemed to have made me a miniature pedestal. I was comforted yesterday that you and J. had at least the pleasure of hearing Bice Trollope sing, to make some amends for the long, cold journey. Please do not any of you, forget that we shall only be three weeks more in this corner of the world, and that we want to see you as often as you care to come. Best love to all, the mother being chief among the all. [Sidenote: Journal, 1874.] _May 19._--This month has been published a volume of my poems--"Legend of Jubal, and other Poems." On the 1st of June we go into the country to the cottage, Earlswood Common, for four months, and I hope there to get deep shafts sunk in my prose book. My health has been a wretched drag on me during this last half-year. I have lately written "a symposium." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Cross, 14th June, 1874.] I have so much trust in your love for us that I feel sure you will like to know of our happiness in the secure peace of the country, and the good we already experience in soul and body from the sweet breezes over hill and common, the delicious silence, and the unbroken spaces of the day. Just now the chill east wind has brought a little check to our pleasure in our long afternoon drives; and I could wish that Canon Kingsley and his fellow-worshippers of that harsh divinity could have it reserved entirely for themselves as a tribal god. We think the neighborhood so lovely that I must beg you to tell J. we are in danger of settling here unless he makes haste to find us a house in your "country-side"--a house with undeniable charms, on high ground, in a strictly rural neighborhood (water and gas laid on, nevertheless), to be vacant precisely this autumn! My philosopher is writing away with double _verve_ in a projecting window, where he can see a beautiful green slope crowned and studded with large trees. I, too, have an agreeable corner in another room. Our house has the essentials of comfort, and we have reason to be contented with it. I confess that my chief motive for writing about ourselves is to earn some news of you, which will not be denied me by one or other of the dear pairs of hands always ready to do us a kindness. Our Sunday is really a Sabbath now--a day of thorough peace. But I shall get hungry for a sight of some of the Sunday visitors before the end of September. I include all your family in a spiritual embrace, and am always yours lovingly. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 16th June, 1874.] We are revelling in the peace of the country, and have no drawback to our delight except the cold winds, which have forced us to put on winter clothing for the last four or five days. Our wide common is very breezy, and the wind makes mournful music round our walls. But I should think it is not possible to find a much healthier region than this round Reigate and Redhill; and it is prettier than half the places one crosses the Channel to see. We have been hunting about for a permanent country home in the neighborhood, but no house is so difficult to get as one which has at once seclusion and convenience of position, which is neither of the suburban-villa style nor of the grand hall and castle dimensions. The restoration of the empire (in France), which is a threatening possibility, seems to me a degrading issue. In the restoration of the monarchy I should have found something to rejoice at, but the traditions of the empire, both first and second, seem to my sentiment bad. Some form of military despotism must be, as you say, the only solution where no one political party knows how to behave itself. The American pattern is certainly being accepted as to senatorial manners. I dare say you have been to Knebworth and talked over French matters with Lord Lytton. We are grieved to hear from him but a poor account of sweet Lady Lytton's health and spirits. She is to me one of the most charming types of womanliness, and I long for her to have all a woman's best blessings. The good news about the small remainder of "Jubal" is very welcome, and I will write at once to Mr. Simpson to send him my two or three corrections, and my wishes about the new edition. The price of the book will well bear a thicker and a handsomely tinted paper, especially now it has proved movable; and I felt so much the difference to the eye and touch of the copies on rich tinted paper, that I was much vexed with myself for having contributed to the shabby appearance of the current edition by suggesting the thin Keats volume as a model. People have become used to more luxurious editions; and I confess to the weakness of being affected by paper and type in something of the same subtile way I am affected by the odor of a room. Many thanks for Lord Neaves's pleasant little book, which is a capital example of your happily planned publication. I came down here half poisoned by the French theatre, but I am flourishing now, and am brewing my future big book with more or less (generally less) belief in the quality of the liquor which will be drawn off. The secured peacefulness and the pure air of the country make our time of double worth; and we mean to give no invitations to London friends desirous of change. We are selfishly bent on dual solitude. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 1st July, 1874.] I am so glad to know from your kind letter that you are interesting yourself, with Madame Belloc, in the poor workhouse girls. You see my only social work is to rejoice in the labors of others, while I live in luxurious remoteness from all turmoil. Of course you have seen Mrs. Senior's report. I read it, and thought it very wise, very valuable in many ways, and since then she has sent me word how much she has been worried about it by (as I imagine) obstructive officials. We are revelling in our country peacefulness, in spite of the chills and rain, driving about every day that the weather will allow, and finding in each drive new beauties of this loveliest part of a lovely country. We are looking out for a house in this neighborhood as a permanent retreat; not with the idea of giving up our London house, at least for some years, but simply of having a place to which we may come for about six months of the year, and perhaps finally shrink into altogether. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 1st July, 1874.] Only the day before your letter came to me I had been saying, "I wonder how our dear Mrs. William Smith is?" so that your impulse to write to me satisfied a need of mine. I cannot help rejoicing that you are in the midst of lovely scenery again, for I had had a presentiment that Cambridge was antipathetic to you; and, indeed, I could not have imagined that you would be in the right place there but for the promised helpfulness of your presence to a young friend. You tell me much that is interesting. Your picture of Mr. and Mrs. Stirling, and what you say of the reasons why one may wish even for the anguish of being _left_ for the sake of waiting on the beloved one to the end--all that goes to my heart of hearts. It is what I think of almost daily. For death seems to me now a close, real experience, like the approach of autumn or winter, and I am glad to find that advancing life brings this power of imagining the nearness of death I never had till of late years. I remember all you told me of your niece's expected marriage, and your joy in the husband who has chosen her. It is wealth you have--that of several sweet nieces to whom being with you is a happiness. You can feel some sympathy in their cheerfulness, even though sorrow is always your only private good--can you not, dear friend?--and the time is short at the utmost. The blessed reunion, if it may come, must be patiently waited for; and such good as you can do others, by loving looks and words, must seem to you like a closer companionship with the gentleness and benignity which you justly worshipped while it was visibly present, and still more, perhaps, now it is veiled, and is a memory stronger than vision of outward things. We are revelling in the sweet peace of the country, and shall remain here till the end of September. Mr. Lewes sends his affectionate remembrances with mine. I am scribbling while he holds my bed-candle, so pray forgive any incoherency. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 17th July, 1874.] I have two questions to ask of your benevolence. First, was there not some village near Stonehenge where you stayed the night, nearer to Stonehenge than Amesbury? Secondly, do you know anything specific about Holmwood _Common_ as a place of residence? It is ravishingly beautiful; is it in its higher part thoroughly unobjectionable as a site for a dwelling? It seems that they have been having the heat of Tophet in London, whereas we have never had more than agreeable sunniness, this common being almost always breezy. And the country around us must, I think, be the loveliest of its undulating, woody kind in all England. I remember, when we were driving together last, something was said about my disposition to melancholy. I ought to have said then, but did not, that I am no longer one of those whom Dante found in hell border because they had been sad under the blessed sunlight.[25] I am uniformly cheerful now--feeling the preciousness of these moments, in which I still possess love and thought. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d Aug. 1874.] It was sweet of you to write me that nice long letter. I was athirst for some news of you. Life, as you say, is a big thing. No wonder there comes a season when we cease to look round and say, "How shall I enjoy?" but, as in a country which has been visited by the sword, pestilence, and famine, think only how we shall help the wounded, and how find seed for the next harvest--how till the earth and make a little time of gladness for those who are being born without their own asking. I am so glad of what you say about the Latin. Go on conquering and to conquer a little kingdom for yourself there. We are, as usual, getting more than our share of peace and other good, except in the matter of warmth and sunshine. Our common is a sort of ball-room for the winds, and on the warmest days we have had here we have found them at their music and dancing. They roar round the corners of our house in a wintry fashion, while the sun is shining on the brown grass. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 8th Aug. 1874.] Thanks for sending me the good news. The sale of "Middlemarch" is wonderful "out of all whooping," and, considered as manifesting the impression made by the book, is more valuable than any amount of immediate distribution. I suppose there will be a new edition of the "Spanish Gypsy" wanted by Christmas; and I have a carefully corrected copy by me, containing my final alterations, to which I desire to have the stereotyped plates adjusted. As to confidence in the work to be done I am somewhat in the condition suggested to Armgart, "How will you bear the poise of eminence with dread of falling?" And the other day, having a bad headache, I did what I have sometimes done before at intervals of five or six years--looked into three or four novels to see what the world was reading. The effect was paralyzing, and certainly justifies me in that abstinence from novel-reading which, I fear, makes me seem supercilious or churlish to the many persons who send me their books, or ask me about their friends' books. To be delivered from all doubts as to one's justification in writing at this stage of the world, one should have either a plentiful faith in one's own exceptionalness, or a plentiful lack of money. Tennyson said to me, "Everybody writes so well now;" and if the lace is only machine-made, it still pushes out the hand-made, which has differences only for a fine, fastidious appreciation. To write indifferently after having written well--that is, from a true, individual store which makes a special contribution--is like an eminent clergyman spoiling his reputation by lapses, and neutralizing all the good he did before. However, this is superfluous stuff to write to you. It is only a sample of the way in which depression works upon me. I am not the less grateful for all the encouragement I get. I saw handsome Dean Liddell at Oxford. He is really a grand figure. They accuse him of being obstructive to much-needed reforms. For my own part I am thankful to him for his share in "Liddell and Scott" and his capital little Roman History. _À propos_ of books and St. Andrews, I have read aloud to Mr. Lewes Professor Flint's volume, and we have both been much pleased with its conscientious presentation and thorough effort at fairness. We have enjoyed the country, as we always do; but we have been, for our constitutions, a little unfortunate in the choice of a spot which is the windiest of the windy. That heat which we have read and heard of has hardly been at all felt by us; and we have both suffered a little from chills. You will perceive from my letter I am just now possessed by an evil spirit in the form of headache; but on the whole I am much the stronger for the peace and the delicious air, which I take in as a conscious addition to the good of living. We have been near buying a little country hermitage on Holmwood Common--a grand spot, with a view hard to match in our flat land. But we have been frightened away by its windiness. I rather envy Major Lockhart and the rest of the golfian enthusiasts; to have a seductive idleness which is really a healthy activity is invaluable to people who have desk-work. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 11th Nov. 1874.] I feel rather disgraced by the fact that I received your last kind letter nearly two months ago. But a brief note of mine, written immediately on hearing of you from Mrs. Fields, must have crossed yours and the Professor's kind letters to me; and I hope it proved to you that I love you in my heart. We were in the country then, but soon afterwards we set out on a six-weeks' journey, and we are but just settled in our winter home. Those unspeakable troubles in which I necessarily felt more for _you_ than for any one else concerned, are, I trust, well at an end, and you are enjoying a time of peace. It was like your own sympathetic energy to be able, even while the storm was yet hanging in your sky, to write to me about my husband's books. Will you not agree with me that there is one comprehensive Church whose fellowship consists in the desire to purify and ennoble human life, and where the best members of all narrower Churches may call themselves brother and sister in spite of differences? I am writing to your dear husband as well as to you, and in answer to his question about Goethe, I must say, for my part, that I think he had a strain of mysticism in his soul--of so much mysticism as I think inevitably belongs to a full, poetic nature--I mean the delighted bathing of the soul in emotions which overpass the outlines of definite thought. I should take the "Imitation" as a type (it is one which your husband also mentions), but perhaps I might differ from him in my attempt to interpret the unchangeable and universal meanings of that great book. Mr. Lewes, however, who has a better right than I to a conclusion about Goethe, thinks that he entered into the experience of the mystic--as in the confessions of the _Schöne Seele_--simply by force of his sympathetic genius, and that his personal individual bent was towards the clear and plastic exclusively. Do not imagine that Mr. Lewes is guided in his exposition by theoretic antipathies. He is singularly tolerant of difference, and able to admire what is unlike himself. He is busy now correcting the proofs of his second volume. I wonder whether you have headaches and are rickety as we are, or whether you have a glorious immunity from those ills of the flesh. Your husband's photograph looks worthy to represent one of those wondrous Greeks who wrote grand dramas at eighty or ninety. I am decidedly among the correspondents who may exercise their friends in the virtue of giving and hoping for nothing again. Otherwise I am unprofitable. Yet believe me, dear friend, I am always with lively memories of you, yours affectionately. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1874.] We have spent this year in much happiness, and are sorry to part with it. From the beginning of June to the end of September we had a house in Surrey, and enjoyed delicious quiet with daily walks and drives in the lovely scenery round Reigate and Dorking. October we spent in a country visit to friends (Six-Mile Bottom) and in a journey to Paris, and through the Ardennes homeward, finishing off our travels by some excursions in our own country, which we are ready to say we will never quit again--it is so much better worth knowing than most places one travels abroad to see. We make ourselves amends for being in London by going to museums to see the wonderful works of men; and the other day I was taken over the Bank of England and to Woolwich Arsenal--getting object-lessons in my old age, you perceive. Mr. Lewes is half through the proof-correcting of his second volume; and it will be matter of rejoicing when the other half is done, for we both hate proof-correcting (do you?)--the writing always seems worse than it really is when one reads it in patches, looking out for mistakes. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby (now Lady Ponsonby), 10th Dec. 1874.] My books have for their main bearing a conclusion the opposite of that in which your studies seem to have painfully imprisoned you--a conclusion without which I could not have cared to write any representation of human life--namely, that the fellowship between man and man which has been the principle of development, social and moral, is not dependent on conceptions of what is not man: and that the idea of God, so far as it has been a high spiritual influence, is the ideal of a goodness entirely human (_i.e._, an exaltation of the human). Have you quite fairly represented yourself in saying that you have ceased to pity your suffering fellow-men, because you can no longer think of them as individualities of immortal duration, in some other state of existence than this of which you know the pains and the pleasures?--that you feel less for them now you regard them as more miserable? And, on a closer examination of your feelings, should you find that you had lost all sense of quality in actions, all possibility of admiration that yearns to imitate, all keen sense of what is cruel and injurious, all belief that your conduct (and therefore the conduct of others) can have any difference of effect on the well-being of those immediately about you (and therefore on those afar off), whether you carelessly follow your selfish moods, or encourage that vision of others' needs which is the source of justice, tenderness, sympathy in the fullest sense--I cannot believe that your strong intellect will continue to see, in the conditions of man's appearance on this planet, a destructive relation to your sympathy. This seems to me equivalent to saying that you care no longer for color, now you know the laws of the spectrum. As to the necessary combinations through which life is manifested, and which seem to present themselves to you as a hideous fatalism, which ought logically to petrify your volition, have they, _in fact_, any such influence on your ordinary course of action in the primary affairs of your existence as a human, social, domestic creature? And if they don't hinder you from taking measures for a bath, without which you know that you cannot secure the delicate cleanliness which is your second nature, why should they hinder you from a line of resolve in a higher strain of duty to your ideal, both for yourself and others? But the consideration of molecular physics is not the direct ground of human love and moral action any more than it is the direct means of composing a noble picture or of enjoying great music. One might as well hope to dissect one's own body and be merry in doing it, as take molecular physics (in which you must banish from your field of view what is specifically human) to be your dominant guide, your determiner of motives, in what is solely human. That every study has its bearing on every other is true; but pain and relief, love and sorrow, have their peculiar history, which make an experience and knowledge over and above the swing of atoms. The teaching you quote as George Sand's would, I think, deserve to be called nonsensical if it did not deserve to be called wicked. What sort of "culture of the intellect" is that which, instead of widening the mind to a fuller and fuller response to all the elements of our existence, isolates it in a moral stupidity?--which flatters egoism with the possibility that a complex and refined human society can continue, wherein relations have no sacredness beyond the inclination of changing moods?--or figures to itself an æsthetic human life that one may compare to that of the fabled grasshoppers who were once men, but having heard the song of the Muses could do nothing but sing, and starved themselves so till they died and had a fit resurrection as grasshoppers? "And this," says Socrates, "was the return the Muses made them." With regard to the pains and limitations of one's personal lot, I suppose there is not a single man or woman who has not more or less need of that stoical resignation which is often a hidden heroism, or who, in considering his or her past history, is not aware that it has been cruelly affected by the ignorant or selfish action of some fellow-being in a more or less close relation of life. And to my mind there can be no stronger motive than this perception, to an energetic effort that the lives nearest to us shall not suffer in a like manner from _us_. The progress of the world--which you say can only come at the right time--can certainly never come at all save by the modified action of the individual beings who compose the world; and that we can say to ourselves with effect, "There is an order of considerations which I will keep myself continually in mind of, so that they may continually be the prompters of certain feelings and actions," seems to me as undeniable as that we can resolve to study the Semitic languages and apply to an Oriental scholar to give us daily lessons. What would your keen wit say to a young man who alleged the physical basis of nervous action as a reason why he could not possibly take that course? As to duration and the way in which it affects your view of the human history, what is really the difference to your imagination between infinitude and billions when you have to consider the value of human experience? Will you say that, since your life has a term of threescore years and ten, it was really a matter of indifference whether you were a cripple with a wretched skin disease, or an active creature with a mind at large for the enjoyment of knowledge, and with a nature which has attracted others to you? Difficulties of thought--acceptance of what is, without full comprehension--belong to every system of thinking. The question is to find the least incomplete. When I wrote the first page of this letter I thought I was going to say that I had not courage to enter on the momentous points you had touched on in the hasty, brief form of a letter. But I have been led on sentence after sentence--not, I fear, with any inspiration beyond that of my anxiety. You will at least pardon any ill-advised things I may have written on the prompting of the moment. [Sidenote: Journal, 1875.] _Jan. 13._--Here is a great gap since I last made a record. But the time has been filled full of happiness. A second edition of "Jubal" was published in August; and the fourth edition of the "Spanish Gypsy" is all sold. This morning I received a copy of the fifth edition. The amount of copies sold of "Middlemarch" up to 31st December is between nineteen and twenty thousand. Yesterday I also received the good news that the engagement between Emily Cross and Mr. Otter is settled. The last year has been crowded with proofs of affection for me and of value for what work I have been able to do. This makes the best motive or encouragement to do more; but, as usual, I am suffering much from doubt as to the worth of what I am doing, and fear lest I may not be able to complete it so as to make it a contribution to literature and not a mere addition to the heap of books. I am now just beginning the part about "Deronda," at page 234. [Sidenote: Letter to Francis Otter, 13th (?) Jan. 1875.] Your letter was a deeply felt pleasure to me last night; and I have one from Emily this morning, which makes my joy in the prospect of your union as thorough as it could well be. I could not wish either her words or yours to be in the least different. Long ago, when I had no notion that the event was probable, my too hasty imagination had prefigured it and longed for it. To say this is to say something of the high regard with which all I have known of you has impressed me--for I hold our sweet Emily worthy of one who may be reckoned among the best. The possibility of a constantly growing blessedness in marriage is to me the very basis of good in our mortal life; and the believing hope that you and she will experience that blessedness seems to enrich me for the coming years. I shall count it among my strengthening thoughts that you both think of me with affection, and care for my sympathy. Mr. Lewes shares in all the feelings I express, and we are rejoicing together. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 15th Jan. 1875.] Please never wonder at my silence, or believe that I bear you in any the less lively remembrance because I do not write to you. Writing notes is the _crux_ of my life. It often interferes with my morning hours (before 1 o'clock), which is the only time I have for quiet work. For certain letters are unavoidable demands, and though my kind husband writes them for me whenever he can, they are not all to be done by proxy. That glorious bit of work of yours about the Home for Girls[26] is delightful to hear of. Hardly anything is more wanted, I imagine, than homes for girls in various employments--or, rather, for unmarried women of all ages. I heard also the other day that your name was among those of the ladies interested in the beginning of a union among the bookbinding women, which one would like to succeed and spread. I hope, from your ability to work so well, that you are in perfect health yourself. Our friend Barbara, too, looks literally the pink of well-being, and cheers one's soul by her interest in all worthy things. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby (now Lady Ponsonby), 30th Jan. 1875.] I should urge you to consider your early religious experience as a portion of valid knowledge, and to cherish its emotional results in relation to objects and ideas which are either substitutes or metamorphoses of the earlier. And I think we must not take every great physicist--or other "ist"--for an apostle, but be ready to suspect him of some crudity concerning relations that lie outside his special studies, if his exposition strands us on results that seem to stultify the most ardent, massive experience of mankind, and hem up the best part of our feelings in stagnation. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 7th Feb. 1875.] Last night I finished reading aloud to Mr. Lewes the "Inkerman" volume, and we both thank you heartily for the valuable present. It is an admirable piece of writing; such pure, lucid English is what one rarely gets to read. The masterly marshalling of the material is certainly in contrast with the movements described. To my non-military mind the Inkerman affair seems nothing but a brave blundering into victory. Great traits of valor--Homeric movements--but also a powerful lack of brains in the form of generalship. I cannot see that the ordering up of the two 18-pounder guns was a vast mental effort, unless the weight of the guns is to be counted in the order as well as in the execution. But the grand fact of the thousands beaten by the hundreds remains under all interpretation. Why the Russians, in their multitudinous mass, should have chosen to retreat into Sebastopol, moving at their leisure, and carrying off all their artillery, seems a mystery in spite of General Dannenberg's memorable answer to Mentschikoff. There are some splendid movements in the story--the tradition of the "Minden Yell," the "Men, remember Albuera," and the officer of the 77th advancing with, "Then I will go myself," with what followed, are favorite bits of mine. My mind is in the anomalous condition of hating war and loving its discipline, which has been an incalculable contribution to the sentiment of duty. I have not troubled myself to read any reviews of the book. My eye caught one in which the author's style was accused of affectation. But I have long learned to apply to reviewers an aphorism which tickled me in my childhood--"There must be some such to be some of all sorts." Pray tell Mr. Simpson that I was much pleased with the new dress of the "Spanish Gypsy." The first part of "Giannetto" raised my interest, but I was disappointed in the unravelling of the plot. It seems to me neither really nor ideally satisfactory. But it is a long while since I read a story newer than "Rasselas," which I re-read two years ago, with a desire to renew my childish delight in it, when it was one of my best-loved companions. So I am a bad judge of comparative merits among popular writers. I am obliged to fast from fiction, and fasting is known sometimes to weaken the stomach. I ought to except Miss Thackeray's stories--which I cannot resist when they come near me--and bits of Mr. Trollope, for affection's sake. You would not wonder at my fasting, if you knew how deplorably uncalled-for and "everything-that-it-should-not-be" my own fiction seems to me in times of inward and outward fog--like this morning, when the light is dim on my paper. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby (now Lady Ponsonby), 11th Feb. 1875.] _Do_ send me the papers you have written--I mean as a help and instruction to me. I need very much to know how ideas lie in other minds than my own, that I may not miss their difficulties while I am urging only what satisfies myself. I shall be deeply interested in knowing exactly what you wrote at that particular stage. Please remember that I don't consider myself a teacher, but a companion in the struggle of thought. What can consulting physicians do without pathological knowledge? and the more they have of it, the less absolute--the more tentative--are their procedures. You will see by the _Fortnightly_, which you have not read, that Mr. Spencer is very anxious to vindicate himself from neglect of the logical necessity that the evolution of the abstraction "society" is dependent on the modified action of the units; indeed, he is very sensitive on the point of being supposed to teach an enervating fatalism. Consider what the human mind _en masse_ would have been if there had been no such combination of elements in it as has produced poets. All the philosophers and _savants_ would not have sufficed to supply that deficiency. And how can the life of nations be understood without the inward light of poetry--that is, of emotion blending with thought? But the beginning and object of my letter must be the end--please send me your papers. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 10th May, 1875.] We cannot believe that there is reason to fear any painful observations on the publication of the memoir in one volume with "Gravenhurst" and the essays. The memoir is written with exquisite judgment and feeling; and without estimating too highly the taste and carefulness of journalists in their ordinary treatment of books, I think that we may count on their not being impressed otherwise than respectfully and sympathetically with the character of your dear husband's work, and with the sketch of his pure, elevated life. I would also urge you to rely on the fact that Mr. Blackwood thinks the publication desirable, as a guarantee that it will not prove injudicious in relation to the outer world--I mean, the world beyond the circle of your husband's especial friends and admirers. I am grieved to hear of your poor eyes having been condemned to an inaction which, I fear, may have sadly increased the vividness of that inward seeing, already painfully strong in you. There has been, I trust, always some sympathetic young companionship to help you--some sweet voice to read aloud to you, or to talk of those better things in human lots which enable us to look at the good of life a little apart from our own particular sorrow. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 11th May, 1875.] The doctors have decided that there is nothing very grave the matter with me: and I am now so much better that we even think it possible I may go to see Salvini, in the Gladiator, to-morrow evening. This is to let you know that there is no reason against your coming, with or without Margaret, at the usual time on Friday. Your words of affection in the note you sent me are very dear to my remembrance. I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 14th May, 1875.] You are right--there is no time, but only the sense of not having time; especially when, instead of filling the days with useful exertion, as you do, one wastes them in being ill, as I have been doing of late. However, I am better now, and will not grumble. Thanks for all the dear words in your letter. Be sure I treasure the memory of your faithful friendship, which goes back--you know how far. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 1st June, 1875.] If you could, some day this week or the beginning of next, allow me half an hour's quiet _tête-à-tête_, I should be very much obliged by such a kindness. The trivial questions I want to put could hardly be shapen in a letter so as to govern an answer that would satisfy my need. And I trust that the interview will hardly be more troublesome to you than writing. I hope, when you learn the pettiness of my difficulties, you will not be indignant, like a great doctor called in to the favorite cat. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 9th Aug. 1875, from Rickmansworth.] We admire our bit of Hertfordshire greatly; but I should be glad of more breezy common land and far-reaching outlooks. For fertility, wealth of grand trees, parks, mansions, and charming bits of stream and canal, our neighborhood can hardly be excelled. And our house is a good old red-brick Georgian place, with a nice bit of garden and meadow and river at the back. Perhaps we are too much in the valley, and have too large a share of mist, which often lies white on our meadows in the early evening. But who has not had too much moisture in this calamitously wet, cold summer? Mr. Lewes is very busy, but not in zoologizing. We reserve that for October, when we mean to go to the coast for a few weeks. It is a long while since I walked on broad sands and watched the receding tide; and I look forward agreeably to a renewal of that old pleasure. I am not particularly flourishing in this pretty region, probably owing to the low barometer. The air has been continually muggy, and has lain on one's head like a thick turban. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 14th Aug. 1875.] What a comfort that you are at home again and well![27] The sense of your nearness had been so long missing to us that we had begun to take up with life as inevitably a little less cheerful than we remembered it to have been formerly, without thinking of restoration. My box is quite dear to me, and shall be used for stamps, as you recommend, unless I find another use that will lead me to open it and think of you the oftener. It is very precious to me that you bore me in your mind, and took that trouble to give me pleasure--in which you have succeeded. Our house here is rather a fine old brick Georgian place, with a lovely bit of landscape; but I think we have suffered the more from the rainy, close weather, because we are in a valley, and can see the mists lie in a thick, white stratum on our meadows. Mr. Lewes has been, on the whole, flourishing and enjoying--writing away with vigor, and making a discovery or theory at the rate of one per diem. Of me you must expect no good. I have been in a piteous state of debility in body and depression in mind. My book seems to me so unlikely ever to be finished in a way that will make it worth giving to the world, that it is a kind of glass in which I behold my infirmities. That expedition on the Thames would be a great delight, if it were possible to us. But our arrangements forbid it. Our loving thanks to Mr. Druce, as well as to you, for reviving the thought. We are to remain here till the 23d of September; then to fly through town, or at least only perch there for a night or so, and then go down to the coast, while the servants clean our house. We expect that Bournemouth will be our destination. Let us have news of you all again soon. Let us comfort each other while it is day, for the night cometh. I hope this change of weather, in which we are glorying both for the country's sake and our own, will not make Weybridge too warm for Mrs. Cross. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby, 19th Aug. 1875.] I don't mind how many letters I receive from one who interests me as much as you do. The receptive part of correspondence I can carry on with much alacrity. It is writing answers that I groan over. Please take it as a proof of special feeling that I declined answering your kind inquiries by proxy. This corner of Hertfordshire is as pretty as it can be of the kind. There are really rural bits at every turn. But for my particular taste I prefer such a region as that round Haslemere--with wide, furzy commons and a grander horizon. Also I prefer a country where I don't make bad blood by having to see one public house to every six dwellings--which is literally the case in many spots around us. My gall rises at the rich brewers in Parliament and out of it, who plant these poison shops for the sake of their million-making trade, while probably their families are figuring somewhere as refined philanthropists or devout Evangelicals and Ritualists. You perceive from this that I am dyspeptic and disposed to melancholy views. In fact, I have not been flourishing, but I am getting a little better; grateful thanks that you will care to know it. On the whole the sins of brewers, with their drugged ale and devil's traps, depress me less than my own inefficiency. But every fresh morning is an opportunity that one can look forward to for exerting one's will. I shall not be satisfied with your philosophy till you have conciliated necessitarianism--I hate the ugly word--with the practice of willing strongly, willing to will strongly, and so on, that being what you certainly can do and have done about a great many things in life, whence it is clear that there is nothing in truth to hinder you from it--except, you will say, the absence of a motive. But that absence I don't believe in in your case--only in the case of empty, barren souls. Are you not making a transient confusion of intuitions with innate ideas? The most thorough experientialists admit intuition--_i.e._, direct impressions of sensibility underlying all proof, as necessary starting-points for thought. [Sidenote: Journal, 1875.] _Oct. 10._--On the 15th June, we went to a house we had taken at Rickmansworth. Here, in the end of July, we received the news that our dear Bertie had died on June 29th. Our stay at Rickmansworth, though otherwise peaceful, was not marked by any great improvement in health from the change to country instead of town--rather the contrary. We left on 23d September, and then set off on a journey into Wales, which was altogether unfortunate on account of the excessive rain. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 10th Oct. 1875.] I behaved rather shabbily in not thanking you otherwise than by proxy for the kind letter you sent me to Rickmansworth, but I had a bad time down there, and did less of everything than I desired. Last night we returned from our trip--a very lively word for a journey made in the worst weather; and since I am, on the whole, the better for a succession of small discomforts in hotels, and struggling walks taken under an umbrella, I have no excuse for not writing a line to my neglected correspondents. You will laugh at our nervous caution in depositing our MSS. at the Union Bank before we set out. We could have borne to hear that our house had been burned down, provided no lives were lost, and our unprinted matter, our _oeuvres inédites_, were safe out of it. About _my_ unprinted matter, Mr. Lewes thinks it will not be well to publish the first part till February. The four first monthly parts are ready for travelling now. It will be well to begin the printing in good time, so that I may not be hurried with the proofs; and I must beg Mr. Simpson to judge for me in that matter with kind carefulness. I can't say that I am at all satisfied with the book, or that I have a comfortable sense of doing in it what I want to do; but Mr. Lewes _is_ satisfied with it, and insists that since he is as anxious as possible for it to be fine, I ought to accept his impressions as trustworthy. So I resign myself. I read aloud the "Abode of Snow" at Rickmansworth, to our mutual delight; and we are both very much obliged to you for the handsome present. But what an amazing creature is this Andrew Wilson to have kept pluck for such travelling while his body was miserably ailing! One would have said that he had more than the average spirit of hardy men to have persevered even in good health after a little taste of the difficulties he describes. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 20th Oct. 1875.] The arrangements as to the publication of my next book are already determined on. Ever since "Adam Bede" appeared I have been continually having proposals from the proprietors or editors of periodicals, but I have always declined them, except in the case of "Romola," which appeared in the _Cornhill_, and was allowed to take up a varying and unusual number of pages. I have the strongest objection to cutting up my work into little bits; and there is no motive to it on my part, since I have a large enough public already. But, even apart from that objection, it would not now be worth the while of any magazine or journal to give me a sum such as my books yield in separate publication. I had £7000 for "Romola," but the mode in which "Middlemarch" was issued brings in a still larger sum. I ought to say, however, that the question is not entirely one of money with me: if I could gain _more_ by splitting my writing into small parts, I would not do it, because the effect would be injurious as a matter of art. So much detail I trouble you with to save misapprehension. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Nov. 1875.] Your enjoyment of the proofs cheers me greatly; and pray thank Mrs. Blackwood for her valuable hints on equine matters. I have not only the satisfaction of using those hints, I allow myself the inference that where there is no criticism on like points I have made no mistake. I should be much obliged to Mr. Simpson--whom I am glad that Gwendolen has captivated--if he would rate the printers a little about their want of spacing. I am anxious that my poor heroes and heroines should have all the advantage that paper and print can give them. It will perhaps be a little comfort to you to know that poor Gwen is spiritually saved, but "so as by fire." Don't you see the process already beginning? I have no doubt you do, for you are a wide-awake reader. But what a climate to expect good writing in! Skating in the morning and splashy roads in the afternoon is just typical of the alternation from frigid to flaccid in the author's bodily system, likely to give a corresponding variety to the style. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1875.] I got my head from under the pressure of other matters, like a frog from under the water, to send you my November greeting. My silence through the rest of the months makes you esteem me the more, I hope, seeing that you yourself hate letter-writing--a remarkable exception to the rule that people like doing what they can do well, if one can call that a rule of which the reverse seems more frequent--namely, that they like doing what they do ill. We stayed till nearly the end of September at the house we had taken in Hertfordshire. After that we went into Wales for a fortnight, and were under umbrellas nearly the whole time. I wonder if you all remember an old governess of mine who used to visit me at Foleshill--a Miss Lewis? I have found her out. She is living at Leamington, very poor as well as old, but cheerful, and so delighted to be remembered with gratitude. How very old we are all getting! But I hope you don't mind it any more than I do. One sees so many contemporaries that one is well in the fashion. The approach of parting is the bitterness of age. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Dec. 1875.] Your letter is an agreeable tonic, very much needed, for that wretched hinderance of a cold last week has trailed after it a series of headaches worse than itself. An additional impression, like Mr. Langford's, of the two volumes is really valuable, as a sign that I have not so far failed in relation to a variety of readers. But you know that in one sense I count nothing done as long as anything remains to do; and it always seems to me that the worst difficulty is still to come. In the sanest, soberest judgment, however, I think the third volume (which I have not yet finished) would be regarded as the difficult bridge. I will not send you any more MS. until I can send the whole of vol. iii. We think that Mr. Simpson has conducted our Australian business admirably. Remembering that but for his judgment and consequent activity we might have got no publication at all in that quarter, we may well be content with £200. Mr. Lewes has not got the Life of Heine, and will be much pleased and obliged by your gift. Major Lockhart's lively letter gives one a longing for the fresh, breezy life and fine scenery it conjures up. You must let me know when there is a book of his, because when I have done my own I shall like to read something else by him. I got much pleasure out of the two books I did read. But when I am writing, or only thinking of writing, fiction of my own, I cannot risk the reading of other English fiction. I was obliged to tell Anthony Trollope so when he sent me the first part of his "Prime Minister," though this must seem sadly ungracious to those who don't share my susceptibilities. Apparently there are wild reports about the subject-matter of "Deronda"--among the rest, that it represents French life! But that is hardly more ridiculous than the supposition that after refusing to go to America, I should undertake to describe society there! It is wonderful how "Middlemarch" keeps afloat in people's minds. Somebody told me that Mr. Henry Sidgwick said it was a bold thing to write another book after "Middlemarch," and we must prepare ourselves for the incalculableness of the public reception in the first instance. I think I have heard you say that the chief result of your ample experience has been to convince you of that incalculableness. What a blow for Miss Thackeray--the death of that sister to whom she was so closely bound in affection. [Sidenote: Journal, 1875.] _Dec. 25._--After our return from Wales in October I grew better and wrote with some success. For the last three weeks, however, I have been suffering from a cold and its effects so as to be unable to make any progress. Meanwhile the two first volumes of "Daniel Deronda" are in print, and the first book is to be published on February 1st. I have thought very poorly of it myself throughout, but George and the Blackwoods are full of satisfaction in it. Each part as I see it before me _im werden_ seems less likely to be anything else than a failure; but I see on looking back this morning--Christmas Day--that I really was in worse health and suffered equal depression about "Romola;" and, so far as I have recorded, the same thing seems to be true of "Middlemarch." I have finished the fifth book, but am not far on in the sixth, as I hoped to have been; the oppression under which I have been laboring having positively suspended my power of writing anything that I could feel satisfaction in. _SUMMARY._ JANUARY, 1873, TO DECEMBER, 1875. Reception of "Middlemarch"--Letter to John Blackwood--Mr. Anthony Trollope--Dutch translation of George Eliot's novels--Letter to Mrs. Cross--Evening drives at Weybridge--Letter to John Blackwood--German reprint of "Spanish Gypsy"--"The Lifted Veil"--"Kenelm Chillingly"--Letter to Mrs. William Smith on her Memoir of her husband--Pleasure in young life--Letter to John Blackwood--Want of a Conservative leader--Letter to Mr. Burne-Jones--The function of art--Purpose in art--"Iphigenia in Aulis"--Letter to Mrs. Congreve--Welcoming her home--Letter to Mrs. William Smith on women at Cambridge--Visit to Mr. Frederic Myers at Cambridge--Meets Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Jebb, Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Lyttelton, and Mrs. and Miss Huth--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Death of Miss Rebecca Franklin--Visit to the Master of Balliol--Meets Mr. and Mrs. Charles Roundell--Professor Green--Max Müller--Thomson, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge--Nine-weeks' trip to the Continent--Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Homburg--Fontainebleau, Plombières, and Luxeuil--Two months' stay at Bickley--Letter to Mrs. Cross on journey abroad and Blackbrook--Letter to John Blackwood--New edition of "Middlemarch"--A real Lowick in a Midland county--Cheap editions--Letter to Mrs. Cross on the pleasures of the country and on Mr. Henry Sidgwick--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--House in the country--Letter to J. W. Cross on conformity--Letter to John Blackwood--Interruptions of town life--Simmering towards another book--Berlin reading "Middlemarch"--Ashantee war--Letter to Madame Bodichon--The George Howards--John Stuart Mill's Autobiography--Letter to Mrs. Cross on Christmas invitation--Dr. Andrew Clark--Letter to Mrs. Bray on stupidity of readers--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Retrospect of 1873--Sales of "Middlemarch" and "Spanish Gypsy"--Letter to Mrs. William Smith--"Plain living and high thinking"--Letter to John Blackwood--Conservative reaction--Cheaper edition of novels--Lord Lytton's "Fables"--Dickens's Life and biography in general--Letter to John Blackwood--Volume of poems--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Motives for children--Letter to Miss Hennell--Francis Newman--George Dawson--"The Legend of Jubal and other Poems" published--"Symposium" written--Letter to Miss Mary Cross thanking her for a vase--Letter to Mrs. Cross--Delight in country--Letter to John Blackwood--Threatened restoration of the empire in France--"Brewing" "Deronda"--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on Mrs. Nassau Senior's report--Letter to Mrs. William Smith on consolations in loss--Letter to Madame Bodichon--No disposition to melancholy--Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones--The serious view of life--Letter to John Blackwood--Justifications for writing--Dean Liddell--Letter to Mrs. Stowe--Goethe's mysticism--Letter to Miss Hennell--Visit to Six-Mile Bottom--Paris and the Ardennes--Bank of England and Woolwich Arsenal--Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby--The idea of God an exaltation of human goodness--Vision of others' needs--Ground of moral action--Need of altruism--The power of the will--Difficulties of thought--Sales of books--Retrospect of 1874--Letter to Francis Otter on his engagement--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Note-writing--Home for girls--Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby--Value of early religious experience--Limitations of scientists--Letter to John Blackwood--Kinglake's "Crimea"--Discipline of war--"Rasselas"--Miss Thackeray--Anthony Trollope--Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby--Desire to know the difficulties of others--Companion in the struggle of thought--Mr. Spencer's teaching--The value of poets--Emotion blending with thought--Letter to Mrs. William Smith--Her memoir--Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones--The world of light and speech--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Rickmansworth--Letter to F. Harrison asking for consultation--Letter to J. W. Cross--"The Elms"--Depression--Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby--The Brewing interest--Conciliation of necessitarianism with will--Innate ideas--Death of Herbert Lewes--Trip to Wales--Letter to John Blackwood--Not satisfied with "Deronda"--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Mode of publication of books--Letter to John Blackwood--Gwendolen--Letter to Miss Hennell--Miss Lewis--Letter to John Blackwood--Impressions of "Deronda"--Major Lockhart--Depression about "Deronda." FOOTNOTES: [21] Death of Mrs. Cross's sister of cholera, at Salzburg. [22] See _ante_, p. 66. [23] "Paul Bradley." [24] A vase with paintings from "Romola" on tiles. [25] "Tristi fummo Nell'aer dolce che dal sol s'allegra." _Inferno_, cant. vii. 121, 122. [26] Bessborough Gardens. [27] I had been abroad for six weeks. CHAPTER XVIII. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 17th March, 1876.] We have just come in from Weybridge, but are going to take refuge there again on Monday for a few days more of fresh air and long, breezy afternoon walks. Many thanks for your thoughtfulness in sending me the cheering account of sales. Mr. Lewes has not heard any complaints of not understanding Gwendolen, but a strong partisanship for and against her. My correspondence about the misquotation of Tennyson has quieted itself since the fifth letter. But one gentleman has written me a very pretty note, taxing me with having wanted insight into the technicalities of Newmarket, when I made Lush say, "I will _take_ odds." He judges that I should have written, "I will lay odds." On the other hand, another expert contends that the case is one in which Lush would be more likely to say, "I will take odds." What do you think? I told my correspondent that I had a dread of being righteously pelted with mistakes that would make a cairn above me--a monument and a warning to people who write novels without being omniscient and infallible. Mr. Lewes is agitating himself over a fifth reading of revise, Book VI., and says he finds it more interesting than on any former reading. It is agreeable to have a home criticism of this kind! But I am deep in the fourth volume, and cannot any longer care about what is past and done for--the passion of the moment is as much as I can live in. We had beautiful skies with our cold, and only now and then a snow shower. It is grievous to read of the suffering elsewhere from floods. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 30th March, 1876.] I am well pleased that "Deronda" touches you. I _wanted_ you to prefer the chapter about Mirah's finding, and I hope you will also like her history in Part III., which has just been published. We want very much to get away, but I fear we shall hardly be able to start till the end of May. At present we think of the Maritime Alps as a destination for the warm summer--if we have such a season this year; but we shall wander a little on our way thither, and not feel bound to accomplish anything in particular. Meanwhile we are hearing some nice music occasionally, and we are going to see Tennyson's play, which is to be given on the 15th. The occasion will be very interesting, and I should be very sorry to miss it. We have been getting a little refreshment from two flights between Sundays to Weybridge. But we have had the good a little drained from us by going out to dinner two days in succession. At Sir James Paget's I was much interested to find that a gentle-looking, clear-eyed, neatly-made man was Sir Garnet Wolseley; and I had some talk with him, which quite confirmed the impression of him as one of those men who have a power of command by dint of their sweet temper, calm demeanor, and unswerving resolution. The next subject that has filled our chat lately has been the Blue Book on Vivisection, which you would like to look into. There is a great deal of matter for reflection in the evidence on the subject, and some good points have been lately put in print, and conversation that I should like to tell you of if I had time. Professor Clifford told us the other Sunday that Huxley complained of his sufferings from "the profligate lying of virtuous women." [Sidenote: Journal, 1876.] _April 12._--On February 1st began the publication of "Deronda," and the interest of the public, strong from the first, appears to have increased with Book III. The day before yesterday I sent off Book VII. The success of the work at present is greater than that of "Middlemarch" up to the corresponding point of publication. What will be the feeling of the public as the story advances I am entirely doubtful. The Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody. I am in rather better health--having, perhaps, profited by some eight days' change at Weybridge. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 18th April, 1876.] Your sympathetic letter is a welcome support to me in the rather depressed condition which has come upon me from the effect, I imagine, of a chill taken in the sudden change from mildness to renewed winter. You can understand how trying it is to have a week of incompetence at the present stage of affairs. I am rather concerned to see that the part is nearly a sheet smaller than any of the other parts. But Books V. and VI. are proportionately thick. It seemed inadmissible to add anything after the scene with Gwendolen; and to stick anything in not necessary to development between the foregoing chapters is a form of "matter in the wrong place" particularly repulsive to my authorship's sensibility. People tell us that the book is enormously discussed, and I must share with you rather a neat coincidence which pleased us last week. Perhaps you saw what Mr. Lewes told me of--namely, that [a critic] opined that the scenes between Lush and Grandcourt were not _vraisemblable_--were of the imperious feminine, not the masculine, character. Just afterwards Mr. Lewes was chatting with a friend who, without having read the [criticism] or having the subject in the least led up to by Mr. Lewes, said that he had been at Lady Waldegraves', where the subject of discussion had been "Deronda;" and Bernal Osborne, delivering himself on the book, said that the very best parts were the scenes between Grandcourt and Lush. Don't you think that Bernal Osborne has seen more of the Grandcourt and Lush life than that critic has seen? But several men of experience have put their fingers on those scenes as having surprising verisimilitude; and I naturally was peculiarly anxious about such testimony, where my construction was founded on a less direct knowledge. We are rather vexed, now it is too late, that I did not carry out a sort of incipient intention to expunge a motto from Walt Whitman which I inserted in Book IV. Of course the whole is irrevocable by this time; but I should have otherwise thought it worth while to have a new page, not because the motto itself is objectionable to me--it was one of the finer things which had clung to me from among his writings--but because, since I quote so few poets, my selection of a motto from Walt Whitman might be taken as a sign of a special admiration, which I am very far from feeling. How imperfectly one's mind acts in proof-reading! Mr. Lewes had taken up Book IV. yesterday to re-read it for his pleasure merely; and though he had read it several times before, he never till yesterday made a remark against taking a motto from Walt Whitman. I, again, had continually had an _appetency_ towards removing the motto, and had never carried it out--perhaps from that sort of flaccidity which comes over me about what _has been_ done, when I am occupied with what _is being_ done. People in their eagerness about my characters are quite angry, it appears, when their own expectations are not fulfilled--angry, for example, that Gwendolen accepts Grandcourt, etc., etc. One reader is sure that Mirah is going to die very soon, and, I suppose, will be disgusted at her remaining alive. Such are the reproaches to which I make myself liable. However, that you seem to share Mr. Lewes's strong feeling of Book VII. being no falling off in intensity makes me brave. Only endings are inevitably the least satisfactory part of any work in which there is any merit of development. I forgot to say that the "tephillin" are the small leather bands or phylacteries, inscribed with supremely sacred words, which the Jew binds on his arms and head during prayer. Any periphrasis which would be generally intelligible would be undramatic; and I don't much like explanatory foot-notes in a poem or story. But I must consider what I can do to remedy the unintelligibility. The printers have sadly spoiled the beautiful Greek name Kalonymos, which was the name of a celebrated family of scholarly Jews, transplanted from Italy into Germany in mediæval times. But my writing was in fault. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 6th May, 1876.] Your letter was one of the best cordials I could have. Is there anything that cheers and strengthens more than the sense of another's worth and tenderness? And it was that sense that your letter stirred in me, not only by the words of fellowship and encouragement you give directly to me, but by all you tell me of your own feeling under your late painful experience. I had felt it long since I had heard of your and the Professor's well being; but I need not say one word to you of the reasons why I am not active towards my distant friends except in thought. I _do_ think of them, and have a tenacious memory of every little sign they have given me. Please offer my reverential love to the Professor, and tell him I am ruthlessly proud that I kept him out of his bed. I hope that both you and he will continue to be interested in my spiritual children. My cares for them are nearly at an end, and in a few weeks we expect to set out on a Continental journey, as the sort of relaxation which carries one most thoroughly away from studies and social claims. You rightly divine that I am a little overdone, but my fatigue is due not to any excess of work so much as to the vicissitudes of our long winter, which have affected me severely as they have done all delicate people. It is true that some nervous wear, such as you know well, from the excitement of writing, may have made me more susceptible to knife-like winds and sudden chills. Though you tenderly forbade me to write in answer to your letter, I like to do it in these minutes when I happen to be free, lest hinderances should come in the indefinite future. I am the happier for thinking that you will have had this little bit of a letter to assure you that the sweet rain of your affection did not fall on a sandy place. I make a delightful picture of your life in your orange-grove--taken care of by dear daughters. Climate enters into _my_ life with an influence the reverse of what I like to think of in yours. Sunlight and sweet air make a new creature of me. But we cannot bear now to exile ourselves from our own country, which holds the roots of our moral and social life. One fears to become selfish and emotionally withered by living abroad, and giving up the numerous connections with fellow countrymen and women whom one can further a little towards both public and private good. I wonder whether you ever suffered much from false writing (about your biography and motives) in the newspapers. I dare say that pro-slavery prints did not spare you. But I should be glad to think that there was less impudent romancing about you as a _citoyenne_ of the States than there appears to be about me as a stranger. But it is difficult for us English, who have not spent any time in the United States, to know the rank that is given to the various newspapers; and we may make the mistake of giving emphasis to some American journalism which is with you as unknown to respectable minds as any low-class newspaper with us. When we come back from our journeying, I shall be interesting myself in the MS. and proofs of my husband's third volume of his Problems, which will then go to press, and shall plunge myself into the mysteries of our nervous tissue as the Professor has been doing into the mysteries of the Middle Ages. I have a cousinship with him in that taste--but how to find space in one's life for all the subjects that solicit one? My studies have lately kept me away from the track of my husband's researches, and I feel behindhand in my wifely sympathies. You know the pleasure of such interchange--husband and wife each keeping to their own work, but loving to have cognizance of the other's course. God bless you, dear friend. Beg the Professor to accept my affectionate respect, and believe me always yours with love. [Sidenote: Journal, 1876.] _June 3._--Book V. published a week ago. Growing interest in the public, and growing sale, which has from the beginning exceeded that of "Middlemarch;" the Jewish part apparently creating strong interest. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 3d June, 1876.] The useful "companion," which your loving care has had marked with my initials, will go with me, and be a constant sign of the giver's precious affection, which you have expressed in words such as I most value. Even success needs its consolations. Wide effects are rarely other than superficial, and would breed a miserable scepticism about one's work if it were not now and then for an earnest assurance such as you give me that there are lives in which the work has done something "to strengthen the good and mitigate the evil." I am pursued to the last with some bodily trouble--this week it has been sore throat. But I am emerging, and you may think of me next week as raising my "Ebenezer." Love and blessings to you all. The manuscript of "Daniel Deronda" bears the following inscription: "To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes. "Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, * * * * * Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising Haply I think on thee--and then my state Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings." [Sidenote: Journal, 1876.] _June 10._--We set off on our journey, intending to go to San Martino Lantosc in the Maritime Alps. But I was ill at Aix, where the heat had become oppressive, and we turned northwards after making a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes--stayed a few days at Lausanne, then at Vevey, where again I was ill; then by Berne and Zurich to Ragatz, where we were both set up sufficiently to enjoy our life. After Ragatz to Heidelberg, the Klönthal, Schaffhausen, St. Blasien in the Black Forest, and then home by Strasburg, Nancy, and Amiens, arriving September 1. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 6th July, 1876, from Ragatz.] After much travelling we seem to have reached the right place for our health and comfort, and as we hope to stay here for at least a fortnight, I have begun to entertain selfish thoughts about you and the possibility of having news from you. Our month's absence seems long to us--filled with various scenes and various ailments--but to you, I dare say, the request for a letter to tell us what has happened will seem to have come before there is anything particular to tell. On our arriving at Aix the effect of railway travelling and heat on me warned us to renounce our project of going to the Maritime Alps and to turn northward; so after resting at Aix we went to Chambéry, just to make a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes, and then set our faces northward, staying at beautiful Lausanne and Vevey for a week, and then coming on by easy stages to this nook in the mountains. In spite of illness we have had much enjoyment of the lovely scenery we have been dwelling in ever since we entered Savoy, where one gets what I most delight in--the combination of rich, well-cultivated land, friendly to man, and the grand outline and atmospheric effect of mountains near and distant. This place seems to be one of the quietest baths possible. Such fashion as there is, is of a German, unimposing kind; and the King of Saxony, who is at the twin hotel with this, is, I imagine, a much quieter kind of eminence than a London stock-broker. At present the company seems to be almost exclusively Swiss and German, but all the appliances for living and carrying on the "cure" are thoroughly generous and agreeable. We rose at five this morning, drank our glasses of warm water, and walked till a quarter to seven, then breakfasted; and from half-past eight to eleven walked to Bad Pfeffers and back again, along a magnificent ravine where the Tamine boils down beneath a tremendous wall of rock, and where it is interesting to see the electric telegraph leaping from the summit, crossing the gulf, and then quietly running by the roadside till it leaps upward again to the opposite summit. You may consider us as generally ill-informed, and as ready to make much of a little news as any old provincial folk in the days when the stage-coach brought a single London paper to the village Crown or Red Lion. We have known that Servia has declared war against Turkey, and that Harriet Martineau is dead as well as George Sand. Our weather has been uniformly splendid since we left Paris, with the exception of some storms, which have conveniently laid the dust. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 2d Sept. 1876.] We reached home only last night, and had scarcely taken our much-needed dinner before a parcel was brought in which proved to be "Daniel Deronda" in the four bound volumes, and various letters with other "missiles"--as an acquaintance of mine once quite naively called his own favors to his correspondents--which have at present only gone to swell a heap that I mean to make acquaintance with very slowly. Mr. Lewes, however, is more eager than I, and he has just brought up to me a letter which has certainly gratified me more than anything else of the sort I ever received. It is from Dr. Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi here, expressing his "warm appreciation of the fidelity with which some of the best traits of the Jewish character have been depicted by" etc., etc. I think this will gratify you. We are both the better for our journey, and I consider myself in as good case as I can ever reasonably expect. We can't be made young again, and must not be surprised that infirmities recur in spite of mineral waters and air 3000 feet above the sea-level. After Ragatz, we stayed at Stachelberg and Klönthal--two lovely places, where an English face is seldom seen. Another delicious spot, where the air is fit for the gods of Epicurus, is St. Blasien, in the Schwarzwald, where also we saw no English or American visitors, except such as _übernachten_ there and pass on. We have done exploits in walking, usually taking four or five hours of it daily. I hope that you and yours have kept well and have enjoyed the heat rather than suffered from it. I confess myself glad to think that this planet has not become hopelessly chilly. Draughts and chills are my enemies, and but for them I should hardly ever be ailing. The four volumes look very handsome on the outside. Please thank Mr. William Blackwood for many kind notes he wrote me in the days of MS. and proofs--not one of which I ever answered or took notice of except for my own behoof. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th Sept. 1876.] We got home again last Friday, much strengthened by our journey, notwithstanding vicissitudes. I suppose you will not be in town for ages to come, but I let you know that I am here in case you have anything to say to me by letter--about "objects." After leaving Ragatz we still kept in eastern Switzerland, in high valleys unvisited by the English; and in our homeward line of travel we paused in the Schwarzwald at St. Blasien, which is a _Luft-kur_, all green hills and pines, with their tops as still as if it were the abode of the gods. But imagine how we enjoy being at home again in our own chairs, with the familiar faces giving us smiles which are not expecting change in franc pieces! We are both pretty well, but of course not cured of all infirmities. Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years. Still we are thoroughly lively and "spry." I hope that the hot summer has passed agreeably for you and not been unfavorable to your health or comfort. Of course a little news of you will be welcome, even if you don't particularly want to say anything to me. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d Oct. 1876.] My blessing on you for your sweet letter, which I count among the blessings given to me. Yes. Women can do much for the other women (and men) to come. My impression of the good there is in all unselfish efforts is continually strengthened. Doubtless many a ship is drowned on expeditions of discovery or rescue, and precious freights lie buried. But there was the good of manning and furnishing the ship with a great purpose before it set out. We are going into Cambridgeshire this week, and are watching the weather with private views.[28] I have had some very interesting letters both from Jews and from Christians about "Deronda." Part of the scene at the club is translated into Hebrew in a German-Jewish newspaper. On the other hand, a Christian (highly accomplished) thanks me for embodying the principles by which Christ wrought and will conquer. This is better than the laudation of readers who cut the book up into scraps, and talk of nothing in it but Gwendolen. I meant everything in the book to be related to everything else there. I quite enter into Miss Jekyll's view of negative beauty. Life tends to accumulate "messes" about one, and it is hard to rid one's self of them because of the associations attached. I get impatient sometimes, and long, as Andrew Fairservice would say, to "kaim off the fleas," as one does in a cathedral spoiled by monuments out of keeping with the pillars and walls. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Wm. Smith, 14th Oct. 1876.] I had felt it long before you let me have some news of you. How could you repeat deliberately that bad dream of your having made yourself "objectionable?" I will answer for it that you were never objectionable to any creature except perhaps to your own self--a too modest and shrinking self. I trusted in your understanding last spring that I was glad to hear from my friends without having to make the effort of answering, when answering was not demanded for practical purposes. My health was not good, and I was absorbed as to my working power, though not as to my interest and sympathy. You have been in my mind of late, not only on your own account but in affectionate association with our dear Mrs. Ruck, whose acquaintance I owe to you. On my return from abroad I found among my heap of letters a delightful one from her, written, I think, at the end of June, as bright and cheering as the hills under the summer sky. And only a day or two after we saw that sad news in the _Times_. I think of her beautiful, open face, with the marks of grief upon it. Why did you write me such a brief letter, telling me nothing about your own life? I am a poor correspondent, and have to answer many letters from people less interesting to me than you are. Will you not indulge me by writing more to me than you expect me to write to you? That would be generous. We both came back the better for our three months' journeying, though I was so ill after we had got to the south that we thought of returning, and went northward in that expectation. But Ragatz set me up, so far as I expect to be set up, and we greatly enjoyed our fresh glimpses of Swiss scenery. Mr. Lewes is now printing his third volume of "Problems of Life and Mind," and is, as usual, very happy over his work. He shares my interest in everything that relates to you; and be assured--will you not?--that such interest will always be warm in us. I shall not, while I live, cease to be yours affectionately. [Sidenote: Journal, 1876.] _Oct. 20._--Looking into accounts _apropos_ of an offer from Blackwood for another ten years of copyright, I find that before last Christmas there had been distributed 24,577 copies of "Middlemarch." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe,[29] 29th Oct. 1876.] "Evermore thanks" for your last letter, full of generous sympathy that can afford to be frank. The lovely photograph of the grandson will be carefully preserved. It has the sort of beauty which seems to be peculiarly abundant in America, at once rounded and delicate in form. I do hope you will be able to carry out your wish to visit your son at Bonn, notwithstanding that heavy crown of years that your dear Rabbi has to carry. If the sea voyage could be borne without much disturbance, the land journey might be made easy by taking it in short stages--the plan we always pursue in travelling. You see I have an interested motive in wishing you to come to Europe again, since I can't go to America. But I enter thoroughly into the disinclination to move when there are studies that make each day too short. If we were neighbors, I should be in danger of getting troublesome to the revered Orientalist, with all kinds of questions. As to the Jewish element in "Deronda," I expected from first to last, in writing it, that it would create much stronger resistance, and even repulsion, than it has actually met with. But precisely because I felt that the usual attitude of Christians towards Jews is--I hardly know whether to say more impious or more stupid when viewed in the light of their professed principles, I therefore felt urged to treat Jews with such sympathy and understanding as my nature and knowledge could attain to. Moreover, not only towards the Jews, but towards all Oriental peoples with whom we English come in contact, a spirit of arrogance and contemptuous dictatorialness is observable which has become a national disgrace to us. There is nothing I should care more to do, if it were possible, than to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs. But towards the Hebrews we western people, who have been reared in Christianity, have a peculiar debt, and, whether we acknowledge it or not, a peculiar thoroughness of fellowship in religious and moral sentiment. Can anything be more disgusting than to hear people called "educated" making small jokes about eating ham, and showing themselves empty of any real knowledge as to the relation of their own social and religious life to the history of the people they think themselves witty in insulting? They hardly know that Christ was a Jew. And I find men, educated, supposing that Christ spoke Greek. To my feeling, this deadness to the history which has prepared half our world for us, this inability to find interest in any form of life that is not clad in the same coat-tails and flounces as our own, lies very close to the worst kind of irreligion. The best that can be said of it is, that it is a sign of the intellectual narrowness--in plain English, the stupidity--which is still the average mark of our culture. Yes, I expected more aversion than I have found. But I was happily independent in material things, and felt no temptation to accommodate my writing to any standard except that of trying to do my best in what seemed to me most needful to be done, and I sum up with the writer of the Book of Maccabees--"If I have done well and as befits the subject, it is what I desired; and if I have done ill, it is what I could attain unto." You are in the middle of a more glorious autumn than ours, but we, too, are having now and then a little sunshine on the changing woods. I hope that I am right in putting the address from which you wrote to me on the 25th September, so that my note may not linger away from you, and leave you to imagine me indifferent or negligent. Please offer my reverent regard to Mr. Stowe. We spent three months in East Switzerland, and are the better for it. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1876.] Any one who knows from experience what bodily infirmity is--how it spoils life even for those who have no other trouble--gets a little impatient of healthy complainants, strong enough for extra work and ignorant of indigestion. I at least should be inclined to scold the discontented young people who tell me in one breath that they never have anything the matter with them, and that life is not worth having, if I did not remember my own young discontent. It is remarkable to me that I have entirely lost my _personal_ melancholy. I often, of course, have melancholy thoughts about the destinies of my fellow creatures, but I am never in that _mood_ of sadness which used to be my frequent visitant even in the midst of external happiness; and this, notwithstanding a very vivid sense that life is declining and death close at hand. We are waiting with some expectation for Miss Martineau's Autobiography, which, I fancy, will be charming so far as her younger and less renowned life extends. All biography diminishes in interest when the subject has won celebrity--or some reputation that hardly comes up to celebrity. But autobiography at least saves a man or woman that the world is curious about from the publication of a string of mistakes called "Memoirs." It would be nice if we could be a trio--I mean you, Cara, and I--chatting together for an hour as we used to do when I had walked over the hill to see you. But that pleasure belongs to "the days that are no more." Will you believe that an accomplished man some years ago said to me that he saw no place for the exercise of _resignation_ when there was no personal divine will contemplated as ordaining sorrow or privation? He is not yet aware that he is getting old and needing that unembittered compliance of soul with the inevitable which seems to me a full enough meaning for the word "resignation." [Sidenote: Journal, 1876.] _Dec. 1._--Since we came home at the beginning of September I have been made aware of much repugnance or else indifference towards the Jewish part of "Deronda," and of some hostile as well as adverse reviewing. On the other hand, there have been the strongest expressions of interest, some persons adhering to the opinion, started during the early numbers, that the book is my best. Delightful letters have here and there been sent to me; and the sale both in America and in England has been an unmistakable guarantee that the public has been touched. Words of gratitude have come from Jews and Jewesses, and these are certain signs that I may have contributed my mite to a good result. The sale hitherto has exceeded that of "Middlemarch," as to the £2 2_s._ four-volume form, but we do not expect an equal success for the guinea edition which has lately been issued. _Dec. 11._--We have just bought a house in Surrey, and think of it as making a serious change in our life--namely, that we shall finally settle there and give up town. This was a charming house--The Heights, Witley, near Godalming. It stands on a gentle hill overlooking a lovely bit of characteristic English scenery. In the foreground green fields, prettily timbered, undulate up to the high ground of Haslemere in front, with Blackdown (where Tennyson lives) on the left hand, and Hind Head on the right--"Heights that laugh with corn in August, or lift the plough-team against the sky in September." Below, the white steam-pennon flies along in the hollow. The walks and drives in the neighborhood are enchanting. A land of pine-woods and copses, village greens and heather-covered hills, with the most delicious old red or gray brick, timbered cottages nestling among creeping roses; the sober-colored tiles of their roofs, covered with lichen, offering a perpetual harmony to the eye. The only want in the landscape is the want of flowing water. About the house there are some eight or nine acres of pleasure ground and gardens. It quite fulfilled all expectations, as regards beauty and convenience of situation, though I am not quite sure that it was bracing enough for health. [Sidenote: Journal, 1876.] _Dec. 15._--At the beginning of this week I had deep satisfaction from reading in the _Times_ the report of a lecture on "Daniel Deronda," delivered by Dr. Hermann Adler to the Jewish working-men--a lecture showing much insight and implying an expectation of serious benefit. Since then I have had a delightful letter from the Jewish Theological Seminary at Breslau, written by an American Jew named Isaacs, who excuses himself for expressing his feeling of gratitude on reading "Deronda," and assures me of his belief that it has even already had an elevating effect on the minds of some among his people--predicting that the effect will spread. I have also had a request from Signor Bartolommeo Aquarone, of Siena, for leave to translate "Romola," and declaring that as one who has given special study to the history of San Marco, and has written a life of Fra Jeronimo Savonarola, he cares that "Romola" should be known to his countrymen, for their good. _Magnificat anima mea!_ And last night I had a letter from Dr. Benisch, editor of the _Jewish Chronicle_, announcing a copy of the paper containing an article written by himself on reading "Deronda" (there have long ago been two articles in the same journal reviewing the book), and using strong words as to the effect the book is producing. I record these signs, that I may look back on them if they come to be confirmed. _Dec. 31._--We have spent the Christmas with our friends at Weybridge, but the greater part of the time I was not well enough to enjoy greatly the pleasures their affection prepared for us. Farewell 1876. [Illustration: The Heights, Witley. From a Sketch by Mrs. Allingham.] [Sidenote: Journal, 1877.] _Jan. 1._--The year opens with public anxieties. First, about the threatening war in the East; and next, about the calamities consequent on the continued rains. As to our private life, all is happiness, perfect love, and undiminished intellectual interest. G.'s third volume is about half-way in print. [Sidenote: Letter to James Sully, 19th Jan. 1877.] I don't know that I ever heard anybody use the word "meliorist" except myself. But I begin to think that there is no good invention or discovery that has not been made by more than one person. The only good reason for referring to the "source" would be that you found it useful for the doctrine of meliorism to cite one unfashionable confessor of it in the face of the fashionable extremes. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th Jan. 1877.] What are we to do about "Romola?" It ought to range with the cheap edition of my books--which, _exceptis excipiendis_, is a beautiful edition--as well as with any handsomer series which the world's affairs may encourage us to publish. The only difficulty lies in the illustrations required for uniformity. The illustrations in the other volumes are, as Mr. Lewes says, not queerer than those which amuse us in Scott and Miss Austin, with one exception--namely, that where Adam is making love to Dinah, which really enrages me with its unctuousness. I would gladly pay something to be rid of it. The next worst is that of Adam in the wood with Arthur Donnithorne. The rest are endurable to a mind well accustomed to resignation. And the vignettes on the title-pages are charming. But if an illustrator is wanted, I know one whose work is exquisite--Mrs. Allingham. This is not a moment for new ventures, but it will take some time to prepare "Romola." I should like to see proofs, feeling bound to take care of my text; and I have lately been glancing into a book on Italian things, where almost every citation I alighted on was incorrectly printed. I have just read through the cheap edition of "Romola," and though I have only made a few alterations of an unimportant kind--the printing being unusually correct--it would be well for me to send this copy to be printed from. I think it must be nearly ten years since I read the book before, but there is no book of mine about which I more thoroughly feel that I could swear by every sentence as having been written with my best blood, such as it is, and with the most ardent care for veracity of which my nature is capable. It has made me often sob with a sort of painful joy as I have read the sentences which had faded from my memory. This helps one to bear false representations with patience; for I really don't love any gentleman who undertakes to state my opinions well enough to desire that I should find myself all wrong in order to justify his statement. I wish, whenever it is expedient, to add "The Lifted Veil" and "Brother Jacob," and so fatten the volume containing "Silas Marner," which would thus become about 100 pages thicker. [Sidenote: Letter to William Allingham, 8th March, 1877.] Mr. Lewes feels himself innocent of dialect in general, and of Midland dialect in especial. Hence I presume to take your reference on the subject as if it had been addressed to me. I was born and bred in Warwickshire, and heard the Leicestershire, North Staffordshire, and Derbyshire dialects during visits made in my childhood and youth. These last are represented (mildly) in "Adam Bede." The Warwickshire talk is broader, and has characteristics which it shares with other Mercian districts. Moreover, dialect, like other living things, tends to become mongrel, especially in a central, fertile, and manufacturing region, attractive of migration; and hence the Midland talk presents less interesting relics of elder grammar than the more northerly dialects. Perhaps, unless a poet has a dialect ringing in his ears, so as to shape his metre and rhymes according to it at one jet, it is better to be content with a few suggestive touches; and, I fear, that the stupid public is not half grateful for studies in dialect beyond such suggestions. I have made a few notes, which may perhaps be not unacceptable to you in the absence of more accomplished aid: 1. The vowel always a double sound, the _y_ sometimes present, sometimes not; either _aäl_ or _yaäl_. _Hither_ not heard except in _c'moother_, addressed to horses. 2. _Thou_ never heard. In general, the 2d person singular not used in Warwickshire except occasionally to young members of a family, and then always in the form of _thee_--_i.e._, _'ee_. For the _emphatic_ nominative, _yo_, like the Lancashire. For the accusative, _yer_, without any sound of the _r_. The demonstrative _those_ never heard among the common people (unless when caught by infection from the parson, etc.). _Self_ pronounced _sen_. The _f_ never heard in _of_, nor the _n_ in _in_. 3. Not year but 'ear. On the other hand, with the usual "compensation," head is pronounced _y_ead. 4. "A gallows little chap as e'er ye see." 5. Here's _to_ you, maäster. Saäm to yo. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 20th March, 1877.] You must read Harriet Martineau's "Autobiography." The account of her childhood and early youth is most pathetic and interesting; but as in all books of the kind, the charm departs as the life advances, and the writer has to tell of her own triumphs. One regrets continually that she felt it necessary not only to tell of her intercourse with many more or less distinguished persons--which would have been quite pleasant to everybody--but also to pronounce upon their entire merits and demerits, especially when, if she had died as soon as she expected, these persons would nearly all have been living to read her gratuitous rudenesses. Still I hope the book will do more good than harm. Many of the most interesting little stories in it about herself and others she had told me (and Mr. Atkinson) when I was staying with her, almost in the very same words. But they were all the better for being told in her silvery voice. She was a charming talker, and a perfect lady in her manners as a hostess. We are only going to bivouac in our Surrey home for a few months, to try what alterations are necessary. We shall come back to this corner in the autumn. We don't think of giving up London altogether at present, but we may have to give up life before we come to any decision on that minor point. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 15th May, 1877.] Pray bring Madame Mario to see us again. But bear in mind that on Sunday the 27th--which probably will be our last Sunday in London--Holmes the violinist is coming to play, with Mrs. Vernon Lushington to accompany him. Don't mention to any one else that they are coming, lest the audience should be larger than he wishes. We are working a little too hard at "pleasure" just now. This morning we are going for the third time to a Wagner rehearsal at 10 o'clock. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 15th May, 1877.] I have not read, and do not mean to read, Mrs. Chapman's volume, so that I can judge of it only by report. You seem to me to make a very good case for removing the weight of blame from her shoulders and transferring it to the already burdened back of Harriet Martineau. But I confess that the more I think of the book and all connected with it, the more it deepens my repugnance--or, rather, creates a new repugnance in me--to autobiography, unless it can be so written as to involve neither self-glorification nor impeachment of others. I like that the "He, being dead, yet speaketh," should have quite another meaning than that. But however the blame may be distributed, it remains a grievously pitiable thing to me that man, or woman, who has cared about a future life in the minds of a coming generation or generations, should have deliberately, persistently mingled with that prospect the ignoble desire to perpetuate personal animosities, which can never be rightly judged by those immediately engaged in them. And Harriet Martineau, according to the witness of those well acquainted with facts which she represents in her Autobiography, was quite remarkably apt to have a false view of her relations with others. In some cases she gives a ridiculously inaccurate account of the tenor or bearing of correspondence held with her. One would not for a moment want to dwell on the weakness of a character on the whole valuable and beneficent, if it were not made needful by the ready harshness with which she has inflicted pain on others. No; I did not agree with you about the Byron case. I understand by the teaching of my own egoism--and therefore I can sympathize with--any act of self-vindicating or vindictive rage under the immediate infliction of what is felt to be a wrong or injustice. But I have no sympathy with self-vindication, or the becoming a proxy in vindication, deliberately bought at such a price as that of vitiating revelations--which may even possibly be false. To write a letter in a rage is very pardonable--even a letter full of gall and bitterness, meant as a sort of poisoned dagger. We poor mortals can hardly escape these sins of passion. But I have no pity to spare for the rancor that corrects its proofs and revises, and lays it by chuckling with the sense of its future publicity. [Sidenote: Letter to Professor Dr. David Kaufmann, 31st May, 1877.] Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper satisfaction--I may say, a more heartfelt joy--than you have given me in your estimate of "Daniel Deronda." I must tell you that it is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work, is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no discernment of good and evil. Certainly if I had been asked to choose _what_ should be written about my books, and _who_ should write it, I should have sketched--well, not anything so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a Jew who showed not merely a sympathy with the best aspirations of his race, but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating sensibility, the perfect response to the artist's intention, which must make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and not in compliance with current fashions. Such a response holds for an author not only what is best in "the life that now is," but the promise of "that which is to come." I mean that the usual approximative narrow perception of what one has been intending and profoundly feeling in one's work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff, without roots to take any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative prompting has foreshadowed and will continue to satisfy a need in other minds. Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute something towards the ennobling of Judaism in the conceptions of the Christian community, and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof that the effort was needed--yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hunger for certain signs of sympathetic discernment which you only have given. I may mention as one instance your clear perception of the relation between the presentation of the Jewish elements and those of English social life. I write under the pressure of small hurries; for we are just moving into the country for the summer, and all things are in a vagrant condition around me. But I wished not to defer answering your letter to an uncertain opportunity. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 14th June, 1877.] I am greatly indebted to you for your letter. It has done something towards rousing me from what I will not call self-despair but resignation to being of no use. I wonder whether you at all imagine the terrible pressure of disbelief in my own {duty/right} to speak to the public, which is apt with me to make all beginnings of work like a rowing against tide. Not that I am without more than my fair ounce of self-conceit and confidence that I know better than the critics, whom I don't take the trouble to read, but who seem to fill the air as with the smoke of bad tobacco. But I will not dwell on my antithetic experiences. I only mention them to show why your letter has done me a service, and also to help in the explanation of my mental attitude towards your requests or suggestions. I do not quite understand whether you have in your mind any plan of straightway constructing a liturgy to which you wish me to contribute in a direct way. That form of contribution would hardly be within my powers. But your words of trust in me as possibly an organ of feelings which have not yet found their due expression is as likely as any external call could be to prompt such perfectly unfettered productions as that which you say has been found acceptable. I wasted some time, three years ago, in writing (what I do not mean to print) a poetic dialogue embodying or rather shadowing very imperfectly the actual contest of ideas. Perhaps what you have written to me may promote and influence a different kind of presentation. At any rate all the words of your letter will be borne in mind, and will enter into my motives. We are tolerably settled now in our camping, experimental fashion. Perhaps, before the summer is far advanced, you may be in our neighborhood, and come to look at us. I trust that Mrs. Harrison is by this time in her usual health. Please give my love to her, and believe me always, with many grateful memories, yours sincerely. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d July, 1877.] It was a draught of real comfort and pleasure to have a letter written by your own hand, and one altogether cheerful.[30] I trust that you will by-and-by be able to write me word of continued progress. Hardly any bit of the kingdom, I fancy, would suit your taste better than your neighborhood of the Land's End. You are not fond of bushy midland-fashioned scenery. We are enjoying the mixture of wildness and culture extremely, and so far as landscape and air go we would not choose a different home from this. But we have not yet made up our minds whether we shall keep our house or sell it. Some London friends are also occasional dwellers in these parts. The day before yesterday we had Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Harrison, whose parents have a fine old Tudor house--Sutton Place--some three miles beyond Guildford. And do you remember Edmund Gurney? He and his graceful bride lunched with us the other day. And Miss Thackeray is married to-day to young Ritchie. I saw him at Cambridge, and felt that the nearly twenty years' difference between them was bridged hopefully by his solidity and gravity. This is one of several instances that I have known of lately, showing that young men with even brilliant advantages will often choose as their life's companion a woman whose attractions are chiefly of the spiritual order. I often see you enjoying your sunsets and the wayside flowers. [Sidenote: Letter to William Allingham, 26th Aug. 1877.] I hope that this letter may be sent on to you in some delicious nook where your dear wife is by your side preparing to make us all richer with store of new sketches. I almost fear that I am implying unbecoming claims in asking you to send me a word or two of news about your twofold, nay, fourfold self. But you must excuse in me a presumption which is simply a feeling of spiritual kinship, bred by reading in the volume you gave me before we left town. That tremendous tramp--"Life, Death; Life, Death"[31]--makes me care the more, as age makes it the more audible to me, for those younger ones who are keeping step behind me. [Sidenote: Letter to Professor Kaufmann, 12th Oct. 1877.] I trust it will not be otherwise than gratifying to you to know that your stirring article on "Daniel Deronda" is now translated into English by a son of Professor Ferrier, who was a philosophical writer of considerable mark. It will be issued in a handsomer form than that of the pamphlet, and will appear within this autumnal publishing season, Messrs. Blackwood having already advertised it. Whenever a copy is ready we shall have the pleasure of sending it to you. There is often something to be borne with in reading one's own writing in a translation, but I hope that in this case you will not be made to wince severely. In waiting to send you this news, I seem to have deferred too long the expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew translations of Lessing and the collection of Hebrew poems--a kindness which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched the gift of his work. I see by your last letter that your Theological Seminary was to open on the 4th of this month, so that this too retrospective letter of mine will reach you when you are in the midst of your new duties. I trust that this new institution will be a great good to professor and students, and that your position is of a kind that you contemplate as permanent. To teach the young personally has always seemed to me the most satisfactory supplement to teaching the world through books; and I have often wished that I had such a means of having fresh, living spiritual children within sight. One can hardly turn one's thought towards Eastern Europe just now without a mingling of pain and dread, but we mass together distant scenes and events in an unreal way, and one would like to believe that the present troubles will not at any time press on you in Hungary with more external misfortune than on us in England. Mr. Lewes is happily occupied in his psychological studies. We both look forward to the reception of the work you kindly promised us, and he begs me to offer you his best regards. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Ponsonby, 17th Oct. 1877.] I like to know that you have been thinking of me and that you care to write to me, and though I will not disobey your considerate prohibition so far as to try to answer your letter fully, I must content my soul by telling you that we shall be settled in the old place by the end of the first week in November, and that I shall be delighted to see you then. There are many subjects that I shall have a special pleasure in talking of with you. Let me say now that the passage quoted from your friend's letter is one that I am most glad to find falling in with your own attitude of mind. The view is what I have endeavored to represent in a little poem called "Stradivarius," which you may not have happened to read. I say, not God Himself can make man's best Without best men to help Him. And next: I think direct personal portraiture--or caricature--is a bastard kind of satire that I am not disposed to think the better of because Aristophanes used it in relation to Socrates. Do you know that pretty story about Bishop Thirlwall? When somebody wanted to bring to him Forchhammer as a distinguished German writer, he replied, "No; I will never receive into my house the man who justified the death of Socrates!" "O that we were all of one mind, and that mind good!" is an impossible-to-be-realized wish: and I don't wish it at all in its full extent. But I think it would be possible that men should differ speculatively as much as they do now, and yet be "of one mind" in the desire to avoid giving unnecessary pain, in the desire to do an honest part towards the general well-being, which has made a comfortable _nidus_ for themselves, in the resolve not to sacrifice another to their own egoistic promptings. Pity and fairness--two little words which, carried out, would embrace the utmost delicacies of the moral life--seem to me not to rest on an unverifiable hypothesis but on facts quite as irreversible as the perception that a pyramid will not stand on its apex. I am so glad you have been enjoying Ireland in quiet. We love our bit of country and are bent on keeping it as a summer refuge. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 6th Nov. 1877, from the Priory.] _Apropos_ of authorship, I was a little uneasy on Sunday because I had seemed in the unmanageable current of talk to echo a too slight way of speaking about a great poet. I did not mean to say Amen when the "Idylls of the King" seemed to be judged rather _de haut en bas_. I only meant that I should value for my own mind "In Memoriam" as the chief of the larger works; and that while I feel exquisite beauty in passages scattered through the "Idylls," I must judge some smaller wholes among the lyrics as the works most decisive of Tennyson's high place among the immortals. Not that my deliverance on this matter is of any moment, but that I cannot bear to fall in with the sickening fashion of people who talk much about writers whom they read little, and pronounce on a great man's powers with only half his work in their mind, while if they remembered the other half they would find their judgments as to his limits flatly contradicted. Then, again, I think Tennyson's dramas such as the world should be glad of--and would be, if there had been no prejudgment that he could not write a drama. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 10th Nov. 1877.] Never augur ill because you do not hear from me. It is, you know, my profession _not_ to write letters. Happily I can meet your kind anxiety by contraries. I have for two months and more been in better health than I have known for several years. This pleasant effect is due to the delicious air of the breezy Surrey hills; and, further, to a friend's insistence on my practising lawn-tennis as a daily exercise. We are in love with our Surrey house, and only regret that it hardly promises to be snug enough for us chilly people through the winter, so that we dare not think of doing without the warmer nest in town. [Sidenote: Journal, 1877.] _Nov. 10._--We went to the Heights, Witley, at the beginning of June, after a delightful visit to Cambridge, and returned to this old home on the 29th October. We are at last in love with our Surrey house, and mean to keep it. The air and abundant exercise have quite renovated my health, and I am in more bodily comfort than I have known for several years. But my dear husband's condition is less satisfactory, his headaches still tormenting him. Since the year began several little epochs have marked themselves. Blackwood offered for another ten years' copyright of my works, the previous agreement for ten years having expired. I declined, choosing to have a royalty. G.'s third volume has been well received, and has sold satisfactorily for a book so little in the popular taste. A pleasant correspondence has been opened with Professor Kaufmann, now Principal of the Jewish Theological Seminary at Pesth; and his "Attempt at an Appreciation of 'Daniel Deronda'" has been translated into English by young Ferrier, son of Professor Ferrier. A new Cabinet edition of my works, including "Romola," has been decided on, and is being prepared; and there have been multiplied signs that the spiritual effect of "Deronda" is growing. In America the book is placed above all my previous writings. Our third little Hampstead granddaughter has been born, and was christened Saturday--the 3d--Elinor. Yesterday Mr. Macmillan came to ask me if I would undertake to write the volume on Shakespeare, in a series to be issued under the title "Men of Letters." I have declined. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 16th Nov. 1877.] Having a more secure freedom than I may have next week, I satisfy my eagerness to tell you that I am longing for the news of you which you have accustomed me to trust in as sure to come at this time of the year. You will give me, will you not, something more than an affectionate greeting? You will tell me how and where you have been, and what is the actual state of your health and spirits--whether you can still interest yourself in writing on great subjects without too much fatigue, and what companionship is now the most precious to you? We returned from our country home (with which we are much in love) at the beginning of this month, leaving it earlier than we wished because of the need to get workmen into it. Our bit of Surrey has the beauties of Scotland wedded to those of Warwickshire. During the last two months of our stay there I was conscious of more health and strength than I have known for several years. Imagine me playing at lawn-tennis by the hour together! The world I live in is chiefly one that has grown around me in these later years, since we have seen so little of each other. Doubtless we are both greatly changed in spiritual as well as bodily matters, but I think we are unchanged in the friendship founded on early memories. I, for my part, feel increasing gratitude for the cheering and stimulus your companionship gave me, and only think with pain that I might have profited more by it if my mind had been more open to good influences. [Sidenote: Journal, 1877.] _Nov. 26._--The other day we saw in the _Times_ that G.'s name had been proposed for the Rectorship of St. Andrews. Blackwood writes me that in less than a month they have sold off all but 400 of the 5250 printed; and in October were sold 495 of the 3_s._ 6_d._ edition of "Adam Bede." Our friend Dr. Allbut came to see us last week, after we had missed each other for three or four years. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d Dec. 1877.] I have been made rather unhappy by my husband's impulsive proposal about Christmas. We are dull old persons, and your two sweet young ones ought to find each Christmas a new bright bead to string on their memory, whereas to spend the time with us would be to string on a dark, shrivelled berry. They ought to have a group of young creatures to be joyful with. Our own children always spend their Christmas with Gertrude's family, and we have usually taken our sober merry-making with friends out of town. Illness among these will break our custom this year; and thus _mein Mann_, feeling that our Christmas was free, considered how very much he liked being with you, omitting the other side of the question--namely, our total lack of means to make a suitably joyous meeting, a real festival, for Phil and Margaret. I was conscious of this lack in the very moment of the proposal, and the consciousness has been pressing on me more and more painfully ever since. Even my husband's affectionate hopefulness cannot withstand my melancholy demonstration. So pray consider the kill-joy proposition as entirely retracted, and give us something of yourselves, only on simple black-letter days when the Herald Angels have not been raising expectations early in the morning. I am not afraid of your misunderstanding one word. You know that it is not a little love with which I am yours ever. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 13th Dec. 1877.] Your note yesterday gave me much comfort, and I thank you for sparing the time to write it. The world cannot seem quite the same to me as long as you are all in anxiety about her who is most precious to you[32]--in immediate urgent anxiety that is. For love is never without its shadow of anxiety. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. [Sidenote: Journal, 1877.] _Dec. 31._--To-day I say a final farewell to this little book, which is the only record I have made of my personal life for sixteen years and more. I have often been helped, in looking back in it, to compare former with actual states of despondency, from bad health or other apparent causes. In this way a past despondency has turned to present hopefulness. But of course, as the years advance, there is a new rational ground for the expectation that my life may become less fruitful. The difficulty is to decide how far resolution should set in the direction of activity rather than in the acceptance of a more negative state. Many conceptions of work to be carried out present themselves, but confidence in my own fitness to complete them worthily is all the more wanting because it is reasonable to argue that I must have already done my best. In fact, my mind is embarrassed by the number and wide variety of subjects that attract me, and the enlarging vista that each brings with it. I shall record no more in this book, because I am going to keep a more business-like diary. Here ends 1877. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 17th Jan. 1878.] Yes, it is a comfort to me, in the midst of so many dispiriting European signs, that France has come so far through her struggle. And no doubt you are rejoicing too that London University has opened all its degrees to women. I think we know no reading more amusing than the _Times_ just now. We are deep among the gravities. I have been reading aloud Green's first volume of his new, larger "History of the English People;" and this evening have begun Lecky's "History of England in the Eighteenth Century"--in fact, we are dull old fogies, who are ill-informed about anything that is going on of an amusing kind. On Monday we took a youth to the pantomime, but I found it a melancholy business. The dear old story of Puss in Boots was mis-handled in an exasperating way, and every incident as well as pretence of a character turned into a motive for the most vulgar kind of dancing. I came away with a headache, from which I am only to-day recovered. It is too cruel that one can't get anything innocent as a spectacle for the children! Mr. Lewes sends his best love, but is quite barren of suggestions about books--buried in pink and lilac periodicals of a physiological sort, and preoccupied with the case of a man who has an artificial larynx, with which he talks very well. What do you say to the phonograph, which can report gentlemen's bad speeches with all their stammering? [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 26th Jan. 1878.] I like to think of you and Mrs. Blackwood taking your daughter to Rome. It will be a delightful way of reviving memories, to mingle and compare them with her fresh impressions, and in a spiritual sense to have what Shakespeare says is the joy of having offspring--"to see your blood warm while you feel it cold." I wish that and all other prospects were not marred by the threat of widening war. Last night I finished reading Principal Tulloch's small but full volume on "Pascal"--a present for which I am much obliged. It is admirably fair and dispassionate, and I should think will be an acceptable piece of instruction to many readers. The brief and graphic way in which he has made present and intelligible the position of the Port Royalists is an example of just what is needed in such a series as the Foreign Classics. But of course they are the most fortunate contributors who have to write about the authors, less commonly treated of, and especially when they are prepared to write by an early liking and long familiarity--as in the present case. I have read every line of appreciation with interest. My first acquaintance with Pascal came from his "Pensées" being given to me, as a school prize, when I was fourteen; and I am continually turning to them now to revive my sense of their deep though broken wisdom. It is a pity that "La Bruyère" cannot be done justice to by any merely English presentation. There is a sentence of his which touches with the finest point the diseased spot in the literary culture of our time--"Le plaisir de la critique nous ôté celui d'être vivement touchés de tres belles choses." We see that our present fashions are old, but there is this difference, that they are followed by a greater multitude. You may be sure I was very much cheered by your last despatch--the solid unmistakable proof that my books are not yet superfluous. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 23d March, 1878.] As to my enjoyment of the "Two Grenadiers," it would have been impossible but for the complete reduction of it to symbolism in my own mind, and my belief that it really touches nobody now, as enthusiasm for the execrable Napoleon I. But I feel that the devotion of the common soldier to his leader (the sign for him of hard duty) is the type of all higher devotedness, and is full of promise to other and better generations. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 7th June, 1878.] The royalties did themselves much credit.[33] The Crown Prince is really a grand-looking man, whose name you would ask for with expectation, if you imagined him no royalty. He is like a grand antique bust--cordial and simple in manners withal, shaking hands, and insisting that I should let him know when we next came to Berlin, just as if he had been a Professor Gruppe, living _au troisième_. _She_ is equally good-natured and unpretending, liking best to talk of nursing soldiers, and of what her father's taste was in literature. She opened the talk by saying, "You know my sister Louise"--just as any other slightly embarrassed mortal might have done. We had a picked party to dinner--Dean of Westminster, Bishop of Peterborough, Lord and Lady Ripon, Dr. Lyon Playfair, Kinglake (you remember "Eothen"--the old gentleman is a good friend of mine), Froude, Mrs. Ponsonby (Lord Grey's granddaughter), and two or three more "illustrations;" then a small detachment coming in after dinner. It was really an interesting occasion. We go to Oxford to-morrow (to the Master of Balliol). [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 27th June, 1878, from Witley.] I hope we are not wrong in imagining you settled at Strathtyrum, with a fresh power of enjoying the old scenes after your exile, in spite of the abstinence from work--the chief sweetness of life. Mr. Lewes, too, is under a regimen for gout, which casts its threatening shadow in the form of nightly cramps and inward _malaise_. He wants me to tell you something amusing--a bit of Baboo English, from an Indian journal sent us by Lord Lytton. _Apropos_ of Sir G. Campbell's rash statement that India was no good to England, the accomplished writer says, "But British House of Commons stripped him to pieces, and exposed his _cui bono_ in all its naked hideousness!" After all, I think the cultivated Hindoo writing what he calls English, is about on a par with the authors of leading articles on this side of the globe writing what _they_ call English--accusing or laudatory epithets and phrases, adjusted to some dim standard of effect quite aloof from any knowledge or belief of their own. Letter-writing, I imagine, is counted as "work" from which you must abstain; and I scribble this letter simply from the self-satisfied notion that you will like to hear from me. You see I have asked no questions, which are the torture-screws of correspondence, hence you have nothing to answer. How glad I shall be of an announcement that "No further bulletins will be sent, Mr. Blackwood having gone to golf again." [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 18th July, 1878.] I thought you understood that I have grave reasons for not speaking on certain public topics. No request from the best friend in the world--even from my own husband--ought to induce me to speak when I judge it my duty to be silent. If I had taken a contrary decision, I should not have remained silent till now. My function is that of the _æsthetic_, not the doctrinal teacher--the rousing of the nobler emotions, which make mankind desire the social right, not the prescribing of special measures, concerning which the artistic mind, however strongly moved by social sympathy, is often not the best judge. It is one thing to feel keenly for one's fellow-beings; another to say, "This step, and this alone, will be the best to take for the removal of particular calamities." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 30th July, 1878.] I did hope that by the time your military evolutions were over, we might see our way to enjoying the kind welcome which you and Mrs. Blackwood have offered us. No expedition attracts us more than the projected visit to Strathtyrum. Unhappily, Mr. Lewes continues to be troubled and depressed by symptoms that, with the recollection upon us of the crippling gout which once followed them, quite rob us of the courage to leave home. The journey and the excitement, which would be part of his pleasure if he were tolerably well, seem to him now dangerous to encounter--and I am not myself robust enough to venture on a risk of illness to him; so that I cannot supply the daring he needs. We begin to think that we shall be obliged to defer our pleasure of seeing you in your own home--so promising of walks and talks, such as we can never have a chance of in London--until we have the disadvantage of counting ourselves a year older. I am very sorry. But it is better to know that you are getting well, and we unable to see you, than to think of you as an invalid, unable to receive us. We must satisfy ourselves with the good we have--including the peace, and the promise of an abundant wheat harvest. Please ask Mrs. and Miss Blackwood to accept my best regards, and assure them that I counted much on a longer, quieter intercourse with them in a few sunny days away from hotels and callers. Do not write when writing seems a task. Otherwise you know how well I like to have a letter from you. [Sidenote: Letter to William Blackwood, 15th Aug. 1878.] We have certainly to pay for all our other happiness, which is a Benjamin's share, by many small bodily miseries. Mr. Lewes continues ailing, and I am keeping him company with headache. "Rejoice, O young man, in the days of thy youth," and keep a reserve of strength for the more evil days. Especially avoid breaking your neck in hunting. Mr. Lewes did once try horseback, some years ago, but found the exercise too violent for him. I think a Highland sheltie would be the suitable nag, only he is very fond of walking; and between that and lawn-tennis he tires himself sufficiently. I shall hope by and by to hear more good news about your uncle's health. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 26th Aug. 1878.] Shall you mind the trouble of writing me a few words of news about you and yours? just to let me know how things are with you, and deliver me from evil dreams. We have been so ailing in the midst of our country joys that I need to hear of my friends being well as a ground for cheerfulness--a bit of sugar in the cup of resignation. Perhaps this fine summer has been altogether delightful to you. Let me know this good, and satisfy the thirsty sponge of my affection. If you object to my phrase, please to observe that it is Dantesque--which will oblige you to find it admirable. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 26th Aug. 1878.] You remember the case of the old woman of whom her murderers confessed that they had beaten her to death, "partly with crowbars and partly with their fists." Well, I have been beaten into silence since your kind letter, partly by visitors and partly by continual headache. I am a shade or two better this morning, and my soul has half awaked to run its daily stage of duty. Happily I was temporarily relieved from headache during our friends' (the Tom Trollopes') visit. We took them to see Tennyson, and they were delighted with the reading which he very amiably gave us. Then the Du Mauriers came to dine with us on the Thursday, and so the time was not, I hope, too languid for our visitors. Mr. Lewes continues to show improvement in health, so that the balance of good is not much altered by my deficit. We shall be pleased to have any news of you, whether by post or person. At this time I was in the habit of going over occasionally from Weybridge on Sundays. The shadow of trouble was on both our houses. My mother was in her last illness, and Mr. Lewes was constantly ailing, though none of us then thought that he would be taken first. But the sharing of a common anxiety contributed to make our friendship much more intimate. In our drives in the neighborhood of Witley, Mr. Lewes used sometimes to be suddenly seized with severe cramping pains. I think he was himself aware that something was far wrong, but the moment the pain ceased the extraordinary buoyancy of his spirits returned. Nothing but death could quench that bright flame. Even on his worst days he had always a good story to tell; and I remember on one occasion, between two bouts of pain, he sang through, with great _brio_, though without much voice, the greater portion of the tenor part in the "Barber of Seville"--George Eliot playing his accompaniment, and both of them thoroughly enjoying the fun. They led a very secluded life at Witley--as always in their country retreats--but enjoyed the society of some of their neighbors. Sir Henry and Lady Holland, who lived next door; charming Mrs. Thellusson and her daughter, Mrs. Greville, who lived between Witley and Godalming, were especial friends. The Tennysons, too, and the Du Mauriers and Allinghams, were all within easy visiting distance. George Eliot's dislike of London life continued to increase with the increasing number of her acquaintance, and consequent demands on time. The Sunday receptions, confined to a small number of intimate friends in 1867, had gradually extended themselves to a great variety of interesting people. These receptions have been so often and so well described that they have hitherto occupied rather a disproportionate place in the accounts of George Eliot's life. It will have been noticed that there is very little allusion to them in the letters; but, owing to the seclusion of her life, it happened that the large majority of people who knew George Eliot as an author never met her elsewhere. Her _salon_ was important as a meeting-place for many friends whom she cared greatly to see, but it was not otherwise important in her own life. For she was eminently _not_ a typical mistress of a _salon_. It was difficult for her, mentally, to move from one person to another. Playing around many disconnected subjects, in talk, neither interested her nor amused her much. She took things too seriously, and seldom found the effort of entertaining compensated by the gain. Fortunately Mr. Lewes supplied any qualities lacking in the hostess. A brilliant talker, a delightful _raconteur_, versatile, full of resource in the social difficulties of amalgamating diverse groups, and bridging over awkward pauses, he managed to secure for these gatherings most of the social success which they obtained. Many of the _réunions_ were exceedingly agreeable and interesting, especially when they were not too crowded, when general conversation could be maintained. But the larger the company grew the more difficult it was to manage. The English character does not easily accommodate itself to the exigencies of a _salon_. There is a fatal tendency to break up into small groups. The entertainment was frequently varied by music when any good performer happened to be present. I think, however, that the majority of visitors delighted chiefly to come for the chance of a few words with George Eliot alone. When the drawing-room door of the Priory opened, a first glance revealed her always in the same low arm-chair on the left-hand side of the fire. On entering, a visitor's eye was at once arrested by the massive head. The abundant hair, streaked with gray now, was draped with lace, arranged mantilla-fashion, coming to a point at the top of the forehead. If she were engaged in conversation her body was usually bent forward with eager, anxious desire to get as close as possible to the person with whom she talked. She had a great dislike to raising her voice, and often became so wholly absorbed in conversation that the announcement of an incoming visitor sometimes failed to attract her attention; but the moment the eyes were lifted up, and recognized a friend, they smiled a rare welcome--sincere, cordial, grave--a welcome that was felt to come straight from the heart, not graduated according to any social distinction. Early in the afternoon, with only one or two guests, the talk was always general and delightful. Mr. Lewes was quite as good in a company of three as in a company of thirty. In fact, he was better, for his _verve_ was not in the least dependent on the number of his audience, and the flow was less interrupted. Conversation was no effort to him; nor was it to her so long as the numbers engaged were not too many, and the topics were interesting enough to sustain discussion. But her talk, I think, was always most enjoyable _à deux_. It was not produced for effect, nor from the lip, but welled up from a heart and mind intent on the one person with whom she happened to be speaking. She was never weary of giving of her best so far as the wish to give was concerned. In addition to the Sundays "at home" the Priory doors were open to a small circle of very intimate friends on other days of the week. Of evening entertainments there were very few, I think, after 1870. I remember some charming little dinners--never exceeding six persons--and one notable evening when the Poet Laureate read aloud "Maud," "The Northern Farmer," and parts of other poems. It was very interesting on this occasion to see the two most widely known representatives of contemporary English literature sitting side by side. George Eliot would have enjoyed much in her London life if she had been stronger in health, but, with her susceptible organization, the _atmosphere_ oppressed her both physically and mentally. She always rejoiced to escape to the country. The autumn days were beginning to close in now on the beautiful Surrey landscape, not without some dim, half-recognized presage to her anxious mind of impending trouble. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 24th Sept. 1878.] I am not inclined to let you rest any longer without asking you to send me some account of yourself, for it is long since I got my last news from Edinburgh. I should like to know that you have continued to gather strength, and that you have all been consequently more and more enjoying your life at Strathtyrum. It is an ugly theory that happiness wants the contrast of illness and anxiety, but I know that Mrs. Blackwood must have a new comfort in seeing you once more with your usual strength. We have had "a bad time" in point of health, and it is only quite lately that we have both been feeling a little better. The fault is all in our own frames, not in our air or other circumstances; for we like our house and neighborhood better and better. The general testimony and all other arguments are in favor of this district being thoroughly healthy. But we both look very haggard in the midst of our blessings. Are you not disturbed by yesterday's Indian news? One's hopes for the world's getting a little rest from war are continually checked. Every day, after reading the _Times_, I feel as if all one's writing were miserably trivial stuff in the presence of this daily history. Do you think there are persons who admire Russia's "mission" in Asia as they did the mission in Europe? Please write me anything that comes easily to the end of your pen, and make your world seem nearer to me. Good Mr. Simpson, I hope, lets you know that he is prospering in his pursuit of pleasure without work--which seems a strange paradox in association with my idea of him. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 15th Oct. 1878.] The days pass by without my finding time to tell you what I want to tell you--how delighted I was to have a good account of you. But every bright day, and we have had many such, has made me think the more of you, and hope that you were drawing in strength from the clear, sweet air. I miss so much the hope that I used always to have of seeing you in London and talking over everything just as we used to do--in the way that will never exactly come with any one else. How unspeakably the lengthening of memories in common endears our old friends! The new are comparatively foreigners, with whom one's talk is hemmed in by mutual ignorance. The one cannot express, the other cannot divine. We are intensely happy in our bit of country, as happy as the cloudy aspect of public affairs will allow any one who cares for them to be, with the daily reading of the _Times_. A neighbor of ours was reciting to me yesterday some delicious bits of dialogue with a quaint Surrey woman; _e.g._, "O ma'am, what I have gone through with my husband! He is so uneddicated--he never had a tail-coat in his life!" [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 23d Nov. 1878, from the Priory.] When Mr. Lewes sent you my MS.[34] the other morning he was in that state of exhilarated activity which often comes with the sense of ease after an attack of illness which had been very painful. In the afternoon he imprudently drove out, and undertook, with his usual eagerness, to get through numerous details of business, over-fatigued himself, and took cold. The effect has been a sad amount of suffering from feverishness and headache, and I have been in deep anxiety, am still very unhappy, and only comforted by Sir James Paget's assurances that the actual trouble will be soon allayed. I have been telling the patient about your letter and suggestion that he should send a form of slip as advertisement for the Magazine. He says--and the answer seems to have been a matter of premeditation with him--that it will be better not to announce the book in this way at once--"the Americans and Germans will be down on us." I cannot question him further at present, but I have no doubt he has been thinking about the matter, and we must not cross his wish in any way. I have thought that a good form of advertisement, to save people from disappointment in a book of mine not being a story, would be to print the list of contents, which, with the title, would give all but the very stupid a notion to what form of writing the work belongs. But this is a later consideration. I am glad you were pleased with the opening. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, Sunday evening, 24th Nov. 1878.] For the last week I have been in deep trouble. Mr. Lewes has been alarmingly ill. To-day Sir James Paget and Dr. Quain pronounce him in all respects better, and I am for the first time comforted. You will not wonder now at my silence. Thanks for your affectionate remembrances. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Nov. 1878.] Mr. Lewes continues sadly ill, and I am absorbed in nursing him. When he wrote about Parliament meeting, he was thinking that it would be called together at the usual time--perhaps February. The book can be deferred without mischief. I wish to add a good deal, but, of course, I can finish nothing now, until Mr. Lewes is better. The doctors pronounced him in every respect better yesterday, and he had a quiet night, but since five o'clock this morning he has had a recurrence of trouble. You can feel for him and me, having so lately known what severe illness is. Mr. Lewes died on the 28th November, 1878. _SUMMARY._ MARCH, 1876, TO NOVEMBER, 1878. Letter to John Blackwood--Visit to Weybridge--"Daniel Deronda"--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--Meets Sir Garnet Wolseley--Vivisection--Letter to John Blackwood--Public discussion of "Deronda"--Motto from Walt Whitman--Inscription on the MS. of "Deronda"--Letter to Mrs. Stowe--Thanks for sympathy--Drawbacks to going too much abroad--Mr. Lewes's "Problems"--Letter to J. W. Cross on the effect of her writing--Three-months' trip to Continent--Letter to John Blackwood--Visit to Chambéry and Les Charmettes--Lausanne and Vevey--Ragatz--Return to London--Letter to John Blackwood--Dr. Hermann Adler--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--St. Blasien--Women's work--Visit to Six-Mile Bottom--Meets Turguenieff--Jewish appreciation of "Deronda"--Letter to Mrs. William Smith--Mrs. Ruck--Letter to Mrs. Stowe--Jewish element in "Deronda"--Letter to Miss Hennell--Miss Martineau's "Autobiography," and biography in general--Resignation--Gratitude of Jews for "Deronda"--Purchase of house at Witley, near Godalming--Dr. Hermann Adler's lectures on "Daniel Deronda"--Application to translate "Romola" into Italian--Christmas at Weybridge--Opening of year 1877--Letter to James Sully--The word "meliorism"--Letter to John Blackwood--Illustrations of cheap editions--"Romola"--Letter to William Allingham--Warwickshire dialect--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Harriet Martineau's "Autobiography"--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--Holmes and Mrs. Vernon Lushington playing--Letter to Miss Hennell--Mrs. Chapman on Harriet Martineau--Mrs. Stowe and the Byron case--Letter to Professor Kaufmann--Gratitude for his estimate of "Deronda"--Letter to F. Harrison--Sympathy incentive to production--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--Miss Thackeray's marriage--Letter to W. Allingham on his poems--Letter to Professor Kaufmann--Translation of his article by Mr. Ferrier--Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby--Reference to Stradivarius--Pity and fairness--Letter to J. W. Cross--Appreciation of Tennyson's poems and dramas--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Improvement in health at Witley--Proposal to write on Shakespeare for "Men of Letters" series--Letter to Miss Hennell--Gain of health and strength at Witley--Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones--Christmas plans--Farewell to Journal and to year 1877--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--State of France--London University opening degrees to women--Reading Green's "History of the English People" and Lecky--The phonograph--Letter to John Blackwood--"Pascal"--"La Bruyère"--Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones on the "Two Grenadiers"--Letter to Mrs. Bray--Meeting with Crown Prince and Princess of Germany at Mr. Goschen's--Visit to Oxford to the Master of Balliol--Letter to John Blackwood--Indian story of Lord Lytton's--Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor--Function the æsthetic not the doctrinal teacher--Letter to John Blackwood--Mr. Lewes's ill-health--Letter to William Blackwood--Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones complaining of health--Letter to J. W. Cross--Mr. Lewes's continued illness--Life at Witley--Effect of receptions at the Priory--Description of receptions--Letter to John Blackwood--Complaining of health--Letter to Mme. Bodichon--Delight in old friends--Letters to John Blackwood--MS. of "Theophrastus Such"--Mr. Lewes's last illness--Postponement of publication of "Theophrastus"--Mr. Lewes's death. FOOTNOTES: [28] This was a visit to Six-Mile Bottom, where M. Turguenieff, who was a very highly valued friend of Mr. and Mrs. Lewes, had come to compare his experiences of Russian and English sport. I remember George Eliot telling me that she had never met any literary man whose society she enjoyed so thoroughly and so unrestrainedly as she did that of M. Turguenieff. They had innumerable bonds of sympathy. [29] This letter is in acknowledgment of a letter from Mrs. Beecher Stowe on "Daniel Deronda." [30] Mme. Bodichon had been dangerously ill. [31] Refers to a poem by W. Allingham, "The General Chorus," with a burden: "Life, Death; Life, Death; Such is the song of human breath." [32] The beginning of my mother's last illness. [33] Dinner at Mr. Goschen's. [34] "The Impressions of Theophrastus Such." CHAPTER XIX. For many weeks after Mr. Lewes's death, George Eliot saw no one except Mr. Charles Lewes, and the very few persons she was obliged to receive on necessary business. She read no letters, and wrote none, but at once began to occupy herself busily with Mr. Lewes's unfinished MSS., in which work Mr. Charles Lewes was able to assist her in the arrangement. The only entry in her diary on the 1st January, 1879, is "Here I and sorrow sit." At the end of two months this desolation had told terribly on her health and spirits; and on the last day of January she was greatly comforted by a visit from Sir James Paget--a friend for whom she had always had the highest and most cordial regard during the many years she had known him. Meantime she had begun to write a few short notes, and she mentions in her journal of 2d January, "A kind letter from Professor Michael Foster, of Cambridge, offering to help me on any physiological point;" and on the 19th January, "Ruminating on the founding of some educational instrumentality as a memorial to be called by his name." There are the following letters in January and February. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 7th Jan. 1879.] I bless you for all your goodness to me, but I am a bruised creature, and shrink even from the tenderest touch. As soon as I feel able to see anybody I will see _you_. Please give my love to Bessie[35] and thank her for me--I mean, for her sweet letter. I was a long while before I read any letters, but tell her I shall read hers again and again. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 13th Jan. 1879.] It was a long while before I read any letters, and as yet I have written none, except such as business required of me. You will believe that this has not been for want of gratitude to all my friends for their goodness to me. I can trust to your understanding of a sorrow which has broken my life. I write now because I ought not to allow any disproportionate expense to be incurred about my printed sheets. To me, now, the writing seems all trivial stuff, but since he wished it to be printed, and you seem to concur, I will correct the sheets (if you will send me the remainder) gradually as I am able, and they can be struck off and laid by for a future time. I submit this proposition to your judgment, not knowing what may be most expedient for your printing-office. Thank you for all your kind words. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 22d Jan. 1879.] Sometime, if I live, I shall be able to see you--perhaps sooner than any one else--but not yet. Life seems to get harder instead of easier. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 30th Jan. 1879.] When I said "sometime" I meant still a distant time. I want to live a little time that I may do certain things for his sake. So I try to keep up my strength, and I work as much as I can to save my mind from imbecility. But that is all at present. I can go through anything that is mere business. But what used to be joy is joy no longer, and what is pain is easier because he has not to bear it. I bless my friends for all their goodness to me. Please say so to all of them that you know, especially Mr. Hall. Tell him I have read his letter again and again. If you feel prompted to say anything, write it to me. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 4th Feb. 1879.] Do not believe that your love is lost upon me, dear. I bless you for all your goodness to me, and keep every sign of it in my memory. I have been rather ill lately, but my head is clearer this morning. The world's winter is going, I hope, but my everlasting winter has set in. You know that and will be patient with me. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th Feb. 1879.] Bless you for your loving thought. But for all reasons, bodily and mental, I am unable to move. I am entirely occupied with his manuscripts, and must be on this spot among all the books. Then, I am in a very ailing condition of body--cannot count on myself from day to day--and am not fit to undertake any sort of journey. I have never yet been outside the gate. Even if I were otherwise able, I could not bear to go out of sight of the things he used and looked on. Bless you once more. If I could go away with _anybody_ I could go away with you. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 7th Feb. 1879.] I do need your affection. Every sign of care for me from the beings I respect and love is a help to me. In a week or two I think I shall want to see you. Sometimes, even now, I have a longing, but it is immediately counteracted by a fear. The perpetual mourner--the grief that can never be healed--is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning--a new acquaintance with grief. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, Saturday, 22d Feb. 1879.] If you happen to be at liberty to-morrow, or the following Friday, or to-morrow week, I hope I shall be well enough to see you. Let me know which day. On Sunday, the 23d February, I saw her for the first time, and there is the following letter next day. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 24th Feb. 1879.] A transient absence of mind yesterday made me speak as if it were possible for me to entertain your thoughtful, kind proposal that I should move to Weybridge for a short time. But I cannot leave this house for the next two months--if for no other reason, I should be chained here by the need of having all the books I want to refer to. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 25th Feb. 1879.] Pray do not announce "Theophrastus" in any way. It would be intolerable to my feelings to have a book of my writing brought out for a long while to come. What I wish to do is, to correct the sheets thoroughly, and then have them struck off and laid by till the time of publication comes. One reason which prompted me to set about the proofs--in addition to my scruples about occupying the type--was that I was feeling so ill, I thought there was no time to be lost in getting done everything which no one else would do if I left it undone. But I am getting better, I think; and my doctors say there is nothing the matter with me to urge more haste than the common uncertainty of life urges on us all. There is a great movement now among the Jews towards colonizing Palestine, and bringing out the resources of the soil. Probably Mr. Oliphant is interested in the work, and will find his experience in the West not without applicability in the East. It is a satisfaction to you, I hope, that your son is about to be initiated in George Street. I trust he will one day carry on the good traditions of the name "John Blackwood." [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th Mch. 1879.] Your letter, which tells me that you are benefiting by the clear, sunny air, is very welcome. Yes, here too the weather is more merciful, and I drive out most days. I am better bodily, but I never feel thoroughly comfortable in that material sense, and I am incredibly thin. As to my mind, I am full of occupation, but the sorrow deepens down instead of diminishing. I mean to go to Witley in a few months, that I may look again on the spots that he enjoyed, and that we enjoyed together, but I cannot tell beforehand whether I shall care to go again afterwards. Everybody is very kind to me, and by and by I shall begin to see a few intimate friends. I can do or go through anything that is business or duty, but time and strength seem lacking for everything else. You must excuse my weakness, remembering that for nearly twenty-five years I have been used to find my happiness in his. I can find it nowhere else. But we can live and be helpful without happiness, and I have had more than myriads who were and are better fitted for it. I am really very busy, and have been sadly delayed by want of health. One project I have entered on is to found a studentship, which will be called after his name. I am getting help from experienced men. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 5th Mch. 1879.] I send the corrected sheets of "Theophrastus," and shall be much obliged if you will order a complete revise to be sent me before they are struck off. Whenever the book is published (I cannot contemplate its appearing before June, and if that is a bad time it must stand over till the autumn season) I beg you kindly to write for me a notice, to be printed on the fly-leaf, that the MS. was placed in your hands last November, or simply last year. I think you will enter into my feeling when I say that to create a notion on the part of the public of my having been occupied in writing "Theophrastus" would be repugnant to me. And I shrink from putting myself forward in any way. I hope you are benefiting by the milder weather. I drive out a little now, but you must be prepared to see me a much changed creature. I think I should hardly know myself. [Sidenote: Journal, 1879.] _March 8._--Gertrude[36] and the children came to tea. _March 9._--Mr. Henry Sidgwick came to discuss the plan of the studentship. _March 13._--Professor Michael Foster came to discuss the studentship, and we arrived at a satisfactory clearness as to the conditions. He mentioned as men whom he thought of as suitable trustees, Huxley, Pye Smith, Thiselton Dyer, Francis Balfour, and Henry Sidgwick. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 20th Mch. 1879.] DEAR FRIEND,--When you have time to come to me about six o'clock I shall love to see you. [Sidenote: Journal, 1879.] _March 22._--Mrs. Congreve came again. Mrs. Burne-Jones came. [Sidenote: Letter to William Blackwood, 25th Mch. 1879.] I am so dissatisfied with "Theophrastus" on reading the revise that I have proposed to suppress it in this original form, and regenerate it whenever--if ever--I recover the power to do so. You see the cruel weather has travelled after you. It makes one feel every grievance more grievously in some respects, though to me the sunshine is in one sense sadder. [Sidenote: Journal, 1879.] _March 30._--Mr. Bowen (now Lord Justice Bowen) came, Mr. Spencer, and J. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 5th April, 1879.] After weighing what you have said, I agree to the publication of "Theophrastus" in May. If you had at all suspected that the book would injure my influence, you would not have wished me to give it forth in its present form, and in the uncertainty of one's inner and outer life it is not well to depend on future capabilities. There are some things in it which I want to get said, and if the book turned out to be effective in proportion to my other things, the form would lend itself to a "second series"--supposing I lived and kept my faculties. As to the price for the right of translating, you will judge. If you will kindly undertake these negotiations for me, I shall be thankful. And pray remember that I don't _want_ the book to be translated, so that it will be well to wait for the application, and to ask a sufficient sum to put the publisher on his guard as to the selection of a translator. But, of course, this little book cannot be paid for according to the difficulty of translation. You see, I have been so used to have all trouble spared me that I am ready to cast it on any willing shoulders. But I am obliged now to think of business in many ways. I am so glad to know that Mrs. Blackwood has the comfort of a good report about you from the doctors. Perhaps it may seem to you the wrong order of sympathy to be glad for your sake in the _second_ place. [Sidenote: Journal, 1879.] _April 8._--Mrs. Stuart came. Mrs. Stuart was a devoted friend whose acquaintance had been formed some years before through the presentation of some beautiful wood-carving which she had executed as an offering to George Eliot. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 8th April, 1879.] DEAR FRIENDS,--Will you come to see me some day? I am always in from my drive and at liberty by half-past four. Please do not say to any one that I am receiving visitors generally. Though I have been so long without making any sign, my heart has been continually moved with gratitude towards you. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 8th April, 1879.] Your letter was very welcome this morning, for I do not like to be very long without having some picture of you, and your words of affection are always sweet. The studentship I mention is to supply an income to a young man who is qualified and eager to carry on physiological research, and would not otherwise have the means of doing so. Mr. H. Sidgwick, Michael Foster, and other men of kindred mind are helping me in settling the scheme. I have been determined in my choice of the studentship by the idea of what would be a sort of prolongation of _his_ life. That there should always, in consequence of his having lived, be a young man working in the way he would have liked to work, is a memorial of him that comes nearest my feeling. It is to be at Cambridge to begin with, and we thought at first of affiliating it to the university; but now the notion is that it will be well to keep it free, so that the trustees may move it where and when they will. But the scheme is not yet drafted. I am going to bring out one of "The Problems" in a separate volume at the beginning of May, and am now correcting the proofs. My going to Witley is an experiment. I don't know how I shall bear being there, but I hope there will be nothing to hinder my _having you_ there if you will undertake the troublous journey for my sake. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 9th April, 1879.] I enclose the proof of title-page and motto. Whether the motto (which is singularly apt and good) should be on the title-page or fly-leaf I leave you to judge. Certainly, everybody who does not read Latin will be offended by its claiming notice, and will consider that only the deepest-dyed pedantry could have found the motive for it. But I will not leave it out altogether. I have had such various letters from time to time, asking me to reprint or write essays, that, perhaps, some of the public will not be disappointed that the volume is not a story. But that must be as it may; and if you think the acceptance dubious, it is much the better plan not to stereotype. What energy there is in Mr. Kinglake in spite of the somewhat shattered health that his _Wesen_ gives one the impression of! Among incidents of war that one can dwell on with anything like gladness, that account of the rescue of the colors at Isandlana is memorable, is it not? I go out every day, drive beyond the ranks of hideous houses in the Kilburn outskirts, and get to lanes where I can walk, in perfect privacy, among the fields and budding hedgerows. I hope Mr. Julian Sturgis will take care of his writing and do something lasting. He seems to me to have a strain above the common in him; and he is not writing for his bread, or even his butter. I don't know why I say this just now, except that I had it in my mind to say long ago, and it has just come upper-most as I was thinking of the Magazine. [Sidenote: Letter to Professor Kaufmann, 17th April, 1879.] Your kind letter has touched me very deeply. I confess that my mind had, more than once, gone out to you as one from whom I should like to have some sign of sympathy with my loss. But you were rightly inspired in waiting till now, for during many weeks I was unable even to listen to the letters which my generous friends were continually sending me. Now, at last, I am eagerly interested in every communication that springs out of an acquaintance with my husband and his works. I thank you for telling me about the Hungarian translation of his "History of Philosophy;" but what would I not have given if the volumes could have come, even only a few days, before his death! For his mind was perfectly clear, and he would have felt some joy in that sign of his work being effective. I do not know whether you will enter into the comfort I feel that he never knew he was dying, and fell gently asleep after ten days of illness, in which the suffering was comparatively mild. One of the last things he did at his desk was to despatch a manuscript of mine to the publishers. The book (not a story, and not bulky) is to appear near the end of May, and, as it contains some words I wanted to say about the Jews, I will order a copy to be sent to you. I hope that your labors have gone on uninterruptedly for the benefit of others, in spite of public troubles. The aspect of affairs with us is grievous--industry languishing, and the best part of our nation indignant at our having been betrayed into an unjustifiable war in South Africa. I have been occupied in editing my husband's MSS., so far as they are left in sufficient completeness to be prepared for publication without the obtrusion of another mind instead of his. A brief volume on "The Study of Psychology" will appear immediately, and a further volume of psychological studies will follow in the autumn. But his work was cut short while he still thought of it as the happy occupation of far-stretching months. Once more let me thank you for remembering me in my sorrow. [Sidenote: Letter to J. W. Cross, 22d April, 1879.] I am in dreadful need of your counsel. Pray come to me when you can--morning, afternoon, or evening. From this time forward I saw George Eliot constantly. My mother had died in the beginning of the previous December, a week after Mr. Lewes; and, as my life had been very much bound up with hers, I was trying to find some fresh interest in taking up a new pursuit. Knowing very little Italian, I began Dante's "Inferno" with Carlyle's translation. The first time I saw George Eliot afterwards, she asked me what I was doing, and, when I told her, exclaimed, "Oh, I must read that with you." And so it was. In the following twelve months we read through the "Inferno" and the "Purgatorio" together; not in a _dilettante_ way, but with minute and careful examination of the construction of every sentence. The prodigious stimulus of such a teacher (_cotanto maestro_) made the reading a real labor of love. Her sympathetic delight in stimulating my newly awakened enthusiasm for Dante did something to distract her mind from sorrowful memories. The divine poet took us into a new world. It was a renovation of life. At the end of May I induced her to play on the piano at Witley for the first time; and she played regularly after that whenever I was there, which was generally once or twice a week, as I was living at Weybridge, within easy distance. Besides Dante, we read at this time a great many of Sainte-Beuve's "Causeries," and much of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Wordsworth. But I am anticipating. We will return to the correspondence in its order. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 22d April, 1879.] When I shall be able to get to Witley is altogether uncertain. The cold winds make one less hungry for the country, but still it will be a relief to me, in some respects, to get away from town. I am much stronger than I was, and am again finding interest in this wonderful life of ours. But I am obliged to keep my doors closed against all but the few until I go away. You, however, I shall hope to see. I am founding a studentship of Physiology, to be called "The George Henry Lewes Studentship." It will be placed, in the first instance, at Cambridge, where there is the best physiological school in the kingdom. But the trustees (with my consent during my life) will have the power of moving it where they judge best. This idea, which I early conceived, has been a great stay to me. But I have plenty to think of, plenty of creatures depending on me, to make my time seem of some value. And there are so many in the world who have to live without any great enjoyment. [Sidenote: Journal, 1879.] _April 26._--Mr. and Mrs. Hall came. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d May, 1879.] If you can come to me next week for a parting word, will you try to learn beforehand whether and when your husband can give me half an hour at the end of his working-day? I should like to see him before I go, which I hope to do soon after the 13th. [Sidenote: Journal, 1879.] _May 6._--Mr. and Mrs. Call, Eleanor and Florence (Cross) came. _May 8._--Mr. Burne-Jones came. _May 10._--Edith Simcox and Mr. Pigott came. _May 13._--Dr. Andrew Clark came and gave me important suggestions about the studentship. _May 21._--Saw Mr. Anthony Trollope. _May 22._--Came down to Witley--lovely mild day. [Sidenote: Letter to James Sully, 28th May, 1879.] Mr. Lewes always wrote the dramatic criticisms in the _Leader_, and for a year or two he occasionally wrote such criticisms in the _Pall Mall_. Of the latter, the chief were reprinted in the little book on "Actors, and the Art of Acting." What was written in the _Fortnightly_ (1865-66) is marked by signature. The most characteristic contributions to the _Cornhill_ (1864-65) were "The Mental Condition of Babies," "Dangers and Delights of Tobacco," "Was Nero a Monster?" "Shakespeare in France," and "Miseries of a Dramatic Author." But after 1866 his contributions to any periodical were very scanty--confined to a few articles in the _Pall Mall Gazette_, one on "The Reign of Law," in the _Fortnightly_, and the series on Darwin, now incorporated in "The Physical Basis of Mind." After these, his sole contributions were an article on Dickens (1872), two on "Spiritualism" and "Mesmerism" (1876), and one on "The Dread and Dislike of Science" (1878). Charles, I think, mentioned to you my desire that you should do me the valuable service of looking over the proofs of the remaining volume of "Problems," and you were so generous as to express your willingness to undertake that labor. The printing will not begin till after the 16th--Dr. Michael Foster, who has also kindly offered to help me in the same way, not being sufficiently at leisure till after that date. I have been rather ill again lately, but am hoping to benefit by the country quietude. You, too, I am sorry to hear, are not over strong. This will make your loan of mind and eyesight all the more appreciated by me. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 3d June, 1879.] Your letter, full of details--just the sort of letter I like to have--has been among my comforts in these last damp, chill days. The first week I was not well, and had a troublesome attack of pain, but I am better, and try to make life interesting by always having something to do. I am wishing Margaret many happy returns of this day, and am making a picture of you all keeping the little _fête_. A young birthday, when the young creature is promising, is really a happy time; one can hope reasonably; and the elder ones may be content that gladness has passed onward from them into newer vessels. I should like to see the blue-eyed maid with her bangles on her arms. Please give my love to all and sundry who make any sign of love for me; and any amount you like is ready for you to draw upon. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 10th June, 1879.] I am greatly obliged to you for sending me the paper you are to read to-day; and I appreciate it the more highly because your diligence is in contrast with the general sluggishness of readers about any but idle reading. It is melancholy enough that to most of our polite readers the social factor in psychology would be a dull subject; for it is certainly no conceit of ours which pronounces it to be the supremely interesting element in the thinking of our time. I confess the word factor has always been distasteful to me as the name for the grandest of forces. If it were only mathematical I should not mind, but it has many other associated flavors which spoil it for me. Once more--ever more--thanks. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 10th June, 1879.] You will like to know that Mr. Frederic Harrison has sent me a brief paper, which is to be read to-day at the Metaphysical Society, on the "Social Factor in Psychology," opening with a quotation from the "Study of Psychology," and marking throughout his high appreciation of your father's work. Also the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, kindly sent (with his initials only) to Trübner four errata which he had found in reading the "Study of Psychology." Trübner did not know who was the kind corrector, and very properly sent the paper to me, offering to have the corrections made on the plates if I wished it. I said, "By all means," and have written to thank the Rector. What a blessing to find a man who really reads a book! I have received the enclosed letter, with other papers (about country lodgings at Sevenoaks for poor children). Will you look out a single copy of as many of my books (poems included) as you can find, and send them in a parcel, saying that they come from me for the Free Library? Please not to mind this trouble, as it is for the _impecunious_ readers. (You know I am nothing if not "sesquipedalian" and scientific; and a word of five syllables will do for both qualities.) I wish you could see Coquelin in Tabourin. He is a wonderful actor, when he gets the right part for him. He has a penetrating personality that one cannot be indifferent to, though possibly it may be unpleasant to some people. [Sidenote: Letter to William Blackwood, 12th June, 1879.] I was beginning, with my usual apprehensiveness, to fear that you had no good news to tell me, since I did not hear from you, and I should have gone on fearing till to-morrow morning if I had not happened to drive to Godalming and ask for the second post. We only get one post a day at the benighted Witley, so that if you want me to get a letter quickly it must be posted early at Edinburgh. I am heartily glad to know that the invalid is going on well, and I trust that the softer air we are having now will help him forward. "Theophrastus" seems to be really welcomed by the public. Mr. Blackwood will be amused to hear that one gentleman told Charles, or implied, that "Theophrastus" was a higher order of book, and _more difficult to write_ than a novel. Wait long enough, and every form of opinion will turn up. However, poor "Theophrastus" is certainly not composed of "chips" any more than my other books. Another amusing bit of news is, that the other day Mrs. Pattison sent me an extract from the _livret_ of the Paris _Salon_, describing a picture painted by a French artist from "The Lifted Veil," and representing the moment when the resuscitated woman, fixing her eyes on her mistress, accuses her of having poisoned her husband. I call this amusing--I ought rather to have said typical of the relation my books generally have with the French mind. Thank you for sending me the list of orders. It does interest me to see the various country demands. I hope the movement will continue to cheer us all, and you are sure to let me know everything that is pleasant, so I do not need to ask for that kindness. The weather is decidedly warmer, and Tuesday was a perfectly glorious day. But rain and storm have never let us rest long together. I am not very bright, and am ready to interpret everything in the saddest sense, but I have no definite ailment. My best regards to the convalescent, who, I have no doubt, will write to me when he is able to do so. But I am only one of many who will be glad to hear from him. [Sidenote: Letter from Madame Bodichon to Miss Bonham-Carter, 12th June, 1879.] "I spent an hour with Marian (5th June). She was more delightful than I can say, and left me in good spirits for her--though she is wretchedly thin, and looks, in her long, loose, black dress, like the black shadow of herself. She said she had so much to do that she must keep well--'the world was so _intensely interesting_.' She said she would come _next year_ to see me. We both agreed in the great love we had for life. In fact, I think she will do more for us than ever." [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 20th June, 1879.] I have been having my turn of illness of rather a sharp kind. Yesterday, when your letter came, I was in more acute pain than I have ever known in my life before, but before the morning was over I was sufficiently relieved to read your pleasant news. I am writing in bed, but am in that most keenly conscious ease which comes after unusual suffering. The way in which the public takes "Theophrastus" is really a comfort to me. I have had some letters, not of the complimentary, but of the grateful kind, which are an encouragement to believe in the use of writing. But you would be screamingly amused with one, twenty-three pages long (from an Edinburgh man, by-the-bye), who has not read the book, but has read of it, and thinks that his own case is still more worthy of presentation than Merman's. I think a valuable series (or couple of volumes) might be made up from "Maga" of articles written _hot_ by travellers and military men, and not otherwise republished--chronicles and descriptions by eye-witnesses--which might be material for historians. What a comfort that the Afghan war is concluded! But on the back of it comes the black dog of Indian finance, which means, alas! a great deal of hardship to poor Hindûs. Let me hear more news of you before long. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 29th June, 1879.] Your description of the effects you feel from the restless, tormenting winds would serve well to represent my experience too. It seems something incredible written in my memory that when I was a little girl I loved the wind--used to like to walk about when it was blowing great guns. And now the wind is to me what it was to early peoples--a demon-god, cruelly demanding all sorts of human sacrifices. Thank you, dear, for caring whether I have any human angels to guard me. None are permanently here except my servants, but Sir James Paget has been down to see me, I have a very comfortable country practitioner to watch over me from day to day, and there is a devoted friend who is backward and forward continually to see that I lack nothing. It is a satisfaction to me that you felt the need for "Debasing the Moral Currency" to be written. I was determined to do it, though it might make me a stone of stumbling and rock of offence to all the comic tribe. Do not rate my illness too high in the scale of mortal misery. I am prone to make much of my ailments, and am among the worst at enduring pain. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 29th June, 1879.] Thank you for sending me the pretty little book.[37] I am deeply touched by the account of its origin, and I remember well everything you said to me of Mr. Brown in old days when he was still with you. I had only cut a very little way into the volume when a friend came and carried it off, but my eyes had already been arrested by some remarks on the character of Harold Transome, which seemed to me more penetrating and finely felt than almost anything I have read in the way of printed comment on my own writing. When my friend brings back the volume I shall read it reverentially, and most probably with a sense of being usefully admonished. For praise and sympathy arouse much more self-suspicion and sense of shortcoming than all the blame and depreciation of all the Pepins. I am better, and I hope on the way to complete recovery, but I am still at some distance from that goal. Perhaps if the winds would give one some rest from their tormenting importunity, both you and I should get on faster. I am looking forward to reading the "Recollections of Ekowe" in "Maga," which came to me yesterday, with its list of my own doings and misdoings on the cover. Does not this Zulu war seem to you a horribly bad business? [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 30th June, 1879.] Sir Henry Maine has sent me the one letter that has rejoiced my heart about the "Study of Psychology." He says: "In this branch of Mr. Lewes's studies I am almost as one of the ignorant, but I think I have understood every sentence in the book, and I believe I have gained great knowledge from it. It has been the most satisfactory piece of work I have done for a long time." I have written to tell him that he has rescued me from my scepticism as to any one's reading a serious book except the author or editor. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d July, 1879.] The sight of your handwriting on the pamphlet sent me urges me to do the sooner what I should have already done but for a rather sharp illness, which has kept me chiefly in bed for nearly a fortnight, and from which I am not yet quite free. I enclose a copy of Michael Foster's draft of conditions for the studentship, which I put into the lawyer's hands some ten or twelve days ago, and which is now come to me drawn up in legal form. You said it would interest you to see the draft, and I have been bearing this in mind, but have not been able to go to the desk where the copy lay. I hope to hear that you have been going on well despite the cruel, restless winds and sad intermittence of sunshine. On the 12th I am going to have two daughters-in-law, _five_ grandchildren, and servant for a week--if I can get well enough, as I have good hope now that I shall. The strawberries will be ripe then, and as I don't eat any myself it would be dolorous not to be able to have the children, and see them enjoy the juicy blessing. [Sidenote: Letter to John Blackwood, 16th July, 1879.] I was beginning to want some news of you, and was almost ready to ask for it. It is the more welcome for having had time to ripen into a decidedly good report of your condition. About myself I have a very poor story to tell, being now in the fifth week of a troublesome illness, in which, like you, I have been partly fed on "poisonous decoctions." To-day, however, happens to show a considerable improvement in my symptoms, and I have been walking in the warmer air with more ease than hitherto. Driving I have not been able to manage for some time, the motion of the carriage shaking me too much. The best of care has been taken of me. I have an excellent country doctor (Mr. Parsons of Godalming) who watches me daily; and Sir James Paget and Dr. Andrew Clark have been down to add their supervision. I begin to think that if I can avoid any evil condition, such as a chill that would bring on a relapse, I may soon be pretty well again. The point to be achieved is to stop the wasting of my not too solid flesh. I am glad to hear that the third edition of "Theophrastus" has had so lively a movement. If the remainder should be sold off I think it would be well just to print a small number of copies to carry on, and avoid bringing out a cheaper edition too soon after people have been paying for the expensive one. I have been always able to write my letters and read my proofs, usually in bed before the fatigue of dressing, but the rest of my time has been very unprofitable--spent chiefly in pain and languor. I am feeling easy now, and you will well understand that after undergoing pain this ease is opening paradise. Invalids must be excused for being eloquent about themselves. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 22d July, 1879.] I feel a perhaps too selfish need to tell you that things have gone ill with me since I last wrote to you. Why do I want to let you know this not agreeable news about myself? Chiefly because I want you to be quite clear that if I do not write to say, "When can you come to me?" it is not from indifference, but from misfortune of another sort. Meanwhile it will do me good to have little items of news from you, when you can find half an hour for the kind deed of writing me a letter. What helps me most is to be told things about others, and your letters are just of the sort I like to have. I am just now in one of my easier hours, and the demon wind has abated. He seems to enter into my pains with hideous rejoicing. [Sidenote: Letter to James Sully, 7th Aug. 1879.] Thank you for your kind note. There are to be more than as many proofs as you have already had, for which I must crave the valuable aid of your reading. You will understand all the better how much comfort it is to me to have your help as well as Professor Foster's, when I tell you that for the last eight weeks I have been seriously out of health, and have often been suffering much pain--a state which I imagine you know by experience to heighten all real anxieties, and usually to create unreal. It cheers me to be told by you that you think the volume interesting. In reading the MS. again and again I had got into a state of tremor about it which deprived me of judgment--just as if it were writing of my own, which I could not trust myself to pronounce upon. I hope that your own health, and Mrs. Sully's too, will have been benefited by your change from south to north. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 11th Aug. 1879.] I think that I am really getting better, and shall have to stay among the minority in this world a little longer than I had expected. Will you send me word how long you shall be at liberty, and whether you would think it worth while to come down to me one morning and stay till the afternoon of the following day? Your letter is delightful to me. Several spiritual kisses for it. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 19th Aug. 1879.] Thank you for your sweet affection. I have had rather a trying illness, which lasted, without great relief, for nearly eight weeks. But I hope that I am now out of it--that is, so far established that I may go on without a relapse. The cold weather was against me, as it was and is against much more important matters. The days of warmth and sunlight which have now and then blessed us have been my best medicine, though I acknowledge the benefit of pepsin and steel, and many other drugs. The gray skies and recurring rain are peculiarly dispiriting to me, and one seems to feel their influence all the more for the wide, beautiful view of field and hill which they sadden and half conceal. In town one thinks less of the sky. If you are ever writing to our dear Mrs. William Smith do give my love to her, and tell her I am very grateful to her for the letter she wrote me with the postmark _Ventnor_ upon it. With her usual delicacy of feeling she did not send her address, so that I could not write in return. [Sidenote: Letter to William Blackwood, 3d Sept. 1879.] I am much obliged to you for writing me your letter of pleasant news. It is wonderful how "Theophrastus" goes on selling in these bad times, and I have only to hope in addition that the buyers will be the better for it. Apparently we shall get through this last edition before Christmas, and then perhaps you will think of adding the volume to the Cabinet Edition. I am especially rejoiced to hear that your uncle is better again, and I trust that Strathtyrum is sharing our sunshine, which will be the best cure for him as for me. I am getting strong, and also am gaining flesh on my moderate scale. It really makes a difference to one's spirits to think that the harvest may now possibly be got in without utter ruin to the produce and unhappy producers. But this year will certainly prove a serious epoch, and initiate many changes in relation to farming. I fear, from what I have read, that the rich Lothians will have to be called compassionately the poor Lothians. By the way, if you happen to want any translation done from the French, and have not just the right person to do it, I think I can recommend a Miss Bradley Jenkins, of 50 Cornwall Road, Wesbourne Park, as one who has an unusually competent knowledge of French. We sat side by side on the same form translating Miss Edgeworth into French when we were girls. I have not seen her for many years, but I know that she has been engaged in a high order of teaching, and I have lately heard from her that she is anxious to get work of the kind in question. She already spoke French well when we were pupils together, and she has since been an unintermitting student. I wonder, talking of translators, how the young Mr. Ferrier is going on, who translated Kaufmann's pamphlet on "Deronda." What Mr. Blackwood told me of him interested me about his future. Oblige us all by not falling into another accident when the next hunting season comes. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 3d Sept. 1879.] Before I received your letter the other day I was intending to write to you to ask whether, now that I am stronger and the fine weather shows some signs of permanence, you feel any revival of the inclination to come and see me for a couple of days. I hardly like to propose your taking the journey, now that you are not being brought near me by other visits--for the railway from you to us is, I think, rather tiresome. But if your inclination really lies towards coming you will be affectionately welcomed. About the sea-side I am hopeless. The latter part of October is likely to be too cold for me to move about without risk of chills; and I hope to be back in town before the end of the month. I am not very fond of the sea-side, and this year it is likely to be crowded with people who have been hindered by the bad weather from going earlier. I prefer the Surrey hills and the security from draughts in one's own home. The one attraction of a coast place to me is a great breadth of sand to pace on when it is in its fresh firmness after the fall of the tide. But the sea itself is melancholy to me, only a little less so under warm sunlight, with plenty of fishing-smacks changing their shadows. All this is to let you know why I do not yield to the attraction of being with you, where we could chat as much or as little as we liked. I feel very much your affectionateness in wishing to have me near you. Write me word soon whether you feel able to come as far as this for my sake. [Sidenote: Letter to James Sully, 10th Sept. 1879.] I have read the article[38] with very grateful feelings. I think that he would himself have regarded it as a generally just estimate. And I am much obliged to you for sending it to me in proof. Your selection of subjects for remark, and the remarks themselves, are in accordance with my feeling to a comforting extent; and I shall always remain your debtor for writing the article. I trust you will not be forced to omit anything about his scientific and philosophical work, because that is the part of his life's labor which he most valued. Perhaps you a little underrate the (original) effect of his "Life of Goethe in Germany." It was received with enthusiasm, and an immense number of copies, in both the English and German form, have been sold in Germany since its appearance in 1854. I wish you were allowed to put your name to the article. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 17th Sept. 1879.] I am getting strong now after a long spell of medical discipline. All these long months I have been occupied with my husband's manuscripts: also with the foundation of a Physiological Studentship, which is my monument to his memory, and which is now all settled, as you may perhaps have seen by advertisements.[39] But I am not yet through the proof-reading of the final volume of "Problems of Life and Mind," which will contain the last sheets he ever wrote. I hear very good accounts of Madame Bodichon, who is coming to me for a couple of days on the 29th. You are wonderful for life and energy, in spite of your delicate looks. May you have all the strength you need for your sympathetic tasks! [Sidenote: Letter to James Sully, 7th Oct. 1879.] I have not yet thanked you--and I do so now very gratefully--for the help you have given me in my sad and anxious task. Your eyes have been a most precious aid, not only as a matter of fact, but as a ground of confidence. For I am not at all a good proof-reader, and have a thorough distrust of myself. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 18th Oct. 1879.] I cannot wish not to have been cheered by your triple letter, even though I have caused you to rise earlier in the morning, and to feel a disproportionate remorse. "Maggior difetto men vergogna lava," as says Virgil to the blushing Dante. And you have given me the fuller measure because I had to wait a little. Your legend of "Fair Women" interests me very much. I feel a citizen of the world again, knowing all the news. But the core of good news in your letter is that your husband is well again, and again happy in his work. Your collapse is what I feared for you; and you must call the getting change of air and scene--I was going to say "a duty," but are you one of those wonderful beings who find everything easier under that name? But at least one prefers doing a hard duty to grimacing with a pretence of pleasure in things that are no pleasure. I am greatly comforted this morning by the fact that the (apparently) right man is found for the George Henry Lewes Studentship--an ardent worker, who could not have carried on his pursuit without this help. I know you are not unmindful of what touches me deeply. Go on your visit, dear, and come back well--then show yourself without unnecessary delay to your loving friend. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, Saturday, 20th Oct. 1879.] I have had a delightful bit of news from Dr. Foster this morning. He had mentioned to me before that there was an Edinburgh student whom he had in his mind as the right one to elect. This morning he writes: "The trustees meet to-morrow to receive my nomination. I have chosen Dr. Charles Roy, an Edinburgh man, and Scotchman--not one of my own pupils. He is, I think, the most promising--by far the most promising--of our young physiologists, putting aside those who do not need the pecuniary assistance of the studentship. And the help comes to him just when it is most needed--he is in full swing of work, and was casting about for some means of supporting himself which would least interfere with his work, when I called his attention to the studentship. I feel myself very gratified that I can, at the very outset, recommend just the man, as it appears to me, for the post." This is a thing your father would have chosen as a result of his life. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, Tuesday, 27th Oct. 1879.] I have just had some news that grieves me. Mr. Blackwood is dangerously ill, and I fear, from Mr. William's letter, that there is little hope of recovery. He will be a heavy loss to me. He has been bound up with what I most cared for in my life for more than twenty years; and his good qualities have made many things easy to me that, without him, would often have been difficult.[40] I wrote to Mr. Trübner to tell him that the printing of the "Problems" being finished, I should be glad if he would arrange with you about the conditions of publication. Bear in mind your father's wish that the volumes should not be made dearer than necessary. I am going to Weybridge on Friday, and I intend to be at the Priory by Saturday before dusk. But it is _just possible_ I may be detained till Monday morning. So if you have any good occupation for Sunday you had better call on your way home on Monday. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Eleanor Cross, 29th Oct. 1879.] Your affectionate note would quite have determined me to do what, when your brother kindly proposed it, raised a certain longing in me. I thought that I should like to see you all in the remembered home again. But I have had a little check in health, and I am feeling so depressed that I shrink from making any engagement which involves others. A visitor to-day and my own languor threatens to throw me backward in my arrangements for leaving, and I have a sense of impossibility about everything that, under other conditions, would be a pleasure. I am afraid lest a fit of sadness should make me an oppression to you all; and my conclusion this morning is that I must give up the few hours' happiness of feeling your family love around me as I used to do, and simply go straight up to town with my servants. But if Friday morning brings me better hopes I will telegraph to you, since you allow me to wait till the eleventh hour. If you receive no telegram you will understand that I am still too downhearted to venture on a visit even to those who are among the best-loved of my friends. In that case you must all make me amends for my loss by coming to see me in the old place in town. Came to Weybridge on 31st October, and returned to the Priory on 1st November. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 8th Nov. 1879.] I came here just a week ago, and I had a superstition that you would come to me yesterday. But I used no enchantments--and so you didn't come. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1879, from the Priory.] I am very grateful to you for your kind letter. News about you all had been much desired by me; but I have now so many business letters to write that I am apt to defer such as are not absolutely necessary. The careful index is a sign of your effective industry, and I have no doubt that it will be a great help to yourself as well as to your readers. One very often needs an index to one's own writing. My chief objects are quite completed now. The Dr. Roy appointed to the studentship is held by competent persons to be the most hopeful of our young physiologists: and there is a volume of 501 pages (the last) of "Problems of Life and Mind" ready to appear next month. I am quite recovered from the ailment which made me good for little in the summer, and indeed am stronger than I ever expected to be again. People are very good to me, and I am exceptionally blessed in many ways; but more blessed are the dead who rest from their labors, and have not to dread a barren, useless survival. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 6th Dec. 1879, from the Priory.] I am very well, dear kind friend, all things considered. One cannot help getting occasional chills and headaches in this hard, wintry time. Oh, yes, I read the _Times_ with great interest, and am much concerned to know what my contemporaries are doing. My time is very fully occupied, for I have now to write a great many letters, such as used to be written for me, and I would willingly spend the time thus taken up in another sort of reading and writing. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 5th Jan. 1880.] Thank you a thousand times, my dear friend, for your tender New Year's greeting and inquiries. I have passed well from "under the saws and harrows" of the severe cold, and am better, both in apparent organic soundness and in strength for all occupation, than I once thought was possible for me. Our dear Barbara is painting in water colors again from her window--just as of old. I know you will be glad to hear of this. And I am now seeing many other friends, who interest me and bring me reports of their several worlds. The great public calamities of the past year have helped to quiet one's murmuring spirit in relation to private sorrows, and the prospect for the future is not yet very bright. One thinks of mothers like Mrs. Ruck, whose best-loved sons are in Afghanistan. But we must live as much as we can for human joy, dwelling on sorrow and pain only so far as the consciousness of it may help us in striving to remedy them. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 19th Jan. 1880.] Life has seemed worse without my glimpses of you. And now I have not the amends of thinking that you are out of our Egyptian darkness and getting health in the country. I must drive over to ask about you as soon as I can. As the year went on, George Eliot began to see all her old friends again. But her life was nevertheless a life of heart-loneliness. Accustomed as she had been for so many years to solitude _à deux_, the want of close companionship continued to be very bitterly felt. She was in the habit of going with me very frequently to the National Gallery, and to other exhibitions of pictures, to the British Museum sculptures, and to South Kensington. This constant association engrossed me completely, and was a new interest to her. A bond of mutual dependence had been formed between us. On the 28th March she came down to Weybridge and stayed till the 30th; and on the 9th April it was finally decided that our marriage should take place as soon, and as privately, as might be found practicable. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Eleanor Cross, 13th April, 1880.] You can hardly think how sweet the name sister is to me, that I have not been called by for so many, many years. Without your tenderness I do not believe it would have been possible for me to accept this wonderful renewal of my life. Nothing less than the prospect of being loved and welcomed by you all could have sustained me. But now I cherish the thought that the family life will be the richer and not the poorer through your brother's great gift of love to me. Yet I quail a little in facing what has to be gone through--the hurting of many whom I care for. You are doing everything you can to help me, and I am full of gratitude to you all for his sake as well as my own. The springs of affection are reopened in me, and it will make me better to be among you--more loving and trustful. I valued Florence's little visit very much. You and she will come again--will you not?--to your sister. [Sidenote: Letter to Frederic Harrison, 19th April, 1880.] I have found the spot in "The Prelude" where the passage I mentioned occurs. It is in book viii., "The Retrospect," towards the end: "The human nature unto which I felt That I belonged, and reverenced with love, Was not a punctual presence, but a spirit Diffused through time and space, with aid derived Of evidence from monuments, erect, Prostrate, or leaning towards their common rest In earth, the widely scattered wreck sublime Of vanished nations." The bit of brickwork in the rock is "With aid derived from evidence." I think you would find much to suit your purpose in "The Prelude," such as-- "There is One great society alone on earth: The noble Living and the noble Dead." Except for travelling, and for popular distribution, I prefer Moxon's one-volumed edition of Wordsworth to any selection. No selection gives you the perfect gems to be found in single lines, or in half a dozen lines which are to be found in the "dull" poems. I am sorry Matthew Arnold has not included the sonnet beginning-- "I griev'd for Buonaparté with a vain And an unthinking grief--" and which has these precious lines, "'Tis not in battles that from youth we train The governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood. _Wisdom doth live with children round her knees._" Has he the magnificent sonnet on Toussaint l'Ouverture? I don't know where there is anything finer than the last eight lines of it. Please don't acknowledge this note, else you will neutralize my pleasure in sending it by making me feel that I have given you trouble. [Sidenote: Letter to the Hon. Lady Lytton, 24th April, 1880.] The beautiful photograph has reached me safely, and I am very grateful to you for your kindness in sending it to me. In comparing it with the photograph which you gave me seven or eight years ago I see the effect of a saddening experience which the years must bring to us all, but, to my feeling, the face is the more endearing because of that effect. You have been very often in my thoughts, because I have associated you with public affairs, and have imagined sympathetically how they must have affected your private life. I am sure that this momentous experience in India has been a hard discipline both for you and for Lord Lytton. I can imagine he has often been sick at heart with the near vision, which his post forces on him, of human meanness and rancor. You, too, must have gathered some melancholy knowledge of that sort, which has perhaps changed a little the curves of the mouth and the glance of the eyes since those Vienna days, when the delightful M. de Villers helped to make the hours pleasant to us. I saw the photographs of your daughters, which gave me an idea how fast the dramatic authoress has developed physically as well as mentally. When I first saw her at Vienna she was the prettiest little rosebud. Mrs. Strachey called the other day when I was out, and among other reasons for my being sorry not to have seen her, was the having missed some authentic news about your probable movements. What happens to you will always have interest for me, since I have long been, with sincere regard, yours most truly. On the 24th April George Eliot came down to Weybridge, and stayed till the 26th. [Sidenote: Letter to James Sully, 26th April, 1880.] I am deeply obliged to you for the care with which you have treated the final volume of "The Problems" in the _Academy_, which you have kindly sent me. I think you could hardly have written more effectively towards exciting an interest in the work in the minds of the comparatively few who really care for the study of psychology. You have added one more to the obligations which will make me always yours gratefully. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 5th May, 1880.] I have something to tell you which will doubtless be a great surprise to you; but since I have found that other friends, less acquainted with me and my life than you are, have given me their sympathy, I think that I can count on yours. I am going to do what not very long ago I should myself have pronounced impossible for me, and therefore I should not wonder at any one else who found my action incomprehensible. By the time you receive this letter I shall (so far as the future can be matter of assertion) have been married to Mr. J. W. Cross, who, you know, is a friend of years, a friend much loved and trusted by Mr. Lewes, and who, now that I am alone, sees his happiness in the dedication of his life to me. This change in my position will make no change in my care for Mr. Lewes's family, and in the ultimate disposition of my property. Mr. Cross has a sufficient fortune of his own. We are going abroad for a few months, and I shall not return to live at this house. Mr. Cross has taken the lease of a house, No. 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where we shall spend the winter and early spring, making Witley our summer home. I indulge the hope that you will some day look at the river from the windows of our Chelsea house, which is rather quaint and picturesque. Please tell Bessie[41] for me, with my love to her. I cannot write to more than two or three persons. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 5th May, 1880.] A great, momentous change is going to take place in my life. My indisposition last week and several other subsequent circumstances have hindered me from communicating it to you, and the time has been but short since the decision was come to. But with your permission Charles will call on you and tell you what he can on Saturday. Yours and Emily's ever, with unchanging love. [Sidenote: Journal, 1880.] _May 6._--Married this day at 10.15 to John Walter Cross, at St. George's, Hanover Square. Present, Charles, who gave me away, Mr. and Mrs. Druce, Mr. Hall, William, Mary, Eleanor, and Florence Cross. We went back to the Priory, where we signed our wills. Then we started for Dover and arrived there a little after five o'clock. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Eleanor Cross, 9th May, 1880.] Your letter was a sweet greeting to us on our arrival here yesterday. We had a millennial cabin on the deck of the Calais-Douvres, and floated over the strait as easily as the saints float upward to heaven (in the pictures). At Amiens we were very comfortably housed, and paid two enraptured visits, evening and morning, to the cathedral. I was delighted with J.'s delight in it. And we read our dear old cantos of the "Inferno" that we were reading a year ago, declining afterwards on "Eugénie Grandet." The nice woman who waited on us made herself very memorable to me by her sketch of her own life. She went to England when she was nineteen as a lady's maid--had been much _ennuyée de sa mère_, detested _les plaisirs_, liked only her regular every-day work and _la paix_. Here we have a very fair _appartement_, and plenty of sunlight, _au premier_. Before dinner we walked up to the Arc de l'Étoile and back again, enjoying the lovely greenth and blossoms of the horse-chestnuts, which are in their first glory, innocent of dust or of one withered petal. This morning at twelve o'clock we are going to the Russian church, where J. has never been, and where I hope we shall hear the wonderful intoning and singing as I heard it years ago. This is the chronicle of our happy married life, three days long--all its happiness conscious of a dear background in those who are loving us at Weybridge, at Thornhill, and at Ranby. You are all inwoven into the pattern of my thoughts, which would have a sad lack without you. I like to go over again in imagination all the scene in the church and in the vestry, and to feel every loving look from the eyes of those who were rejoicing for us. Besides Professor Sellar's letter, which touched J. with grateful surprise, we have had one to him from Mr. Frederic Harrison, saying everything affectionate, and two very finely felt letters from Edith Simcox--one to him enclosing the one to me. Certainly, she has a rare generosity and elevation which find their easy channel in writing. My love to Henry and to the gentle Berthe,[42] who was an invisible presence at our wedding. I think I must thank Florence, too, for her letter to J.; for we accept to the full the principle of "what is mine is thine" on each side. What most comforted him this morning was a letter from Albert Druce about the Chelsea house. His usual exclamation over anything from Albert is that his brother-in-law is the most satisfactory of men! Write us word about everything, and consider yourselves all very much loved and spiritually petted by your loving sister. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 21st May, 1880, from Grenoble.] This place is so magnificently situated, in a smiling valley, with the Isère flowing through it, and surrounded by grand and various lines of mountains, and we were so enraptured by our expedition yesterday to the Grande Chartreuse that we congratulate ourselves greatly on our choice of route. I think it unlikely that we shall want to wander beyond the second week in July. We shall begin to long for home just when the rest of the London world are longing for travel. We are seeing nature in her happiest moment now--the foliage on all the tremendous heights, the soft slopes, and the richly clad valleys on the way to the Chartreuse is all fresh and tender, shone through by a sunlight which cherishes and does not burn us. I had but one regret in seeing the sublime beauty of the Grande Chartreuse. It was that the Pater had not seen it. I would still give up my own life willingly if he could have the happiness instead of me. But marriage has seemed to restore me to my old self. I was getting hard, and if I had decided differently, I think I should have become very selfish. To feel daily the loveliness of a nature close to me, and to feel grateful for it, is the fountain of tenderness and strength to endure. Glorious weather always, and I am very well--quite amazingly able to go through fatigue. [Sidenote: Letter to Miss Florence Cross, 25th May, 1880.] Our life since we wrote to you has been a chapter of delights--Grenoble--Grande Chartreuse--Chambéry--paradisiacal walk to Les Charmettes--roses gathered in Jean Jacques' garden--Mont Cenis Tunnel and emergence into Italian sunshine. Milan, comfortable _appartement_, delicious privacy, and great minds condescending to relax themselves! We got here yesterday, and of course our first walk was to the post, where we found your delightful budget and other letters, which we took to a _café_ in the grand _galleria_ and read at our ease to the accompaniment of tea. Two of my letters yesterday touched me very gratefully. One was from "Brother Jimmy"--the prettiest letter possible. The other letter that moved me was one from my own brother. Then J. had a graceful letter of congratulation from Mr. Henry James, who is still at Florence. I think you did not send that letter of Mr. Edmund Gurney's which you mention. I am fond of seeing the letters which put my friends in an amiable light for my imagination. And now that I have had that charming letter from my new brother in America, I feel that my family initiation is complete. No woman was ever more sweetly received by brothers and sisters than I have been; and it is a happy, new longing in my life that I may return into their bosoms some of the gladness they have poured into mine. I have been uninterruptedly well, and feel quite strong with all sorts of strength except strong-mindedness. We are going to hear the music in the Duomo at eleven, and after that we intend to pay our first visit to the Brera gallery. It is our present plan to stay here for some days, and we enjoy the thought of a little stationary life such as we have not had since we left Paris. We often talk of our sisters, oftener think of them. You are our children, you know. [Sidenote: Letter to Isaac P. Evans, 26th May, 1880.] Your letter was forwarded to me here, and it was a great joy to me to have your kind words of sympathy, for our long silence has never broken the affection for you which began when we were little ones. My husband, too, was much pleased to read your letter. I have known his family for eleven years, and they have received me among them very lovingly. The only point to be regretted in our marriage is that I am much older than he; but his affection has made him choose this lot of caring for me rather than any other of the various lots open to him. Emily Clarke has lately sent me rather a sad account of Sarah's[43] health. I trust that it is now better, for I think it is her lungs that chiefly trouble her, and summer may act beneficently on them. Please give my love to her, and tell her that I like the assurance of her share in the good wishes you send me. I have often heard of Frederick[44] through the admiration of those who have heard him preach; and it has been a happy thought to me that you and Sarah must feel it a great comfort to have him as well as Walter settled near you. Edith is the only one of your children whom I have seen since they have been grown up, and I thought her a noble-looking woman. We are going to remain abroad until some time in July, and shall then return to the Heights, Witley, Surrey. Our home in London will be 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, looking on a very picturesque bit of the river. I hope that your own health is quite good now, and that you are able to enjoy the active life which I know you are fond of. Always your affectionate sister. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 28th May, 1880.] Many thanks for your delightful letter, which came to me yesterday, with a loving though brief letter from Mrs. Congreve to keep it company in making the day agreeable. We arrived here on Monday, and have been induced by a nice quiet apartment and pleasant attendance to carry out our plan of resting here and deliberately seeing what is to be seen in this cheerful, prosperous city. I am glad to find that the Luini pictures come up to my remembrance, and that J. is much impressed by his introduction to them. I continue remarkably well, and am every day surprising myself by the amount of walking, standing, and looking that I can go through. To-morrow or the next day we intend to go on to Verona, then, after a sufficient pause to enjoy that glorious place, we shall move on to Padua and Venice, where it will be best for you to send anything you may have to send. I like to see the letters. They make one realize the fact of one's home and little world there amid the dreaminess of foreign travel. We take our meals in our own apartment and see nothing of our fellow-guests in the hotel--only hear their British and American voices when they air themselves in the _cortile_ after their dinner. The weather has hitherto been delicious, not excessively warm, always with a pleasant movement in the air; but this morning there is a decided advance in heat, and we shall both have our theory of great heat being the best thing for us well tested in the next month. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 29th May and 1st June, 1880, from Verona.] The change I make in the date of this letter is a sign of the difficulty you well know that one finds in writing all the letters one wants to write while travelling. Ever since Charles forwarded to me your dear letter while I was in Paris I have been meaning to write to you. That letter was doubly sweet to me because it was written before you received mine, _intended_ to inform you of my marriage before it appeared in the newspapers. Charles says that my friends are chiefly hurt because I did not tell them of the approaching change in my life. But I really did not finally, absolutely, decide--I was in a state of doubt and struggle--until only a fortnight before the event took place, so that at last everything was done in the utmost haste. However, there were four or five friends, of whom you were one, to whom I was resolved to write, so that they should at least get my letter on the morning of the 6th. I had more than once said to Mr. Cross that you were that one of my friends who required the least explanation on the subject--who would spontaneously understand our marriage. But Charles sends me word that my friends in general are very sympathetic, and I should like to mention to you that Bessie[45] is one whose very kind words he has sent to me, for you may have an opportunity of giving my love to her, and telling her that it is very sweet to me to feel that her affection is constant to me in this as it was in other crises of my life. I wish, since you can no longer come in and out among us as you used to do, that you already knew my husband better. His family welcome me with the uttermost tenderness. All this is wonderful blessing falling to me beyond my share, after I had thought that my life was ended, and that, so to speak, my coffin was ready for me in the next room. Deep down below there is a hidden river of sadness, but this must always be with those who have lived long--and I am able to enjoy my newly reopened life. I shall be a better, more loving creature than I could have been in solitude. To be constantly, lovingly grateful for the gift of a perfect love is the best illumination of one's mind to all the possible good there may be in store for man on this troublous little planet. We leave Verona to-day, and stay a little at Padua on our way to Venice. Hitherto we have had delightful weather, and just the temperature we rejoice in. We are both fond of warmth, and could bear more heat than we have the prospect of at present. Yesterday we had a drive on the skirting heights of Verona, and saw the vast fertile plain around, with the Euganean hills, blue in the distance, and the Apennines just dimly visible on the clear margin of the horizon. I am always made happier by seeing well-cultivated land. We came into Italy by way of Grenoble (seeing the Grande Chartreuse), Chambéry, and the Mont Cenis Tunnel; since then we have been staying at Milan and enjoying the Luini frescoes and a few other great things there. The great things are always by comparison few, and there is much everywhere one would like to help seeing, after it has once served to give one a notion of historical progression. We shall stay at Venice for ten days or a fortnight; so if you have a scribe, or would write yourself, to tell me that all is going on well with you, the letter would not, as the Scotch say, "go amissing." [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 9th June, 1880, from Venice.] We both enjoyed reading your letter on the morning after our arrival at this enchanting city, where the glorious light, with comparative stillness and total absence of dust, makes a paradise much more desirable than that painted by Tintoretto on the wall of the Consiglio Maggiore. Nothing but the advent of mosquitoes would make it easy for us to tear ourselves away from this place, where every prospect pleases, but also where one is obliged to admit that man is somewhat vile. I am sadly disappointed in the aspect of the Venetian populace. Even physically they look less endowed than I thought them when we were here under the Austrian dominion. We have hardly seen a sweet or noble woman's face since we arrived; but the men are not quite so ill-looking as the women. The singing here (by itinerant performers in gondolas) is disgraceful to Venice and to Italy. Coarse voices, much out of tune, make one shudder when they strike suddenly under the window. Our days here are passed quite deliciously. We see a few beautiful pictures or other objects of interest, and dwell on them sufficiently every morning, not hurrying ourselves to do much; and afterwards we have a _giro_ in our gondola, enjoying the air and the sight of marvellous Venice from various points of view and under various aspects. Hitherto we have had no _heat_, only warmth, with a light breeze. To-day, for the first time, one thinks that violent exercise must be terribly trying for our red-skinned fellow-mortals at work on the gondolas and the barges. But for us it is only pleasant to find the air warm enough for sitting out in the evening. We shall not soon run away from Venice unless some plague--_e.g._, mosquitoes--should arise to drive us. We edify ourselves with what Ruskin has written about Venice, in an agreeable pamphlet shape, using his knowledge gratefully, and shutting our ears to his wrathful innuendoes against the whole modern world. And we are now nearly at the end of Alfieri's autobiography, which is a deeply interesting study of character. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 10th June, 1880.] It may well seem incredible to you, for it is hardly credible to myself, that while I have been longing to write to you ever since I received your dear letter, I have not found the time to satisfy my longing. Perhaps you are more able than most people to conceive the difficulty of getting a clear half-hour between the business of travelling and the attention to little details of packing and toilet, over and above the companionship of talk and reading. Certainly I have thought of you all the more, but you have not known that, and I have lost my claim to hear about you--a use and wont which I would not willingly part with. I wonder whether you have imagined--I believe that you are quick to imagine for the benefit of others--all the reasons why it was left at last to Charles to tell you of the great, once undreamed-of change in my life. The momentous decision, in fact, was not made till scarcely more than a fortnight before my marriage; and even if opportunity had lent itself to my confiding everything to you, I think I could hardly have done it at a time when your presence filled me rather with a sense of your and Emily's trouble[46] than with my own affairs. Perhaps Charles will have told you that the marriage deprives no one of any good I felt bound to render before--it only gives me a more strenuous position, in which I cannot sink into the self-absorption and laziness I was in danger of before. The whole history is something like a miracle-legend. But instead of any former affection being displaced in my mind, I seem to have recovered the loving sympathy that I was in danger of losing. I mean, that I had been conscious of a certain drying-up of tenderness in me, and that now the spring seems to have risen again. Who could take your place within me or make me amends for the loss of you? And yet I should not take it bitterly if you felt some alienation from me. Such alienation is very natural where a friend does not fulfil expectations of long standing. We have already been ten days at Venice, but we hope to remain as long again, not fearing the heat, which has hitherto been only a false alarm in the minds of English travellers. If you could find time to send me word how you all are--yourself, Dr. Congreve after his holiday, and Emily, with all her cares about removal--a letter sent to the _Poste Restante_ here would reach me, even if we had left before the next ten days were over. We shall hardly be at Witley before the middle of July: but the sense of neighborhood to you at Witley is sadly ended now. We thought too little of the heat, and rather laughed at English people's dread of the sun. But the mode of life at Venice has its peculiar dangers. It is one thing to enjoy heat when leading an active life, getting plenty of exercise in riding or rowing in the evenings; it is another thing to spend all one's days in a gondola--a delicious, dreamy existence--going from one church to another--from palaces to picture-galleries--sight-seeing of the most exhaustively interesting kind--traversing constantly the _piccoli rei_, which are nothing more than drains, and with bedroom-windows always open on the great drain of the Grand Canal. The effect of this continual bad air, and the complete and sudden deprivation of all bodily exercise, made me thoroughly ill. As soon as I could be moved we left Venice, on the 23d of June, and went to Innspruck, where we stayed for a week, and in the change to the pure, sweet, mountain air I soon regained strength. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 7th July, 1880, from Stuttgart.] I was made very glad by Gertrude's letter, which assured me that Witley had been enjoyed by you and the little ones. We stayed six days at Innspruck, finding it more and more beautiful under the sunshine which had been wanting to it during our first two days. Then we went on to Munich, and yesterday we arrived here, as a temporary resting-place on our way to Wildbad, which, we hope, will put the finishing-touch to J.'s recovery of his usual health. I wish I had been able to let you know in time that you could have remained a little longer at Witley, as I think we shall hardly be at home before the 20th if we find Wildbad what we want. Your _Mutter_ is marvellously well and strong. It seems more natural to her to have anxiety than to be free from it. Let us hope that she will not run down like a jelly-fish now that her anxiety is over. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 13th July, 1880, from Wildbad.] I received your welcome letter yesterday morning, and felt inclined to answer it the next minute. J. is quite well again, but is inclined to linger a little in the sweet air of the Schwarzwald, which comes to one on gently stirred wings, laden with the scent of the pine forests. We mean to drive from here to Baden, which is within easy distance. Yesterday we sallied forth for a walk over the mountain, to a place where we could rest and lunch, returning in the afternoon. The sky was brilliant. But in half an hour the clouds gathered and threatened a storm. We were prudent enough to turn back, and by the time we were in the hotel again the thunder was rolling and the rain pouring down. This continued till about two o'clock, and then again the sky became clear. I never saw so incalculable a state of weather as we have in this valley. One quarter of an hour the blue sky is only flecked by lightest cirrus clouds, the next it is almost hidden by dark rain clouds. But we are going to start on our promised expedition this morning, the sunshine flattering us that it is quite confirmed. I think you had better address your next letter _Poste Restante_, Strasburg, as I am uncertain how long we shall rest at Baden. Left Wildbad on the 17th July, and had a delightful drive through the Black Forest by Herrenalb to Baden, and thence by Strasburg, Metz, Luxemburg, and Brussels, arriving at Witley on Monday the 26th of July. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 1st Aug. 1880.] We arrived here in all safety last Monday, and if I had not had your welcome little note this morning I think I should soon have written to you without any such extra stimulus. Mr. Cross had a sharp but brief attack at Venice, due to the unsanitary influences of that wondrous city in the later weeks of June. We stayed a little too long there, with a continuous sirocco blowing, and bad smells under the windows of the hotel; and these conditions found him a little below par from long protracted anxiety before our marriage. But ever since we left Venice (on the 23d of June) he has been getting strong again, and we have enjoyed a leisurely journey through Germany in constant warmth and sunshine, save for an occasional thunderstorm. The climate in this beloved country of ours is a sad exchange, and makes one think of a second bad harvest, with all its consequences. Still, it is a delight to be at home and enjoy perfect stillness, after the noisiness of foreign bells and foreign voices indoors and out. It would be very pretty to pay you a visit next April, if we are all alive, and I think Mr. Cross would like it very much. He sends you, hoping you will accept them, his best remembrances, which have been kept up by our often talking about you. I have been amazingly well through all the exertion of our travels, and in the latter half of the time have done a great deal of walking. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, 2d Aug. 1880.] How sweet of you to write me a little welcome as soon as you knew that I was at home again. Yes, we are both well now, and _glad_ to be at home again, though the change of climate is not of the exhilarating sort. One is so sorry for all the holiday-makers, whose best enjoyment of these three days would have been in the clear air and sunshine. Do not reproach me for not telling you of my marriage beforehand. It is difficult to speak of what surprises ourselves, and the decision was sudden, though not the friendship which led to the decision. My heart thoroughly responds to your remembrance of our long--our thirty-years' relation to each other. Let me tell you this once what I have said to others--that I value you as one of the purest-minded, gentlest-hearted women I have ever known, and where such a feeling exists, friendship can live without much aid from sight. We shall probably not be in town again till the beginning of November. Our address then will be 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where we shall have an outlook on the river and meadows beyond. Just now we have the prospect of going on family visits to married sisters, which prevents us from feeling quite settled. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 12th Aug. 1880.] I expected your letter, and expected, too, just the sort of letter I have received, telling me everything delightfully. I can follow you everywhere in your journeying except to Ober Wesel. I hope you will have enjoyed St. Blasien and some of the walks there consecrated by the beloved Pater's footsteps. We reversed your drive and went to Freiburg, so that I can enter into your enjoyment of the Höllenthal. I am glad that your weather has been temperate. Here we have now had four sunny and really hot days, and this morning promises to be the fifth. That is consolatory as to the harvest, and is very agreeable as to our private life. The last two evenings we have walked in the garden after eight o'clock--the first time by starlight, the second under a vapory sky, with the red moon setting. The air was perfectly still and warm, and I felt no need of extra clothing. Our life has had no more important events than calls from neighbors and our calls in return. To-morrow we pay our visit to the Druces at Sevenoaks, where, you may remember, Mr. Druce has built a beautiful house. At the beginning of September we are to visit Mr. and Mrs. Otter at Ranby, and after that we shall go to Six-Mile Bottom for a day or two. Then our wanderings will be over. I went to the Priory the other day, and found a treatise on Blood Pressure, by Dr. Roy, which he had sent me there, and which he has published as the "George Henry Lewes Student." I imagine that he has come to pursue his studies in England, as he intended to do. Delbeuf's article on the last volume of the "Problems" (in the Belgian _Athenæum_) is very nicely done. He has read the book. I am pretty well, but find myself more languid than I was when abroad. I think the cause is perhaps the moisture of the climate. There is something languorous in this climate, or, rather, in its effects. J. gets a little better every day, and so each day is more enjoyable. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 9th Sept. 1880.] We have just come home after paying family visits in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, else I should have answered your letter earlier. The former one reached me in Venice, when I was in great trouble on account of Mr. Cross's illness. I had had reason to believe that my letters, ordered to be posted on the 5th of May, had not been delivered; so I asked Charles to inquire about the letter I wrote to you--not because it demanded an answer, but because I wished you to know that I had written. I am so glad to know that you have been enjoying our brief English summer. The good harvest makes the country everywhere cheerful, and we have been in great, even districts where the fields, full of sheaves or studded with ricks, stretch wide as a prairie. Now, we hope not to leave this place again till November, when we intend to go to Chelsea for the winter and earliest spring. I almost envy you the opportunity of seeing Wombwell's Menagerie. I suppose I got more delight out of that itinerant institution when I was nine or ten years old than I have ever got out of the Zoological Gardens. The smells and the sawdust mingled themselves with my rapture. Everything was good. It was very dear of you to write to me before you finished your holiday. My love attends you all. [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 14th Sept. 1880.] Your letter this morning is a welcome assurance about you. We have been away in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, paying visits to the Otters and the Halls. The weather, which is now broken, was glorious through all our wandering, which we made very interesting by pausing to see Ely, Peterborough, and Lincoln cathedrals. The Otters have a very pretty, happy household. He is a country gentleman now, acting as a magistrate, and glancing towards Parliament. But he keeps up his reading, and is delightful to talk to. Emily looks very pretty in her matronly position, with three little children. The Halls, too, are very pleasant to behold in their home life. He has done wonders in building nice cottages and schools, and sinking wells where they were wanted, and founding a co-operative store--and, in general, doing whatever opportunity allows towards slowly improving this confused world. We saw (at Six-Mile Bottom) Mr. and Mrs. Sidgwick. Perhaps you know that they have had, and have, the admirable public spirit to let their house and arrange to live for a year in the new Newnham House, in order to facilitate matters for the double institution. We are very well. Mr. Cross gets stronger and brighter every day. We often mention you, because you are associated with so many of my memories. Our only bugbear--it is a very little one--is the having to make preliminary arrangements towards settling ourselves in the new house (4 Cheyne Walk). It is a quaint house; and a Mr. Armitage of Manchester, of whom you may have heard, has been superintending the decoration and furnishing, but not to the exclusion of old things, which we must carry and stow, especially wallings of books. I am become so lazy that I shrink from all such practical work. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 23d Sept. 1880.] I have been and am suffering under an attack of a comparatively mild sort, but I expect to be well in two or three days, and am just going to drive to Godalming to meet my husband. Hence I write this hurriedly. We should like to see you and Gertrude from Saturday to Monday some week next month if it would be pleasant to you. This attack was a recurrence of the renal disorder of the previous year. On the 29th September we went for ten days to Brighton as the most accessible place for a bracing change. The first effects of the sea breezes were encouraging, but the improvement was not maintained. Shortly after our return to Witley Dr. Andrew Clark,[47] "the beloved physician," came down to consult with Mr. Parsons of Godalming--on 22d October. From that time there was gradual but slow improvement, and, during November, a decided recovery of strength. But an English autumn was not favorable to the invalid. Her sensibility to climatic influences was extreme. It will have been noticed in the preceding letters how constantly change of air and scene was required. I had never seen my wife out of England, previous to our marriage, except the first time at Rome, when she was suffering. My general impression, therefore, had been that her health was always very low, and that she was almost constantly ailing. Moreover, I had been with her very frequently during her long, severe illness at Witley in 1879. I was the more surprised, after our marriage, to find that from the day she set her foot on Continental soil till the day she returned to Witley she was never ill--never even unwell. She began at once to look many years younger. During the eleven years of our acquaintance I had never seen her so strong in health. The greater dryness and lightness of the atmosphere seemed to have a magical effect. At Paris we spent our mornings at the Louvre or the Luxembourg, looking at pictures or sculpture, or seeing other sights--always fatiguing work. In the afternoons we took long walks in the Bois, and very often went to the theatre in the evening. Reading and writing filled in all the interstices of time; yet there was no consciousness of fatigue. And we had the same experience at all the places we stayed at in Italy. On our way home she was able to take a great deal of walking exercise at Wildbad and Baden. Decrease of physical strength coincided exactly with the time of our return to the damper climate of England. The specific form of illness did not declare itself until two months later, but her health was never again the same as it had been on the Continent. Towards the middle of October she was obliged to keep her bed, but without restriction as to amount of reading and talking, which she was always able to enjoy, except in moments of acute pain. During her illness I read aloud, among other books, Comte's "Discours Préliminaire," translated by Dr. Bridges. This volume was one of her especial favorites, and she delighted in making me acquainted with it. For all Comte's writing she had a feeling of high admiration, intense interest, and very deep sympathy. I do not think I ever heard her speak of any writer with a more grateful sense of obligation for enlightenment. Her great debt to him was always thankfully acknowledged. But the appreciation was thoroughly selective, so far as I was able to judge. Parts of his teaching were accepted and other parts rejected. Her attitude towards him, as the founder of a new religion, may be gathered from the references and allusions in the foregoing correspondence, and from the fact that for many years, and up to the time of her death, she subscribed to the Comtist Fund, but never, so far as I am aware, more directly associated herself with the members of the Positivist Church. It was a limited adherence. We generally began our reading at Witley with some chapters of the Bible, which was a very precious and sacred book to her, not only from early associations, but also from the profound conviction of its importance in the development of the religious life of man. She particularly enjoyed reading aloud some of the finest chapters of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and St. Paul's Epistles. With a naturally rich, deep voice, rendered completely flexible by constant practice; with the keenest perception of the requirements of emphasis, and with the most subtile modulations of tone, her reading threw a glamour over indifferent writing, and gave to the greatest writing fresh meanings and beauty. The Bible and our elder English poets best suited the organ-like tones of her voice, which required, for their full effect, a certain solemnity and majesty of rhythm. Her reading of Milton was especially fine; and I shall never forget four great lines of the "Samson Agonistes" to which it did perfect justice-- "But what more oft in nations grown corrupt, And by their vices brought to servitude, Than to love bondage more than liberty, Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty." The delighted conviction of justice in the thought--the sense of perfect accord between thought, language, and rhythm--stimulated the voice of the reader to find the exactly right tone. Such reading requires for its perfection a rare union of intellectual, moral, and physical qualities. It cannot be imitated. It is an art, like singing--a personal possession that dies with the possessor, and leaves nothing behind except a memory. Immediately before her illness we had read, together, the first part of "Faust." Reading the poem in the original with such an interpreter was the opening of a new world to me. Nothing in all literature moved her more than the pathetic situation and the whole character of Gretchen. It touched her more than anything in Shakespeare. During the time that we were reading the "Faust" we were also constantly reading, together, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth: some of Scott's novels and Lamb's essays too, in which she greatly delighted. For graver study we read through Professor Sayce's "Introduction to the Science of Language." Philology was a subject in which she was most deeply interested; and this was my first experience of what seemed to me a limitless persistency in application. I had noticed the persistency before, while looking at pictures, or while hearing her play difficult music; for it was characteristic of her nature that she took just as great pains to play her very best to a single unlearned listener as most performers would do to a room full of critical _cognoscenti_. Professor Sayce's book was the first which we had read together requiring very sustained attention ("The Divina Commedia" we had read in very short bits at a time), and it revealed to me more clearly the depth of George Eliot's mental concentration. Continuous thought did not fatigue her. She could keep her mind on the stretch hour after hour: the body might give way, but the brain remained unwearied. Her memory held securely her great stores of reading. Even of light books her recollections were always crisp, definite, and vivid. On our way home from Venice, after my illness, we were reading French novels of Cherbuliez, Alphonse Daudet, Gustave Droz, George Sand. Most of these books she had read years before, and I was astonished to find what clear-cut, accurate impressions had been retained, not only of all the principal characters, but also of all the subsidiary personages--even their names were generally remembered. But, on the other hand, her verbal memory was not always to be depended on. She never could trust herself to write a quotation without verifying it. In foreign languages George Eliot had an experience more unusual among women than among men. With a complete literary and scholarly knowledge of French, German, Italian, and Spanish, she _spoke_ all four languages with difficulty, though accurately and grammatically; but the mimetic power of catching intonation and accent was wanting. Greek and Latin she could read with thorough delight to herself; and Hebrew was a favorite study to the end of her life. In her younger days, especially at Geneva, inspired by Professor de la Rive's lectures, she had been greatly interested in mathematical studies. At one time she applied herself heartily and with keen enjoyment to geometry, and she thought that she might have attained to some excellence in that branch if she had been able to pursue it. In later days the map of the heavens lay constantly on her table at Witley, and she longed for deeper astronomical knowledge. She had a passion for the stars; and one of the things to which we looked forward on returning to London was a possible visit to Greenwich Observatory, as she had never looked through a great telescope of the first class. Her knowledge of wild-flowers gave a fresh interest each day to our walks in the Surrey lanes, as every hedgerow is full of wonders--to "those who know;" but she would, I think, have disclaimed for herself real botanical knowledge, except of an elementary sort. This wide and varied culture was accompanied with an unaffected distrust of her own knowledge, with the sense of how little she really knew, compared with what it was possible for her to have known, in the world. Her standard was always abnormally high--it was the standard of an expert; and she believed in the aphorism that to know any subject well we must know the details of it. During our short married life our time was so much divided between travelling and illness that George Eliot wrote very little, so that I have but slight personal experience of how the creative effort affected her. But she told me that, in all that she considered her best writing, there was a "not herself," which took possession of her, and that she felt her own personality to be merely the instrument through which this spirit, as it were, was acting. Particularly she dwelt on this in regard to the scene in "Middlemarch" between Dorothea and Rosamond, saying that, although she always knew they had, sooner or later, to come together, she kept the idea resolutely out of her mind until Dorothea was in Rosamond's drawing-room. Then, abandoning herself to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the whole scene exactly as it stands, without alteration or erasure, in an intense state of excitement and agitation, feeling herself entirely possessed by the feelings of the two women. Of all the characters she had attempted she found Rosamond's the most difficult to sustain. With this sense of "possession" it is easy to imagine what the cost to the author must have been of writing books, each of which has its tragedy. We have seen the suffering alluded to in the letters on the "Mill on the Floss," "Felix Holt," and "Romola." For those who would know the length and the breadth of George Eliot's intellectual capacity she has written her books. Here I am only putting down some of my own personal impressions or recollections, which must be taken for what they are worth. In doing this I should like to dwell on the catholicity of her judgment. Singularly free from the spirit of detraction, either in respect of her contemporaries or her predecessors, she was always anxious to see the best and the most noble qualities of human beings or of books, in cases where she felt some general sympathy notwithstanding particular disagreements. And it was this wide sympathy, this understanding of so many points of view, that gained for her the passionate devotion not only of personal friends, but also of literary admirers, from the most widely sundered sections of society. Probably few people have ever received so many intimate confidences from confidants of such diverse habits of thought. This many-sidedness, however, makes it exceedingly difficult to ascertain, either from her books or from the closest personal intimacy, what her exact relation was to any existing religious creed or to any political party. Yet George Eliot's was emphatically a religious mind. My own impression is that her whole soul was so imbued with, and her imagination was so fired by, the scientific spirit of the age--by the constant rapid development of ideas in the Western world--that she could not conceive that there was, as yet, any religious formula sufficient nor any known political system likely to be final. She had great hope for the future, in the improvement of human nature by the gradual development of the affections and the sympathetic emotions, and "by the slow, stupendous teaching of the world's events," rather than by means of legislative enactments. Party measures and party men afforded her no great interest. Representative government, by numerical majorities, did not appeal to her as the last word of political wisdom. Generally speaking, she had little patience with talk about practical politics, which seemed to her under our present system to be too often very unpractically handled by ignorant amateurs. The amateur was always a "stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence." Her wrath used often to be roused, in late years, by the increased bitterness in the language of parties, and by the growing habit of attributing, for political effect, the most shameful motives to distinguished statesmen. She was keenly anxious to redress injustices to women, and to raise their general status in the community. This, she thought, could best be effected by women improving their work--ceasing to be amateurs. But it was one of the most distinctly marked traits in her character that she particularly disliked everything generally associated with the idea of a "masculine woman." She was, and as a woman she wished to be, above all things, feminine--"so delicate with her needle, and an admirable musician." She was proud, too, of being an excellent housekeeper--an excellence attained from knowing how things ought to be done, from her early training, and from an inborn habit of extreme orderliness. Nothing offended her more than the idea that because a woman had exceptional intellectual powers therefore it was right that she should absolve herself, or be absolved, from her ordinary household duties. It will have been seen from the letters that George Eliot was deeply interested in the higher education of women, and that she was among the earliest contributors to Girton College. After meeting Mr. and Mrs. Henry Sidgwick, in September, 1880, when they had gone to reside at the new hall of Newnham College for a time, she was anxious to be associated in that work also, but she did not live to carry out the plan herself. The danger she was alive to in the system of collegiate education was the possible weakening of the bonds of family affection and family duties. In her view, the family life holds the roots of all that is best in our mortal lot; and she always felt that it is far too ruthlessly sacrificed in the case of English _men_ by their public school and university education, and that much more is such a result to be deprecated in the case of women. But, the absolute good being unattainable in our mixed condition of things, those women especially who are obliged to earn their own living must do their best with the opportunities at their command, as "they cannot live with posterity," when a more perfect system may prevail. Therefore, George Eliot wished God-speed to the women's colleges. It was often in her mind and on her lips that the only worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is, that human beings should love one another better. Culture merely for culture's sake can never be anything but a sapless root, capable of producing at best a shrivelled branch. In her general attitude towards life George Eliot was neither optimist nor pessimist. She held to the middle term, which she invented for herself, of "meliorist." She was cheered by the hope and by the belief in gradual improvement of the mass; for in her view each individual must find the better part of happiness in helping another. She often thought it wisest not to raise too ambitious an ideal, especially for young people, but to impress on ordinary natures the immense possibilities of making a small home circle brighter and better. Few are born to do the great work of the world, but all are born to this. And to the natures capable of the larger effort the field of usefulness will constantly widen. In her personal bearing George Eliot was seldom moved by the hurry which mars all dignity in action. Her commanding brows and deep, penetrating eyes were seconded by the sweet, restrained, impressive speech, which claimed something like an awed attention from strangers. But to those very near to her there was another side of her nature, scarcely suspected by outside friends and acquaintances. No one could be more capable of enjoying and of communicating genuine, loving, hearty, uncontrollable laughter. It was a deep-seated wish, expressed in the poem of "Agatha"--"I would have young things merry." And I remember, many years ago, at the time of our first acquaintance, how deeply it pained her when, in reply to a direct question, I was obliged to admit that, with all my admiration for her books, I found them, on the whole, profoundly sad. But sadness was certainly not the note of her intimate converse. For she had the distinctively feminine qualities which lend a rhythm to the movement of life. The quick sympathy that understands without words; the capacity for creating a complete atmosphere of loving interest; the detachment from outside influences; the delight in everything worthy--even the smallest thing--for its own sake; the readiness to receive as well as to give impressions; the disciplined mental habit which can hold in check and conquer the natural egoism of a massive, powerful personality; the versatility of mind; the varied accomplishments--these are characteristics to be found more highly developed among gifted women than among gifted men. Add to these the crowning gift of genius, and, in such companionship, we may possess the world without belonging to it. The November days had come now--cold and clear. My wife was able again to enjoy the daily drives and walks on which she was very dependent for health. The letters continue. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 3d Nov. 1880.] Since I wrote to you I have been much more ill, and have only, during the last few days, begun to feel myself recovering strength. But I have been cared for with something much better than angelic tenderness. The fine, clear air, if it lasts, will induce us to linger in the country; and, indeed, I am not yet quite fit to move; for, though I appear to be quite cured of my main ailment, half my bodily self has vanished. We are having deliciously clear days here, and I get out for short drives and walks. I really have nothing to complain of now except a little lack of strength. I play on the piano again, and walk with perfect ease. There is a long chapter about myself! [Sidenote: Letter to Madame Bodichon, 7th Nov. 1880.] Three weeks ago I had a rather troublesome attack, but I am getting well now, though still reduced and comparatively weak. We shall probably linger here till near the end of the month, for the autumnal landscape is very beautiful, and I am not yet quite fit for the exertion of moving. It is a comfort to think that you can be very snug through the winter in your nice house. What a pity we are not within an easy driving distance from you! Mr. Hall is here to-day. He gave a lecture on Leclaire, the house-painter in Paris who initiated an excellent plan of co-operative sharing for his workmen. It has been printed, and when I have another copy I will send it you. Leclaire is mentioned by John S. Mill in the notes to his "Political Economy," but had not been otherwise taken much notice of. Still, you may know all about him. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones, 18th Nov. 1880.] Thanks for your loving remembrance of me. We have been kept in the country by two sufficient causes: I have been ill, and the house at Cheyne Walk has not been ready to receive us. I suppose we shall not be there till the end of the month instead of the beginning. One of the good things I look forward to is the sight of your dear face again. You will see little more than half of me, for nearly half has been consumed. But I have been nursed with supreme tenderness, and am daily gaining some strength. Much love to both. [Sidenote: Letter to Charles L. Lewes, 23d Nov. 1880.] We are lingering here for three reasons: the beauty of the weather, the unreadiness of the house, and my unfitness to bear the hurry of moving. I am getting better, but have not yet been able to bear much exertion. Thanks for your pretty letter. I do not think I shall have many returns of Novembers, but there is every prospect that such as remain to me will be as happy as they can be made by the devoted tenderness which watches over me. Your years will probably be many, and it is cheering to me to think that you have many springs of happiness in your lot that are likely to grow fuller with advancing time. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Bray, 28th Nov. 1880.] I have thought of you all the more because I have not even heard anything of you for several months. You will wonder less why I have not written, as a consequence of those thoughts, when I tell you that I have been ill, and not allowed to do anything but indulge myself and receive indulgence. I am very well now, and am every day consciously gathering strength, so that, if I could like giving trouble, I should look back on my illness as a great opportunity of enjoying the tenderest watching and nursing. I kept my bed only about a week, and have always been equal, except at short intervals, to much reading and talking, so that there is no fair cause for any grumbling on my part. It has not been so bad an illness as that of last summer. You see we are not yet at Cheyne Walk, but we are to be settled there by the end of next week. I have had no trouble, but have remained here on my cushions while Mr. Cross has gone early for several mornings running to superintend the removal. It is difficult to give you materials for imagining my "world." Think of me as surrounded and cherished by family love; by brothers and sisters whose characters are admirable to me, and who have for years been my friends. But there is no excessive visiting among us, and the life of my own hearth is chiefly that of dual companionship. If it is any good for me that my life has been prolonged till now, I believe it is owing to this miraculous affection which has chosen to watch over me. [Sidenote: Journal, 1880.] _Dec. 3._--Came to 4 Cheyne Walk. _Dec. 4._--Went to Popular Concert at St. James's Hall. Heard Madame Neruda, Piatti, and Miss Zimmermann. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 6th Dec. 1880.] Only on Friday evening did we get into this new house, and I had deferred writing to you till I could say "Come and see me." I can say so now, but on reflection I have come to the conclusion that you would like yourself to fix a time beforehand, the journey here being rather long. Perhaps you will like to choose a day on which you could go to Emily also, her house being less formidably distant--across the park and down Sloane Street would be an easy way to us. This week we shall be much engaged in household matters, such as the reduction to order of the chaos which still reigns in certain places least obvious to visitors, and the procuring of small objects, either necessary or desirable. But after this week I shall be most glad if you and Dr. Congreve will come to see us just _as_ and _when_ you would find the least inconvenience in doing so--either at lunch-time (half-past one) or at a later hour. I find myself in a new climate here--the London air and this particular house being so warm compared with Witley. I hope that you too find the air mild, for I know that suits you best. Dr. and Mrs. Congreve paid their promised visit the week after this letter was written; and Madame Belloc lunched with us the following day. Order was beginning to reign in the new house. The books had all been arranged as nearly as possible in the same order that they had occupied at the Priory, Mr. Radermacher of the Pantechnicon having given his personal attention to this arrangement of some thousands of volumes, for which George Eliot was particularly grateful. Notwithstanding all this care, however, there were many unforeseen details of furnishing still to be completed, which caused a considerable expenditure of time. We continued reading aloud Max Müller's "Lectures on the Science of Language," and Duffield's translation of "Don Quixote;" we were also reading "Hermann and Dorothea," Tennyson's last volume of poems, just published, and Mr. Frederic Myers's volume on Wordsworth. In the evenings we had always a little feast of music, and were becoming in every way reconciled to town life, notwithstanding the loss of country quiet, light, and beauty. On the afternoon of Friday, the 17th December, we went to see the "Agamemnon" performed in Greek by Oxford undergraduates. The representation was a great enjoyment--an exciting stimulus--and my wife proposed that during the winter we should read together some of the great Greek dramas. The following afternoon we went to the Saturday Popular Concert at St. James's Hall. It was a cold day. The air in the hall was overheated, and George Eliot allowed a fur cloak which she wore to slip from her shoulders. I was conscious of a draught, and was afraid of it for her, as she was very sensitive to cold. I begged her to resume the cloak, but, smiling, she whispered that the room was really too hot. In the evening she played through several of the pieces that we had heard at the concert, with all her accustomed enjoyment of the piano, and with a touch as true and as delicate as ever. On Sunday there was very slight trouble in the throat, but not sufficient to prevent her from coming down-stairs to breakfast as usual. In the afternoon she was well enough to receive visits from Mr. Herbert Spencer and one or two other friends. Afterwards she began the following letter to Mrs. Strachey. It was left unfinished in her writing-case, and is printed as it stands. [Sidenote: Letter to Mrs. Strachey, 19th Dec. 1880.] I have been thinking so much of Lady Colvile, and yet I shrank from troubling even your more indirect sympathetic sorrow with a letter. I am wondering how far her health is in a state to endure this loss--a loss which extends even to me, who only occasionally saw, but was always cheered by, the expression of a wise and sweet nature, which clearly shone in Sir James Colvile's manner and conversation. One great comfort I believe she has--that of a sister's affection. Here the letter is broken off. The pen which had delighted and comforted so many minds and hearts here made its last mark. The spring, which had broadened out into so wide a river of speech, ceased to flow. Little more remains to be told. On Monday the doctor treated the case as one of laryngeal sore throat; and when Dr. Andrew Clark came for consultation on Wednesday evening the pericardium was found to be seriously affected. While the doctors were at her bedside she had just time to whisper to me, "Tell them I have great pain in the left side," before she became unconscious. Her long illness in the autumn had left her no power to rally. She passed away, about ten o'clock at night, on the 22d December, 1880. She died, as she would herself have chosen to die, without protracted pain, and with every faculty brightly vigorous. Her body rests in Highgate Cemetery, in the grave next to Mr. Lewes. In sleet and snow, on a bitter day--the 29th December--very many whom she knew, very many whom she did not know, pressed to her grave-side with tributes of tears and flowers. Her spirit joined that choir invisible "whose music is the gladness of the world." FOOTNOTES: [35] Madame Belloc. [36] Mrs. Charles Lewes. [37] "The Ethics of George Eliot's Works," by J. C. Brown. Blackwood: 1879. [38] Article on G. H. Lewes.--_New Quarterly Review_, Oct. 1879. [39] "George Henry Lewes Studentship."--This studentship has been founded in memory of Mr. George Henry Lewes, for the purpose of enabling the holder for the time being to devote himself wholly to the prosecution of original research in physiology. The studentship, the value of which is slightly under £200 per annum, paid quarterly in advance, is tenable for three years, during which time the student is required to carry on, under the guidance of a director, physiological investigations, to the complete exclusion of all other professional occupations. No person will be elected as a "George Henry Lewes Student" who does not satisfy the trustees and director, first, as to the promise of success in physiological inquiry; and, second, as to the need of pecuniary assistance. Otherwise all persons of both sexes are eligible. Applications, together with such information concerning ability and circumstances as the candidate may think proper, should be sent to the present director, Dr. Michael Foster, New Museums, Cambridge, not later than October 15, 1879. The appointment will be made and duly advertised as soon as possible after that date. [40] Mr. John Blackwood died on 29th October, 1879. [41] Madame Belloc. [42] Mrs. Hall. [43] Mrs. Isaac Evans (since deceased). [44] Rev. Frederick Evans, Rector of Bedworth. [45] Madame Belloc. [46] Mr. Geddes's death. [47] Now Sir Andrew Clark. INDEX. "Abode of Snow," by Andrew Wilson, iii. 190. A breezy common, iii. 108. "Adam Bede," progress of, i. 338; second volume finished in Dresden, ii. 42; £800 offered for copyright for four years, 47; its history, 48-52; author's love of, 51; subscription to, 59; cheap edition suggested by working man, 66; sale increasing, 67, 68; quoted in House of Commons, 69; French translation proposed, 73; additional £400 from publishers, 80; fourth edition (5000) sold in a fortnight, 88; sixth edition, 96; seventh edition (2000), 101; Blackwoods propose to pay £800 above agreed price, 101; 16,000 copies sold in one year, 105; copyright conceded, 111; third volume written in six weeks, 113. "Adam Bede, Junior," a sequel, advertised, ii. 104. "Address to the Working Men," by Felix Holt, iii. 18. Adler, Dr. Hermann, appreciation of Jewish character in "Deronda," iii. 207; lecture on "Deronda" by, 215. Æsthetic teaching the highest of all teaching, ii. 318. Æsthetic, the, not a doctrinal teacher, iii. 237. Afghanistan, effect of the sad news from, iii. 278. "Agatha" sold to Fields & Osgood for _Atlantic Monthly_, iii. 63. Aix to Vevey, journey to, iii. 205. Allbut, Dr. Clifford, Leeds, iii. 41, 42. Allingham, William, letter to, on Midland dialect, iii. 218; on his poems, 226. Altruism, the need of, iii. 178, 179. Amalfi, grand drive, ii. 153. America, interest in, i. 219; the war in, anxiety regarding, ii. 242; delight in descriptions of, iii. 115; invited to visit, 118. Amsterdam, Jewish synagogues in, ii. 317. "An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity," by Charles Hennell, influence of, on George Eliot, i. 68; read again with admiration, 119. Anders, Mr., apologizes for the Liggins business, ii. 78. Antwerp, pictures at, i. 239, 240. Apennines, across the, ii. 168. Application, persistence in, iii. 304. Appreciation of Dickens's letter, ii. 6. Ardennes, journey to the, iii. 176. "Aristotle," by G. H. Lewes, ii. 271. "Armgart," a dramatic poem, iii. 85. Art, the function of, iii. 144; purpose in, 144. Articles written by Mr. Lewes, iii. 260, 261; by military men, 265. Ashantee War, the, iii. 157. Asher's cheap editions of "George Eliot," iii. 124. Atkinson, Mr., i. 193. Australia, proposed visit to, i. 221. Authors and booksellers, meeting of, i. 201. Authorship acknowledged to the Brays and Miss Hennell, ii. 83. Autobiography, repugnance to, iii. 221. Autumn, love for, i. 67; ii. 263, 264. "A Word for the Germans," ii. 288. Aytoun, Professor, admiration of "Gilfil's Love-Story," i. 326; on "Adam Bede," ii. 81. Bâle, a morning in, ii. 87. Ballot, dislike of the, iii. 49; the first experiment of the, 161. Balzac, a saying of, iii, 41. Bancroft, American Minister, Berlin, on "Middlemarch," iii. 157. Bank of England visited, iii. 176. "Beata," by T. A. Trollope, ii. 239. Bedworth, country about, i. 5-7. Beesley, Professor Edmund Spencer, iii. 64. Bellagio and the Splügen Pass, ii. 181. Benisch, Dr., editor of _Jewish Chronicle_, iii. 216. Berlin, popularity of "Middlemarch" in, iii. 157. Berlin, visit to the _Charité_, iii. 77; society and music at, 77; increase in luxury in, 78. Berlin recollections: meets Varnhagen, i. 251, 252; impressions of the city, 251; new acquaintances, 253; portrait of Kleist, 253; Fräulein Solmar's _salon_, 253; General Pfuhl, 254; Baron Sternberg, 254; "Lisez les Chroniques," 254; Professor Gruppe, 255, 263; Waagen on Goethe, 256; Edward Magnus, 257; celebrities, 258; Professor Stahr, 258, 263; Schiller's portrait, 258; Rauch the sculptor, 258; his atelier, 259, 260; Dessoir the actor, 260; "Nathan der Weise," 261; Johanna Wagner, 261; Gluck's "Orpheus," 261; Roger and Arabella Goddard, 264; Vivier anecdotes, 264, 265; works of art, 265; evenings in, 266; _table d'hôte_, reading between the courses, 266; work at and books read, 268; translating Spinoza's "Ethics," 268; remarks on books read, 270; return to England, 271. Bethnal Green, pictures at, iii. 128. Biarritz, its natural beauties, iii. 2; the Chambre de l'Amour, 2; journey to Barcelona from, 4. Bible and the Liturgy of the English Church, ii. 226. Bible reading, iii. 302. Bickley, country-house at, iii. 152. Birthday greetings, iii. 47. Bishop Steignton, visit to, i. 185. Blackie, Professor, Edinburgh, letter of sympathy from, ii. 111, 113. _Blackwood's Magazine_ on "Adam Bede," ii. 70. Blackwood, John, his favorable opinion of "Amos Barton," i. 302; accepts it for "Maga," 304; receives kind letter from author, 307; cautions regarding "huddling up stories," 319; not enthusiastic about "Janet's Repentance," 326; calls on Lewes, and George Eliot reveals herself, ii. 10; letter from George Eliot on artistic combination, 31; offers £800 for copyright of "Adam Bede" for four years, 47; letter to, regarding Liggins, 73; his liberal treatment of George Eliot, 102; proposals for "Mill on the Floss," 110; concedes copyright of "Adam Bede," 111; suggests title of "Mill on the Floss," 112; letter from author on finishing "Mill on the Floss," 114; letter to, from George Eliot at Berne, 182, 183; do. from Florence, 218; offers £5000 for "Felix Holt," 308; letters to, about "Spanish Gypsy," iii. 16, 26; about Scott Commemoration, 97; "Middlemarch," 103; his favorable impressions of "Middlemarch," 106; letter to, from Homburg, 123; New Year's greetings from George Eliot, 138; letter on "Middlemarch," 153; on another book simmering in her head, 157; on corrected edition of "Spanish Gypsy," 161, 162; letter to, with volume of poems, 164; on printing of "Deronda," 190, 191, 197; on re-reading "Romola," 217, 218; offers for second ten-years' copyright, 230; letter to, declining invitation to Strathtyrum, 237; on her continued ill-health, 244; his death, 276. Blackwood, Major, his opinion of "Amos Barton," i. 306; hopeful about the "Scenes," 342; calls on Lewes, and suspects identity of George Eliot, 342; letter regarding the Liggins affair, ii. 81; letter from author on "Mill on the Floss," 167. Blackwood, William, his favorable news of "Clerical Life," ii. 116; letter to, on Mr. Lewes's illness, iii. 239; on "Theophrastus Such," 254, 263, 271. Blanc, Louis, anecdote of, i. 195. Bodichon, Madame, discovers author of "Adam Bede," ii. 77; letters to: on artistic combinations, 93; on Mrs. Gaskell's letter, 107; the rewards of the artist, 107; on settling in London, 198; on religious forms and ceremonies, 205; on the necessity of sympathy, 268; on her Spanish tour, iii. 4; on cheerfulness, 172; on "Deronda," 198; on woman's work, 208; on her illness, 225; on improvement in health, 252; letter regarding "Lewes Studentship," 267; letter announcing her marriage, 283; on sympathy with marriage, 289. Bohn, Madame, visit from, ii. 293. Bologna, its pictures and churches, ii. 169; the leaning towers, 170. Bonham-Carter, Miss, letter to, from Madame Bodichon, iii. 264. Bonheur, Rosa, her pictures, i. 333. Books belong to successive mental phases, ii. 211. Books read at Malvern, 1861, ii. 228-230, 234-236. Books read, with remarks on, i. 268-271, 322, 341, 344; ii. 58, 299; iii. 25, 41, 68, 71, 72. Booksellers and authors, meeting of, i. 201. Bookstalls, literary taste at, iii. 51. Brabant, Miss, i. 85. Bracebridge, Mr., and Liggins, ii. 99. Bray, Charles, his work, "The Philosophy of Necessity," i. 67; influence of his opinions, 68; words of affection in time of depression, 135; letter to, on rumors of authorship, ii. 13. Bray, Mrs., letters to: on favorite books, i. 86; reading and music, 87; poetry of Christianity, 93; chameleon-like nature, 158; orthodox friends, 162; anxiety for letters, 164; need of encouragement, 165; life in Geneva, 169, 170; Christmas wishes, 174; severe winter, 175; yearning for friends at home, 175; a singular advertisement, 195; _Westminster_ reviewers, 199; love for music, 202; feels well and "plucky," 207; in Edinburgh again, 211; pleasant travelling, 213; a Saturday's work, 214; work in the Strand, 215; domestic grievances, 229; view of union with Mr. Lewes, 235; on careless cooking, 316; on the charms of Richmond Park, 326; unbelief in others' love, 337; authorship acknowledged to, ii. 83; recollections of journey of 1849, 191; asking for music, 241; on her "Physiology for Schools," 267; on writing poetry instead of novels, iii. 31; on happiness in recovery, 313. Bremer, Frederica, i. 188, 190. Brewing interest in Parliament, the, iii. 188, 189. Brewster, Sir David, i. 190. Bridges, Dr., Leeds, iii. 42. Bright on Ireland, iii. 56. Brittany, trip to, ii. 296. Broadstairs, delight with, i. 205. Brodie, Sir Benjamin, iii. 80. Brontë, Charlotte, life of, i. 317. Brooks, Shirley, delighted with "Adam Bede," ii. 70. "Brother Jacob" written, ii. 199. "Brother and Sister," sonnets, iii. 70. Brougham, Lord, a delicious _non sequitur_, i. 214. Brown, Dr. John, sends "Rab and his Friends" to author of "Adam Bede," ii. 60; kindly letter in reply, 60. Brown, J. C., "Ethics of George Eliot's Works," iii. 266. Browne, Dr., chemist, Edinburgh, i. 195. Browning, first visit from, ii. 249; "Elisha," iii. 56. Browning, Mrs., her "Casa Guidi Windows", ii. 243. Buchanan, Robert, his "David Grey," ii. 273. Buckle, personal dislike to, ii. 47. Buckle's "History of Civilization," i. 341, 345. Buckle's ideal not George Eliot's, ii. 220. Bulstrode, new view of, iii. 133. Bunyan, reading again with pleasure, ii. 105. Burne-Jones, Edward, letter to, on the function of art, iii. 144. Burne-Jones, Mrs., iii. 29; letter to, on the serious view of life, 172; on her illness, 185; on Christmas plans, 232; on her sense of depression, 239. Burton, Mr., wishes to take portrait, ii. 273; his picture of a knight in armor, 277. Burton, Sir Frederick, Director of the National Gallery, ii. 240. Byron, a vulgar-minded genius, iii. 72. Call, Mr., author of "Reverberations and other Poems," i. 335. Calvinism, a libel on, iii. 88. Camaldoli, expedition to, ii. 221. Cambridge, a visit to, iii. 147; a group of "Trinity" men, 147. Cambridgeshire, visit to, iii. 299. Caricature, a bastard kind of satire, iii. 228. _Caritas_, the highest love, ii. 252. Carlyle, Mrs., pleasant letter from, ii. 7; her conception of George Eliot, 8. Carlyle, on the Glasgow artisan, i. 55; eulogium on Emerson, 140; "Life of Sterling," 189; anecdotes of, 190, 257; his denunciation of the opera, 192; letter to George Eliot on "Frederic," 343; G. A. anxious he should read her novels, ii. 63. "Carlyle's Memoirs," ii. 208. Catholicity of judgment, iii. 307. Cavour, Count, ii. 122, 143. Cerebellum, function of the, i. 210. Chapman, Mrs., on Harriet Martineau, iii. 220. Charade party, failure of, ii. 287. Charity of the Apostle Paul, the, ii. 251. Chart of Ecclesiastical History, i. 45. Cheap books, opinion of, iii. 154. Cheap edition of "Adam Bede" suggested by working man, ii. 66. Cheap editions of novels, arrangements for, iii. 10. Cheap music in England, ii. 81. Cheerful, now uniformly, iii. 172. Chiem See, journey by, ii. 34. Childhood's real feelings, i. 91. Child's idea of God, a, i. 153, 154. Chills, spiritual and physical, iii. 120. Chioggia, journey to, ii. 177. "Christianity and Infidelity," Baillie Prize Essay, i. 311. Chronological order in writing, ii. 211. Church-going resumed, i. 82. Clark, Sir James, pleasant evening with, i. 222; meeting with, 226, 230. Clark, W. G., late public orator at Cambridge, ii. 240; visit to, at Cambridge, iii. 24; resigns his oratorship, 74. "Clerical Tutor," discouraged to proceed with, i. 336. Club criticism of "Amos Barton," i. 308. Coaching days, i. 7. Cobbe, Miss, her introduction to Theodore Parker, ii. 253. Cobden, disappointed with, i. 196. Cologne, journey to, i. 267. Colossians, Epistle to the, i. 51. Combe, George, friendship with, i. 186; on the _Westminster_, 204; visit to, in Edinburgh, 211. Comprehensive Church, one, iii. 175. Comte and his critics, ii. 224; admiration of, 224; delight in his "Politique," iii. 2. Comte's "Discours Préliminaire," ii. 264. Comte's works, reading, iii. 302. Conceptions of new work, iii. 233. Confidence, desire for, i. 128. Conformity, letter to J. W. Cross on, iii. 155. Congreve, Mrs., letters to, ii. 82, 84, 141; visits George Eliot in London, 232; letter to, on Thornton Lewes's illness, iii. 63; leaves for India, 132; returns to Europe, 145; letter to, after marriage with Mr. Cross, 292; invited to Cheyne Walk, 314. Congreve, Richard, ii. 62, 67, 73; friendship of Mr. and Mrs., 76, 80; Christmas Day with, 110; his lectures on Positivism, iii. 12; his article Huxley on Comte, 58. Conolly, Dr., i. 233. Conscience in work, iii. 27. Conservative reaction, on the, iii. 143. Contemporary fiction, iii. 183. Continent, start for, visiting Fontainebleau, Plombières, iii. 149; three months' trip to the, 205. Continental tour, six weeks' journey to Baden, etc., iii. 37; St. Märgen, 37; peasant proprietors in the Black Forest, 38. Continental trip with the Brays, i. 150. Coquelin's acting, iii. 263. Correggio's Madonnas, ii. 43. Correspondence, views on, i. 134. Country, delight in the, iii. 154. Country districts, remoteness of, i. 5. Country-house, visions of a, ii. 61. Country life, monotony of, i. 25; enjoyment of, ii. 275. Country quiet, the benefits of, iii. 110. Critical attitude, the, iii. 79. Criticism, sensibility to, ii. 63. Critics, indifference to opinions of, iii. 224. Cross, J. W., first meeting at Rome with George Eliot, iii. 59; meet again at Weybridge, 71; letter to, on buying a house, 131; on conformity, 155; on depression, 187; on effect of her writing, 204; on Tennyson, 229; letters to, after Lewes's death, 250-252; his engagement, 279; his marriage, 282; illness in Venice, 294. Cross, Miss Eleanor, letter to, iii. 276; on her engagement to Mr. Cross, 279; on her marriage tour, 283. Cross, Miss Elizabeth D., "An Old Story and other Poems," iii. 15. Cross, Miss Florence, letter to from Milan on the enjoyment of travel, iii. 286. Cross, Miss Mary, her "Marie of Villefranche," iii. 100; letter to, on gift of a vase, 166. Cross, Mrs., letters to, accepting invitation to Six-Mile Bottom, iii. 121; letter to, from Homburg, 122; on return home, 125; on journey abroad, and country-house at Bickley, 152; on the pleasures of the country, 154; on Christmas invitation, 158; on silence of the country, 167. Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, dinner with, iii. 236; their simple manner, 236; guests at table, 236. Cruikshank, George, i. 202. Cumming, article on, in the _Westminster_, i. 277. D'Albert, M. and Mme. _See_ Durade. Dallas, Mr., an admirer of "Adam Bede," ii. 64. Daniel, the prophecies of, i. 122. "Daniel Deronda," writing, iii. 180; fear for MS. being burned, 190; anticipations of, 193, 194; public interest in, 199, 214; finished, 204; Jewish element in, 211. Darwin's "Origin of Species," ii. 104, 105, 108. Dawson, Mr. George, lecturer, i. 129; ii. 233; iii. 165. Dean Ramsay, letter from, with his "Reminiscences of Scottish Life," ii. 320. Death, imagining the nearness of, iii. 170. "Debasing the Moral Currency," iii. 266. Delight in the country, iii. 154; in old friends, 245. Depression from damp, iii. 187. Derbyshire, memories of, iii. 47. Deutsch, his article on the Talmud, iii. 18. "Deutscher Novellenschatz," iii. 96. "Development of Industries," effect of, ii. 281. Development of religion, iii. 62. Dialect in "Adam Bede," ii. 72; iii. 219. Dickens, Charles, meeting with, i. 201; letter from, ii. 2; recognizes woman's hand in "Clerical Life," 3; dines at Wandsworth, 102; asks for a story for "All the Year Round," 104; his death, iii. 82; his "Life" by Forster, 104. Dinah Morris, the character of, ii. 49. Dinner at Greenwich, with Blackwood, Colonel Stewart, Colonel Hamley, and Mr. Skene, ii. 222. Discontent of the young, iii. 213. Discouraged with her writings, ii. 86. D'Israeli's "Tancred," i. 118, 123; his theory of races, 124; funeral oration on the Duke of Wellington, 215. Distrust of her own knowledge, iii. 305. "Divina Commedia," reading the, with Mr. Cross, iii. 259. Dorking, fourth visit to, ii. 254. Doyle, Mr., iii. 74. Drama, trying a, ii. 280. Drawbacks to living abroad, iii. 203. Drawings from "Romola," iii. 166. Dresden: end of vol. ii. of "Adam Bede" written, ii. 42; Holbein's "Madonna," 42; the "Sistine Madonna," 43; the Correggios, 43; Murillo's "St. Rodriguez," 43; Dutch and Flemish pictures, 44; Veronese, 44; the theatres and concerts, 45. Druce, Mr., visit to, at Sevenoaks, iii. 297. Dulwich Picture-gallery, ii. 79. Durade, M. d'Albert, i. 164; residence with, 165; their household, 166; affection to, 173; paints her portrait, 178; visits England, 181; wished to translate the "Scenes," ii. 109; two days with, 186; translates the "Scenes," 187. Dürer, Albert, his paintings, ii. 24. Dutch translation of George Eliot's novels, iii. 139. Dutch and Flemish pictures in Dresden, ii. 44. Dwelling on faults, abstention from, iii. 89. Dying in harness, on, iii. 141. Dyspeptic troubles and their cure, ii. 288. Early death, thoughts on, ii. 290. Edinburgh criticisms more favorable than London, ii. 64. Edinburgh, enjoyment of, i. 211; visit to Craigcrook, 212. Editor's life, i. 215, 221. Education of Women, iii. 27; the higher, 146. Effect of talking of her own books, ii. 85. Effect of writing, the, iii. 306. Egotism, cure for, i. 128. "Elijah," delight in hearing, i. 112, 118. Ellis, Mr. and Mrs., i. 191. Emerson, first meeting with, i. 139; Carlyle's eulogium on, 140; his "Man the Reformer," ii. 196. Empire in France, the, iii. 168. Englefield Green, delightful week at, ii. 244. English, attitude of the, towards Orientals, iii. 212; ignorance of the Jews, 212. English domestic life _versus_ German, i. 271. English and French working classes, difference between, i. 131. "Englishwoman's Journal" on the Infant Seamstresses, ii. 97. Enjoying the thought of work, ii. 219. Enriched with new ideas after journey to Italy, ii. 182. "Ethics of George Eliot's Works," by J. C. Brown, iii. 266. Evans, Christiana (sister), married to Mr. Edward Clark, surgeon, i. 22; relations between the sisters, 22, 23; her husband's death, 216; plans for her family, 217; letter to her brother Isaac regarding, 318; visit to her sister, ii. 96. Evans, Isaac (brother), recollections of his sister, i. 11; her susceptibility to terror, 12; their happy childhood, 12; his marriage, 61; renewed correspondence with his sister on her marriage with Mr. Cross, iii. 287; notice of his family, 287. Evans, J. C., offers £1000 for a story for American periodical, ii. 94. Evans, Mrs. Samuel (aunt), the Dinah Morris of "Adam Bede," i. 33. Evans, Robert (father), his career, i. 1, 2; removed to Griff, 2; influence of his ideas on his daughter, 4; his position, 8; his wife, partly represented in Mrs. Poyser, 10; her death, 22; removal to Foleshill Road, Coventry, 61; strong disapproval of his daughter's religious views, 75; she visits her brother at Griff, 79; regrets her impetuosity, and returns to Foleshill, 81; his illness, 100; visits Dover with his daughter, 107; trip to Isle of Wight, 120; illness increases, and visits St. Leonards, 135; returns to Coventry, 139; his death, 148. Evidence, the value of, iii. 109. Evil-speaking, contrition for, i. 141. "Fables," by Lord Lytton, iii. 162. Fairness and pity, where necessary, iii. 228. Fame in dreams, ii. 89. Family reunion, iii. 268; joys, iii. 286. Faraday, letter from, acknowledging presentation copy of "Clerical Life," ii. 9. Farming, an epoch in, iii. 271. Faucit, Helen, admiration of, i. 222. Faults, abstention from dwelling on, iii. 89. "Faust," reading in the original, iii. 303. Faux, David, Confectioner (Brother Jacob), written, ii. 199. Fawcett, Henry, articles on Strikes by, ii. 194. "Fawn of Sertorius," i. 108. Fechter in "Hamlet," ii. 225; his "Othello," 232. Feeling old for her years, ii. 193. "Felix Holt," writing commenced, ii. 290; reading for, 292; Blackwood offers £5000 for, 308; pains taken with, 309; finished in excitement, 311; final instalment received from Blackwood, iii. 13; payment for copyright, 13. Feminine characteristics, iii. 310, 311. Ferrier, Mr., translates Kaufmann's article on "Deronda," iii. 216. Feuerbach, translation of, published; first and only time her real name appeared in print, i. 233. Fiction, contemporary, iii. 183. Fiction-reading condemned, i. 36. Fiction-writing, first mention of, i. 296; how I came to write, 298-300. First authorship, i. 42. First novel, i. 298; title of, 299. Flemish and Dutch pictures in Dresden, ii. 44. Florence: view from Fiesole and Bellasguardo, ii. 155; the Duomo and Campanile, 156; the palaces and libraries, 157; the Loggia di Lanza, 158; Santa Maria Novella, 158; Santa Croce and the Carmine, 159; the frescoes, 159; S. Maria Novella, 160; San Michele, the shrine, 160; the Uffizi Gallery, 161; and pictures, 162; Pitti pictures, 162; paintings at the Accademia, 163; Galileo's tower, 164; Michael Angelo's house, 165, 166. Flower, Mr., i. 191. Fontainebleau, visit to, iii. 150. Forster, W. E., his article on Slavery, i. 218; "Life of Dickens," iii. 104. Foster, Professor Michael, his draught of conditions for Lewes scholar studentship, iii. 267, 269. France, the Empire in, iii. 168. Franco-German war, iii. 86, 92. Franklin, Miss Rebecca, her school at Coventry, i. 17; her death, iii. 149. Freethinkers, little sympathy with, as a class, ii. 249. French and English working classes, difference between, i. 131. French revolution of 1848, i. 129. Froude's "Shadows of the Clouds," i. 146. Fuller, Margaret, her Journal, i. 198. Function of art, the, iii. 144. Furnishing, on troubles of, ii. 267. "Futile Lying," letter on, ii. 290. Gambler, a girl, iii. 124. Garibaldi at the Crystal Palace, ii. 276. Gaskell, Mrs., suspected to have written "Adam Bede," ii. 82; letter from, 102; expresses admiration of "Scenes" and "Adam Bede," 107. Gaskell's, Mrs., "Ruth," i. 219. Geneva, life at Campagne Plongeon, i. 151-157; Genevese preachers, 153, 154; _Fête_ of Navigation, 157; effect of change of life, 159; plans for lessons, 160; Baronne de Ludwigsdorff, 161; home remembrances, 170; beauty of scenery, 171; delight in town life, 171; the Juras, 178; last days in, 179. Genevese preachers, i. 153, 154. Genoa, the cathedral, ii. 124. George Eliot.--1819-37: Birth at Arbury farm, i. 1; removal to Griff, 2; anecdotes of father, 9; character of mother, 10; at Dame's school, 10; at Miss Lathom's school at Attleboro, 11; happy childhood, 12; first books read, 13; first journey to Staffordshire, 15; Miss Wallington's school at Nuneaton, 15; writes out "Waverley," 16; favorite books, 17; charade-acting, 17; riot at Nuneaton, 20; first letter to Miss Lewis, 21; mother's illness and death, 22; housekeeper at Griff, 24; life and studies there, 24. 1838-41: First visit to London, i. 28; religious asceticism, 29; nineteenth birthday, 32; religious objections to music, 32; religious reflections, 34; besetting sin, ambition, 35; objections to fiction-reading, 36; first poem, 42; books read and studies pursued, 44; German lessons begun, 45; chart of ecclesiastical history, 46; Italian studies, 49; dislike to housekeeping work, 50; reads Isaac Taylor, 51; visits Birmingham to hear "Messiah," 53; translates German poem, 54; her reading, 57; removal to Foleshill Road, Coventry, 59. 1841-46: Coventry life, i. 61; mental depression, 64; friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Bray, 67; reads Charles Hennell's "Inquiry," 67, 68; effect of this book, 74; gives up going to church, 75; family difficulties, 79; regrets her impetuosity, 81; resumes going to church, 82; intimacy with Miss Sara Hennell and Mr. and Mrs. Bray, 83; attitude towards immortality, 84; excursion to Stratford and Malvern, 85; meets Robert Owen, 86; studies German and music, 86, 87; opinion in regard to conformity, 89; translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu," 90; despair about publication of Strauss, 94; trip to the Highlands, 97. 1846-49: Strauss translation published, i. 107; classical books wanted, 108; suspected of novel-writing, 108; reading Foster's life, 109; thoughts on Jesus at Emmaus, 110; a child's idea of God, 111, 112; visits London and hears "Elijah," 112; re-reading Hennell's "Inquiry," 119; visit to Isle of Wight with father, 120; admiration of Richardson, 121; delight in George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur," 122; dislike to Jews, 125; supremacy of Hebrew poetry, 125; admiration of Roberts and Creswick, 127; opinion of Mr. Dawson the lecturer, 129; sympathy with revolution, 130; France and England contrasted, 131; sympathy with nonconformity, 133; visit to St. Leonards, 135; father's illness, 135; mental depression, 136; how to be overcome, 136; admiration of Louis Blanc, 137; recovery from depression, 138; opinion of "Jane Eyre," 138; meets Emerson, 138; again suffering from depression, 141; contrition for evil-speaking, 141; reading Macaulay's "History," 142; bodily suffering, 143; on the influence of Sand's and Rousseau's writings, 143, 144; writes review of the "Nemesis of Faith," 145; translates Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," 147; father's death, 148. 1849-50: Goes abroad with Mr. and Mrs. Bray, 150; Geneva, life at Campagne Plongeon, 151,152; prophetic anticipation of position seven years later, 158; effect of change of life, 159; plans for lessons, 160; finds apartments in Geneva, 164; enjoyment of society, 165; need of encouragement, 165; life in Geneva, 169, 170; yearning for friends at home, 170; remarks on translations of Spinoza, 172; desire for a woman's duty, 173; portrait by M. d'Albert, 178; remarks on education of children, 179; leaving Geneva, 180. 1850-54: Return to England, 181; reviews Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect" in _Westminster_, 184; assistant editor of _Westminster Review_, 186; introduced to Mr. Lewes, 189; intimacy begins, 192; help in despondency, 198; growing intimacy with Mr. Herbert Spencer, 201; dislike of scrap-work, 203; visit to Edinburgh, 211; an editor's life, 214, 215; ill with rheumatism, 218; interest in America, 219; growing intimacy with Mr. Lewes, 221, 232; contemplates publishing "The Idea of a Future Life," 229; union with Mr. Lewes, 234, 235; letter to Mrs. Bray, 235, 236. 1854-55: Visits Antwerp with Mr. Lewes, i. 239; extracts from journal, 239 _et seq._; Weimar, i. 240-251; Berlin recollections, 251-268; work at Weimar and Berlin, 268; remarks on books read, 268-271; return to England, 271. 1855-57: Articles written, i. 275; effect of article on Cumming, 278; reading on physiology, 279; miscellaneous writing, 280; Spinoza's "Ethics," translation finished, 281; wishes not to be known as translator, 283; articles on Young and Riehl, 286; tendency to scientific accuracy, 287; naturalistic experiences, 288; first mention of fiction-writing, 296; "how I came to write fiction," 298; correspondence about "Amos Barton," 300; "Mr. Gilfil's Love-story" begun, 305; Blackwood's high admiration of the story, 307; name of George Eliot assumed, 309; artistic bent, 310; Caterina and the dagger scene, 313; trip to the Scilly Isles, 313; social life at St. Mary's, 316; on conclusions of stories, 319; Jersey recollections, 319-322; Mr. Liggins, 323; opinions of "Mr. Gilfil's Love-story," 324, 325; happiness in her life, 328; Blackwood's opinion of "Janet's Repentance," 329; haunted by new story, 334; "Adam Bede" begun, 337; receives £120 for first edition of "Clerical Life," 337; unbelief in others' love, 337; sympathy with individuals, 339; objection to theism, 339; evening studies, 342; Major Blackwood suspects identity of George Eliot, 324; review of the year 1857. 1858: The _Times_ reviews of "Scenes of Clerical Life," ii. 1; letter from Charles Dickens, recognizing woman's hand, 3; from Froude, 3; from Mrs. Carlyle, 7; reveals herself to John Blackwood, 10; visit to Germany, 14-46; progress with "Adam Bede," 32; latter half written, 42; description of life at Dresden, 45; history of "Adam Bede," 48-52; retrospect of year, 55. 1859-60: Reading up for "Mill on the Floss," ii. 58; letter to John Blackwood on "Adam Bede," 58; wishes Carlyle to read her novels, 63; awakening to fame, 68; Mr. Liggins said to be author of "Adam Bede," 71; finished the "Lifted Veil," 75; reveals herself to Brays as author of "Adam Bede," 83; trip to Switzerland, 87; fourth edition (5000) of "Adam Bede" sold in a fortnight, 88; receives £800 beyond bargain for success, 102; 16,000 sold in one year, 107; Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, 115; "Mill on the Floss" finished, 116; start for Italy, 116. 1860: First journey to Italy, ii. 120; Rome, first sight of, 126; description of Naples, 144, 145; visit to Pompeii, 148; Florence, 155; first mention of Italian novel, 168; Venice, 172; home by Berne and Geneva, 181; enriched with new ideas, 182. 1860-61: "Mill on the Floss" success, ii. 185; sitting to Lawrence for portrait, 194; independence secured, 203; the queen's admiration of "Mill on the Floss," 203; success of "Silas Marner," 214; second journey to Italy, 216; hopeful about future work, 220; began "Romola," 230; studying for, 235, 236. 1862-65: Begins "Romola" again, ii. 238; offered £10,000 for "Romola" for the _Cornhill_, but idea given up, 244; £7000 accepted under new terms, 245; the effect of writing "Romola," 255; continued ill-health, 256, 258; letter from Frederick Maurice, 259; third visit to Italy, 278; trying a drama, 280; retrospect of year 1864, 282; "A Word for the Germans" written, 288; "Felix Holt" begun, 290; readings, 292; expedition to Brittany, 296; retrospect of 1865, 299. 1866: Mr. Harrison's legal help in "Felix Holt," ii. 303, 304, 310; offered £5000 for "Felix Holt" by Blackwood, 308; visit to Holland and Germany, 312; "The Spanish Gypsy" taken up again, 317; reading for, 321; start for Spain, 324. 1867: Journey to Spain, iii. 1; learning Spanish, 3; letters from Spain, 4-9; return to the Priory, 9; two months' visit to North Germany, 14; acquaintance with Mrs. Cross and family, 15; "Address to the Working Men," 19. 1868: Month's visit to Torquay, iii. 25; "Spanish Gypsy" finished, 29; notes on the "Spanish Gypsy," 30; on the writing of poetry instead of novels, 36; six weeks' journey to Baden, 37; meditating subject of Timoleon, 49; retrospect of the year, 50; cheap edition of novels, 51. 1869-72: Poem on "Agatha," iii. 55; writing "How Lisa Loved the King," 56; fourth visit to Italy, 57; religion of the future, 62; "Sonnets on Childhood" finished, 65; the phenomena of spiritualism, 67; the Byron scandal, 72; "Legend of Jubal" begun, 73; letter on the Positivist problem, 75; visit to Germany, 76; three days' visit to Oxford, 80; growing dislike of migratory life, 82; "Armgart" begun, 85; industrial schemes, 90; visit to Petersfield, 94; visit from Tennyson, 99; delight in intellectual activity, 101; reception of "Middlemarch," 103; Foster's "Life of Dickens," 104; "Middlemarch" finished, 121; a month's visit to Homburg, 122; a girl gambler, 124; memorial article on author of "Thorndale," 126; "Maga" on "Middlemarch," 130. 1873-75: Reception of "Middlemarch," iii. 138; Dutch translation of novels, 139; German reprints, 140; visit to Cambridge, 147; visit to the Master of Balliol, 149; nine weeks' trip to the Continent, 150; another book simmering in her thoughts, 157; retrospect of 1873, 160; cheaper edition of novels, 162; "Legend of Jubal" published, 167; journey to the Ardennes, 176; sales of her books, 180; value of early religious experience, 182; not satisfied with "Deronda," 193; depression in finishing, 194. 1876-78: Public interest in "Deronda," iii. 199; Mrs. Stowe's admiration of "Deronda," 202; letter to J. W. Cross, 204; trip to the Continent, 205; Jewish appreciation of "Deronda," 209; Dr. Adler's lecture on, 216; Mrs. Stowe and the Byron case, 221; appreciation of Tennyson, 229; gaining strength at Witley, 231; meets Crown Prince and Princess of Germany, 236; visit to Oxford, 236; Mr. Lewes's ill-health, 239; reception at the Priory, 241; Mr. Lewes's last illness and death, 245-247. 1879-80: First weeks of loneliness, iii. 249; announcement of "Theophrastus Such" delayed, 252; project of Physiological Studentship, 254; dissatisfied with "Theophrastus," 254; letter to J. W. Cross asking counsel, 258; reception of "Theophrastus" by the public, 263, 264; serious renal attack, 265; conditions for the studentship, 267; renewed interest in social news, 270; Dr. Roy appointed to studentship, 275; death of John Blackwood, 276; engagement to Mr. Cross, 279; married at St. George's, Hanover Square, 283; left for the Continent, 283; letters from France and Italy, 284-294; Mr. Cross's illness in Venice, 294; arrival in England, 295; recurrence of illness, 300; recovery of strength, 313; settled in Cheyne Walk, 313; first appearance of sore throat, 315; letter to Mrs. Strachey (unfinished), 316; sudden death, 316. German editions of "Middlemarch," iii. 114. German poem, translation of, i. 54. German reading, iii. 124. German Revolution of '48 caused by real oppression, i. 258. German translation of "Adam Bede," ii. 116; first volume received, 116. Germans, Vivier's anecdotes of, i. 264, 265; domestic life of, 271. Germany, North, journey to, iii. 14; places revisited and new scenes, 15. Germany, second visit to, 1854: Munich, ii. 14-34; Ischl, 37; Vienna, 38; Prague, 40; Dresden, 45; Leipzig, 46. Germany, visit to, in 1854; extracts from journal: Weimar, i. 240; Berlin, 251, 252. Gift of a vase from Miss Mary Cross, iii. 166. Girl gambler, a, iii. 124. Girton College scheme, iii. 18. Goethe on Spinoza, ii. 298. Goschen, Mr., dinner with, iii. 236; meets Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, 236. Got's acting, iii. 101. Granada, the Alhambra, iii. 7; view from, 8. Grand Chartreuse, expedition to the, iii. 285. Grandcourt and Lush, iii. 200. Grandison, Sir Charles, i. 121. Green, Professor T., iii. 149. Ground of moral action, iii. 178. Gurney, Mr. Edmund, iii. 147. Gurney, Rev. Archer, on "Scenes of Clerical Life," i. 324. Guthrie, Dr., address by, i. 230. Hamilton, Sir William, valuable contributions, i. 278. Hamley, Colonel (now General Sir Edward Hamley), impressions of, ii. 315; thanks for letter to the _Times_, iii. 93. Handel Festival, the, ii. 82. Hannay, Mr., on "Romola," ii. 252. Happiness in recovery of health, iii. 313. Hare, Mrs. Julius, ii. 263; her death, 273. Harrison, Frederic, letter to, on industrial co-operation, ii. 303; his legal advice in "Felix Holt," 303; more consultations with, 305, 306; letter to, on æsthetic teaching, etc., 318; receives a copy of "Spanish Gypsy," iii. 36; consultation with, 186. Harrogate, its lovely walks, ii. 281. Haughton, Mrs., letters to: on contrition for evil-speaking, i. 141; on friends at home, 159; on the bondage of luxuries, 177; on her proof-reading, 231. Haunted by new story, i. 334. Hawthorne, admiration of, i. 208. Heine, article on, in _Westminster_, i. 279. Helps, Arthur, dinner with, i. 230; incident in Spain, 242; on "Clerical Life," ii. 2. Hemans's "The Forest Sanctuary," i. 57. Hennell, Charles, analysis of "An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity," i. 68-74; his marriage, 85. Hennell, Miss Mary, author of "An Outline of the various Social Systems founded on the Principle of Co-operation," her death, i. 84. Hennell, Miss Sara, first meeting with, i. 82; letters to, on mental characteristics, 84; dangers of nonconformity, 89, 90; translating Strauss, 92; Strauss difficulties, 96; title of translation, 98; finishing translation, 101; longing for idleness, 102; thankfulness for help in translation, 103; visit to Mrs. Hennell, 107; desire for classics, 108; relief from work, 109; admiration of "Heliados," 111; philosophy and religion, 121; "Live and teach," 122; "sweet uses" of adversity, 135; depression by father's illness, 136; the "Romanticist," 139; a longing for sympathy, 141; bodily suffering, 143; return to England, 180, 181; Mr. Chapman's soirées, 190; delight with change of life, 206; letter from Berlin, 262; on essay "Christianity and Infidelity," 311; peacefully busy, 334; delight in Mr. Lewes's books, ii. 11; on the death of a mother, 12; admiration of Liebig, 25; sympathy with, on her mother's death, 32; letter from Dresden, 45; about Mrs. Clarke, 66, 67; recollections of Mr. Liggins, 72; authorship acknowledged to, 83; "expecting disappointments," 201, 202; settled in new house, 204, 205; on the blessings of good health, 229; old remembrances, 233; on her low health, 306; a birthday letter, iii. 129. Hereditary misfortunes, iii. 34. Hereford, Dean of, i. 227. Herts, country-house in, iii. 186. Higher education of women, iii. 13, 146. History of "Adam Bede," ii. 48-52. "History of Europe," Alison's, i. 282. History reading, iii. 234. Holbein's Madonna, ii. 42. Holland and Germany, journey to, ii. 312; the route taken, 315. Holland, Sir Henry, visit from, ii. 321. Holmwood Common, iii. 174. Homburg, the gaming-tables, iii. 122. Home, enjoyment of, iii. 208. Home for Girls, iii. 181. Home life, i. 13; iii. 107, 108. "Horsedealer in Syria," ii. 101. Housekeeping work, dislike of, i. 50. How I came to write fiction, i. 298-300. Hungarian, "Adam Bede" translated into, ii. 115. Hunt, Leigh, his "The Religion of the Heart," i. 226. Huth, Mrs. and Miss, iii. 147. Hutton, R. H., letter to, on "Romola," ii. 261. "Huxley on M. Comte," Dr. Congreve's article on, iii. 58. Huxley, Mr., an agreeable evening with, i. 220. Hyrtl, the German anatomist, ii. 39. "Idea of a Future Life," contemplates publishing, i. 229. Ilfracombe recollections: journey to, i. 285; naturalistic experiences, 288; zoological expeditions, 289; Devonshire lanes, 289; Rev. Mr. Tugwell, 290; the scientific spirit, 291; leave for Tenby, 292. Illness a partial death, iii. 155. Illustrations in cheap edition, not _queerer_ than in other books, iii. 217. Impetuosity regretted, i. 81. "Impossibility of marrying," dangers of speaking of, ii. 212. Incentive to production, iii. 224. Independence of external good, i. 81. Indian newspaper-writing, iii. 237. Individual versus the general, the, iii. 33. Industrious poor, helping the, iii. 90. Inkermann, battle of, a mere brave blundering, iii. 182. Inman, Dr., Liverpool, ii. 114. Innspruck and Wildbad, iii. 294, 295. Intellectual activity, enjoyment of, iii. 101. Intellectual superciliousness, ii. 255. "Introduction to the Science of Language," iii. 303. "Iphigenia in Aulis," iii. 145. Irregular verses, the use of, iii. 40. Ischl, the Gmunden See, ii. 37; voyage down the Danube, 38. Isle of Wight, trip to the, ii. 72, 256. Italian novel, first mention of, ii. 168. Italian studies, i. 49. Italy, first journey to, 1860: Turin, ii. 122; Genoa, 123; Leghorn, 124; Pisa, 125; Rome, 126-144; Naples, 144; Salerno, 151; Pæstum, 152; Amalfi, 153; Sorrento, 153, 154; Florence, 155; Bologna, 168; Padua, 170; Venice, 172; Verona, 179; Milan, 179-181. Italy, second journey to, ii. 216; stay at Florence, 217; renewed delight in, 219; work during the visit, 221. Italy, third visit to, ii. 277; Mr. Burton's companionship, 278; the Alps by the St. Gothard, 278. Italy, fourth visit to, iii. 57; places visited, 58. Italy, fifth visit to: Milan, iii. 288; Verona, 289; Venice, 291. "Jane Eyre," opinion of, i. 138. Jansa, Herr, takes lessons from, ii. 271. Jersey recollections, 1857: scenery, i. 319; inland walks, 320, 321; coast beauties, 321; books read, 322. Jesus at Emmaus, thoughts on, i. 110. Jewish appreciation of "Deronda," iii. 207, 216. Jews, dislike of, i. 125; English ignorance of the, iii. 212. Jones, Mr. Owen, decorates the new house, ii. 265, 266. Journal, 1855: Third book of "Ethics," preface written, i. 273; _Westminster Review_, 274; wrote for the _Leader_, 275. 1856: Working at Spinoza, i. 281; first mention of fiction-writing, 296; "Mr. Gilfil's Love-story" begun, 305. 1857: Pleasant letters regarding "Gilfil," i. 323, 324; finished "Janet's Repentance," 336; began "Adam Bede," 336; books read, 342; the year's work, 344. 1858: News from the city regarding "Clerical Life," ii. 12; visit to Germany, 14-46; "Adam Bede" finished, 48. 1859: A trip to Lucerne, ii. 87; return to England, 88; declined American offer for new story, 94; anxiety and doubt about new novel, 97. 1860: Seeing friends, ii. 114; first journey to Italy, 120-182. 1861: Second journey, ii. 216; struggling constantly with depression, 227; continued ill-health, 243-245; despondency, 279. 1868: Books, reading, iii. 25; retrospect of year, 50. 1869: Work in prospect, iii. 55; beginning "Middlemarch," 69; "Legend of Jubal" begun, 73. 1870: In languid health, iii. 79. 1871: First part of "Middlemarch" published, iii. 104. 1873: Success of "Middlemarch," iii. 138; retrospect of year, 159. 1875: Sales of books, iii. 180. 1876: Depression in writing "Deronda," iii. 194. 1877: Cabinet edition decided on, iii. 230; declined to renew copyright agreement, 230; close of her journal, 233. 1879: Seeing visitors, iii. 260. 1880: Her marriage with Mr. Cross, iii. 283; came to 4 Cheyne Walk, 311. Jowett, Mr., Master of Balliol, visit to, iii. 149. Julian the Apostate, Strauss's pamphlet on, i. 139. Justification in writing, iii. 173. Kaufmann, Dr. David, letter to, on his estimate of "Daniel Deronda," iii. 222; on the function of the teacher, 226; on Lewes's death, 257. Kenelm Chillingly, iii. 141. Knight, Charles, i. 202. La Bruyère's wisdom, iii. 235. Lamartine as a poet, i. 130. Languages, her knowledge of, iii. 305. La Vernia, description of, ii. 223. Lawrence wishes to take her portrait, ii. 115; sits for it, 194. Lecky's "History of Rationalism," ii. 291. Lecture on "Daniel Deronda," by Dr. Adler, iii. 216. Leeds, the horrible smoke of, iii. 43; its fine hospital, 44. "Legend of Jubal," some verses written, iii. 73; published as "Legend of Jubal, and other Poems," 167; new edition of, 169. Leghorn, the Jewish synagogue, ii. 125; to Civita Vecchia, 125; a pleasant companion, 126. Leipzig, two days at, ii. 45; its picture-gallery, 45. Leroux, Pierre, his theories, i. 194. Letters to her friends almost all destroyed, ii. 207. "Letter to Berthelot," Renan's, ii. 269. Lewes, Charles, first letter to, ii. 91; on musical parties, 98; on liking for algebra, 106; returns from Hofwyl, 185; receives appointment in Post-office, 194; letters from Florence to, 216, 219, 221; from Isle of Wight, 257; his engagement, 278; letters to, on Harrison's paper, iii. 262; on printing the "Problems," 276; from Grenoble, 285; from Milan, 288; from Venice, 291; from Stuttgart and Wildbad, 294, 295; on his visit to St. Blasien, 297; on recurrence of illness, 300. Lewes, George H., i. 188; first introduction to Miss Evans, 189; meet at the theatre, 192; article on "Julia von Krüdener," 192; his Comte papers, 209; growing intimacy, 221; his "History of Philosophy," 227; illness, 231; intimate relations with Miss Evans, 232; their union, 235; completed life of Goethe at Weimar, 267; estimation of George Eliot, 277; necessity for hard work, 277; proposes sending boys to Hofwyl, 284; goes to Switzerland with them, 297; highly pleased with "Amos Barton," 300; letter to John Blackwood with MS. of "Scenes of Clerical Life," 300; George Eliot revealed to John Blackwood, ii. 10; suggestions in "Adam Bede," 49, 50; extract from Journal, 55; "Physiology of Common Life," 92; "Studies in Animal Life," 113; dispassionate judgment, 202; delicate health, 223; busy with Aristotle, 233; "History of Science" begun, 243; views of Bible-reading, 251; buoyant nature, 290; walking expedition with Mr. Spencer, iii. 15; acquaintance with Mrs. Cross, 15; visits Bonn, 20; death of his mother, 91; proposed for Rectorship of St. Andrews, 232; continued illness, 240; his death, 247. Lewes, Herbert, his death, iii. 189. Lewes Studentship proposed, iii. 253; plans for, and trustees, 254. Lewes, Thornton, leaves for Natal, ii. 264; returns, iii. 63; his death, 73. Lewis, Miss, Leamington, iii. 192. Lewis, Miss, letters to: On first visit to London, i. 28; on living for eternity, 30; emulation of Wilberforce, 31; oratorios, 32; bad effect of novels, 37; religious controversies, 39; first authorship, 42; studies pursued, 44; Italian studies, 49; Mrs. Somerville's "Connection of the Physical Sciences," 50; opinions of Isaac Taylor, 51; German translation, 54; a walled-in world, 55; sensitiveness, 57; war's purgations, 59; satisfaction with new life, 62; depression of mind, 64; mind requiring rest, 65; desire for brain waves, 66; religious doubts and difficulties, 74, 75; on self-denial, 78. Lichfield, recollections of, ii. 96. Liddell, Dean, Oxford, iii. 173. Liebig, Professor, ii. 23; admiration of, 25, 29. "Life of Goethe," i. 275. "Lifted Veil," finished April, 1859, ii. 75; the idea of the story, iii. 141. Liggins, Mr., first mention of, i. 323; calls himself George Eliot, ii. 71; some recollections of, 72; Mr. Anders's apology, 78; Mr. Bracebridge's letter regarding, 99. Limitations of scientists, iii. 182. Lincoln, President, anecdote of, iii. 82. Lincoln, the Rector of, iii. 81. Lincolnshire, visits to, iii. 288. "Lisa," writing rhymed poem on, iii. 55. Literary biography, iii. 163. Literary taste at bookstalls, iii. 51. Littlehampton, trip to, ii. 247. Liturgy of the English Church and the Bible, ii. 226. Living abroad, drawbacks to, iii. 203. Lockhart, Captain, his writings, iii. 98, 193. Lonely days: "here I and sorrow sit," iii. 249. Louis Blanc, admiration of, i. 138. Louis Philippe and his sons, i. 130. Lowell's "My Study Windows," iii. 96. Lucerne, a trip to, ii. 87; visit from Mrs. Congreve, 87. Lush and Grandcourt, iii. 200. Lushington, Mrs. Vernon, iii. 220. Lyrics for "Spanish Gypsy," iii. 16. Lytton, Hon. Mrs. Robert (now Lady Lytton), letter of sympathy to, iii. 83; on thoughts of death, 99, 100; on Lord Lytton's Indian experiences, 281. Lytton, Hon. Robert (now Lord Lytton), on pronunciation in "Spanish Gypsy," iii. 52; explanation of errors, 52. Lytton, Sir Edward Bulwer, letter from, thanking author of "Adam Bede," ii. 74, 75; visit from, 115; criticises "Adam Bede," 115; his criticisms of "Maggie," 190. Macaulay, interest in, i. 142. Mackay's "Progress of the Intellect" reviewed, i. 183; extracts from, 183-185, 190. "Macmillan," article on "The Mill on the Floss" in, ii. 212. Macmillan, Mr., his proposal for volume on Shakespeare, iii. 231. Madrid, the Gallery, iii. 9. Madonna di San Sisto, first impression of, ii. 43. Main, Mr., collector of "The Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings of George Eliot," iii. 103; opinions of, 105. Maine, Sir Henry, on Lewes's "Physiology," iii. 267. Malvern, trip to, ii. 228; improved health from, 230, 231. "Man's Nature and Development," i. 187. "Marie of Villefranche," by Miss Mary Cross, iii. 100. Marriage, possibilities in, iii. 181. Marriage, the ideal, iii. 142. Martineau, Harriet, "The Crofton Boys," i. 93; meeting with, 94, 193; invitation from, 197; article on "Niebuhr," 203; visit to, at Ambleside, 212; respect for her, ii. 103; her autobiography, iii. 214, 219. Martineau, James, i. 192; critique of Kingsley's "Phaethon," 219; on Sir William Hamilton, 223; invitation from, 54; "Comte," 55. Martineau, Maria, her death, ii. 274. "Masculine woman," dislike of the, iii. 308. Masson, Mr., on Recent Philosophy, ii. 298. Mathematics, her love for, iii. 305. Matlock, recollections of, iii. 47. Maurice, Frederick, generous tribute from, ii. 259. Mazzini, asked to write on "Freedom _v._ Despotism," i. 194; his speeches, 198. Mazzini Fund, the, ii. 294. Mazzini's death, iii. 113. "Meliorist," the word, iii. 217. Memorial article on author of "Thorndale," iii. 126. Mendelssohn's "Letters," iii. 84. Mental characteristics described, i. 84. "Middlemarch," writing introduction, iii. 69; reading for, 71, 72; the design of, 99; anticipations of, 103; first part published, 104; French and German interest in, 112; delayed by ill-health, 113; £1200 from Harpers for reprint, 114; finished, 121; reviewed in _Blackwood's Magazine_, 130; new edition called for, 153; number sold in 1873, 160; December, 1874, 20,000 sold, 180. Milan, the Ambrosian Library, ii. 180; the "Brera," 180; Church of San Ambrogio, 181; the "Luini" pictures, iii. 288. Military men, articles by, iii. 265. Mill, John Stuart, his "Autobiography," iii. 158. "Mill on the Floss," first volume finished as "Sister Maggie," ii. 101; Blackwood's proposals for, 110; discussions as to title, 111; Blackwood's suggestion adopted, 112; Harpers, New York, give £300 for American edition, 115; third volume finished, 116; inscription on, 116; sad at finishing, 117; first and second editions (6000) sold, 185. Miracle play at Antwerp, the, ii. 316. Miscellaneous writing, i. 280. Misconception of others, on, ii. 197. "Miss Brooke," experimenting on, iii. 91. Mixed marriages in Germany, ii. 28. Modern German art, ii. 27. Mohl, Madame, dinner with, iii. 1. Moleschott, of Zurich, ii. 182. Molière's "Misanthrope," ii. 108. Mommsen's "History of Rome," ii. 264. Mont Cenis, passage of, ii. 120. Moral action, ground of, iii. 178. Moral sanction is obedience to facts, iii. 34. Morality with the "Bible shut," i. 230. More, Mrs. Hannah, her letters, i. 123. Müller, Max, ii. 239; iii. 149. Munich, the opera, ii. 18; Samson and Delilah, 18; Schwanthaler's "Bavaria," 19; appreciation of Rubens, 20; Catholic and Protestant worship, 21; the Glyptothek and Pinnacothek, 21; Kaulbach, Bodenstedt, and Genelli, 22, 23; Professor Wagner, 23; Professor Martius, 23; Liebig, 23, 25; Heyse and Geibel, 23; music of the "Faust," 24; Professor Löher, 24; Albert Dürer's paintings, 24; Bluntschli and Melchior Meyr, 25; the _Tafel-rund_, 26; the Siebolds, 26, 33; Kaulbach's pictures, 27; mixed marriages, 28; porcelain-painting, 30; Madame Bodenstedt, 30; visit to Grosshesselohe, 31; Lewes leaves for Switzerland, 33; leaves for Dresden, 33. Murillo's St. Rodriguez, ii. 43. Music, cheap, inconveniences connected with, in England, ii. 81. Musical evenings with Mr. Pigott and Mr. Redford, ii. 227, 229, 230. Musical parties, ii. 99. Myers, Mr. Frederick, Cambridge, iii. 147. "My Vegetarian Friend," written, ii. 285. Nancy, the Germans at, iii. 151. Naples: first impressions, ii. 144; visits to Baiæ, Avernus, and Misena, 145; to Pozzuoli and Capo di Monte, 146; the Cemetery, 147; Museo Borbonico, 147; Pompeii, 148; its remains, 149; beauty of, 150; the pictures at, 151; Giotto's frescoes, 151; leave for Florence, 154. Nearness of death, imagining the, iii. 170. Negative attitude unsatisfactory, iii. 156. "Nemesis of Faith," reviews the, i. 145; note from Froude, 145. New house, enjoyment of, ii. 269, 270. Newman, Francis, i. 140; iii. 165. Newman's "Apologia," ii. 280. Newman's, J. H., "Lectures on the Position of Catholics," i. 192. New misery in writing, i. 227. New Year's wishes, iii. 139. Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens," i. 65. Nightingale, Miss Florence, note from, i. 206; ii. 61. Noel, Mr., i. 191. Nonconformity, effect of, i. 79; dangers of, 90. Normandy, trip to, ii. 296. _North British_, favorable review, ii. 199. Notes on the "Spanish Gypsy," iii. 30, 31. Novel-writing, suspected of, i. 108. Nuneaton, riot at, i. 20. Nürnberg, description of, ii. 14; its roofs and balconies, 15; the Frauen-Kirche, 16; effect of Catholic "Function," 17; Albert Dürer's house, 17. Old people's judgments, i. 118. "Old Town Folks," appreciation of, iii. 66. Oliphant, Lawrence, and the colonizing of Palestine, iii. 252. Oliphant, Mrs., the novelist, ii. 11. _Once a Week_, a story requested for, ii. 104, 106. Oratorios at Birmingham, i. 53. Oratorios condemned, i. 32. Orientals, English attitude towards, iii. 211. Osborne, Bernal, on "Deronda," iii. 200. Otter, Francis, letter to, on his engagement, iii. 180, 181. Owen, Professor, i. 202; on the cerebellum, 210; sends his "Palæontology," ii. 116. Owen, Robert, i. 86. Oxford, first visit to, iii. 80; people met with, 80. Oxford Tracts and Christian Year, i. 48. Padua, Church of San Antonio, ii. 170; the Arena Chapel, 171; Giotto's painting, 171. Pæstum, the Temple of Neptune, ii. 152. Paris, visit to Comte's apartment, ii. 286. Parkes, Miss (Madame Belloc), friendship with, i. 195; iii. 289. "Pascal," by Principal Tulloch, iii. 235. Passionate affliction, defence against, iii. 84. Patience, the need of, iii. 128. "Paul Bradley," by Mrs. Bray, iii. 164. Pays no visits in London, ii. 215. Peabody, George, his magnificent gift, ii. 245. Pears, Mrs., letters to: on religious difficulties, i. 76; on desire for truth, 77; on her impetuosity, 81; her friendship with Mr. Robert Evans, 147. Penmaenmawr, ii. 96. Permanent influence of ideas, the, iii. 89. Persistence in application, iii. 304. Personal bearing, her, iii. 310. Personal portraiture objected to, iii. 228. Personality, independence of our, iii. 84. Phenomena of spiritualism, the, iii. 67. Philosophical Club, first meeting of, ii. 248; dissolution of, 253. "Philosophy of Necessity," the, i. 339. Phrenological indications, i. 78. Phrenology, the position of, i. 340. Physiological reading, i. 279. Physiological Studentship, the purpose of, iii. 256. "Physiology for Schools," Mrs. Bray's, ii. 267. Pigott, Mr. Edward Smith, i. 293. Pisa, description of, ii. 125; the cathedral, 125. Pity and fairness, where requisite, iii. 228. Plain living and high thinking, iii. 161. Plombières and the Vosges, iii. 150. Poem in _Christian Observer_, i. 43. Poetry instead of novels, on writing, iii. 36. Poetry of Christianity, i. 93; ii. 251. Poets, the value of, iii. 184. Political and religious standpoint, iii. 308. Pompeii and its remains, ii. 149, 150, 154. Ponsonby, Hon. Mrs. (now Lady Ponsonby), letter to, on the idea of God an exaltation of human goodness, etc., iii. 176; on the desire to know the difficulties of others, 184; on excess of public-houses, 188; on pity and fairness, 228. Poor, helping industrious, iii. 90. "Popular author," characteristics of the, ii. 59. Popular Concerts, Monday, ii. 204, 248. Popular judgment of books, iii. 62. Popular preacher, a, iii. 87. Positivism in "The Spanish Gypsy," iii. 49. Positivism regarded as one-sided, ii. 224. Possession, the sense of, iii. 306. Power of the will, the, iii. 179. Poyser, Mrs., her dialogue, ii. 54; quoted in House of Commons, 69. Prague: the Jewish burial-ground, ii. 40; impressive view, 41. Preacher, a popular, criticised, iii. 87. Presentation copies never sent, ii. 216. Press notices of "Adam Bede," ii. 60. "Pretended comforts," ii. 296. Prince Albert, admiration of, i. 202. Printed rancor, on, iii. 221. Priory, receptions at the, iii. 241. Private correspondence almost all destroyed, ii. 207. Private theatricals, i. 176, 178. "Problems of Life and Mind," by G. H. Lewes, iii. 203, 210. _Prospective Review_, i. 219; on Goethe, 224. Psychical troubles, i. 232. Public-houses, excess of, iii. 188. Public interest in "Deronda," iii. 199. Public school and University education, iii. 309. Publishing books, on different methods of, iii. 190, 191. "Pug," letter to John Blackwood on, ii. 91. Quackery of infidelity, i. 89. _Quarterly_ on "The Mill on the Floss," ii. 201. Queen's admiration of "The Mill on the Floss," ii. 203. Quiet joy in success, ii. 72. Quirk, Mr., finally renounces Liggins, ii. 96. Race characteristics, i. 125. Ragatz, "The Cure" at, iii. 206; gain in health from, 210. Rancor, on printed, iii. 221. Rawlinson, Professor, iii. 80. Reade, Charles, on "Adam Bede," ii. 70. Reading aloud, the effect of her, iii. 302, 303. Reading world very narrow, iii. 131. Reeves, Sims, singing "Adelaide," ii. 205. Religion and art, i. 126; the development of, iii. 62. Religious controversies, i. 39, 47; aspirations, 63; doubts and difficulties, 74, 76; forms and ceremonies, ii. 205; assemblies, the need of, iii. 156; and political standpoint, 308. Renan, estimate of, ii. 269; his appearance, iii. 3. Renan's "Vie de Jésus," ii. 260. Renunciation, on, iii. 35. Repugnance to autobiography, iii. 221. Responsibility of authorship, ii. 89. Retrospect of year 1819, i. 4, 5; of 1857, 346; of 1858, ii. 55; of 1864, 285; of 1865, 300; of 1868, iii. 50; of year 1873, 159. Reviews, effect of, ii. 192; abstains from reading, 193. Reviews of "Spanish Gypsy," iii. 40, 44. Revolution, sympathy with, i. 130. Revolutionary spirit, i. 138. "Revue des Deux Mondes," review of "Adam Bede," ii. 105; Lewes accepts editorship of periodical on plan of, ii. 287. Rewards of the artist, the, ii. 107. Richmond Park, the charms of, i. 326; sunset effects, 341. Riehl's "Die Familie," i. 344. Ritualistic services at Ryde, iii. 91. Rive, M. le Professeur de la, his lectures, i. 175, 177. Romance in real life, a, ii. 258, 259. Rome: from Civita Vecchia to, ii. 126; first sight of, 126; disappointed with, 127; view from the Capitol, 128; the Sabine and Alban hills, 128; the temples and palaces, 129; the arches and columns, 129, 130; the Coliseum and baths, 130; the Lateran and Vatican sculptures, 131; St. Peter's, 132; mediæval churches, 133; Sistine chapel, 133; palaces, 133, 134; illumination of St. Peter's, 134; the Quirinal, 134; San Pietro in Vincoli, 134; Michael Angelo's "Moses," 135; modern artists, 135; Riedel and Overbeck, 136; Pamfili Doria gardens, 137; Villa Albani and Frascati, 137; Tivoli, 138; pictures at the Capitol, 139; the Lateran Museum, 139; Shelley's and Keats's graves, 140; removal to apartments, 142; the French occupation, 143; beautiful mothers and children, 143; the Pope's blessing, 144. "Romola," first conception of, ii. 197; began the first chapter, 230; studying for, 234; begins it again, 238; Smith offers £10,000 for it to appear in the _Cornhill_, 244; £7000 accepted, 245; slow progress in writing, 246, 250; opinions of, 252; strain of writing, 255; finished Part XIII., 255; completion of, 256; application to translate into Italian, iii. 216. Rosehill, visit to, i. 193. Roundell, Mr. and Mrs. Charles, iii. 149. Roy, Dr. Charles, elected Lewes Physiological student, iii. 275; his treatise on "Blood Pressure," 298. Rubens, appreciation of, ii. 20. Rumors of authorship, ii. 13. Ruskin and Alfieri, reading, iii. 292. Ruskin's Works, opinion of, ii. 5. Ryde, visit to, iii. 91; ritualistic service at, 91. Salerno, visit to, ii. 151. Salzburg, description of scenery, ii. 36. Sand's, George, "Lettres d'un Voyageur," i. 122. Saragossa, the old cathedral, iii. 5. Saturday Popular Concerts, last visit to, iii. 315. _Saturday Review_, the, i. 281. Saveney on "La Physique Moderne," iii. 3. Scarborough, visit to, ii. 281. "Scenes of Clerical Life:" "Sad Fortunes of Amos Barton," i. 299; offered to Blackwood, 300; accepted, 304; sensitiveness of author, 304; "Mr. Gilfil's Love-story" begun, 305; "Amos Barton," published in January (1856) Magazine, 305; opinions regarding authorship, 308, 309; assumes the name of George Eliot, 310; Caterina and the dagger scene, 313; "Mr. Gilfil" finished, 319; epilogue to, 319; opinions of, 324; "Janet's Repentance" begun, 326; Blackwood's opinion of, 328; increased circulation, 342; favorable opinions of, ii. 10. Scherer, Professor, Geneva, iii. 8. School-fellows, excels her, i, 19. Schwalbach, description of, ii. 312. Scientists, limitations of, iii. 182. Scilly Islands, recollections of: St. Mary's, i. 314; Beauties of the coast, 314; sunlight on the waves, 315; social life, 316. Scotch Reign of Terror, disbelief in a, i. 132. Scotland, trip to, i. 97; visit to, ii. 275. Scott Commemoration, afraid of journey to, iii. 97, 98. Scott, Life of Sir Walter, ii. 61. Scrap-work, dislike of, i. 203. Sculpture and painting, i. 127. Sensibility to criticism, ii. 63. Sequel to "Adam Bede" proposed, ii. 100. Shakespeare's "Passionate Pilgrim," i. 273. Shakespeare, the acting preferred to the reading, ii. 109. Shakespeare, volume on, requested by Macmillan, iii. 231. Sheffield, visit to, iii. 46; early recollections of, 46. Shelley's "Cloud," i. 53. Shottermill, life at, iii. 94. Sibree, John, letters to, i. 123; on "Tancred" and D'Israeli, 123, 124; race characteristics, 125; religion and art, 126; painting and sculpture, 127; sympathy with him, 128; necessity of utterance, 132; desire for a change, 133. Sibree, Miss Mary (Mrs. John Cash), her recollections of Miss Evans at Coventry, i. 113-116; letter to, 327. Sidgwick, Mr. Henry, iii. 147. Siebold the anatomist, ii. 26. Siena, expedition to, ii. 164; the Cathedral, 164, 165; its paintings, 165. "Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe," a sudden inspiration, ii. 204; story begun, 207; its sombre character, 210; subscription to, 5500, 212. Silence of the country, iii. 107. "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," article on, finished, i. 297. Simpson, Mr. George, Edinburgh, letter to, iii. 135; proposed a yet cheaper edition of novels, 162; author's regret at not adopting the plan, 162. "Small upper room" 1866 years ago, comparison with, ii. 285. Smith, Albert, on "Amos Barton," i. 308. Smith, Barbara (Madame Bodichon), i. 205, 295. _See_ Madame Bodichon. Smith, Mr. George, offers £10,000 for "Romola," to appear in the _Cornhill_, ii. 244; accepted for £7000, 245. Smith, Mrs. William, letters to, on the Memoir of her husband, iii. 126, 142; on the higher education of women, 146; on her poems, 160. Smith, Sydney, anecdote of, ii. 299. Smith, William, author of "Thorndale," ii. 5, 212; his illness, iii. 109; his death, 119; memoir of, 185. Social dangers, i. 56. Somerville's, Mrs., "Connection of the Physical Sciences," i. 50. "Sonnets on Childhood," iii. 65. Sorrento, visit to, ii. 153; its neighborhood, Vico, and the Syren Isles, 154. Spain, set off on journey to, ii. 324; return home, iii. 9. "Spanish Gypsy," reading for, ii. 280; first act finished, 283; taken up again, 317; reading for, 321; recommenced in new form, 321; reading for, iii. 15; Mr. Lewes's opinion of, 22; shortening of, 29; finished, 29; notes on, 30; the _motif_ of the poem, 30; reviews of, 39, 40; second and third editions, 42, 45; reprinted in Germany, 140; number sold in 1873, 160; fifth edition published, 180. Spanish grammar, studying, ii. 282. Spanish, new system of learning, iii. 3; scenery, 4; travelling, 6. Speke, Captain, the African traveller, ii. 95, 101. Spencer, Herbert, first meeting with, i. 187; intimacy with, 201, 203; "Universal Postulate," 225; "Genesis of Science," 234; Essays, 371; his influence on Lewes, ii. 55, 56; enthusiastic letter from, 89; his new work, 206; visit from, 276; introduces Lewes to Mrs. Cross, iii. 15; his teaching, 184; last visit from, 315. Spencer, Mr., senior, teacher, ii. 272. Spinoza's "Ethics," desires not to be known as translator, i. 283. Spinoza's "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus," i. 147, 172. Spiritualistic evidence, iii. 111; phenomena, 116. "Spiritual Wives," a nasty book, iii. 130. Spiritualism, the phenomena of, iii. 67; one aspect of, 117. Splügen Pass, journey across, ii. 181. Springs of affection reopened, iii. 280. Stachelberg and Klönthal, iii. 207. Staffordshire, first journey to, i. 15. Stanley, Lord, his opinion of the "Scenes," i. 325. _Statesman_ review of "Clerical Life," ii. 6. Stella Collas in "Juliet," ii. 259. Stephenson, George, one of her heroes, ii. 241. St. Blasien, in the Schwarz Wald, iii. 207. St. Leonards, visit to, i. 223. St. Paul's, charity children singing, i. 203. Stories, on conclusions of, i. 319. Stowe, Mrs., Miss Cobbe's rejoinder to, ii. 253; letters to, iii. 60; on early memories of, 60; the popular judgment of books, 61; the development of religion, 62; a woman's experience, 63; on appreciation of "Old Town Folks," 66; Professor Stowe's psychological experience, 67; phenomena of spiritualism, 67; on the benefits of country quiet, 110; on spiritualistic phenomena, 116; on Goethe, 175; on her admiration for "Deronda," 202; on the Jewish element in "Deronda," 211. Stowe, Mrs., letter to Mrs. Follen, i. 220. Stowe, Professor, his psychological experience, iii. 66; a story by, iii. 129. Strachey, Mrs., letter to (unfinished), iii. 315. "Stradivarius," referred to, iii. 228. Strain of writing "Romola," ii. 255. Strauss, translation of, i. 90, 94; delay in publication, 95; difficulties, 96; title, 98; finishing translation, 101; Miss Hennell's help in translation, 103; review of, 109; interview with, 240; renewed acquaintance with, ii. 46. Strength while abroad, iii. 301. Stuart, Mrs., visit from, iii. 255. Study, enjoyment of, ii. 322. Studying for "Romola," ii. 234, 240, 246, 249, 250. Sturgis, Julian, high opinion of, iii. 257. Sully, James, letter to, on Mr. Lewes's articles, iii. 260, 269, 273; thanking him for proof-reading, 274. "Sunshine through the Clouds," i. 233. Surrey, enjoyment, iii. 170. Surrey hills preferred to the sea-side, iii. 272. Swansea, cockle-women at, i. 292. Swayne, Rev. Mr., his delight with "Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story," i. 311. Switzerland, letters during residence in 1849, i. 151-179. Sympathy, with other women, iii. 100; the necessity of, ii. 269; recovery of, iii. 293. Tauchnitz offers for "Clerical Life," ii. 52; offers £100 for German reprint of "Adam Bede," 115. Taylor, Isaac, influence of, i. 51. Taylor, Mrs. Peter, i. 196; sympathy with, 197; letters to, 218, 219; generous letter from, with reply, 293, 294; on her domestic position, ii. 213, 214; letter to, on Christmas at Weybridge, iii. 159; on difficulties of note writing, 181; on the Lewes Studentship, 273. Taylor, Professor Tom, i. 201. Tenby, zoological delights, i. 293; St. Catherine's Rock, 295; work done here, 295; Mr. Pigott's visit, 296; leave and return to Richmond, 297. Tennyson, appreciation of, iii. 229. "Terror" in religious education, iii. 48. Thackeray, Miss, "The Story of Elizabeth," ii. 299; her marriage, iii. 225. Thackeray's "Esmond," i. 214; opinion of "Gilfil's Love-Story," 323; favorable opinion of "Clerical Life," ii. 10. "The Impressions of Theophrastus Such," MS. sent to publishers, iii. 245; publication postponed, 252; third edition about sold out, 268. Theism, objection to, i. 339, 340. Thirlwall, Bishop, story of, iii. 228. Thompson, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, iii. 149. Thorns in actual fame, ii. 90. Thorwaldsen's Christ scourged, i. 126. "Thoughts in Aid of Faith," by Miss Hennell, ii. 186, 188, 195; favorable view of, by Miss Nightingale and Miss Julia Smith, 190. "Thoughts in Aid of Faith," ii. 73. Thoughts on death, iii. 100; on early death, ii. 290. Tichborne trial, the, iii. 106; Coleridge's address, 107. _Times_ reviews "Adam Bede," ii. 73; letter to, denying Liggin's authorship, 74. Titian's paintings, ii. 43, 45. "Too good to be true," i. 140. Torquay, visit to, iii. 25. Toulon to Nice, drive from, ii. 216, 217. Town life, depression of, ii. 203. Tragedy, notes on, iii. 32. Translator's difficulties, a, i. 99. Traunstein, our fellow-travellers at, ii. 35. Trèves, a visit to, iii. 122. Trollope, Anthony, his "Orley Farm," delightful letter from, ii. 246. Truth, desire for, i. 77. Truth of feeling a bond of union, i. 88. Tryan, Rev. Mr., an ideal character, i. 332. Tulloch, Principal, his "Pascal," iii. 235. Turguenieff, M., iii. 209. Turin: Count Cavour, ii. 122; Prince de Carignan, 122. Tylor's "Primitive Culture," iii. 118. Tyndall, Professor, "On the Constitution of the Universe," ii. 299. University and public school education, iii. 309. Use of irregular verses, iii. 40. "Utopias," poem on, ii. 286. Venice: the Grand Canal by moonlight, ii. 172; San Marco and Doge's Palace, 173; pictures in the palace, 173; interior of St. Mark's, 174; "Death of Peter the Martyr," 175; the Scuola di San Rocco, 176; Tintoretto and Titian, 176; Giovanni Bellini and Palma Vecchio, 177; sunset on the Lagoon, 177; Piazza of San Marco, 178; a remarkable picture, 178. Verona, the church of San Zenone, ii. 179; the tombs of the Scaligers, 179. Veronese, his "Finding of Moses," etc., ii. 44. Via Mala, its grand scenery, ii. 182. Vienna: Belvedere pictures, ii. 39; the Liechtenstein collection, 39; Hyrtl, the anatomist, 39; journey to Prague, 40. "Villette," i. 220. Vision of others' needs, iii. 177. Vision-seeing subjective, iii. 116. "Visiting my Relations," a volume of poetry from the authoress of, ii. 97. Wales, visit to, iii. 189. Wallace's "Eastern Archipelago," iii. 118. Wallington, Miss, her school at Nuneaton, i. 15. Walt Whitman, motto from, iii. 200. Wandsworth, takes new house at, ii. 59. Warwickshire magistrate, correspondence with, ii. 97. "Waverley," writes out, i. 16. Weimar recollections: interview with Strauss, i. 240; the Dichter Zimmer, 240; Scholl, 240; excursion to Ettersburg, 241; Arthur Helps, 242; Goethe's beech, 242; expedition to Ilmenau, 242; Wagner's operas, 243; "Der Freischütz," 243; Schiller's house, 244; Goethe's house, 244; his study, 245; the _Gartenhaus_, 246; the _Webicht_, 247; Marquis de Ferrière, 247; Liszt on Spontoni, 248; breakfast with, 249; his playing, 250; his trophies, 250; our expenses, 251; work at and books read, 268-271; wrote article on "Madame de Sablé," 268; remarks on books read, 269-271; return to England, 271. _Westminster_, the, on "Essays and Reviews," ii. 200. _Westminster Review_, assistant editor of, i. 186; heavy work, 193; its difficulties, 227; wishes to give up editorship, 229. _Westminster_ reviewers, i. 199, 200, 205, 210. Weybridge, Christmas visit to, iii. 71, 140, 159. Wharton's "Summary of the Laws relating to Women," i. 220. Whitby, visit to, iii. 85. Wicksteed's review of Strauss's translation in "Prospective," i. 109. Wilberforce, emulation of, i. 31. Wildbad to Brussels, iii. 295. Will, power of the, iii. 179. Wilson, Andrew, the "Abode of Snow," iii. 190. Witley, house bought at, iii. 215; life at, 240; Sunday receptions, 241. Wolseley, Sir Garnet, iii. 198. Woman's duty, yearning for a, i. 173; earnings, 282; full experience, iii. 63; constancy, on, 92, 93. Womanhood, her ideal of, iii. 308. Women's Colleges, iii. 309. Woolwich Arsenal, a visit to, iii. 176. Wordsworth's Poems, i. 45. Wordsworth's Thoughts on Humanity, iii. 280. Work at Weimar and Berlin, i. 268. World of light and speech, iii. 185. Writing under difficulties, ii. 307. Young, discontent of the, iii. 213. Young Englandism, no sympathy with, i. 124. Young men, desire to influence, iii. 18. Yorkshire, visit to, iii. 41. Zoological Gardens, pleasure in, ii. 209; friendship with the Shoebill, 209. THE END. GEORGE ELIOT'S WORKS. LIBRARY EDITION. _ADAM BEDE._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. _DANIEL DERONDA._ 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. _ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK._ 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. _FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. _MIDDLEMARCH._ 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $2.50. _ROMOLA._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. _SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. _THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH._ 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. _THE MILL ON THE FLOSS._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $1.25. * * * * * POPULAR EDITION. _ADAM BEDE._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. _DANIEL DERONDA._ 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $1.50. _ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK._ 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. _FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. _MIDDLEMARCH._ 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $1.50. _ROMOLA._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. _SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE, and SILAS MARNER._ Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. _THE IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH._ 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. _THE MILL ON THE FLOSS._ 12mo, Cloth, 75 cents. * * * * * CHEAPER EDITIONS. _BROTHER JACOB.--THE LIFTED VEIL._ 32mo, Paper, 20 cents. _DANIEL DERONDA._ 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. _ESSAYS and LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK._ 4to, Paper. _FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL._ 8vo, Paper, 50 cents. _JANET'S REPENTANCE._ 32mo, Paper, 20 cents. _MIDDLEMARCH._ 8vo, Paper, 75 cents. _MR. 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Latin-1 file: p. 133, "baby is raised to the _n_^{th} power"--^{th} indicates "th" as a superscript. Latin-1 file: p. 102, [)o] indicates an "o" with a breve, and [=o] indicates an "o" with a macron. Html file displays these as in the original. 
11680	----	GEORGE ELIOT: A CRITICAL STUDY OF HER LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY. BY GEORGE WILLIS COOKE AUTHOR OF "RALPH WALDO EMERSON: HIS LIFE, WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY." 1884 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. The publication of a new edition of this work permits me to say that the essay on "The Lady Novelists," quoted in the seventh chapter, was written by George Henry Lewes. Its opinions, however, are substantially those of George Eliot, and they will be found in harmony with her own words. Confessing to the error, I yet venture to let the quotations, and the comments on them, stand as at first made. The three poems mentioned on page 75, were among the latest of the productions of George Eliot's pen. It has been suggested to me that I have not done perfect justice to George Henry Lewes, especially in what I say of his books on the Spanish drama and the life of Goethe. I have carefully reconsidered what I wrote of him, and find no occasion for any change of judgment, though two or three words might properly give place to others of a more appreciative meaning. My book has met with much greater praise than I could have expected. Its errors, I have no doubt, are quite numerous enough; and yet I venture to think the main thought of the book is correct. MARCH, 1884. CONTENTS. PREFACE I. EARLY LIFE II. TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR III. MARRIAGE IV. CAREER AS AN AUTHOR V. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS VI. LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES VII. THEORY OF THE NOVEL VIII. POETIC METHODS IX. PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE X. DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS XI. RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES XII. ETHICAL SPIRIT XIII. EARLIER NOVELS XIV. ROMOLA XV. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH XVI. DANIEL DERONDA XVII. THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS XVIII. LATER ESSAYS XIX. THE ANALYTIC METHOD XX. THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT XXI. BIBLIOGRAPHY I. EARLY LIFE. The poet and the novelist write largely out of personal experience, and must give expression to the effects of their own history. What they have seen and felt, gives shape and tone to what they write; that which is nearest their own hearts is poured forth in their books. To ignore these influences is to overlook a better part of what they write, and is often to lose the explanation of many features of their work. Shakspere is one of those who are of no time or place, whose words gain no added meaning in view of what he was and how he lived; but it is not so with a great number of the best and most inspiring writers. The era in which they lived, the intellectual surroundings afforded them by their country and generation, the subtle phases of sentiment and aspiration of their immediate time and place, are all essential to a true appreciation of their books. It is so of Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Hugo, Wordsworth, Emerson, and how many more! As we must know the eighteenth century in its social spirit, literary tendencies, revolutionary aims, romantic aspirations, philosophy and science, to know Goethe, so must we know the nineteenth century in its scientific attainments, agnostic philosophy, realistic spirit and humanitarian aims, in order to know George Eliot. She is a product of her time, as Lessing, Goethe, Wordsworth and Byron were of theirs; a voice to utter its purpose and meaning, as well as a trumpet-call to lead it on. As Goethe came after Lessing, Herder and Kant, so George Eliot came after Comte, Mill and Spencer. Her books are to be read in the light of their speculations, and she embodied in literary forms what they uttered as science or philosophy. Not only is a poet's mind affected by the tone of thought about him, but his personal experiences and surroundings are likely to have a large influence on what he writes. Scott was deeply affected by the romantic atmosphere of his native land. Her birthplace and youthful surroundings had a like effect on George Eliot. The Midland home, the plain village life, the humble, toiling country folk, shaped for her the scenes and characters about which she was to write. Some knowledge of her early home and the influences amidst which her mind was formed, help largely to an appreciation of her books and the views of life which she presents in them. The Midland region of England she has pictured with something of that accuracy with which Scott described the Border. It is a country of historic memories. Near by her childhood home was the forest of Arden and Astly Castle, the home of Sir John Grey, whose widow, Elizabeth Woodville, became the queen of Edward IV. This was also one of the homes of Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, who was found in a hollow tree near by after his rebellion; and the home, likewise, of his daughter, Lady Jane Grey. In another direction was Bosworth Field; and within twenty miles was Stratford-upon-Avon. The ancient city of Coventry was not far distant. It was not these historic regions which attracted her, however, so much as the pleasant country, the common people, the quiet villages. With observant eyes she saw the world about her as it was and she entered into the heart of its life, and has painted it for us in a most sympathetic, appreciative spirit. The simple, homely, unromantic life of middle England she has made immortal with her wit, her satire, her fine description, and her keen love of all that is human. She herself recognized the importance of her early surroundings. In one of her letters she used these words: It is interesting, I think, to know whether a writer was born in a central or border district--a condition which always has a strongly determining influence. I was born in Warwickshire, but certain family traditions connected with more northerly districts made these districts a region of poetry to me in my early childhood. I was brought up in the Church of England, and have never joined any other religious society, but I have had close acquaintance with many Dissenters of various sects, from Calvinistic Anabaptists to Unitarians. The influence of the surroundings of childhood upon character she has more than once touched upon in her books. In the second chapter of _Theophrastus Such_, she says,-- I cherish my childish loves--the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged. In the same essay she says,-- Our Midland plains have never lost their familiar expression and conservative spirit for me. In _Daniel Deronda_ she most tenderly expresses the same deep conviction concerning the soul's need of anchorage in some familiar and inspiring scene, with which the memories of childhood may be delightfully associated. Her own fond recollections lent force to whatever philosophical significance such a theory may have had for her. A human life should be well rooted in some spot of a native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for the face of the earth, for the labors men go forth to, for the sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give that home a familiar, unmistakable difference amidst the future widening of knowledge; a spot where the definiteness of early knowledge may be inwrought with affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbors, even to the dogs and monkeys, may spread, not by sentimental effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. Mary Ann Evans was born at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish of Colton, Warwickshire, England, November 22, 1819. In after years she adopted the abbreviated form of her name, and was known by her friends as Marian. When she was six months old the family moved to Griff House, which was situated half-way between Bedworth, a mining village, and the manufacturing town of Nuneaton. In approaching Griff from Nuneaton, a little valley, known as Griff Hollows, is passed, much resembling the "Red Deeps" of _The Mill on the Floss_. On the right, a little beyond, is Griff House, a comfortable and substantial dwelling surrounded by pleasant gardens and lawns. Robert Evans, her father, was born at Ellaston, Staffordshire, of a substantial family of mechanics and craftsmen. He was of massive build, tall, wide-shouldered and strong, and his features were of a marked, emphatic cast. He began life as a master carpenter, then became a forester, and finally a land agent. He was induced to settle in Warwickshire by Sir Roger Newdigate, his principal employer, and for the remainder of his life he had charge of five large estates in the neighborhood. In this employment he was successful, being respected and trusted to the fullest extent by his employers, his name becoming a synonym for trustworthiness. Marian many times sketched the main traits of her father's character, as in the love of perfect work in "Stradivarius." He had Adam Bede's stalwart figure and robust manhood. Caleb Garth, in _Middlemarch_, is in many ways a fine portrait of him as to the nature of his employment, his delight in the soil, and his honest, rugged character. Caleb was wont to say that "it's a fine thing to have the chance of getting a bit of the country into good fettle, and putting men into the right way with their farming, and getting a bit of good contriving and solid building done--that those who are living and those who come after will be the better for. I'd sooner have it than a fortune. I hold it the most honorable work that is." Robert Evans, like Caleb Garth, "while faithfully serving his employers enjoyed great popularity among their tenants. He was gentle but of indomitable firmness; and while stern to the idle and unthrifty, he did not press heavily on those who might be behindhand with their rent, owing to ill luck or misfortune, on quarter days." While still living in Staffordshire, Robert Evans lost his first wife, by whom he had a son and a daughter. His second wife, the mother of Marian, was a Miss Pearson, a gentle, loving woman, and a notable housewife. She is described in the Mrs. Hackit of "Amos Barton," whose industry, sharp tongue, epigrammatic speech and marked character were taken from life. Something of Mrs. Poyser also entered into her nature. She had three children, Christiana, Isaac and Mary Ann. The house at Griff was situated in a rich landscape, and was a large, commodious farm-house of red brick, ivy-covered, and of two stories' height. At the back was a large garden, and a farm-yard with barns and sheds. In the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and Sister," Marian has given some account of her early life. She had the attachment there described for her brother Isaac, and followed him about with the same persistence and affection. The whole of that poem is autobiographical. The account of the mother gives a delightful glimpse into Marian's child-life: Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, Stroked down my tippet, set my brother's frill, Then with the benediction of her gaze Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still Across the homestead to the rookery elms, Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, So rich for us, we counted them as realms With varied products. The early life of Marian Evans has, in many features of it, been very fully described in the story of Maggie Tulliver. How far her own life is that of Maggie may be seen by comparing the earlier chapters in _The Mill on the Floss_ with the "Brother and Sister." The incident described in the poem, of her brother leaving her in charge of the fishing-rod, is repeated in all its main features in the experiences of Maggie. In the poem she describes an encounter with a gipsy, which again recalls Maggie's encounter with some persons of that race. The whole account of her childhood life with her brother, her trust in him, their delight in the common pleasures of childhood, and the impression made on her by the beauties of nature, reappears in striking similarity in the description of the child-life of Maggie and Tom. These elements of her early experience and observation of life have been well described by one who knew her personally. This person says that "Maggie Tulliver's childhood is clearly full of the most accurate personal recollections." Marian Evans very early became an enthusiastic reader of the best books. In an almanac she found a portion of one of the essays of Charles Lamb, and remembered reading it with great delight. In her seventh year a copy of _Waverley_ was loaned to her older sister. She became herself intensely fascinated by it, and when it was returned before she had completed it she was thrown into much distress. The story so possessed her that she began to complete it in writing, according to her own conception. When this was discovered, the book was again secured for her perusal. This incident she has described in a sonnet, which appears as the motto to the fifty-seventh chapter of _Middlemarch_. They numbered scarce eight summers when a name Rose on their souls and stirred such motions there As thrill the buds and shape their hidden frame At penetration of the quickening air: His name who told of loyal Evan Dhu, Of quaint Bradwardine, and Vich Ian Vor, Making the little world their childhood knew Large with a land of mountain, lake and scaur, And larger yet with wonder, love, belief, Toward Walter Scott, who living far away Sent them this wealth of joy and noble grief. The book and they must part, but day by day, In lines that thwart like portly spiders ran, They wrote the tale, from Tully Veolan. Not only was she a great reader, but she was also a diligent and even a precocious student, learning easily and rapidly whatever she undertook to acquire in the way of knowledge. She was first sent, with her brother Isaac, to a free school in the village of Griff. Among her mates was William Jacques, the original of Bob Jakins in _The Mill on the Floss_. When seven years old she went to a girls' school at Nuneaton. Her schoolmates describe her as being then a "quiet, reserved girl, with strongly lined, almost masculine features, and a profusion of light hair worn in curls round her head." The abundance of her curling hair caused her much trouble, and she once cut it off, as Maggie Tulliver did, because it would not "lie straight." "One of her school-fellows," we are told, "recalls that the first time she sat down to the piano she astonished her companions by the knowledge of music she had already acquired. She mastered her lessons with an ease which excited wonder. She read with avidity. She joined very rarely in the sports of her companions, and her diffidence and shrinking sensibility prevented her from forming any close friendship among her school-fellows. When she stood up in the class, her features, heavy in repose, were lighted by eager excitement, which found further vent in nervous movements of her hands. At this school Marian was well taught in English, with drawing, music, and some little French." Leaving this school at the age of twelve, she went to that of the Misses Franklin in Coventry, a large town a few miles distant. To the careful training received there she was much indebted, and in after years often spoke of it with the heartiest appreciation. One of her friends, Edith Simcox, has given an account of this school and of Marian's studies there. "Almost on the outskirts of the old town of Coventry, towards the railway station, the house may still be seen, itself an old-fashioned five-windowed, Queen Anne sort of dwelling, with a shell-shaped cornice over the door, with an old timbered cottage facing it, and near adjoining a quaint brick and timber building, with an oriel window thrown out upon oak pillars. Between forty and fifty years ago, Methodist ladies kept the school, and the name of 'little mamma,' given by her school-fellows, is a proof that already something was to be seen of the maternal air which characterized her in later years, and perhaps more especially in intercourse with her own sex. Prayer meetings were in vogue among the girls, following the example of their elders; and while taking, no doubt, a leading part in them, she used to suffer much self-reproach about her coldness and inability to be carried away with the same enthusiasm as others. At the same time, nothing was farther from her nature than any sceptical inclination, and she used to pounce with avidity upon any approach to argumentative theology within her reach, carrying Paley's _Evidences_ up to her bedroom, and devouring it as she lay upon the floor alone." During the three years Marian attended this school she held aloof from the other pupils, was grave and womanly in her deportment. She acquired Miss Rebecca Franklin's slow and precise method of speaking, and to her diligent training owed her life-long habit of giving a finished completeness to all her sentences. It seems that her imagination was alive at this time, and being slowly cultivated. She was in the habit of scribbling verses in her books and elsewhere. A fellow-pupil during the time she was a member of this boarding-school has given these reminiscences of Marian's life there: "She learned everything with ease," says this person, "but was passionately devoted to music, and became thoroughly accomplished as a pianist. Her masters always brought the most difficult solos for her to play in public, and everywhere said she might make a performer equal to any then upon the concert stage. She was keenly susceptible to what she thought her lack of personal beauty, frequently saying that she was not pleased with a single feature of her face or figure. She was not especially noted as a writer, but so uncommon was her intellectual power that we all thought her capable of any effort; and so great was the charm of her conversation, that there was continual strife among the girls as to which of them should walk with her. The teachers had to settle it by making it depend upon alphabetical succession." Leaving the school in Coventry at the age of fifteen, Marian continued her studies at home. The year following, her mother died; and this event, as she afterwards said, first made her acquainted with "the unspeakable grief of a last parting." Soon after, her older sister and her brother were married and left home. She alone remained with her father, and was for several years his housekeeper. "He offered to get a housekeeper," says Miss Blind, "as not the house only, but farm matters had to be looked after, and he was always tenderly considerate of 'the little wench,' as he called her. But his daughter preferred taking the whole management of the place into her own hands, and she was as conscientious and diligent in the discharge of her domestic duties as in the prosecution of the studies she carried on at the same time." Her experiences at this period have been made use of in more than one of her characters. The dairy scenes in _Adam Bede_ are so perfectly realistic because she was familiar with all the processes of butter and cheese making. In 1841 her father gave up his business to his son and moved to Foleshill, one mile from Coventry. A pleasant house and surroundings made the new home, and her habits of thought and life became more exact and fastidious. The frequent absence of her father gave her much time for reading, which she eagerly improved. Books were more accessible, though her own library was a good one. She zealously began and carried on a systematic course of studies, such as gave her the most thorough results of culture. She took up Latin and Greek with the head master of the Coventry grammar-school, and became familiar with the classic literatures. French, German and Italian were read in all the master-pieces of those languages. The Old Testament was also studied in the original; at the same time she became a proficient player on the piano, and obtained a thorough knowledge of music. During several years of quiet and continuous study she laid the foundations of that accurate and wide-reaching knowledge which was so notable a feature of her life and work. It was a careful, systematic knowledge she acquired, such as entitled her to rank as an educated person in the fullest sense. Her painstaking thoroughness, and her energetic application, were as remarkable at this time as in later years. Her knowledge was mainly self-acquired, but it was in no sense superficial. It is difficult to see in what way it could have been improved, even if the universities had been open to her. Her life and her studies at Coventry have been well described by one who knew her. We are told that "in this somewhat more populous neighborhood she soon became known as a person of more than common interest, and, moreover, as a most devoted daughter and the excellent manager of her father's household. There was perhaps little at first sight which betokened genius in that quiet gentle-mannered girl, with pale grave face, naturally pensive in expression: and ordinary acquaintances regarded her chiefly for the kindness and sympathy that were never wanting to any. But to those with whom, by some unspoken affinity, her soul could expand, her expressive gray eyes would light up with intense meaning and humor, and the low, sweet voice, with its peculiar mannerism of speaking--which by the way wore off in after years--would give utterance to thoughts so rich and singular that converse with Miss Evans, even in those days, made speech with other people seem flat and common. Miss Evans was an exemplification of the fact that a great genius is not an exceptional, capricious product of nature, but a thing of slow, laborious growth, the fruit of industry and the general culture of the faculties. At Foleshill, with ample means and leisure, her real education began. She acquired French, German and Italian from Signor Brezzi. An acquaintance with Hebrew was the result of her own unaided efforts. From Mr. Simms, the veteran organist of St. Michaels, Coventry, she received lessons in music, although it was her own fine musical sense which made her in after years an admirable pianoforte player. Nothing once learned escaped her marvellous memory; and her keen sympathy with all human feelings, in which lay the secret of her power of discriminating character, caused a constant fund of knowledge to flow into her treasure-house from the social world about her." Marian Evans early showed an unusual interest in religious subjects. Her parents belonged to the Established Church, while other members of the family were zealous Methodists. Religion was a subject which occupied much of their attention, and several of them were engaged in one way and another in its inculcation. Marian was an attentive listener to the sermons preached in the parish church, and at the age of twelve was teaching in a Sunday school held in a cottage near her father's house. Up to the age of eighteen she was a most devoted believer in Christianity, and her zeal was so great that Evangelicalism came to represent her mode of thought and feeling. She was a somewhat rigid Calvinist and full of pious enthusiasm. After her removal to Coventry, where her reading was of a wider range and her circle of friends increased, doubts gradually sprang up in her mind. In a letter written to Miss Sara Hennell she gave a brief account of her religious experiences at this period. In it she described an aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, who was a Methodist preacher, and the original of Dinah Morris in _Adam Bede_. There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family--few and far-between visits of (to my childish feeling) strange uncles and aunts and cousins from my father's far-off native country, and once a journey of my own, as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William (a rich builder) in Staffordshire--but _not_ my uncle and aunt Samuel, so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I remember of northerly relatives in my childhood. But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married and I was mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he persuaded her to return with him, telling her that _I_ should be very, very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavoring to shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament. I _was_ delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that I should find sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--about sixty--and, I believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little woman, with bright, small, dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I imagine, but was now gray--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will believe--was not _simply_ physical; no difference is. She was a woman of strong natural excitability, which I know, from the description I have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and quiet in her manners--very loving--and (what she must have been from the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and the love of man were fused together. There was nothing highly distinctive in her religious conversation. I had had much intercourse with pious Dissenters before; the only freshness I found, in our talk, came from the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan, and though _she left the society when women were no longer allowed to preach_, and joined the New Wesleyans, she retained the character of thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which at the time I disapproved; it was not strictly a consequence of her Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it, yet it came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, once greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. "But I hope the good man's in heaven, for all that," said my uncle. "Oh, yes," said my aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, "Mr. A's in heaven--that's sure." This was at the time an offence to my stern, ascetic, hard views--how beautiful it is to me now! One who has been permitted to read the letters of Marian Evans written to this aunt, has given the following account of them, which throws much light on her religious attitude at this period: "Most of the epistles are addressed to my 'dear uncle and aunt,' and all reveal George Eliot's great talents. The style is elegant and graceful, and the letters abound in beautiful metaphor; but their most striking characteristic is the religious tinge that pervades them all. Nearly every line denotes that George Eliot was an earnest biblical student, and that she was, especially in the years 1839 and 1840, very anxious about her spiritual condition. In one of these letters, written from Griff to Elizabeth Evans, in 1839, she says she is living in a dry and thirsty land, and that she is looking forward with pleasure to a visit to Wirksworth, and likens her aunt's companionship and counsel to a spring of pure water, acceptable to her as is the well dug for the traveller in the desert. That the most affectionate and loving relationship existed between the eminent author and Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, is apparent from this correspondence. The inmost secrets of George Eliot's heart are laid bare in these letters to the famous Methodist preacher, who was at that time her dearest friend. She is ever asking for advice and spiritual guidance, and confesses her faults with a candor that is rendered additionally attractive by reason of the polished language in which it is clothed. When quite a girl, George Eliot was known as pious and clever; and in the letters she wrote in 1839, when she was twenty years old, the cleverness has grown and expanded, although she is not so sure about her piety. She says that 'unstable as water thou shalt not excel,' seems to be a description of her character, instead of the progress from strength to strength that should be experienced by those who wish to stand in the presence of God. In another letter she admits that she cannot give a good account of her spiritual state, says that she has been surrounded by worldly persons, and that love of human praise is one of her great stumbling-blocks. But in a letter written in 1840 the uncertainty has gone from her mind, and she writes that she has resolved in the strength of the Lord to serve him evermore. In a later communication, however, she does not appear so confident, and admits that she is obliged to strive against the ambition that fills her heart, and that her fondness of worldly praise is a great bar and hindrance to spiritual advancement. Still she thinks it is no use sitting inactive with folded hands; and believing that the love of God is the only thing to give real satisfaction to human beings, she hopes, with his help, to obtain it. One of the letters is chiefly devoted to the concern felt by Marian Evans at Elizabeth Evans' illness; and another, written at Foleshill, betrays some humor amid the trouble that afflicts her about her own future. Their outward circumstances, she writes, are all she can desire; but she is not so certain about her spiritual state, although she feels that it is the grace of God alone that can give the greatest satisfaction. Then she goes on to speak of the preacher at Foleshill, with whom she is not greatly pleased: 'We get the truth, but it is not recommended by the mode of its delivery,' is how she writes of this divine; yet she is charitable withal, and removes the sting by adding that more good may sometimes be obtained from humble instruments than from the highest privileges, and that she must examine her own heart rather than speak unkindly of the preacher. Up to this period it is evident that Marian Evans' views upon religion were orthodox, and that her life was passed in ceaseless striving for the 'peace that passeth understanding;' but in 1843 a letter was written to Elizabeth Evans by a relative in Griff, in which Marian Evans is spoken of, and the change in her religious opinions indicated. She writes that they are in great pain about Mary Ann; but the last portion of the letter, dealing more fully with the subject, has unfortunately got lost or destroyed. The close association of George Eliot with Derbyshire, as well as her love for the quaint village of Wirksworth, and its upright, honest, God-fearing people, breaks forth in more than one of these communications." Partly as the result of her studies and partly as the result of contact with other minds, Marian began to grow sceptical about the religious beliefs she had entertained. This took place probably during her twenty-third year, but the growth of the new ideas was slow at first. As one of her friends has suggested, it was her eagerness for positive knowledge which made her an unbeliever. She had no love of mere doubt, no desire to disagree with accepted doctrines, but she was not content unless she could get at the facts and reach what was just and reasonable. "It is seldom," says this person, "that a mind of so much power is so free from the impulse to dissent, and that not from too ready credulousness, but rather because the consideration of doubtful points was habitually crowded out, one may say, by the more ready and delighted acceptance of whatever accredited facts and doctrines might be received unquestioningly. We can imagine George Eliot in youth, burning to master all the wisdom and learning of the world; we cannot imagine her failing to acquire any kind of knowledge on the pretext that her teacher was in error about something else than the matter in hand; and it is undoubtedly to this natural preference for the positive side of things that we are indebted for the singular breadth and completeness of her knowledge and culture. A mind like hers must have preyed disastrously upon itself during the years of comparative solitude in which she lived at Foleshill, had it not been for that inexhaustible source of delight in every kind of intellectual acquisition. Languages, music, literature, science and philosophy interested her alike; it was early in this period that in the course of a walk with a friend she paused and clasped her hands with a wild aspiration that she might live 'to reconcile the philosophy of Locke and Kant!' Years afterward she remembered the very turn of the road where she had spoken it." The spiritual struggles of Maggie Tulliver give a good picture of Marian Evans' mental and spiritual experiences at this time. Her friends and relatives were scandalized by her scepticism. Her father could not at all sympathize with her changed religious attitude, and treated her harshly. She refused to attend church, and this made the separation so wide that it was proposed to break up the home. By the advice of friends she at last consented to outwardly conform to her father's wishes, and a partial reconciliation was effected. This alienation, however, had a profound effect upon her mind. She slowly grew away from the intellectual basis of her old beliefs, but, with Maggie, she found peace and strength in self-renunciation, and in the cultivation of that inward trust which makes the chief anchorage of strong natures. She bore this experience patiently, and without any diminution of her affection; but she also found various friends among the more cultivated people of Coventry, who could sympathize with her in her studies and with her radical views in religion. These persons gave her the encouragement she needed, the contact with other and more matured minds which was so necessary to her mental development, and that social contact with life which was so conducive to her health of mind. In one family especially, that of Mr. Charles Bray, did she find the true, and cordial, and appreciative friendship she desired. These friends softened the growing discord with her own family, and gave her that devoted regard and aid that would be of most service to her. "In Mr. Bray's family," we are told by one who has written of this trying period of her career, "she found sympathy with her ardent love of knowledge and with the more enlightened views that had begun to supplant those under which (as she described it) her spirit had been grievously burdened. Emerson, Froude, George Combe, Robert Mackay, and many other men of mark, were at various times guests at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill while Miss Evans was there either as inmate or occasional visitor; and many a time might have been seen, pacing up and down the lawn or grouped under an old acacia, men of thought and research, discussing all things in heaven and earth, and listening with marked attention when one gentle woman's voice was heard to utter what they were quite sure had been well matured before the lips opened. Few, if any, could feel themselves her superior in general intelligence; and it was amusing one day to see the amazement of a certain doctor, who, venturing on a quotation from Epictetus to an unassuming young lady, was, with modest politeness, corrected in his Greek by his feminine auditor. One rare characteristic belonged to her which gave a peculiar charm to her conversation. She had no petty egotism, no spirit of contradiction; she never talked for effect. A happy thought well expressed filled her with delight; in a moment she would seize the thought and improve upon it--so that common people began to feel themselves wise in her presence; and perhaps years after she would remind them, to their pride and surprise, of the good things they had said." She was an ardent reader of Emerson and other thinkers of his cast of thought, and some traces of this early sympathy are to be seen in her books. On his second visit to England Emerson spent a day or two at the house of Charles Bray, with whose writings he had previously become acquainted. Emerson was much impressed with the personality of Marian Evans, and more than once said to Bray, "That young lady has a calm, serious soul." When Emerson asked her somewhat suddenly, "What one book do you like best?" she at once replied, "Rousseau's _Confessions_." She cherished this acquaintance with Emerson, and held him in grateful remembrance through life. The painful experiences of this period are undoubtedly reflected in another of her autobiographic poems, that entitled "Self and Life." She speaks of the profound influence the past had over her mind, and that her hands and feet were still tiny when she began to know the historic thrill of contact with other ages. She also makes Life say to Self, in regard to her pain and sorrow: But all thy anguish and thy discontent Was growth of mine, the elemental strife Towards feeling manifold with vision blent To wider thought: I was no vulgar life That like the water-mirrored ape, Not discerns the thing it sees, Nor knows its own in others' shape, Railing, scorning, at its ease. Half man's truth must hidden lie If unlit by sorrow's eye. I by sorrow wrought in thee Willing pain of ministry. The intellectual surroundings of Marian Evans at this time gave shape to her whole after-life. There were now laid the foundations of her mode of thinking, and her philosophic theories began to be formed. It was in the home of one of her friends she learned to think for herself, and it was there her positivist doctrines first appeared. Charles Bray was affected by the transcendental movement, and was an ardent admirer of Newman, Emerson and others among its leaders. This interest prepared him, as it has so many other minds, for the acceptance of those speculative views which were built up on the foundation of science when the transcendental movement began to wane. The transcendental doctrines of unity, the oneness of mind and matter, the evolution of all forms of life and being from the lowest, the universal dominion of law and necessity, and the profound significance of nature in its influence on man, as they were developed by Goethe, Schelling, Carlyle and Emerson, gave direction to a new order of speculation, which had its foundations in modern science. Bray was an ardent phrenologist, and in 1832 published a work on _The Education of the Feelings_, based on phrenological principles. In 1841 appeared his main work, _The Philosophy of Necessity_; this was followed several years later by a somewhat similar work, _On Force, its Mental and Moral Correlates_. His philosophy was summarized in a volume published in 1871, which was entitled _A Manual of Anthropology_. He also wrote pamphlets on "Illusion and Delusion," "The Reign of Law," "Toleration," and "Christianity." In his work on necessity he promulgated very many of those ideas which have formed so prominent a part of the philosophy of George Eliot. The dominion of law, the reign of necessity, experience as the foundation of knowledge, humanity as an organism that develops a larger life for man by the aid of experience and tradition,--these are among the doctrines of the book. There is every reason for believing that in the teachings of Charles Bray, Marian Evans found many of the main elements of her philosophy, and with his aid her opinions were largely shaped. Mrs. Bray was also a woman of large intelligence, and of a mind freely open to new theories. She wrote a _Physiology for Schools_ and a school-book on _Duties to Animals_, which have been well received by the public and used as text books in the schools of the Midland counties. In 1882 she published a little book on the _Elements of Morality_, consisting of a series of easy lessons for Unitarian Sunday schools and for home teaching. To the Brays, Marian Evans owed much in the way of sympathy, culture and direct influence. Perhaps more than any other persons they gave tone and direction to her mind. One who knew them has said, "Besides being a practical as well as theoretical philanthropist, Mr. Bray was also a courageous impugner of the dogmas which form the basis of the popular theology. Mrs. Bray shared in this general largeness of thought, while perhaps more in sympathy with the fairer aspects of Christianity." A brother and a sister of Mrs. Bray's, Charles C. Hennell and Sara S. Hennell, also had a large influence on Marian Evans during this period. It was Charles Hennell who induced her to translate Strauss, and it was Sara Hennell to whom she wrote about her aunt after the publication of _Adam Bede_. Hennell's _Inquiry concerning the origin of Christianity_ was published in 1838, and appeared in a second edition in 1841. In the latter year the book was read by Marian Evans, after a faithful perusal of the Bible as a preparation for it, and quickly re-read, and with great interest and delight. She then pronounced it "the most interesting book she had ever read," dating from it a new birth to her mind. The book was translated into German, Strauss writing a preface for it, and that interpreter of Christianity praised it highly. Hennell rejected all supernaturalism and the miraculous, regarding Christianity as a slow and natural development out of Judaism, aided by Platonism and other outside influences. He finds the sources of Jesus' teachings in the Jewish tendencies of the time, while the cause of the supremacy of the man Jesus was laid in a long course of events which had swelled to a crisis at the time of his appearance, and bore him aloft to a height whence his personal qualities told with a power derived from the accumulated force of many generations. Jesus was an enthusiast who believed himself the predicted king of the Jews, and he was a revolutionist expecting to establish an earthly kingdom for the supremacy of Judaism. Jesus was largely influenced by the Essenes, but he rejected their austerity. Hennell found a mixture of truth and error in the Gospels, and believed that many mythical elements entered into the accounts given of Jesus. A thorough rationalist, he claimed to accept the spiritual essence of Christianity, and to value highly the moral teachings of Jesus. In a later work on _Christian Theism_ he finds an argument for belief in God mainly in nature. In his conclusions he is not far from F.W. Newman and Theodore Parker; but he does not give the credit to intuition and the religious faculty they do, though he is an earnest believer in God, and inclined to accept Christianity as the highest expression of religion. Sara S. Hennell early published _An Essay on the Skeptical Tendency of Butler's Analogy_, and a Baillie prize essay on _Christianity and Infidelity: An Exposition of the Arguments on Both Sides_. A work of much merit and thought appeared from her pen in 1860, under the title of _Thoughts in Aid of Faith_. In this work she follows her brother, Strauss, Feuerbach and Spencer in an interpretation of religion, which constantly recalls the theories of George Eliot. In a series of more recent books she has continued the same line of thought. The early and intimate friendship of Marian Evans and Miss Hennell may explain this similarity of opinion, and the beliefs they held in common were doubtless developed to a greater or less extent even when the former lived in Coventry. Another friend of this period was a German scholar by the name of Brabant, resident in England, a friend of Strauss, Paulus, Coleridge and Grote. Grote described him as "a vigorous self-thinking intellect." A daughter of Dr. Brabant first undertook the translation of Strauss, and she it was who married Charles Hennell. After this marriage Miss Evans offered to take to Dr. Brabant the place of his daughter, and did act as his housekeeper for some months. Marian Evans was surrounded at the most impressible period of her life by this group of intellectual, free-thinking people, who seem to have fully indoctrinated her with their own opinions. None of them had rejected Christianity or theism, but they were rationalists in spirit, and eager students of philosophy and science. Here were laid the foundations of the doctrines she afterwards held so strongly, and even during this period very many of the theories presented in her books were fully developed. Here her mind was thoroughly prepared for the teachings of Comte, Spencer and Lewes; and her early instructors had gone so far in their lessons that the later teachers had little to do more than to give system to her thoughts. It was essential to George Eliot's novel-writing that she was educated amidst religious influences, and that she earnestly accepted the religious teaching of her childhood. Not less important was her humble home and her association with the common life of the people. Through all her work these influences appear, coloring her thought, shaping her views of life, and increasing her sympathies and affections. Her tender, enthusiastic love of humble life never lost any of its quickening power. The faith of childhood was lost, but its memory was left in a warm appreciation of all phases of religious life and a heartfelt sympathy with all the sorrows and aspirations of men. Her father's health becoming very poor, Marian spent the next two or three years in the care of him. She read to him most of Scott's novels, devoting several hours each day to this task. During this period she made a visit to the Isle of Wight, and there read the novels of Richardson. Her father died in 1849, and she was very much affected by this event. She grieved for him overmuch, and could find no consolation. Her friends, the Brays, to divert and relieve her mind, invited her to take a continental tour with them. They travelled extensively in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Italy. Her grief, however, was so excessive as to receive little relief, and her friends began to fear the results. On their return to England they left her at Geneva, where she remained for nearly a year. After some months in a boarding-house near Geneva she became an inmate of the family of M. d'Albert Durade, a Swiss water-color painter of some reputation, who afterwards became the translator of her works into French. She devoted the winter of 1849-50 to the study of French and its literature, to mathematics and to reading. Her teacher in mathematics soon told her that she was able to proceed without his aid. She read Rousseau and studied the French socialists. M. Durade painted her portrait, making a remarkable picture. The softness of the clear blue eyes, in which is expressed a profound depth of thought, is one of its characteristics. M. Durade accompanied her to England in the spring of 1850, and she went to live with her brother, where she remained for a few months. The old family differences about religion had alienated the brother and sister so far intellectually that she accepted an invitation from the Brays to find a home with them. Her sadness and grief continued, and her health was not good. Her fits of nervousness and of tears were frequent, but her studies continued to occupy her mind. She delighted to converse with Mr. Bray, and other persons of earnest thought had their influence on her mind. Among these was George Dawson, the famous preacher who cut himself loose from all denominations. II. TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR. It was while living at Foleshill, and amidst the intellectual influences of awakening radicalism, that Marian Evans undertook her first literary labor. This was the translation of the _Leben Jesu_ of David Strauss. A book so daring in its interpretations of the origin of Christianity excited much attention, and especially among those who had broken away from the old religious beliefs. The work of translation was at first undertaken by Miss Brabant, who soon married Charles Hennell. Then the task was taken up by Marian Evans, who gave three years to it, renewing her Hebrew studies for the purpose, and the book was published in 1846. The work was thoroughly done, so much so that Strauss complimented the translator on its accuracy and correctness of spirit. Concerning the translation the _Westminster Review_ had this word of praise to offer: "We can testify that the translator has achieved a very tough work with remarkable spirit and fidelity. The author, though indeed a good writer, could hardly have spoken better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which impart to the volumes before us the air and the spirit of an original. A modest and kindly care for his reader's convenience has induced the translator often to supply the rendering into English of a Greek quotation when there was no corresponding rendering into German in the original. Indeed, Strauss may well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for this English edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is _et accurata et perspicua_." The book had a successful sale, but Marian Evans received only twenty pounds, and twenty-five copies of the book, for her share of the translation. A little later she translated Feuerbach's _Essence of Christianity_, receiving fifty pounds for this labor. It was published in 1854, but the sale was small, and it proved a heavy loss to the publisher. While translating Strauss she aided a friend interested in philosophical studies (probably Charles Bray) by the translation, for his reading, of the _De Deo_ of Spinoza. Some years later she completed a translation of the more famous _Ethica_ of the same thinker. It was not published, probably because there was at that time so little interest in Spinoza. The execution of such work as this, and all of it done in the most creditable and accurate manner, indicates the thoroughness of Marian Evans' scholarship. Though she doubtless was somewhat inclined to accept the opinions she thus helped to diffuse, yet Miss Simcox tells us that "the translation of Strauss and the translation of Spinoza were undertaken, not by her own choice but at the call of friendship; in the first place to complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the second to make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly phrenologist who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded translation as a work that should be undertaken as a duty, to make accessible any book that required to be read; and though undoubtedly she was satisfied that the _Leben Jesu_ required to be read in England, it would be difficult to imagine a temper more naturally antipathetic to her than that of its author; and critics who talk about the 'Strauss and Feuerbach period' should be careful to explain that the phrase covers no implication that she was at anytime an admirer or a disciple of Strauss. There are extremes not only too remote but too disparate to be included in the same life." Marian Evans did not become an admirer or disciple of Strauss, probably because she preferred Charles Hennell's interpretation of Christianity, It is certain, however, that she was greatly affected by Feuerbach, and that his influence was ever after strongly marked in her thinking. The teachings of Charles Bray and Charles Hennell had prepared her for the reception of those of Feuerbach, and he in turn made her mind responsive to the more systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary product of its own activity. The mind necessarily believes in God, which is man's way of conceiving his species and realizing to himself the perfect type of his own nature. God does not exist, and yet he is a true picture of man's soul, a necessary product of his feeling and consciousness. All religious ideas are true subjectively, and Christianity especially corresponds to the inward wants and aspirations of the soul. To Feuerbach it is true as a poetic interpretation of feeling and sentiment, and to him it gives the noblest and truest conception of what the soul needs for its inward satisfaction. The influence of Feuerbach is to be seen in the profound interest which Marian Evans ever took in the subject of religion. That influence alone explains how it was possible for one who did not accept any religious doctrines as true, who did not believe in God or immortality, and who rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration, revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation. Religion was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of feeling. To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true interpretation of the soul's wants, at the same time that she totally rejected it as fact and dogma. In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, Chapman had been the publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the way to the continent the year before. He was the publisher of a large number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and radical sentiment of the time. The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker, Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note, appeared on his list. The _Westminster Review_ was devoted to scientific and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries. Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the acquaintance of a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women. Under this influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of the ablest among them. Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was "distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which have since made her known to all the world." We are told by another that "her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression on all who wore thrown into her society." Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors. She was extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the _Review_ was held in Mr. Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time. Harriet Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke. She visited George Combe and his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return. While assisting Mr. Chapman, Marian Evans contributed only one article, beyond her editorial work, to the pages of the _Westminster Review_. The work she did, almost wholly that of digesting and reviewing new books, could have been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally, however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of current English literature for January, 1852. she had Carlyle's _Life of Sterling_ in hand. Her notice of the book is highly appreciative of Carlyle's genius, and full of cordial praise. This passage gives her idea of a true biography: We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently to the task of the biographer,--that when some great or good personage dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could have a real "Life," setting forth briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims and achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the conditions required for the perfection of life writing,--personal intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect,--are seldom found in combination. _The Life of Sterling_ is an instance of this rare conjunction. Its comparatively tame scenes and incidents gather picturesqueness and interest under the rich lights of Carlyle's mind. We are told neither too little nor too much; the facts noted, the letters selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest conception of what Sterling was and what he did; and though the book speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind of scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose. The earliest of the regular articles, and the only one printed while she was the associate editor of the _Review_, is on "The Lady Novelists." It appeared in the number for July, 1852, and contained a striking discussion of woman's place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her treatment of Jane Austen and George Sand, praising as well as criticising with insight and fine discrimination. At the outset she defines literature as an expression of the emotions, and gives a remarkably clear and original description of its functions. Her editorial connection with the _Westminster Review_ continued for about two years, until the end of 1853. For the next three years she was a contributor to its pages, where there appeared "Woman in France: Madame de Sablé," in October, 1854; "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," October, 1855; "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," January, 1856; "The Natural History of German Life," July, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856; and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these articles are still as great as when they were first published. This will justify the publication here of numerous extracts from their most salient and important paragraphs. As indicating her literary judgment, and her capacity for incisive characterization and clear, trenchant criticism, reference may be made to the essay on Heine, which is one of the finest pieces of critical writing the century has produced. Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age; no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic wand of his fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art--who sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the possibilities of German prose; and--in spite of all charges against him, true as well as false--a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an intellectual interest. It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight in the other scale--that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness, all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of exquisite poetry, of wit, humor and just thought. It is apparently too often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the advantage of being himself a man of _no_ genius, so that those transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; _he_, forsooth, never lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation that lies in transcendent power.... In Heine's hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, brilliant; it is German in an _allotropic_ condition. No dreary, labyrinthine sentences in which you find "no end in wandering mazes lost;" no chains of adjectives in linked harshness long drawn out; no digressions thrown in as parentheses; but crystalline definiteness and clearness, fine and varied rhythm, and all that delicate precision, all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects. Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness, tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet. The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany, having a flavor and a spirit quite his own. Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr. Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or 1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education, the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them. In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism. She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere. Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity--no indication of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual communion with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of justification, and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an experience. He insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith, as labors to be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely represents them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with divine love. He is at home in the external, the polemical, the historical, the circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and practical. The great majority of his published sermons are occupied with argument or philippic against Romanists and unbelievers, with vindications of the Bible, with the political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism of public events; and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual and practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of fringe in a hurried sentence or two at the end. He revels in the demonstration that the Pope is the Man of Sin; he is copious on the downfall of the Ottoman empire; he appears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story which tends to show how he abashed an "infidel;" it is a favorite exercise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the earth is to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, Puseyites and infidels are given over to gnashing of teeth. But of really spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of sympathy with that yearning over the lost and erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, and prompted the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them," of the gentler fruits of the Spirit, and the peace of God which passeth understanding--of all this, we find little trace in Dr. Cumming's discourses. Even more severe is her account of the poet Young. She speaks of him as "a remarkable individual of the species _divine_." This is her account of his life: He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general mendicancy business to a particular branch; in other words, he has determined on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking orders," with the prospect of a good living and an advantageous matrimonial connection. And no man can be better fitted for an Established Church. He personifies completely her nice balance of temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for immortal life and for "livings;" he has a vivid attachment to patrons in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly things; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers it would be wise and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave. Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and exalting the next; and by this double process you get the Christian--"the highest style of man." With all this, our new-made divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes and objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive; for this divine is Edward Young, the future author of _Night Thoughts_. She says, "One of the most striking characteristics of Young is his _radical insincerity as a poetic artist_." Indeed, we remember no mind in poetic literature that seems to have absorbed less of the beauty and the healthy breath of the common landscape than Young's. His images, often grand and finely presented, lie almost entirely within that circle of observation which would be familiar to a man who lived in town, hung about the theatres, read the newspaper, and went home often by moon and star light. There is no natural object nearer than the moon that seems to have any strong attraction for him, and even to the moon he chiefly appeals for patronage, and "pays his court" to her.... He describes nothing so well as a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail over nothing more familiar than the day of judgment and an imaginary journey among the stars.... The adherence to abstractions, or to the personification of abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the _want of genuine emotion_. He sees Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists and storms of earth: he sees Religion coming down from the skies, with this world in her left hand and the other world in her right; but we never find him dwelling on virtue or religion as it really exists--in the emotions of a man dressed in an ordinary coat, and seated by his fireside of an evening, with his hand resting on the head of his little daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish ends, in the internal triumph of justice and pity over personal resentment, in all the sublime self-renunciation and sweet charities which are found in the details of ordinary life. In these essays there are various indications of her religious opinions, and those of a decided character. In that on Dr. Cumming, she has this word to say of the rationalistic conception of the Bible: He seems to be ignorant, or he chooses to ignore the fact, that there is a large body of eminently instructed and earnest men who regard the Hebrew and Christian scriptures as a series of historical documents, to be dealt with according to the rules of historical criticism, and that an equally large number of men, who are not historical critics, find the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the scriptures, opposed to their profoundest moral convictions. This statement is suggestive of her position on religious subjects: The best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system, believe that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the saving but the educating of men's souls, the creating within them of holy dispositions, the subduing of egoistical pretensions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire that the will of God--a will synonymous with goodness and truth--may be done on earth. But what relation to all this has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of the Christian in the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show, of which Satan is the wild beast in the shape of a great red dragon, and two thirds of mankind the victims--the whole provided and got up by God for the edification of the saints? She calls Dr. Cumming's teachings "the natural crop of a human mind where the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic beliefs." Then she deals with that belief in this trenchant fashion: Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids the complete prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as religious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and though dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth: build walls around the living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the sap. But next to the hatred of the enemies of God which is the principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into activity by their proper objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as it is compassion that speaks through the eyes when we soothe, and moves the arm when we succor, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the soothing or the succor be given because another being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to be one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of self-interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in producing an action, but they presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the actions of accessory motives will be excluded. In writing of Young she says,-- The God of the _Night Thoughts_ is simply Young himself "writ large"--a didactic poet, who "lectures" mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven, and expects the tribute of inexhaustible applause. Young has no conception of religion as anything else than egoism turned heavenward; and he does not merely imply this, he insists on it. She contrasts Young with Cowper, preferring the latter because he dwells more on the things of a common and simple life. In Young we have the type of that deficient human sympathy, that impiety toward the present and the visible, which flies for its motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague and unknown: in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge. This warm human sympathy is all she cares for in religion. See how a lovely, sympathetic nature manifests itself in spite of creed and circumstance! Where is the poem that surpasses the _Task_ in the genuine love it breathes, at once toward inanimate and animate existence--in truthfulness of perception and sincerity of presentation--in the calm gladness that springs from a delight in objects for their own sake, without self-reference--in divine sympathy with the lowliest pleasures, with the most shortlived capacity for pain? Here is no railing at the earth's "melancholy map," but the happiest lingering over her simplest scenes with all the fond minuteness that belongs to love; no pompous rhetoric about the inferiority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their behalf against man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, and a sense of enlarged happiness from their companionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about human misery and human virtue, but that close and vivid presentation of particular deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How Cowper's exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of morning sunlight on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every detail and investing every detail with beauty! No object is too small to prompt his song-- not the sooty film on the bars, or the spoutless teapot holding a bit of mignonette that serves to cheer the dingy town lodging with a "hint that nature lives;" and yet his song is never trivial, for he is alive to small objects, not because his mind is narrow, but because his glance is clear and his heart is large. Her contributions to the _Westminster Review_ indicate that Marian Evans had read much and well, and that she was possessed of a thoroughly cultivated mind and much learning. To their preparation she gave herself diligently, writing slowly, after a careful study of her subject and much thought devoted to a faithful thinking out of all its parts. It has been many times suggested that these articles gave indication only of learning and studious effort. They certainly give strong hint of these, but also of much more. That on human life shows how much she had thought, and how thoroughly and philosophically, on one of the largest problems; while the one on Heine indicates her penetrating literary judgment and her capacity for analysis and interpretation. These essays are not mere compilations, mere digests of learned information; they are studies of large subjects done in a large and inspiring manner. Her essays on the poet Young and Dr. Cumming, and the two on lady novelists, as well as that on Heine, show many indications of that subtle power and that true genius which were displayed in her later work. There was genius displayed in these articles, without doubt, and genius of a high order. It was genius not as yet aware of itself, and not yet at the height of its power and capable of its truest expression, but genius nevertheless. Many of the most striking characteristics of her novel-writing were shown in these essays. Here was the same love of common human life; the same interest in its humbler forms and expressions; the like penetrating analysis and subtle portrayal of character; a psychological method of the same probing and comprehensive nature. Her main philosophical ideas were indicated here, though not given that clear and incisive expression they afterwards received. When she wrote of the natural history of German life she indicated in the very title of her essay one of her main theories, and her conception of man as a social being was brought out in it. These essays fully indicate that her opinions were already formed, that the leading ideas she was to give expression to in her novels had been arrived at by diligent study and thought, and that she had equipped herself with ample reasons for the acceptance of the opinions she held. Their chief defect is in their occasional arrogance of expression, as if the writer had not yet wholly escaped the superior airs of the young woman elated with the greatness of her knowledge, and a certain rudeness and vehemence of statement not seen later. It is a defect that is not very prominent, but one that is apparent enough to mar some of the best of these pages. It was one she never wholly outgrew, though in her novels her large information was usually so managed and subordinated as to give little annoyance to the intelligent reader. It must be quite evident to any reader of her _Westminster Review_ contributions, that Marian Evans would never have attained to any such high literary eminence as an essayist as that which she has secured as a novelist. Readable as are her essays,--and the five just named are certainly worthy of a place in her complete works,--yet they are not of the highest order. She could attain the highest range of her power only when something far more subtile and intrinsic was concerned. That this is true may be seen in these essays; for even here she writes the best only when she has human motives, feelings and aspirations to weigh and explain. That she could dissect and explain the inner man they made apparent enough; but her genius demanded also the opportunity to create, to build up a life of high beauty and purpose from materials of its own construction. Her _Review_ articles gave her a high place in the eyes of her friends, and their chief value seems to have been, that they caused these friends to see that she could do other and better work, and led them to induce her to apply her genius in a direction more congenial to its capacity. III. MARRIAGE. In 1853 Marian Evans became the wife of George Henry Lewes. He had married at an early ago a woman possessed of many charms of person. They went to live in a large house at Kensington with five other young couples, keeping house on a co-operative arrangement, with many attractions of social entertainment therewith. One result was the desertion of her home by Mrs. Lewes in connection with one of the men into whose company she was constantly thrown by this manner of life. She soon repented, and Lewes forgave her, receiving her back to his home. A second time, however, she left him. His having condoned her fault made it impossible for him to secure a divorce according to the laws of England at that time. He seems to have done what he could to retain her faithful devotion to her marriage relations, so long as that seemed possible. When Lewes and Marian Evans met, on her going to live in London, and after his wife had deserted him, there sprang up a strong attachment between them, As they could not be legally married, she agreed to live with him without that formality. It is to be said of this affair that George Eliot was very far from looking at such a problem as Goethe or, George Sand would have looked at it, from the position of personal inclination. Yet we are told by Miss Blind that she early entertained liberal views in regard to divorce, believing that greater freedom in this respect is desirable. There could have been no passionate individualistic defiance of law in her case, however. No one has insisted more strongly than she on the importance and the sanctity of the social regulations in regard to the union of the sexes. That her marriage was a true one in all but the legal form, that she was faithful to its every social obligation, has been abundantly shown. She was a most faithful wife to Lewes, and the devoted mother of his three children by the previous marriage, while she found in him that strong, self-reliant helpmate she needed. Her marriage under these circumstances required no little individualism of purpose, and some defiance of social obligations. Her intimate friends were unable to comprehend her conduct, and she was alienated from most of them. Especially her friends in Coventry were annoyed at such a marriage, and were not reconciled with her for a long time, and not until they saw that she had acted with a conscientious purpose. She was excluded from society by this act, and her marriage was interpreted as a gross violation of social morality. To a sensitive nature, as hers assuredly was, and to one who so much valued the confidence of her friends as she did, such exclusion must have been a serious cross. She freely elected her own course in life, however, and she never seems to have complained at the results it brought her. That it saddened her mind seems probable, but there is no outward evidence that she accepted her lot in a bitter or complaining spirit. No one could have written of love and marriage in so high and pure a spirit as everywhere appears in her books with whom passion was in any degree a controlling influence. In _Adam Bede_ her own conception of wedded love is expressed out of the innermost convictions and impulses of her own heart, when she exclaims,-- What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting. In _Felix Holt_ there is a passage on this subject which must have come directly from her own experience, and it gives us a true insight into the spirit in which she accepted the distrust of friends and the coldness of the world which her marriage brought her. A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life, and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not to be had when and how she will: to know that high initiation, she must often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult. Throughout her novels she exalts marriage, never casts any slur upon it, treats it as one of the most sacred of all human relations. She makes it appear as a sacrament, not of the Church, but of the sublime fellowship of humanity. It is pure, holy, a binding tie, a sacred obligation, as it appears in her books. When Romola is leaving Florence and her husband, her love dead and all that made her life seem worthy gone with it, she meets Savonarola, who bids her return to her home and its duties. What the great prophet-priest says on this occasion we have every reason to believe expressed the true sentiments of George Eliot herself. He proclaims, what she doubtless thoroughly believed, that marriage is something far more than mere affection, more than love; that its obligation holds when all love is gone; that its obligation is so sacred and binding as to call for the fullest measure of renunciation and personal humiliation. As throwing light on George Eliot's manner of looking at this subject, the whole chapter which describes the meeting of Romola and Savonarola deserves to be read. That portion of it in which Savonarola gives his views of marriage may here be reproduced, not as giving the doctrine of the Church, but as presenting the positivist conception of marriage as interpreted by George Eliot. His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life, which made it seem impossible toiler that she could go on her way as if she had not heard it; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she must take, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. And the instinctive shrinking from a return to her husband brought doubts. She turned away her eyes from Fra Girolamo, and stood for a minute or two with her hands hanging clasped before her, like a statue. At last she spoke, as if the words were being wrung from her, still looking on the ground. "My husband--he is not--my love is gone!" "My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Marriage is not carnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads you to! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all the obligations of your place and name. That would not have been if you had learned that it is a sacramental vow, from which none but God can release you. My daughter, your life is not as a grain of sand, to be blown by the winds; it is as flesh and blood, that dies if it be sundered. Your husband is not a malefactor?" Romola flushed and started. "Heaven forbid! No; I accuse him of nothing." "I did not suppose he was a malefactor. I meant that if he were a malefactor your place would be in the prison beside him. My daughter, if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You may say, 'I will forsake my husband,' but you cannot cease to be a wife." "Yet if--oh, how could I bear--" Romola had involuntarily begun to say something which she sought to banish from her mind again. "Make your marriage sorrows an offering, too, my daughter: an offering to the great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease. The end is sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is beginning, and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our blessedness to die for it: to die daily by the crucifixion of our selfish will--to die at last by laying our bodies on the altar. My daughter, you are a child of Florence; fulfil the duties of that great inheritance. Live for Florence--for your own people, whom God is preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron is sharp--I know, I know--it rends the tender flesh. The draught is bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup--there is the vision which makes all life below it dross forever. Come, my daughter, come back to your place!" [Footnote: Chapter XL.] Again, when Dorothea goes to see Rosamond to intercede in Dr. Lydgate's behalf with his wife, we have an expression of the sacredness of marriage, and the renunciation it demands of all that is opposed to its trust and helpfulness. Dorothea says,-- "Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved some one else better than--than those we were married to, it would be of no use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us like a murder--and everything else is gone. And then our husband--if he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life--" If Marian Evans rejected the sanctions which society has imposed on the love of man and woman in the legal forms of marriage, it was not in a wilful and passionate spirit. There are reasons for believing that she was somewhat touched in her youth with the individualistic theories of the time, which made so many men and women of genius reject the restraints imposed by society, as in the case of Goethe, Heine, George Sand, Shelley and many another; yet she does not appear to have been to more than a very limited extent influenced by such considerations in regard to her own marriage. The matter for surprise is, that one who regarded all human traditions, ceremonies and social obligations as sacred, should have consented to act in so individualistic a manner. She makes Rufus Lyon say--and it is her own opinion--that "the right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness." Her marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the _Westminster Review_, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the tone of his books was not "immaculate," and that it was "strangely at variance, with that sound and lofty morality which ought to form the basis of every education." She also speaks of the philosophy of that day as "the delusive though plausible theory that no license of tone, or warmth of coloring, could injure any really healthy and high-toned mind." In the article on "Woman in France," she touches on similar theories. As this article was written just at the time of her marriage, one passage in it may have a personal interest, and shows her conception of a marriage such as her own, based on intellectual interest rather than on passionate love. She is speaking of the laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage tie. Heaven forbid [she adds] that we should enter on a defence of French morals, most of all in relation to marriage! But it is undeniable that unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, grounded only on inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more intelligent sympathy with men, and to heighten and complicate their share in the political drama. The quiescence and security of the conjugal relation are, doubtless, favorable to the manifestation of the highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object--to convert indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness into perspicuity. Her conception of marriage may have been affected by that presented by Feuerbach in his _Essence of Christianity_. In words translated into English by herself, Feuerbach says, "that alone is a religious marriage which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of marriage--love." Again, he says that marriage is only sacred when it is an inward attraction confirmed by social and personal obligations; "for a marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction of love--in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing--is not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage." As a moral and social obligation, marriage is to be held sacred; its sacredness grows out of its profound human elements of helpfulness, nurture and emotional satisfaction, while its obligation rises from its primary social functions. It does not consist in any legal form, but in compliance with deep moral and social responsibilities. Some such conception of marriage as this she seems to have accepted, which found its obligation in the satisfaction it gives to the inner nature, and in the fulfilment of social responsibilities. The influence of Compte may also have been felt in the case of both Lewes and Marian Evans; they saw in the marriage form a fulfilment of human, not of legal, requirements. While there is no doubt they would both gladly have accepted the legal form had that been possible, yet they were sufficiently out of sympathy with the conventionalities of society to cause them to disregard that form when it could not be complied with. They regarded themselves, however, as married, and bound by all the ties and requirements which marriage imposes. They proclaimed themselves to their friends as husband and wife, and they were so accepted by those who knew them. In her letters to literary correspondents she always mentioned Lewes as "my husband." The laws of most civilized nations recognize these very conditions, and regard the acceptance of the marriage relation before the world as a sufficient form. Those who have written of this marriage, bear testimony to its devotion and beauty. The author of the account of her life and writings in the _Westminster Review_, an early and intimate friend, says the "union was from the first regarded by themselves as a true marriage, as an alliance of a sacred kind, having a binding and permanent character. When the fact of the union was first made known to a few intimate friends, it was accompanied with the assurance that its permanence was already irrevocably decreed. The marriage of true hearts for a quarter of a century has demonstrated the sincerity of the intention. 'The social sanction,' said Mr. Lewes once in our hearing, 'is always desirable.' There are cases in which it is not always to be had. Such a ratification of the sacrament of affection was regarded as a sufficient warrant, under the circumstances of the case, for entrance on the most sacred engagement of life. There was with her no misgiving, no hesitation, no looking back, no regret; but always the unostentatious assertion of quiet, matronly dignity, the most queenly expression and unconscious affirmation of the 'divine right' of the wedded wife. We have heard her own oral testimony to the enduring happiness of this union, and can, as privileged witnesses, corroborate it. As a necessary element in this happiness she practically included the enjoyment inseparable from the spontaneous reciprocation of home affection, meeting with an almost maternal love the filial devotion of Mr. Lewes's sons, proffering all tender service in illness, giving and receiving all friendly confidence in her own hour of sorrowful bereavement, and crowning with a final act of generous love and forethought the acceptance of parental responsibilities in the affectionate distribution of property, the visible result of years of the intellectual toil whose invisible issues are endless." Their marriage helped both to a more perfect work and to a truer life. She gave poise and purpose to the "versatile, high-strung, somewhat wayward nature" of her husband, and she "restrained, raised, ennobled, and purified" his life and thought. He stimulated and directed her genius life into its true channel, cared for her business interests with untiring faithfulness, made it possible for her to pursue her work without burdens and distractions, and gave her the inspiration of a noble affection and a cheerful home. Miss Edith Simcox speaks of "the perfect union between these two," which, she says, "lent half its charm to all the worship paid at the shrine of George Eliot." She herself, Miss Simcox proceeds to say, "has spoken somewhere of the element of almost natural tenderness in a man's protecting love: this patient, unwearying care for which no trifles are too small, watched over her own life; he stood between her and the world, her relieved her from all those minor cares which chafe and fret the artist's soul; he wrote her letters; in a word, he so smoothed the course of her outer life as to leave all her powers free to do what she alone could do for the world and for the many who looked to her for help and guidance. No doubt this devotion brought its own reward; but we are exacting for our idols and do not care to have even a generous error to condone, and therefore we are glad to know that, great as his reward was, it was no greater than was merited by the most perfect love that ever crowned a woman's life." Mr. Kegan Paul also writes of the mutual helpfulness and harmony of purpose which grew out of this marriage. "Mr. Lewes's character attained a stability and pose in which it had been somewhat lacking, and the quiet of an orderly and beautiful home enabled him to concentrate himself more and more on works demanding sustained intellectual effort, while Mrs. Lewes's intensely feminine nature found the strong man on whom to lean in the daily business of life, for which she was physically and intellectually unfitted. Her own somewhat sombre cast of thought was cheered, enlivened and diversified by the vivacity and versatility which characterized Mr. Lewes, and made him seem less like an Englishman than a very agreeable foreigner." This marriage presents one of the curious ethical problems of literature. In this case approval and condemnation are alike difficult. Her own teaching condemns it; her own life approves it. We could wish it had not been, for the sake of what is purest and best; and yet it is not difficult to see that its effects were in many ways beneficial to her. That it was ethically wrong there is no doubt. That it was condemned by her own teaching is so plain as to cause doubt about how she could herself approve it. Lewes had a brilliant and versatile mind. He was not a profound thinker, but he had keen literary tastes, a vigorous interest in science, and a remarkable alertness of intellect. His gifts were varied rather than deep; literary rather than philosophical. As a companion, he had a wonderful charm and magnetism; he was a graceful talker, a marvellous story-teller, and a wit seldom rivalled. His intimate friend, Anthony Trollope, says, "There was never a man so pleasant as he with whom to sit and talk vague literary gossip over a cup of coffee and a cigar." By the same friend we are told that no man related a story as he did. "No one could say that he was handsome. The long bushy hair, and the thin cheeks, and the heavy mustache, joined as they were, alas! almost always to a look of sickness, were not attributes of beauty. But there was a brilliance in his eye which was not to be tamed by any sickness, by any suffering, which overcame all other feeling on looking at him." George Henry Lewes was born in London, April 18, 1817. His grandfather was a well-known comedian. His education was received in a very desultory manner. He was at school for a time in Jersey, and also in Brittany, where he acquired a thorough command of French. Later he attended a famous school in Greenwich, kept by a Dr. Burney. After leaving school he went into a notary's office, and then he became a clerk to a Russia merchant. His mind was, however, attracted to scientific and philosophic studies, and he betrayed little interest either in the law or in commercial pursuits. Then he took up the study of medicine, giving thorough attention to anatomy and physiology. It is said that his horror of the dissecting-room was so great as to cause him to abandon the purpose to become a physician. All this time his mind was steadily drawn to philosophy, and he gave as much time to it as he could. The bent, of his mind was early developed, and in 1836, when only nineteen, he had projected a treatise on the philosophy of mind, in which he proposed to give a physiological interpretation to the doctrines of Reid, Stewart and Brown. At the age of twenty he gave a course of lectures on this subject; and to this line of thought he held ever after. One of the influences which led to his departure from a strict interpretation of the Scotch metaphysicians was the influence of Spinoza. As indicating the eagerness with which he pursued his studies in all directions, and the earnestness of his purpose at so early an age, his own account of a club he attended at this time [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, April 1,1866, introductory to the article on Spinoza.] may be mentioned. In this account he describes a Jew by the name of Cohen, who first introduced him to the study of Spinoza, and who has mistakenly been supposed to be the original of Mordecai in _Daniel Deronda_. The sixth member of this club, who "studied anatomy and many other things, with vast aspirations, and no very definite career before him," was Lewes himself, in all probability. His eager desire for knowledge took him to Germany in 1838, where he remained for two years in the same desultory study of many subjects. He became thoroughly acquainted with the German language and life, and gave much attention to German literature and philosophy. On his return to England, Lewes entered upon his literary career, which was remarkable for its versatility and productiveness. In 1841 he wrote "The Noble Heart," a three-act tragedy, published in 1852. His studies of Spinoza found expression in one of the first essays on the subject published in England. In 1843, he published in the _Westminster Review_ his conclusions on that thinker. His essay was reprinted in a separate form, attracting much attention, and in 1846 was incorporated into a larger work, the result of his studies in Germany and of his interest in philosophy. In 1845, at the age of twenty-nine, he published a history of philosophy, in which he undertook to criticise all metaphysical systems from the inductive and scientific point of view. This work was his _Biographical History of Philosophy_. It appeared in four small volumes in Knight's weekly series of popular books devoted to the diffusion of knowledge among the people. Lewes touched a popular demand in this book, reaching the wants of many readers. He continued through many years to elaborate his studies on these subjects and to re-work his materials. New and enlarged editions, each time making the book substantially a new one, were published in 1857, in 1867 and in 1871. No solid book of the century has sold better; and it has been translated into several continental languages. Lewes did not confine himself to philosophy. Other and very different subjects also attracted his attention. His mind ranged in many directions, and his flexible genius found subjects of interest on all sides. In 1846 he published a little book on _The Spanish Drama: Lope de Vega and Calderon_, a slight affair, full of his peculiar prejudices, and devoted mainly to an unsympathetic criticism. The following year he gave to the world an ambitious novel, _Ranthorpe_. It seems to have been well read in its day, was translated into German and reprinted on the continent by Tauchnitz. The plot is well conceived, but the story is rapidly told, full of incident and tragedy, and there is a subtle air of unreality about it. The experiences of a poet are unfolded in a romantic form, and the attempt is made to show what is the true purpose and spirit in which literature can be successfully pursued. To this end there is a discussion running through the book on the various phases of the literary life, much in the manner of Fielding. _Ranthorpe_ would now be regarded as a very dull novel, and it is crude, full of the sensational, with little analysis of character and much action. It was read, however, by Charlotte Brontë with great interest, and she wrote of it to the author in these words: "In reading _Ranthorpe_ I have read a new book--not a reprint--not a reflection of any other book, but _a new book_. I did not know such books were written now. It is very different to any of the popular works of fiction; it fills the mind with fresh knowledge. Your experience and your convictions are made the reader's; and to an author, at least, they have a value and an interest quite unusual." In 1848, Lewes published another novel of a very different kind--_Rose, Blanche and Violet_. This was a society novel, intended to reach the minds of the ordinary novel-readers, but was not so successful as the first. It has little plot or incident, but has much freshness of thought and originality of style. The same year appeared his _Life of Robespierre_, the result of original investigations, and based largely on unpublished correspondence. Without any sympathy of opinion with Robespierre, and without any purpose of vindicating his character, Lewes told the true story of his life, and showed wherein he had been grossly misrepresented. The book was one of much interest, though it lacked in true historic insight and was clumsily written. While these works were appearing, Lewes was a voluminous contributor to the periodical literature of the day. He wrote, at this time and later, for the _Edinburgh Review_, the _Foreign Quarterly_, _British Quarterly_, _Westminster Review_, _Fraser's Magazine_, _Blackwood's Magazine_, _Cornhill Monthly_, _Saturday Review_, in the _Classical Museum_, the _Morning Chronicle_, the _Atlas_ and various other periodicals, and on a great variety of subjects. His work of this kind was increased when in 1849 he became the literary editor of _The Leader_ newspaper, a weekly journal of radical thought and politics. His versatility, freshness of thought and vigor of expression made this department of _The Leader_ of great interest. His reviews of books were always good, and his literary articles piquant and forcible. In the first volume he published a story called _The Apprenticeship of Life_. In April, 1852, he began in its columns a series of eighteen articles on Comte's Positive Philosophy. In connection with the second article of this series he asked for subscriptions in aid of Comte, and in the third reported that three workingmen had sent in money. These subscriptions were continued while the articles were in progress, and amounted to a considerable sum. In 1854 these essays were republished in Bohn's _Scientific Library_ under the title of _Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences_. The _Leader_ was ably conducted, but it was radical and outspoken, and did not receive the support it deserved. In 1854 his connection with it came to an end. While connected with _The Leader_, Lewes had turned his attention to Goethe, and made a thorough study of his life and opinions. After spending many months in Weimar, and as a result of his studies in Germany, he published in 1855 his _Life and Works of Goethe_. It was carefully re-written in 1873, and the substance of it was given in an abbreviated and more popular form a few years later. This has usually been accepted as the best book about Goethe written in English. Mr. Anthony Trollope expresses the usual opinion when he says, "As a critical biography of one of the great heroes of literature it is almost perfect. It is short, easily understood by common readers, singularly graphic, exhaustive, and altogether devoted to the subject." On the other hand, Bayard Taylor said that "Lewes's entertaining apology hardly deserves the name of a biography." It is an opinionated book, controversial, egotistic, and unnecessarily critical. It was written less with the purpose of interpreting Goethe to the English reader than of giving expression to Lewes's own views on many subjects. His chapters on Goethe's science and on his realism are marked by an extreme dogmatism. The poetic and religious side of Goethe's nature he was incapable of understanding, and always misrepresents, as he did that side of his nature which allied Goethe with Schiller and the other idealists. Lewes was always polemical, had some theory to champion, some battle to fight. He did not write for the sake of the subject, but because the subject afforded an arena of battle for the theories to the advocacy of which he gave his life. With the completion of his _Life of Goethe_, Lewes turned his attention more than ever to physiological studies, though he had continued to give them much attention in the midst of his other pursuits. In 1858 appeared his _Seaside Studies_, in which he recorded the results of his original investigations at Ilfracombe, Tenby, Scilly Isles and Jersey. This volume is written in a plain descriptive style, containing many interesting accounts of scenery and adventure, explanations of the methods of study of animal life at the seashore, how experiments are carried on, the results of these special studies, and much of controversy with other observers. It combines science and description in a happy manner. Another result of his physiological studies was a paper "On the Spinal Cord as a Centre of Sensation and Volition," read before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1858. This was followed the next year by three published addresses on "The Nervous System," in which he presented those theories which were more carefully developed in his latest work, where he gave a systematic account of his philosophy. From this time on to his death the greater part of his energies were given to these studies, and to the building up of a philosophy based on physiology. A popular work, in which many of his theories are unfolded, and marked throughout by his peculiar ideas in regard to the relations of body and mind, was published in 1858. This was his _Physiology of Common Life_, a work of great value, and written in a simple, comprehensive style, suited to the wants of the general reader. In the first volume he wrote of hunger and thirst, food and drink, digestion, structure and uses of the blood, circulation of the blood, respiration and suffocation, and why we are warm and how we keep so. The second treats of feeling and thinking, the mind and the brain, our senses and sensations, sleep and dreams, the qualities we inherit from our parents, and life and death. In 1860 he printed in _The Cornhill Magazine_ a series of six papers on animal life. They were reprinted in book form in 1861, under the title of _Studies in Animal Life_. More strictly scientific than his _Seaside Studies_, they were even more popular in style, and intended for the general reader. While these books were being published he was at work on a more strictly scientific task, and one intended for the thoughtful and philosophic reader. This was his _Aristotle: a Chapter from the History of Science, including Analyses of Aristotle's Scientific Writings_, which was completed early in 1862, but not published until 1864. As in his previous works, Lewes is here mainly concerned with an exposition of his theories of the inductive method, and he judges Aristotle from this somewhat narrow position. He refuses Aristotle a place among scientific observers, but says he gave a great impulse towards scientific study, while in intellectual force he was a giant. The book contains no recognition of Aristotle's value as a philosopher; indeed his metaphysics are treated with entire distrust or indifference. His fame is pronounced to be justifiably colossal, but it is said he did not lay the basis of any physical science. It is a work of controversy rather than of unbiassed exposition, and its method is dry and difficult. Early in the year 1865, a few literary men in London conceived the project of a new review, which should avoid what they conceived to be the errors of the old ones. It was to be eclectic in its doctrinal position, contain only the best literature, all articles were to be signed by the author's name, and it was to be published by a joint-stock company. Lewes was invited to become the editor of this new periodical, and after much urging he consented. The first number of _The Fortnightly Review_ was published May 15,1865, It proved a financial failure, and was soon sold to a publishing firm. The eclectic theory was abandoned, and the _Review_ became an agnostic and radical organ under the management of its second editor, John Morley. Lewes edited six volumes, when, in 1867, he was obliged, on account of his health, to resign his position. He made the _Review_ an independent and able exponent of current thought, and he kept it up to a very high standard of literary excellence. His own contributions were among the best things it contained, and give a good indication of the wide range of his talent. In the first volume he published papers on "The Heart and the Brain," and on the poetry of Robert Buchanan, as well as a series of four very able and valuable papers on "The Principles of Success in Literature." In the second volume he wrote about "Mr. Grote's Plato." In the third he dealt with "Victor Hugo's Latest Poems," "Criticism in relation to Novels," and "Auguste Comte." In this volume he began a series of essays entitled "Causeries," in which he treated, in a light vein, of the passing topics of the day. He wrote of Spinoza in the fourth volume, and of "Comte and Mill" in the sixth, contributing nothing to the fifth. After Morley became the editor, in the ninth and tenth volumes, he published three papers on Darwin's hypothesis, and in 1878 there was a paper of his on the "Dread and Dislike of Science." He also had a criticism of Dickens in the July number of 1872, full of his subtle power of analysis and literary insight. Lewes in early life had a strong inclination to become an actor, and he did go on the stage for a short time. He wrote and translated several plays, one of his adaptations becoming very popular. He wrote dramatic criticisms for the _Pall Mall Gazette_ and other journals, during many years. In 1875, a volume of these papers was published with the title, _On Actors and the Art of Acting_. It treated in a pleasant way, and with keen insight, of Edmund Kean, Charles Kean, Rachel, Macready, Fan-en, Charles Matthews, Frédéric Lemaitre, the two Keeleys, Shakspere as actor and critic, natural acting, foreign actors on our stage, the drama of Paris in 1865, Germany in 1867, and Spain in 1867, and of his first impressions of Salvini. Another piece of work done by him was the furnishing, in 1867, of an explanatory text to accompany Kaulbach's _Female Characters of Goethe_. The last years of Lewes's life were devoted to the preparation of a systematic exposition of his physiological philosophy. As early as the year 1858, he was at work on the nervous system, and, soon after, his studies took a systematic shape. In his series of volumes on the _Problems of Life and Mind_ he gave to the world a new theory of the mind and of knowledge. In the first two volumes, published in 1874, and entitled _The Foundations of a Creed_, he developed his views on the methods of philosophic research. These were followed in 1877 by a third volume, on _The Physical Basis of Life_. After his death his wife edited two small volumes on Psychology, which included all the writing he left in a form ready for publication. His work was left incomplete, but its publication had gone far enough to show the methods to be followed and the main conclusions to be reached. Concerning the work done by Lewes in philosophy, there will be much difference of opinion. He did much through his various expositions to make the public familiar with the inductive methods of inquiry and with the conclusions of positive thought. He made his books readable, and even popular, giving philosophy an exposition suited to the wants of the general reader. At the same time, he was polemical and dogmatic, and more concerned to be clever than to be exact in his interpretation. Into the meanings of some of the greatest thinkers he had little clear insight, and he is seldom to be implicitly trusted as an expositor of those whose systems were in any way opposed to his own. His limitations have been well defined by Ribot, in his _Contemporary English Psychology_. "Mr. Lewes lacks the vocation of the scholar, which, indeed, is generally wanting in original minds. His history resembles rather that of Hegel than that of Ritter. His review of the labors of philosophers is rather occupied with that which they have thought, than with their comparative importance. He judges rather than expounds; his history is fastidious and critical. It is the work of a clear, precise and elegant mind, always that of a writer, often witty, measured, possessing no taste for declamation, avoiding exclusive solutions, and making its interest profitable to the reader whom he forces to think." Ribot speaks of the work again as being original but dogmatic and critical. He says it belongs to that class of books which make history a pretext for conflict. "The author is less occupied with the exposition of facts than he is with his method of warfare; he thinks less of being exact than of being clever.... He has evidently no taste, or, if we prefer so to put it, he has not the virtue necessary to face these formidable folios, these undigested texts of scholastic learning, which the historian of philosophy ought to penetrate, however repulsive to his positive and lucid mind." On the other hand, Mr. Frederic Harrison has described the great success of the _Biographical History of Philosophy_, and made it apparent what are its chief merits. "This astonishing work was designed to be popular, to be readable, to be intelligible. It was all of these in a singular degree. It has proved to be the most popular account of philosophy of our time; it has been republished, enlarged, and almost re-written, and each re-issue has found new readers. It did what hardly any previous book on philosophy ever did--it made philosophy readable, reasonable, lively, almost as exciting as a good novel. Learners who had been tortured over dismal homilies on the pantheism of Spinoza, and yet more dismal expositions of the pan-nihilism of Hegel, seized with eagerness upon a little book which gave an intense reality to Spinoza and his thoughts, which threw Hegel's contradictories into epigrams, and made the course of philosophic thought unfold itself naturally with all the life and coherence of a well-considered plot.... There can be no possible doubt as to the success of this method. Men to whom philosophy has been a wearisome swaying backward and forward of meaningless phrases, found something which they could remember and understand.... For a generation this 'entirely popular' book saturated the minds of the younger readers. It has done as much as any book, perhaps-more than any, to give the key to the prevalent thought of our time about the metaphysical problems.... That such a book should have had such a triumph was a singular literary fact. The opinions frankly expressed as to theology, metaphysics, and many established orthodoxies; its conclusion, glowing in every page, that metaphysics, as Danton said of the Revolution, was devouring its own children, and led to self-annihilation; its proclamation of Comte as the legitimate issue of all previous philosophy and positive philosophy as its ultimate _irenicon_--all this, one might think, would have condemned such a book from its birth. The orthodoxies frowned; the professors sneered; the owls of metaphysic hooted from the gloom of their various jungles; but the public read, the younger students adopted it, the world learned from it the positive method; it held its ground because it made clear what no one else had made clear--what philosophy meant, and why philosophers differed so violently." This extravagant praise becomes even absurd when the writer gravely says that this book "had simply killed metaphysic." A popular style and method gave the book success, along with the fact that the temper of the time made such a statement acceptable. It cleverly indicated the weak places in the metaphysical methods, and it presented the advantages of the inductive method with great eloquence and ingenuity. Its satire, and its contempt for the more spiritualistic systems, also helped to make it readable. His later work, in which he develops his own positive conclusions, has the merit of being one of the best expositions yet made of the philosophy of evolution. In view, however, of his unqualified condemnation of the theories of metaphysicians, his system is one of singular audacity of speculation. Not even Schelling or Hegel has gone beyond him in theorizing, or exceeded him in the ground traversed beyond the limits of demonstration. He who had held up all speculative systems to scorn, distanced those he had condemned, and showed how easy it is to take theory for fact. Metaphysic has not had in its whole history a greater illustration of the daring of speculation than in the case of Lewes's theory of the relations of the subjective and objective. He interprets matter and mind, motion and feeling, objective and subjective, as simply the outer and inner, the concave and convex, sides of one and the same reality. Mind is the same as matter, except that it is viewed from a different aspect. In this opinion he resembles Schelling more than any other thinker, as he does in some other of his speculations. As a monist, his conclusions are similar to those of the leading German transcendentalists. Indeed, the evolution philosophy he expounds is, in some of its aspects, but a development of the identity philosophy of Schelling. In its monism, its theory of the development of mind out of matter, and its conception of law, they are one and the same. The evolution differs from the identity philosophy mainly in its more scientific interpretation of the influence of heredity and the social environment. The one is undoubtedly an outgrowth from the other, while the audacious nights of speculation indulged in by Lewes rival anything attempted even by Schelling. Lewes was one of the earliest English disciples of Auguste Comte, and he probably did more than any other person to introduce the opinions of that thinker to English students. He was a zealous and yet not a blind disciple, rejecting for the most part the later speculations of Comte. Comte's theories of social and religious construction were repugnant to Lewes's mind, but his positive methods and his entire rejection of theology were acceptable. Comte's positivism was the foundation of his own philosophy, and he did little more than to expand and more carefully work out the system of his predecessor. In psychology he went beyond Comte, through his physiological studies, and by the adoption of the methods and results of evolution. His discovery of the sociological factors of mind was a real advance on his master. George Eliot's connection with Lewes had much to do with the after-development of her mind. An affinity of intellectual purpose and conviction drew them together. She found her philosophical theories confirmed by his, and both together labored for the propagation of that positivism in which they so heartily believed. Their lives and influence are inseparably united. There was an almost entire unanimity of intellectual conviction between them, and his books are in many ways the best interpreters of the ethical and philosophical meanings of her novels. Her thorough interest in his studies, and her comprehension of them, is manifest on many of her pages. Her enthusiastic acceptance of positivism in that spirit in which it is presented by Lewes, is apparent throughout all her work. Their marriage was a companionship and a friendship. They lived in each other, were mutual helpers, and each depended much on--the advice and counsel of the other. Miss Mathilde Blind has pointed out how thoroughly identical are their views of realism in art, and on many other subjects they were as harmonious. They did not echo each other, but there was an intimate affinity of intellectual apprehension and purpose. Immediately after their marriage, Lewes and his wife went to Germany, and they spent a quiet year of study in Berlin, Munich and Weimar. Here he re-wrote and completed his _Life of Goethe_. On their return to England they took a house in Blandford Square, and began then to make that home which was soon destined to have so much interest and attraction. A good part of the year 1858 was also spent on the continent in study and travel. Three months were passed in Munich, six weeks in Dresden, while Salzburg, Vienna and Prague were also visited. The continent was again visited in the summer of 1865, and a trip was taken through Normandy, Brittany and Touraine. Other visits preceded and followed, including a study of Florence in preparation for the writing of _Romola_, and a tour in Spain in 1867 to secure local coloring for _The Spanish Gypsy_. In 1865, the house in Blandford Square was abandoned for "The Priory," a commodious and pleasant house on the North Bank, St. John's Wood. It was here Mr. and Mrs. Lewes lived until his death. IV. CAREER AS AN AUTHOR. Until she was thirty-six years old Mrs. Lewes had given no hint that she was likely to become a great novelist. She had shown evidence of large learning and critical ability, but not of decided capacity for imaginative or poetic creation. The critic and the creator are seldom combined in one person; and while she might have been expected to become a philosophical writer of large reputation, there was little promise that she would become a great novelist. Before she began the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, she had written but very little of an original character. She was not drawn irresistibly to the career for which she was best fitted, and others had to discover her gift and urge her to its use. Mr. Lewes saw that the person who could write so admirably of what a novel ought to be, and who could so skilfully point out the defects in the lady novelists of the day, was herself capable of writing much better ones than those she criticised. It was at his suggestion, and through his encouragement, she made her first attempt at novel-writing. Her love of learning, her relish for literary and philosophical studies, led her to believe that she could accomplish the largest results in the line of the work she had already begun. Yet Lewes had learned from her conversational powers, from her keen appreciation of the dramatic elements of daily life, and from her fine humor and sarcasm, that other work was within the range of her powers. Reluctantly she consented to turn aside from the results of scholarship she had hoped to accomplish, and with many doubts concerning her ability to become a writer of fiction. The history of the publication of her first work, _Scenes of Clerical Life_, has been fully told, and is helpful towards an understanding of her career as an author. In the autumn of 1856, William Blackwood received from Lewes a short story bearing--the title of "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," which he sent as the work of an anonymous friend. His nephew has described the results that followed on the reception of this novel by Blackwood, and its publication in _Blackwood's Magazine_. "The story was offered as the first instalment of a series; and though the editor pronounced that 'Amos' would 'do,' he wished to satisfy himself that it was no chance hit, and requested a sight of the other tales before coming to a decision. Criticisms on the plot and studies of character in 'Amos Barton' were frankly put forward, and the editor wound up his letter by saying,' If the author is a new writer, I beg to congratulate him on being worthy of the honors of print and pay. I shall be very glad to hear from him or you soon.' At this time the remaining _Scenes of Clerical Life_ were unwritten, and the criticisms upon 'Amos' had rather a disheartening effect upon the author, which the editor hastened to remove as soon as he became sensible of them, by offering to accept the tale. He wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'If you think it would stimulate the author to go on with the other tales, I shall publish 'Amos' at once;' expressing also his 'sanguineness' that he would be able to approve of the contributions to follow, as 'Amos' gave indications of great freshness of style. Some natural curiosity had been expressed as to the unknown writer, and a hint had been thrown out that he was 'a clergyman,'--a device which, since it has the great sanction of Sir Walter Scott, we must regard as perfectly consistent with the ethics of anonymous literature. "'Amos Barton' occupied the first place in the magazine for January, 1857, and was completed in the following number. By that time 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' was ready, and the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ appeared month by month, until they ended with 'Janet's Repentance' in November of that year. As fresh instalments of the manuscript were received, the editor's conviction of the power, and even genius, of his new contributor steadily increased. In his first letter to the author after the appearance of 'Amos Barton,' he wrote, 'It is a long time since I have read anything so fresh, so humorous and so touching. The style is capital, conveying so much in so few words.' In another letter, addressed 'My dear Amos,' for lack of any more distinct appellation, the editor remarks, 'I forgot whether I told you or Lewes that I had shown part of the MS. to Thackeray. He was staying with me, and having been out at dinner, came in about eleven o'clock, when I had just finished reading it. I said to him, 'Do you know that I think I have lighted upon a new author who is uncommonly like a first-class passenger?' I showed him a page or two--I think the passage where the curate returns home and Milly is first introduced. He would not pronounce whether it came up to my ideas, but remarked afterwards that he would have liked to have read more, which I thought a good sign.' "From the first the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ arrested public attention. Critics were, however, by no means unanimous as to their merits. They had so much individuality--stood so far apart from the standards of contemporary fiction--that there was considerable difficulty in applying the usual tests in their case. The terse, condensed style, the exactitude of expression, and the constant use of illustration, naturally suggested to some the notion that the new writer must be a man of science relaxing himself in the walks of fiction. The editor's own suspicions had once been directed towards Professor Owen by a similarity of handwriting. Guesses were freely hazarded as to the author's personality, and among other conjectures was one that Lord Lyttoll, whose 'Caxton' novels were about the same period delighting the readers of this magazine, had again struck a new vein of fiction. Probably Dickens was among the first to divine that the author must be a woman; but the reasons upon which he based this opinion might readily have been met by equally cogent deductions from the _Scenes_ that the writer must be of the male sex. Dickens, on the conclusion of the _Scenes_, wrote a letter of most generous appreciation, which, when sent through the editor, afforded the unknown author very hearty gratification. "While 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' was passing through the magazine, the editor was informed that he was to know the author as 'George Eliot.' It was at this time, then, that a name so famous in our literature was invented. We have no reason to suppose that it had been thought of when the series was commenced. It was probably assumed from the impossibility of a nameless shadow maintaining frequent communication with the editor of a magazine; possibly the recollection of George Sand entered into the idea; but the designation was euphonious and impressive. "Before the conclusion of the _Scenes_, Mr. Blackwood felt satisfied that he had to do with a master mind, and that a great career as a novelist lay open to George Eliot; and his frequent communications urged her warmly to persevere in her efforts. When 'Janet's Repentance' was drawing to a close, and arrangements were being made for re-issuing the sketches as a separate publication, he wrote to Mr. Lewes, 'George Eliot is too diffident of his own powers and prospects of success. Very few men, indeed, have more reason to be satisfied as far as the experiment has gone. The following should be a practical cheerer,'--and then he proceeded to say how the Messrs, Blackwood had seen reason to make a large increase in the forthcoming reprint of the _Scenes_. The volumes did not appear until after the New Year of 1858; and their success was such that the editor was able, before the end of the month, to write as follows to Lewes: 'George Eliot has fairly achieved a literary reputation among judges, and the public must follow, although it may take time. Dickens's letter was very handsome, and truly kind. I sent him an extract from George Eliot's letter to me, and I have a note from him, saying that 'he has been much interested by it,' and that 'it has given him the greatest pleasure.' Dickens adheres to his theory that the writer must be a woman.' To George Eliot herself he wrote in February, 1858, 'You will recollect, when we proposed to reprint, my impression was that the series had not lasted long enough in the magazine to give you a hold on the general public, although long enough to make your literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases, a very long time often elapses between the two stages of reputation, the literary and the public. Your progress will be _sure_, if not so quick as we could wish.'" The success of the _Clerical Scenes_ determined the literary career of Mrs. Lewes. She began at once an elaborate novel, which was largely written in Germany. It was sent to Blackwood for publication, and his nephew has given a full account of the reception of the manuscript and the details of giving the work to the public. "_Adam Bede_ was begun almost as soon as the _Scenes_ were finished, and had already made considerable progress before their appearance in the reprint. In February, 1858, the editor, writing to Mr. Lewes, says, 'I am delighted to hear from George Eliot that I might soon hope to see something like a volume of the new tale. I am very sanguine.' In a few weeks after, the manuscript of the opening chapters of _Adam Bede_ was put into his hands, and he writes thus to Lewes after the first perusal: 'Tell George Eliot that I think _Adam Bede_ all right--most lifelike and real. I shall read the MS. quietly over again before writing in detail about it.... For the first reading it did not signify how many things I had to think of; I would have hurried through it with eager pleasure. I write this note to allay all anxiety on the part of George Eliot as to my appreciation of the merits of this most promising opening of a picture of life. In spite of all injunctions, I began _Adam Bede_ in the railway, and felt very savage when the waning light stopped me as we neared the Scottish border.' A few weeks later, when he had received further chapters, and had reperused the manuscript from the beginning, Mr. Blackwood wrote to George Eliot, 'The story is altogether very novel, and I cannot recollect anything at all like it. I find myself constantly thinking of the characters as real personages, which is a capital sign.' After he had read yet a little further he remarks, 'There is an atmosphere of genuine religion and purity that fears no evil, about the whole opening of the story.' George Eliot made an expedition to Germany in the spring of 1858, and the bulk of the second volume was sent home from Munich. Acknowledging the receipt of the manuscript, the editor wrote to Lewes, 'There can be no mistake about the merits, and I am not sure whether I expressed myself sufficiently warmly. But you know that I am not equal to the _abandon_ of expression which distinguishes the large-hearted school of critics.' Adam Bede was completed in the end of October, 1858, and Mr. Blackwood read the conclusion at once, and sent his opinions. He says, 'I am happy to tell you that I think it is capital.--I never saw such wonderful efforts worked out by such a succession of simple and yet delicate and minute touches. Hetty's night in the fields is marvellous. I positively shuddered for her, poor creature; and I do not think the most thoughtless lad could read that terrible picture of her feelings and hopeless misery without being deeply moved. Adam going to support her at the trial is a noble touch. You really make him a gentleman by that act. It is like giving him his spurs. The way poor Hetty leans upon and clings to Dinah is beautiful. Mr. Irwine is always good; so are the Poysers, lifelike as possible. Dinah is a very striking and original character, always perfectly supported, and never obtrusive in her piety. Very early in the book I took it into my head that it would be 'borne in upon her' to fall in love with Adam. Arthur is the least satisfactory character, but he is true too. The picture of his happy, complacent feelings before the bombshell bursts upon him is very good.' "_Adam Bede_ was published in the last week of January, 1859. The author was desirous on this occasion to test her strength by appealing directly to the public; and the editor, though quite prepared to accept _Adam Bede_ for the magazine, willingly gratified her. Sending George Eliot an early copy, before _Adam Bede_ had reached the public, he says, 'Whatever the subscription may be, I am confident of success--great success. The book is so novel and so true, that the whole story remains in my mind like a succession of incidents in the lives of people I know. _Adam Bede_ can certainly never come under the class of popular agreeable stories; but those who love power, real humor, and true natural description, will stand by the sturdy carpenter and the living groups you have painted in and about Hayslope.' "_Adam Bede_ did not immediately command that signal success which, looking back to it now, we might have expected for it. As the editor had warned the author, the Scenes had secured for her a reputation with the higher order of readers and with men of letters, but had not established her popularity with the public in general. The reviewers, too, were somewhat divided. Many of them recognized the merits of the work, but more committed the blunder of endeavoring to fix the position of the book by contrasting the author with the popular novelists of the time, and by endeavoring to determine from which of them she had drawn her inspiration. In 1859 a review of _Adam Bede_ from the pen of one of the oldest and ablest of our contributors was published in this magazine, and on its appearance George Eliot wrote the editor, 'I should like you to convey my gratitude to your reviewer. I see well he is a man whose experience and study enabled him to relish parts of my book which I should despair of seeing recognized by critics in London back drawing-rooms. He has gratified me keenly by laying his fingers on passages which I wrote either from strong feeling or from intimate knowledge, but which I had prepared myself to find passed over by reviewers.' Soon after, _The Times_ followed with an appreciative notice of the book which sounded its real merits, and did justice to the author's originality of genius; and by the month of April the book was steadily running through a second edition. Readers were beginning to realize that the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ was not a mere chance success, but the work of a writer capable of greater and better things." It was Mrs. Lewes's desire not to be known to the public in her own personality, hence her adoption of a _nom de plume_. She shrank from the consequences of a literary fame, had none of George Sand's love of notoriety or desire to impress herself upon the world. It was her hope that George Eliot and Mrs. Lewes would lead distinct lives so far as either was known outside her own household; that the two should not be joined together even in the minds of her most intimate friends. When her friend, the editor of the _Westminster Review_, detected the authorship of _Adam Bede_, and wrote to her in its praise, congratulating her on the success she had attained, Lewes wrote to him denying positively that Mrs. Lewes was the author. Charles Dickens also saw through the disguise, and wrote to the publisher declaring his opinion that _Adam Bede_ was written by a woman. When this was denied, he still persisted in his conviction, detecting the womanly insight into character, her failure adequately to portray men, while of women "she seemed to know their very hearts." The vividness with which scenes and persons about her childhood home were depicted, speedily led to the breaking of this disguise. One of her school-fellows, as soon as she had read _Adam Bede_, said, "George Eliot is Marian Evans;" but others were only confident that the author must be some Nuncaton resident, and began to look about them for the author. Some portions of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ had already been discovered to have a very strong local coloring, and now there was much curiosity as to the personality of the writer. A dilapidated gentleman of the neighborhood, who had run through with a fortune at Cambridge, was selected for the honor. While the _Scenes_ were being published, an Isle of Man newspaper attributed the authorship to this man, whose name was Liggins, but he at once repudiated it. On the appearance of _Adam Bede_ this claim was again put forward, and a local clergyman became the medium of its announcement to the public. The London _Times_ printed the following letter in its issue of April 15, 1859: "Sir,--The author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam Bede_ is Mr. Joseph Liggins, of Nuncaton, Warwickshire. You may easily satisfy yourself of my correctness by inquiring of any one in that neighborhood. Mr. Liggins himself and the characters whom he paints are as familiar there as the twin spires of Coventry.--Yours obediently, H. ANDERS, Rector of Kirkby." The next day the following was printed by the same paper:-- Sir,--The Rev. H. Anders has with questionable delicacy and unquestionable inaccuracy assured the world through your columns that the author of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ and _Adam Bede_ is Mr. Joseph Liggins, of Nuncaton. I beg distinctly to deny that statement. I declare on my honor that that gentleman never saw a line of those works until they were printed, nor had he any knowledge of them whatever. Allow me to ask whether the act of publishing a book deprives a man of all claim to the courtesies usual among gentlemen? If not, the attempt to pry into what is obviously meant to be withheld--my name--and to publish the rumors which such prying may give rise to, seems to me quite indefensible, still more so to state these rumors as ascertained facts. I am, sir. Yours, &c., GEORGE ELIOT. Liggins found his ardent supporters, and he explained the letter repudiating the authorship of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ as being written to further his own interests. He obtained money on the plea that he was being deprived of his rights, by showing portions of a manuscript which he had copied from the printed book. Neighboring clergymen zealously espoused his cause, and a warm controversy raged for a little time concerning his claim. Very curiously, it became a question of high and low church, his own fellow-believers defending Liggins with zeal, while the other party easily detected his imposition. Finally, Blackwood published a letter in _The Times_ denying his claims, accompanied by one from George Eliot expressing entire satisfaction with her publisher. A consequence of this discussion was, that the real name of the author was soon known to the public. The curiosity excited about the authorship of _Adam Bede_, the Liggins controversy, and the fresh, original character of the book itself, soon drew attention to its merits. It was referred to in a Parliamentary debate, and it became the general topic of literary conversation. Its success was soon assured, and it was not long before it was recognized that a new novelist of the first order had appeared. It is as amusing as interesting now to look back upon the reception given to _Adam Bede_ by the critics. It is not every critic who can detect a great writer in his first unheralded book, and some very stupid blunders were made in regard to this one. It was reviewed in _The Spectator_ for February 12, 1859, in this unappreciative manner: "George Eliot's three-volume novel of _Adam Bede_ is a story of humble life, where religious conscientiousness is the main characteristic of the hero and heroine, as well as of some of the other persons. Its literary feature partakes, we fear, too much of that Northern trait which, by minutely describing things and delineating individuals as matters of substantive importance in themselves, rather than as subordinate to general interest, has a tendency to induce a feeling of sluggishness in the reader." Not all the critics were so blundering as this one, however, and in the middle of April, _The Times_ said there was no mistake about the character of _Adam Bede_, that it was a first-rate novel, and that its author would take rank at once among the masters of the craft. In April, also, _Blackwood's Magazine_ gave the book a hearty welcome. The natural, genuine descriptions of village life were commended, and the boot was praised for its "hearty, manly sympathy with weakness, not inconsistent with hatred of vice." Throughout this notice the author is spoken of as "Mr. Eliot." The critic of the _Westminster Review_, in an appreciative and favorable notice, expressed a doubt if the author could be a man. He cited Hetty as proof that only a woman could have written the book, and said this character could "only be delineated as it is by an author combining the intense feelings and sympathies of a woman with the conceptive power of artistic genius." The woman theory was pronounced to be beset with serious difficulties, however, and the notice concluded with these words: "But while pronouncing no decisive opinion on this point, we may remark that the union of the best qualities of the masculine and feminine intellect is as rare as it is admirable; that it is a distinguishing characteristic of the most gifted artists and poets, and that to ascribe it to the author of _Adam Bede_ is to accord the highest praise we can bestow." With the writing of _Adam Bede_, George Eliot accepted her career as a novelist, and henceforth her life was devoted to literary creation. Even before _Adam Bede_ was completed, her attention was directed to Savonarola as the subject for a novel. Though this subject was in her mind, yet it was not made use of until later. As soon as _Adam Bede_ was completed, she at once began another novel of English life, and drawn even more fully than its predecessors from her own experience. Of this new work a greater portion of the manuscript was in the hands of the publishers with the beginning of 1860. She called it _Sister Maggie_, from the name of the leading character. This title did not please the publisher, and on the 6th of January, Blackwood wrote to her suggesting that it be called _The Mill on the Floss_. This title was accepted by George Eliot, and the new work appeared in three volumes at the beginning of April, 1860. In July, 1859, there appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ a short story from George Eliot bearing the title of "The Lifted Veil." This was followed by another, in 1864, called "Brother Jacob." Both were printed anonymously and are the only short stories she wrote after the _Clerical Scenes_. They attracted attention, but were not reprinted until 1880, when they appeared in the volume with _Silas Marner_, in Blackwood's "cabinet edition" of her works. In March, 1861, _Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe_, her only one-volume novel, was given to the public by Blackwood. Having carefully studied the life and surroundings of Savonarola, she now took up this subject, and embodied it in her _Romola_. This novel appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_ from July, 1862, to July, 1863. It has been reported that it was offered to Blackwood for publication, who rejected it because it was not likely to be popular with the public. The probable reason of its publication in the _Cornhill Magazine_ was that a large sum was paid for its first appearance in that periodical. In a letter written July 5, 1862, Lewes gave the true explanation. "My main object in persuading her to consent to serial publication was not the unheard-of magnificence of the offer, but the advantage to such a work of being read slowly and deliberately, instead of being galloped through in three volumes. I think it quite unique, and so will the public when it gets over the first feeling of surprise and disappointment at the book not being English and like its predecessor." The success it met with while under way in the pages of the magazine may be seen from a letter written by Lewes on December 18. "Marian lives entirely in the fifteenth century, and is much cheered every now and then by hearing indirectly how her book is appreciated by the higher class of minds, and some of the highest, though it is not, and cannot be, popular. In Florence we hear they are wild with delight and surprise at such a work being executed by a foreigner, as if an Italian had ever done anything of the kind." _Romola_ was illustrated in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and on its completion was reprinted by Smith, Elder & Co., the publishers of that periodical. The success of _Romola_ was such as to lead George Eliot to begin on another historical subject, though she was probably induced to do this much more by its fitness to her purposes than by the public reception of the novel. This time she gave her work a poetical and dramatic form. _The Spanish Gypsy_ was written in the winter of 1864-5, but was laid aside for more thorough study of the subject and for careful revision. She had previously, in 1863, written a short story in verse, founded on the pages of Bocaccio, entitled "How Lisa Loved the King." Probably other poems had also been written, but poetry had not occupied much of her attention. As a school-girl, and even after she had gone to London, she had written verses. Among these earlier attempts, it may not be unsafe to conjecture, may have been the undated poems which she has published in connection with _The Legend of Jubal_. These are "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and go, Love," and "The Death of Moses." After laying aside _The Spanish Gypsy_ she began on another novel of English life, and _Felix Holt: the Radical_ was printed in three volumes by Blackwood, in June, 1866. Shortly after, she printed in _Blackwood's Magazine_--an "Address to workmen, by Felix Holt," in which she gave some wholesome and admirable advice to the operative classes who had been enfranchised by the Reform Bill. In the same magazine, "How Lisa Loved the King" was printed in May, 1869. This was the last of her contributions to its pages. Its publisher gave her many encouragements in her literary career, and was devoted to her interests. After his death she gave expression to her appreciation of his valuable aid in reaching the public, through a letter addressed to his successor. I feel that his death was an irreparable loss to my mental life for nowhere else is it possible that I can find the same long-tried genuineness of sympathy and unmixed impartial gladness in anything I might happen to do well. To have had a publisher who was in the fullest sense of the word a gentleman, and at the same time a man of excellent moral judgment, has been an invaluable stimulus and comfort to me. Your uncle had retained that fruit of experience which makes a man of the world, as opposed to the narrow man of literature. He judged well of writing, because he had learned to judge well of men and things, not merely through quickness of observation and insight, but with the illumination of a heart in the right place--a thorough integrity and rare tenderness of feeling. After a visit to Spain in the summer of 1867, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was re-written and published by Blackwood, in June, 1868. During several years, at this period of her life, her pen was busy with poetical subjects. "A Minor Prophet" was written in 1865, "Two Lovers" in 1866, and "Oh may I join the Choir Invisible" in 1867. "Agatha" was written in 1868, and was published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for August, 1869. _The Legend of Jubal_ was written in 1869 and was printed in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for May, 1870. In 1869 were also written the series of sonnets entitled "Brother and Sister." "Armgart" was written in 1870, and appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_ in July, 1871. "Arion" and "Stradivarius" were written in 1873. "A College Breakfast Party" was written in April, 1874, and was printed in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for July, 1878. _The Legend of Jubal and other Poems_ was published by Blackwood in 1874, and contained all the poems just named, except the last. A new edition was published in 1879 as _The Legend of Jubal and other Poems, Old and New_. The "new" poems in this edition are "The College Breakfast Party," "Self and Life," "Sweet Evenings come and go, Love," and "The Death of Moses." To the longer of these poetical studies succeeded another novel of English Life. _Middlemarch: a Study of Provincial Life_ was printed in twelve monthly parts by Blackwood, beginning in December, 1871. Five years later, _Daniel Deronda_ was printed in eight monthly parts by the same publisher, beginning with February, 1876. This method of publication was probably adopted for the same reason assigned by Lewes for the serial appearance of _Romola_. Both novels attracted much attention, and were eagerly devoured and discussed as the successive numbers appeared, the first because of its remarkable character as a study of English life, the other because of its peculiar ideas, and its defence of the Jewish race. Her last book, _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_, a series of essays on moral and literary subjects, written the year before, was published by Blackwood in June, 1879. Its reception by the public was somewhat unfavorable, and it added nothing of immediate enlargement to her reputation. Of miscellaneous writing George Eliot did but very little. While Mr. Lewes was the editor of _The Leader_ newspaper, from 1849 to 1854, she was an occasional contributor of anonymous articles to its columns. When he founded _The Fortnightly Review_ she contributed to its first number, published in May, 1865, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in which she reviewed Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_. These occasional efforts of her pen, together with the two short stories and the poems already mentioned, constituted all her work outside her series of great novels. She concentrated her efforts as few authors have done; and having found, albeit slowly and reluctantly, what she could best accomplish, she seldom strayed aside. When her pen had found its proper place it was not often idle; and though she did not write rapidly, yet she continued steadily at her work and accomplished much. Within twenty years she wrote eight great works of fiction, including _The Spanish Gypsy_; works that are destined to an immortality of fame. From almost entire obscurity her name appeared, with the publication of the _Scenes of Clerical Life_, to attract attention among a few most appreciative readers, and it was destined then to rise suddenly to the highest place of literary reputation with the publication of _Adam Bede_. Her genius blazed clearly out upon the world in the fulness of its powers, and each new work added to her fame, and revealed some new capacity in the delineation of character. Her literary career shows throughout the steady triumph of genius and of persistent labor. V. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. The home of Mrs. Lewes during the later years of her life was in one of the London suburbs, near Regent's Park, in what is known as St. John's Wood, at number 21, North Bank Street. This locality was not too far from the city for the enjoyment and the use of its advantages, while it was out of the noise and the smoke. The houses stand far apart, are surrounded with trees and lawns, while all is quiet and beautiful. The square, unpretentious house in which the Leweses lived was surrounded by a fine garden and green turf, while flowers were abundant. A high wall shut it out from the street. Within, all was refinement and good taste; there were flowers in the windows, the furniture was plain and substantial, while quiet simplicity reigned supreme. The house had two stories and a basement. On the first floor were two drawing-rooms, a small reception room, a dining-room and Mr. Lewes's study. These rooms were decorated by Owen Jones, their artist friend. The second floor contained the study of George Eliot, which was a plain room, not large. Its two front windows looked into the garden, and there were book-cases around the walls, and a neat writing-desk. All things about the house indicated simple tastes, moderate needs, and a plain method of life. Mrs. Lewes usually went into her study at eight o'clock in the morning, and remained there at work until one. If the weather was fine, she rode out in the afternoon, or she walked in Regent's Park with Mr. Lewes. In case the weather did not permit her going out, she returned again to her study in the afternoon. The affairs of her household were so arranged that she could give herself uninterruptedly to her work. The kitchen was in the basement, a housekeeper had entire charge of the management of the house, and Mrs. Lewes was carefully guarded from all outside interruptions. She very seldom went into society, and she received but few visitors, except on Sunday afternoons. Her letters were written by Mr. Lewes, with the exception of those to personal friends or an occasional outside correspondent; and all the details of the publication of her books and the management of her business affairs were in his hands. The immediate success of her novels made them profitable to the publisher, and she was paid comparatively large sums for them. Her evenings were spent by Mrs. Lewes at home, in reading and singing, unless she went to the theatre, as she often did. She walked much, often visiting the zoological gardens, and she had a great liking for all kinds of small animals. She greatly enjoyed travelling. Music was her passion, and art her delight. She preferred the realistic painters, and she never tired of the collections she often visited in London. The health of Mrs. Lewes was never good. She was a constant sufferer, was nervous, excitable and low-spirited. Only by the utmost care and husbanding of her powers was she enabled to accomplish her work. In a note to one of her correspondents she has given some hint of the almost chronic languor and bodily weakness from which she suffered. The weather, our ailments, and various other causes, have made us put off our flight from one week to another, but now we are really fluttering our wings and making a dust about us. I wish we had seen you oftener. I was placidly looking forward to your staying in England another year or more, and gave way to my general languor about seeing friends in these last months, which have been too full of small bodily miseries for me to feel that I had much space to give to pleasanter occupation. Only those who knew her long and well can fitly describe such a woman as Mrs. Lewes. Personal intimacy gives a color to the words used, and a meaning to the delicate shades of expression, that can be had in no other way. One of her friends has described her as being of "the middle height, the head large, the brow ample, the lower face massive; the eyes gray, lighting up from time to time with a sympathetic glow; the countenance sensitive, spiritual, with 'mind and music breathing' from it; the general demeanor composed and gracious; her utterance fluent and finished, but somewhat measured; her voice clear and melodious, moving evenly, as it were in a monotone, though now and then rising, with a sort of quiet eagerness, into a higher note." The same writer speaks of the close-fitting flow of her robe, and the luxuriant mass of light-brown hair hanging low on both sides of her head, as marked characteristics of her costume. Her features were very plain and large, too large for anything like beauty, but strongly impressive by their very massiveness. More than one of her friends has spoken of her resemblance to Savonarola, perhaps suggested by her description of that monk-prophet in _Romola_. Mr. Kegan Paul finds that she also resembled Dante and Cardinal Newman, and that these four were of the same spiritual family, with a curious interdependence of likeness. All these persons have "the same straight wall of brow; the droop of the powerful nose; mobile lips, touched with strong passion kept resolutely under control; a square jaw, which would make the face stern were it not counteracted by the sweet smile of lips and eye." Her friends say that no portrait does her justice, that her massive we features could not be portrayed. "The mere shape of the head," says Kegan Paul, "would be the despair of any painter. It was so grand and massive that it would scarcely be possible to represent it without giving the idea of disproportion to the frame, of which no one ever thought for a moment when they saw her, although it was a surprise, when she stood up, to see that, after all, she was but a little fragile woman who bore this weight of brow and brain." An account of her personal traits has been given by Mrs. Lippincott. "She impressed me," says this writer, "at first as exceedingly plain, with the massive character of her features, her aggressive jaw and evasive blue eyes. But as she grew interested and earnest in conversation, a great light flashed over or out of her face, till it seemed transfigured, while the sweetness of her rare smile was something quite indescribable. But she seemed to me to the last lofty and cold. I felt that her head was among the stars--the stars of a wintry night." Another American, Miss Kate Field, in writing of the English authors to be seen in Florence half a dozen years after George Eliot began her career, was the first to give an account of this new literary star. "She is a woman of large frame and fair Saxon coloring. In heaviness of jaw and height of cheek-bone she greatly resembles a German; nor are her features unlike those of Wordsworth, judging from his pictures. The expression of her face is gentle and amiable, while her manner is particularly timid and retiring. In conversation Mrs. Lewes is most entertaining, and her interest in young writers is a trait which immediately takes captive all persons of this class. We shall not forget with what kindness and earnestness she addressed a young girl who had just begun to handle a pen, how frankly she related her own literary experience, and how gently she _suggested_ advice. True genius is always allied to humility; and in seeing Mrs. Lewes do the work of a good Samaritan so unobtrusively, we learned to respect the woman as much as we had ever admired the writer. 'For years,' said she to us, 'I wrote reviews because I knew too little of humanity.'" These sketches by persons who only met her casually have an interest in the illustration of her character; and they may be added to by still another account, written by Mrs. Annie Downs, also an American, in 1879, and describing a visit to George Eliot two years before her death. "Tall, slender, with a grace most un-English, her face, instead of beauty, possessed a sweet benignity, and at times flashed into absolute brilliancy. She was older than I had imagined, for her hair, once fair, was gray, and unmistakable lines of care and thought were on the low, broad brow. But although a pang pierced my heart as I recognized that most of her life was behind her, so intensely did I feel her personality that in a moment I lost sight of her age; it was like standing soul to soul, and beyond the reach of time. Dressed in black velvet, with point lace on her hair, and repeated at throat and wrists, she made me think at once of Romola and Dorothea Brooke. She talked of Agassiz, of his museum at Cambridge, of the great natural-history collections at Naples, of Sir Edwin Landseer's pictures, and with enthusiasm of Mr. Furnival's Shakspere and Chaucer classes at the Working Men's College... She had quaint etchings of some of the monkeys at the zoological gardens, and told me she was more interested in them than any of the other animals, they exhibit traits so distinctly human. She declared, while her husband and friends laughingly teased her for the assertion, that she had seen a sick monkey, parched with fever, absolutely refuse the water he longed for, until the keeper had handed it to a friend who was suffering more than he. As an illustration of their quickness, she told me, in a very dramatic manner, of a nurse who shook two of her little charges for some childish misdemeanor while in the monkey house. No one noticed the monkeys looking at her, but pretty soon every old monkey in the house began shaking her children, and kept up the process until the little monkeys had to be removed for fear their heads would be shaken off. I felt no incongruity between her conversation and her books. She talked as she wrote; in descriptive passages, with the same sort of humor, and the same manner of linking events by analogy and inference. The walls were covered with pictures. I remember Guido's Aurora, Michael Angelo's prophets, Raphael's sibyls, while all about were sketches, landscapes and crayon drawings, gifts from the most famous living painters, many of whom are friends of the house. A grand piano, opened and covered with music, indicated recent and continual use." One of her intimate friends says that "in every line of her face there was powder, and about her jaw and mouth a prodigious massiveness, which might well have inspired awe had it not been tempered by the most gracious smile which ever lighted up human features, and was ever ready to convert what otherwise might have been terror into fascination!" We are told that "an extraordinary delicacy pervaded her whole being. She seemed to live upon air, and the rest of her body was as light and fragile as her countenance and intellect were massive." One of the results of this large brain and fragile body was, that she was never vigorous in health. Only her quiet, simple life, and avoidance of all excitement in regular work, enabled her to accomplish so much as she did. Her conversation was rich and attractive. She talked much as she wrote, was a good listener, never obtruded her opinions, and always had a noble moral purpose in her words. An American lady has given an interesting account of her home and of her conversation. "No one," says Mrs. Field, "who had ever seen her could mistake the large head (her brain must be heavier than most men's) covered with a mass of rich auburn hair. At first I thought her tall; for one could not think that such a head could rest on an ordinary woman's shoulders. But, as she rose up, her figure appeared of but medium height. She received us very kindly. In seeing, for the first time, one to whom we owed so many happy hours, it was impossible to feel towards her as a stranger. All distance was removed by her courtesy. Her manners are very sweet, because very simple and free from affectation. To me her welcome was the more grateful as that of one woman to another. There is a sort of free-masonry among women, by which they understand at once those with whom they have any intellectual sympathy. A few words, and all reserve was gone. 'Come, sit by me on this sofa,' she said; and instantly, seated side by side, we were deep in conversation. It is in such intimacy one feels the magnetism of a large mind informed by a true woman's heart; then, as the soul shines through the face, one perceives its intellectual beauty. No portrait can give the full expression of the eye any more than of the voice. Looking into that clear, calm eye, one sees a transparent nature, a soul of goodness and truth, an impression which is deepened as you listen to her soft and gentle tones. A low voice is said to be an excellent thing in a woman. It is a special charm of the most finely cultured English ladies. But never did a sweeter voice fascinate a listener,--so soft and low that one must almost bend to hear. You can imagine what it was thus to sit for an hour beside this gifted woman and hear talk of questions interesting to the women of England and America. But I should do her great injustice if I gave the impression that there was in her conversation any attempt at display. There is no wish to shine. She is above that affectation of brilliancy which is often mere flippancy. Nor does she seek to attract homage and admiration. On the contrary, she is very averse to speak of herself, or even to hear the heartfelt praise of others. She does not engross the conversation, but is more eager to listen than to talk. She has that delicate tact--which is one of the fine arts among women--to make others talk, suggesting topics the most rich and fruitful, and by a word drawing the conversation into a channel where it may flow with broad, free current. Thus she makes you forget the celebrated author, and think only of the refined and highly cultivated woman. You do not feel awed by her genius, but only quickened by it, as something that calls out all that is better and truer. While there is no attempt to impress you with her intellectual superiority, you naturally feel elevated into a higher sphere. The conversation of itself floats upward into a region above the commonplace. The small-talk of ordinary society would seem an impertinence. There is a singular earnestness about her, as if those mild eyes looked deep into the great, sad, awful truths of existence. To her, life is a serious reality, and the gift of genius a grave responsibility." Mrs. Lewes was in the habit for many years of receiving her friends on Sunday afternoons from two to six o'clock. These gatherings came to be among the most memorable features of London literary life. A large number of persons, both men and women, attended her receptions, and among them many who were well known to the scientific or literary world. Especially were young men of aspiring minds drawn hither and given a larger comprehension of life. She had no political or fashionable connections, says Mr. F.W.H. Myers, "but nearly all who were most eminent in art, science, literature, philanthropy, might be met from time to time at her Sunday-afternoon receptions. There were many women, too, drawn often from among very different traditions of thought and belief, by the unfeigned goodness which they recognized in Mrs. Lewes's look and speech, and sometimes illumining with some fair young face a _salon_ whose grave talk needed the grace which they could bestow. And there was sure to be a considerable admixture of men not as yet famous,--probably never to be so,--but whom some indication of studies earnestly pursued, of sincere effort for the good of their fellow-men, had recommended to 'that hopeful interest which'--to quote a letter of her own--'the elder mind, dissatisfied with itself, delights to entertain with regard to those younger, whose years and powers hold a larger measure of unspoiled life.' It was Mr. Lewes who on these occasions contributed the cheerful _bonhomie_, the observant readiness, which are necessary for the facing of any social group. Mrs. Lewes's manner had a grave simplicity, which rose in closer converse into an almost pathetic anxiety to give of her best--to establish a genuine human relation between herself and her interlocutor--to utter words which should remain as an active influence for good in the hearts of those who heard them. To some of her literary admirers, this serious tone was distasteful; they were inclined to resent the prominence given to moral ideas in a quarter from which they preferred to look merely for intellectual refreshment. Mrs. Lewes's humor, though fed from a deep perception of the incongruities of human fates, had not, except in intimate moments, any buoyant or contagious quality, and in all her talk--full of matter and wisdom, and exquisitely worded as it was--there was the same pervading air of strenuous seriousness which was more welcome to those whose object was distinctively to _learn_ from her, than to those who merely wished to pass an idle and brilliant hour. To her, these mixed receptions were a great effort. Her mind did not move easily from one individuality to another, and when she afterward thought that she had failed to understand some difficulty which had been laid before her,--had spoken the wrong word to some expectant heart,--she would suffer from almost morbid accesses of self-reproach." A further idea of these conversations may be gathered from Mr. Kegan Paul's account. "When London was full," he says, "the little drawing-room in St. John's Wood was now and then crowded to overflowing with those who were glad to give their best of conversation, of information, and sometimes of music, always to listen with eager attention to whatever their hostess might say, when all that she said was worth hearing. Without a trace of pedantry, she led the conversation to some great and lofty strain. Of herself and her works she never spoke; of the works and thoughts of others she spoke with reverence, and sometimes even too great tolerance. But these afternoons had the highest pleasure when London was empty, or the day was wet, and only a few friends were present, so that her conversation assumed a more sustained tone than was possible when the rooms were full of shifting groups. It was then that, without any premeditation, her sentences fell as fully formed, as wise, as weighty, as epigrammatic, as any to be found in her books. Always ready, but never rapid, her talk was not only good in itself, but it encouraged the same in others, since she was an excellent listener, and eager to hear." At these gatherings the most noted of the English disciples of Comte were to be found, and among them Frederic Harrison, Prof. E.S. Beesley, Dr. Congrove, the director of the London Church of Humanity, and Prof. W.K. Clifford. The English positivists were represented by Herbert Spencer, Prof. T.H. Huxley and Moncure D. Conway. The realistic school of poets and artists came in the persons of its most representative men. Dante Rosetti and Millais, Tourguénief and Burne Jones, DuMaurier and Dr. Hueffner illustrated most of its phases. The great world of general literature sent Sir Arthur Helps, Sir Theodore Martin, Anthony Trollope, C.G. Leland, Justin McCarthy, Frederic Myers, Prof. Mark Pattison and many another. The rarer guests included Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. It was no inconsiderable influence which could draw together such a company and hold it together for many years. Of the part played in these gatherings by the hosts, Miss Mathilde Blind has given an account. Lewes acted "as a social cement. His vivacity, his ready tact, the fascination of his manners, diffused that general sense of ease and _abandon_ so requisite to foster an harmonious flow of conversation. He was inimitable as a _raconteur_, and Thackeray, Trollope and Arthur Helps were fond of quoting some of the stories which he would dramatize in the telling. One of the images which, on these occasions, recurs oftenest to George Eliot's friends is that of the frail-looking woman who would sit with her chair drawn close to the fire, and whose winning womanliness of bearing and manners struck every one who had the privilege of an introduction to her. Her long, pale face, with its strongly marked features, was less rugged in the mature prime of life than in youth, the inner meanings of her nature having worked themselves more and more to the surface, the mouth, with its benignant suavity of expression, especially softening the too prominent under lip and massive jaw. Her abundant hair, untinged with gray, whose smooth bands made a kind of frame to the face, was covered by a lace or muslin cap, with lappets of rich point or Valenciennes lace fastened under her chin. Her gray-blue eyes, under noticeable eyelashes, expressed the same acute sensitiveness as her long, thin, beautifully shaped hands. She had a pleasant laugh and smile, her voice being low, distinct, and intensely sympathetic in quality; it was contralto in singing, but she seldom sang or played before more than one or two friends. Though her conversation was perfectly easy, each sentence was as finished, as perfectly formed, as the style of her published works." Among the persons who gathered at The Priory on Sunday afternoons there came to be a considerable number of those who were Mrs. Lewes's devoted disciples. They hung upon her words, they accepted her views of life, her philosophy became theirs. That she would have admitted such discipleship existed there is no reason to believe, and it is certain she did not attempt to bring it about or even desire it. So great, however, was her power of intellect, so noble her personal influence, it was impossible that ardent young natures could refrain from devotion to such genius and speedy acceptance of its teachings. The richness of her moral and intellectual nature aided largely in this heroine worship, but she impressed herself on other minds because she was so much an individual, because her personality was of a kind to command reverence and devotion. It was not merely young and impulsive natures who were thus attracted and inspired, for Edith Simcox says that "men and women, old friends and new, persons of her own age and of another generation, the married and the single, impulsive lovers and hard-headed philosophers, nay, even some who elsewhere might have passed for cynics, all classes alike yielded to the attractive force of this rare character, in which tenderness and strength were blended together, and as it were transfused with something that was all her own--the genius of sweet goodness." Perhaps her influence was so great on those it reached because it demanded high and noble life and thought of her disciples. Her moral ideal was a high one, and she had literary and artistic standards that demanded all the effort of both genius and talent, while her culture was such as to be exacting in its requirements. So we find Miss Simcox saying that Mrs. Lewes, in her friendships, "had the unconscious exactingness of a full nature. She was intolerant of a vacuum in the mind or character, and she was indifferent to admiration that did not seem to have its root in fundamental agreement with those principles she held to be most 'necessary to salvation.' Where this sympathy existed, her generous affection was given to a fellow-believer, a fellow-laborer, with singularly little reference to the fact that such full sympathy was never unattended with profound love and reverence for herself as a living witness to the truth and power of the principles thus shared. To love her was a strenuous pleasure; for in spite of the tenderness for all human weakness that was natural to her, and the scrupulous charity of her overt judgments, the fact remained that her natural standard was ruthlessly out of reach, and it was a painful discipline for her friends to feel that she was compelled to lower it to suit their infirmities. The intense humility of her self-appreciation, and the unfeigned readiness with which she would even herself with any sinner who sought her counsel, had the same effect upon those who would compare what she condemned in herself with what she tolerated in them. And at the same time, no doubt, this total absence of self-sufficiency had something to do with the passionate tenderness with which commonplace people dared to cherish their immortal friend." As has already been suggested, her womanliness is a more prominent characteristic of Mrs. Lewes's mind than its great intellectual power. Her sympathy was keen and most sensitive, her modesty and humility were almost excessive, and her tenderness of nature was a woman's own. She gave her sympathy readily and freely to the humble and unfavored. She had no taint of intellectual aristocracy, says one of her friends. Faithful, devoted love; the sacredness of simple duties and plain work; earnest help of other souls,--these were among the daily lessons of her life and teaching. "How strong was the current of her sympathy in the direction of all humble effort," exclaims one of her friends, "how reluctantly she checked presumption! The most ordinary and uninteresting of her friends must feel that had they known nothing of her but her rapid insight into and quick response to their inmost feelings she would still have been a memorable personality to them. This sympathy was extended to the sorrows most unlike anything she could ever by any possibility have known--the failures of life obtained as large a share of her compassion as its sorrows. The wish to console and cheer was indeed rooted in the most vital part of her nature." Another of her friends has said that "she possessed to a marvellous degree the divine gifts of charity, and of attracting moral outcasts to herself, whose devils she cast out, if I may be permitted the expression, by shutting her eyes to their existence. In her presence you felt wrapped round by an all-embracing atmosphere of sympathy and readiness to make the least of all your short comings, and the most of any good which might be in you. But great as was her personality, she shrank with horror from intruding it upon you, and, in general society, her exquisitely melodious voice was, unhappily for the outside circles, too seldom raised beyond the pitch of something not much above a whisper. Of the rich vein of humor which runs through George Eliot's works there was comparatively little trace in her conversation, which seldom descended from the grave to the gay. But although she rarely indulged in conversational levity herself, she was most tolerant of it, and even encouraged its ebullition, in others, joining heartily in any mirth which might be going on." She made her younger admirers feel the deeper influence of her great personality by inspiring them with the largest moral purposes. To awaken and to arouse the moral nature seems always to have been her purpose, and to lead it to the highest attainable results. Earnest young minds never "failed to feel in her presence that they were for the time, at all events, raised into a higher moral level, and none ever left her without feeling inspired with a stronger sense of duty, and positively under the obligation of striving to live up to a higher standard of life." Hence her personal influence was considerable, though she led the close life of a student, and did not go into general society at all. This high moral earnestness made her a prophet to her friends, as in her books it made her a great moral teacher to the world at large. Those who had the privilege of an intimate acquaintance with Mrs. Lewes have pronounced the woman greater than her books. She was not only a great writer but a great woman. Human nature in its largest capacities was represented in her, for she rose above the limitations of sex; and she is thought of less as a great woman than as a large human personality. Hers was a massive nature, emphatic, individual, many-sided. Genius of a very high order, though not the highest, was hers, while she was possessed of a broad culture and great learning. Seldom does genius carry with it talents so varied and well-trained or a culture so full and thorough. And her culture was of that kind which entered into every fibre of her nature and became a part of her own personality. It was thoroughly digested and absorbed into good healthy red blood, and became a quickened, sustained motive to the largest efforts. How vital this love of culture was, may be seen when we are told that "she possessed in an eminent degree that power which has led to success in so many directions, of keeping her mind unceasingly at the stretch without conscious fatigue. She would cease to ponder or to read when other duties called her, but never because she herself felt tired. Even in so complex an effort as a visit to a picture gallery implies, she could continue for hours at the same pitch of earnest interest, and outweary strong men. Nor was this a mere habit of passive reception. In the intervals between her successive compositions her mind was always fusing and combining its fresh stores." She had culture, moral power and earnestness in a high degree, warmth of sympathy and sensitiveness to all beauty, but she had no saintliness. Profound as was her reverence for moral purity, and lofty as was her moral purpose, she was not a saint, and holiness was not a characteristic of her nature. This clear and high sense of moral truth everywhere appears in her life and thought. "For the lessons most imperatively needed by the mass of men, the lessons of deliberate kindness, of careful truth, of unwavering endeavor,--for these plain themes one could not ask a more convincing teacher than she. Everything in her aspect and presence was in keeping with the bent of her soul. The deeply lined face, the too marked and massive features, were united with an air of delicate refinement, which in one way was the more impressive because it seemed to proceed entirely from within. Nay, the inward beauty would sometimes quite transform the external harshness; there would be moments when the thin hands that entwined themselves in their eagerness, the earnest figure that bowed forward to speak and hear, the deep gaze moving from one face to another with a grave appeal,--all these seemed the transparent symbols that showed the presence of a wise, benignant soul. But it was the voice which best revealed her, a voice whose subdued intensity and tremulous richness seemed to environ her uttered words with the mystery of a world that must remain untold. And then again, when in moments of more intimate converse some current of emotion would set strongly through her soul, when she would raise her head in unconscious absorption and look out into the unseen, her expression was not one to be soon forgotten. It has not, indeed, the serene felicity of souls to whose childlike confidence all heaven and earth are fair. Rather it was the look of a strenuous Demiurge, of a soul on which high tasks are laid, and which finds in their accomplishment its only imagination of joy." Another side of her influence on persons is expressed by the representative of that publishing house which gave her books to the world. "In addition to the spell which bound the world to her by her genius, she had a personal power of drawing to herself, in ties of sympathy and kindly feeling, all who came under her influence. She never oppressed any one by her talents; she never allowed any one to be sensible of the depth and variety of her scholarship; she knew, as few know, how to draw forth the views and feelings of her visitors, and to make their sympathies her own. There was a charm in her personal character which of itself was sufficient to conciliate deep and lasting regard. Every one who entered her society left it impressed with the conviction that they had been under the influence of a sympathy and tenderness not less remarkable than the force of her mental power.... Her deep and catholic love for humanity in its broadest and best sense, which was in itself the strongest quickening motive of her genius, will maintain her influence in the future as in the present." Hers was a somewhat sensitive, shrinking nature, with no self-assumption, and without the taint of egotism. She had a modest estimate of her own great literary creations, and shrank from all mention of them and from the homage paid to her as an author. After the publication of _Romola_ she was one day reading French to a girl companion in the garden of a Swiss hotel, when a lady drew near to listen to the silvery tones of her voice. Noticing this, she said, "Do you understand?" The lady answered, "I do not care for the matter; I only came to listen to your voice." "Do you like it?" was then inquired. When the lady expressed the pleasure it gave her, Mrs. Lewes took her hand and warmly said, "I thank you. I would rather you would compliment my voice than my _Romola_." [Footnote: This story is not authenticated; it may be taken for what it is worth, though it appears to be characteristic.] It has been truly said of her that above all novelists, with the exception of Goethe, she was supreme in culture. She had a passion for knowledge, and zeal in the pursuit of learning. She was a lover of books, but not a scholar in the technical and exact sense. Delighting in literature, art, music, and all that appeals to the imagination, rather than in mere information, yet she was a thinker of original powers, with a keen appreciation of philosophy, and ability to tread its most difficult paths with firm step. She had an intimate acquaintance with the literatures of Germany, France, Italy and Spain, and she was well read in the classics of Greece and Rome. She was "competently acquainted" with the different systems of philosophy, and she had mastered their problems while thinking out her own conclusions. Having no professional knowledge of the sciences, she was a diligent reader of scientific books, and was familiar with all the bearings of science on philosophy and religion. Her books show an intimate knowledge of modern thought in many of its phases, as it bears upon physical, economic, historical and intellectual science. With all her learning, however, she retained a woman's sympathy with life, beauty and poetry. Her knowledge was never dry and technical, but warm and imaginative with genius and poetry. [Footnote: Her scholarly habits, and her realistic tendencies, usually made George Eliot very painstaking and accurate, but an occasional slip of pen or memory is to be noted in her books. In Theophrastus Such she credited to the Apologia of Plato what is really contained in the Phaedo. The motto to chapter seventeen of Daniel Deronda was quoted, in the first edition, as from In Memoriam instead of Locksley Hall. In an early chapter of Felix Holt she made the parson preach from the words, "Break up the fallow ground of your hearts." The words of scripture are, "Break up your fallow ground." In Adam Bede a clergyman is made to take the words of the Prayer Book, "In the midst of life we are in death," for his text.] Her culture may be compared with Mrs. Browning's, who was also an extensive reader and widely informed. The poet as well as the novelist acquired her learning because of her thirst for knowledge, and mainly by her own efforts; but she preferred the classics to science, and literature to philosophy. Mrs. Browning was the wiser, George Eliot the more learned. The writings of Mrs. Browning are less affected by her information than George Eliot's; and this is true because she was of a more poetical temperament, because her imagination was more brilliant and creative. Mrs. Lewes was an enthusiastic lover of art, and especially of music. She never tired in her interest in beholding fine paintings, and music was the continual delight of her life. She was a tireless frequenter of picture galleries, and every fine musical entertainment in London was sure to find her, in company with Mr. Lewes, an enthusiastic listener. Good acting also claimed not a little of her interest, and she carefully studied even the details of the dramatic art, so that she was able to give a critical appreciation to the acting she enjoyed. Indeed, she had given to her mind that rounded fulness of attainment, and developed all her faculties with that due proportion, which Fichte so earnestly preached as the characteristic of true culture. "Her character," says Edith Simcox, "seemed to include every possibility of action and emotion; no human passion was wanting in her nature, there were no blanks or negations; and the marvellous thing was to see how, in this wealth of impulses and desires, there was no crash of internal discord, no painful collisions with other human interests outside; how, in all her life, passions of volcanic strength were harnessed in the service of those nearest her, and so inspired by the permanent instinct of devotion to her kind, that it seemed as if it were by her own choice they spent themselves there only where their force was welcome. Her very being was a protest against the opposing and yet cognate heresies that half the normal human passions must be strangled in the quest of virtue, and that the attainment of virtue is a dull and undesirable end, seeing that it implies the sacrifice of most that makes life interesting." She had her own temptations and her imperfections. With these she struggled bravely, and set herself to the hard task of correction and discipline. Her culture was not merely one of books, but it was also one of moral discipline and of strenuous spiritual subjection. It was one of stern moral requirements and duties, as well as one of large sympathy with all that is natural and beautiful. It was a quiet life of continuous study and authorship which Mrs. Lewes led in The Priory, and it was varied from year to year only by her visits to the continent and by her summer residence in Surrey. One of her summer retreats, at the village of Shotter Mill, has been described, as well as her life there. The most picturesque house in the place is known as Brookbank, and here she spent a summer, that of 1871. It is described as "an old two-storied cottage, the front of the house being half-covered with trailing rose-trees. The rooms are low but pleasant, and furnished in a simple, comfortable manner. We have often endeavored," says the writer of this account, "to glean some information regarding George Eliot's life at Shotter Mill, but she and Mr. Lewes lived in such seclusion that there was very little to be told. They seldom crossed their threshold during the day, but wandered over the commons and hills after sundown. They were very anxious to lodge at the picturesque old farm, ten minutes' walk beyond Brookbank, but all available room was then occupied. However, George Eliot would often visit the farmer's wife, and, sitting on a grassy bank just beside the kitchen door, would discuss the growth of fruit and the quality of butter in a manner so quiet and simple the good country folks were astonished, expecting very different conversation from the great novelist. The farmer was employed to drive them two or three times a week. They occasionally visited Tennyson, whose home is only three miles distant, though a rather tedious drive, since it is up hill nearly all the way. George Eliot did not enjoy the ride much, for the farmer told us that, 'withal her being such a mighty clever body,--she were very nervous in a carriage--allays wanted to go on a smooth road, and seemed dreadful feared of being thrown out.' George Eliot was writing _Middlemarch_ during her summer at Brookbank, and the term for which they had the cottage expired before they wished to return to London. The Squire was away at the time, so they procured permission to use his house during the remainder of the visit. In speaking of them he said, 'I visited Mr. and Mrs. Lewes several times before they went back to town, and found the authoress a very agreeable woman, both in manner and appearance; but her mind was evidently completely absorbed in her work; she seemed to have no time for anything but writing from morning till night. Her hand could hardly convey her thoughts to paper fast enough. It was an exceptionally hot summer, and yet through it all Mrs. Lewes would have artificial heat placed at her feet to keep up the circulation. Why, one broiling day I came home worn out, longing for a gray sky and a cool breeze, and on going into the garden I found her sitting there, her head just shaded by a deodara on the lawn, writing away as usual. I expostulated with her for letting the midday sun pour down on her like that. 'Oh,' she replied, 'I like it. To-day is the first time I have felt warm this summer.' So I said no more, and went my way.' And thus nearly all we could learn about George Eliot was that she loved to bask in the sun and liked green peas. She visited some of the cottagers, but only those living in secluded places, who knew nothing of her. Just such people as these she used in her graphic and realistic sketches of peasant life. With regard to the surrounding country, George Eliot said that it pleased her more than any she knew of in England." In these summer retreats she continued steadily at her work, and she greatly delighted in the quiet and rest. Other summers were spent at Witley, in the same county, where the fine scenery, lovely drives and wide-reaching views from the hill-tops were to her a perpetual delight. At this place a house was bought, and there was a project of giving up the London residence and of visiting the city only for occasional relaxation. This project was not carried out, for soon after their return from Witley in the autumn of 1878, Mr. Lewes was taken ill, and died in November. His death was a great blow to Mrs. Lewes, and he was deeply mourned, so much so as to seriously impair her health. The state of her mind at this trying period is well indicated in a letter written to Prof. David Kaufmann. THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PARK, April 17, '79. MY DEAR SIR,--Your kind letter has touched me very deeply. I confess that my mind has more than once gone out to you as one from whom I should like to have some sign of sympathy with my loss. But you were rightly inspired in waiting till now, for during many weeks I was unable even to listen to the letters which my generous friends were continually sending me. Now, at last, I am eagerly interested in every communication that springs out of an acquaintance with my husband and taskworks. I thank you for telling me about the Hungarian translation of his History of Philosophy, but what would I not have given if the volumes could have come a few days before his death; for his mind was perfectly clear, and he would have felt some joy in that sign of his work being effective. I do not know whether you enter into the comfort I feel that he never knew he was dying, and fell gently asleep after ten days of illness in which the suffering was comparatively mild..... One of the last things he did at his desk was to despatch a manuscript of mine to the publishers. The book (not a story and not bulky) is to appear near the end of May, and as it contains some words I wanted to say about the Jews, I will order a copy to be sent to you. I hope that your labors have gone on uninterruptedly for the benefit of others, in spite of public troubles. The aspect of affairs with us is grevious--industry languishing, and the best part of our nation indignant at our having been betrayed into an unjustifiable war (in South Africa). I have been occupied in editing my husband's MSS., so far as they are left in sufficient completeness to be prepared for publication without the obtrusion of another mind instead of his. A brief volume on _The Study of Psychology_ will appear immediately, and a further volume of psychological studies will follow in the autumn. But his work was cut short while he still thought of it as the happy occupation of far-stretching months. Once more let me thank you for remembering me in my sorrow, and believe me Yours with high regard, M.E. LEWES. Writing to a friend soon after Lewes's death, who had also lost her husband, she said,-- There is but one refuge--the having much to do. Nothing can make the burden to be patiently borne, except the gradual adaptation of your soul to the new conditions. The much to do she partly found in editing the uncompleted _Problems of Life and Mind_, and in establishing a studentship for original investigation in physiology, known as "The George Henry Lewes Studentship." Its value is about two hundred pounds, and it is open to both sexes. These labors enabled her to do honor to one she had trusted through many years, whose name and fame she greatly revered, and to recover the even poise of her life. She carefully managed the business affairs he had left in her hands, and she provided for his children. A year and a half after the death of Lewes, May 6, 1880, she was married at the church of St. George's, Hanover Square, to John Walter Cross, the senior partner in a London banking firm, whom she had first met in 1867, and who had been a greatly valued friend both to herself and Lewes. Though much younger than herself, he had many qualities to recommend him to her regard. A visit to the continent after this ceremony lasted for several months, a considerable portion of the time being spent in Venice. On their return to London in the autumn after spending a happy summer in Surrey, they went to live in the house of Mr. Cross at 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. The old habits of her life were taken up, her studies were resumed, a new novel was begun, her friends came as usual on Sunday afternoons, and many years of work seemed before her, for her health had greatly improved. On Friday, December 17, 1880, she attended the presentation of the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, in the original Greek, with the accompaniments of the ancient theatre, by the undergraduates of Balliol College, Oxford. She was very enthusiastic about this revival of ancient art, and planned to read anew all the Greek dramatists with her husband. The next day she attended a popular concert at St. James Hall, and listened with her usual intense interest. Sitting in a draught, she caught cold, but that evening she played through much of the music she had heard in the afternoon. The next day she was not so well as usual, yet she met her friends in the afternoon. On Monday her larynx was slightly affected, and a physician was called, but no danger was apprehended. Yet her malady gained rapidly. On Tuesday night she was in a dangerous condition, and on Wednesday the pericardium was found to be seriously diseased. Towards midnight of that day, December 22, after a period of unconsciousness, she quietly passed away. She was buried on the 29th, in the unconsecrated portion of Highgate Cemetery, by the side of George Henry Lewes. The funeral services were conducted by the Rev. Dr. Sadler, a radical Unitarian minister, who spoke of her great genius, and quoted her own words about a future life in the life of humanity. His address contained many references to her personal characteristics, such as could only come from an intimate friend. He said,-- "To those who are present it is given to think of the gentleness, and delicate womanly grace and charm, which were combined with 'that breadth of culture and universality of power which,' as one has expressed it, 'have made her known to all the world.' To those who are present it is given to know the diffidence and self-distrust which, notwithstanding all her public fame, needed individual sympathy and encouragement to prevent her from feeling too keenly how far the results of her labors fell below the standard she had set before her. To those who are present too it may be given--though there is so large a number to whom it is not given--to understand how a nature may be profoundly devout, and yet unable to accept a great deal of what is usually held as religious belief. No intellectual difficulties or uncertainties, no sense of mental incapacity to climb the heights of infinitude, could take from her the piety of the affections or 'the beliefs which were the mother-tongue of her soul.' I cannot doubt that she spoke out of the fulness of her own heart when she put into the lips of another the words, 'May not a man silence his awe or his love and take to finding reasons which others demand? But if his love lies deeper than any reasons to be found!' How patiently she toiled to render her work in all its details as little imperfect as might be! How green she kept the remembrance of all those companions to whom she felt that she owed a moulding and elevating influence, especially in her old home, and of him who was its head, her father! How her heart glowed with a desire to help to make a heaven on earth, to be a 'cup of strength' to others, and when her own days on earth should have closed, to have a place among those "'Immortal dead who still live on In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude; in scorn For miserable aims that end with sell; In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues.' "How she thus yearned 'to join the choir invisible, whose music is the gladness of the world!' All this is known to those who had the privilege of being near her." The address was preceded by a simple burial service, and was followed by a prayer, all being given in the chapel of the cemetery. The coffin, covered with the finest floral tributes, was then borne to the grave, where the burial service was completed, and was followed by a prayer and the benediction. Although the day was a disagreeable one and rain was falling, the chapel was crowded, and many not being able to gain admittance stood about the open grave. Beside her personal friends and her family there were present many persons noted for their literary or scientific attainments, On the lid of the coffin was this inscription: MARY ANN CROSS. ("George Eliot") Born 22d Nov., 1819; died 22d Dec., 1880. Quilla fonte Che spande di parlay si largo flume. [Footnote: From Dante, and has been rendered into English thus: That fountain Which spreads abroad so wide a river of speech.] The novel which had been begun was left a mere fragment, and in accordance with what it was thought would have been her wish, was destroyed by her family. Perhaps it was better that her dislike of unfinished work should be so respected. VI. LITERARY TRAITS AND TENDENCIES. George Eliot was a painstaking, laborious writer. She did not proceed rapidly, so carefully did she elaborate her pages. Her subjects were thoroughly studied before the pen was taken in hand, patiently thought out, planned with much care, and all available helps secured that could be had. She threw her whole life into her work, became a part of the scenes she was depicting; her life was absorbed until the work of writing became a painful process both to body and mind. "Her beautifully written manuscript," says her publisher, "free from blur or erasure, and with every letter delicately and distinctly finished, was only the outward and visible sign of the inward labor which she had taken to work out her ideas. She never drew any of her facts or impressions from second hand; and thus, in spite of the number and variety of her illustrations, she had rarely much to correct in her proof-sheets. She had all that love of doing her work well for the work's sake which she makes prominent characteristics of Adam Bede and Stradivarius." When a book was completed, so intense had been her application and the absorption of her life in her work, a period of despondency followed. When a correspondent praised _Middlemarch_, and expressed a hope that even a greater work might follow, she replied, "As to the 'great novel' which remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future books." Again, she wrote of the depression which succeeded the completion of each of her works,-- Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The responsibility of writing grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to one's self to do it. Owing probably somewhat to this tendency to take a despondent view concerning her own work, and to distrust of the leadings of her own genius, was her habit of never reading the criticisms made on her books. She adopted this rule, she tells one correspondent, "as a necessary preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying her power of writing." To another, who had written her in appreciation of her books, she wrote this note, in which she alludes to the same habit of shunning criticism: MY DEAR MISS WELLINGTON,--The signs of your sympathy sent to me across the wide water have touched me with the more effect because you imply that you are young. I care supremely that my writing should be some help and stimulus to those who have probably a long life before them. Mr. Lewes does not let me read criticisms on my writings. He always reads them himself, and gives me occasional quotations, when be thinks that they show a spirit and mode of appreciation which will win my gratitude. He has carefully read through the articles which were accompanied by your kind letter, and he has a high opinion of the feeling and discernment exhibited in them. Some concluding passages which he read aloud to me are such as I register among the grounds of any encouragement in looking backward on what I have written, if not in looking forward to my future writing. Thank you, my dear young friend, whom I shall probably never know otherwise than in this spiritual way. And certainly, apart from those relations in life which bring daily duties and opportunities of lovingness, the most satisfactory of all ties is this effective invisible intercourse of an elder mind with a younger. The quotation in your letter from Hawthorne's book offers an excellent type both for men and women in the value it assigns to that order of work which is called subordinate but becomes ennobling by being finely done. [Footnote: A reference to Hilda's ceasing to consider herself an original artist in the presence of the great masters. "Beholding the miracles of beauty which the old masters had achieved, the world seemed already rich enough in original designs and nothing more was so desirable as to diffuse these selfsame beauties more widely among mankind.'--So Hilda became a copyist."] Yours, with sincere obligations, M.E. LEWES. By the way, Mr. Lewes tells me that you ascribe to me a hatred of blue eyes--which is amusing, since my own eyes are blue-gray. I am not in any sense one of the "good haters;" on the contrary, my weaknesses all verge toward an excessive tolerance and a tendency to melt off the outlines of things. THE PRIORY, 21 North Bank, Regent's Park, Jan. 16, '73. [Footnote: From The Critic of December 31, 1881. This letter was addressed to Miss Alice Wellington, now Mrs. Rollins.] Her sensitiveness was great, and contact with an unappreciative and unsympathetic public depressing to a large degree. It was a part of that shrinking away from the world which kept her out of society, and away from all but a select few whose tastes and sympathies were largely in accordance with her own. Besides, she distrusted that common form of criticism which presumes to tell an author how he ought to have written, and assumes to itself an insight and knowledge greater than that possessed by genius itself. Concerning the value of such criticism she wrote these pertinent words: I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest. To the same correspondent she used even stronger words concerning her dislike of ordinary criticism. Do not expect "criticism" from me. I hate "sitting in the seat of judgment," and I would rather try to impress the public generally with the sense that they may get the best result from a book without necessarily forming an "opinion" about it, than I would rush into stating opinions of my own. The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of our times--a chief obstacle to true culture. It is not to be forgotten, however, that George Eliot had done much critical work before she became a novelist, and that much of it was of a keen and cutting nature. Severely as she was handled by the critics, no one of them was more vigorous than was her treatment of Young and Cumming. Even in later years, when she took up the critical pen, the effect was felt. Mr. Lecky did not pass gently through her hands when she reviewed his _Rationalism in Europe_. Her criticisms in _Theophrastus Such_ were penetrating and severe. For the same reason, she read few works of contemporary fiction, that her mind might not be biassed and that she might not be discouraged in her own work. Always busy with some special subject which absorbed all her time and strength, she could give little attention to contemporary literature. To one correspondent she wrote,-- My constant groan is, that I must leave so much of the greatest writing which the centuries have sifted for me, unread for want of time. The style adopted by George Eliot is for the most part fresh, vital and energetic. It is pure in form, rich in illustrations, strong and expressive in manner. There are exceptions to this statement, it is true, and she is sometimes turgid and dry, again gaudy and verbose. Sententious in her didactic passages, she is pure and noble in her sentiment, poetical and impressive in her descriptions of nature. Her diction is choice, her range of expression large, and she admirably suits her words to the thought she would present. There is a rich, teeming fulness of life in her books, the canvas is crowded, there is movement and action. An abundance of passion, delicate feeling and fine sensibility is expressed. The critics have almost universally condemned the plots of George Eliot's novels for their want of unity. They tell us that the flow of events is often not orderly, while improbable scenes are introduced, superfluous incidents are common, the number of characters is too great, and the analysis of character impedes the unity of events. These objections are not always vital, and sometimes they are mere objections rather than genuine criticisms. Instances of failure to follow the best methods may be cited in abundance, one of which is seen in the first two chapters in _Daniel Deronda_ being placed out of their natural order. The opening scenes in _The Spanish Gypsy_ seem quite unnecessary to the development of the plot, while the last two scenes of the second book are so fragmentary and unconnected with the remainder of the story as to help it but little. In the middle of _Adam Bede_ are several chapters devoted to the birthday party, which are quite unnecessary to the development of the action. _Daniel Deronda_ contains two narratives which are in many respects almost entirely distinct from each other, and the reader is made to alternate between two worlds that have little in common. There is much of the improbable in the account of the Transome estate in _Felix Holt_, while the closing scenes in the life of Tito Melema in _Romola_ are more tragical than natural. Yet these defects are incidental to her method and art rather than actual blemishes on her work. For the most part, her work is thoroughly unitary, cause leads naturally into effect, and there is a moral development of character such as is found in life itself. Her plots are strongly constructed, in simple outlines, are easily comprehended and kept in mind, and the leading motive holds steadily through to the end. Her analytical method often makes an apparent interruption of the narrative, and the unity of purpose is frequently developed through the philosophic purport of the novel rather than in its literary form. Direct narrative is often hindered, it is true, by her habit of studying the remote causes and effects of character, but she never wanders far enough to forget the real purpose had in view. She holds the many elements of her story well under command, she concentrates them upon some one aim, and she gives to her story a tragic unity of great moral splendor and effect. Even the diverse elements, the minute side-studies and the profuse comments, are all woven into the organic structure, and are essential to the unfoldment of the plot. They seem to be quite irrelevant interruptions until we look back upon the completed whole and study the perfected intent of the story. Then we see how essential they are to the epic finish of the novel, and to that total effect which a work of genius creates. Then it is seen that a dramatic unity and well-studied intent hold together every part and make a completed structure of great beauty. Her dramatic skill is great, and her dialogues thoroughly good. Her characters are full of power and life, and stand out as distinct personalities. The conversation is sprightly, strong and wise. Probably no novelist has created so many clearly cut, positive, intensely personal characters as George Eliot, and this individualism is depicted as acting within social and hereditary limits; hence dramatic action is constantly arising. Shakspere and Browning only surpass her in dramatic power, as in the creation of character. Yet her method of producing character differs essentially from that of Shakspere, Homer and all the great creators. She describes character, while they present it. Homer gives no description of Helen; but of her beauty and her person we learn all the more because we are left to find them out from the influence they produce. We know Hamlet because he lives before us, and impresses his personality upon every feature of the great drama in which he appears. George Eliot's manner is to describe, to minutely portray, and to dissect to the last muscle and nerve. She has also a rich and racy humor, sensitive and sober, refined and delicate. She does not caricature folly with Dickens, or laugh at weakness with Thackeray; but she shows us the limitations of life in such a manner as to produce the finest humor. She is never repulsive, grotesque or vulgar; but wise, laughter-loving and sympathetic. Her humor is pure and homely as it is delicate and exquisite; and it is invariably human and noble. She has an intense love and a wonderful appreciation of the ludicrous, sees whatever is incongruous In life, and makes her laughter genial and joyous. Her humor is the very quintessence of human experience, strikes deadly blows at what is unjust and untrue. It is both intellectual and moral, as Professor Dowden suggests. "The grotesque in human character is reclaimed from the province of the humorous by her affections, when that is possible, and is shown to be a pathetic form of beauty. Her humor usually belongs to her entire conception of character, and cannot be separated from it." She laughs at all, but sneers at no one,--for she has keen sympathy with all. George Eliot is not so good a satirist as she is humorist. Her humor is as fresh and delightful as a morning in May, but her satire is nearly always labored. She is too much in sympathy with human nature to laugh at its follies and its weaknesses. Its joys, its bubbling humor and delight she can appreciate, as well as all the pain and sorrow that come to men and women; and she can fully enter into the life of her characters of every kind, and portray their inmost motives and impulses; but the foibles of the world she cannot treat in the vein of the satirist. In her earlier books she is said to have been under the influence of Thackeray, but her satire is heavy, and lacks his light touch and his tender undertone of compassion. Here is a good specimen of her earlier attempts to be satirical: When a man is happy enough to win the affections of a sweet girl, who can soothe his cares with crochet, and respond to all his most cherished ideas with beaded urn-rugs and chair-covers in German wool, he has, at least, a guarantee of domestic comfort, whatever trials may await him out of doors. What a resource it is under fatigue and irritation to have your drawing-room well supplied with small mats, which would always be ready if you ever wanted to set anything on them! And what styptic for a bleeding heart can equal copious squares of crochet-work, which are useful for slipping down the moment you touch them? [Footnote: Janet's Repentance, chapter III.] Similar to this is the account of Mrs. Pullett's grief. It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity Introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization--the sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate ribbon-strings--what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened child of civilization the abandonment characteristic of grief is checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes half-blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too devious step through a door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves, too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility produces a composition of forces by which she takes a line that just clears the door-post. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward--a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with her head leaning backward at an angle that will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things else a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state. [Footnote: Mill on the Floss, chapter VII.] In her later books the strained efforts at satire are partially avoided, and though the satirical spirit is not withdrawn in any measure, yet it is more delicately managed. It is less open, less blunt, but hardly more subtle and penetrative. It is still a strained effort, and it is quite too hard and bare in statement. We are told in _Middlemarch_ that Mrs. Bulstrode's _naïve_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable seriousness. Such a turning of sentiment into satire as the following is rather jarring, and is a good specimen of that "laborious smartness," as Mr. R.H. Hutton justly calls it, which is found in all of George Eliot's books:-- Young love-making--that gossamer web! Even the points it clings to--the things whence its subtile interlacings are swung--are scarcely perceptible: momentary touches of finger-tips, meetings of rays from blue and dark orbs, unfinished phrases, lightest changes of cheek and lip, faintest tremors. The web itself is made of spontaneous beliefs and indefinable joys, yearnings of one life toward another, visions of completeness, indefinite trust. And Lydgate fell to spinning that web from his inward self with wonderful rapidity, in spite of experience supposed to be finished off with the drama of Laure--in spite, too, of medicine and biology; for the inspection of macerated muscle or of eyes presented in a dish (like Santa Lucia's), and other incidents of scientific inquiry, are observed to be less incompatible with poetic love than a native dulness or a lively addiction to the lowest prose. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XXXVI.] This introduction of a scientific illustration will serve to bring another tendency of George Eliot's to our attention. She makes a frequent use of her large learning and culture in her novels. In the earlier ones a Greek quotation is to be found here and there, while in the later, German seems to have the preference. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she describes Bob Jakin's thumb as "a singularly broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey." Such references to recent scientific speculations are not unfrequent. If they serve to show the tendencies of her mind towards knowledge and large thought, they also indicate a too ready willingness to imbibe, and to use in a popular manner, what is not thoroughly assimilated truth. The force of such an illustration as the following must be lost on most novel-readers:-- Although Sir James was a sportsman, he had some other feelings toward women than toward grouse and foxes, and did not regard his future wife in the light of prey, valuable chiefly for the excitements of the chase. Neither was he so well acquainted with the habits of primitive races as to feel that an ideal combat for her, tomahawk in hand, so to speak, was necessary to the historical continuity of the marriage tie. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter VI.] It is doubtful whether any reader will quite catch the meaning of this sentence: Has any one ever pinched into its pilulous smallness the cobweb of prematrimonial acquaintanceship? [Footnote: Ibid, chapter II.] Many of her critics have asserted that this use of the language of science, and the adoption of the speculative ideas of the time, had largely increased upon George Eliot in her later books; but this is not true. In her _Westminster Review_ essays both tendencies are strongly developed. In one of them she says, "The very chyme and chyle of a rector are conscious of the gown and band." Again, she says,-- The woman of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of ideas; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy required for spontaneous activity; the voltaic pile is not strong enough to produce crystallization. It is not just to George Eliot, however, to refer to such mere casual blemishes, without insisting on the largeness of thought, the wealth of knowledge, and the comprehensive understanding of human experience with which her books abound. She often turns aside to discuss the problems suggested by the experiences of her characters, to point out how the effect of their own thoughts and deeds re-act upon them, and to inculcate the highest ethical lessons. In one of her "asides" she seems to reject this method, in referring to Fielding. A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his arm-chair to the proscenium, and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house. I, at least, have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XV.] She does not ramble away from her subject, it is true; but she likes to pause often to discuss the doings of her personages, and to pour forth some tender or noble thought. To many of her readers these bits of wisdom and of sentiment are among the most valuable portions of her books, when taken in their true environment in her pages. She has a purpose larger than that of telling a story or of describing the loves of a few men and women. She seeks to penetrate into the motives of life, and to reveal the hidden springs of action; to show how people affect each other; how ideas mould the destinies of the individual. To do all this in that large, artistic spirit she has followed, requires that there shall be something more than narration and conversation. That she has now and then commented unnecessarily, and in a too-learned manner, is a very small detraction from the interest of her books. In _Adam Bede_ she turns aside for a whole chapter to defend her method of depicting accurately, minutely, in the simplest detail, the feelings, motives, actions and surroundings of very commonplace and uninteresting people. Her reasons for this method in novel-writing apply to all her works, and are worthy of the author of _Adam Bede_ and _Silas Marner_. I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields--on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice. So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility, which we mistook for genius, is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that, even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much harder than to say something fine about them which is _not_ the exact truth. It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened, perhaps, by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel and her stone jug, and all those cheap, common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her: or I turn to that village wedding, kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably with quart pots in their hands, but with expression of unmistakable contentment and good-will. "Foh!" says my idealistic friend, "what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low phase of life! what clumsy, ugly people!" But, bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those "lords of their kind," the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions, are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love among us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet, to my certain knowledge, tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron who could never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth; it does not wait for beauty--it flows with resistless force, and brings beauty with it. All honor and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women and children--in our gardens and in our houses; but let us love that other beauty, too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward, and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the regions of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house--those rounded-backs and stupid, weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common, coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world--few sublimely beautiful women--few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities; I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common laborer, who gets his own bread, and eats it vulgarly, but creditably, with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers; more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is, perhaps, rather too corpulent, and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist. [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XVII.] In all her earlier novels George Eliot has shown the artistic possibilities of the humblest lives and situations. In the most ordinary lives, as in the case of the persons described in _Silas Marner_, and in the least picturesque incidents of human existence, there is an interest for us which, when properly brought out, will be sure to absorb our attention. She has abundantly proved that dramatic situations, historic surroundings and heroic attitudes are not necessary for the highest purposes of the novelist. Hers are heart tragedies and spiritual histories; for life has its tragic, pathetic and humorous elements of the keenest interest under every social condition. Her realism is relieved, as in actual life, by love, helpfulness and pathos; by deep sorrow, sufferings patiently borne, and tender sympathy for others' woes. And if she sometimes sketches with too free a hand the coarse and repulsive features of life, this fault is relieved by her tender sympathy with the sorrows and weaknesses of her characters. She asks her readers not to grudge Amos Barton his lovely wife, that "large, fair, gentle Madonna," with an imposing mildness and the unspeakable charm of gentle womanhood. He was a man of very middling qualities and a quite stupid sort of person, but he loved his wife and made the most he could of such talents as he had. She pleads in his behalf by saying,-- I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are nobody's pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair. Much the larger number of characters in these novels are of the same unpromising quality. Most of them are ignorant, uncouth and simple-minded; yet George Eliot gives them a warm place in our hearts, and we rejoice to have known them all. This ignorant rusticity is discovered to have charms and attractions of its own. Especially does the reader learn that what is most human and what is most lovely in personal character may be found within these rough exteriors and amid these unpromising circumstances. Even so fine a character as Adam Bede, one of the best in all her books, was a workman of limited education and little knowledge of the outside world. The author does "not pretend that his was an ordinary character among workmen." Yet such men as he are found among his class, and the noble qualities he possessed are not out of place among workingmen. Her warm sympathy with this class, the class in which she was born and reared, and her earnest desire to do it justice, is seen in what she says of Adam. He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared here and there in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful, courageous labor; they make their way upward, rarely as geniuses, most commonly as painstaking, honest men, with the skill and conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible echo beyond the neighborhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure to find there some good piece of road, some building, some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform of parish abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two generations after them. Their employers were richer for them, the work of their hands has worn well, and the work of their brains has guided well the hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with lime and red paint; in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honor at church and at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and daughters seated round the bright hearth on winter evenings, how pleased they were when they first earned their twopence a day. Others there are who die poor, and never put off the workman's coat on week-days; they have not had the art of getting rich; but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work is all out of them, it is as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the master who employed them says, "Where shall I find their like?" [Footnote: Chapter XIX.] In _Amos Barton_ she states her reasons for portraying characters of so little outward interest. Amos had none of the more manly and sturdy qualities of Adam Bede, and yet to George Eliot it was enough that he was human, that trouble and heartache could come to him, and that he must carry his share of the burdens and weaknesses of the world. The Rev. Amos Barton, whose sad fortunes I have undertaken to relate, was, you perceive, in no respect an ideal or exceptional character; and perhaps I am doing a bold thing to bespeak your sympathy on behalf of a man who was so very far from remarkable,--a man whose virtues were not heroic, and who had no undetected crime within his breast; who had not the slightest mystery hanging about him, but was palpably and unmistakably commonplace; who was not even in love, but had had that complaint many years ago. "An utterly uninteresting character!" I think I hear a lady reader exclaim,--Mrs. Farthingale, for example, who prefers the ideal in fiction; to whom tragedy means ermine tippets, adultery and murder; and comedy, the adventures of some personage who is quite a "character." But, my dear madam, it is so very large a majority of your fellow-countrymen that are of this insignificant stamp. At least eighty out of a hundred of your adult male fellow-Britons returned in the last census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more or less bald and disjointed. Yet these commonplace people--many of them--bear a conscience, and have felt the sublime prompting to do the painful right; they have their unspoken sorrows, and their sacred joys; their hearts have perhaps gone out towards their first-born, and they have mourned over the irreclaimable dead. Nay, is there not a pathos in their very insignificance,--in our comparison of their dim and narrow existence with the glorious possibilities of that human nature which they share? Depend upon it, you would gain unspeakably if you would learn with me to see some of the poetry and the pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the experience of a human soul that looks out through dull gray eyes, and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary tones. In that case, I should have no fear of your not caring to know what further befell the Rev. Amos Barton, or of your thinking the homely details I have to tell at all beneath your attention. In her hands the novel becomes the means of recording the history of those whom no history takes note of, and of bringing before the world its unnamed and unnoted heroes. Professor Dowden says her sympathy spreads with a powerful and even flow in every direction. In this effort she has been eminently successful; and her loving sympathy with all that is human; her warm-hearted faith in the weak and unfortunate; the graciousness of her love for the common souls who are faithful and true in their way and in their places, will excuse much greater literary faults than any into which she has fallen. The sincere and loving humanity of her books gives them a great charm, and an influence wide-reaching and noble. No one of her imitators and successors has gained anything of like power which is given to her novels by her intense sympathy with her characters. Others have described ignorant and coarse phases of life as something to look at and study, but not to bring into the heart and love. George Eliot loves her characters, has an intense affection for them, pours out her motherliness upon them. Not so Daudet or James or Howells, who study crude life on the surface, and because it is the fashion. There is no heart-nearness in their work, little of passionate human desire to do justice to phases of life hitherto neglected. She has in this regard the genius of Scott and Hugo, who live in and with their characters, and so make them living and real. She identifies herself with the life she describes, and never looks at it from without, with curious and cold and critical gaze, simply for the sake of making a novel. She is more at home among villagers than in the drawing-room. A profound intuition has led her to the very heart of English life among the happier and worthier classes of working-people. There is no squalor in her books, no general misery, but always conscience, respectability and home-comforts. There is something of coarseness in some of her scenes, and a realism too bare and bald; but for the most part she has come far short of what might have been done in picturing the repulsive and sensual side of life. In all her books there is abundant evidence of her painstaking, and of her anxious desire to be truthful. She has studied life on the spot, and gives to it the local coloring. In writing _Romola_, she searched into every corner of Florentine history, custom and thought. She is true to every touch of local incident and manner. In _Daniel Deronda_, she made herself familiar with Jewish life, and has given the race aroma to her portraits and scenes. She is thoroughly a realist, but a realist with a wide and attractive sympathy, a profound insight into motives and impulses, and a strong imagination. She is too great a genius to believe that the novelist can describe life as the geologist describes the strata of the earth. She feels with her characters; she has that form of insight or imagination which enables her to apprehend a mind totally unlike her own. This is what saves the history of Hetty from coarseness and repulsiveness. It is Hetty's own account of her life-woes. Its infinite pathos, and the tenderness and pity it awakens, destroys our concern for the other features of the narrative. Psychologic analysis seems out of place in a novel, but with George Eliot it is a chief purpose of her writing. She lays bare the soul, opens its inmost secrets, and its anatomy is minutely studied. She devotes more space to the inner life and character of her personalities than to her narratives and conversations. She traces some of her characters through a long process of development, and shows how they are affected by the experiences of life. Her more important characters grow up under her pen, develop under the influence of thought or sorrow. Novelists usually carry their characters through their pages on the same level of mind and life; and George Eliot not only does this with her uncultured characters, but she also shows the soul in the process of unfolding or expanding. None of her leading characters are at the end what they were in the beginning; with the most subtle power she traces the growth of Tito Melema's mind through its perilous descent into selfish corruption, and with equal or even greater skill she unfolds the history of Daniel Deronda's development under the impulse to find for himself a life-mission. In this direction George Eliot is always great. Her skill is remarkable, albeit she has not sounded either the highest or the lowest ranges of human capacity. The range within which her studies are made is a wide one, however, and within it she has shown herself the master of human motives and a consummate artist in portraying the soul. She devotes the utmost care to describing some plain person who appears in her pages for but a moment, and is as much concerned that he shall be truly presented as if he were of the utmost consequence. More than one otherwise very ordinary character acquires under this treatment of hers the warmest interest for the reader. And she describes such persons, because their influence is subtle or momentous as it affects the lives of others. Personages and incidents play a part in her books not for the sake of the plot or to secure dramatic unity, but for the sake of manifesting the soul, in order that the unfoldment of psychologic analysis may go on. The unity she aims at is that of showing the development of the soul under influence of some one or more decisive impulses or as affected by given surroundings. The lesser characters, while given a nature quite their own, help in the process of unfolding the personality which gives central purpose to each of her novels. The influence of opposite natures on each other, the moulding power of circumstances, and especially the bearings of hereditary impulses, all play a prominent part in this process of psychologic analysis. Through page after page and chapter after chapter she traces the feelings and thoughts of her characters. How each decisive event appears to them is explained at length. Moreover, the most trivial trait of character, the most incidental impulse, is described in all its particularity. Through many pages Hetty's conduct in her own bedroom is laid before the reader, and in no other way could her nature have been so brought to our knowledge. Her shallow lightness of heart and her vanity could not be realized by ordinary intercourse with one so pretty and so bright; but George Eliot describes Hetty's taking out the earrings given her by Arthur, and we see what she is. The author seeks to open before us the inner life of that childish soul, and we see into its nature and realize all its capacities for good and evil. Oh, the delight of taking out that little box and looking at the earrings! Do not reason about it, my philosophical reader, and say that Hetty, being very pretty, must have known that it did not signify whether she had any ornaments or not; and that, moreover, to look at earrings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary-bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the earrings nestled in the little box. Ah! you think, it is for the sake of the person who has given them to her, and her thoughts are gone back now to the moment when they were put into her hands. No; else why should she have cared to have earrings rather than anything else? and I know that she had longed for earrings from among all the ornaments she could imagine. This faculty of soul interpretation may be illustrated by innumerable passages and from characters the most diverse in nature and capacity. As an instance of her ability to interpret uncommon minds, those affected in some peculiar manner, reference may be made to Baldassarre, in _Romola_. The descriptions of this man's sufferings, the giving way of his mind under them, and the purpose of revenge which took complete possession of him, form a study in character unsurpassed. For subtle insight into the action of a morbid mind, and for a majestic conception of human passion, the passage wherein Baldassarre finds he can again read his Greek book is most worthy of attention. Her ability to delineate a growing mind, and a mind at work under the influence of new and rare experiences, is shown in the case of Daniel Deronda. His quiet love of ease as a boy is described as he sits one day watching the falling rain, and meditates on the possibility which has been suggested to him, that his is not to be the life of a gentleman. He knew a great deal of what it was to be a gentleman by inheritance, and without thinking much about himself--for he was a boy of active perceptions, and easily forgot his own existence in that of Robert Bruce--he had never supposed that he could be shut out from such a lot, or have a very different part in the world from that of the uncle who petted him... But Daniel's tastes were altogether in keeping with his nurture: his disposition was one in which every-day scenes and habits beget not _ennui_ or rebellion but delight, affection, aptitudes; and now the lad had been stung to the quick by the idea that his uncle--perhaps his father--thought of a career for him which was totally unlike his own, and which he knew very well was not thought of among possible destinations for the sons of English gentlemen. The mind of this lad expands; ideal desires awake in him; there is a yearning for a life of noble knight-errantry in some heroic cause. The reader is permitted to watch from step to step the growth of this longing, and to behold each new deed by which it is expressed. He craves for a broader life, but he is surrounded by such a social atmosphere as to make his longing futile. As a young man who is seeking to know what there is in the world for him to do, and who is eager for some task that is to end in a larger life for man, he is again described. It happened that the very vividness of his impressions had often made him the more enigmatic to his friends, and had contributed to an apparent indefiniteness in his sentiments. His early wakened sensibility and reflectiveness, had developed into a many-sided sympathy, which threatened to hinder any persistent course of action: as soon as he took up any antagonism, though only in thought, he seemed to himself like the Sabine warriors in the memorable story--with nothing to meet his spear but flesh of his flesh, and objects that he loved. His imagination had so wrought itself to the habit of seeing things as they probably appeared to others, that a strong partisanship, unless it were against an immediate oppression, had become an insincerity for him. His plenteous, flexible sympathy had ended by falling into one current with that reflective analysis which tends to neutralize sympathy. Few men were able to keep themselves clearer of vices than he; yet he hated vices mildly, being used to think of them less in the abstract than as a part of mixed human natures having an individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to trace with understanding and pity. With the same innate balance he was fervidly democratic in his feeling for the multitude, and yet, through his affections and imagination, intensely conservative; voracious of speculations on government and religion, yet loath to part with long-sanctioned forms which, for him, were quick with memories and sentiments that no argument could lay dead... He was ceasing to care for knowledge--he had no ambition for practice--unless they could both be gathered up into one current with his emotions; and he dreaded, as if it were a dwelling-place of lost souls, that dead anatomy of culture which turns the universe into a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and knows, not everything, but everything else about everything--as if one should be ignorant of nothing concerning the scent of violets except the scent itself, for which one had no nostril. But how and whence was the needed event to come?--the influence that would justify partiality, and make him what he longed to be, yet was unable to make himself--an organic part of social life, instead of roaming in it like a yearning disembodied spirit, stirred with a vague, social passion, but without fixed local habitation to render fellowship real? To make a little difference for the better was what he was not contented to live without; but how make it? It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it. He rescues Mirah and sets out in search of her brother. He finds Mordecai, and gradually a way is opened to him along which his yearning is satisfied. Step by step the reader is permitted to trace the expansion of his mind. A window is opened into his soul, and we see its every movement as Daniel is led on to find the mission which was to be his. When that task is fully accepted he says to Mordecai,-- Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task, in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude--some social captainship, which would come to me as a duty, and not to be striven for as a personal prize. In her strong tendency to psychologic analysis George Eliot much resembles Robert Browning. It is the life of passion and ideas which both alike delight to describe. They greatly differ, however, in their methods of dissecting the inner life. Browning lays bare the soul in some startling experience, George Eliot by the slow development of the mind through all the stages of growth. He is impersonal, but she is always present to make comments and to expound the causes of growth. Yet her characters are as clear-cut, as individual, as his. His analysis is the more rapid, subtle and complete in immediate expression; hers is the more penetrating, vigorous and interesting. His lightning flash sees the soul through and through in the present moment; her calmer and intenser gaze penetrates the long succession of hidden causes by which the soul is shaped to its earthly destiny. Any account of George Eliot which dwells only on her humor and sarcasm, her realism and her powers of analysis, does her grave injustice. She has also in rare degree the power of artistic constructiveness, a strong and brilliant imagination and genius of almost the highest range. She can create character as well as analyze it, and with that brilliant command of resources which indicates a high order of genius. She had culture almost equal to Goethe's, and quite equal to Mrs. Browning's; and she had that wide sympathy with life which was his, with an equal capacity for their expression in an artistic reconstruction of human experience. While Mr. R. H. Hutton is justified in saying that "few minds at once so speculative and so creative have ever put their mark on literature," yet the critic needs to beware lest he give the speculative tendency in her mind a place too prominent compared with that assigned to her creative genius. The poet and the novelist are so seldom speculative, so seldom put into their creations the constant burden of great thoughts, that when one appears who does this, it is likely to be dwelt upon too largely by the critics. George Eliot speculates about life and its experiences, and it is evident she had a philosophy of life at her command; but it is quite as true that she soars on pinions free into the heavens of genius, and brings back the song which no other has sung, and which is a true song. She has created characters, she has described the histories of souls, in a manner which will cause some of her books to endure for all time. If she has allied her genius to current culture and speculation, it has in that way been given continuity of purpose and definiteness of aim. The genius is there and cannot be hidden or obscured; and those who love what is great and noble will be profoundly attracted by her books. If a great thinker, she is still more truly a great literary artist; and such is the largeness and gracious power of her genius that those who do not love her speculations will be drawn to her in spite of all objections. Her genius is generous, expansive, illuminative, profound. Her creativeness is an elemental power; new births are to be found in her books; life has grown under her moulding touch. VII. THEORY OF THE NOVEL. Before George Eliot began her career as a novelist she had already turned her attention to what is good and bad in fiction-writing, and had given expression to her own theory of the novel. What she wrote on this subject is excellent in itself, but it now has an additional interest in view of her success as a novelist, and as throwing light on her conception of the purposes to be followed in the writing of fiction. In what she wrote on this subject two ideas stand out distinctly, that women are to find in novel-writing a literary field peculiarly adapted to their capacities, and that the novel should be a true portraiture of life. She was a zealous advocate of woman's capacity to excel as a novelist, and she saw in this form of literature a field especially adapted to her greater powers of emotion and sympathy. Very generous and appreciative are her references to the lady novelists whom she defends, the excellence of whose work she maintains entitles them to the highest places as literary artists. In the article on "Lady Novelists" she has drawn attention both to those qualities in which woman may excel and to those in which she may fail. In writing later of "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" she criticised unsparingly those women who write novels without comprehending life or any of its problems, and who write in a merely artificial manner. The width of her own culture, the vigor of her critical talent, the largeness of her conception of life and its interests, are well expressed in these essays. Only a large mind could have so truly conceived the real nature of woman's relations to literature, and expressed them in a spirit so intelligent and comprehensive. She would have the whole of life portrayed, and she believes only a woman can truly speak for women. But her faith in woman seems not to have been of the revolutionary character. She rather preferred that women should achieve a higher social condition by deeds than by words. A great intellectual career like her own, which places a woman in the front rank of literary creators, does more to elevate the position of women than any amount of agitation in favor of suffrage. That she sought for the highest intellectual achievement, and that she labored to attain the widest results of scholarship, is greatly to her credit; but more to her credit is it, that she made no claim upon the public as a woman, but only as a literary artist. She asked that her work should be judged on its literary merits, as the product of intellect, and not with reference to her sex. While believing that woman can do her work best by being true to the instincts, sympathies and capacities of her sex, yet she would have the same standard of literary judgment applied to women as to men. Its truthfulness, its reality, its power to widen our sympathies and enlarge our culture, its measure of genius and moral power, is the true test to be applied to any literary work. Such being her conception of the manner in which women should be judged when becoming literary creators, she had no excuses to offer for those who make use of prejudices and a false culture in their own behalf. She says that The most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form, because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the solid education of women. That she believed in the solid education of women is apparent in her own efforts towards obtaining it for herself, and her conception of what is to be done with it was large and generous. Mere learning she did not hold to be an adornment in a woman. The culture must be transmuted into life-power, and be poured forth, not as oracular wisdom in silly novels, but as sympathy and enlarged comprehension of the daily duties of life. When educated women "mistake vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality," she is not surprised that men regard rhodomontade as the native accent of woman's intellect, or that they come to the conclusion that "the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble a soil to bear much tillage." It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in the world; but we have not now to contest their opinion--we are only pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself.... She does not write books to confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight them, in conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you _can't_ understand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw material of culture,--she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence. After this estimate of the value of culture to women, it is interesting to turn to George Eliot's words concerning the legitimate work which women can perform in literature. What she says on this subject shows that she not only had culture, but also the wisdom which is its highest result. She saw that while a woman is to ask for no leniency towards her work because she is a woman, yet that she is not to imitate men or to ignore her sex. She is to portray life as a woman sees it, with a woman's sympathies and experiences. To interpret the feminine side of life is her legitimate province as a literary artist. If we regard literature as the expression of the emotions, the whims, the caprices, the enthusiasms, the fluctuating idealisms which move each epoch, we shall not be far wrong; and inasmuch as women necessarily take part in these things, they ought to give them _their_ expression. And this leads us to the heart of the question, what does the literature of women mean? It means this: while it is impossible for men to express life otherwise than as they know it--and they can only know it profoundly according to their own experience--the advent of female literature promises woman's view of life, woman's experience; in other words, a new element. Make what distinctions you please in the social world, it still remains true that men and women have different organizations, consequently different experiences. To know life you must have both sides depicted. Let him paint what he knows. And if you limit woman's sphere to the domestic circle, you must still recognize the concurrent necessity of domestic life finding its homeliest and truest expression in the woman who lives it. Keeping to the abstract heights we have chosen, too abstract and general to be affected by exceptions, we may further say that the masculine mind is characterized by the predominance of the intellect, and the feminine by the predominance of the emotions. According to this rough division, the regions of philosophy would be assigned to men, those of literature to women. We need scarcely warn the reader against too rigorous an interpretation of this statement, which is purposely exaggerated the better to serve as a signpost. It is quite true that no such absolute distinction will be found in authorship. There is no man whose mind is shrivelled up into pure intellect; there is no woman whose intellect is completely absorbed by her emotions. But in most men the intellect does not move in such inseparable alliance with the emotions as in most women, and hence, although often not so great as in women, yet the intellect is more commonly dominant. In poets, artists, and men of letters, _par excellence_, we observe this feminine trait, that their intellect habitually moves in alliance with their emotions; and one of the best descriptions of poetry was that given by Professor Wilson, as the "intellect colored by the feelings." Woman, by her greater affectionateness, her greater range and depth of emotional experience, is well fitted to give expression to the emotional facts of life, and demands a place in literature corresponding to that she occupies in society; and that literature must be greatly benefited thereby, follows from the definition we have given of literature. But hitherto, in spite of illustrations, the literature of woman has fallen short of its function, owing to a very natural and a very explicable weakness--it has been too much a literature of imitation. To write as men write, is the aim and besetting sin of women; to write as women, is the real office they have to perform. Our definition of literature includes this necessity. If writers are bound to express what they have really known, felt and suffered, that very obligation imperiously declares they shall not quit their own point of view for the point of view of others. To imitate is to abdicate. We are in no need of more male writers; we are in need of genuine female experience. The prejudices, notions, passions and conventionalisms of men are amply illustrated; let us have the same fulness with respect to women. Unhappily the literature of women may be compared with that of Rome: no amount of graceful talent can disguise the internal defect. Virgil, Ovid and Catullus were assuredly gifted with delicate and poetic sensibility; but their light is, after all, the light of moons reflected from the Grecian suns, and such as brings little life with its rays, To speak in Greek, to think in Greek, was the ambition of all cultivated Romans, who could not see that it would be a grander thing to utter their pure Roman natures in sincere originality. So of women. The throne of intellect has so long been occupied by men, that women naturally deem themselves bound to attend the court. Greece domineered over Rome; its intellectual supremacy was recognized, and the only way of rivalling it seemed to be imitation. Yet not so did Rome vanquish Pyrrhus and his elephants; not by employing elephants to match his, but by Roman valor. Of all departments of literature, fiction is the one to which, by nature and by circumstance, women are best adapted. Exceptional women will of course be found competent to the highest success in other departments; but speaking generally, novels are their forte. The domestic experiences which form the bulk of woman's knowledge finds an appropriate form in novels; while the very nature of fiction calls for that predominance of sentiment which we have already attributed to the feminine mind. Love is the staple of fiction, for it "forms the story of a woman's life." The joys and sorrows of affection, the incidents of domestic life, the aspirations and fluctuations of emotional life, assume typical forms in the novel. Hence we may be prepared to find women succeeding better in _finesse_ of detail, in pathos and sentiment, while men generally succeed better in the construction of plots and the delineation of character. Such a novel as _Tom Jones_ or _Vanity Fair_ we shall not get from a woman, nor such an effort of imaginative history as _Ivanhoe_ or _Old Mortality_; but Fielding, Thackeray and Scott are equally excluded from such perfection in its kind as _Pride and Prejudice_, _Indiana_ or _Jane Eyre_. As an artist Jane Austen surpasses all the male novelists that ever lived; and for eloquence and depth of feeling no man approaches George Sand. We are here led to another curious point in our subject, viz., the influence of sorrow upon female literature. It may be said without exaggeration that almost all literature has some remote connection with suffering. "Speculation," said Novalis, "is disease." It certainly springs from a vague disquiet. Poetry is analogous to the pearl which the oyster secretes in its malady. "Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong, They learn in suffering what they teach in song." What Shelley says of poets, applies with greater force to women. If they turn their thoughts to literature, it is--when not purely an imitative act--always to solace by some intellectual activity the sorrow that in silence wastes their lives, and by a withdrawal of the intellect from the contemplation of their pain, or by a transmutation of their secret anxieties into types, they escape from the pressure of that burden. If the accidents of her position make her solitary and inactive, or if her thwarted affections shut her somewhat from that sweet domestic and maternal sphere to which her whole being spontaneously moves, she turns to literature as to another sphere. We do not here simply refer to those notorious cases where literature was taken up with the avowed and conscious purpose of withdrawing thoughts from painful subjects; but to the unconscious, unavowed influence of domestic disquiet and unfulfilled expectations, in determining the sufferer to intellectual activity. The happy wife and busy mother are only forced into literature by some hereditary organic tendency, stronger even than the domestic; and hence it is that the cleverest women are not those who have written books. In the later essay on "Silly Novels" her powers of sarcasm were fully displayed. It showed keen critical powers, and a clear insight into the defects inherent in most novel-writing. She spared no faults, had no mercy for presumption, and condemned unsparingly the pretence of culture. She described four kinds of silly novels, classing them as being of the _mind-and-millinery_, the _oracular, the _white-neck-cloth_, and the _modern-antique_ varieties. All her powers of analysis and insight shown in her novels appeared in this article. Severe as her criticism is, it is always just. It aims at the presentation of a truer conception of the purpose of novel-writing, and women are judged simply as literary workers. This criticism is based on the clearest apprehension of why it is that women fail as novel-writers; that it is not because they are women, but because they are false to nature and to the simplest conditions of literary art. These women write poor novels because they aim at fine writing, and believe they must be learned and grandiloquent. They ignore what they see about them every day, and which, if they were to describe it in simple language, would give them real power. It is this falsity in thought, method and purpose which is so severely condemned. And it is the very justness of the criticism which makes it severe, which gives to a true description of these novels the nature of a stinging sarcasm. That these women are praised by the critics she justly regards as a sure indication of their incapacity, or a sign of man's chivalry towards the other sex, which does not permit him to speak the truth about what he knows to be so false and immature. She also sees that what women need is to be told the truth, and to be compelled to accept the just consequences of their work, The standing apology for women who become writers without any special qualification is, that society shuts them out from other spheres of occupation. Society is a very culpable entity, and has to answer for the manufacture of many unwholesome commodities, from bad pickles to bad poetry. But society, like "matter" and her Majesty's Government, and other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as well as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes from necessity, we believe there are three who write from vanity; and besides, there is something so antiseptic in the mere healthy fact of working for one's bread, that the most trashy and rotten kind of literature is not likely to have been produced under such circumstances. "In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness. Happily we are not dependent on argument to prove that fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but among the very finest;--novels, too, that have a precious specialty, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form and yet be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements--genuine observation, humor and passion. But it is precisely this absence of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which has its absolute _technique_ is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery. And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussi, je joue de la flute;"--a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of "silly novels by lady novelists." Her praise of the great novelists is as enthusiastic as her condemnation of the silly ones is severe. It is interesting to note that in the first of these papers she selects Jane Austen and George Sand as the chiefest among women novelists, and that she praises them for the truthfulness of their portraitures of life, nor is she any the less aware of the defects of these masters than of the deficiencies of silly women who write novels. She finds that Jane Austen never penetrates into the deeper spiritual experiences of life, and that George Sand lacks in that moral poise and purity which is so necessary to the finest literary effort. Her sketches of these women are as truthful as they are interesting. First and foremost let Jane Austen be named, the greatest artist that has ever written, using the term to signify the most perfect mastery over the means to her end. There are heights and depths in human nature Miss Austen has never scaled nor fathomed, there are worlds of passionate existence into which she has never set foot; but although this is obvious to every reader, it is equally obvious that she has risked no failures by attempting to delineate that which she has not seen. Her circle may be restricted, but it is complete. Her world is a perfect orb and vital. Life, as it appears to an English gentlewoman peacefully yet actively engaged in her quiet village, is mirrored in her works with a purity and fidelity that must endow them with interest for all time. To read one of her books is like an actual experience of life; you know the people as if you had lived with them, and you feel something of personal affection towards them. The marvellous reality and subtle distinctive traits noticeable in her portraits has led Macaulay to call her a prose Shakspere. If the whole force of the distinction which lies in that epithet _prose_ be fairly appreciated, no one, we think, will dispute the compliment; for out of Shakspere it would be difficult to find characters so typical yet so nicely demarcated within the limits of their kind. We do not find such profound psychological insight as may be found in George Sand (not to mention male writers), but taking the type to which the characters belong, we see the most intimate and accurate knowledge in all Miss Austen's creations. Only cultivated minds fairly appreciate the exquisite art of Miss Austen. Those who demand the stimulus of effects, those who can only see by strong lights and shadows, will find her tame and uninteresting. We may illustrate this by one detail. Lucy Steele's bad English, so delicately and truthfully indicated, would in the hands of another have been more obvious, more "effective" in its exaggeration, but the loss of this comic effect is more than replaced to the cultivated reader by his relish of the nice discrimination visible in its truthfulness. And so of the rest. _Strong_ lights are unnecessary, _true_ lights being at command. The incidents, the characters, the dialogue--all are of every-day life, and so truthfully presented that to appreciate the art we must try to imitate it, or carefully compare it with that of others. We are but echoing an universal note of praise in speaking thus highly of her works, and it is from no desire of simply swelling that chorus of praise that we name her here, but to call attention to the peculiar excellence, at once womanly and literary, which has earned this reputation. Of all imaginative writers she is the most _real_. Never does she transcend her own actual experience, never does her pen trace a line that does not touch the experience of others. Herein we recognize the first quality of literature. We recognize the second and more special quality of womanliness in the tone and point of view; they are novels written by a woman, an Englishwoman, a gentlewoman; no signature could disguise that fact; and because she has so faithfully (although unconsciously) kept to her own womanly point of view, her works are durable. There is nothing of the _doctrinaire_ in Jane Austen; not a trace of woman's "mission;" but as the most truthful, charming, humorous, pure-minded, quick-witted and unexaggerated of writers, female literature has reason to be proud of her. And this is her suggestive portrait of the other, drawn with that skill which is only displayed when one genius interprets another through community of feeling and purpose. Of greater genius, and incomparably deeper experience, George Sand represents woman's literature more illustriously and more obviously. In her, quite apart from the magnificent gifts of nature, we see the influence of sorrow as a determining impulse to write, and the abiding consciousness of the womanly point of view as the subject matter of her writings. In vain has she chosen the mask of a man: the features of a woman are everywhere visible. Since Goethe no one has been able to say with so much truth, "My writings are my confessions." Her biography lies there, presented, indeed, in a fragmentary shape and under wayward disguises, but nevertheless giving to the motley groups the strong and uumistakable charm of reality. Her grandmother, by whom she was brought up, disgusted at her not being a boy, resolved to remedy the misfortune as far as possible by educating her like a boy. We may say of this, as of all the other irregularities of her strange and exceptional life, that whatever unhappiness and error may be traceable thereto, its influence on her writings has been beneficial, by giving a greater range to her experience. It may be selfish to rejoice over the malady which secretes a pearl, but the possessor of the pearl may at least congratulate himself that at any rate the pearl has been produced; and so of the unhappiness of genius. Certainly few women have had such profound and varied experience as George Sand; none have turned it to more account. Her writings contain many passages that her warmest admirers would wish unwritten; but although severe criticism may detect the weak places, the severest criticism must conclude with the admission of her standing among the highest minds of literature. In the matter of eloquence, she surpasses everything France has yet produced. There has been no style at once so large, so harmonious, so expressive, and so unaffected: like a light shining through an alabaster vase, the ideas shine through her diction; while as regards rhythmic melody of phrase, it is a style such as Beethoven might have written had he uttered in words the melodious passion that was in him. But deeper than all eloquence, grander than all grandeur of phrase, is that forlorn splendor of a life of passionate experience painted in her works. There is no man so wise but he may learn from them, for they are the utterances of a soul in pain, a soul that has been tried. No man could have written her books, for no man could have had her experience, even with a genius equal to her own. The philosopher may smile sometimes at her philosophy, for _that_ is only the reflex of some man whose ideas she has adopted; the critic may smile sometimes--at her failure in delineating men; but both philosopher and critic must perceive that those writings of hers are _original_ and genuine, are transcripts of experience, and as such fulfil the primary condition of all literature. This clear, intellectual apprehension of what woman can effect in literature, had much to do with George Eliot's own success. Yet it is doubtful if she was so true, in some directions, to the instincts of her sex as was George Sand, Mrs. Browning or Charlotte Brontë. Hers was in large measure an intellect without sex; and though she was a woman in all the instincts of her heart, yet intellectually she occupied the human rather than the woman's point of view. With a marvellous insight into the heart of woman, and great skill in portraying womanly natures, she had a man's way, the logical and impersonal manner, of viewing, the greater problems of human existence. Charlotte Brontë more truly represents the woman's way of viewing life; the trustful way of one educated in the conventional views of religion. She has given a corrector interpretation of the meaning of love to woman than George Eliot has been able to present, and simply because she thought and lived more nearly as other women think and live. Hers was the genius of spontaneous insight and emotion, that vibrated to every experience and was moved by every sentiment. Life played upon her heart like the wind upon an Aescolian harp, and she reflected its every movement of joy and sorrow. George Eliot studied life, probed into it, cut it in pieces, constructed a theory of it, and then told us what it means. In this she was unlike other women who have made a deep impression on literature. Mrs. Browning had nearly as much culture, was as thoughtful as she, but more genuinely feminine at the heart-core. Love she painted in a purer and happier fashion than that adopted by George Eliot, and she had the warmer impulses of a woman's tenderness. Her account of life is the truer, because it is the more ideal; and this may be said for Charlotte Brontë also. George Eliot had the larger intellect, the keener mind, was a profounder thinker; but her realism held her back from that instinctive conception of life which realizes its larger ideal meanings. It is not enough to see what is; man desires to know what ought to be. The poet is the seer, the one who apprehends, who has that finer eye for facts by which he is able to behold what the facts give promise of. This ideal vision Mrs. Browning had, and in so far she was the superior of George Eliot. The same may be said for George Sand, who, with all her wildness and impurity, was a woman through and through. She was all heart, all impulse, lived in her instincts and emotions. She had the abandon, enthusiasm and spontaneity which George Eliot lacked. If the one represents the head, the other expresses the heart of woman. George Eliot, as a woman, thought, reasoned, philosophized; George Sand felt, gave every emotion reign, lived out all her impulses. What the one lacks the other had; where one was weak the other was strong. With somewhat of George Sand's idealism and emotional zeal for wider and freer life, George Eliot would have been a greater writer. Could she have moulded Dorothea with what is best in Consuelo, she would have been the rival of the greatest literary artists among men. Yet, with her limitations, it must be said that George Eliot is the superior of all other women in her literary accomplishments. If others are her superiors in some directions, in the totality of her powers she surpasses all. Even as an interpreter of woman's nature and the feminine side of life, she does not fail to keep well ahead of the best of feminine writers. She is more thoroughly the master of her powers, is more self-centred, looks out upon human experience more calmly and with a more penetrating gaze. Foremost of the half-dozen women who during the present century have sought to interpret the feminine side of life, she has done much for her sex. Daring more than others, she has given a greater promise than any other of what woman is to accomplish when her nature blossoms out into all its possibilities. The chief rule for novel-writing laid down by George Eliot in these essays is, that the novel shall be the result of experience and true to nature. She emphasizes the importance of this condition, and says that the novelist is bound to use actual experience as his material, and that alone, or else keep silent. Weak and silly novels are the result of an effort to break away from this rule; but the writer who ventures to disregard it never can be other than silly or weak. Novelists, she says, may either portray experience outwardly through observation, or inwardly through sentiment, or through a combination of both. Observation without sentiment usually leads to humor or satire; sentiment without observation to rhetoric and long-drawn lachrymosity. The extreme fault of the one is flippant superficiality, that of the other is what is called sickly sentimentality. All true literature, she says, is based on fact, describes life as it is lived by men and women, touches and is fragrant with reality. This cardinal principle of literary art she has defined and illustrated in her own strong and expressive manner in this _Review_ article. All poetry, all fiction, all comedy, all _belles-lettres_, even to the playful caprices of fancy, are but the expression of experiences and emotions; and these expressions are the avenues through which we reach the sacred _adytum_ of humanity, and learn better to understand our fellows and ourselves. In proportion as these expressions are the forms of universal truths, of facts common to all nations or appreciable by all intellects, the literature which sets them forth is permanently good and true. Hence the universality and immortality of Homer, Shakspere, Cervantes, Moliere. But in proportion as these expressions are the forms of individual, peculiar truths, such as fleeting fashions or idiosyncrasies, the literature is ephemeral. Hence tragedy never grows old, for it arises from elemental experience; but comedy soon ages, for it arises from peculiarities. Nevertheless, even idiosyncrasies are valuable as side glances; they are aberrations that bring the natural orbit into more prominent distinctness. It follows from what has been said, that literature, being essentially the expression of experience and emotion--of what we have seen, felt and thought--that only _that_ literature is effective, and to be prized accordingly, which has _reality for its basis_ (needless to say that emotion is as real as the three-per-cents), _and effective in proportion to the depth and breadth of that basis_. In writing? of the authors of _Jane Eyre_ and _Mary Barton_, she shows how important to her mind it is that the novel should have its basis in actual experience, and that it should be an expression of reality. They have both given imaginative expression to actual experience--they have not invented, but reproduced; they have preferred the truth, such as their own experience testified, to the vague, false, conventional notions current in circulating libraries. Whatever of weakness may be pointed out in their works will, we are positive, be mostly in those parts where experience is deserted, and the supposed requirements of fiction have been listened to; whatever has really affected the public mind is, we are equally, certain, the transcript of some actual incident, character or emotion. Note, moreover, that beyond this basis of actuality these writers have the further advantage of deep feeling united to keen observation. Especially severe is her condemnation of the tendency to introduce only fashionable or learned people into novels. She says the silly novelists rarely make us acquainted with "any other than very lofty and fashionable society," and very often the authors know nothing of such society except from the reading of other such novels. It is true that we are constantly struck with the want of verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which they seem to live; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other form of life. If their peers and peeresses are improbable, their literary men, tradespeople and cottagers are impossible; and their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing both what they _have_ seen and heard, and what they have _not_ seen and heard, with equal faithfulness. What is simple, natural, unaffected, she pleads for as the true material of fiction. How she would apply this idea may be seen in her condemnation of a novelist who devoted her pages to a defence of Evangelicalism. This writer is "tame and feeble" because she attempts to depict a form of society with which she is not familiar. That the common phases of religious life are capable of affording the richest material for the novelist, George Eliot has abundantly shown, and what she says of their value in this discussion of "Silly Novelists" is of great interest in view of her own success in this kind of portraiture. What she suggested as a fine field for the novelist was to be the one she herself was so well to occupy. Her success proved how clearly she comprehended the nature of novel-writing, and how well she understood the character of the material with which the best results can be attained. It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist than any other, gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and carriages. The real drama of Evangelicalism--and it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it--lies among the middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather than in the mighty? Why, then, cannot our Evangelical novelists show us the operation of their religious views among people (there really are many such in the world) who keep no carriage, "not so much as a brass-bound gig," who even manage to eat their dinner without a silver fork, and in whose mouths the authoress's questionable English would be strictly consistent? Why can we not have pictures of religious life among the industrial classes in England as interesting as Mrs. Stowe's pictures of religious life among the negroes? Was this question a prophecy? It indicates that the writer's attention had already been directed to the richness of this material for the purposes of the novelist. After reading these words we see why she took up the common life of the English village as she had herself been familiar with it from childhood. In order to be true to her own conception of the novel, there was no other field she could occupy. That she understood the picturesqueness of this form of life no reader of her novels will doubt, or that she saw and understood its capacities for artistic delineation. The opening paragraphs of her _Westminster Review_ article on the "Natural History of German Life" afford further evidence of her insight and wisdom on this subject. They also afford evidence of her hatred of the conventional and the artificial in art, literature and life. The spirit of imitation and mannerism common to the eighteenth century was in every way repugnant to her. She could have had only contempt for the literary art of a Pope or a Boileau. The nature of her realism, and the conception she had of its importance, may be understood from these paragraphs, for in them she has unfolded her theory more clearly than in anything else she has written, and with that genius for sympathetic description which is so marked in her novels. How little the real characteristics of the working-classes are known to those who are outside them, how little their natural history has been studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our art as well as by our political and social theories. Where, in our picture exhibitions, shall we find a group of true peasantry? What English artist even attempts to rival in truthfulness such studies of popular life as the pictures of Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo? Even one of the greatest painters of the pre-eminently realistic school, while in his picture of "The Hireling Shepherd" he gave us a landscape of marvellous truthfulness, placed a pair of peasants in the foreground who were not much more real than the idyllic swains and damsels of our chimney ornaments. Only a total absence of acquaintance and sympathy with our peasantry could give a moment's popularity to such a picture as "Cross Purposes," where we have a peasant girl who looks as if she knew L.E.L.'s poems by heart, and English rustics whose costumes seem to indicate that they are meant for ploughmen with exotic features that remind us of a handsome _primo tenore_. Rather than such cockney sentimentality as this as an education for the taste and sympathies, we prefer the most crapulous group of boors that Teniers ever painted. But even those among our painters who aim at giving the rustic type of features, who are far above the effeminate feebleness of the "Keepsake" style, treat their subjects under the influence of traditions and prepossessions rather than of direct observation. The notion that peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village children necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature instead of life. The painter is still under the influence of idyllic literature, which has always expressed the imagination of the cultivated and town-bred, rather than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers dance in the chequered shade, and refresh themselves, not immoderately, with spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen much of actual ploughmen thinks them jocund; no one who is well acquainted with the English peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which no sense of beauty beams, no humor twinkles,-the slow utterance and the heavy slouching walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal, the camel, than of the sturdy countryman with striped stockings, red waist coat and hat aside, who represents the traditional English peasant. Observe a company of haymakers, when you see them at a distance, tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon creeps--slowly with its increasing burthen over the meadow, and the bright green space which tells of work done gets larger and larger, you pronounce the scene "smiling," and you think that these companions in labor must be as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they give animation. Approach nearer, and you will certainly find that haymaking time is a time of joking, especially it there are women among the laborers; but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your idyllic conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence of the mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the northern peasant, except tipsy revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for the English clown exists at the bottom of the third quart-pot. The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up pocket books and never looks into them, and who is too simple even to know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still lingering mistake that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an upright disposition. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket; a reaper is not given to writing begging letters, but he is quite capable of cajoling the dairy-maid into filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not subdued by the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make men moral, something more is requisite than to turn them out to grass. Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin's indignation, are surely too frank an idealization to be misleading; and since popular chorus is one of the most effective elements of the opera, we can hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant laced bodices and picturesque motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of colliers in their pit costume, or a ballet of charwomen and stocking-weavers. But our social novels profess to represent the people as they are, and the unreality of their representations is a grave evil. The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment. When Scott takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's cottage, or tells the story of The Two Drovers,--when Wordsworth sings to us the reverie of Poor Susan,--when Kingsley shows us Alton Locke gazing yearningly over the gate which leads from the highway into the first wood he ever saw,--when Harnung paints a group of chimney-sweepers,--more is done towards linking the higher classes with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of sermons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsification here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects of life. It is not so very serious that we should have false ideas about evanescent fashions--about the manners and conversation of beaux and duchesses; but it _is_ serious that our sympathy with the perennial joys and struggles, the toil, the tragedy and the humor in the life of our more heavily laden fellow-men,--should be perverted, and turned towards a false object instead of the true one. This perversion is not the less fatal because the misrepresentation which gives rise to it has what the artist considers a moral end. The thing for mankind to know is, not what are the motives and influences which the moralist thinks _ought_ to act on the laborer or the artisan, but what are the motives and influences which do act on him. We want to be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental peasant, but for the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan in all his suspicious selfishness. We have one great novelist who is gifted with the utmost power of rendering the external traits of our town population; and if he could give us their psychological character--their conceptions of life, and their emotions--with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Plornish's colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while there is the same startling inspiration in his description of the gestures and phrases of "Boots," as in the speeches of Shakspere's mobs or numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from the humorous and external to the emotional and tragic, without becoming as transcendent in his unreality as he was a moment before in his artistic truthfulness. But for the precious salt of his humor, which compels him to reproduce external traits that serve, in some degree, as a corrective to his frequently false psychology, his preternaturally virtuous poor children and artisans, his melodramatic bootmen and courtesans, would be as noxious as Eugene Sue's idealized proletaires in encouraging the miserable fallacy that high morality and refined sentiment can grow out of harsh social relations, ignorance and want; or that the working-classes are in a condition to enter at once into a millennial state of _altruism_, wherein every one is caring for every one else, and no one for himself. If we need a true conception of the popular character to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our theories, and direct us in their application. The tendency created by the splendid conquests of modern generalization, to believe that all social questions are merged in economical science, and that the relations of men to their neighbors may be settled by algebraic equations,--the dream that the uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which appeals principally to their moral sensibilities,--the aristocratic dilettantism which attempts to restore the "good old times" by a sort of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity and veneration as we grow prize turnips, by an artificial system of culture,--none of these diverging mistakes can co-exist with a real knowledge of the people, with a thorough study of their habits, their ideas, their motives. The landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the mining agent, have each an opportunity for making precious observations on different sections of the working-class, but unfortunately their experience is too often not registered at all, or its results are too scattered to be available as a source of information and stimulus to the public mind generally. If any man of sufficient moral and intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be vitiated by a foregone conclusion, or by a professional point of view, would devote himself to studying the natural history of our social classes, especially of the small shop-keepers, artisans and peasantry,--the degree in which they are influenced by local conditions, their maxims and habits, the points of view from which they regard their religious teachers, and the degree in which they are influenced by religious doctrines, the interaction of the various classes on each other, and what are the tendencies in their position towards disintegration or towards development,--and if, after all this study, he would give us the result of his observations in a book well nourished with specific facts, his work would be a valuable aid to the social and political reformer. The estimates given in these essays of the writings of Jane Austen, George Sand, Charlotte Brontë and Thackeray, show the soundness of George Eliot's critical judgment. She fully appreciated Jane Austen's artistic skill, as she did George Sand's impassioned love of liberty and naturalness. She also saw how tame are Miss Austen's scenes, how humanly imperfect are Thackeray's characters. Her own work is wanting in Jane Austen's artistic skill and finish, but there is far more of originality and character in her books, more of thought and purpose. Miss Austen tells her story wonderfully well, but her books are all on the same level of social mediocrity and flatness. No fresh, strong, natural, aspiring life is to be found in one of them. George Eliot has not Jane Austen's artistic skill, but she has thought, depth of purpose, originality of expression and conception, and a marvellous creative insight into character. She is less passionate and bold than George Sand, not the same daring innovator, more rational and sensible. She is not so much a poet, has little of George Sand's power of improvisation, much less of eloquence and abandon. She has more literary skill than Charlotte Brontë, less originality, but none of her crudeness. She has not so much of the subtle element of genius, but more of solidity and thought. Her theories concerning the novel place George Eliot fully in sympathy with what may very properly be called the British school of fiction. The natural history of man is the subject matter used by this school; and to describe accurately, minutely, some portion of the human race, some social community, is its main object. Richardson, Fielding, Miss Austen and Thackeray are the masters in this school, who have given direction to its aims and methods. They have sought to accomplish in novel-writing somewhat the same results as those aimed at by Wordsworth and Browning in poetry, to follow the natural, to make much of the common, to describe things as they are. They are realists both in method and philosophy, though differing widely from the minuteness and coarseness of Tourguénief and Zola, in that they show a large element of the ideal interfused with the real. This school is seldom coarse, vulgar or sensuous, does not mistake the depraved and beastly for the natural. Its members delight in simple scenes, plain life, common joys; the scenes, life and joys which are open to every Englishman. They have made use of the facts lying immediately about them, those with which they were the most familiar. They have broken away from the traditional theories of life, the manners of books of etiquette and the rules of fashionable society, for the life which is natural and instinct with impulses of its own. The life of the professions is described, local dialects and provincialisms appear, places and scenery are carefully painted, and the disagreeable and painful become elements in these novels, because common to humanity. To this special theory of the novel, as it had been worked out by the English masters of prose-poetry, George Eliot added nothing essential. Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Miss Austen, Miss Mitford, Fielding and Richardson had preceded her along the way she was to follow. Their methods became hers, she accepted their influence, and her work was done in the spirit they had so ably illustrated. In one direction, however, she far surpassed any one of her masters, and gave to the novel a richness of power and fulness of aim it had not attained to with any of her predecessors. George Eliot combined other methods with that of naturalism, not adhering rigidly to the purpose of painting life as it appears on the surface. Not only from the pre-Raphaelites, but from such romanticists as Scott, did she learn much. Past scenes became natural, and history was discovered to be a vast element in the thought of the present. Scott's power of reviving the past in all its romantic and picturesque features, which gave him such capacity for re-creating the life that had once passed away, was not possessed by George Eliot. Still, if not a romancist, she realized how mighty is the shaping power of the past over the present. For this reason, she endeavored to recast old scenes, to revive in living shapes the times that had gone by. The living movements of the present, its efforts at reform, its cries for liberty, its searchings after a freer and purer life, also became a prominent element in her novels. If in this tendency she somewhat enlarged upon the methods of her masters, yet she was quite in sympathy with many who came just before her, and with many more who were her contemporaries. In another direction she kept along the way followed by many of her co-workers, and brought philosophy and socialistic speculation to the aid of the naturalistic method. Indeed, she so far departed from that method, and from the soundest theories of art, as to become to some extent a _doctrinaire_. Her novels, like much of the poetry of the same period, are eclectic in spirit, combining with the naturalistic methods those of the historic, socialistic, culture and speculative schools. Art and culture for their own sake combined in her novels with the purpose to use history and social life obedient to a distinct conception of their meanings. To describe life accurately there must be a clear conception of what life means. Genius never works aimlessly; and in seeing life as it is, always sees that it has a tendency and direction. A mind so thoughtful as George Eliot's, with so strong a love of speculative interest in it, was likely to give to novel-writing done by her a large philosophic element. Yet her philosophy is nearly always subject to her imagination and to her naturalism. Her love of nature, her intimate interest in life and its elemental problems, her passionate sympathy with all human passions and experiences, saves her from becoming a mere _doctrinaire_, and gives to her speculations a pathetic, living interest. The poetic elements of her novels are so many as to subordinate the philosophic to the true purposes of art. In one direction George Eliot departed from the methods of her predecessors, and to so great an extent as to be herself the originator of a new school of fiction. She followed the bent of her time for analysis and psychologic interpretation. It is here more than anywhere else she differs from Charlotte Brontë and George Sand. These two great novelists create character by direct representation, by making their persons live and act. George Eliot shows her characters to the reader by analyzing their motives and by giving the history of their development. The disadvantages of the analytic method are apparent when George Eliot is compared with Scott. Unique, personal and human are his creations, instinct with all human emotions, and profoundly real. It is only the poetic side of life which he sees, not its philosophic. George Eliot wanted to know the meanings of things, and this very desire brings a largeness into her books which is not found in Scott's. She was much the more thoughtful of the two, the one who tried to realize to the intellect what life means. Yet her method of doing this is not always the best one for the poet or the novelist. Scott was no realist, and yet George Eliot has not been more accurate than he. Indeed, he is far more truly accurate in so far as he paints the soul as well as the body of life. The sad endings of her novels grew out of a false theory, and from her inability to see anything of spiritual reality beyond the little round of man's earthly destiny. She did not accept the doctrine that art is to be cultivated only for art's sake, for art was always to her the vehicle of moral or philosophic teaching. The limitations of her art largely lay in the direction of her agnosticism. Scott and George Sand gain for their work a great power and effect by their acceptance of the spiritual as real. There is a light, a subtle aroma, a width of vision, a sense of reality, in their work from this source, which is wanting in George Eliot's. The illimitable mystery beyond the region of the real is the greatest fact man has presented to him, and that region is a reality in all the effects it works on humanity. No poet can ignore it or try to limit it to humanity without a loss to his work. It is this subtle, penetrative, aromatic and mystic power of the ideal which is most to be felt as lacking in the works of George Eliot. Much as we may praise her, we can but feel this limitation. Great as is our admiration, we can but feel that there is a higher range of poetic and artistic creation than any she reached. The quotations presented from her early writings prove that George Eliot began her career as a novelist with a fully elaborated conception of the purposes of the novel and of the methods to be followed in its production. She had thoroughly studied the subject, had read many of the best works of the best writers, and had formed a carefully digested theory of the novel. That she could do this is rather an indication of critical than of creative power. Her novels everywhere betray the greatness of her reasoning powers, that she was a thinker, that she had strong powers of intellectual analysis, and that she had a logical, accurate mind. Had her mind taken no other direction than this, however, she never could have become a great novelist. These essays indicated something beside powers of reasoning and psychological analysis. They also indicated her capacity for imaginative insight into the motives and impulses of human nature, and an intuitive comprehension of what is most natural to human thought and action. They showed appreciation of sympathy and feeling, and delicate perception of the finer cravings and tendencies of even the commonest souls. They gave promise of so much creative power, her friends saw that in novel-writing she was to find the true expression of her large qualities of mind and heart. The person who could so skilfully point out the faults in the poor novels rapidly issuing from the press, and realize the true indications of a master's power in the creations of the literary artists, might herself possess the genius necessary to original work of her own. Her early essays are now chiefly of value for this promise they give of larger powers than those which could be fully expressed in such work. They prophesied the future, and made her friends zealous to overcome her own reluctance to enter upon a larger work. She doubted her own genius, but it was not destined to remain unfruitful. VIII. POETIC METHODS. Had George Eliot written nothing else than the poems which bear her name, she would have been assigned a permanent place among the poets. Having first attained her rank in the highest order of novelists, however, her poetry suffers in comparison with her prose. The critics tell us that no person gifted with supreme excellence in one form of creative expression has ever been able to attain high rank in another. They forget that Goethe was great both in prose and poetry; that his _Wilhelm Meister_ is of scarcely inferior genius to his _Faust_. They also forget that Victor Hugo holds the first place among the French poets of the present century, at the same time that he is the greatest of all French novelists. It would be well for them also to remember that Scott held high rank as a poet before he began his wonderful career as a novelist. A contemporary of George Eliot's, to name a single instance of another kind, was equally excellent as poet and painter. Dante Rossetti made for himself a lasting place in both directions, and in both he did work of a high order. In reality, the novel much resembles the narrative or epic poem; and if a work of true genius, it is difficult to distinguish it from the poem except as they differ in external form. The novel has for its main elements those qualities of imagination, description, high-wrought purpose, which are also constituents of much of the best poetry. The novel is more expansive than the poem, one of the chief characteristics of which is condensation; its theme may take a wider range, and it may embrace those cruder and more common features of life which are inappropriate to the poem. The novelist can make a greater use of humor, he can give more detail to description, and portrayal of character can be carried to a much greater extent, than is usual with the poet. The poet requires a subject more sublime, inspiring and naturally beautiful than the novelist, who seeks what is the more human, nearer the level of daily social existence, and full of the affecting even if ruder interests and passions of life. The novel is so similar to the poem, and in so many ways requires such similar qualities of mind for its production, that there is no inherent reason why the same person cannot do equally good work in both. The supposition is that the poet may become a novelist, or the novelist a poet, in all cases except where there is some outward disqualification. The novelist may not have the sense of rhythmical form and of metrical expression; and the poet may not possess that constructive faculty which builds up plots, incidents and characters. In nearly all respects but these the two forms of creative genius so nearly assimilate each other, it is to be expected a novelist may turn poet if he have a large imagination and a stimulating capacity for metrical expression. Novelists of strong imagination and a ready command of expressive words, barely escape writing poetry when they only purpose to write prose. This is true of Hugo, Auerbach, Dickens and George Eliot, again and again. The glow of creation, the high-wrought impulse of imagination, the ideal conception of life, all move the novelist in the direction of poetry. With much effort he keeps meter and rhyme out of his prose, but simile and metaphor, condensed expression, unusual words, poetic compounds, alliteration, sublime and picturesque expression, will intrude themselves. Dickens even permits meter and rhyme to conquer him, and weakens his style in consequence. He grows sentimental, and the real strength of pure prose is lost. George Eliot is often poetical in expression, touches the very borders of poetry continually, but she seldom permits herself to lapse from the strong, energetic and impressive prose which she almost uniformly writes. Specimens of this noble poetic-prose may be found very often in her pages. While it would be difficult by any transposition of words to turn it into poetry, as may often be done in the case of Dickens's prose, yet it contains most of the elements of a high order of poetry. In the account of the death of Maggie and Tom is to be found a fine specimen of her style, the last words being good iambics. The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; living through again, in one supreme moment, the days when they _had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together_. In the first paragraph of the thirty-third chapter of _Adam Bede_ is a sentence which makes a successful stanza in iambics by the addition of a single word. The woods behind the chase, And all the hedgerow trees, Took on a solemn splendor _then_ Under the dark low-hanging skies. It is very seldom, however, that George Eliot permits anything like meter in her prose, and she is usually very reticent of rhythm. There is fervor and enthusiasm, imagination and poetic insight, but all kept within the limits of robust and manly prose. This capacity of prose to serve most of the purposes of poetry may be seen in a marked degree in all of George Eliot's novels. In the account of Adam Bede's love for Hetty this subtle power of words and ideas to give the charm and impression of poetry without rhythm or rhyme is exhibited in a characteristic manner. I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature, and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music; what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them; it is more than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off, mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter XXXIII.] Love, music and beautiful landscapes continually inspire the poetic side of her nature; and these themes, which are constantly recurring in her chapters, draw forth her imagination and give fervor and enthusiasm to her expression. Her love of nature is deep and most appreciative of all its transformations and beauties. This sensitiveness to the changes of the outward world is a large element in her mind, and indicates the reality of her poetic gifts. This may be seen in a passage such as the following:-- The ride to Stone Court, which Fred and Rosamond took the next morning, lay through a pretty bit of midland landscape, almost all meadows and pastures, with hedgerows still allowed to grow in bushy beauty, and to spread out coral fruit for the birds. Little details gave each field a particular physiognomy, dear to the eyes that have looked on them from childhood; the pool in the corner where the grasses were dank and trees leaned whisperingly; the great oak shadowing a bare place in mid-pasture; the high bank where the ash-trees grew; the sudden slope of the old marl-pit making a red background for the burdock; the huddled roofs and ricks of the homestead without a traceable way of approach; the gray gate and fences against the depths of the bordering wood; and the stray hovel, its old, old thatch full of mossy hills and valleys, with wondrous modulations of light and shadow, such as we travel far to see in later life, and see larger, but not more beautiful. These are the things that made the gamut of joy in landscape to midland-bred souls--the things they toddled among, or perhaps learned by heart, standing between their father's knees while he drove leisurely. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XII.] It is nature as affecting man, and man as transformed into a creature of feeling and passion by the mysterious conditions of his existence, which oftenest arouses the poetic fervor in her. The enthusiasm of high resolves, yearnings after the pure and beautiful, and love's regenerating power, give to her themes which kindle poetic expression to a glow. The vision of Mordecai on Blackfriars' bridge affords a fine example of her love of the ideal in moral purpose, and shows how stimulating it is to her imagination. It is a poetic picture of the finest quality she has given in this chapter, one that could easily have been made to find expression in verse of great beauty; but it is poetry in thought and spirit alone, not in form or structure. It is true prose in form, strong in its fulness of detail, knit together with words of the right texture, built up into a true prose image of beauty in thought. Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images that his coherent trains of thought often resembled the significant dreams attributed to sleepers by waking persons in their most inventive moments; nay, they often resembled genuine dreams in their way of breaking off the passage from the known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually thought of the Being answering to his need as one distinctly approaching or turning his back toward him, darkly painted against a golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in one of Mordecai's habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic aspects of London; and a favorite resort of his, when strength and leisure allowed, was to some one of the bridges, especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he was bending over watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small upper room looking out on dingy bricks and dingy cracked windows, his imagination spontaneously planted him on some spot where he had a far-stretching scene; his thought went on in wide spaces, and whenever he could, he tried to have in reality the influences of a large sky. Leaning on the parapet of Blackfriars' bridge, and gazing meditatively, the breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy, half luminous, the grand dim masses or tall forms of buildings which were the signs of world-commerce, the on-coming of boats and barges from the still distance into sound and color, entered into his mood and blent themselves indistinguishably with his thinking, as a fine symphony to which we can hardly be said to listen, makes a medium that bears up our spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure representative of Mordecai's longing was mentally seen darkened by the excess of light in the aerial background. But in the inevitable progress of his imagination toward fuller detail he ceased to see the figure with its back toward him. It began to advance, and a face became discernible; the words youth, beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity, turned into hardly individual but typical form and color: gathered from his memory of faces seen among the Jews of Holland and Bohemia, and from the paintings which revived that memory. Reverently let it be said of this mature spiritual need that it was akin to the boy's and girl's picturing of the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire are feeble compared with the passionate current of an ideal life straining to embody itself, made intense by resistance to imminent dissolution. The visionary form became a companion and auditor, keeping a place not only in the waking imagination, but in those dreams of lighter slumber of which it is truest to say, "I sleep, but my heart is awake"--when the disturbing trivial story of yesterday is charged with the impassioned purpose of years. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chapter XXXVIII.] Many times in her prose George Eliot has recognized the true character of poetry, and she has even given definitions of it which show how well she knew its real nature. She makes Will Ladislaw say that-- To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion--a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge. [Footnote: Middlemarch, chapter XXII.] She thinks poetry and romance are as plentiful in the world as ever they were, that they exist even amidst the conditions created by invention and science; and if we do not find them there it is only because poetry and romance are absent from our own minds. If we have not awe and tenderness, wonder and enthusiasm, poetry cannot come near us, and we shall not be thrilled and exalted by it. [Footnote: Daniel Deronda, chanter XIX.] Yet it is not difficult to see that George Eliot is not a poet in the fullest sense, because hers is not thoroughly and always a poetic mind, because she reasons about things too much. The poet is impressed, moved, thrilled and exalted, and pours out his song from his feelings and transfused with emotion. George Eliot was given to speculation, loved exactness of expression, and kept too close to the real. She had not that lightness of touch, that deftness and flexibility of expression, and that versatility of imaging forth her ideas, which the real poet possesses. Her mind moved with a ponderous tread, which needed a prose style large and stately as its true medium of expression. While she had poetic ideas in abundance, and an imaginative discernment of nature and life, she had not the full gift of poetic speech. She lacked inspiration as well as flexibility of thought, her imagination was not sufficiently rich, and she had not the full sense of rhythmic harmony. George Eliot first began to write in verse, as was to be expected of one gifted with an imagination vigorous as hers. Her love of music, her keen perception of the beauties of nature, her love of form and color, gave added attraction and impetus in the same direction. That she did not continue through many years to write poetry seems to have been partly the result of her intense interest in severer studies. The speculative cast of her mind predominated the poetical so nearly as to turn her away from the poetic side of life to find a solution for its graver and more intricate problems. Her return to the poetic form of expression may be accounted for partly as the result of a greater confidence in her own powers which came from success, and partly from a desire for a new and richer medium of utterance. So far as can be judged from the dates of her poems, as appended to many of them, "How Lisa Loved the King" was the earliest written. This was written in the year of the publication of _Romola_, and was followed the next year by the first draft of _The Spanish Gypsy_. The poetical mottoes of _Felix Holt_, however, were the first to be published; and not until these appeared did the public know of her poetic gifts. _The Spanish Gypsy_ was not published until 1868, and "How Lisa Loved the King" appeared the following year. The original mottoes in _Felix Holt_ gave good hint of George Eliot's poetic gifts. They are solid with thought, pregnant with the ripe wisdom of daily experience, significant for dramatic expression, or notable for their humor. They are rather heavy and ponderous in style, though sonorous in expression. A stately tread, a largeness of expression, an air of weighty meaning, appear in nearly all these mottoes. As a specimen of the more philosophic, the following will indicate the truthfulness of this description:-- Truth is the precious harvest of the earth, But once, when harvest waved upon a land, The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar, Locusts, and all the swarming, foul-born broods, Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws, And turned the harvest into pestilence, Until men said, What profits it to sow? Her capacity for dramatic expression, in which a rich comprehension of life is included, may be seen in these lines: 1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth That makes a vice of virtue by excess. 2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins Be loss of virtue? 1ST CITIZEN. All things cool with time-- The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find A general level, nowhere in excess. 2D CITIZEN. 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought, That future middlingness. Wisdom alloyed with humor appears in another motto: "It is a good and soothfast saw; Half-roasted never will be raw; No dough is dried once more to meal. No crock new-shapen by the wheel; You can't turn curds to milk again Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then; And having tasted stolen honey, You can't buy innocence for money." Mr. Buxton Forman says, that "in the charming headings to the chapters of _Felix Holt_ it seemed as though the strong hand which had, up to that point, exercised masterly control over the restive tendency of high prose to rear up into verse, had relaxed itself just for the sake of a holiday, and no more. These headings did not bear the stamp of original poetry upon them. Forcible as were some, admirable in thought and applicability to the respective chapters as were all, none bore traces of that clearly defined individuality of style betrayed by all great and accomplished practitioners of verse, in even so small a compass as these headings. Some of them possess the great distinctive technical mark of poetry,--condensation; but this very condensation is compassed not in an original and individual method, but in the method of some pre-existent model; and it is hardly necessary to enforce that power of assimilation or reproduction, however large, is no infallible index of self-existent poetical faculty." This critic finds traces of Shakspere, Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning in these mottoes, and thinks they are all imitative, even when they are best. It is too easy, however, to dispose of a piece of literary work in this manner, and such criticism is very apt to have little meaning in it. George Eliot has proven herself far too original, both in prose and poetry, to make such a criticism of much value. Even if the charge of imitation is a valid one, it is far more probable that it was conscious and purposed, than that George Eliot's poetic gifts could only be exercised when impelled by the genius of some other. To give the impression of quotation may have been a part of George Eliot's purpose in writing these mottoes, which are original enough, and thoughtful enough, to have been attributed to any of the great poets. The real defects of her poetry lie in quite another direction than that of a lack of originality. She has enough to say that is fresh and interesting, she has no need to consult others for what she is to utter; but she has not the fervor of expression, the impressive touch, which separates poetry from prose. There is intellectual power enough, thought even in excess, but she does not soar and sing. She walks steadily, majestically along on the ground, she has no wings for the clear ether. Indeed, she is too much a realist to breathe in that upper air of pure song; it is too fine and delicate for one who loves the solid facts of earth so well as she. If George Eliot often wrote prose which is almost poetry, she also wrote poetry which is almost prose. The concentrated, image-bearing phrases of poetry are wanting oftentimes in her verse. There is meter but no other quality of poetry, and not a few passages could be printed as prose with scarce a suspicion to the reader that they were intended for poetry. Mr. Buxton Forman has given a passage from _The Spanish Gypsy_ in this way, adding only six insignificant words, and restoring _i_ to _is_ in two instances. He rightly says that the passage printed in prose "would surely be read by any one who saw it for the first time, without any suspicion that it merely required the excision of six little words and two letters to transform it to verse; no single expression betraying the secret that the passage is from a poem." _Do_ you hear the trumpet! There _is_ old Eamon's blast. No bray but his can shake the air so well. He takes his trumpeting as solemnly as _an_ angel charged to wake the dead; thinks war was made for trumpeters, and _that_ their great art _was_ made solely for themselves who understand it. His features have all shaped themselves to blowing, and when his trumpet _is either_ bagged or left at home he seems _like_ a chattel in a broker's booth, a spoutless watering-can, a promise to pay no sum particular! George Eliot had not full command of poetic expression. This frequently appears, not only in the fact that many lines are simply prose in thought, but in the defects of the poetic form. Some lines are too short and others too long, some having four and some six feet. An instance of the former is to be found in these words between Don Silva and the Prior, forming one line: Strong reasons, father. Ay, but good? Of the latter: And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion. Still more suggestive are the expedients she resorts to in order to complete the line. Lopez is made to say,-- Santiago! Juan, thou art hard to please. I speak not for my own delighting, I. I can be silent, I. Very near this, Lopez is spoken of in this line: That was not what he drew his sword at--he! Such defects as these are not, certainly, of vital importance, and may doubtless be found in even the greatest poets; but they are noticeable here because of one texture with that which limits the quality of her poetic art. The principal criticism to be made on her poetry is that it was composed and did not create itself out of a full poetic mind. It was wrought out, was the result of study and composition, is wanting in spontaneity and enthusiasm. The most serious defect of her poetry is also the most marked defect of her prose, and this is a want of the ideal element. She was a realist by nature, and could not free herself from the tendency to look at the world on its surface only. In her poetry George Eliot is much more a _doctrinaire_ than in her novels. All her poems, except a few of the shorter ones, are devoted to the inculcation of some moral or philosophic teaching. The very effort she was obliged to make to give herself utterance in poetry predisposed her to intellectual subjects and those of a controversial nature. For this reason her verse has a special interest for those who are attracted to her teachings. Her pen was freer, more creative, in her great novels than in her poems. In fact, her novels, especially _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on the Floss_, are much more poetical than much she did in verse. In her verse she tried to present the more spiritual side of life, to make living and effective her own conceptions of the unseen and eternal. Yet she was burdened constantly in this effort by the fact that she had a new theory of the spiritual and ideal side of life to interpret. The poets who win the homage of mankind, and conquer all hearts to themselves, take the accepted interpretations of the great spiritual problems of life as the basis of their work and give those a larger, loftier meaning through their poetic and ideal insight and capacity of interpretation. They shun theories which must be expounded and interpretations for which no one is prepared. It is here George Eliot is seriously at fault as a poet, however much she may be commended as a teacher and reformer. Perhaps the truest piece of poetic work she did was _Agatha_, in which, however, there is a greater reliance than in most of her poems, on the accepted interpretations of spiritual beliefs. In portraying the trust, childlike and simple, of an old woman, and in endeavoring to realize the poetic elements of that trust and simplicity, she was very effective. In such work as this she would have been much more successful, from the strictly poetic point of view, than she has been, if she had not attempted to give her theories a clothing in verse. In her "Brother and Sister" she was also very successful, but especially so in the "Two Lovers." There is an exquisite charm and power in some of these minor poems. Where the heart was free, and the intellect was not dominant and insistent on the importance of its theories, there was secured a genuine poetic beauty. There is true poetry in these lines: Two lovers by a moss-grown spring: They lean soft cheeks together there, Mingled the dark and sunny hair, And heard the wooing thrushes sing. Oh budding time! Oh love's blest prime! Two wedded from the portal stept: The bells made happy carrollings, The air was soft as passing wings, White petals on the pathway slept. Oh pure-eyed bride! Oh tender pride! There is a beauty and majesty in the poem on subjective immortality which is likely to make it, as it has already become, the one popular poem among all she wrote. There is a stimulus, enthusiasm and abandon about it which is attained but seldom in her other verses. The love of humanity, its passionate longing to sacrifice self for the good of all, is acceptable to much of the thought and purpose of the present time; and its spirit of sacrifice is one which may commend it to all earnest souls. In the more extended poems there is genuine accomplishment just in proportion as the leading purpose was artistic rather than philosophic or moral. Difficult as it was for a successful novelist to secure applause as a poet, George Eliot overcame the distrust of her admirers and gained also a not unmerited place as a poet. Her verse has been a real addition to her work, and is likely to command an increasing interest in the future. That it is not always successful from the merely artistic point of view, that it is not to be placed by the side of the best poetry of the time, is no reason why it will not appeal to many minds and enlist its own company of admirers. Next after the universal poets are those who appeal to a select circle and charm a particular class of minds. Among these George Eliot will stand as one of the foremost and one of those most worthy of homage. As the poet of positivism, she will long delight those in sympathy with her teachings. It would be extravagant praise to call her a second Lucretius, and yet that which has given the Roman author his place among poets will also give George Eliot rank in the same company. With all his merits as a poet, it has not been his poetic power, or his love of nature, or his worth as an interpreter of human nature, which has given Lucretius his reputation as a poet. With real poetic power,--for he would have been a much smaller man without this,--he combined a philosophic mind and a daring genius for speculation. The poetry gave charm and ideal grandeur to the speculations, and the philosophy made the poetry full of meaning and earnest intellectual purpose. He read life and nature with a keener eye and a more profound penetration than others of his time; he tried to grasp the secret of the universe, and because of it he left behind the touch of a strong mind. In some such way as this, George Eliot's poetry is likely to be read in the future. As poetry merely, it cannot take high rank; but for the sake of its philosophy, which is conceived as a poet would conceive it, there is promise that its future is to be one that is lasting. Even for poetry there must be thought, and the larger, profounder it is the better for the poetry, if it is imaginatively conceived and expressed. It is not thought, or even philosophy, which annuls poetry, but want of ideal and creative insight. To Goethe, Wordsworth or Browning there was a gain by enlargement of intellectual materials, but these were suffused in true poetic fire, and came forth a new creation. In so far as George Eliot has attained this result is she a poet, and is she sure of the future suffrages of those who accept her philosophy. At the least, her admirers must rejoice at the enlarged range of expression she secured by the use of the poetic form. IX. PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE. George Eliot was pre-eminently a novelist and a poet; but she is also the truest literary representative the nineteenth century has yet afforded of its positivist and scientific tendencies. What Comte and Spencer have taught in the name of philosophy, Tyndall and Haeckel in the name of science, she has applied to life and its problems. Their aims, spirit and tendencies have found in her a living embodiment, and re-appear in her pages as forms of genius, as artistic creations. They have experimented, speculated, elaborated theories of the universe, drawn out systems of philosophy; but she has reconstructed the social life of man through her creative insight. What they mean, whither they lead, is not to be discovered nearly so plainly in their books as in hers. She is their interpreter through that wonderful insight, genius and creative power which enabled her to see what they could not themselves discover,--the effect of their teachings on man as an individual and as a social being. Whoever would know what the agnostic and evolution philosophy of the time has to teach about man, his social life, his moral responsibilities, his religious aspirations, should go to the pages of George Eliot in preference to those of any other. The scientific spirit, the evolution philosophy, live in her pages, reveal themselves there in all their strength and in all their weakness. She was a thinker equal to any of those whose names stand forth as the representatives of the philosophy she accepted, she was as competent, as they to think out the problems of life and to interpret social existence in accordance with their theories of man and nature. Competent to grasp and to interpret the positive philosophy in all its details and in all its applications, she also had that artistic spirit of reconstruction which enabled her to apply to life what she held in theory. Along with the calm philosophic spirit which thinks out "the painful riddle of the earth," she had the creative spirit of the artist which delights in portraying life in all its endeavors, complexities and consequences. She not only accepted the theory of hereditary transmission as science has recently developed it, and as it has been enlarged by positivism into a shaping influence of the past upon the present, but she made this law vital with meaning as she developed its consequences in the lives of her characters. To her it was not merely a theory, but a principle so pregnant with meaning as to have its applications in every phase of human experience. Life could not be explained without it; the thoughts, deeds and aspirations of men could be understood only with reference to it; much that enters into human life of weal and woe is to be comprehended only with reference to this law. In regard to all the other evolution problems and principles her knowledge was as great, her insight as clear, and her constructive use of them as original. A new theory of life and the universe may be intellectually accepted as soon as its teachings are comprehended; but the absorption of that theory into the moral tissues, so that it becomes an active and constant impulse and motive in feeling and conduct, is a long and difficult process. It takes generations before it can associate itself with the instinctive impulses of the mind. It is one thing to accept the theory of universal law as an intellectual explanation of the sequences of phenomena, but it is quite another to be guided by that theory in all the most spontaneous movements of feeling, conscience and thought. A few minds are able to make such a theory at once their own by virtue of genius of a very instinctive and subtle order; but for the great majority of mankind this result can only be reached after generations of instruction. The use made of such theories by the poets and novelists is a sure test of their popular acceptance. When the poets accept such a theory, and naturally express themselves in accordance with its spirit, the people may soon feel and think according to its meaning. The theory of evolution will not easily adjust the human mind to its conclusions and methods. It is therefore very remarkable that George Eliot, the contemporary of Comte, Spencer, Darwin, Lewes and Tyndall, should be able to give a true literary expression to their speculations. She has not only been able to follow these men, to accept their theories and to understand them in all their implications and tendencies, but she has so absorbed these theories into her mind, and so made them a part of all its processes, that she has painted life thoroughly in accordance with their spirit. Should the teachings of the evolutionists of to-day be finally accepted, and after a few generations become the universally received explanations of life and the universe, it is not likely any poet or novelist will more genuinely and entirely express their spirit than George Eliot has done. The evolutionary spirit and ways of looking at life became instinctive to her; she saw life and read its deepest experiences wholly in the light shed by this philosophy. For this reason her writings are of great value to those who would understand the evolution philosophy in its higher phases. George Eliot accepted the intellectual conclusions of evolution, and the outline thus afforded she filled in with feeling and poetry. She interpreted the pathos, the tragedy, the aspirations of life in the light of this philosophy. Accepting with a bold and undismayed intellect the implications and consequences of evolution, rejecting or abating no least portion of it, she found in it a place for art, poetry and religion; and she tried to show how it touches and moulds and uplifts man. She shrank from nothing which would enable her to reveal how man is to live in such a universe as she believed in; she saw all its hardness, cruelty, anguish and mystery, and resolutely endeavored to show how these enter into and help to form his destiny. In doing this she followed the lead of the positivists in the acceptance of feeling as the basis and the true expression of man's inner life. The emotional life is made the essential life; and all its phases of manifestation in art, poetry and religion are regarded as of great importance. George Eliot viewed the higher problems of life from this point of view, giving to the forms in which the emotional side of man's nature is expressed a supreme importance. Religion, as the response of feeling to the mystery of existence, occupied a most important place in her philosophy. That her interpretation of the emotional elements of life is the true one, that she has discovered their source or their real ideal significance, may well be doubted; but there is every reason for believing that she realized their great value, and she certainly tried in an earnest spirit to make them helpful in the life of ideal beauty and truthfulness. All that agnostic science and the evolution philosophy had to teach, George Eliot accepted, its doctrine of descent, its new psychology, and its theories of society and human destiny. Its doctrine of experience, its ethical theories, were equally hers. Yet into her interpretation of existence went a woman's heart, the widest and tenderest sympathy, and a quick yearning purpose to do what good she could in the world. She saw with the lover's eyes, motherhood revealed itself in her soul, the child's trust was in her heart. The new philosophy she applied to life, revealed its relations to duty, love, sorrow, trial and death. To her it had a deep social meaning, a vital connection with the heart, its hopes and its burdens, and for her it touched the spiritual content of life with reality. It was in this way she became the truest interpreter of the evolution philosophy, the best apostle of the ethics taught by agnostic science. She not only speculated, she also felt and lived. Philosophy was to her more than an abstract theory of the universe; into it entered a tender sympathy for all human weakness, a profound sense of the mystery of existence, and a holy purpose to make life pure and true to all she could reach. This larger comprehension gives a new significance to her interpretation of evolution. It makes it impossible that this philosophy should be fully understood without a study of her books. It is because George Eliot was not a mere speculative thinker that her teachings become so important. The true novelist, who is gifted with genius, who creates character and situation with a master's hand, must have some theory of life. He must have some notion of what life means, what the significance of the pathos and tragedy of human experience, and why it is that good and evil in conduct do not produce the same results. Such a theory of life, if firmly grasped and worked out strongly, becomes a philosophy. Much depends with the novelist on that philosophy, what it places foremost, what it sees destiny to mean. It will affect his insight, give shape to his plots, decide his characters, guide his ethical interpretations, fix his spiritual apprehension. It was because George Eliot adopted a new and remarkable philosophy, one that teaches much which the instincts of the race have rejected, and repudiates much which the race has accepted as necessary to its welfare, that her teachings become so noteworthy. Genius first of all she had, and the artist's creative power; but the way she used these, and the limitations she put upon them by her philosophy, give her books an interest which not even her wonderful genius could alone produce. That philosophy is in debate; and it is not yet decided whether it is mainly false because growing out of wrong methods, or if it be in reality a true explanation of existence. Its revolutionary character, its negative spirit, its relations to ethics and religion, make it remarkable, and even startling. Profound thinkers, men of commanding philosophic apprehension and power of generalization, have accepted it; physical science has largely lent its aid to the support of its conclusions. Yet on its side genius, imagination, creative instinct, artistic apprehension, have not given their aid. Without them it is defective, and cannot command the ideal sentiments and hopes of the race. First to fill this gap came George Eliot, and she yet remains its only great literary ally and coadjutor. Tyndall, Haeckel and DuBois Raymond can give us science; but this is not enough. Comte, Mill and Spencer can give us philosophy; but that is inadequate. They have also essayed, one and all, to say some true word about morals, religion and the social ideals; but they have one and all failed. They are too speculative, too far away from the vital movements of life, know too little of human experience as it throbs out of the heart and sentiments. They can explain their theories in terms of science, ethics and philosophy; but George Eliot explains them in terms of life. They have speculated, she has felt; they have made philosophies, she has created ideal characters and given us poetry; they have studied nature, she has studied experience and life; they have tried to resolve the mind into its constituent elements; she has entered into the heart and read its secrets; they have looked on to see what history meant, she has lived all heart tragedies and known all spiritual aspirations. George Eliot was not a mere disciple of any of the great teachers of evolution. Though of their school, and largely in accord and sympathy with them, yet she often departed from the way they went, and took a position quite in opposition to theirs. Her standpoint in philosophy was arrived at quite independently of their influence, and in many of its main features her philosophy was developed before she had any acquaintance either with them or their books. She wrote concerning John Stuart Mill, [Footnote: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' "Last words from George Eliot," is Harper Magazine for March 1882. The names of Mill and Spencer are not given in this article, but the words from her letters so plainly refer to them that they have been quoted here as illustrating her relations to these men.]-- I never had any personal acquaintance with him, never saw him to my knowledge except in the House of Commons; and though I have studied his books, especially his _Logic_ and _Political Economy_ with much benefit, I have no consciousness of their having made any marked epoch in my life. Concerning another leading positivist she has said,-- Of [Herbert Spencer's] friendship I have had the honor and advantage for twenty years, but I believe that every main bias of my mind had been taken before I knew him. Like the rest of his readers, I am, of course, indebted to him for much enlargement and clarifying of thought. Not long previous to her death, in reading Bridges' version of _The General View of Positivism_, she expressed her dissent more often than her assent, and once she said,-- I cannot submit my intellect or my soul to the guidance of Comte. George Eliot did not take up her residence in London until her thirty-second year, and previous to that time her acquaintance with the positivist leaders must have been slight. Before that age the opinions of most persons are formed, and such was the case with George Eliot. It is likely her opinions underwent many changes after this date, but only in the direction of those already established and in modification of the philosophy already accepted. She became an evolutionist without the aid of those men who are supposed to be the originators of this theory. Every new idea or new way of interpreting nature and life grows into form gradually, and under the influence of many different minds. The evolution philosophy was long accepted before it became a doctrine or was formulated into a philosophy. The same influences worked in many quarters to produce the same conclusions. It was given to George Eliot to come under a set of influences which led her to accept all the leading ideas of evolution before she had any opportunity to know that philosophy as it has been elaborated by the men whose names are most often connected with it. A brief account of the successive philosophic influences which most directly and personally touched her mind will largely help towards the comprehension of her teachings. The most intimate friend of her youth, who gave her a home when trouble came with her family, and stimulated her mind to active inquiry after truth, was a philosopher of no mean ability. Charles Bray not only was the first philosopher she knew, but her opinions of after years were mainly in the direction he marked out for her. In his _Philosophy of Necessity_, published in 1841, he maintained that the only reality is the _Great Unknown_ which we name God, that all natural laws are actions of the first cause. He taught that the world is created in our own minds, the result of some unknown cause without us, which we call matter; but it is thus God mirrors himself to us. "All we see is but the vesture of God, and what we call laws of nature are but attributes of Deity." Matter is known to us only as the cause of sensations, while the soul is the principle of sensation, dependent upon the nervous system; the nervous system depending upon life, and life upon organization. All knowledge comes to man through the action of the external world upon the senses; all truth, all progress, come to us out of experience. "Reason is dependent for its exercise upon experience, and experience is nothing more than the knowledge of the invariable order of nature, of the relations of cause and effect." All acts of men are ruled by necessity. Pain produces our ideas of right and wrong, and happiness is the test of all moral action. There are no such things as sin and evil, only pains and pleasures. Evil is the natural and necessary limitation of our faculties, and our consequent liability to error; and pain, which we call evil, is its corrective. Nothing, under the circumstances, could have happened but that which did happen; and the actions of men, under precisely the same circumstances, must always issue in precisely the same results. Death, treated of in a separate chapter, is shown to be good, and a necessary aid to progress. Society is regarded as an organism, and man is to find his highest life in the life of others. "The great body of humanity (considered as an individual), with its soul, the principle of sensation, is ever fresh and vigorous and increasing in enjoyment. Death and birth, the means of renewal and succession, bear the same relation to this body of society as the system of waste and reproduction do to the human body; the old and useless and decayed material is carried out, and fresh substituted, and thus the frame is renovated and rendered capable of ever-increasing happiness.... The minds, that is to say, the ideas and feelings of which they were composed, of Socrates, Plato, Epicurus, Galileo, Bacon, Locke, Newton, are thus forever in existence, and the immortality of the soul is preserved, not in individuals, but in the great body of humanity.... To the race, though not to individuals, all beautiful things are preserved forever; all that is really good and profitable is immortal." Nearly every idea here presented was accepted by George Eliot and re-appears in her writings. In Bray's later books much also is to be found which she embraced. He therein says that all outside of us is a delusion of the senses. [Footnote: This summary of Bray's philosophy is condensed from an article in the Westminster Review for April, 1879.] The senses conspire with the intellect to impose upon us. The constitution of our faculties forces us to believe in an external world, but it has no more reality than our dreams. Each creature is the creator of its own separate, different world. The unity of outward things is imposed on them by the faculty of individuality, and is a mere fiction of the mind. Matter is a creature of the imagination, and is a pure assumption. It is the centre of force, as immaterial as spirit, as ethereal and unsubstantial. As centres of force imply locality, and locality space, so space must have an extension of its own. Not so; it is a pure creation of the mind. The same holds true of time. The world of mind, the moral world as well, are our own creations. Man has no power over himself; nothing could have been otherwise than as it is. Repentance and remorse are foolish regrets over what could not have been otherwise. All actions and motives are indifferent; only in their consequences can any distinction be observed between them. Such as minister to man's pleasure he calls good; such as produce pain he calls evil. Thereis no good but pleasure, and no evil but pain. Hence there is no distinction between moral and physical evil. Morality is the chemistry of the mind, its attractions and repulsions, likes and dislikes. God is an illusion, as are all moral conclusions based on his existence, Nor has man any reality; he is the greatest illusion and delusion of all. The faculty of individuality gives us all our ideas and feelings, and creates for us what we call our minds. A mind is an aggregate of a stream of consciousness. Ideas, feelings, states of consciousness, do not inhere in anything; each is a distinct entity. "Thinking is," is what we should say, not "I think." Here we are at the ground fact of what constitutes being, on solid footing; consciousness cannot deceive us. Thinking is, even if mind and matter, self and not-self, are illusory. It is, even if we deny both the external and internal causes of consciousness. We know our own consciousness, that alone. All is inference beside. When we consider what inferences are most probable, we are led to build up a constructive philosophy. Consciousness says we have a body, body a brain, and pressure on the brain stops consciousness; hence a close connection between the brain and consciousness. The two go together, and in the brain we must lay the foundation of our philosophy. The mental faculties create the world of individual consciousness, it the outside world. We know only what is revealed in consciousness. Matter and mind are one. Life and mind are correlates of physical force; they are the forms assumed by physical force when subjected to organic conditions. Yet there is no such thing as mere physical force. Every atom of matter acts intelligently; it has so acted always. The conscious intelligence of the universe has subsided into natural law, and acts automatically. This universal agent of life in all things is God. All consciousness and physical force are but "the varied God." There is in reality no agent but mind, conscious or unconscious. God is nature; matter is mind solidified. Matter is force as revealed by the senses. It is the body, force is the soul. In nature, as in man, body and soul are one and indivisible. Mind builds up organisms. There is a living will, conscious or unconscious, in all things. The One and All requires the resignation of the individual and personal, of all that is selfish, to the Infinite whole. The basis of Bray's philosophy was idealism and pantheism, assuming form under the influence of modern science. He quoted Emerson frequently, and the school of thought Emerson represents affected him greatly. On the other hand, he was then a strong phrenologist, had imbibed much of the teaching of Combe's _Constitution of Man_, and he eagerly embraced those notions of the relations of body and mind which have been propagated in the name of physical science. The same double influence is to be seen at work upon the next thinker who was destined to give direction to George Eliot's philosophy. Feuerbach was a disciple of Hegel, whose influence is deeply marked through all his earlier writings. He also was affected by physical science, and he found in sensationalism an element for his system. To him all thought is the product of experience; he founded his ideas on materials which can be appropriated only through the activity of the senses. The external world affects the senses and generates feeling, feeling produces ideas. Feeling re-acts upon the external world, interprets it according to its own wants. Feeling is thus the source of all knowledge; feeling is the basis alike of religion and philosophy. Feuerbach, as well as Bray, finds that man creates the outward world in consciousness; all that is out of man which he can know, is but a reflection of what is in him. This conception of consciousness, this pure idealism, becomes the source of Feuerbach's philosophy of religion. He says that religion is based on the differences between man and the brute; man has consciousness, which is only present in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought. Man thinks, converses with himself, is at once I and Thou, can put himself in the place of another. Religion is identical with self-consciousness, and expresses man's sense of the infinitude of his own faculties. Man learns about himself through what is objective to him, but the object only serves to bring out what is in him; his own nature becomes the absolute to him. Consciousness marks the self-satisfaction, self-perfection of man, that all truth is in him. As feeling is the cause of the outward world, or of that notion of it man has, it becomes the organ of religion. The nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature of feeling. As man lives mainly in feeling, finds there the sources of all his mental and moral life, he comes to regard feeling as the divinest part of his nature, the noblest and most excellent; so it becomes to him the organ of the divine. When man thinks what is infinite he in reality does nothing more than to perceive and affirm that to him feeling has an infinite power. If you feel the infinite, you feel and affirm the infinitude of the power of feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect objective to itself; the object of feeling is feeling objective to itself. God is pure, unlimited, free feeling. In religion, consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide. The object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively. God is like our thoughts and dispositions; consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. Religion is the unveiling of a man's hidden treasures, the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love secrets. It is to the understanding Feuerbach attributes man's capacity for objectifying himself or of attributing to the outward world those qualities which really exist only within. Man's consciousness of God is nothing else than his consciousness of his species. "Man has his highest being, his God, in himself; not in himself as an individual, but in his essential nature, his species. No individual is an adequate representative of his species, but only the human individual is conscious of the distinction between the species and the individual. In the sense of this distinction lies the root of religion. The yearning of man after something above himself is nothing else than the longing after the perfect type of his nature, the yearning to be free from himself, _i.e._, from the limits and defects of his individuality. Individuality is the self-conditioning, the self-limitation of the species. Thus man has cognizance of nothing above himself, of nothing beyond the nature of humanity; but to the individual man this nature presents itself under the form of an individual man. All feelings which man experiences towards a superior man, nay, in general, all moral feelings which man has towards man, are of a religious nature. Man feels nothing towards God which he does not also feel towards man." The dogmas of Christianity are interpreted by Feuerbach from this standpoint of conceiving religion as a projection of feeling upon the outward world. So he explains the incarnation as man's love for man, man's yearning to help his fellows, the renunciation and suffering man undergoes for man. The passion of Christ represents freely accepted suffering for others in love of them. The trinity typifies the participated, social life of the species; it shows the father, mother and son as the symbols of the race. The _logos_ or son is the nature of the imagination made objective, the satisfaction of the need for mental images, the reflected splendor of the imagination. Faith in providence is faith in one's own worth; it indicates the divine reality and significance of our own being. Prayer is an expression of the power of feeling, a dialogue of man with his own heart. Faith is confidence in the reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or laws of nature and reason. Its specific object is miracle; faith and miracle are absolutely inseparable. That which is objectively miracle is subjectively faith. Faith is the miracle of feeling; it is nothing else than belief in the absolute reality of subjectivity. The power of miracle is the power of the imagination, for imagination corresponds to personal feeling; it sets aside all limits, all laws painful to the feelings, and thus makes objective to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction of his subjective wishes. The belief in miracle accepts wishes as realities. In fact, the fundamental dogmas of Christianity are simply realized wishes of the heart. This is true, because the highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of will and deed, of wishing and reality. To religion, what is felt or wished is regarded as real. In the Redeemer this is realized, wish becomes fact. All things are to be wrought, according to religion, by belief. Thus the future life is a life where feeling realizes every desire. Its whole import is that of the abolition of the discordance which exists between wish and reality. It is the realization of a state which corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison with himself. The other world is nothing more than the reality of a known idea, the satisfaction of a conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish. "The sum of the future life is happiness, the everlasting bliss of personality, which is here limited and circumscribed by nature. Faith in the future life is therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the limits of nature; it is faith in the eternity and infinitude of personality, and not of personality viewed in relation to the idea of the species, in which it forever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of personality as belonging to already existing individuals; consequently, it is the faith of man in himself. But faith in the kingdom of heaven is one with faith in God; the context of both ideas is the same; God is pure absolute subjectivity released from all natural limits; he is what individuals ought to be and will be; faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and truth of his own nature; the Divine Being is the subjective human being in his absolute freedom and unlimitedness." It is not probable that George Eliot confined her philosophic studies to the writings of Charles Bray and Feuerbach, but it is quite certain that in their books which she did faithfully study, are to be found some of the leading principles of her philosophy. What gives greater confirmation to the supposition that her philosophy was largely shaped under their influence is the fact that her intimate friend, Sara Hennell, drew from the same sources for the presentation of theories quite identical with hers. Sara Hennell's _Thoughts in Aid of Faith_, published in 1860, is an attempt to show that the religious sentiments may be retained when the doctrines of theology are intellectually rejected, that a disposition of the heart akin to Paul's may be present though conviction be extinct. In securing this result, she too takes Feuerbach as her guide, and his teachings she claims are fully corroborated by the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. Religion she regards as the result of the tendency of man's mind towards philosophy, the outgrowth of the activity of his mental faculties seeking satisfaction for themselves in explaining the world given for his contemplation and study. "The growth of religion in the human intelligence (thereby distinguished from mere blind emotion), is coincident with, or rather immediately consequent upon, the power of forming abstract ideas; that is to say, it is a generalization effected by the operation of the intellect upon the sentiments and emotions, when these have attained to so great extent and distinctness as to become self-conscious." Man early objectifies the qualities he finds in himself and his fellows, regards them as entities, is prostrated in awe and worship before them, conceives them to be gods. He attributes to outward objects his subjective states, and regards them as like himself, only infinitely more powerful. His emotions he believes are caused by these objective beings, and he thinks he is inspired, that the gods are at work within him. Feeling becomes the voice of God, the revelator of religions and theologies. Christianity Miss Hennell regards as "the form in which the religious affections, struggling against earthly limitations, have created for themselves the satisfaction they demand, and, therefore, in so far, real, just as the affections are real." Feeling, she says, is real as logic, and must equally have its real foundation. That is, feeling gives us the truth, actually answers to the realities of things as man can know them. She is here an ontologist, and she is convinced that feeling is a direct witness of the deeper knowledge and reality which man seeks in religion. The permanency and validity of religion she believes in, and she testifies to its wholesome and ennobling effect upon the race. "Christianity, having formed an actual portion of the composition both of our own individual experience and of the world's history, can no more be annihilated out of them than the sum of what we learned during a certain number of years of our childhood, from the one, or the effects of any notable occurrence, such as the fall of the Roman Empire, or the Norman invasion, from the other;--Christianity on every view, whether of its truth or falsity, and consequently of its good or bad effect, has undoubtedly contributed to make us what we are; without it we should have grown into something incalculably different from our present selves.... And how can it be otherwise than real to us, this belief that has nourished the souls of us all, and seems to have moulded actually anew their internal constitution, as well as stored them up with its infinite variety of external interests and associations? What other than a very real thing has it been in the life of the world, sprang out of, and again causing to spring forth, such volumes of human emotion? making a current, as it were, of feeling, that has drawn within its own sphere all the moral vitality of so many ages. In all this reality of influence there is indeed the testimony of Christianity having truly formed an integral portion of the organic life of humanity." Though Miss Hennell is so earnest a believer in Christianity, yet she totally rejects the idea of any objective reality corresponding to its dogmas. This conclusion is based on the philosophic notion, which she shares with Bray, Feuerbach, George Eliot, Spencer and Lewes, that man has no real knowledge whatever except that which is given in consciousness. This philosophy, shared in common by these persons, is called by Lewes "reasoned realism," and by Spencer "transfigured realism." It accepts the reality of an outward world, but says that all man knows of it is, that it produces impressions on his senses which are transmuted into sensations. Sensations produce feelings, and feelings become ideas. According to Spencer, the steps of knowledge are three: the co-ordinating of sensations in a living organism; the registering of impressions within the organism in such a way as to build up a store of experiences; the transmission of the organism and its susceptibilities to offspring. Miss Hennell accepts Spencer's theory that feeling is the source of all our knowledge. Not only, as she says, does it "constitute the essential and main vitality of our nature," but when it is stored up in the human organism and inherited, it becomes the vital source out of which all moral and religious truth is built up. Experience, transformed into inherited feeling, takes on the form of those intuitions which "are the only reliable ground of solid belief." "These sentiments which are born within us, slumbering as it were in our nature, ready to be awakened into action immediately they are roused by hint of corresponding circumstances, are drawn out of the whole of previous human existence. They constitute our treasured inheritance out of all the life that has been lived before us, to which no age, no human being who has trod the earth and laid himself to rest with all his mortal burden upon her maternal bosom, has failed to add his contribution. No generation has had its engrossing conflict, surely battling out the triumphs of mind over material force, and through forms of monstrous abortions concurrent with its birth, too hideous for us now to bear in contemplation, moulding the early intelligence by every struggle, and winning its gradual powers,--no single soul has borne itself through its personal trial,--without bequeathing to us of its fruit. There is not a religious thought that we take to ourselves for secret comfort in our time of grief, that has not been distilled out of the multiplicity of the hallowed tears of mankind; not an animating idea is there for our fainting courage that has not gathered its inspiration from the bravery of the myriad armies of the world's heroes. All this best of humanity's hard earnings has been hoarded with generous care by our _alma natura naturans_; so that at last, in our rich ages, the _mens naturafa_ opens its gaze with awful wonder upon its environment of spiritual possessions." The intimate sympathy of George Eliot and Miss Hennell indicates that they followed much the same studies, and it is certain they arrived at very similar conclusions. That the one was directly influenced or led by the other there seem to be no reasons for believing. All that is probable is, that there was a close affinity of thought and purpose between them, and that they arrived at similar philosophical conclusions. The same is to be said in regard to George Eliot's relations to George Henry Lewes. Her theories of life, as has been already clearly indicated, were firmly fixed before she knew him, and her philosophical opinions were formed. The similarity of their speculative opinions doubtless had something to do with bringing them together; and it is certain that the tenor of their thoughts, their views about life, and their spiritual aspirations, were very much alike, giving promise of a most thorough sympathy in all their intellectual and moral pursuits. If she was influenced by him, he was quite as much influenced by her. Lewes accepted the philosophical side of Comte's Positive Philosophy, but the religious side of it he rejected and strongly condemned. In his _History of Philosophy_, he says, "Antagonism to the method and certain conclusions of the _Politique positive_ led me for many years to regard that work as a deviation from the Positive Philosophy in every way unfortunate. My attitude has changed now that I have learned (from the remark of one very dear to me) to regard it as an Utopia, presenting hypotheses rather than doctrines, suggestions for inquirers rather than dogmas for adepts--hypotheses carrying more or less of truth, and serviceable as a provisional mode of colligating facts, to be confirmed or contradicted by experience." It is altogether probable, as in this case, that George Eliot gave Lewes the suggestive aid of her acute mind. If she was aided by him, it was only as one strong mind aids another, by collision and suggestion rather than by direct teaching. Lewes may have had the effect to deepen and establish firmly the conclusions already reached by George Eliot, and a consideration of his philosophy must confirm this conjecture. He, too, makes feeling the basis of all knowing. From this point, however, he diverges widely from Herbert Spencer and the other English empiricists. Spencer regards matter and mind as two phases of an underlying substance, which he presents as the unknown and unknowable. Lewes at once denies the duality implied in the words matter and mind, motion and feeling, and declares these are one and the same thing, objectively or subjectively presented. Feeling is motion, and motion is feeling; mind is the spiritual aspect of the material organism, and matter is the objective aspect of feeling. Feeling is not the cause of motion, as idealism would suggest; and motion does not cause or turn into feeling, as materialism teaches. The two are absolutely identical; there is no dualism or antithesis. In the same way, cause and effect are but two aspects of one phenomenon; there is no separation between them, but one and the same thing before and after. He applies this idea to the conception of natural law, and declares it to be only the persistence of phenomena; that is, the persistence of feeling. He denies that there is any absolute behind phenomena; the absolute is in the phenomena, which is the only reality. The phenomenal universe is simply a group of relations, nothing more; and what seems to be, really exists, because the relations are real. It is not necessary here to enter into a full presentation of Lewes's philosophy, but his theories about the functions of feeling are of importance, in view of George Eliot's acceptance of them. They have been summarized into the statement that "all truths are alike feelings, ideally distinguishable according to the aspects under which they are viewed. There is no motion apart from feeling, for the motion _is_ the feeling; there is no force apart from matter which compels it to moves for the force _is_ the matter, as matter is motion--differently viewed; there is no essence or substance which determines the properties, for the substance is the whole group of properties; there are no causes outside of effects, no laws outside the processes, no reality outside the phenomena, no absolute outside the relative, which determine things to be as they are and not otherwise, for all these are but different sides of one and the same thing." The central thought presented by Lewes is, that "for us there is nothing but feeling, whose subjective side is sensations, perceptions, memories, reasonings, the ideal constructions of science and philosophy, emotions, pleasures, pains; whose objective side is motion, matter, force, cause, the absolute." The outcome of this theory is, it enables Lewes to believe that the inner and outer practically agree, that our feelings give a sufficiently correct picture of the universe. In reality, the two do not agree, and even "science is in no respect a plain transcript of reality;" but so intimate are feeling and the outer world, that the inward report is to be regarded as practically a correct one. In many ways Lewes differed from his contemporaries, disagreeing again and again with Spencer, Bain and Huxley. He often seems much nearer Schelling than Haeckel. He differs from Schelling in his demand for verification and the inductive method, and in claiming that all his conclusions are the result of scientific experiments and deductions. He agrees with Schelling in his rejection of mechanical processes and in his acceptance of a vital, organic method in nature and in social development. He differs from many of the other leaders of speculative science in his rejection of reflex action, maintaining that the brain is not the only seat of sensation, and that all cerebral processes are mental processes. With equal vigor he rejects the theory of animal automatism, and the assertion that animal actions can be completely expressed and accounted for in terms of nervous matter and motion. The laws of the mind, he maintained, are not to be deduced from physiological processes, but with them must be joined the psychical processes of the individual and the social man. He separates man by an impassable barrier from the lower animals, this gulf between them being due to human society and to the social acquisition of language. In the social factor he finds an important element of psychology, and one that must always come in to overturn any mechanical theories of mental activity. It has been very truly said, that Lewes must be credited with the doctrine of the dependence of the human mind on the social medium. Others had hit upon this idea, and it had been very well developed by Spencer and Comte; but Lewes gave it a wider and profounder interpretation than any other. One of his critics says that Lewes "has the sort of claim to have originated this theory that Bacon has to be considered the discoverer of the inductive method." He not only held with Spencer and other evolutionists, that the human mind is the product of experience in contact with the outer world, that experience transmitted by heredity and built up into mental processes and conclusions; but he maintained that the social medium is a much greater and more important factor. The past makes the present; the social life develops the individual. Our language, our thought, as individuals, are the product of the collective life of the race. "We are to seek in the social organism for all the main conditions of the higher functions, and in the social medium of beliefs, opinions, institutions, &c., for the atmosphere breathed by the intellect. Man is no longer to be considered simply as an assemblage of organs, but also as an organ in a collective organism. From the former he derives his sensations, judgments, primary impulses; from the latter, his conceptions, theories and virtues. This is very clear when we learn how the intellect draws both its inspiration and its instrument from the social needs. All the materials of intellect are images and symbols, all its processes are operations on images and symbols. Language--which is wholly a social product for a social need--is the chief vehicle of symbolical operation, and the only means by which abstraction is affected.... Language is the creator and sustainer of that ideal world in which the noblest part of human activity finds a theatre, the world of thought and spiritual insight, of knowledge and duty, loftily elevated above that of sense and appetite. Into this ideal world man absorbs the universe as in a transfiguration. It is here that he shapes the programme of his existence; and to that programme he makes the real world conform. It is here he forms his highest rules of conduct. It is here he plants his hopes and joys. It is here he finds his dignity and power. The ideal world becomes to him the supreme reality." Lewes said that what a man thinks "is the necessary product of his organism and external conditions." The "organism itself is the product of its history; it is what it has become; it is a part of the history of the race." Because man is a creature of feeling he is susceptible to the influences of the outer world, and from the influences and experiences thus received the foundations of his mental life are laid. The structure erected on this foundation, however, is the product of man's social environment. As a social being, he inherits mental capacities, and all the instruments of mental, moral and social development, as these have been produced in the past. The social structure takes up and preserves the results of individual effort; and social capacity enlarges mental and moral power quite beyond what mere inheritance produces. Lewes assigned as high a value to introspection as to observation in psychology, and said that whatever place is assigned to the one in scientific method must be assigned to the other. He therefore accorded a high value to imagination and intuition, and to all ideal constructions of life and its meanings which are based on science. All knowledge grows out of feeling, and must be expressible again in feeling, if it is to have any value. Accordingly, man's life is of little value apart from sentiment, and the emotional nature must always be satisfied. As Lewes begins his philosophy in feeling, he holds that the final object of philosophy is to develop feeling into a perfect expression, in accordance with the ideal wants of man's nature. In other words, the final and supreme object of philosophy is the expression of religion and the founding of a moral and spiritual system of life. He believed that religion will continue to regulate the evolution of humanity, and in "a religion founded on science and expressing at each stage what is known of the world and of man." As much as any zealous Christian believer he accepted man's need of spiritual culture and religious development. At the same time, his philosophy rejected a substantive absolute, or any other spiritual realities or existences apart from the universe given in feeling and consciousness. Accordingly, man must find his ideal satisfactions, his spiritual realities and moral ideals, within the limits of the universe as known to philosophy, and in the organic life of the race. George Eliot was also largely influenced by the teachings of Auguste Comte. The place he assigned to positive knowledge and the inductive method, to feeling, to development and the influence of the past upon the present, were all accepted by her in an enthusiastic spirit. Altruism commanded her hearty belief, and to its principles she devoted her life. Comte's conceptions in regard to sentiment, and the vital importance of religion and social organization, had her entire assent. She differed from him in regard to spiritual and social organization, and she could not accept his arbitrary and artificial methods. One of the leaders of positivism in England [Footnote: Some Public Aspects of Positivism, the annual address before the Postivist Society, London, January 1, 1881, by Professor E.G. Beesley, of University College.] has given this account of her relations to its organized movements and to its founder: "Her powerful intellect had accepted the teaching of Auguste Comte, and she looked forward to the reorganization of belief on the lines which he had laid down. Her study of his two great works was diligent and constant. The last time I saw her--a few days before her death--I found that she had just been reading over again, with closest attention, that wonderful treatise, _The General View of Positivism_, a book which always seems full of fresh wisdom, however often one comes back to it. She had her reservations, no doubt. There were details in Comte's work which did not satisfy her. But all who knew her were aware--and I speak from an acquaintance of eighteen years--that she had not only cast away every shred of theology and metaphysics, but that she had found refuge from mere negativism in the system of Comte. She did not write her positivism in broad characters on her books. Like Shakspere, she was first an artist and then a philosopher; and I imagine she thought it to be her business as an artist rather to paint humanity as it is than as she would have it to be. But she could not conceal her intellectual conviction, and few competent persons read her books without detecting her standpoint. If any doubt could have existed, it was set at rest by that noble poem on 'Subjective Immortality,' the clearest, and at the same time the most beautiful, expression that has yet been given to one of the most distinctive doctrines of positivism; a composition of which we can already say with certainty that it will enter into the positivist liturgies of all countries and through all time. Towards positivism as an organization, a discipline,--in short, as a church,--her attitude must be plainly stated. She had much sympathy with it, as she showed by regularly subscribing to positivist objects, as, for instance, to the fund of the central organization in Paris presided over by M. Laffitte. But she sought membership neither in that nor any other church. Like most of the stronger and thoroughly emancipated minds in this period of transition and revolutionary disturbance, she looked not beyond her own conscience for guidance and authority, but judged for herself, appealing to no external tribunal from the solitary judgment-seat within. I do not for a moment suppose that she looked on the organization of a church as unattainable; but she did not regard it as attained." Another of her friends [Footnote: W.M.W. Call in the Westminster Review for July, 1881.] has indicated very clearly the nature and extent of her dissent from Comte. He remarks that "her apologetic representation of the _Politique_ as an _Utopia_ evinces that she did not admit the cogency of its reasoning, or regard the entire social reconstruction of Comte as demonstrably valid. Her dissatisfaction with some of his speculations, as expressed to ourselves in the spring of 1880, was very decided.... All membership with the positivist community she steadily rejected. That a philosophy originally so catholic as that of Comte should assume a sectarian character, was a contingency she foreboded and deprecated." In this last remark we doubtless have the explanation of George Eliot's dissent from Comte. She believed in an organic, vital development of a higher social structure, which will be brought about in the gradual evolution of humanity. Comte's social structure was artificial, the conception of one mind, and therefore as ill adapted to represent the wants of mankind as any other system devised by an individual thinker. His philosophy proper, his system of positive; thought, she accepted with but few reservations. Her views in this direction, as in many others, were substantially those presented by Lewes in his many works bearing on positivism. She was profoundly indebted to Comte, although in her later years she largely passed beyond his influence to the acceptance of the new evolution philosophy. In fact, she belonged to that school of English positivists which has only accepted the positive philosophy of Comte, and which has rejected his later work in the direction of social and religious construction. Lewes was the earliest of English thinkers to look at Comte in this way; but other representative members of the school are John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Frederic Harrison and John Morley. Zealously accepting Comte's position that philosophy must limit itself to positive data and methods, they look upon the "Religion of Humanity," with Prof. Tyndall, as Catholicism minus Christianity, and reject it. She certainly came nearer to Comte in some directions than to Herbert Spencer, for the latter has not so fully recognized those elements of the mental and social life which most attracted her attention. Her theory of duty is one which he does not accept. He insists in his _Data of Ethics_ that duty will become less and less _obligatory_ and necessary in the future, because all action will be in harmony with the impulses of the inner man and with the conditions of the environment. This conclusion is entirely opposed to the moral-theory of George Eliot, and is but one instance of their wide divergence. He insists, in his _Study of Sociology_, that the religious consciousness will not change its lines of evolution. He distinctly rejects the conclusion arrived at by George Eliot, that there is no Infinite Reality knowable to man, and that the substance and reality of religion is purely subjective. "That the object-matter of religion," he says, "can be replaced by another object-matter, as supposed by those who think the 'religion of humanity' will be the religion of the future, is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor by deduction. However dominant may become the moral sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never exclude the sentiment alone properly called religious, awakened by that which is behind humanity and behind all other things." George Eliot was content with humanity, and believed that all religion arises out of the subjective elements of human life. At the same time that she made religion a development from feeling, she limited the moral law to emotional sanctions. On the contrary, Spencer is much more a rationalist, and insists on the intellectual basis both of morals and of religion. He makes less of feeling than she; and in this fact is to be found a wide gulf of separation between them. She could have been no more content with his philosophy than she was indebted to it in the construction of her own. As much one as they are in their philosophic basis and general methods, they are antagonistic in their conceptions about man and in the place assigned to nature in the development of religion. To George Eliot, religion is the development of feeling. To Spencer, it is the result of our "_thought_ of a power of which humanity is but a small and fugitive product." In these, as in other directions, they were not in sympathy. Her realism, her psychologic method, her philosophic theories, her scientific sympathies, she did not derive from him, diligently as she may have studied his books. George Eliot agreed with Comte and all other positivists in setting aside every inquiry into causes, and limiting philosophy to the search after laws. The idea of causes is idealistic, and a cause of any kind whatever is, according to these thinkers, not to be found. "The knowledge of laws," says Comte, "is henceforth to take the place of the search after causes." In other words, it is impossible for man to find out _why_ anything is, he can only know _how_ it is. George Eliot entirely agreed with Comte as to the universal dominion of law. She also followed him in his teachings about heredity, which he held to be the cause of social unity, morality, and the higher or subjective life. His conception of feeling as the highest expression of human life confirmed the conclusions to which she had already arrived from the study of Feuerbach. She was an enthusiastic believer in the Great Being, Humanity; she worshipped at that shrine. More to her than all other beliefs was her belief that we are to live for others. With Comte she said, "Altruism alone can enable us to live in the highest and truest sense." She would have all our doctrines about _rights_ eliminated from morality and politics. They are as absurd, says Comte, as they are immoral. George Eliot had a strong tendency towards philosophical speculations. While yet a student she expressed an ardent desire that she might live to reconcile the philosophy of Locke with that of Kant. In positivism, as developed and modified by Lewes, she found that reconciliation. She went far towards accepting the boldest speculations of the agnostic science of the time, but she modified it again and again to meet the needs of her own broader mind and heart. Yet it is related of her that in parting with one of the greatest English poets, probably Tennyson, when he said to her, "Well, good-by, you and your molecules," she replied, "I am quite content with my molecules." Her speculations led to the rejection of anything like a positive belief in God, to an entire rejection of faith in a personal immortality, and to a repudiation of all idealistic conceptions of knowledge derived from supersensuous sources. Her theories are best represented by the words environment, experience, heredity, development, altruism, solidarité, subjective immortality. These speculations confront the reader in nearly every chapter of her novels, and they gave existence to all but a very few of her poems. X. DISTINCTIVE TEACHINGS. Science was accepted by George Eliot as furnishing the method and the proof for her philosophic and religious opinions. She was in hearty sympathy with Spencer and Darwin in regard to most of their speculations, and the doctrine of evolution was one which entirely approved itself to her mind. All her theories were based fundamentally on the hypothesis of universal law, which she probably interpreted with Lewes, in his _Foundations of a Creed_, as the uniformities of Infinite Activity. Not only in the physical world did she see law reigning, but also in every phase of the moral and spiritual life of man. In reviewing Lecky's _Rationalism in Europe_, she used these suggestive words concerning the uniformity of sequences she believed to be universal in the fullest sense: The supremely important fact that the gradual reduction of all phenomena within the sphere of established law, which carries as a consequence the rejection of the miraculous, and has its determining current in the development of physical science, seems to have engaged comparatively little of his attention; at least he gives it no prominence. The great conception of uniform regular sequence, without partiality and without caprice--the conception which is the most potent force at work in the modification of our faith, and of the practical form given to our sentiments--could only grow out of that patient watching of external fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions, which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical science. [Footnote: Fortnightly Review, May, 1865.] The uniformities of nature have the effect upon man, through his nervous organization, of developing a responsive feeling and action. He learns to respond to that uniformity, to conform his actions to it. The habits thus acquired are inherited by his children, and moral conduct is developed. Heredity has as conspicuous a place in the novels of George Eliot as in the scientific treatises of Charles Darwin. She has attempted to indicate the moral and social influences of heredity, that it gives us the better part of our life in all directions. Heredity is but one phase of the uniformity of nature and the persistence of its forces. That uniformity never changes for man; his life it entirely ignores. He is crushed by its forces; he is given pain and sorrow through its unpitying disregard of his tender nature. Not only the physical world, but the moral world also, is unfailing in the development of the legitimate sequences of its forces. There is no cessation of activity, no turning aside of consequences, no delay in the transformation of causes into necessary effects. George Eliot never swerves from this conception of the universe, physical and moral; everywhere cause is but another name for effect. The unbending order adopts man into its processes, helps him when he conforms to them, and gives him pain when he disregards them. The whole secret of man's existence is to be found in the agreement of his life with the invariable sequences of nature and moral activity; harmony with them brings true development, discord brings pain and sorrow. The unbending nature of law, and man's relations to it, she has portrayed in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," when describing Tina's sorrows. While this poor little heart was being bruised with a weight too heavy for it, Nature was holding on her calm inexorable way, in unmoved and terrible beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was making brilliant day to busy nations oil the other side of the expectant earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and broadening onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships were laboring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest, and sleepless statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest centre of quivering life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought food, and has found the nest torn and empty. The effect of the uniformities of nature upon man, as George Eliot regarded them, is not quite that which would be inferred from these words alone. While she believed that nature is as unbending and pitiless as is here indicated, yet that unbending uniformity, which never changes its direction for man, is a large influence towards the development of his higher life. It has the effect on man to develop feeling which is the expression of all that is best and most human in his life. George Eliot believed that the better and nobler part of man's life is to be found in feeling. It is the first expression which he makes as a sentient being, to have emotions; and his emotions more truly represent him than the purely intellectual processes of the mind. She would have us believe that feeling is rather to be trusted than the intellect, that it is both a safer and a surer guide. In _Middlemarch_ she says that "our good depends on the quality and breadth of our emotions." Her conception of the comparative worth of feeling and logic is expressed in _Romola_ with a characteristic touch. After all has been said that can be said about the widening influence of ideas, it remains true that they would hardly be such strong agents unless they were taken in a solvent of feeling. The great world-struggle of developing thought is continually foreshadowed in the struggle of the affections, seeking a justification for love and hope. In _Daniel Deronda_, when considering the causes which prevent men from desecrating their fathers' tombs for material gain, she says, "The only check to be alleged is a sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold that sentiments are the better part of the world's wealth." To the same effect is her saying in _Theophrastus Such_, that "our civilization, considered as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril without the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings." She expresses the conviction in _Adam Bede_, that "it is possible to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings;" and she does not hesitate through all her writings to convey the idea, that sublime feelings are much to be preferred to profound thoughts or the most perfect philosophy. She makes Adam Bede say that "it isn't notions sets people doing the right thing--it's feelings," and that "feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Feeling gives us the only true knowledge we have of our fellow-men, a knowledge in every way more perfect than that which is to be derived from our intellectual inquiries into their natures and wants. In _Janet's Repentance_ this power of feeling to give us true knowledge of others, to awaken us to the deeper needs of our own souls, when we come in contact with those who are able to move and inspire us, is eloquently presented. Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another! Not calculable by algebra, not deducible by logic, but mysterious, effectual, mighty as the hidden process by which the tiny seed is quickened, and bursts forth into tall stem and broad leaf, and glowing tasselled flower. Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapor, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath; they touch us with soft responsive hands; they look at us with sad, sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones; they are clothed in a living human soul, with all its conflicts, its faith and its love. Then their presence is a power; then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. [Footnote: Chapter XIX.] She returns to the same subject when considering the intellectual theories of happiness and the proportion of crime there is likely to occur in the world. She shows her entire dissent from such a method of dealing with human woe, and she pleads for that sympathy and love which will enable us to feel the pain of others as our own. This fellow-feeling gives us the most adequate knowledge we can have. It was probably a hard saying to the Pharisees, that "there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance." And certain ingenious philosophers of our own day must surely take offence at a joy so entirely out of correspondence with arithmetical proportion. But a heart that has been taught by its own sore struggles to bleed for the woes of another--that has "learned pity through suffering"--is likely to find very imperfect satisfaction in the "balance of happiness," "doctrine of compensations," and other short and easy methods of obtaining thorough complacency in the presence of pain; and for such a heart that saying will not be altogether dark. The emotions I have observed are but slightly influenced by arithmetical considerations: the mother, when her sweet lisping little ones have all been taken from her one after another, and she is hanging over her last dead babe, finds small consolation in the fact that the tiny dimpled corpse is but one of a necessary average, and that a thousand other babes brought into the world at the same time are doing well, and are likely to live; and if you stood beside that mother--if you knew her pang and shared it--it is probable you would be equally unable to see a ground of complacency in statistics. Doubtless a complacency resting on that basis is highly rational; but emotion, I fear, is obstinately irrational; it insists on caring for individuals; it absolutely refuses to adopt the quantitative view of human anguish, and to admit that thirteen happy lives are a set-off against twelve miserable lives, which leaves a clear balance on the side of satisfaction. This is the inherent imbecility of feeling, and one must be a great philosopher to have got quite clear of all that, and to have emerged into the serene air of pure intellect, in which it is evident that individuals really exist for no other purpose than that abstractions maybe drawn from them--abstractions that may rise from heaps of ruined lives like the sweet savor of a sacrifice in the nostrils of philosophers, and of a philosophic Deity. And so it comes to pass that for the man who knows sympathy because he has known sorrow, that old, old saying about the joy of angels over the repentant sinner outweighing their joy over the ninety-nine just, has a meaning which does not jar with the language of his own heart. It only tells him that for angels too there is a transcendent value in human pain which refuses to be settled by equations; that the eyes of angels too are turned away from the serene happiness of the righteous to bend with yearning pity on the poor erring soul wandering in the desert where no water is; that for angels too the misery of one casts so tremendous a shadow as to eclipse the bliss of ninety-nine. [Footnote: Chapter XXII.] Again, she says in the same story,-- Surely, surely the only true knowledge of our fellow-man is that which enables us to feel with him--which gives us a fine ear for the heart-pulses that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and opinion. Our subtlest analogies of schools and sects must miss the essential truth, unless it be lit up by the love that sees in all forms of human thought and-work the life-and-death struggles of separate human beings. George Eliot would have us believe, that until we can feel with man, enter sympathetically into his emotions and yearnings, we cannot know him. It is because we have common emotions, common experiences, common aspirations, that we are really able to understand man; and not because of statistics, natural history, sociology or psychology. The objective facts have their place and value, but the real knowledge we possess of mankind is subjective, grows out of fellow-feeling. The mental life of man, according to George Eliot, is simply an expansion of the emotional life. At first the mental life is unconscious, it is instinctive, simply the emotional response of man to the sequences of nature. This instinctive life of the emotions always remains a better part of our natures, and is to be trusted rather than the more formal activities of the intellectual faculties. In the most highly developed intellects even, there is a subconscious mental activity, an instinctive life of feeling, which is rather to be trusted than reason itself. This is a frequently recurring statement, which George Eliot makes in the firmest conviction of its truthfulness. It appears in such a sentence as this, in _The Mill on the Floss_: "Watch your own speech, and notice how it is guided by your less conscious purposes." In _Daniel Deronda_ it finds expression in the assertion that "there is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms." It is more explicitly presented in _Adam Bede_. Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulses by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us. George Eliot puts into the mouth of Mordecai the assertion that love lies deeper than any reasons which are to be found for its exercise. In the same way, she would have us believe that feeling is safer than reason. Daniel Deronda questions Mordecai's visions, and doubts if he is worth listening to, except for pity's sake. On this the author comments, in defence of the visions, as against reason. Suppose he had introduced himself as one of the strictest reasoners: do they form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations, too hastily concluding that its net will now at last be large enough to hold the universe. Men may dream in demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape of axioms, definitions and propositions, with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking will save us mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the matter to be thought about. And since the unemotional intellect may carry us into a mathematical dream-land where nothing is but what is not, perhaps an emotional intellect may have absorbed into its passionate vision of possibilities some truth of what will be--the more comprehensive massive life feeding theory with new material, as the sensibility of the artist seizes combinations which science explains and justifies. At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to be trusted. [Footnote: Chapter XLI.] As explicit is a passage in _Theophrastus Such_, wherein imagination is regarded as a means of knowledge, because it rests on a subconscious expression of experience. It is worth repeating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, but intense inward representation, and a creative energy constantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of experience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes; not the habitual confusion of probable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact, with far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations of human existence. [Footnote: Chapter XIII.] Imagination, feeling and the whole inward life are being constantly shaped by our actions. Experience gives new character to the inward life, and at the same time determines its motives and its inclinations. The muscles develop as they are used; what has been once done it is easier to do again. In the same way, our deeds influence our lives, and compel us to repeat our actions. At least this is George Eliot's opinion, and one she is fond of re-affirming. After Arthur had wronged Hetty, his life was changed, and of this change wrought in his character by his conduct, George Eliot says,-- Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts which constitute a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds which may at first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this reason--that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterward with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_, and so does an individual character--until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution. [Footnote: Chapter XXIX.] What we have done, determines what we shall do, even in opposition to our wills. After Tito Melema had done his first act towards denying his foster-father, we have this observation of the author's: Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never; they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pressing hard on Tito for the first time. When Tito had openly denied that father, at an unexpected moment, we hear the ever-present chorus repeating this great ethical truth: Tito was experiencing that inexorable law of human souls, that we prepare ourselves for sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil that gradually determines character. As a river moves in the channel made for it, as a plant grows towards the sunlight, so man does again what he has once done. The impression of his act is left upon his nature, it is taken up into his motives, it leads to feeling and impulse, it repeats itself in future conduct. His deed lives in memory, it lives in weakness or strength of impulse, it lives in disease or in health, it lives in mental listlessness or in mental vigor. What is done, determines our natures in their character and tendency for the future. "A man can never separate himself from his past history," says George Eliot in one of the mottoes of _Felix Holt_. We cannot rid ourselves of the effects of our actions; they follow us forever. This truth takes shape in _Romola_ in these words: Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have once acted greatly, seems a reason why we should always be noble. But Tito was feeling the effect of an opposite tradition: he had now no memories of self-conquest and perfect faithfulness from which he could have a sense of falling. A motto in _Daniel Deronda_ reiterates this oft-repeated assertion. Deeds are the pulse of Time, his beating life, And righteous or unrighteous, being done, Must throb in after-throbs till Time itself Be laid in stillness, and the universe Quiver and breathe upon no mirror more. Feeling is to be preferred to logic, according to George Eliot, because it brings us the results of long-accumulating experiences, because it embodies the inherited experiences of the race. She was an earnest believer in "far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion," for she was convinced that the better part of all our knowledge is brought to us by inheritance. The deeds of the individual make the habits of his life, they remain in memory, they guide the purposes of the will, and they give motives to action. Deeds often repeated give impulse and direction to character, and these appear in the offspring as predispositions of body and mind. In this way our deeds "throb in after-throbs" of our children; and in the same manner the deeds of a people live in the life of the race and become guiding motives in its future deeds. As the deeds of a person develop into habits, so the deeds of a people develop into national tendencies and actions. George Eliot was a thorough believer in the Darwinian theories of heredity, and she has in all her books shown the effects of hereditary conditions on the individual and even upon a people. Family and race are made to play a very important part in her writings. Other novelists disregard the conditions and limitations imposed by heredity, and consider the individual as unrestricted by other laws than those of his own will; but George Eliot gives conspicuous prominence to the laws of heredity, both individual and social. Felix Holt never ceases in her pages to be the son of his mother, however enlarged his ideas may become and broad his culture. Rosamond Vincy also has a parentage, and so has Mary Garth. Daniel Deronda is a Jew by birth, the son of a visionary mother and a truth-seeking father. This parentage expresses itself throughout his life, even in boyhood, in all his thought and conduct. Heredity shapes the destiny of Tito Melema, Romola, Fedalma, Maggie Tulliver, Will Ladislaw, Gwendolen Harleth and many another character in George Eliot's novels. It is even more strongly presented in her poems. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she describes Fedalma as a genuine daughter of her father, as inheriting his genius and tendencies, which are stronger than all the Spanish culture she had received. When Fedalma says she belongs to him she loves, and that love is nature too, Forming a fresher law than laws of birth,-- Zarca replies,-- Unmake yourself, then, from a Zincala-- Unmake yourself from being child of mine! Take holy water, cross your dark skin white; Round your proud eyes to foolish kitten looks; Walk mincingly, and smirk, and twitch your robe: Unmake yourself--doff all the eagle plumes And be a parrot, chained to a ring that slips Upon a Spaniard's thumb, at will of his That you should prattle o'er his words again! Fedalma cannot unmake herself; she has already danced in the plaza, and she is soon convinced that she is a Zincala, that her place is with her father and his tribe. The Prior had declared,-- That maiden's blood Is as unchristian as the leopard's, and it so proves. His statement of reasons for this conviction expresses the author's own belief. What! Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips Descend through generations, and the soul That moves within our frame like God in worlds-- Convulsing, urging, melting, withering-- Imprint no record, leave no documents, Of her great history? Shall men bequeath The fancies of their palates to their sons, And shall the shudder of restraining awe, The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, Faith's prayerful labor, and the food divine Of fasts ecstatic--shall these pass away Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly? Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain, And god-enshrining symbols leave no trace Of tremors reverent? This larger or social heredity is that which claims much the larger share of George Eliot's attention, and it is far more clearly and distinctively presented in her writings. She gives a literary expression here to the teachings of the evolutionists, shows the application to life of what has been taught by Spencer, Haeckel and Lewes. In his _Foundations of a Creed_, Lewes has stated this theory in discussing "the limitations of knowledge." "It is indisputable," he says, "that every particular man comes into the world with a heritage of organized forms and definite tendencies, which will determine his feeling and thinking in certain definite ways, whenever the suitable conditions are present. And all who believe in evolution believe that these forms and tendencies represent ancestral experiences and adaptations; believe that not only is the pointer born with an organized tendency to point, the setter to set, the beaver to build, and the bird to fly, but that the man is born with a tendency to think in images and symbols according to given relations and sequences which constitute logical laws, that _what_ he thinks is the necessary product of his organism and the external conditions. This organism itself is a product of its history; it _is_ what it has _become_; it is a part of the history of the human race; it is also specially individualized by the particular personal conditions which have distinguished him from his fellow-men. Thus resembling all men in general characters, he will in general feel as they feel, think as they think; and differing from all men in special characters, he will have personal differences of feeling and shades of feeling, thought and combinations of thought.... The mind is built up out of assimilated experiences, its perceptions being shaped by its pre-perceptions, its conceptions by its pre-conceptions. Like the body, the mind is shaped through its history." In other words, experience is inherited and shapes the mental and social life. What some philosophers have called intuitions, and what Kant called the categories of the mind, Lewes regarded as the inherited results of human experience. By a slow process of evolution the mind has been produced and shaped into harmony with its environment; the results of inherited experience take the form of feelings, intuitions, laws of thought and social tendencies. Its intuitions are to be accepted as the highest knowledge, because the transmitted results of all human experience. As the body performs those muscular operations most easily to which it is most accustomed, so men as social beings perform those acts and think those thoughts most easily and naturally to which the race has been longest accustomed. Man lives and thinks as man has lived and thought; he inherits the past. In his social life he is as much the child of the past as he is individually the son of his father. If he inherits his father's physiognomy and habits of thought, so does he socially inherit the characteristics of his race, its social and moral life. George Eliot was profoundly convinced of the value of this fact, and she has presented it in her books in all its phases. In her _Fortnightly Review_ essay on "The Influence of Rationalism," she says all large minds have long had "a vague sense" "that tradition is really the basis of our best life." She says, "Our sentiments may be called organized traditions; and a large part of our actions gather all their justification, all their attractions and aroma, from the memory of the life lived, of the actions done, before we were born." Tradition is the inherited experience of the race, the result of its long efforts, its many struggles, after a larger life. It lives in the tendencies of our emotions, in the intuitions and aspirations of our minds, as the wisdom which our minds hold dear, as the yearnings of our hearts after a wider social life. These things are not the results of our own reasonings, but they are the results of the life lived by those who have gone before us, and who, by their thoughts and deeds, have shaped our lives, our minds, to what they are. Tradition is the inherited experience, feeling, yearning, pain, sorrow and wisdom of the ages. It furnishes a great system of customs, laws, institutions, ideas, motives and feelings into which we are born, which we naturally adopt, which gives shape and strength to our growing life, which makes it possible for us to take up life at that stage it has reached after the experiences of many generations. George Eliot says in _Middlemarch_ that "a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gum or starch in the form of tradition." We come into a world made ready for us, and find prepared for our immediate use a vast complex of customs and duties and ideas, the results of the world's experience. George Eliot believed, with Comte, that with each generation the influence of the past over the present becomes greater, and that men's lives are more and more shaped by what has been. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ she makes Don Silva say that The only better is a Past that lives On through an added Present, stretching still In hope unchecked by shaming memories To life's last breath. This deep conviction of the blessed influence of the past upon us is well expressed in the little poem on "Self and Life," one of the most fully autobiographical of all her poems, where she makes Life bid Self remember How the solemn, splendid Past O'er thy early widened earth Made grandeur, as on sunset cast Dark elms near take mighty girth. Hands and feet were tiny still When we knew the historic thrill, Breathed deep breath in heroes dead, Tasted the immortals' bread. In expressive sentences, in the development of her characters, and in many other ways, she affirms this faith in tradition. In one of the mottoes in _Felix Holt_ she uses a fine sentence, which is repeated in "A Minor Prophet." Our finest hope is finest memory. The finest hope of the race is to be found in memory of its great deeds, as its saddest loss is to be found in forgetfulness of a noble past. In _The Mill on the Floss_, when describing St. Ogg's, she attributes its sordid and tedious life to its neglect of the past and its inspiring memories. The mind of St. Ogg's did not look extensively before or after. It inherited a long past without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the spirits that walk the streets, Since the centuries when St. Ogg with his boat, and the Virgin Mother at the prow, had been seen on the wide water, so many memories had been left behind, and had gradually vanished like the receding hill-tops! And the present time was like the level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, thinking to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giant forces that used to shake the earth are forever laid to sleep. The days were gone when people could be greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less change it: the Catholics were formidable because they would lay hold of government and property, and burn men alive; not because any sane and honest parishioner of St. Ogg's could be brought to believe in the Pope. One aged person remembered how a rude multitude had been swayed when John Wesley preached in the cattle-market; but for a long while it had not been expected of preachers that they should shake the souls of men. An occasional burst of fervor in Dissenting pulpits on the subject of infant baptism was the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober times when men had done with change. Protestantism sat at ease, unmindful of schisms, careless of proselytism; Dissent was an inheritance along with a superior pew and a business connection; and Churchmanship only wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish habit that clung greatly to families in the grocery and chandlering lines, though not incompatible with prosperous wholesale dealing. [Footnote: Chapter XII.] This faith in tradition, as giving the basis of all our best life, is perhaps nowhere so expressively set forth by George Eliot as in _The Spanish Gypsy_. It is distinctly taught by all the best characters in the words they speak, and it is emphatically taught in the whole purpose and spirit of the poem. Zarca says his tribe has no great life because it has no great national memories. He calls his people Wanderers whom no God took knowledge of To give them laws, to fight for them, or blight Another race to make them ampler room; Who have no whence or whither in their souls, No dimmest lure of glorious ancestors To make a common breath for piety. As his people are weak because they have no traditional life, he proposes by his deeds to make them national memories and hopes and aims. No lure Shall draw me to disown them, or forsake The meagre wandering herd that lows for help-- And needs me for its guide, to seek my pasture Among the well-fed beeves that graze at will. Because our race has no great memories, I will so live, it shall remember me For deeds of such divine beneficence As rivers have, that teach, men what is good By blessing them. I have been schooled--have caught Lore from Hebrew, deftness from the Moor-- Know the rich heritage, the milder life, Of nations fathered by a mighty Past. The way in which such a past is made is suggested by Zarca, in answer to a question about the Gypsy's faith; it is made by a common life of faith and brotherhood, that gives origin to a common inheritance and memories. O, it is a faith Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts Faith to each other: the fidelity Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share The scanty water: the fidelity Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, The speech that even in lying tells the truth Of heritage inevitable as birth, Nay, in the silent bodily presence feel The mystic stirring of a common life Which makes the many one: fidelity To that deep consecrating oath our sponsor Fate Made through our infant breath when we were born The fellow-heirs of that small island, Life, Where we must dig and sow and reap with brothers. Fear thou that oath, my daughter--nay, not fear, But love it; for the sanctity of oaths Lies not in lightning that avenges them, But in the injury wrought by broken bonds And in the garnered good of human trust. And you have sworn--even with your infant breath You too were pledged. George Eliot's faith in tradition, as furnishing the basis of our best life, and the moral purpose and law which is to guide it, she has concentrated into one question asked by Maggie Tulliver. If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment. Although this question is asked in regard to an individual's past, the answer to it holds quite as good for the race as for the individual. She repudiates all theories which give the individual authority to follow inclination, or even to follow some inner or personal guide. The true wisdom is always social, always grows out of the experiences of the race, and not out of any personal inspiration or enlightenment. Tradition furnishes the materials for reason to use, but reason does not penetrate into new regions, or bring to us wisdom apart from that we obtain through inherited experiences. George Eliot compares these two with each other in _The Spanish Gypsy_ in the words of Sephardo. I abide By that wise spirit of listening reverence Which marks the boldest doctors of our race. For Truth, to us, is like a living child Born of two parents: if the parents part And will divide the child, how shall it live? Or, I will rather say: Two angels guide The path of man, both aged and yet young, As angels are, ripening through endless years. On one he leans: some call her Memory, And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet, With deep mysterious accords: the other, Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams A light divine and searching on the earth, Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked But for Tradition; we walk evermore To higher paths, by brightening Reason's lamp. Man leans on tradition, it is the support of his life, by its strength he is able to move forward. Reason is a lamp which lights the way, gives direction to tradition; it is a beacon and not a support. Tradition not only brings us the wisdom of all past experience, but it develops into a spiritual atmosphere in which we live, move and have our being. This was Comte's idea, that the spiritual life is developed out of tradition, that the world's experiences have produced for us intangible hopes, yearnings and aspirations; awe, reverence and sense of subtle mystery: mystic trust, faith in invisible memories, joy in the unseen power of thought and love; and that these create for us a spiritual world most real in its nature, and most powerful in its influence. On every hand man is touched by the invisible, mystical influences of the past, spiritual voices call to him out of the ages, unseen hands point the way he is to go. He breathes this atmosphere of spiritual memories, he is fed on thoughts other men have made for his sustenance, he is inspired by the heroisms of ages gone before. In an article in the _Westminster Review_ in July, 1856, on "The Natural History of German Life," in review of W.H. Riehl's books on the German peasant, and on land and climate, she presents the idea that a people can be understood only when we understand its history. Society, she says, has developed through many generations, and has built itself up in many memories and associations. To change it we must change its traditions. Nothing can be done _de novo_; a fresh beginning cannot be had. The dream of the French Revolution, that a new nation, a new life, a new morality, was to be created anew and fresh out of the cogitations of philosophers, is not in any sense to be realized. Tradition forever asserts itself, the past is more powerful than all philosophers, and new traditions must be made before a new life can be had for society. These ideas are well expressed by George Eliot in her review of Riehl's books. He sees in European society _incarnate history_, and any attempt to disengage it from its historical elements must, he believes, be simply destruction of social vitality. What has grown up historically can only die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. The external conditions which society has inherited from the past are but the manifestation of inherited internal conditions in the human beings who compose it; the internal conditions and the external are related to each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both. As a necessary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must obtain purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of hereditary affection and antipathy; which is as easy as to get running streams without springs, or the leafy shade of the forest without the secular growth of trunk and branch. The historical conditions of society may be compared with those of language. It must be admitted that the language of cultivated nations is in anything but a rational state; the great sections of the civilized world are only approximately intelligible to each other, and even that, only at the cost of long study; one word stands for many things, and many words for one thing; the subtle shades of meaning, and still subtler echoes of association, make language an instrument which scarcely anything short of genius can wield with definiteness and certainty. Suppose, then, that the effort which has been again and again made to construct a universal language on a rational basis has at length succeeded, and that you have a language which has no uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous forms, no fitful shimmer of many-hued significance, no hoary archaisms "familiar with forgotten years,"--a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects the purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of expression to science, but will never express _life_, which is a great deal more than science. With the anomalies and inconveniences of historical language, you will have parted with its music and its passion, with its vital qualities as an expression of individual character, with its subtle capabilities of wit, with everything that gives it power over the imagination; and the next step in simplification will be the invention of a talking watch, which will achieve the utmost facility and despatch in the communication of ideas by a graduated adjustment of ticks, to be represented in writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A "melancholy language of the future!" The sensory and motor nerves that run in the same sheath are scarcely bound together by a more necessary and delicate union than that which binds men's affections, imagination, wit and humor with the subtle ramifications of historical language. Language must be left to grow in precision, completeness and unity, as minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness and sympathy. And there is an analogous relation between the moral tendencies of men and the social conditions they have inherited. The nature of European men has its roots intertwined with the past, and can only be developed by allowing those roots to remain undisturbed while the process of development is going on, until that perfect ripeness of the seed which carries with it a life independent of the root.... It has not been sufficiently insisted on, that in the various branches of social science there is an advance from the general to the special, from the simple to the complex, analogous with that which is found in the series of the sciences, from mathematics to biology. To the laws of quantity comprised in mathematics and physics are superadded, in chemistry, laws of quality; to those again are added, in biology, laws of life; and lastly, the conditions of life in general branch out into its special conditions, or natural history, on the one hand, and into its abnormal conditions, or pathology, on the other. And in this series or ramification of the sciences, the more general science will not suffice to solve the problems of the more special. Chemistry embraces phenomena which are not explicable by physics; biology embraces phenomena which are not explicable by chemistry; and no biological generalization will enable us to predict the infinite specialties produced by the complexity of vital conditions. So social science, while it has departments which in their fundamental generality correspond to mathematics and physics, namely, those grand and simple generalizations which trace out the inevitable march of the human race as a whole, and, as a ramification of these, the laws of economical science, has also, in the departments of government and jurisprudence, which embrace the conditions of social life in all their complexity, what may be called its biology, carrying us on to innumerable special phenomena which outlie the sphere of science, and belong to natural history. And just as the most thorough acquaintance with physics, or chemistry, or general physiology, will not enable you at once to establish the balance of life in your private vivarium, so that your particular society of zoophytes, molluscs and echinoderms may feel themselves, as the Germans say, at ease in their skins; so the most complete equipment of theory will not enable a statesman or a political and social reformer to adjust his measures wisely, in the absence of a special acquaintance with the section of society for which he legislates, with the peculiar characteristics of the nation, the province, the class whose well-being he has to consult. In other words, a wise social policy must be based not simply on abstract social science but on the natural history of social bodies. Her conception of the corporate life of the nice has been clearly expressed by George Eliot in the concluding essay in _Theophrastus Such_. In that essay she writes of the powerful influence wrought upon national life by "the divine gift of memory which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute." The nations which lead the world on to a larger civilization are not merely those with most genius, originality, gift of invention or talent for scientific observation, but those which have the finest traditions. As a member of such a nation, the individual can be noble and great. We should almost be persuaded, reading George Eliot's eloquent rhetoric on this subject, that personal genius is of little moment in comparison with a rich inheritance of national memories. It is indeed true that Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton and Shakspere have used the traditions of their people for the materials of their immortal works, but what would those traditions have been without the genius of the men who deal with the traditions in a fashion quite their own, giving them new meaning and vitality! The poet, however, needs materials for his song, and memories to inspire it. The influence of these George Eliot well understands in calling them "the deep suckers of healthy sentiment." The historian guides us rightly in urging us to dwell on the virtues of our ancestors with emulation, and to cherish our sense of a common descent as a bond of obligation. The eminence, the nobleness of a people, depends on its capability of being stirred by memories, and for striving for what we call spiritual ends--ends which consist not in an immediate material possession, but in the satisfaction of a great feeling that animates the collective body as with one soul. A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, if not in actual existence yet existing in the past--in memory, as a departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be restored.... Not only the nobleness of a nation depends on the presence of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each individual citizen. Our dignity and rectitude are proportioned to our sense of relationship with something great, admirable, pregnant with high possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to self-repression and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and more attractive to our generous part than the securing of personal ease or prosperity. [Footnote: Theophrastus Such, chapter XVIII.] Zealous as is George Eliot's faith in tradition, she is broad-minded enough to see that it is limited in its influence by at least two causes,--by reason and by the spirit of universal brotherhood. We have already seen that she makes reason one of man's guides. In _Romola_ the right of the individual to make a new course for action is distinctly expressed. Romola had "the inspiring consciousness," we are told, "that her lot was vitally united with the general lot which exalted even the minor details of obligation into religion," and so "she was marching with a great army, she was feeling the stress of a common life." Yet she began to feel that she must not merely repeat the past; and the influence of Savonarola, in breaking with Rome for the sake of a pure and holy life, inspired her. To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in face of a law which is not unarmed with divine lightnings--lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false. It is reason's lamp by which "we walk evermore to higher paths;" and by its aid, new deeds are to be done, new memories created, fresher traditions woven into feeling and hope. National memories are to be superseded by the spirit of brotherhood, for, as the race advances, nations are brought closer to each other, have more in common, and development is made of world-wide traditions. Theophrastus Such, in the last of his essays, tells us that "it is impossible to arrest the tendencies of things towards the quicker or slower fusion of races." The environment of her characters George Eliot makes of very great importance. She dwells upon the natural scenery which they love, but especially does she magnify the importance of the social environment, and the perpetual influence it has upon the whole of life. Mr. James Sully has clearly interpreted her thought on this subject, and pointed out its engrossing interest for her. "A character divorced from its surroundings is an abstraction. A personality is only a concrete living whole, when we attach it by a network of organic filaments to its particular environment, physical and social. Our author evidently chooses her surroundings with strict regard to her characters. She paints nature less in its own beauty than in its special aspect and significance for those whom she sets in its midst. 'The bushy hedgerows,' 'the pool in the corner of the field where the grasses were dank,' 'the sudden slope of the old marl-pit, making a red background for the burdock'--these things are touched caressingly and lingered over because they are so much to the 'midland-bred souls' whose history is here recorded; so much because of cumulative recollection reaching back to the time when they 'toddled among' them, or perhaps 'learnt them by heart standing between their father's knees while he drove leisurely.' And what applies to the natural environment applies still more to those narrower surroundings which men construct for themselves, and which form their daily shelter, their work-shop, their place of social influence. The human interest which our author sheds about the mill, the carpenter's shop, the dairy, the village church, and even the stiff, uninviting conventicle, shows that she looks on these as having a living continuity with the people whom she sets among them. Their artistic value is but a reflection of all that they mean to those for whom they have made the nearer and habitually enclosing world." The larger influence in the environment of any person, according to George Eliot, is that which arises from tradition. Cut off from the sustenance given by tradition, the person loses the motives, the supports of his life. This is well shown in the case of Silas Marner, who had fled from his early home and all his life held dear. George Eliot describes the effect of such a change of environment. Even people whose lives have been made various by learning, sometimes find it hard to keep a fast hold on their habitual views of life, on their faith in the Invisible--nay, on the sense that their past joys and sorrows are a real experience, when they are suddenly transported to a new land, where the beings around them know nothing of their history, and share none of their ideas--where their mother earth shows another lap, and human life has other forms than those on which their souls have been nourished. Minds that have been unhinged from their old faith and love, have perhaps sought this Lethean influence of exile, in which the past becomes dreamy because its symbols have all vanished, and the present too is dreamy because it is linked with no memories. [Footnote: Chapter II.] She delights to return again and again to the influences produced upon us by the environment of childhood. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she tells us how dear the earth becomes by such associations. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass--the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows--the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds," because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and _loved_ because it is known? The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers, and the blue-eyed speedwell, and the ground-ivy at my feet--what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home-scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows--such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years, which still live in us, and transform our perception into love. [Footnote: Chapter V.] In the backward glance of _Theophrastus Such_ this anchorage of the life in familiar associations is described as a source of our faith in the spiritual, even when all the childhood thoughts about those associations cannot be retained. The illusions that began for us when we were less acquainted with evil have not lost their value when we discern them to be illusions. They feed the ideal better, and in loving them still, we strengthen, the precious habit of loving something not visibly, tangibly existent, but a spiritual product of our visible, tangible selves. In the evolution philosophy she found the reconciliation between Locke and Kant which she so earnestly desired to discover in girlhood. The old school of experimentalists did not satisfy her with their philosophy; she saw that the dictum that all knowledge is the result of sensation was not satisfactory, that it was shallow and untrue. On the other hand, the intellectual intuition of Schelling was not acceptable, nor even Kant's categories of the mind. She wished to know why the mind instinctively throws all experiences and thoughts under certain forms, and why it must think under certain general methods. She found what to her was a perfectly satisfactory answer to these questions in the theory of evolution as developed by Darwin and Spencer. Through the aid of these men she found the reconciliation between Locke and Kant, and discovered that both were wrong and both right. So familiar has this reconciliation become, and so wide is its acceptance, that no more than a mere hint of its meaning will be needed here. This philosophy asserts, with Locke, that all knowledge begins in sensation and experience; but with Kant, it affirms that knowledge passes beyond experience and becomes intuitional. It differs from Kant as to the source of the intuitions, pronouncing them the results of experience built up into legitimate factors of the mind by heredity. Experience is inherited and becomes intuitions. The intuitions are affirmed to be reliable, and, to a certain extent, sure indications of truth. They are the results, to use the phrase adopted by Lewes, of "organized experience;" experience verified in the most effective manner in the organism which it creates and modifies. According to this philosophy, man must trust the results of experience, but he can by no means be certain that those results correspond with actuality. They are actual for him, because it is impossible for him to go beyond their range. Within the little round created by "organized experience," which is also Lewes's definition of science, man may trust his knowledge, because it is consistent with itself; but beyond that strict limit he can obtain no knowledge, and even knows that what is without it does not correspond with what is within it. In truth, man knows only the relative, not the absolute; he must rely on experience, not on creative reason. George Eliot would have us believe that the sources of life are not inward, but outward; not dependent on the deep affirmations of individual reason, or on the soul's inherent capacity to see what is true, but on the effects of environment and the results of social experience. Man is not related to an infinite world of reason and spiritual truth, but only to a world of universal law, hereditary conditions and social traditions. Invariable law, heredity, feeling, tradition; these words indicate the trend of George Eliot's mind, and the narrow limitations of her philosophy. Man is not only the product of nature, but, according to this theory, nature limits his moral capacity and the range of his mental activity. Environment is regarded as all-powerful, and the material world as the _source_ of such truth as we can know. In her powerful presentation of this philosophy of life George Eliot indicates her great genius and her profound insight. At the same time, her work is limited, her genius cramped, and her imagination crippled, by a philosophy so narrow and a creed so inexpansive. XI. RELIGIOUS TENDENCIES. As a great literary creator, George Eliot holds a singular position in reference to religious beliefs. To most literary artists religion is a vital part of life, which enters as a profound element into their teachings or into their interpretations of character and incident. Religion deeply affects the writings of Tennyson, Browning and Ruskin; its problems, its hopes, its elements of mystery and infinity touch all their pages. In an equal degree, though with a further departure from accredited beliefs, and with a greater effect from philosophical or humanitarian influences, has it wrought itself into the genius of Goethe, Carlyle and Hugo. Even the pages of Voltaire, Shelley and Heine have been touched by its magic influence; their words glow with its great interests, and bloom into beauty through its inspiration. None of these is more affected by religion than George Eliot has been; nor does it form a greater element in their writings than in hers. What is singular about George Eliot's position is, that she both affirms and denies; she is deeply religious and yet rejects all religious doctrines. No writer of the century has given religion a more important relation to human interests or made it a larger element in his creative work; and yet no other literary artist has so completely rejected all positive belief in God and immortality. In her books she depicts every phase of religious belief and life, and with sympathy and appreciation. A very large proportion of her characters are clergymen or other religious persons, who are described with accuracy and sympathy. Her own faith, the theory of religion she accepts, is not given to any of her characters. What she believes, appears only in her comments, and in the general effect which life produces on the persons she describes. She believed Christianity is subjectively true, that it is a fit expression of the inner nature and of the spiritual wants of the soul. She did not propagate the pantheism of Spinoza or the theism of Francis Newman, because she did not regard them as so near the truth as the Christianity of Paul. As intellectual theories they may have been preferable to her, but from the outlook of feeling which she ever occupied, Paul was the truer teacher, and especially because his teachings are linked with the spiritual desires and outpourings of many generations. The spontaneous movements of the human mind, which have taken possession of vast numbers of people through long periods of time, have a depth of meaning which the speculations of no individual theorizer can ever possess. Especially did she regard Christianity as a pure and noble expression of the soul's inner wants and aspirations. It is an objective realization of feeling and sentiment, it gives purpose and meaning to man's cravings for a diviner life, it links generation to generation in a continued series of beautiful traditions and noble inspirations. Her intellectual view of the subject was expressed to a friend in these words: Deism seems to me the most incoherent of all systems, but to Christianity I feel no objection but its want of evidence. She also expressed more sympathy with the simple faith of the multitude than with the intellectual speculations of philosophers and theologians; and again, she said that she felt more sympathy with than divergence from the narrowest and least cultivated believer in Christianity. As a vehicle of the accumulated hopes and traditions of the world's feeling and sorrow she appreciated Christianity, saw its beauty, felt deeply in sympathy with its spirit of renunciation, accepted its ideal of a divine life. She learned from Feuerbach that religion, that Christianity, gives fit expression to the emotional life and spiritual aspirations of man, and that what it finds within in no degree corresponds with that which surrounds man without. Barren and lifeless as this view must seem to most persons, it was a source of great confidence and inspiration to George Eliot. It enabled her to appreciate the religious experiences of men, to portray most accurately and sympathetically a great variety of religious believers, and to give this side of life its place and proportion. At the same time, it was a personal satisfaction to her to be able to keep in unbroken sympathy with the religious experiences of her childhood and youth while intellectually unable to accept the beliefs on which these experiences rested. More than this, she believed that religion and spirituality of life are necessary elements of human existence, that man can never cast them off, and that man will lead a happy and harmonious life only when they have a true and fitting expression in his culture and civilization. She maintained, with Sara Hennell, that we may retain the religious sentiments in all their glow and in all their depth of influence, at the same time that the doctrines of theology and all those conceptions of nature and man on which they rest are rejected; that we may have a disposition of the heart akin to that of the prophets and saints of religion, while we intellectually cast aside all which gave meaning to their faith and devotion. According to George Eliot, religion rests upon feeling and the relations of man to humanity, as well as upon his irreversible relations to the universe. In _The Mill on the Floss_ she has given a definition of it, in speaking of Maggie's want of that knowledge of the irreversible laws within and without her, which, governing the habits, becomes morality, and developing the feelings of submission and dependence, becomes religion. [Footnote: Book IV., chapter III.] It is the human side of religion which interests George Eliot, its influence morally, its sympathetic impulse, its power to comfort and console. Its supernatural elements seem to have little influence over her mind, at least only so far as they serve the moral aims of life. It is humanity which attracts her mind, inspires her ideal hopes, kindles her enthusiasms. Religion, apart from human encouragement and elevation, the suppression of human sin and sorrow, and the increase of human sympathy and joy, has little attraction for her. She takes no ground of opposition to the beliefs of others, expresses no contempt for any form of belief in God; but she measures all beliefs by their moral influence and their power to enkindle the enthusiasm of humanity. The pantheistic theism defended by Lewes in his book on Comte, in 1853, seems to have been also accepted by George Eliot. We are told that her mind long wavered between the two, though pantheism was less acceptable than theism, on account of its moral indifference. It was undoubtedly the moral bearings of the subject which all the time had the greatest weight with her, and probably Kant's position had not a little effect on her opinions. She came, at least, to find final satisfaction in agnosticism, to believe that all intellectual speculations on the subject are in vain. At the same time, her moral convictions grew stronger, and she believed in the power of moral activity to work out a solution of life when no other can be found. At this point she stood with Kant rather than with Comte, in accepting the moral nature as a true guide. She very zealously believed with Fichte in a moral order of the world, approving of the truth which underlies the words of Fichte's English disciple, Matthew Arnold, when he discourses of "the Eternal, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness." Her positive convictions and beliefs on the subject lie in this direction, and she firmly accepted the idea of a moral order and purpose. So much she thought we can know and rely on; beyond this she believed we can know nothing. Her later convictions on this subject have been expressed in a graphic manner by one of her friends. "I remember how," says this person, "at Cambridge, I walked with her once in the Fellows' Garden, of Trinity, on an evening of rainy May; and she, stirred somewhat beyond her wont, and taking as her text the three words which have been used so often as the inspiring trumpet-calls of man,--the words _God, Immortality, Duty_,--pronounced, with terrible emphasis, how inconceivable was the _first_, how unbelievable the _second_, and yet how peremptory and absolute the _third_. Never, perhaps, have sterner accents affirmed the sovereignty of impersonal and unrecompensed law. I listened, and night fell; her grave, majestic countenance turned towards me like a sibyl's in the gloom; it was as though she withdrew from my grasp, one by one, the two scrolls of promise, and left me the third scroll only, awful with inevitable fates." [Footnote: F.W.H. Myers in The Century Magazine for November, 1881.] All her later writings, at least, confirm this testimony to her assertion of the inconceivableness of God, and her open denial of faith in theism. She cannot have gone so far as to assert the non-existence of God, affirming only that she could not conceive of such a being as actually existing. She could not believe in a personal God, but Lewes's conception of a dynamic life was doubtless acceptable. With as much emphasis she pronounced immortality unbelievable. She early accepted the theory of Charles Bray and Sara Hennell, that we live hereafter only in the life of the race. The moral bearings of the subject here also were most effective over her mind, for she felt that what we ought most of all to consider is our relations to our fellow-men, and that another world can have little real effect upon our present living. In her _Westminster Review_ article on "Evangelical Teaching" as presented in Young's _Night Thoughts_, she criticises the following declaration:-- "Who tells me he denies his soul immortal, What'er his boast, has told me he's a knave. His duty 'tis to love himself alone, Nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles." Her comments on these lines of Young's are full of interest, in view of her subsequent teachings, and they open an insight into her tendencies of mind very helpful to those who would understand her fully. Her interest in all that is human, her craving for a more perfect development of human sympathy and co-operation, are very clearly to be seen. We may admit that if the better part of virtue consists, as Young appears to think, in contempt for mortal joys, in "meditation of our own decease," and in "applause" of God in the style of a congratulatory address to Her Majesty--all which has small relation to the well-being of mankind on this earth--the motive to it must be gathered from something that lies quite outside the sphere of human sympathy. But, for certain other elements of virtue, which are of more obvious importance to untheological minds,--a delicate sense of our neighbor's rights, an active participation in the joys and sorrows of our fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance of privation or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition of good to others,--in a word, the extension and intensification of our sympathetic nature,--we think it of some importance to contend that they have no more direct relation to the belief in a future state than the interchange of gases in the lungs has to the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable that in some minds the deep pathos lying in the thought of human mortality--that we are here for a little while and then vanish away, that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved ones and to our many suffering fellow-men--lies nearer the fountains of moral emotion than the conception of extended existence. And surely it ought to be a welcome fact, if the thought of _mortality_, as well as of immortality, be favorable to virtue. Do writers of sermons and religious novels prefer that we should be vicious in order that there may be a more evident political and social necessity for printed sermons and clerical fictions? Because learned gentlemen are theological, are we to have no more simple honesty and good-will? We can imagine that the proprietors of a patent water-supply have a dread of common springs; but, for our own part, we think there cannot be too great security against a lack of fresh water or of pure morality. To us it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as the evolution of science or art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into them with undefinable limits. The considerations here presented are very effective ones, and quite as truthful as effective. There are human supports for morality of the most important and far-reaching character, and such as are outside of any theological considerations. We ought, as George Eliot so well says, to rejoice that the reasons for being moral are manifold, that sympathy with others, as well as the central fires of personality, or the craving to be in harmony with the Eternal, is able to conduce to a righteous conduct. Her objections to Young's narrow and selfish defence of immortality are well presented and powerful, but they do not touch such high considerations as those offered by Kant. The craving for personal freedom and perfection is as strong and as helpful to the race as sympathy for others and yearning to lift up the weak and fallen. When the sense of personality is gone, man loses much of his character; and personality rests on a deep spiritual foundation which does not mean egotism merely, but which does mean for the majority a conviction of a continued existence. The tendency of the present time is to dwell less upon the theological and more upon the human motives to conduct; but it is to be doubted if the highest phases of morality can be retained without belief in God and a future life. The common virtues, the sympathetic motives to conduct, the spirit of helpfulness, may be retained intact, and even increased in power and efficiency, by those motives George Eliot presents; but the loftier virtues of personal heroism and devotion to truth in the face of martyrdom of one form or another, the saintly craving for purity and holiness, and the sturdy spirit of liberty which will suffer no bonds to exist, can be had in their full development only with belief that God calls us to seek for perfect harmony with himself. Kant's view that a divine law within, the living word of God, calls ever to us as personal beings to attain the perfection of our natures in the perfection of the race, and in conformity to the eternal law of righteousness, is far nobler and truer than that which George Eliot accepted. She was not a mere unbeliever, however, for she did not thrust aside the hope of immortality with a contemptuous hand. This problem she left where she left that concerning God, in the background of thought, among the questions which cannot be solved. She believed that the power to contribute to the future good of the race is hope and promise enough. At the same time, she was very tender of the positive beliefs of others, and especially of that yearning so many feel after personal recognition and development. Writing to one who passionately clung to such a hope, she said,-- I have no controversy with the faith that cries out and clings from the depths of man's need. I only long, if it were possible to me, to help in satisfying the need of those who want a reason for living in the absence of what has been called consolatory belief. But all the while I gather a sort of strength from the certainty that there must be limits or negations in my own moral powers and life experience which may screen from me many possibilities of blessedness for our suffering human nature. The most melancholy thought surely would be that we in our own persons had measured and exhausted the sources of spiritual good. But we know the poor help the poor. These words seem to be uttered in quite another tone than that in which she asserted the unbelievableness of immortality, though they do not indicate anything more than a tender yearning for human good and a belief that she could not herself measure all the possibilities of such good. The consolation of which she writes, comes only of human sympathy and helpfulness. In writing to a friend suffering under the anguish of a recent bereavement, she said,-- For the first sharp pangs there is no comfort;--whatever goodness may surround us, darkness and silence still hang about our pain. But slowly the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living affections and duties, and we begin to feel our sorrow as a solemn initiation preparing us for that sense of loving, pitying fellowship with the fullest human lot which, I must think, no one who has tasted it will deny to be the chief blessedness of our life. And especially to know what the last parting is, seems needful to give the utmost sanctity of tenderness to our relations with each other. It is that above all which gives us new sensibilities to "the web of human things, birth and the grave, that are not as they were." And by that faith we come to find for ourselves the truth of the old declaration, that there is a difference between the ease of pleasure and blessedness, as the fullest good possible to us wondrously mixed mortals. In these words she suggests that sorrow for the dead is a solemn initiation into that full measure of human sympathy and tenderness which best fits us to be men. Looking upon all human experience through feeling, she regarded death as one of the most powerful of all the shaping agents of man's destiny in this world. She speaks of death, in _Adam Bede, as "the great reconciler" which unites us to those who have passed away from us. In the closing scenes of _The Mill on the Floss it is presented as such a reconciler, and as the only means of restoring Maggie to the affections of those she had wronged. It is in _The Legend of Jubal, however, that George Eliot has expressed her thought of what death has been in the individual and social evolution of mankind. The descendants of Cain in glad idlesse throve, Nor hunted prey, nor with each other strove; but all was peace and joy with them. There were no great aspirations, no noble achievements, no tending toward progress and a higher life. On an evil day, Lamech, when engaged in athletic sport, accidentally struck and killed his fairest boy. All was then changed, the old love and peace passed away; but good rather than evil came, for man began to lead a larger life. And a new spirit from that hour came o'er The race of Cain: soft idlesse was no more, But even the sunshine had a heart of care, Smiling with hidden dread--a mother fair Who folding to her breast a dying child Beams with feigned joy that but makes sadness mild. Death was now lord of Life, and at his word Time, vague as air before, new terrors stirred, With measured wing now audibly arose Throbbing through all things to some unknown close. Now glad Content by clutching Haste was torn, And Work grew eager, and Devise was born. It seemed the light was never loved before, Now each man said, "'Twill go and come no more." No budding branch, no pebble from the brook, No form, no shadow, but new dearness took From the one thought that life must have an end; And the last parting now began to send Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss, Thrilling them into finer tenderness. Then Memory disclosed her face divine, That like the calm nocturnal lights doth shine Within the soul, and shows the sacred graves, And shows the presence that no sunlight craves, No space, no warmth, but moves among them all; Gone and yet here, and coming at each call, With ready voice and eyes that understand, And lips that ask a kiss, and dear responsive hand. Thus to Cain's race death was tear-watered seed Of various life and action-shaping need. But chief the sons of Lamech felt the stings Of new ambition, and the force that springs In passion beating on the shores of fate. They said, "There comes a night when all too late The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand, The eager thought behind closed portals stand, And the last wishes to the mute lips press Buried ere death in silent helplessness. Then while the soul its way with sound can cleave, And while the arm is strong to strike and heave, Let soul and arm give shape that will abide And rule above our graves, and power divide With that great god of day, whose rays must bend As we shall make the moving shadows tend. Come, let us fashion acts that are to be, When we shall lie in darkness silently, As our young brother doth, whom yet we see Fallen and slain, but reigning in our will By that one image of him pale and still." Death brings discord and sorrow into a world once happy and unaspiring, but it also brings a spiritual eagerness and a divine craving. Jabal began to tame the animals and to cultivate the soil, Tubal-Cain began to use fire and to work metals, while Jubal discovered song and invented musical instruments. Out of the longing and inner unrest which death brought, came the great gift of music. It had power to Exult and cry, and search the inmost deep Where the dark sources of new passion sleep. Jubal passes to other lands to teach them the gift of song, but at last returns an old man to share in the affections of his people. He finds them celebrating with great pomp the invention of music, but they will not accept him as the Jubal they did honor to and believed dead. Then the voice of his own past instructs him that he should not expect any praises or glory in his own person; it is enough to live in the joy of a world uplifted by music. Thus instructed, his broken life succumbs. Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, The All-creating Presence for his grave. In this poem George Eliot regards death as a means of drawing men into a deeper and truer sympathy with each other. The same thought is more fully presented when she exultingly sings,-- O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence: live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self. In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge man's search To vaster issues. Death teaches us to forget self, to live for others, to pour out unstinted sympathy and affection for those whose lives are short and difficult. It is the same thought as that given in reply to Young; mortal sorrows and pains should move us as hopes of immortality cannot. There accompanies this idea the larger one, that our future life is to be found in the better life we make for those who come after us. George Eliot believed with Comte, that we are to live again in minds made better by what we have done and been, that an influence goes out from every helpful and good life which makes the lives of those who come after us fairer and grander. She rests this belief on no sentimental or ideal grounds. Its justification is to be found in science, in the law of hereditary transmission. Darwin and Spencer base the great world-process of evolution on the two laws of transmission and variation. The fittest survives, and the world advances. The survival of every fit and positive form of life in the better forms which succeed it is in accordance with a process or a law which holds true up into all the highest and subtlest expressions of man's inner life. Heredity is as true morally and spiritually as physically, and our moral and spiritual offspring will partake of our own qualities; and, standing on the vantage ground of our lives, will rise higher than we. What George Eliot regards as the positive teaching of science becomes also an inspiring religious belief to her. George Eliot accepted the belief of an immortality in the race with a deep and earnest conviction. It gave a great impulse to her life, it satisfied her craving for closer harmony and sympathy with her fellows, it satisfied her longing for the power to assuage sorrow and to comfort pain. So to live is heaven; To make undying music in the world, and to have an influence for good result from our lives far down the future. Through the beneficent influences we can awake in the world All our rarer, better, truer self. That sobbed religiously in yearning song, That watched to ease the burthen of the world, ... shall live till human time Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever. It was this belief, so satisfying to her and so ardently entertained, which inspired the best and noblest of her poems. With an almost exultant joy, with the enthusiasm of an old-time devotee, she sings of that immortality which consists in renouncing all which is personal. The diffusive good which sweetens life for others through all time is the real heaven she sought. This is life to come, Which martyred men have made more glorious For us who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty-- Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense. So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness of the world. Believing that humanity represents an organic life and development, it was easy for George Eliot to accept the idea of immortality in the race. She reverenced the voice of truth Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead. It was to her a divine voice, full of tenderness, sympathy and strength. She was fascinated by this thought of the solemn, ever-present and all-powerful influence of the dead over the living; there was mystery and inspiration in this belief for her. All phases of religious history, all religious experiences, were by her interpreted in the light of this conception. The power of Jesus's life is, that his trancendent beauty of soul lives in the "everlasting memories" of men, and that the cross of his shame has become The sign Of death that turned to more diffusive life His influence, his memory, has lifted up the world with a great effect, and made his life, spirit and ideas an inherent part of humanity. He has been engrafted into the organic life of the race, and lives there a mighty and an increasing influence. What has happened in his case happens in the case of all the gifted and great. According to what they were living they enter into the life of the world for weal or woe. To become an influence for good in the future, to leave behind an undying impulse of thought and sympathy, was the ambition of George Eliot; and this was all the immortality she desired. The religious tendencies of George Eliot's mind are rather to be noted in her conception of renunciation than in her beliefs about God and immortality. These latter beliefs were of a negative character as she entertained them, but her doctrine of renunciation was of a very positive nature. The central motive of that belief was not faith in God, but faith in man. It gained all its charm and power for her out of her conception of the organic life of the race. Her thought was, that we should live not for self, but for humanity. What so many ardent souls have been willing to do for the glory of God she was willing to do for the uplifting of man. The spirit of renunciation with her took the old theologic form of expression to a considerable extent, associated itself in her thought with the lofty spiritual consecration and self-abnegation of other ages. So ardently did she entertain this doctrine, so fully did she clothe it with the old forms of expression, that many have been deceived into believing her a devoted Christian. A little book was published in 1879 for the express purpose of showing that "the doctrine of the cross" is the main thought presented throughout all George Eliot's books. [Footnote: The Ethics of George Eliot's Works. By the late John Crombie Brown. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons. 1879.] This book was read by George Eliot with much delight, and was regarded by her as the only criticism of her works which did full justice to her purpose in writing them. She is presented in that book as the writer of fiction who "stands out as the deepest, broadest and most catholic illustrator of the true ethics of Christianity; the most earnest and persistent expositor of the true doctrine of the cross, that we are born and should live to something higher than love of happiness." "Self-sacrifice as the divine law of life, and its only true fulfilment; self-sacrifice, not in some ideal sphere sought out for ourselves in the vain spirit of self-pleasing, but wherever God has placed us, amid homely, petty anxieties, loves and sorrows; the aiming at the highest attainable good in our own place, irrespective of all results of joy or sorrow, of apparent success or failure--such is the lesson" that is conveyed in all her books. George Eliot is presented as a true teacher of the doctrine which admonishes us to love not pleasure but God, to forsake all things else for the sake of obedience and devotion, to shun the world and to devote ourselves perpetually to God's service. The Christian doctrine of renunciation has always bidden men put their eyes on God, forget everything beside, and seek only for that divine life which is spiritual union with the Eternal. That doctrine was not George Eliot's. Christianity bids men renounce the world for the sake of a perfect union with God; George Eliot desires men to renounce selfishness for the sake of humanity. The Christian idea includes the renunciation of all self-seeking, it bids us give ourselves for others, it even teaches us that others are to be preferred to ourselves. Yet all this is to be done, not merely for the sake of the present, but in view of an eternal destiny, and because we can thus only fulfil God's will and attain to holy oneness with him. George Eliot did, however, throughout her writings, identify the altruist impulse to live for others with the Christian doctrine of the cross. To her, the life of devotion to humanity, which she has so beautifully presented in the poem, "O may I join the Choir Invisible," was the true interpretation of the Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice. She accepted this world-old religious belief, consecrated with all the tears and sacrifices and martyrdoms of the world, as a true expression of a want of the soul, as the poetic expression of emotions and aspirations which ever live in man. It is a beautiful symbolism of that need of his fellows man ever has, of the conviction which is growing stronger, that man must live for the race and not for himself. The individual is nothing except as he identifies himself with the corporate body of humanity; the true fulfilment of life comes only to those who in some way recognize this fact, and give themselves for the good of the world. George Eliot even goes so far in her willingness to renounce self that she says in _Theophrastus Such_, "I am really at the point of finding that this world would be worth living in without any lot of one's own. Is it not possible for me to enjoy the scenery of earth without saying to myself, I have a cabbage-garden in it?" The relations of the individual to the past and the present of the race make duties and burdens and woes for him which he has not created, but which are given him to bear. The sins of others bring pain and sorrow to us; we are a part of all the good and evil of the world. The present is determined by the past; we must accept the lot created for us by those who have gone before us. "He felt the hard pressure of our common lot, the yoke of that mighty, resistless destiny laid upon us by the past of other men." says George Eliot of one of her characters. The past brings us burdens and sorrows difficult to bear; it also brings us duties. We owe to it many things; our debt to the race is an immense one. That debt can only be discharged by a life of devotion and loyalty, by doing what we can to make humanity better. The Christian idea of a debt owed to God, which we can only repay by perfect loyalty and self-abnegation, becomes to George Eliot a debt owed to humanity, which we can only repay in the purest altruistic spirit. The doctrine of renunciation has been presented again and again by George Eliot; her books are full of it. It is undoubtedly the central theme of all her teaching. In the conversation between Romola and Savonarola when she is escaping from her home and is met by him, it is vividly expressed. Savonarola speaks as a Christian, as a Catholic, as a monk; but the words he uses quite as well serve to express George Eliot's convictions. The Christian symbolism laid aside, and all was true to her; yet her feelings, her sense of corporate unity with the past, would not even suffer her to lay aside the symbolism in presenting her thoughts on this subject. Romola pleads that she would not have left Florence as long as she could fulfil a duty to her father: but Savonarola reminds her that there are other duties, other ties, other burdens. "If your own people are wearing a yoke, will you slip from under it, instead of struggling with them to lighten it? There is hunger and misery in our streets, yet you say, 'I care not; I have my own sorrows; I will go away, if peradventure I can ease them.' The servants of God are struggling after a law of justice, peace and charity, that the hundred thousand citizens among whom you were born may be governed righteously; but you think no more of that than if you were a bird, that may spread its wings and fly whither it will in search of food to its liking. And yet you have scorned the teaching of the Church, my daughter. As if you, a wilful wanderer, following your own blind choice, were not below the humblest Florentine woman who stretches forth her hands with her own people, and craves a blessing for them; and feels a close sisterhood with the neighbor who kneels beside her, and is not of her own blood; and thinks of the mighty purpose that God has for Florence; and waits and endures because the promised work is great, and she feels herself little." She then asserts her purpose not to go away to a life of ease and self-indulgence, but rather to one of hardship; but that plea is not suffered to pass. "You are seeking your own will, my daughter. You are seeking some good other than the law you are bound to obey. But how will you find good? It is not a thing of choice: it is a river that flows from the foot of the Invisible Throne, and flows by the path of obedience. I say again, man cannot choose his duties. You may choose to forsake your duties, and choose not to have the sorrow they bring. But you will go forth; and what will you find, my daughter? Sorrow without duty--bitter herbs, and no bread with them." Savonarola bids her draw the crucifix from her bosom, which she secretly carries, and appeals to her by that symbol of devotion and self-sacrifice to remain true to her duties, to accept willingly the burdens given her to bear, not to think of self, but only of others. He condemns the pagan teaching she had received, of individual self-seeking, and the spirit of culture, refinement and ease which accompanied that teaching. She looks on the image of a suffering life, a life offered willingly as a sacrifice for others' good, and he says,-- "Conform your life to that image, my daughter; make your sorrow an offering; and when the fire of divine charity burns within you, and you behold the need of your fellow-men by the light of that flame, you will not call your offering great. You have carried yourself proudly, as one who held herself not of common blood or of common thoughts; but you have been as one unborn to the true life of man. What! you say your love for your father no longer tells you to stay in Florence? Then, since that tie is snapped, you are without a law, without religion; you are no better than a beast of the field when she is robbed of her young. If the yearning of a fleshly love is gone, you are without love, without obligation. See, then, my daughter, how you are below the life of the believer who worships that image of the Supreme Offering, and feels the glow of a common life with the lost multitude for whom that offering was made, and beholds the history of the world as the history of a great redemption, in which he is himself a fellow-worker, in his own place and among his own people! If you held that faith, my beloved daughter, you would not be a wanderer flying from suffering, and blindly seeking the good of a freedom which is lawlessness. You would feel that Florence was the home of your soul as well as your birthplace, because you would see the work that was given you to do there. If you forsake your place, who will fill it? You ought to be in your place now, helping in the great work by which God will purify Florence and raise it to be the guide of the nations. What! the earth is full of iniquity--full of groans--the light is still struggling with a mighty darkness, and you say, 'I cannot bear my bonds; I will burst them asunder; I will go where no man claims me?' My daughter, every bond of your life is a debt: the right lies in the payment of that debt; it can lie nowhere else. In vain will you wander over the earth; you will be wandering forever away from the right." Romola hesitates, she pleads that her brother Dino forsook his home to become a monk, and that possibly Savonarola may be wrong. He then appeals to her conscience, and assures her that she has assumed relations and duties which cannot be broken from on any plea. The human ties are forever sacred; there can exist no causes capable of annulling them. "You are a wife. You seek to break your ties in self-will and anger, not because the higher life calls upon you to renounce them. The higher life begins for us, my daughter, when we renounce our own will to bow before a Divine law. That seems hard to you. It is the portal of wisdom, and freedom, and blessedness. And the symbol of it hangs before you. That wisdom is the religion of the cross. And you stand aloof from it; you are a pagan; you have been taught to say, 'I am as the wise men who lived before the time when the Jew of Nazareth was crucified.' And that is your wisdom! To be as the dead whose eyes are closed, and whose ear is deaf to the work of God that has been since their time. What has your dead wisdom done for you, my daughter? It has left you without a heart for the neighbors among whom you dwell, without care for the great work by which Florence is to be regenerated and the world made holy; it has left you without a share in the Divine life which quenches the sense of suffering self in the ardors of an ever-growing love. And now, when the sword has pierced your soul, you say, 'I will go away; I cannot bear my sorrow.' And you think nothing of the sorrow and the wrong that are within the walls of the city where you dwell; you would leave your place empty, when it ought to be filled with your pity and your labor. If there is wickedness in the streets, your steps should shine with the light of purity; if there is a cry of anguish, you, my daughter, because you know the meaning of the cry, should be there to still it. My beloved daughter, sorrow has come to teach you a new worship; the sign of it hangs before you." This teaching of renunciation is no less distinctly presented in _The Mill on the Floss_, the chief ethical aim of which is its inculcation. It is also there associated with the Catholic form of its expression, through Maggie's reading of _The Imitation of Christ_, a book which was George Eliot's constant companion, and was found by her bedside after her death. It was the spirit of that book which attracted George Eliot, not its doctrines. Its lofty spirit of submission and renunciation she admired; and she believed that altruism can be made real only through tradition, only as associated with past heroisms and strivings and ideals. As an embodiment of man's craving for perfect union with humanity, for full and joyous submission to his lot, the old forms of faith are sacred. They carry the hopes of ages; they are a pictured poem of man's inward strivings. To break away from these memories is to forsake one's home, is to repudiate one's mother. We cannot intellectually accept them, we cannot assent to the dogmas associated with them; but the forms are the spontaneous expressions of the heart, while the dogmas are an after-thought of the inquiring intellect. The real meaning of the cross of Christ is self-sacrifice for humanity's sake; that was its inspiration, that has ever been its true import. It was this view of the subject which made George Eliot so continuously associate her new teachings with the old expressions of faith. In altruism she believes is to be found the hope of the world, the cure of every private pain and grief. Altruism means living for and in the race, as a willing member of the social organic life of humanity, as desiring not one's own good but the welfare of others. That doctrine she applies to Maggie's case. This young girl was dissatisfied with her life, out of harmony with her surroundings, and could not accept the theories of life given her. She wanted some explanation of this hard, real life; the unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull breakfast-table; the childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid tasks that filled the hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless leisure; the need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel sense that Tom didn't mind what she thought or felt, and that they were no longer playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things that had come to _her_ more than to others--she wanted some key that would enable her to understand, and in understanding endure, the heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught "real learning and wisdom, such as great men knew," she thought she should have held the secrets of life; if she had only books, that she might learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. She know little of saints and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her teaching, that they were a temporary provision against the spread of Catholicism, and had all died at Smithfield. Into the darkness of Maggie's life a light suddenly comes in the shape of the immortal book of Thomas à Kempis. Why that book; why along such a way should the light come? The answer is, that George Eliot meant to teach certain ideas. It is this fact which justifies her reader in taking these scenes of her novels, these words spoken in the interludes, as genuine reflections and transcripts of her own mind. Maggie turns over a parcel of books brought her by Bob Jakin, to find little in them-- but _Thomas à Kempis_. The name had come across her in her reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little old clumsy book with some curiosity; it had the corners turned down in many places, and some hand, now forever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed. "Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world.... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free from care; for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross thee.... Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the cross; and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou desire to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which evil being once overcome and subdued, there will presently ensue great peace and tranquillity.... It is but little thou sufferest in comparison of them that have suffered so much, were so strongly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little adversities. And if they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause thereof.... Blessed are those ears that receive the whispers of the divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth outwardly, but unto the Truth which teacheth inwardly." A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while she read, as if she had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, hardly conscious that she was reading--seeming rather to listen while a low voice said,-- "Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away, and thou together with them. Beware thou cleave not unto them lest thou be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue and very fervent devotion, yet is there much wanting; to wit, one thing which is most necessary for him. What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of self-love.... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same. Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace.... Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations and superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." Maggie drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all other secrets--here was a sublime height to be reached without the help of outward things--here was insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity of the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her own desires, of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading until the sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness, and, in the ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had not perceived--how could she until she had lived longer?--the inmost truth of the old monk's outpourings, that renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. Maggie was still panting for happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it. She knew nothing of doctrines and systems--of mysticism or quietism; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to Maggie as an unquestioned message. I suppose that is the reason why the small, old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness, while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's promptings; it is the chronicle of a solitary hidden anguish, struggle, trust and triumph,--not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt, and suffered, and renounced,--in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours,--but under the same silent, far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness. [Footnote: The Mill on the Floss, Book IV., chapter III.] Life now has a meaning for Maggie, its secret has been in some measure opened. Only by bitter experiences does she at last learn the full meaning of that word; but all her after-life is told for us in order that the depth and breadth and height of that meaning may be unfolded. Very soon Maggie is heard saying, "Our life is determined for us--and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do." It is George Eliot who really speaks these words; hers is the thought which inspires them. Yet Maggie has not learned to give up wishing; and the sorrow, the tragedy of her life comes in consequence. She is pledged in love to Philip, the son of the bitter enemy of her family, and is attracted to Stephen, the lover of her cousin Lucy. A long contest is fought out in her life between attraction and duty; between individual preferences and moral obligations. The struggle is hard, as when Stephen avows his love, and she replies,-- "Oh, it is difficult--life is very difficult. It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but, then, such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us--the ties that have made others dependent on us--and would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign two people ought to belong to each other. But I see--I feel that it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me, but I see one thing quite clearly--that I must not, cannot seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity, and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned." Against her will she elopes with Stephen, or her departure with him is so understood; but us soon as she realizes what she has done, her better nature asserts itself, and she refuses to go on. Stephen pleads that the natural law which has drawn them together is greater than every other obligation; but Maggie replies,-- "If we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery and cruelty. We should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can ever be formed on earth." He then asks what is outward faithfulness and constancy without love. Maggie pleads the better spirit. "That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is not right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us--whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent on us. If we--if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have been so strongly present with me--I should have felt them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my conscience is awake, that the opposite feeling would never have grown in me as it has done: it would have been quenched at once. I should have prayed for help so earnestly--I should have rushed away as we rush from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself--none. I should never have failed toward Lucy and Philip as I have done, if I had not been weak, selfish and hard--able to think of their pain without a pain to myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh. what is Lucy feeling now? She believed in me--she loved me--she was so good to me! Think of her!" She can see no good for herself which is apart from the good of others, no joy which is the means of pain to those she holds dear. The past has made ties and; memories which no present love or future joy can take away; she must be true to past obligations as well as present inclinations. "There are memories and affections, and longing after perfect goodness, that have such a strong hold on me, they would never quit me for long; they would come back and be pain to me--repentance. I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I have caused sorrow already--I know--I feel it; but I have never deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They shall suffer that I may have joy.'" And again, she says,-- "We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us--for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have felt that if I let it go forever I should have no light through the darkness of this life." In these remarkable passages from _Romola_ and _The Mill on the Floss_, George Eliot presented her own theory of life. One of her friends, in giving an account of her moral influence, speaks of "the impression she produced, that one of the greatest duties of life was that of resignation. Nothing was more impressive as exhibiting the power of feelings to survive the convictions which gave them birth, than the earnestness with which she dwelt, on this as the great and real remedy for all the ills of life. On one occasion she appeared to apply it to herself in speaking of the short space of life that lay before her, and the large amount of achievement that must be laid aside as impossible to compress into it--and the sad, gentle tones in which the word _resignation_ was uttered, still vibrate on the ear." [Footnote: Contemporary Review, February, 1881.] Not only renunciation but resignation was by her held to be a prime requisite of a truly moral life. Man must renounce many things for the sake of humanity, but he must also resign himself to endure many things because the universe is under the dominion of invariable laws. Much of pain and sorrow must come to us which can in no way be avoided. A true resignation and renunciation will enable us to turn pain and sorrow into the means of a higher life. In _Adam Bede_ she says that "deep, unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state." She teaches that man can attain true unity with the race only through renunciation, and renunciation always means suffering. Self-sacrifice means hardship, struggle and sorrow; but the true end of life can only be attained when self is renounced for that higher good which comes through devotion to humanity. Her noblest characters, Maggie Tulliver, Romola, Jubal, Fedalma, Armgart, attain peace only when they have found their lives taken up in the good of others. To her the highest happiness consists in being loyal to duty, and it "often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good." George Eliot's religion is without God, without immortality, without a transcendent spiritual aim and duty. It consists in a humble submission to the invariable laws of the universe, a profound love of humanity, a glorification of feeling and affection, and a renunciation of personal and selfish desires for an altruistic devotion to the good of the race. Piety without God, renunciation without immortality, mysticism without the supernatural, everywhere finds eloquent presentation in her pages. Offering that which she believes satisfies the spiritual wants of man, she yet rejects all the legitimate objects of spiritual desire. Even when her characters hold to the most fervent faith, and use with the greatest enthusiasm the old expressions of piety, it is the human elements in that faith which are made to appear most prominently. We are told that no radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for Romola in her moment of direst distress and need. Then we are told that many such see no angels; and we are made to realize that angelic voices are to George Eliot the voices of her fellows. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision--men who believed falsities as well as truths, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, but the arrest of inaction and death. The same thought is expressed in _Silas Marner_, that man is to expect no help and consolation except from his fellow-man. In old days there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward; and the hand may he a little child's. Even more explicit in its rejection of all sources of help, except the human, is the motto to "The Lifted Veil." Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turns To energy of human fellowship; No powers beyond the growing heritage That makes completer manhood. The purpose of this story is to show that supernatural knowledge is a curse to man. The narrator of the story is gifted with the power of divining even the most secret thoughts of those about him, and of beholding coming events. This knowledge brings him only evil and sorrow. His spiritual insight did not save him from folly, and he is led to say,-- "There is no short cut, no patent tram-road to wisdom. After all the centuries of invention, the soul's path lies through the thorny wilderness, which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time." He also discourses of the gain which it is to man that the future is hidden from his knowledge, "So absolute is our soul's need of something hidden and uncertain for the maintenance of that doubt and hope and effort which are the breath of its life, that if the whole future were laid bare to us beyond to-day, the interest of all mankind would be bent on the hours that lie between; we should pant after the uncertainties of our one morning and our one afternoon; we should rush fiercely to the exchange for our last possibility of speculation, of success, of disappointment; we should have a glut of political prophets foretelling a crisis or a no-crisis within the only twenty-four hours left open to prophecy. Conceive the condition of the human mind if all propositions whatsoever were self-evident except one, which was to become self-evident at the close of a summer's day, but in the mean time might be the subject of question, of hypothesis, of debate. Art and philosophy, literature and science, would fasten like bees on that one proposition that had the honey of probability in it, and be the more eager because their enjoyment would end with sunset. Our impulses, our spiritual activities, no more adjust themselves to the idea of their future reality than the beating of our heart, or the irritability of our muscles." All is hidden from man that does not grow out of human experience, and it is better so. Such is George Eliot's method of dealing with our craving for a higher wisdom and a direct revelation. Such wisdom and such revelation are not to be had, and they would not help man if he had them. The mystery of existence rouses his curiosity, stimulates his powers, develops art, religion, sympathy, and all that is best in human life. In her presentations of the men and women most affected by religious motives she adheres to this theory, and represents them as impelled, not by the sense of God's presence, but by purely human considerations. She makes Dorothea Brooke say,-- "I have always been thinking of the different ways in which Christianity is taught, and whenever I find one way that makes it a wider blessing than any other, I cling to that as the truest--I mean that which takes in the most good of all kinds, and brings in the most people as sharers in it." Of the same character is the belief which comforts Dorothea, and takes the place to her of prayer. "That by desiring what is perfectly good, even when we don't quite know what it is and cannot do what we would, we are a part of the divine power against evil--widening the skirts of light and making the struggle with darkness narrower." Mr. Tryan, in _Janet's Repentance_, is a most ardent disciple of Evangelicalism, and accepts all its doctrines; but George Eliot contrives to show throughout the book, that all the value of his work and religion consisted in the humanitarian spirit of renunciation he awakened. George Eliot does not entirely avoid the supernatural, but she treats it as unexplainable. Instances of her use of it are to be found in Adam Bede's experience while at work on his father's coffin, in the visions of Savonarola, and in Mordecai's strange faith in a coming successor to his own faith and work. For Adam Bede's experience there is no explanation given, nor for that curious power manifest in the "Lifted Veil." On the other hand, the spiritual power of Savonarola and Mordecai have their explanation, in George Eliot's philosophy, in that intuition which is inherited insight. In her treatment of such themes she manifests her appreciation of the great mystery which surrounds man's existence, but she shows no faith in a spiritual world which impinges on the material, and ever manifests itself in gleams and fore-tokenings. It is to be noted, however, that many traces of mysticism appear in her works. This might have been expected from her early love of the transcendentalists, as well as from her frequent perusal of Thomas à Kempis. More especially was this to be expected from her conception of feeling as the source of all that is best in man's life. The mystics always make feeling the source of truth, prefer emotion to reason. All thinkers who lay stress on the value of feeling are liable to become mystics, even if materialists in their philosophy. Here and there in her pages this tendency towards mysticism, which manifests itself in some of the more poetic of the scientists of the present time, is to be seen in George Eliot. Some of her words about love, music and nature partake of this character. Her sayings about altruism and renunciation touch the border of the mystical occasionally. Had she been less thoroughly a rationalist she would doubtless have become a mystic in fact. Her tendency in this direction hints at the close affinity between the evolutionists of to-day and the idealists of a century ago. They unite in making matter and mind identical, and in regarding feeling as a source of truth. These are the two essential thoughts on which all mysticism rests. As modern science becomes the basis of speculation about religion, and gives expression to these doctrines, it will develop mysticism. Indeed, it is difficult to know wherein much that George Eliot wrote differs from mysticism. Her subjective immortality derived much of its acceptableness and beauty from those poetic phases given to it by idealistic pantheism. Her altruism caught the glow of the older humanitarianism, Her conception of feeling and emotional sympathy is touched everywhere with that ideal glamour given it by the mystical teachings of an earlier generation. Had she lived half a century earlier she might have been one of Fichte's most ardent disciples, and found in his subjective idealism the incentive to a higher inspiration than that attained to under the leadership of Comte. Her religion would then have differed but little from what it did in fact, but there would have been a new sublimity and a loftier spirit at the heart of it. George Eliot retains the traditional life, piety and symbolism of Christianity, but she undertakes to show they have quite another meaning than that usually given them. Her peculiarity is that she should wish to retain the form after the substance is gone. Comte undertook to give a new outward expression to those needs of the soul which lead to worship and piety; but George Eliot accepted the traditional symbolisms as far better than anything which can be invented. If we would do no violence to feeling and the inner needs of life, we must not break with the past, we must not destroy the temple of the soul. The traditional worship, piety and consecration, the poetic expression of feeling and sentiment, must be kept until new traditions, a new symbolism, have developed themselves out of the experiences of the race. God is a symbol for the great mystery of the universe and of being, the eternity and universality of law. Immortality is a symbol for the transmitted impulse which the person communicates to the race. The life and death of Christ is a symbol of that altruistic spirit of renunciation and sorrow willingly borne, by which humanity is being lifted up and brought towards its true destiny. Feeling demands these symbols, the heart craves for them. The bare enunciation of principles is not enough; they must be clothed upon by sentiment and affection. The Christian symbols answer to this need, they most fitly express this craving of the soul for a higher and purer life. The spontaneous, creative life of humanity has developed them as a fit mode of voicing its great spiritual cravings, and only the same creative genius can replace them. The inquiring intellect cannot furnish substitutes for them; rationalism utterly fails in all its attempts to satisfy the spiritual nature. Such is George Eliot's religion. It is the "Religion of Humanity" as interpreted by a woman, a poet and a genius. It differs from Comte's as the work of a poet differs from that of a philosopher, as that of a woman differs from that of a man. His _positive religion_ gives the impression of being invented; it is artificial, unreal. Hers is, at least, living and beautiful and impressive; it is warm, tender and full of compassion, He invents a new symbolism, a new hierarchy, and a new worship; that is, he remodels Catholicism to fit the Religion of Humanity. She is too sensible, too wise, or rather too poetic and sympathetic, to undertake such a transformation, or to be satisfied with it when accomplished by another. She gives a new poetic and spiritual meaning to the old faith and worship; and in doing this makes no break with tradition, rejects nothing of the old symbolism. It was her conviction that nothing of the real meaning and power of religion escaped by the transformation she made in its spiritual contents. She believed that she had dropped only its speculative teachings, while all that had ever made it of value was retained. That she was entirely mistaken in this opinion scarcely needs to be said; or that her speculative interpretation, if generally accepted, would destroy for most persons even those elements of religion which she accepted. A large rich mind, gifted with genius and possessed of wide culture, as was hers, could doubtless find satisfaction in that attenuated substitute for piety and worship which she accepted. There certainly could be no Mr. Tryan, no Dinah Morris, no Savonarola, no Mordecai, if her theories were the common ones; and it would be even less possible for a Dorothea, a Felix Holt, a Daniel Deronda, or a Romola to develop in such an atmosphere. What her intellectual speculations would accomplish when accepted as the motives of life, is seen all too well in the case of those many radical thinkers whom this century has produced. Only the most highly cultivated, and those of an artistic or poetic temperament, could accept her substitute for the old religion. The motives she presents could affect but a few persons; only here and there are to be found those to whom altruism would be a motive large enough to become a religion. To march in the great human army towards a higher destiny for humanity may have a strong fascination for some, and is coming to affect and inspire a larger number with every century; but it is not enough to know that the race is growing better. What is the end of human progress? we have a right to ask. Does that progress go on in accordance with some universal purpose, which includes the whole universe? We must look not only for a perfect destiny for man, but for a perfect destiny for all worlds and beings throughout the infinitude of God's creative influence. A progressive, intellectual religion such as will answer to the larger needs of modern life, must give belief in a universal providence, and it must teach man to trust in the spiritual capacities of his own soul. Unless the universe means something which is intelligible, and unless it has a purpose and destiny progressive and eternal, it is impossible that religion will continue to inspire men. That is, only a philosophy which gives such an interpretation to the universe can be the basis of an enduring and progressive religion. If religion is to continue, it is also necessary that man should be able to believe in the soul as something more than the product of environment and heredity. It is not merely the belief in immortality which has inspired the greatest minds, but the inward impulse of creative activity, resting on the conviction that they were working with God for enduring results. Absorption into the life of humanity can be but a feeble motive compared with that which grows out of faith in the soul's spiritual eternity in co-operation with God. George Eliot's religion is highly interesting, and in many ways it is suggestive and profitable. Her insistence on feeling and sympathy as its main impulses is profoundly significant; but that teaching is as good for Theism or Christianity as for the Religion of Humanity, and needs everywhere to be accepted. In like manner, her altruistic spirit may be accepted and realized by those who can find no sympathy for her intellectual speculations. Love of man, self-sacrifice for human good, cannot be urged by too many teachers. The greater the number of motives leading to that result, the better for man. XII. ETHICAL SPIRIT. Whatever may be said of George Eliot's philosophy and theology, her moral purpose was sound and her ethical intent noble. She had a strong passion for the ethical life, her convictions regarding it were very deep and earnest, and she dwelt lovingly on all its higher accomplishments. Her books are saturated with moral teaching, and her own life was ordered after a lofty ethical standard. She seems to have yearned most eagerly after a life of moral helpfulness and goodness, and she has made her novels the teachers of a vigorous morality. Her friends bear enthusiastic testimony to the nobleness of her moral life and to her zeal for ethical culture. We are told by one of them that "she had upbuilt with strenuous pains a resolute virtue," conquering many faults, and gaining a lofty nobleness of spirit. Another has said, that "precious as the writings of George Eliot are and must always be, her life and character were yet more beautiful than they." Her zeal for morality was very great; she was an ethical prophet; the moral order of life roused her mind to a lofty inspiration. If she could not conceive of God, if she could not believe in immortality, yet she accepted duty as peremptory and absolute. Her faith in duty and charity seemed all the more vigorous and confident because her religion was so attenuated and imperfect. Love of man with her grew into something like that mighty and absorbing love of God which is to be seen in some of the greatest souls. Morality became to her a religion, not so intense as with saints and prophets, but more sympathetic and ardent than with most ethical teachers. She was no stoic, no teacher of moral precepts, no didactic debater about moral duties, no mere _dilettante_ advocate of human rights. She was a warm, tender, yearning, sympathetic, womanly friend of individuals, who hoped great things for humanity, and who believed that man can find happiness and true culture only in a moral life. She was distinctively a moral teacher in her books. The novel was never to her a work of art alone. The moral purpose was always present, always apparent, always clear and emphatic. There was something to teach for her whenever she took the pen in hand; some deep lesson of human experience, some profound truth of human conduct, some tender word of sympathy for human sorrow and suffering. She seems to have had no sympathy with that theory which says that the poet and the novelist are to picture life as it is, without regard to moral obligations and consequences. In this respect she was one of the most partisan of all partisans, an absolute dogmatist; for she never forgot for a moment the moral consequences of life. She was one of the most ardent of modern preachers, her books are crowded with teaching of the most positive character. In her way she was a great believer, and when she believed she never restrained her pen, but taught the full measure of her convictions. She did not look upon life as a scene to be sketched, but as an experience to be lived, and a moral order to be improved by sympathy and devotedness. Consequently the artist appears in the teacher's garb, the novelist has become an ethical preacher. She does not describe life as something outside of herself, nor does she regard human sorrows and sufferings and labors merely as materials for the artist's use; but she lives in and with all that men do and suffer and aspire to. Hers is not the manner of Homer and Scott, who hide their personality behind the wonderful distinctness of their personalities, making the reader forget the author in the strength and power of the characters described. It is not that of Shakspere, of whom we seem to get no glimpse in his marvellous readings of human nature, who paints other men as no one else has done, but who does not paint himself. Hers is rather the manner of Wordsworth and Goethe, who have a theory of life to give us, and whose personality appears on every page they wrote. She has a philosophy, a morality and a religion to inculcate. She had a vast subjective intensity of conviction, and a strong individualism of purpose, which would not hide itself behind the scenes. Her philosophy impregnates with a strong personality all her classic utterances; her ethics present a marked purpose in the development of her plots and in her presentation of the outcome of human experience; and her religion glows in the personal ardor and sympathy of her noblest characters, and in their passion for renunciation and altruism. Her ethical passion adds to the strength and purpose of George Eliot's genius. No supreme literary creator has been devoid of this characteristic, however objective and impersonal he may have been. Homer, Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Shakspere, Scott, were all earnest ethical teachers. The moral problems of life impressed them profoundly, and they showed a strong personal preference for righteousness. The literary masters of all times and countries have loved virtue, praised purity, and admired ethical uprightness. Any other attitude than this argues something less than genius, though genius may be far from didactic and not given to preaching. The moral intent of life is so inwoven with all its experiences, that the failure of any mind to be impressed with it, and profoundly affected, proves it wanting in insight, poetic vision and genius. George Eliot is entirely in harmony, in this respect, with all the masters of the literary art. Her ethical passion is a clear sign of her genius, and proves the vigor of her intellectual vision. No one who rightly weighs the value of her books, and fairly estimates the nature of her teaching, can regret that she had so keen a love of ethical instruction. The vigor, enthusiasm and originality of her teaching compensate for many faults. Her teachings have a special interest because they afford a literary embodiment of the ethical theories of the evolution philosophy. They indicate the form which is likely to be given to ethics if theism and individualism are discarded, and the peculiar effects upon moral life which will be induced by agnosticism. She applied agnosticism to morals, by regarding good and evil as relative, and as the results, of man's environment. For her, ethics had no infinite sanctions, no intuitive promulgation of an eternal law; but she regarded morality as originating in and deriving its authority from the social relations of men to each other. Our intuitive doing of right, or sorrow for wrong, is the result of inherited conditions. In _Romola_ she speaks of Tito as affected by-- the inward shame, the reflex of that outward law which the great heart of mankind makes for every individual man, a reflex which will exist even in the absence of the sympathetic impulses that need no law, but rush to the deed of fidelity and pity as inevitably as the brute mother shields her young from the attack of the hereditary enemy. [Footnote: Chapter IX.] This teaching is often found in her pages, and in connection with the assertion of the relativity of morals. There is no absolute moral law for her, no eternal ideal standard; but what is right is determined by the environment. Instead of Kant's categorical imperative of the moral law, proclaimed as a divine command in every soul, George Eliot found in the conscience and in the moral intuitions simply inherited experiences. In _Daniel Deronda_ she says, "Our consciences are not all of the same pattern, an inner deliverance of fixed laws; they are the voice of sensibilities as various as our memories." George Eliot's rejection of any absolute standard of moral conduct or of happiness continually asserts itself in her pages. We must look at the individual, his inherited moral power, his environment, his special motives, if we would judge him aright. In the last chapters of _The Mill on the Floss_, when writing of Maggie's repentance, this idea appears. Maggie is not to be tried by the moral ideal of Christianity, nor by any such standard of perfection as Kant proposed, but by all the circumstances of her place in life and her experience. We are accordingly told that-- Moral judgments must remain false and hollow unless they are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the individual lot. George Eliot says in one of the mottoes in _Felix Holt_ that moral happiness is "mainly a complex of habitual relations and dispositions." Even more explicit is her assertion, in one of the mottoes of _Daniel Deronda_, of the relativity of moral power. Looking at life in the growth of a single lot, who having a practised vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled--like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp-- precipitate the mistaken soul on destruction? She does not teach, however, that man is a mere victim of circumstances, that he is a creature ruled by fate. His environment includes his own moral heredity, which may overcome the physical circumstances which surround him. In _Middlemarch_ she says, "It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstances would have been less strong against us." The same thought appears in Zarca's appeal to Fedalma to be his true daughter, in one of the most effective scenes of _The Spanish Gypsy_. Moral devotedness is the strongest of all forces, he argues, even when it fails of its immediate aim; and even in failure the inherited life of the race is enlarged. No great deed is done By falterers who ask for certainty. No good is certain, but the steadfast mind, The undivided will to seek the good: 'Tis that compels the elements, and wrings A human music from the indifferent air. The greatest gift the hero leaves his race Is to have been a hero. Say we fail!-- We feed the high tradition of the world, And leave our spirit in our children's breasts. George Eliot never goes so far as to say that man may, by virtue of his inward life, rise superior to all circumstances, and maintain the inviolable sanctity of his own moral nature. She does not forget that defeat is often the surest victory, that moral faithfulness may lead to disgrace and death; but even in these cases it is for the sake of the race we are to be faithful. The inward victory, the triumph of the soul in unsullied purity and serenity, she does not dwell upon; and it may be doubted if she fully recognized such a moral result. Her mind is so occupied with the social results of conduct as to overlook the individual victories which life ever brings to those who are faithful unto death. George Eliot has put her theory of morality into the mouth of Guildenstern, one of the characters in "A College Breakfast Party." Where get, you say, a binding law, a rule Enforced by sanction, an Ideal throned With thunder in its hand? I answer, there Whence every faith and rule has drawn its force Since human consciousness awaking owned An Outward, whose unconquerable sway Resisted first and then subdued desire By pressure of the dire impossible Urging to possible ends the active soul And shaping so its terror and its love. Why, you have said it--threats and promises Depend on each man's sentence for their force: All sacred rules, imagined or revealed, Can have no form or potency apart From the percipient and emotive mind. God, duty, love, submission, fellowship, Must first be framed in man, as music is, Before they live outside him as a law. And still they grow and shape themselves anew, With fuller concentration in their life Of inward and of outward energies Blending to make the last result called Man, Which means, not this or that philosopher Looking through beauty into blankness, not The swindler who has sent his fruitful lie By the last telegram: it means the tide Of needs reciprocal, toil, trust and love-- The surging multitude of human claims Which make "a presence not to be put by" Above the horizon of the general soul. Is inward reason shrunk to subtleties, And inward wisdom pining passion-starved?-- The outward reason has the world in store, Regenerates passion with the stress of want, Regenerates knowledge with discovery, Shows sly rapacious self a blunderer, Widens dependence, knits the social whole In sensible relation more defined. As these words would indicate, George Eliot's faith in the moral meaning and outcome of the world is very strong. All experience is moral, she would have us believe, and capable of teaching man the higher life. That is, all experience tends slowly to bring man into harmony with his environment, and to teach him that certain actions are helpful, while others are harmful. This teaching is very definite and emphatic in her pages, often rising into a lofty eloquence and a rich poetic diction, as her mind is wrought upon by the greatness and the impressiveness of the moral lessons of life. However effective the outward order of nature may be in creating morality, it is to be borne in mind that ethical rules can have no effect "apart from the percipient and emotive mind." It is, in reality, the social nature which gives morality its form and meaning. It is a creation of the social organism. Its basis is found, indeed, in the invariable order of nature, but the superstructure is erected out of and by society. "Man's individual functions," says Lewes, "arise in relations to the cosmos; his general functions arise in relations to the social medium; thence moral life emerges. All the animal impulses become blended with human emotions. In the process of evolution, starting from the merely animal appetite of sexuality, we arrive at the purest and most far-reaching tenderness. The social instincts tend more and more to make sociality dominate animality, and thus subordinate personality to humanity.... The animal has sympathy, and is moved by sympathetic impulses, but these are never altruistic; the ends are never remote. Moral life is based on sympathy; it is feeling for others, working for others, aiding others, quite irrespective of any personal good beyond the satisfaction of the social impulse. Enlightened by the intuition of our community of weakness, we share ideally the universal sorrows. Suffering harmonizes. Feeling the need of mutual help, we are prompted by it to labor for others." [Footnote: Foundations of a Creed, vol. I., pp. 147, 153.] Morality is social, not personal; the result of those instincts which draw men together in community of interests, sympathies and sufferings. Its sanctions are all social; its motives are purely human; its law is created by the needs of humanity. There is no outward coercive law of the divine will or of invariable order which is to be supremely regarded; the moral law is human need as it changes from age to age. The increase of human sympathies in the process of social evolution gives the true moral ideal to be aspired after. What will increase the social efficiency of the race, what will promote altruism, is moral. Alike because of the invariable order of nature, and the social dependence of men on each other, are the effects of conduct wrought out in the individual. George Eliot believes in "the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind." All evil is injurious to man, destructive of the integrity of his life. She teaches the doctrine of Nemesis with as much conviction, thoroughness and eloquence as the old Greek dramatists, making sin to be punished, and wrong-doing to be destructive. Sometimes she presents this doctrine with all the stern, unpitying vigor of an Aeschylus, as a dire effect of wrong that comes upon men with an unrelenting mercilessness. In _Janet's Repentance_ she says,-- Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch. Her doctrine of Nemesis resembles that of the old Greeks more than that of the modern optimists and theists. Hers is not the idealistic conception of compensation, which measures out an exact proportion of punishment for every sin, and of happiness for every virtuous action. Wrong-doing injures others as well as those who commit the evil deed, and moral effects reach far beyond those who set them in operation. Very explicitly is this fact presented in _The Mill on the Floss_. So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain. In _Adam Bede_, Parson Irwine says to Arthur,-- Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. Yet wrong-doing does not go unpunished, for the law of moral cause and effect ever holds good. This is the teaching of the first chapter of _Felix Holt_. There is seldom any wrong-doing which does not carry along with it some downfall of blindly climbing hopes, some hard entail of suffering, some quickly satiated desire that survives, with the life in death of old paralytic vice, to see itself cursed by its woeful progeny--some tragic mark of kinship in the one brief life to the far-stretching life that went before, and to the life that is to come after, such as has raised the pity and terror of men ever since they began to discern between will and destiny. But these things are often unknown to the world, for there is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer--committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear. In the same novel we are told, that-- To the end of men's struggles a penalty will remain for those who sink from the ranks of the heroes into the crowd for whom the heroes fight and die. The same teaching is to be found in the motto of _Daniel Deronda_, where we are bidden to fear the evil tendencies of our own souls. Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhalations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence. The manner in which George Eliot believes Nemesis works out her results has already been indicated. Her effects do not appear in any outward and palpable results, necessarily; her method is often unknown to men, hidden even from the keenest eyes. Evil causes produce evil results, that is all; and these are shown in the most subtle and secret results of what life is. One of her methods is indicated in _Adam Bede_. Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences-- out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused; there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good society, and smiles when others smile; but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. _The Mill on the Floss_ reflects this thought. Retribution may come from any voice; the hardest, crudest most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can inflict it. More effective still is that punishment which comes of our own inward sense of wrong-doing. George Eliot makes Parson Irwine say that "the inward suffering is the worst form of Nemesis." This is well illustrated in the experience of Gwendolen, who, after the death of her husband at Geneva, is anxious to leave that place. For what place, though it were the flowery vale of Enna, may not the inward sense turn into a circle of punishment where the flowers are no better than a crop of flame-tongues burning the soles of our feet? Even before this, Gwendolen had come to realize the dire effects of selfish conduct in that dread and bitterness of spirit which subdued her and mocked all her hopes and joys. Passion is of the nature of seed, and finds nourishment within, tending to a predominance which determines all currents toward itself, and makes the whole life its tributary. And the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the deserted object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect--rather with the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had grown the self-dread which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse. The vision of her past wrong-doing, and what it had brought on her, came with a pale ghastly illumination over every imagined deed that was a rash effort at freedom, such as she had made in her marriage. [Footnote: Chapter LIV.] The way in which wrong-doing affects us to our hurt is suggested also in _Romola_, where its results upon the inward life are explicitly revealed. Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The contaminating effect of deeds lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires--the enlistment of our self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the purifying effect of public confession springs from the fact that by it the hope in lies is forever swept away, and the soul recovers the noble attitude of simplicity. In the same novel the effect of wrong-doing is regarded as an inward and subduing fear of the consequences of our conduct. This dread so commonly felt, and made a most effective motive by all religions, George Eliot regards as the soul's testimony to the great law of retribution. Experience that moral causes produce moral effects, as that law is every day taught us, takes hold of feeling, and becomes a nameless dread of the avenging powers. Having once begun to explain away Baldassarre's claim, Tito's thought showed itself as active as a virulent acid, eating its rapid way through all the tissues of sentiment. His mind was destitute of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man's animal care for his own skin; that awe of the divine Nemesis which was felt by religious pagans, and, though it took a more positive form under Christianity, is still felt by the mass of mankind simply as a vague fear at anything which is called wrong-doing. Such terror of the unseen is so far above mere sensual cowardice that it will annihilate that cowardice: it is the initial recognition of a moral law restraining desire, and checks the hard bold scrutiny of imperfect thought into obligations which can never be proved to have any sanctity in the absence of feeling. "It is good," sing the old Eumenides, in Aeschylus, "that fear should sit as the guardian of the soul, forcing it into wisdom--good that men should carry a threatening shadow in their hearts under the full sunshine; else how shall they learn to revere the light?" That guardianship may become needless; but only when all outward law has become needless--only when duty and love have united in one stream and made a common force. [Footnote: Chapter XI.] Another form in which Nemesis punishes us is described in the essay on "A Half-Breed" in _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Mixtus was a man with noble aims, but he was fascinated by Scintilla, and realized none of his ideals. He was captivated by her prettiness, liveliness and music, and then he was captured on his worldly side. She did not believe in "notions" and reforms, and he succumbed to her wishes. As a result, his life was crippled, he was always unsatisfied with himself. Of this form of retribution George Eliot says,-- An early deep-seated love to which we become faithless has its unfailing Nemesis, if only in that division of soul which narrows all newer joys by the intrusion of regret and the established presentiment of change. I refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love of ideas, practical beliefs and social habits. And faithlessness here means not a gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a growing desire. In this sort of love it is the forsaker who has the melancholy lot; for an abandoned belief may be more effectively vengeful than Dido. The child of a wandering tribe, caught young and trained to polite life, if he feels a hereditary yearning, can run away to the old wilds and get his nature into tune. But there is no such recovery possible to the man who remembers what he once believed without being convinced that he was in error, who feels within him unsatisfied stirrings toward old beloved habits and intimacies from which he has far receded without conscious justification or unwavering sense of superior attractiveness in the new. This involuntary renegade has his character hopelessly jangled and out of tune. He is like an organ with its stops in the lawless condition of obtruding themselves without method, so that hearers are amazed by the most unexpected transitions--the trumpet breaking in on the flute, and the oboe confounding both. With a strong and eloquent energy, George Eliot teaches the natural consequences of conduct. Every feeling, thought and deed has its effect, comes to fruition. Desire modifies life, shapes our destiny, moulds us into the image of its own nature. Actions become habits, become controlling elements in our lives, and tend to work out their own legitimate results. The whole of George Eliot's doctrine of retribution is, that human causes, as much as any other, lead to their appropriate effects. Her frequent use of the word _Nemesis_ indicates the idea she had of the inevitableness of moral consequences, that a force once set in motion can never be recalled in its effects, which make a permanent modification of human life in its present and in its past. It was not the old doctrine of fate which she presented, not any arbitrary inflictment from supernatural powers. The inevitableness of moral consequences influenced her as a solemn and fearful reality which man must strictly regard if he would find true manhood. The doctrine of retribution is very clearly taught by George Eliot in her comments. With a still greater distinctness it is taught in the development of her characters. As we follow the careers of Hetty, Maggie, Tito, Fedalma, Lydgate and Gwendolen we see how wonderful was George Eliot's insight into the moral issues of life. Not only with these, but with all her characters, we see a righteous moral unfoldment of character into its effects. There is no compromise with evil in her pages; all selfishness, wrong and crime comes to its proper results. The vanity and selfishness of Hetty leads to what terrible crime and shame for her, and what misery for others! Tito's selfishness and want of resolute purpose carries him inevitably downward to a hideous end. What is so plain in the case of these characters is as true, though not so palpable, in that of many others in her books. Dorothea's conduct is clearly shown to develop into consequences (as did Lydgate's) which were the natural results of what she thought, did and was. Maggie's misery was the product of her conduct, the legitimate outcome of it. George Eliot goes beyond the conduct of any one person and its results, and attempts to show how it is affected by the person's environment. It was Maggie's family, education, social standing and personal qualities of mind and heart which helped to determine for her the consequences of her conduct. It was Dorothea's education and social environment which largely helped to shape her career and to leave her bereaved of the largest possibilities of which her life was capable. Gwendolen's life was largely determined by her early training and by her social surroundings. Yet with all these, life has its necessary issues, and Nemesis plays its part. Retribution is for all; it is ever stern, just and inevitable. Just, however, only in the sense that wrong-doing cannot escape its own effects, but not just in the sense that the guiltless must often share the fate of the guilty. Wrong-doing drags down to destruction many an innocent person. It is to be said of George Eliot, however, that she never presents any of her characters as doomed utterly by the past. However strong the memories of the ages lay upon them, they are capable of self-direction. Not one of her characters is wholly the victim of his environment. There is no hint in _Middlemarch_ that Dorothea was not capable of heroism and self-consecration. Her environment gave a wrong direction to her moral purpose; but that purpose remained, and the moral nobleness of her mind was not destroyed. Still, it is largely true, that in her books the individual is sacrificed to his social environment. He is to renounce his own personality for the sake of the race. Consequently his fate is linked with that of others, and he must suffer from other men's deeds. With all its limitations and defects, George Eliot's teaching concerning the moral effects of conduct is wholesome and healthy. It rests on a solid foundation of experience and scientific evidence. Her books are full of moral stimulus and strengthening, because of the profound conviction with which she has presented her conception of moral cause and effect. With her, we must believe that moral sequences are as inevitable as the physical. It would be very unjust to George Eliot to suppose that she left man in the hands of a relentless moral order which manifests no tenderness and which is incapable of pity and mercy. She did not believe in an Infinite Father, full of love and forgiveness; that faith was not for her. Yet she did believe in a providence which can assuage man's sorrows and deal tenderly with his wrong-doing. While nature is stern and the moral sequences of life unbending, man may be sympathetic and helpful. Man is to be the providence of man; humanity is to be his tender forgiving Friend. A substitute so poor for the old faith would seem to have little power of moral renovation or sympathetic impulse in it; but it quickened George Eliot's mind with enthusiasm and ardor. The "enthusiasm of humanity" filled her whole soul, was a luminous hope in her heart and an inspiring purpose to her mind. With Goethe and Carlyle she found in work for humanity the substitute for all faith and the cure for all doubt. Faust finds for his life a purpose, and for the universe a solution, when he comes to labor for the practical improvement of humanity. This was George Eliot's own conclusion, that it is enough for us to see the world about us made a little better and more orderly by our efforts. All her noblest characters find in altruism a substitute for religion, and they find there a moral anchorage. She says very plainly in _Middlemarch_, that every doctrine is capable of "eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men." To the same effect is her saying in _Romola_, that "with the sinking of the high human trust the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is a part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled." In _Janet's Repentance_ she has finely presented this faith in sympathetic humanitarianism, showing how Janet found peace in the sick-room where all had been doubt and trial before. Day after day, with only short intervals of rest, Janet kept her place in that sad chamber. No wonder the sick-room and the lazaretto have so often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt--a place of repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all creeds and all philosophies are at one:--here, at least, the conscience will not be dogged by doubt--the benign impulse will not be checked by adverse theory: here you may begin to act without settling one preliminary question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through the long night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye--these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stir and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued,--where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow,--the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness and simplicity: bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it. As we bend over the sick-bed all the forces of our nature rush towards the channels of pity, of patience and of love, and sweep down the miserable choking drift of our quarrels, our debates, our would-be wisdom, and our clamorous, selfish desires. This blessing of serene freedom from the importunities of opinion lies in all simple, direct acts of mercy, and is one source of that sweet calm which is often felt by the watcher in the sick-room, even when the duties there are of a hard and terrible kind. [Footnote: Chapter XXIV.] The basis of such sympathetic helpfulness she finds in the common sorrows and trials of the world. All find life hard, pain comes to all, none are to be found unacquainted with sorrow. These common experiences draw men together in sympathy, unite them in a common purpose of assuagement and help. The sorrow of Adam Bede made him more gentle and patient with his brother. It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at work within him. For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid! It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown toward which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place in Adam yet; there was still a great remnant of pain, which he felt would subsist as long as _her_ pain was not a memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with the light of every morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it; it becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission; and we are contented with our day when we are able to bear our grief in silence, and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert. Armgart finds that "true vision comes only with sorrow." Sorrow and suffering create a sympathy which sends us to the relief of others. "Pain must enter into its glorified life of memory before it can turn into compassion," we are told in _Middlemarch_. In the trying hours of Maggie Tulliver's life she came to know-- that new sense which is the gift of sorrow--that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship. Again, she learns that "more helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us." Man is in this way brought to live for man, to suffer in his sufferings, to be mercifully tender and pitiful with him in his temptations and trials. Sympathy builds up the moral life, gives an ethical meaning to man's existence. Thus humanity becomes a providence to man, and it is made easier for him to bear his sufferings and to be comforted in his sorrows. Nemesis is stern, but man is pitiful; retribution is inexorable, but humanity is sympathetic. Nature never relents, and there is no God who can so forgive us our sins as to remove their legitimate effects; but man can comfort us with his love, and humanity can teach us to overcome retribution by righteous conduct. All idealistic rights are to be laid aside, according to her theory, all personal claims and motives are to be renounced. In the duties we owe to others, life is to find its rightful expression. In _Janet's Repentance_ she says,-- The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires and impulses. To live for self, George Eliot seems to regard as immoral; self is to be ignored except in so far as it can be made to serve humanity. As rights are individual they are repudiated, and the demand for them is regarded as revolutionary and destructive. That man is a moral being because he is a social being she carries to its farthest extreme in some of her teachings, as when she makes public opinion the great motive power to social improvement. Felix Holt pronounces public opinion--the ruling belief in society about what is right and what is wrong, what is honorable and what is shameful--to be the greatest power under heaven. In the "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt," published in _Blackwood's Magazine_, Felix is made to say to his fellows,-- Any nation that had within it a majority of men--and we are the majority--possessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the bad practices, the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous adulteration of goods, the retail cheating and the political bribery which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A majority has the power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and his-s before we had the franchise: if we had groaned and hissed in the right place, if we had discerned better between good and evil, if the multitude of us artisans and factory hands and miners and laborers of all sorts had been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober--and I don't see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere without these qualities--we should have made an audience that would have shamed the other classes out of their share in the national vices. We should have had better members of Parliament, better religious teachers, honester tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence in infamous and brutal men; and we should not have had among us the abomination of men calling themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-gotten gains. I say it is not possible for any society in which there is a very large body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our society is--to have as low a standard of right and wrong, to have so much belief in falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a notion of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above his fellows. Therefore let us have done with this nonsense about our being much better than the rest of our countrymen, or the pretence that that was a reason why we ought to have such an extension of the franchise as has been given to us. The essay on "Moral Swindlers," in _Theophrastus Such_, clearly indicates George Eliot's point of view in ethics. She makes those moral traits which are social of greater importance than those which are personal. She complains that a man who is chaste and of a clean personal conduct is regarded as a moral man when his business habits are not good. To her, his relations to his fellows in all the social and business affairs of life are of higher importance than his personal habits or his family relations. She rebels against that deep moral instinct of the race which identifies morality with personal character, and is indignant that the altruism she so much believed in is not everywhere made identical with ethics. To her, the person is nothing; the individual is thought of only as a member of a community. She forgot that any large and noble moral life for a people must rest upon personal character, upon a pure and healthy state of the moral nature in individuals. Nations cannot be moral, but persons can. Public corruption has its foundation in personal corruption. The nation cannot have a noble moral life unless the individuals of which it is composed are pure in character and noble in conduct. She complains that sexual purity is made identical with morality, while business integrity is not. Every social and moral bond we have, she says, "is a debt; the right lies in the payment of that debt; _it can lie nowhere else_." It is a debt owed, not to God, but to humanity; it is therefore to be paid, not by personal holiness, but by human sympathy and devotion. The higher social morality, that which inspires nations with great and heroic purposes, George Eliot believes is mainly due, as she says in the essay on "The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" "to the divine gift of a memory which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute." The memories of the past lie mainly in the direction of national movements, and hence the higher moral life of the present must be associated with national memories. The glorious commonplaces of historic teaching, as well as of moral inspiration, are to be found in the fact "that the preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national greatness, that their revival is a sign of reviving nationality, and that every heroic defender, every patriotic restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has made them his watchword." To reject such memories, such social influences, she regards as "a blinding superstition," and says that the moral visions of a nation are an effective bond which must be accepted by all its members. Two of her most characteristic books are written to inculcate this teaching. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ we learn that there is no moral strength and purpose for a man like Don Silva, who repudiates his country, its memories and its religion. The main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is to show how binding and inspiring is the vision of moral truth and life which comes from association even with the national memories of an outcast and alien people. She wished to see individuals helped and good done in the present. She makes Theophrastus Such, in the essay on "Looking Backward," speak her own mind. "All reverence and gratitude for the worthy dead on whose labors we have entered, all care for the future generations whose lot we are preparing; but some affection and fairness for those who are doing the actual work of the world, some attempt to regard them with the same freedom from ill-temper, whether on private or public grounds, as we may hope will be felt by those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the looking before and after, which is our grand human privilege, is in danger of turning to a sort of other-worldliness, breeding a more illogical indifference or bitterness than was ever bred by the ascetic's contemplation of heaven." Again, she says that "the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries." And this was not merely the teaching of her books, it was the practice of her life. Miss Edith Simcox has made it clear that she was zealously anxious to help men and women by personal effort. She tells us that "George Eliot's sympathies went out more readily towards enthusiasm for the discharge of duties than for the assertion of rights. It belonged to the positive basis of her character to identify herself more with what people wished to do themselves than with what they thought somebody else ought to do for them. Her indignation was vehement enough against dishonest or malicious oppression, but the instinct to make allowance for the other side made her a bad hater in politics, and there may easily have been some personal sympathy in her description of Deronda's difficulty about the choice of a career. She was not an inviting auditor for those somewhat pachydermatous philanthropists who dwell complacently upon 'cases' and statistics which represent appalling depths of individual suffering. Her imagination realized these facts with a vividness that was physically unbearable, and unless she could give substantial help, she avoided the fruitless agitation. At the same time, her interest in all rational good works was of the warmest, and she was inclined to exaggerate rather than undervalue the merits of their promoters, with one qualification only. 'Help the millions, by all means,' she has written; 'I only want people not to scorn the narrower effect.' Charity that did not begin at home repelled her as much as she was attracted by the unpretentious kindness which overlooked no near opportunity; and perhaps we should not be far wrong in guessing that she thought for most people the scrupulous discharge of all present and unavoidable duties was nearly occupation enough. Not every one was called to the high but difficult vocation of setting the world to rights. But on the other hand, it must be remembered that her standard of exactingness was 'high, and some of the things that in her eyes it was merely culpable to leave undone might be counted by others among virtues of supererogation. Indeed, it is within the limits of possibility that a philanthropist wrapped in over-much conscious virtue might imagine her cold to the objects proposed, when she only failed to see uncommon merit in their pursuit. No one, however, could recognize with more generous fervor, more delighted admiration, any genuine unobtrusive devotion in either friends or strangers, whether it were spent in making life easier to individuals, or in mending the conditions among which the masses live and labor.' This writer gives us further insight into George Eliot's character when we are told that 'she came as a very angel of consolation to those persons of sufficiently impartial mind to find comfort in the hint that the world might be less to blame than they were as to those points on which they found themselves in chronic disagreement with it. But she had nothing welcome for those whose idea of consolation is the promise of a _deus ex machina_ by whose help they may gather grapes of thorns and figs of thistles. She thought there was much needed doing in the world, and criticism of our neighbors and the natural order might wait at all events until the critic's own character and conduct were free from blame.' She had faith in ordinary lives, and these she earnestly desired to help and encourage. Those who themselves struggle with difficulties are best capable, she thought, of helping others out of theirs. In _Daniel Deronda_ she said, 'Our guides, we pretend, must be sinless; as if those were not often the best teachers who only yesterday got corrected for their mistakes.'" George Eliot's interest in the present amelioration of human conditions was strengthened by her faith in the future of the race. She expected no rapid improvement, no revolutionizing development; but she believed the past of mankind justifies faith in a gradual attainment of perfect conditions. This conviction was expressed when she said,-- What I look to is a time when the impulse to help our fellows shall be as immediate and irresistible as that which I feel to grasp something firm if I am falling. She saw too much evil and suffering to be an optimist; she could not see that all things are good or tending towards what is good. Yet her faith in the final outcome was earnest, and she looked to a slow and painful progress as the result of human struggles. When called an optimist, she responded, "I will not answer to the name of optimist, but if you like to invent Meliorist, I will not say you call me out of my name." She trusted in that gradual development which science points out as the probable result of the survival of the fittest in human life. In "A Minor Prophet" she has presented her conception of human advancement, and tenderly expressed her sympathy with all humble, imperfect lives. Bitterly I feel that every change upon this earth Is bought with sacrifice. My yearnings fail To reach that high apocalyptic mount Which shows in bird's-eye view a perfect world, Or enter warmly into other joys Than those of faulty, struggling human kind, That strain upon my soul's too perfect wing Ends in ignoble floundering: I fall Into short-sighted pity for the men Who, living in those perfect future times, Will not know half the dear imperfect things That move my smiles and tears--will never know The fine old incongruities that raise My friendly laugh; the innocent conceits That like a needless eyeglass or black patch Give those who wear them harmless happiness; The twists and cracks in our poor earthenware, That touch me to more conscious fellowship (I am not myself the finest Parian) With my coevals. So poor Colin Clout, To whom raw onions give prospective zest, Consoling hours of dampest wintry work, Could hardly fancy any regal joys Quite unimpregnate with the onion's scent: Perhaps his highest hopes are not all clear Of waftings from that energetic bulb: 'Tis well that onion is not heresy. Speaking in parable, I am Colin Clout. A clinging flavor penetrates ray life-- My onion is imperfectness: I cleave To nature's blunders, evanescent types Which sages banish from Utopia. "Not worship beauty?" say you. Patience, friend! I worship in the temple with the rest; But by my hearth I keep a sacred nook For gnomes and dwarfs, duck-footed waddling elves Who stitched and hammered for the weary man In days of old. And in that piety I clothe ungainly forms inherited From toiling generations, daily bent At desk, or plough, or loom, or in the mine, In pioneering labors for the world. Nay, I am apt, when floundering confused From too rash flight, to grasp at paradox, And pity future men who will not know A keen experience with pity blent, The pathos exquisite of lovely minds Hid in harsh forms--not penetrating them Like fire divine within a common bush Which glows transfigured by the heavenly guest, So that men put their shoes off; but encaged Like a sweet child within some thick-walled cell, Who leaps and fails to hold the window-bars; But having shown a little dimpled hand, Is visited thenceforth by tender hearts Whose eyes keep watch about the prison walls. A foolish, nay, a wicked paradox! For purest pity is the eye of love, Melting at sight of sorrow; and to grieve Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love Warped from its truer nature, turned to love Of merest habit, like the miser's greed. But I am Colin still: my prejudice Is for the flavor of my daily food. Not that I doubt the world is growing still, As once it grew from chaos and from night; Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn, With earliest watchings of the rising light Chasing the darkness; and through many an age Has raised the vision of a future time That stands an angel, with a face all mild, Spearing the demon. I, too, rest in faith That man's perfection is the crowning flower Towards which the urgent sap in life's great tree Is pressing--seen in puny blossoms now, But in the world's great morrows to expand With broadest petal and with deepest glow. With no disgust toward the crude and wretched life man everywhere lives to-day, but with pity and tenderness for all sorrow, suffering and struggle, she yet believed that the world is being shaped to a glorious and a mighty destiny. This faith finds full and clear expression in the concluding lines of the poem just quoted. The faith that life on earth is being shaped To glorious ends, that order, justice, love, Mean man's completeness, mean effect as sure As roundness in the dewdrop--that great faith Is but the rushing and expanding stream Of thought, of feeling, fed by all the past. Our finest hope is finest memory, As they who love in age think youth is blest Because it has a life to fill with love. Full souls are double mirrors, making still An endless vista of fair things before Repeating things behind: so faith is strong Only when we are strong, shrinks when we shrink. It comes when music stirs us, and the chords Moving on some grand climax shake our souls With influx new that makes new energies. It comes in swellings of the heart and tears That rise at noble and at gentle deeds-- At labors of the master-artist's hand Which, trembling, touches to a finer end, Trembling before an image seen within. It comes in moments of heroic love, Unjealous joy in love not made for us-- In conscious triumph of the good within, Making us worship goodness that rebukes. Even our failures are a prophecy, Even our yearnings and our bitter tears After that fair and true we cannot grasp; As patriots who seem to die in vain Make liberty more sacred by their pangs, Presentiment of better things on earth Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls To admiration, self-renouncing love, Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one: Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night We hear the roll and dash of waves that break Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide, Which rises to the level of the cliff Because the wide Atlantic roils behind, Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs. George Eliot did all that could be done to make the morality she taught commendable and inspiring. In her own direct teachings, and in the development of her characters and her plots, she has done much to make it acceptable. Her strong insistence on the social basis of morality is to be admired, and the truth presented is one of great importance. Even more important is her teaching of the stern nature of retribution, that every thought, word and deed has its effect. There is need of such teaching, and it can be appropriated into the thought and life of the time with great promise of good. Yet the outcome of George Eliot's morality was rather depressing than otherwise. While she was no pessimist, yet she made her readers feel that life was pessimistic in its main tendencies. She makes on the minds of very many of her readers the impression that life has not very much light in it. This comes from the whole cast of her mind, and still more because the light of true ideal hopes was absent from her thought. A stern, ascetic view of life appears throughout her pages, one of the results of the new morality and the humanitarian gospel of altruism. Unbending, unpitiful, does the universe seem to be when the idea of law and Nemesis is so strongly presented, and with no relief from it in the theory of man's free will. Not less depressing to the moral nature is an unrelieved view of the universe under the omnipotent law of cause and effect, which is not lighted by any vision of God and a spiritual order interpenetrating the material. Her teaching too often takes the tone of repression; it is hard and exacting. She devotes many pages to showing the effects of the law of retribution; she gives comparatively few to the correlative law that good always has its reward. Renunciation is presented as a moral force, and as duty of supreme importance; life is to be repressed for the sake of humanity. The spontaneous tendencies of the mind and heart, the importance of giving a free and healthy development to human nature, is not regarded. Her morality is justly to be criticised for its ascetic and pessimistic tendencies. XIII. EARLIER NOVELS. The first four novels written by George Eliot form a group by themselves; and while all similar to each other in their main characteristics, are in important respects different from her later works. This group includes _Clerical Scenes, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss_ and _Silas Marner_. With these may also be classed "Brother Jacob." They are all alike novels of memory, and they deal mainly with common life. Her own life and the surroundings of her childhood, the memories and associations and suggestions of her early life, are drawn upon. The simple surroundings and ideas of the midland village are seldom strayed away from, and most of the characters are farmers and their laborers, artisans or clergymen. _The Mill on the Floss_ offers a partial exception to this statement, for in that book we touch upon the border of a different form of society, but we scarcely enter into it, and the leading characters are from the same class as those in the other books of this group. "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" alone enters wholly within the circle of aristocratic society. There is more of the realism of actual life in these novels than in her later ones, greater spontaneity and insight, a deeper sympathy and a more tender pathos. They came more out of her heart and sympathies, are more impassioned and pathetic. Throughout the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ are descriptions of actual scenes and incidents known to George Eliot in her girlhood. Mrs. Hackit is a portrait of her own mother. In the first chapter of "Amos Barton," Shepperton Church is that at Chilvers Colon, which she attended throughout her childhood. It is from memory, and with an accurate pen, she describes-- Shepperton Church as it was in the old days with its outer court of rough stucco, its red-tiled roof, its heterogeneous windows patched with desultory bits of painted glass, and its little flight of steps with their wooden rail running up the outer wall, and leading to the school-children's gallery. Then inside, what dear old quaintnesses! which I began to look at with delight, even when I was so crude a member of the congregation that my nurse found it necessary to provide for the reinforcement of my devotional patience by smuggling bread-and-butter into the sacred edifice. There was the chancel, guarded by two little cherubims looking uncomfortably squeezed between arch and wall, and adorned with the escutcheons of the Oldinport family, which showed me inexhaustible possibilities of meaning in their blood-red hands, their death's-heads and cross-bones, their leopards' paws and Maltese crosses. There were inscriptions on the panels of the singing-gallery, telling of benefactions to the poor of Shepperton, with an involuted elegance of capitals and final flourishes which my alphabetic erudition traced with ever-new delight. No benches in those days; but huge roomy pews, round which devout churchgoers sat during "lessons," trying to look everywhere else than into each others' eyes. No low partitions allowing you, with a dreary absence of contrast and mystery, to see everything at all moments; but tall dark panels, under whose shadow I sank with a sense of retirement through the Litany, only to feel with more intensity my burst into the conspicuousness of public life when I was made to stand up on the seat during the psalms or the singing. Not only is this description of Shepperton Church accurate in every particular, but a subject of neighborhood gossip is made the basis of the story of "Amos Barton." When George Eliot was about a dozen years old a strange lady appeared at the Cotou parsonage, and became a subject of much discussion on the part of the parishioners. Much pity was felt for the wife of the curate, an intimate friend of Marian Evans's mother, whose poverty, seven children and poor health made her burdens far from easy. She died not long after, and her grave may be seen at Chilvers Coton. The Knebley Church of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is located only a short distance from Chilvers Coton, and is the chancel of the collegiate church founded by Sir Thomas de Astley in the time of Edward III. Its spire was very high, and served as a landmark to travellers through the forest of Arden, and was called "The lanthorn of Arden." The spire fell in the year 1600, but was rebuilt later. The present church was repaired by the patron of George Eliot's father, Sir Roger Newdigate. She describes it in the first chapter of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" as-- a wonderful little church, with a checkered pavement which had once rung to the iron tread of military monks, with coats of arms in clusters on the lofty roof, marble warriors and their wives without noses occupying a large proportion of the area, and the twelve apostles with their heads very much on one side, holding didactic ribbons, painted in fresco on the walls. A delightful lane, overshadowed with noble trees, that ran by Griff House, the birthplace of George Eliot, led to the lodge of Arbury Hall, the home of Sir Roger Newdigate. Arbury Hall was situated in the midst of a fine old forest, and it was originally a large quadrangular brick house. Sir Roger rebuilt it, acting as his own architect, and made it into a modern dwelling of the commodious gothic Order. This house and its owner appear in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" as Cheverel Manor and Sir Christopher Cheverel. In the fourth chapter the reader is told that,-- For the next ten years Sir Christopher was occupied with the architectural metamorphosis of his old family mansion, thus anticipating through the prompting of his individual taste that general re-action from the insipid imitation of the Palladian style towards a restoration of the Gothic, which marked the close of the eighteenth century. This was the object he had set his heart on, with a singleness of determination which was regarded with not a little contempt by his fox-hunting neighbors.... "An obstinate, crotchety man," said his neighbors. But I, who have seen Cheverel Manor as he bequeathed it to his heirs, rather attribute that unswerving architectural purpose of his, conceived and carried out through long years of systematic personal exertion, to something of the fervor of genius. In this story an incident in the life of Sir Roger Newdigate may have been made use of by George Eliot. He was childless, and adopted a cottager's child he and his wife heard singing at its father's door one day. They educated the child, who proved to have a fine voice and a passionate love of music. _Janet's Repentance_ also has its scenes from actual life. Dr. Dempster was thought to be recognized by his neighbors as a well-known person in Nuneaton. Milby and its High street are no other than Nuneaton and its market-place. The character of the town and the manner of life there are all sketched from the Nuneaton of George Eliot's childhood. The school she attended was very near the vicarage. While she was attending this school, when about nine years old, a young curate from a neighboring hamlet was permitted by the Bishop to give Sunday-evening lectures in the Nuneaton church, with the results described in _Janet's Repentance_. In _Adam Bede_ there is also a considerable element of actual history. The heroine, Dinah Morris, is, in some slight particulars at least, sketched from Elizabeth Evans, an aunt of George Eliot's. Elizabeth Evans was born at Newbold, Lincolnshire, in 1776. [Footnote: This subject has been fully worked out in a book published by Blackwood, "George Eliot in Derbyshire: a volume of gossip about passages in the novels of George Eliot," by Guy Roslyn. Reprinted from London Society, with alterations and additions, and an introduction by George Barnett Smith. Its statements are mainly based on a small book published in London in 1859, by Talbot & Co., entitled "Seth Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors." Guy Roslyn is a pseudonym for Joshua Hatton.] She was a beautiful woman when young, with soft gray eyes and a fine face, and had a very simple and gentle manner. She was a Methodist preacher, lived at Wirksworth, Derbyshire, and preached wherever an opportunity occurred. When it was forbidden that women should preach, she continued to exhort in the cottages, and to visit the poor and the sick in their homes. She married Samuel Evans, who was born in Boston, and was a carpenter. He had a brother William, who was a joiner and builder. Their father was a village carpenter and undertaker, honest and respectable, but who took to drink in his later years. He was at an ale-house very late one night, and the next morning was found dead in a brook near his house. Samuel became a Methodist and a preacher, but was teased about it by his brother, who criticised his blunders in prayer and preaching. He was gentle and very considerate at home, and was greatly attached to his brother, though they could not agree in matters of religion. While they were partners in business they prospered, but Samuel did not succeed when by himself. Samuel and Elizabeth were married at St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. In company with a Miss Richards, Elizabeth attended, in 1801 or 1802, a Mary Voce who had poisoned her child. They visited her in jail, and were with her when she was hung in Nottingham. Elizabeth wrote an account of her own life, especially of her conversion and her early work in the ministry. Concerning the execution of Mary Voce, she gives this account: "At seven o'clock [on the morning of the execution] we all knelt down in prayer, and at ten minutes before eight o'clock the Lord in mercy spoke peace to her soul. She cried out, 'Oh, how happy I am! the Lord has pardoned all my sins, and I am going to heaven.' She never lost the evidence for one moment, and always rejoiced in the hope of glory. Is it not by grace we are saved through faith? And is not the Saviour exalted at the Father's right hand to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins? If salvation were by works who would be saved? The vilest and worst may come unto Him. None need despair. None ought to presume. Miss Richards and I attended her to the place of execution. Our feelings on this occasion were very acute. We rode with her in the cart to the awful place. Our people sang with her all the way, which I think was a mile and a half. We were enabled to lift up our hearts unto the Lord in her behalf, and she was enabled to bear a public testimony that God in mercy had pardoned all her sins. When the cap was drawn over her face, and she was about to be turned off, she cried, 'Glory! glory! glory! the angels are waiting around me.' And she died almost without a struggle. At this awful spot I lost a great deal of the fear of man, which to me had been a great hindrance for a long time. I felt if God would send me to the uttermost parts of the earth I would go, and at intervals felt I could embrace a martyr's flame. Oh, this burning love of God, what will it not endure? I could not think I had an enemy in the world. I am certain I enjoyed that salvation that if they had smote me on one cheek, I could have turned to them the other also. I lived "'The life of heaven above, All the life of glorious love.' "I seemed myself to live between heaven and earth. I was not in heaven because of my body, nor upon earth because of my soul. Earth was a scale to heaven, and all I tasted was God. I could pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks. I felt that the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. If I wanted to know anything I had only to ask, and it was given, generally in a moment. Whether I was in the public street, or at my work, or in my private room, I had continued intercourse with my God; and many, I think I may say hundreds of times, He shone upon His Word, and showed me the meaning thereof, that is, texts of scripture, so as to furnish me with sufficient matter to speak to poor sinners for a sufficient length of time." The life of Elizabeth Evans was only a hint to the mind of the author of _Adam Bede_. Dinah was not intended as a portrait, and the resemblances between the two were probably not the result of a conscious purpose on the part of George Eliot. Soon after the publication of _Adam Bede_, when gossip had begun to report that Dinah Morris was an accurate sketch of Elizabeth Evans, and even that her sermon and prayers had been copied from the writings of the aunt, George Eliot wrote a letter to her intimate friend, Miss Sara Hennell, in which she explained to what extent she was indebted to Elizabeth Evans for the portrait of Dinah Morris. HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1850. Dear Sara,--I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt, Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he married my mother.... [Footnote: What is here omitted of this letter will be found on page 12.] As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution, and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass_. In her account of the prison scenes. I remember no word she uttered--I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my mind a nisus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of _Adam Bede_. I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and a night with my father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to see me--when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not possible you should see as I do how her entire individuality differed from Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers and speeches were _copied_--when they were written with hot tears as they surged up in my own mind! As to my indebtedness to facts of _locale_, and personal history of a small kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk about old times. As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is simply the vague, easily satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with _mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach to the truth. Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years _Adam Bede_ and all that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you. Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving MARIAN. When, in 1876, a book was published to show the identity of Dinah Morris and Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot wrote to the author to protest against such a conclusion. She said to him that the one was not intended to represent the other, and that any identification of the two would be protested against as not only false in fact and tending to perpetuate false notions about art, but also as a gross breach of social decorum. Yet these declarations concerning Elizabeth Evans have been repeated, and to them has been added the assertion that she actually copied in _Adam Bede_ the history and sermons of Dinah Morris. [Footnote: "Dinah Morris and Elizabeth Evans," an article by L. Buckley in The Century for August, 1882.] During visits to her aunt in 1842 we are told they spent several hours together each day. "They used to go to the house of one of Mrs. Evans's married daughters, where they had the parlor to themselves and had long conversations. These secret conversations excited some curiosity in the family, and one day Mrs. Evans's daughter said, 'Mother, I can't think what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans replied, 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.' While at Wirksworth, Miss Evans made a note of everything people said in her hearing; no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which seemed never out of her hand. These notes she transcribed every night before going to rest. After her departure Mrs. Evans said to her daughter, 'Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and that is the notes of the first sermon I preached on Ellaston Green.' The sermon preached by Dinah on Hayslope Green has been recognized as one of Mrs. Evans's." The purpose here seems to be to convey the impression that George Eliot actually carried away one of Mrs. Evans's sermons, and that she afterwards copied it into _Adam Bede_. George Eliot's own positive statement on this subject ought to be sufficient to convince any candid mind the sermon was not copied. The evidence brought forward so far in regard to the relations of Dinah Morris to Elizabeth Evans is not sufficient to prove the one was taken from the other. George Eliot's declarations, written soon after _Adam Bede_ was published, when all was perfectly fresh in her mind, and after her relatives had made their statements about Mrs. Evans, ought to settle the matter forever. Unless new and far more positive evidence is brought forward, Dinah Morris ought to be regarded as substantially an original creation. That some features of Elizabeth Evans's character were sketched into that of Dinah Morris seems certain. It is also said that the names of Mrs. Poyser and Bartle Massey were the names of actual persons, the latter being the schoolmaster of her father. As showing her power of local coloring, Miss Mathilde Blind relates this incident: "On its first appearance, _Adam Bede_ was read aloud to an old man, an intimate associate of Robert Evans in his Staffordshire days. This man knew nothing concerning either author or subject beforehand, and his astonishment was boundless on recognizing so many friends and incidents of his own youth portrayed with unerring fidelity, he sat up half the night listening to the story in breathless excitement, now and then slapping his knees as he exclaimed, 'That's Robert, that's Robert, to the life.'" In _Adam Bede_, as well as in the _Clerical Scenes_ and _The Mill on the Floss_, she describes types of character instead of actual personages; and yet so much of the realistic is embodied that more than one of her characters has been identified as being in a considerable degree a sketch from life. This is true of _The Mill on the Floss_ even more fully than of her previous books. In Maggie she has portrayed one side of her own character, and made use of much of her early experience. Lucy is said to be her sister, and two of her aunts are sketched in the aunts of Maggie--Mrs. Glegg and Mrs. Pullett. Her brother recognized the minute faithfulness of this story, as he did that of _Adam Bede_. The town of St. Ogg's is a good description of the tide-water town of Gainesborough in Lincolnshire. The Hayslope of _Adam Bede_ has been identified as the village of Ellaston, four miles from Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. It is near Wirksworth, the home of Elizabeth Evans. The local exactness of George Eliot's descriptions is another evidence of her realism. "It is not unlikely," suggests Mr. Kegan Paul, "that the time will come when with one or other of her books in their hand, people will wander among the scenes of George Eliot's early youth, and trace each allusion, as they are wont to do at Abbotsford or Newstead, and they will recognize the photographic minuteness and accuracy with which these scenes, so long unvisited, had stamped themselves on the mind of the observant girl." The historical setting of her novels is also faithful in even minute details. The time of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is at the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and it well describes the country customs of the earlier years of the present century. _Adam Bede_ describes the first decade of the present century, while _Silas Marner_ is a little later. With "Amos Barton," and _The Mill on the Floss_ we are in the second decade of the century, before hand-looms had gone out or railroads had come in. She has a fondness for these days of rustic simplicity, quiet habits and homely disingenuousness, and she more than once expresses a doubt if much has been gained by the introduction of machinery, suffrage and culture. She regrets that-- Human advancement has no moments when conservative reforming intellect takes a nap, while imagination does a little toryism by the sly, revelling in regret that dear old brown, crumbling, picturesque inefficiency is everywhere giving place to sick-and-span, new-painted, new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans, elevations and sections; but, alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional tenderness for old abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades of vulgar errors. [Footnote: Amos Barton, chapter I.] In _Adam Bede_, when describing a leisurely walk home from church in the good old days, she bursts out again into enthusiastic praise of the time before there was so much advancement and culture. Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown leather covers, and opened with a remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses and the slow wagons and the pedlers who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion trains, art museums, periodical literature and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage; he only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that "periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion--of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis, happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing--liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port wine--not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him and judge him by our modern standard; he never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or _Sartor Resartus_." [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter LII.] Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a _chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people. She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize, as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and rusticity of the life presented. George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the _Transactions of the English_ _Dialect Society_, she has explained her methods of using dialect. It must be borne in mind that my inclination to be as close as I could to the rendering of dialect, both in words and spelling, was constantly checked by the artistic duty of being generally intelligible. But for that check I should have given a stronger color to the dialogue in _Adam Sede_, which is modelled on the talk of North Staffordshire and the neighboring part of Derbyshire. The spelling, being determined by my own ear alone, was necessarily a matter of anxiety, for it would be as possible to quarrel about it as about the spelling of Oriental names. The district imagined as the scene of _Silas Marner_ is in North Warwickshire; but here, and in all my other presentations of English life except _Adam Bede_, it has been my intention to give the general physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the drawing-room and the newspaper. It may be said of George Eliot's realism that she did not borrow nearly so much from actual observation as was done by Charlotte Brontë, in whose novels, scenes, persons and events are described with great accuracy and fulness. In large measure Charlotte Brontë borrowed her materials from the life about her. Large as was her invention, original as her mind was, and unique in its thought, yet she seems to have been unable to create the plots of her novels without aid from real events and persons. Persons and scenes and events were so vividly portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ as to be at once recognized, subjecting the author to much annoyance and mortification. In _Shirley_ there is even a larger use of local traditions and manners, the locality of the story being described with great accuracy. George Eliot did not use such materials to nearly so great an extent, being far less dependent on them. Nor had she anything of Scott's need of local traditions. Accurate as she is, she creates her own story, not depending, as he did, on the suggestive help of the stories of the past. Few of his novels are the entire creations of his own mind; but he used every hint and suggestion he could find as the basis of his work. In this, George Eliot is no more a realist than either of her great predecessors. Even Goldsmith and Fielding were no more creative and original than she, for they depended as much as she on the occurrences of real life for their plots. All genuine novelists have drawn their materials from the life about them, and they could not attain success otherwise. All depends, however, on how the material thus used is made to bear its results. If Charlotte Brontë borrowed more from actual life of event and scenery, yet she was not more a realist; rather her power lies in something higher than realism, in that subtle insight and creative power which gives originality to her work. She was an idealist keeping close to the actual; and in this fact is to be found her superiority to George Eliot in certain directions. George Eliot studied life accurately and intimately, but she did not tie herself to any individual occurrences or persons. She had so absorbed the spirit of the life amidst which she lived, as to give a true expression to it under an almost purely fictitious garb. There is less of distinct teaching in the _Scenes of Clerical Life_ than in George Eliot's later novels. Yet even in these earlier stories there is to be found many a clear indication of her thought. In "Amos Barton" she has especially set forth her sympathy with humble life. This fundamental canon of her art is presented more distinctly in this story, and dwelt upon more fully, than in any of her subsequent novels. It would be difficult to discover any special teaching in "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story;" and this is perhaps the only production of George Eliot's pen which has not some distinct object beyond the telling of the story itself. The religious motif is strong in _Janet's Repentance_, and not to be mistaken by any attentive reader who now for the first time takes up the story. The value of religion as a reforming force is plainly inculcated, as well as that the main and only value of that force is altruistic. It presents a fine picture of the Evangelical movement and its work, though mainly on its humanitarian side. Its deeper spirit of devotion, its loftier religious ideal, its craving after a more intimate realization of the divine presence, is not portrayed. The real purport of the story is contained in its closing words, where the reader is told that the true memorial left behind him by Edgar Tryan is to be found in a life saved to all noble thing's by his efforts. It is Janet Dempster, rescued from self-despair, strengthened with divine hopes, and now looking back on years of purity and helpful labor. The man who has left such a memorial behind him must have been one whose heart beat with true compassion, and whose lips were moved by fervent faith. These _Scenes of Clerical Life_ surpass all George Eliot's later novels in one respect--their pathos. _Adam Bede_ comes nearer them in this particular than any of the later works, but even that novel does not equal them in their power to lay hold of feeling and sympathy and in moving the reader to tears. They differ greatly in this respect from another short story, written only a few years later, entitled "Brother Jacob." This story has more of light banter in it than any other novel of George Eliot's, and less of tenderness and pathos. It is but another lesson on her great theme of _retribution_. The author says in the last sentence of the story that "we see in it an admirable instance of the unexpected forms in which the great Nemesis hides herself." The central thought of the story is, that even in the lives of the most ordinary persons, and in the case of even the smallest departures from the right, there is a power of retribution at work bringing us an unfailing punishment for the evil we do. The literary excellences of the _Scenes from Clerical Life_ are many. They are simple, charming stories, full of life, and delightful in tone. Their humor is rare and effective, never coarse, but racy and touching. Their tenderness of tone lays warm hold upon the reader's sympathies and brings him closer to the throbbing hearts of his fellow-men. There is a pure idyllic loveliness and homelikeness about these stories that is exquisite. They all evidently grew out of the tender memories and associations of George Eliot's girlhood. In _Adam Bede_ the author's purpose is concentrated on character and the moral unfoldment of the lives she describes, while the thorough dramatic unity is lacking which such a work demands. It is a delightful picture of country life, and for idyllic loveliness is scarcely equalled, never surpassed, in English literature. The charm of the narrative is only rivalled by the deep human interest the characters have for us. This exquisite picture of rural life is not merely a piece of fine painting; but the deepest problems, the largest human interests, ever appear as a perpetual background of spiritual reality, giving a sublimity to the whole that truly dignifies it. The thoughtful reader soon finds this inweaving of a larger purpose adding greatly to the idyllic loveliness of these scenes. The moral tone is clear and earnest, and the religious element gives a charm and nobility to this delightful picture of rustic simplicity. _Adam Bede_ has probably delighted a larger number of her readers than any other of George Eliot's books, and even a majority of her critics prefer it to any other. It at once arrests and fixes the attention of the reader. The first chapter has an immediate interest in its wonderful picture of Adam, and its most vivid description of the workshop. The second chapter, with its account of Dinah Morris and her preaching, leaves no possibility of doubt about the genius and power of the book. The reader is brought at once face to face with scenes and persons that act as enchantment on him; and this complete absorption of interest never flags to the end. The elements of this fascination, which is in itself so simple, natural and human, have been pointed out by various critics. They are to be found in the homeliness, pathos and naturalness of the whole story from beginning to end. Little as the critics have noted it, however, much of this fascination comes of the high and pure moral tone of the story, its grasp on the higher motives and interests of life, and its undertone of yearning after a religious motive and ideal adequate to all the problems of human destiny. This religious motive is indeed more than a yearning, for it is a fixed and self-contained confidence in altruism, expressed in sympathy and feeling and pathos most tender and passionate. This novel is full of an eager desire to realize to men their need of each other, and of longing to show them how much better and happier the world would be if we were more sympathetic and had more of fellow-feeling. Life is full of suffering, and this can be lessened only as we help and love each other, only as we can make our feelings so truly tender as to feel the sorrows of others as our own, causing us to live for the good of those who suffer. It is said of Adam Bede that-- He had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity toward our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error but their inward suffering. This compassion for human suffering is conspicuous throughout, and it is regarded as the most effective means of binding men together in common sympathy and helpfulness. Sorrow is regarded as the true means of man's elevation, as that purifying agent which is indispensable to his true development. This teaching is fully depicted in the chapter headed "The Hidden Dread," and in which Hetty's flight is described. We are told in that chapter that this looks like a very bright world on the surface, but that as we look closer within man's nature we find sorrow and pain untold. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loamshire: the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire--an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has stood, perhaps, by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame; understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in it; no wonder he needs a Suffering God. The remedy for this sorrow, even in the pages of _Adam Bede_, is not the atoning love of Christ or the blessedness of a divine forgiveness, but the altruistic compassion of man for man. There is, however, a, deeper recognition in this novel of Christian belief than in any other by George Eliot. The prayer and sermon of Dinah Morris have a truly Christian tone and thought. This is not the case with the teachings of Savonarola, who is always much more an altruist than a Christian, and into whose mouth Christian phrases are put, while it is very evident the Christian spirit in its wholeness was not put into his heart. Sorrow and suffering are regarded in _Adam Bede_ as the means of baptism into a larger life of sympathy, as the means of purification from selfishness and individual aims. Along with this teaching goes the cognate one, that feeling is the true test of the religious life. A feeling that draws us close to others in helpfulness is worth more than knowledge, culture and refinement of taste. The doctrine of retribution is presented as distinctly and positively in _Adam Bede_ as in any subsequent book George Eliot wrote. It is given the form of distinct statement, and it is developed fully in the working out of the plot. Parson Irwine speaks the thought of the author in these words: "There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself, and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe; evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it." The tendency of selfishness and wrong to develop misery is fully unfolded. The terrible law of moral cause and effect is made apparent throughout the whole work. The folly of Arthur and the vanity of Hetty work them terrible consequences of evil and bitterness. Many others are made to suffer with them. The fatal Nemesis is unmasked in these revelations of human nature. If the critics are right in pronouncing _Adam Bede_ artistically defective, it is not difficult to see that there is still less of unity in _The Mill on the Floss_. Unconnected and unnecessary scenes and persons abound, while the Tulliver and Dodson families, and their stupidities, are described at a tedious length. Yet the picture of child-life given here compensates for all we might complain of in other directions. Maggie is an immortal child, wonderfully drawn, out of the very heart of nature herself. Her joy in life, her doubts and fears, her conflicts with self, are delineated with a master's hand, and justify--such is their faithfulness to child-life--the supposition that this is George Eliot's own childhood, so delicate and penetrating is the insight of this description, Swinburne has justly said that "no man or woman, outside the order of poets, has ever written of children with such adorable fidelity of affection as the spiritual mother of Totty, Eppie and of Lillo." Nor have the poets surpassed her in truthfulness to child-life and intuitive insight into child-nature. The child Maggie is unsurpassed, not as an ideal being, but as a living child that plays in the dirt, tears her frocks, and clips her hair in an hour of childish anger. In this novel we first come distinctly upon another element in the writings of George Eliot, and this is a yearning after a fuller, larger life. It does not appear as distinctly developed in _Adam Bede_, where there is more of poise and repose. Maggie represents the restless spirit of the nineteenth century, intense dissatisfaction with self, and a profoundly human passion for something higher and diviner. A passionate restlessness and a profound spiritual hunger are united in this novel to an eager desire for a deeper and fuller life, and for a satisfactory answer to the soul's spiritual thirst. The spiritual repose of Dinah, who has found all the religious cravings of her nature satisfied in Methodism, is abandoned for the inward yearning of Maggie, whose passionate search for spiritual truth ends in disaster. No other of George Eliot's books has been so severely criticised as this one, except _Daniel Deronda_, and mainly because of Maggie. The apparent fall of the heroine, and the crude tragedy of the ending, have been regarded as serious defects. The moral tone and purpose have been severely condemned. In his essays on foul and fair fiction, Ruskin puts _The Mill on the Floss_ into that class of novels which describe life's blotches, burrs and pimples, and calls it "the most striking instance extant of this study of cutaneous disease." He says the personages are picked up from behind the counter and out of the gutter, and he finds "there is not a single person in the book of the smallest importance to anybody in the world but themselves, or whose qualities deserved so much as a line of printer's type in their description." To the same effect is Swinburne's criticism of Maggie's relations to Stephen Guest. He calls it "the hideous transformation by which Maggie is debased." He says that most of George Eliot's admirers would regard this as "the highest and the purest and the fullest example of her magnificent and matchless powers. The first two thirds of the book suffice to compose perhaps the very noblest of tragic as well as of humorous prose idyls in the language; comprising one of the sweetest as well as saddest and tenderest, as well as subtlest examples of dramatic analysis--a study in that kind as soft and true as Rousseau's, as keen and true as Browning's, as full as either's of the fine and bitter sweetness of a pungent and fiery fidelity. But who can forget the horror of inward collapse, the sickness of spiritual re-action, the reluctant, incredulous rage of disenchantment and disgust, with which he came upon the thrice-unhappy third part? The two first volumes have all the intensity and all the perfection of George Sand's best work, tempered by all the simple purity and interfused with all the stainless pathos of Mrs. Gaskell's; they carry such affluent weight of thought, and shine with such warm radiance of humor, as invigorates and illuminates the work of no other famous woman; they have the fiery clarity of crystal or of lightning; they go near to prove a higher claim and attest a clearer right on the part of their author than that of George Sand herself to the crowning crown of praise conferred on her by the hand of a woman ever greater and more glorious than either in her sovereign gift of lyric genius, to the salutation given as by an angel indeed from heaven, of 'large-brained woman and large-hearted man.'" In the momentary lapse of Maggie, Swinburne finds a fatal defect, which no subsequent repentance atones for. He says that "here is the patent flaw, here too plainly is the flagrant blemish, which defaces and degrades the very crown and flower of George Eliot's wonderful and most noble work; no rent or splash on the raiment, but a cancer in the very bosom, a gangrene in the very flesh. It is a radical and mortal plague-spot, corrosive and incurable." Such criticism has little if any value, because there is no point of sympathy between the critic and his author. That real life contains such errors as Maggie's cannot be doubted, and George Eliot wished to paint no ideal scenes or heroines. To portray a passionate, eager, yearning nature, full of poetry, longing for a diviner spiritual life, surrounded by dull and unpoetic conditions and persons, was her purpose. That the hunger of such a person for the expression of her inward cravings for joy, music and beauty should lead her astray and make a sudden lapse possible, is not to be doubted. The fault of the critics is in supposing that this lapse from moral conduct was that of a physical depravity. Maggie's passion grew wholly out of that inward yearning for a fuller life which made all her difficulties. It was not physical passion but spiritual craving; and in the purpose of the novelist she was as pure after as before. The cause of what must be regarded as the great defect in _The Mill on the Floss_ is not that George Eliot chose to paint life in a diseased state, but that she had not the power to make her characters act what they themselves were. While the delightful inward portraiture of Maggie is in process all are charmed with her, her soul is as pure and sweet as a rose new-blown; but when the time arrives for her to act as well as to meditate and to dream, she is not made equal to herself. Through all her books this is true, that George Eliot can describe a soul, but she cannot make her men and women act quite up to the facts of daily life. In this way Dinah and Adam are not equal to themselves, and settle down to a prosaic life such as is not in keeping with that larger action of which they were capable. George Eliot's characters are greater than their deeds; their inward life is truer and more rounded than their outward life is pure and noble. _The Mill on the Floss_ fully develops George Eliot's conception of the value of self-renunciation in the life of the individual, and gives a new emphasis to her ideas about the importance of the spiritual life as an element in true culture. It has been said that she intended to indicate the nature of physiological attraction between men and women, and how large an influence it has; but whether that was an aim of hers or not, she undoubtedly did attempt to indicate how altogether important is renunciation to a life of true development, how difficult it is to attain, and that it is the vital result of all human endeavor. She surrounded a tender, sensitive, musical and poetic soul, one quick to catch the tone of a higher spiritual faith, with the common conditions of ordinary social life, to show how such an "environment" cripples and retards a soul full of aspiration and capable of the best things. Maggie saw the way to the light, but the way was hard, beset with difficulties individual and social, and she could neither overcome herself nor the world. She was taken suddenly away, and the novel comes to a hasty conclusion, because the author desired to indicate the causes of spiritual danger to ardent souls, and not to inculcate a formula for their relief. Maggie had learned how difficult it is for the individual to make for himself a new way in life, how benumbing are the conditions of ordinary human existence; and through her death we are to learn that in such difficulties as hers there is no remedy for the individual. Only through the mediation of death could Maggie be reconciled to those she had offended; death alone could heal the social wounds she had made, and restore her as an accepted and ennobled member of the corporate existence of humanity. This seems to be the idea underlying the hurried conclusion of this novel, that the path of renunciation once truly entered on, brings necessarily such difficulties as only death can overcome; and death does overcome them when those we have loved and those we have helped, forget what seem to them our wrong deeds in the loving memories which follow the dead. Over the grave men forget all that separated them from others, and the living are reconciled to those who can offend them no more. All that was good and pure and loving is then made to appear, and memory glorifies the one who in life was neglected or hated. Through death Maggie was restored to her brother, and over her grave came perfect reconciliation with those others from whom she had been alienated. That renunciation may lead to cruel martyrdoms is what George Eliot means; but she would say it has its lofty recompense in that restoration which death brings, when the individual becomes a part of the spiritual influence which surrounds and guides us all. For those who can accept such a conclusion as this the unity of the novel may seem complete. The poetry of Maggie's nature found itself constantly dragged down to conditions of vulgar prose by the life about her. That life was prosy and hard because those ideal aims which come from a recognition of the past and its traditions were absent from it. Maggie tried to overcome them by renunciation, but by renunciation which did not rest on any genuine sorrow and pain. At last these came, and the real meaning of renunciation was made clear to her. Her bitter sorrow taught her the great lesson which George Eliot ever strives to inculcate, that what is hard, sorrowful and painful in the world should move us to more and more of compassion and help for our fellows who also find life sad and burdensome. At the last Maggie learned this greatest of all lessons which life can give us. She sat quite still far on into the night, with no impulse to, change her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer--only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It came with the memories that no passion could long quench: the long past came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against the window, and the loud moan and roar of the wind: "I have received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me." But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob: "Forgive me, Stephen. It will pass away. You will come back to her." She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of parting. "I will bear it, and bear it till death... But how long it will be before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall, and repent again? Has life other trials as hard for me still?" With that cry of self-despair Maggie fell on her knees against the table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught her by this experience of great need, and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering that the less erring could hardly know. "O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort--" Then the flood came, and death. Maggie could repent, she could acquire the true spirit of renunciation, she could even give herself to a life of altruism; but death only could restore her to the world. Death, says George Eliot, is the great reconciler. _Silas Marner_ is the only one of these earlier novels in which there is a continuous unity of purpose and action. Its several parts are thoroughly wrought into each other, the aim of the narrative is adhered to throughout, and there are no superfluous incidents. The plot is simple, cause and effect flow on steadily to the end in the unfoldment of character and action, and the design of the author is easily grasped. One of her critics, himself a novelist of a high order, has said that in its unity of purpose and dramatic expression _Silas Marner_ is more nearly a masterpiece than any other of George Eliot's novels; "it has more of that simple, rounded, consummate aspect, that absence of loose ends and gaping issues, which marks a classical work." [Footnote: Henry James, Jr.] In this novel, too, her humor flows out with a richer fulness, a racier delight and a more sparkling variety of expression than in any other book of hers, not excepting _Adam Bede_. She has here reached the very height of her qualities as a humorist, for in _Silas Marner_ her humor is constantly genial and delightful. Certain ethical ideas appear very distinctly in this novel. It illustrates man's need of social ties and connections. Silas forsook his old life, the life of his childhood and youth, and the world was a blank for him in consequence. With the sundering of the ties which bound him to the traditional environment amidst which he was reared, all the purpose and meaning of his life was gone. The old ties, obligations and associations gone, his life was without anchorage, its ideal aims perished, and he lived a selfish and worthless creature. When new social ties were formed by the young child he found then his life opened up to a larger meaning again, and he recovered the better things in his nature. He was then led back again into his relations to society, he became once more a man, a fresh life was opened to him. This brought a new confidence in religion, a new trust in the moral motives of life. In this way George Eliot presents the social basis of the higher life in man, and her theory that it cannot be broken off from its traditional surroundings without grave injury to the finer elements of our nature. The law of retribution manifests itself clearly in these pages. Godfrey deserts wife and child. In after years he would fain restore the child to its rightful place, but he finds it has grown up under conditions which alienate it from any sympathy with him. He pronounces his own condemnation: "There's debts we can't pay like money debts, by paying extra for the years that have slipped by. While I've been putting off and putting off, the trees have been growing--it's too late now. Marner was in the right in what he said about a man's turning away a blessing from his door: it falls to somebody else. I wanted to pass for childless once, Nancy--I shall pass for childless now against my wish." A pure moral tone, a keen ethical instinct, mark all these earlier novels by George Eliot. Quite as noticeable is their spiritual atmosphere and their high place assigned to the religious life. Their teaching in these directions has a conservative tendency, and it is based on the most vigorous convictions. XIV. ROMOLA. Whatever differences there may exist between George Eliot's earlier and later books are due rather to the materials used than to any change in purpose, methods or beliefs. In writing of the distinction drawn between her earlier and later books, she said,-- Though I trust there is some growth in my appreciation of others and in my self-distrust, there has been no change in the point of view from which I regard our life since I wrote my first fiction, the _Scenes of Clerical Life_. Any apparent change of spirit must be due to something of which I am unconscious. The principles which are at the root of my effort to paint Dinah Morris are equally at the root of my effort to paint Mordecai. Her later books grow more out of conscious effort and deliberate study than the earlier, are more carefully wrought out, and contain less of spontaneity. The spiritual and ethical purpose, however, is not more distinct and conscious in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _The Mill on the Floss_, in _Romola_ than in _Adam Bede_. The ethical purpose may be more apparent in _Daniel Deronda_ than in _Adam Bede_, more on the surface, and clearer to the view of the general reader, but this is because it takes an unusual form, rather than because it is really any more distinctly present. In _The Mill on the Floss_ her teaching first became known to her readers, and in _Romola_ this purpose to use the novel as the vehicle for propagating ideas became fully apparent. Her aim having once come clearly to view, it was not difficult to see how large an element it was in her earlier books, where it had not been seen before. If she had written nothing but _Adam Bede_ her teachings might not have come to light, though some of those she has most often insisted on are to be found clearly stated in that book. Her doctrinal aim, however, became more clear and pronounced as she went on in her career as a novelist, and became more thoroughly conscious of her own powers and of the purposes which she wished to work out in her novels. She gained courage to express her ideas, and their importance was more deeply impressed upon her mind and heart. In _Romola_ it was first made clear that George Eliot is to be judged as a moralist as well as a literary artist. That she is a great literary artist, surpassed only by a select few, is to be borne constantly in mind; but as a moralist she surpasses most others in the amount of her teaching, and teaching which is thoroughly incorporated into the literary fibre of her work. She much resembles Wordsworth in this, that while she is an original creator of artistic forms and ideas, her books will be sought for their views of life as well for their qualities as novels. Wordsworth is a poet of vast original powers, but the poetic fire in him often burns low and his verses become mere prose. Yet his ideas about nature, life and morals command for him a place higher than that occupied by any other poet of his time, and a school of thinkers and critics has been developed through his influence. In much the same way, George Eliot is likely to attract attention because of her teachings; and it is probable her books will be resorted to and interpreted largely with reference to her moral and philosophical ideas. Should such a movement as this ever spring up, _Romola_ will necessarily become one of the most important of all her books. Some of her principal ideas appear therein more distinctly, in clearer outline, and with a greater fulness of expression, than they obtain in any other of her books. The foreign setting of her story enabled her to give a larger utterance to her thoughts, while there was less of personal and pathetic interest to impede their expression. This is also true of _The Spanish Gypsy_, that it has more of teaching and less of merely literary attraction than any other of her longer poems. The purpose to do justice to the homely life of rustic England was no longer present, and she was free to give her intellectual powers a deliberate expression in the form of a thoughtful interpretation of a great historic period. Mr. Henry James, Jr., has recognized the importance of this effort, and says of _Romola_, that he regards it, "on the whole, as decidedly the most important of her works,--not the most entertaining nor the most readable, but the one in which the largest things are attempted and grasped. The figure of Savonarola, subordinate though it is, is a figure on a larger scale than any which George Eliot has elsewhere undertaken; and in the career of Tito Melema there is a fuller representation of the development of a character. Considerable as are our author's qualities as an artist, and largely as they are displayed in _Romola_, the book is less a work of art than a work of morals. Like all of George Eliot's works, its dramatic construction is feeble; the story drags and halts,--the setting is too large for the picture." The book lacks in spontaneity, is too deliberate, contemplative and ethical. While its artistic elements are great, and even powerful, it is too consciously moral in its purpose to satisfy the literary requirements of a work of art. It wants the sensuous elements of life and the _abandon_ of poetic genius. There is little which is sensational about the book; too little, perhaps, of that vivid imaginative interest which impels the reader headlong through the pages of a novel to the end. It is, however, a high merit in George Eliot, that she does not resort to factitious elements of interest in her books, but works honestly, conscientiously, and with a pure purpose. If the reader is not drawn on by the sensational, he is amply repaid by the more deliberate and natural interest which gives a meaning to every chapter. George Eliot selected for her book one of the most striking and picturesque periods of modern history, in the great centre of culture and art in the fifteenth century. Florence was the intellectual capital of the world in the renaissance period, and the truest representative of its spirit. It was the time also of that remarkable monk-prophet, Savonarola, whose voice was raised so powerfully against the corruptions of that most corrupt age. This unique character, doubtless, had much to do in causing George Eliot to take this city and time for her story. No one of the reformers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was more in earnest, had a loftier purpose, worked in a nobler spirit, than this Dominican monk of Florence. His opposition to the Medici, his conflict with Rome, his visions and prophecies, his leadership of the politics of Florence, his powerful preaching, his untimely death, all give a romantic and a tragic interest to his life, and conspire to make him one of the most interesting figures in modern history. His moral purpose was conspicuous even when tainted by personal ambition. His political influence was supreme while it lasted, and was wielded in the interests of Florence, for its liberties and its moral regeneration. As a religious teacher he was profoundly in earnest; a prophet in his own belief as well as in the depth of his religious insight, he accepted with the most thorough intensity of conviction the spiritual truths he inculcated. In his own belief he was constantly in communion with the spiritual world, and was guided and taught by it. He swayed the people of Florence as the wind sways the branches of a tree, and they bowed utterly to his will for the moment, when he put forth all his moral and intellectual powers in the pulpit. A puritan in morals, he had a most vivid realization of the terrible evils of his time; and he could make his congregation look at the world with his own faith and moral purpose. His influence on literature and art was also great, and it was felt for many years after his death. Savonarola spoke in the pulpit with the authority of the profoundest personal conviction, and his hearers were impressed by his preaching with the feeling that they listened to one who knew whereof he spoke. Whenever he preached there was a crowd to hear; people came three or four hours before the time, and they came in throngs from the surrounding country. He held separate services for men, for women, for children, in order that all might hear. And this eagerness to listen to him was not for a few weeks, but it continued for years. The greatest enthusiasm was awakened by his influence, the people were melted into tears, every person listened with bated breath to his words. Thousands were converted, and among them many of the most learned of the poets, artists and statesmen of the time. The most remarkable changes in the modes of life took place, money was restored, and contributed freely to buy bread when famine threatened, and the confessional was daily crowded with penitents. One of his biographers says that "the most remarkable change that was apparent in the manners of the people, in their recreations and amusements, was the abandonment of demoralizing practices, of debauchery of all kinds, of profane songs of a licentious character which the lower grades of the people especially were greatly addicted to; and the growth of a new taste and passion for spiritual hymns and sacred poetry that had succeeded that depraved taste." On one side of his nature, Savonarola seems to have been of a remarkably pure and noble character, with high aims, noble ambitions and a clear moral insight. Looked at on its better side, his religious reformation was wholesome and salutary, and dictated by a genuine desire to elevate worship and to purify faith. There was a very different side to his life and work, however, and in some features of his character he seems to have been a fanatic and enthusiast of the most dangerous sort. He was credulous, superstitious and visionary. He had no clear, strong and well-reasoned purpose to which he could hold consistently to the end. An earnest Catholic, he only sought to reform the Church, not to supersede it; but his moral aims were not high enough to carry him to the logical results of his position. Involved by his visionary faith in claims of miraculous power and supernatural communication, he had not the intellectual honesty to carry those claims to their legitimate conclusion. Weakness, hesitation and inconsistency marked his character in his later years, and have made him a puzzle to modern students. These inconsistencies of character have led to widely divergent conclusions about the man, his sincerity of purpose and the outcome of his work. Another influence of the time, more powerful because more permanent, was the renaissance movement, which was at this period working its greatest changes and inspiring the most fervid enthusiasm. A new world had been disclosed to the people of the fifteenth century in the revival of knowledge concerning classic literature and art, and there came to be an absorbing, passionate interest in whatever pertained to the ancients. Manuscripts were eagerly sought after, translations were diligently made, literature was modelled after the classic writers, to quote and to imitate the ancients became the habit of the day. A change the most striking was produced in the modes of thought and of life. The love of nature was revived, and with it a graceful abandonment to the dominion of the senses. Paganism seemed likely to return upon the world again and to reconquer from Christianity all that it had once lost. The pagan spirit revived, its tastes and modes of life came back again. Plato was restored to his old place, and in the minds of the cultured seemed worthier of homage than Christ. With such as Lorenzo Medici and his literary friends, Platonism was regarded as a religion. The recovery of classic literature came to the men of this period as a revelation. It opened a new world to them, it operated upon them like a galvanic shock, it kindled the most fervid enthusiasms. It also had the effect to restore the natural side of life, to liberate men from a false spiritualism and an excessive idealism. From despising the human faculties, men came back to an acceptance of their dictation, and even to an animal delight in the senses and passions. The natural man was deified; but not in the manner of the Greeks, in simplicity and with a pure love of beauty. An artificial love of nature and the natural in man was the result of the renaissance; a hothouse culture and a corrupting moral development followed. Passion was given loose rein, the senses took every form of indulgence. Yet the Church was even worse, while many of the classic scholars were stoic in their moral purity and earnestness. This movement developed individualism in thought, a selfish moral aim, and intellectual arrogance. The men who came under its influence cared more for culture than for humanity, they were driven away from the common interests of their fellows by their new intellectual sympathies. It was the desire of Savonarola to restore the old Christian spirit of brotherhood and helpfulness. In this his movement was wide apart from that of the renaissance, which gave such tyrants as the Medici a justification for their deliberate attacks on the liberties of the people. He loved man, they loved personal development. George Eliot shows these two influences in antagonism with each other; on the one hand a reforming Christianity, on the other the renaissance movement. She admirably contrasts them in their spirit and influence, though she by no means indicates all of the tendencies of either. Her purpose is not that of the historical novelist, who wishes simply to give a correct and living picture of the time wherein he lays his plot. She vises this portion of history because it furnishes an excellent opportunity to unfold her ideas about life, rather than because it gives an abundance of picturesque material to the novelist. Her primary object is not the interpretation of Florentine life in the time of Savonarola; and this subordination of the historical material must be kept fully in mind by the reader or he will be misled in his judgment on the book. It has well been said that the historical characters in _Romola_ are not so well sketched as the original creations. Savonarola is not so lifelike as Tito. She seems to have been cramped by the details of history; and she has not thoroughly conquered and marshalled subordinate to her thought the mass of local incidents she introduces. Her account of Savonarola is inadequate, because it does not enter fully enough into his history, and because it omits much which is necessary to a full understanding of the man and his influence. So far as the book has an historical purpose it is that of describing the general life of the time rather than that of portraying Savonarola. Because of this purpose much is introduced into the story which is irrelevant to the plot itself. Not only did the author desire to contrast a man like Savonarola, led by the spirit of self-denial and renunciation, with one like Tito Melema led by the spirit of self-love and personal gratification; but she wished to contrast worldliness and spirituality, or individualism and altruism, as social forces. Lorenzo and the renaissance give one form of life, Savonarola and Christianity give another; and these two appear as affecting every class in society and every phase of the social order. To bring out this contrast requires a broad stage and many scenes. Much which seems quite irrelevant to the plot has its place in this larger purpose, and serves to bring out the final unity of impression which the author sought to produce. Nor is the purpose of the book merely that of contrasting two great phases of thought and of social influence, but rather to show them as permanent elements in human, nature and the nature of the effect which each produces. _Romola_ demands for its thorough appreciation that the reader shall have a considerable acquaintance with Italian history in the fifteenth century and with the social and literary changes of that period. Whether it is read with a keen interest and relish will much depend on this previous information. To the mere novel-reader it may seem dull and too much encumbered by uninteresting learning. To one who is somewhat familiar with the renaissance period, and who can appreciate the ethical intention of the book, it will be found to be a work of genius and profound insight. It will help such a reader to a clearer comprehension of this period than he could well obtain in any other manner, and the ethical purpose will add a new and living interest to the story of Florentine life. He will be greatly helped to comprehend the moral and intellectual life of the time, with its-- strange web of belief and unbelief; of Epicurean levity and fetichistic dread; of pedantic impossible ethics uttered by rote, and crude passions acted out with childish impulsiveness; of inclination toward a self-indulgent paganism, and inevitable subjection to that human conscience which, in the unrest of a new growth, was filling the air with strange prophecies and presentiments. [Footnote: _Proem to Romola_.] The artistic features of this period were many and striking, but George Eliot has not made so large a use of them as could have been wished; at least they appear in her book too much under the influence of historic information. She could not be content merely to absorb and reflect an historic period; but her active intellect, full of ideas concerning the causes of human changes, must give an explanation of what was before her. This philosophic tendency mars the artistic effect and blurs the picture which would otherwise have been given. Yet the critic must not be too sure of this, and he must be content simply to note that George Eliot was too energetic a thinker to be willing to portray the picturesque features of Florentine life in the fifteenth century and to do no more. She had at least three objects,--to give a picture of Florentine life in the fifteenth century, to show the influence of the renaissance in conflict with Christianity, and to inculcate certain ethical ideas about renunciation, tradition and moral retribution. While the book thus gains in breadth and in a certain massive impression which it produces, yet it loses in that concentration of effect which a more limited purpose would have secured. It gives the impression of having been written by a vigorous thinker rather than by a genius of the first order. The critic has no right to complain of this, however, or even to assume that genius might do other work than it has done. Had George Eliot been less thoughtful than she was, she would not have been George Eliot. _Romola_ grew out of a genius so large and original that it can well endure the criticisms caused by any defects it may have. The ideas of the time appear subtly expressed in the influence they produce on the persons who entertain them. Savonarola's mysticism and high moral purpose made him at once a prophet and a reformer, but he was not able to separate the spiritual realities of life from devotion to his party. His courage, purity and holiness cannot but be admired, while his fanaticism is to be deplored. George Eliot has well conceived and expressed the effect produced in all but the very greatest minds by the assumption of supernatural powers. Savonarola was strong and great as a preacher and a reformer, weak only on the side of his visions and his faith that his party represented the kingdom of God. Not that his visions were weak, nor are they assumed to be untrue; but his mysticism clouded his intellect, and his fanaticism led him to overlook the practical truths to be inculcated by a genuine reformer. He is a true type of the mystical churchman of the time, who saw the corruption about him and desired a better order of things, but who hoped to secure it by reviving the past in all its imagined supernatural features. He would have ruled the world by visions to be received by monks, and he would have made Jesus Christ the head of the republic. Yet his visions entangled his clear intellect and perverted his moral purpose. On the other hand, Tito Melema was intended to represent the renaissance movement on its Greek, or its aesthetic and social side. He was not a bad man at heart, but he had no moral purpose, no ethical convictions. He had the Greek love of ease, enjoyment and unconcern for the morrow; a spirit which the renaissance revived in many of its literary devotees. He lived for the day, for self, in the delight of music, art, social intercourse and sensual enjoyment. He had the renaissance quickness of assuming all parts, its love of wide and pretentious learning, its superficial scholarship, its social and political deftness and flexibility. The dry, minute, unprofitable spirit of criticism is well indicated by Bardo Bardi, which had no originality and no fresh vitality, but which loved to comment on the classic writers at tedious length, and to collate passages for purposes the most foreign from any practical aim life could possibly afford. In the conception of Tito, George Eliot has quite surpassed herself, and in all literature there is no delineation of a character surpassing this. One of her critics says there is no character in her novels "more subtly devised or more consistently developed. His serpentine beauty, his winning graciousness, his aesthetic refinement, his masculine energy of intellect, his insinuating affectionateness, with his selfish love of pleasure and his cowardly recoil from pain, his subdulous serenity and treacherous calm, as of a faithless summer sea, make up a being that at once fascinates and repels, that invites love, but turns our love into loathing almost before we have given it." [Footnote: Westminster Review, July, 1881.] Mr. R.H. Hutton has expressed his conviction that this is one of the most skilfully painted of all the characters in fictitious literature. He says, "A character essentially treacherous only because it is full of soft placid selfishness is one of the most difficult to paint;" but in sketching Tito's career, "the same wonderful power is maintained throughout, of stamping on our imagination with the full force of a master hand a character which seems naturally too fluent for the artist's purpose. There is not a more masterly piece of painting in English romance than this figure of Tito." Romola represents the divided interests of one who was affected by both the renaissance and Christianity. Brought up to know only what the renaissance had to teach, to delight in culture and to ignore religion, her contact with Savonarola opened a new world to her mind. Her experience in life led her to seek some deeper moral anchorage than was afforded by the culture of her father and husband, yet she could not follow Savonarola into the region of mystical visions and other-worldliness. Her life having broken loose from the ties of love through the faithlessness of Tito, and from the ties of tradition through the failure of culture to satisfy her heart, she drifts out into the world, to find, under the leadership of the great preacher, that life's highest duty is renunciation. His influence over the noblest souls of his time is indicated in Romola's trust in him, and in her acceptance of him as a master and a guide. When this guide failed, as all human guides must fail, she found peace in the service of others. In living for humanity, her sorrows were turned into strength, and her renunciation became a religion. It is Romola who represents George Eliot in this book, gives voice to her ideas, and who preaches the new gospel she would have the world learn. If Romola has her limitations as a conception of womanly character, is too "passionless and didactic," yet she does admirably represent the influence on a thoughtful woman of a contention between culture and religion, and how such a person may gradually attain to a self-poised life in loving service toward others. She is not an ideal woman. She was given a character which prevents her being quite attractive, because she was made to represent ideas and social tendencies. The altruistic doctrine of renunciation, and of living for others, is more fully developed in _Romola_ than in any other of George Eliot's books except _The Mill on the Floss_. That the truest satisfaction life can afford is to be found in work done for human good is conspicuously shown in the experiences of Romola. She finds no peace as a follower of Savonarola, she finds no abiding content in philosophy; but toil for others among the sick, suffering and dying, brings heavenly joy and a great calm. She had no special love for this work, her early education had even made it repulsive; but Savonarola had shown her that in this direction lay life's true aim. He communicated to her his own enthusiasm for humanity, and she retained this faith even after her loss of confidence in him had loosened her hold on his religious teachings. She went beyond her teacher and inspirer, learned his lessons better than he did himself, and came to see that a true religion is not of a sect or party, but humanitarian. When she warned him against his fanatical devotion to his party, he attempted to justify his narrow policy by identifying true Christianity with his own work, Romola replied,-- "Do you then know so well what will further the coming of God's kingdom, father, that you will dare to despise the plea of mercy--of justice--of faithfulness to your own teaching? Take care, father, lest your enemies have some reason when they say that, in your visions of what will further God's kingdom, you see only what will strengthen your own party." "And that is true!" said Savonarola, with flashing eyes. Romola's voice had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies. "The cause of my party _is_ the cause of God's kingdom." "I do not believe it!" said Romola, her whole frame shaken with passionate repugnance. "God's kingdom is something wider--else let me stand outside it with the beings that I love." The two faces were lit up, each with an opposite emotion, each with an opposite certitude. Further words were impossible. Romola hastily covered her head and went out in silence. [Footnote: Chapter LIX.] Savonarola forgot the better spirit of his own teachings, he sought to become a political leader. It was his ruin, for his purpose was vitiated, and his influence waned. George Eliot well says that "no man ever struggled to retain power over a mixed multitude without suffering vitiation; his standard must be their lower needs, and not his own best insight." This was the sad fate of the great Florentine preacher and reformer. He lost his faith, and he spoke without the moment's conviction. When this result came about, all hope for Savonarola as a reformer was gone. He was then only the leader of a party. George Eliot has well painted the effect upon Romola of this fall, and given deep insight into the results of losing our trust in those great souls who have been our guides. All the ties of life had snapped for Romola; her marriage had proved a failure, her friend had become unworthy of her confidence; and she fled. Romola went away, found herself in the midst of a plague-stricken people, gave her life to an assuagement of suffering and sorrow. Then she could come back to her home purified, calm and noble. In the "Epilogue," we find her speaking the word which gives meaning to the whole book. Tessa's child, whom she had rescued, says to her that he would like to lead a life which would give him a good deal of pleasure. Romola says to him,-- "That is not easy, my Lille. It is only a poor sort of happiness that could ever come by caring very much about our own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest happiness, such as goes along with being a great man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling for the rest of the world as well as ourselves; and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being what we would choose before everything else, because our souls see it is good. There are so many things wrong and difficult in the world that no man can be great--he can hardly keep himself from wickedness--unless he gives up thinking much about pleasures or rewards, and gets strength to endure what is hard and painful. My father had the greatness that belongs to integrity; he chose poverty and obscurity rather than falsehood. And there was Fra Girolamo--you know why I keep to-morrow sacred; _he_ had the greatness which belongs to a life spent in struggling against powerful wrong, and in trying to raise men to the highest deeds they are capable of, And so, my Lillo, if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best things God has put within reach of men, you must learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what will happen to you because of it. And remember, if you were to choose something lower, and make it the rule of your life to seek your own pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, calamity might come just the same; and it would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may well make a man say, 'It would have been better for me if I had never been born.' I will tell you something, Lillo." Romola paused a moment. She had taken Lillo's cheeks between her hands, and his young eyes were meeting hers. "There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for he was young, and clever, and beautiful, and his manners to all were gentle and kind. I believe when I first knew him, he never thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some of the basest deeds--such as make men infamous. He denied his father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that was reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him." Aside from this altruistic teaching which is developed in connection with the life of Romola, the doctrine of retribution is vigorously unfolded in the history of Tito Melema. The effects of selfishness and personal self-seeking have nowhere been so wonderfully studied by George Eliot as in this character. His career is minutely traced from step to step of his downfall, and with a remarkable faithfulness and courage. The effects of vice and sin are nowhere so finely presented and with such profound ethical insight. A careful study of this character alone will give a clear comprehension of George Eliot's conception of retribution, how the natural laws of life drag us down when we are untrue to ourselves and others. It is a great moral lesson presented in this character, a sermon of the most powerful kind. Nemesis follows Tito ever onward from the first false step, lowers the tone of his mind, corrupts his moral nature, drags him into an ever-widening circle of vice and crime, makes him a traitor, and causes him to be false to his wife. Step by step, as he gives way to evil, we see the degradation of his heart and mind, how the unfailing Nemesis is wreaking its vengeance upon him. He is surely punished, and his death is the fit end of his career. We are shown how his evil deeds affect others, how the great law of retribution involves the innocent in his downfall. Here George Eliot has unfolded for us how true it is that our lives are linked on every side with the lives of our fellows, and how the deeds of any one must affect for good or evil the lives of many others. Almost every leading thought of George Eliot's philosophy and ethics is unfolded in greater or less degree in this novel. It is full of brave, wholesome teaching, and of clear insight into the consequences of conduct. _Romola_ is the most thoughtful, the most ambitious, the most philosophical of George Eliot's works; and it is also the most lacking in spontaneity, and more than any other shows the evidences of the artist's labors. Yet by many persons it will be accepted as the greatest of her works, and not without the best of reasons. It contains some of her most original characters, gives a remarkable emphasis to great moral laws, and interprets the spiritual influence of the conflict which is ever waging between tradition and advancing culture as no other has done. It is a thought-provoking book, a book of the highest moral aims. XV. FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH. The scenes of George Eliot's later novels are laid in England, but for the most part among a town rather than a rural population. Instead of Hayslope and Raveloe, Mrs. Poyser and Silas Marner, we have Middlemarch and Treby Magna, Dorothea Brooke and Felix Holt. If Felix Holt is quite as much a working-man as Adam Bede, occupying a social position higher in no respect whatever, yet he is a workingman of a far different type. If Adam is the nobler character, the truer type of man, Felix represents a larger social purpose and has higher moral aims. In _Adam Bede_, we find rustic simplicity and contentment, but in _Felix Holt_ we touch social aspirations and political ambitions. The horizon has widened, the plane of social life has lifted, there are new motives and larger ideals. Very many of her readers and critics regard _Middlemarch_ as George Eliot's greatest novel. This is said to have been her own opinion. With great unanimity her readers pronounce _Felix Holt_ her weakest and least interesting work. So far as the dramatic and artistic execution are concerned, these judgments are not entirely correct. The machinery of _Middlemarch_ is clumsy, and the plot desultory in aim and method. On the other hand, _Felix Holt_ is strongly thought out and skilfully planned. It has much of passion and enthusiasm in it, and not a little of pure and noble sentiment, while _Middlemarch_ is never impassioned, but flows on calmly. The author evidently put herself into _Felix Holt_ with the purpose of teaching her own views about moral and social life. She lived in the characters, felt and hoped with them, and wrote out of a deep, spontaneous purpose. The sensational element has been more fully used, and the unity of the plot more thoroughly developed, than in any other of her works, while there is a living, breathing purpose in the story which is absent from her later works. _Felix Holt_ is one of the two or three novels by George Eliot which have an affirmative and thoroughly constructive purpose. It is this purpose which makes the chief interest of the work. It is a story of social reform, and is to be read as an embodiment of the author's political ideas. From this point of view it is a story full of interest, and it is the one of George Eliot's novels which will most strongly impress those who are fully in sympathy with her ideas of progress and social regeneration. The purpose of _Middlemarch_ is critical, to show how our modern social life cramps the individual, limits his energies, and destroys his power of helpful service to the world. This critical aim runs through the whole work and colors every feature of it. The impression made by the whole work is saddening; and the reader, while admiring the artistic power and the literary finish of the book, is depressed by the moral issue. In strength of imagination, intellectual insight, keen power of analysis, this novel surpasses anything else George Eliot has written. _Felix Holt_ is a novel with an ethical purpose. It aims to show how social and political reform can be brought about. Felix is George Eliot's ideal working-man, a man who remains true to his own class, seeks his own moral elevation, does not have much faith in the ballot, and who is zealous for the education of his fellows. He is a radical who believes in heredity, who is aware of our debt to the past, and who would use the laws of social inheritance for the elevation of mankind. The account Felix gives of his conversion contains George Eliot's conception of what is to be done by all workingmen who rightly understand what social reform is and how it can be most truly brought about. It is to be secured by each workingman living not for self and pleasure, but to do what good he can in the world. "I'm not speaking lightly," said Felix. "If I had not seen that I was making a hog of myself very fast, and that pig-wash, even if I could have got plenty of it, was a poor sort of thing, I should never have looked life fairly in the face to see what was to be done with it. I laughed out loud at last to think of a poor devil like me, in a Scotch garret, with my stockings out at heel and a shilling or two to be dissipated upon, with a smell of raw haggis mounting from below, and old women breathing gin as they passed me on the stairs--wanting to turn my life into easy pleasure. Then I began to see what else it could be turned into. Not much, perhaps. This world is not a very fine place for a good many of the people in it. But I've made up my mind it shan't be the worse for me, if I can help it. They may tell me I can't alter the world--that there must be a certain number of sneaks and robbers in it, And if I don't lie and filch, somebody else will. Well, then, somebody else shall, for I won't. That's the upshot of my conversion. Mr. Lyon, if you want to know it." When Felix gives Esther an account of his plans, and describes to her his purpose to do what he can to elevate his class, we have George Eliot's own views on the subject of social reform. Felix says,-- "I want to be a demagogue of a new sort: an honest one, if possible, who will tell the people they are blind and foolish, and neither flatter them nor batten on them. I have my heritage--an order I belong to. I have the blood of a line of handicraftsmen in my veins, and I want to stand up for the lot of the handicraftsmen as a good lot, in which a man may be better trained to all the best functions of his nature, than if he belonged to the grimacing set who have visiting-cards, and are proud to be thought richer than their neighbors." That the leading aim of _Felix Holt_ is to show the nature of true social reform may be seen in the address made by Felix at the election, and even more distinctly in the address put into his mouth in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for 1868. In the election speech Felix gives it as his belief that if workingmen "go the right way to work they may get power sooner without votes" than with them, by the use of public opinion, "the greatest power under heaven." The novel points out the social complications of life, the influence of hereditary privileges and abuses, and how every attempt at reform is complicated by many interests, and is likely to fall into the hands of demagogues who use the workingmen for their own purposes. The address of Felix in _Blackwood's_ is really a commentary on the novel, or rather a fine and suggestive summary of the moral, social and political idea; it was meant to inculcate. In _Felix Holt_, George Eliot would teach the world that true social reform is not to be secured by act of Parliament, or by the possession of the ballot on the part of all workingmen. It is but another enforcement of the theory that it is not rights men are to seek after, but duties; that social and political reform is not to be secured by insistence on rights, but by the true and manly acceptance of altruism. Felix Holt is a social reformer who is not a demagogue, who does not seek office or personal advancement, but who wishes to show by his own conduct how a larger life is to be won. He would introduce universal education; he would teach the great principles of right living, physically and morally; he would inculcate the spirit of helpfulness and mutual service. As a brave, earnest, self-sacrificing, pure-minded lover of humanity, he is an inspiring character. George Eliot evidently wished to indicate in his creation what can be done by workingmen towards the uplifting of their own class. A better social order, she would have us believe, cannot be secured from external sources; but it must be had by an internal impulse moving those whose lives are degraded to seek for higher things because of their own intrinsic good. The demagogue seeks the elevation of workingmen because he can use them for his own advancement; but Felix desires their elevation for the good of the whole social structure. To this end he would inspire in his fellows a greater moral ambition and zeal for the common good. He is a Mazzini, Castelar or John Bright in his own social order; one who loves his own class, wishes to remain in it, and who desires above all things that it shall do its part in the work of national elevation. His aim is not to oppose the other classes in society, but to make his own necessary to the prosperity of his country. Felix is not an ideal character, for he is rough, uncultured and headstrong; but he is an inspiring personality, with gifts of intellectual fascination and moral courage. George Eliot has created no other character like him, for Deronda and Zarca, whose aims somewhat resemble his, are very different. He is no hero, he is not altogether an attractive person. He has, however, the power, which some of the noblest of George Eliot's characters possess, of attracting and uplifting other persons. He made Esther realize the wide gulf between self-pleasing and duty, he inspired her with moral courage and awakened her mind to the higher aims and satisfactions life has to give us. He was undoubtedly meant for a moral hero of the working class, a prophet to the laborers. With all his limitations he is one of the noblest and most helpful characters in George Eliot's books. Other distinctive ideas of George Eliot's appear throughout this book. Her theories of heredity, altruism and environment affect the whole development of the story. Perhaps no more striking illustration of the law of retribution is to be found in her books than in the case of Mrs. Transome. This woman's sin corrupted her own life, and helped to darken the lives of others. The aim had in view in _Middlemarch_ is to illustrate the impotence of modern life so far as it relates in moral heroism and spiritual attainment. High and noble action is hindered and baulked by the social conditions in the midst of which we live; and those who would live grandly and purely, and in a supreme unselfishness devote themselves to the world, find that their efforts are in vain. Dorothea has longings after a life of love and service; she would live for high purposes and give herself for others' good. Her hopes end in disaster almost; and she is cramped and baulked on every side. Lydgate would devote himself to science, to patient investigations for the sake of alleviating human misery and disease. His social environment cripples him, and his life comes to nothing compared with what he had aimed at, and what he was capable of attaining. Dorothea is presented as capable of becoming a saint, being of an ardent, heroic nature, a woman who yearned after some lofty conception of the world that was to be made, not merely poetry, but an actual fact about her; who was "enamoured of intensity and greatness," and "likely to seek martyrdom." The difficulties which most beset such a nature are presented in the very first chapter, where these saintly tendencies are considered as probable obstacles to her making a good marriage. A young lady of some birth and fortune, who knelt suddenly down on a brick floor by the side of a sick laborer and prayed fervidly, as if she thought herself living in the time of the Apostles--who had strange whims of fasting like a Papist, and of sitting up at night to read old theological books! Such a wife might awaken you some fine morning with a new scheme for the application of her income which would interfere with political economy, and the keeping of saddle-horses; a man would naturally think twice before he risked himself in such fellowship. The social life of Tipton really had no room for such a woman, could not employ her rare gifts, knew not what to make of her yearnings and her charity. And Tipton is the world and modern life, which spurns the heroic, has no place for the poetry of existence, can make nothing of yearnings and longings for high heroism. Because the social order into which she was born could not use her gifts, because the vision of life in her soul was other and higher than that which society had marked out for such as she, her life was wasted in an unhappy marriage. In an earlier age she would have become a St. Theresa, for society then had a place for such souls. Now she bows in reverence to a man of learning, dreams great things of tender service to him; but this proves not to be the place in which she belongs. In the last paragraphs of the book the author gives her own account of Dorothea's failure to reach the good she sought. Sir James never ceased to regard Dorothea's second marriage as a mistake; and indeed this remained the tradition concerning it in Middlemarch, where she was spoken of to a younger generation as a fine girl who married a sickly clergyman, old enough to be her father, and in little more than a year after his death gave up her estate to marry his cousin--young enough to have been his son, with no property, and not well-born. Those who had not seen anything of Dorothea usually observed that she could not have been "a nice woman," else she would not have married either the one or the other. Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of young and noble impulse struggling under prosaic conditions. Among the many remarks passed on her mistakes, it was never said in the neighborhood of Middlemarch that such mistakes could not have happened if the society into which she was born had not smiled on propositions of marriage from a sickly man to a girl less than half his own age--on modes of education which make a woman's knowledge another name for motley ignorance--on rules of conduct which are in flat contradiction with its own loudly asserted beliefs. While this is the social air in which mortals begin to breathe, there will be collisions such as those in Dorothea's life, where great feelings take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. A new Theresa will hardly have the opportunity of reforming a conventual life, any more than a new Antigone will spend her heroic piety in daring all for the sake of a brother's burial; the medium in which their ardent deeds took place is forever gone. But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts, are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know. Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Alexander broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive; for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. The influence of social environment is also presented in _Felix Holt_ as a chief determining agent in the lives of individuals. However high the aims and noble the purposes of the individual, he must succumb to those social influences which are more powerful than he. In the third chapter we are told that-- This history is chiefly concerned with the private lot of a few men and women; but there is no private life which has not been determined by a wider public life, from the time when the primeval milkmaid had to wander with the wanderings of her clan, because the cow she milked was one of a herd which had made the pastures bare. Even in that conservatory existence where the fair Camelia is sighed for by the noble young Pineapple, neither of them needing to care about the frost or rain outside, there is a nether apparatus of hot-water pipes liable to cool down on a strike of the gardeners or a scarcity of coal. And the lives we are about to look back upon do not belong to those conservatory species; they are rooted in the common earth, having to endure all the ordinary chances of past and present weather. As to the weather of 1832, the Zadkiel of that time had predicted that the electrical condition of the clouds in the political hemisphere would produce unusual perturbations in organic existence, and he would perhaps have seen a fulfilment of his remarkable prophecy in that mutual influence of dissimilar destinies which we shall see gradually unfolding itself. For if the mixed political conditions of Treby Magna had not been acted on by the passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Harold Transome would not have presented himself as a candidate for North Loamshire, Treby would not have been a polling-place, Mr. Matthew Jermyn would not have been on affable terms with a Dissenting preacher and his flock, and the venerable town would not have been placarded with handbills, more or less complimentary and retrospective--conditions in this case essential to the "where" and the "what," without which, as the learned know, there can be no event whatever. In the case of Lydgate, if the ambition was less noble and pure, the fall was greater, and the disaster sadder to contemplate. He, too, was hindered by his "environment," but it was much more of his own creating, the result of his own nature, than in the case of Dorothea. We are told that "he was fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an anatomical conception, and make a link in the chain of discovery." That he was fully capable of achieving such a result is made to appear by the author. The account given of the discovery he wished to make, abundantly confirms this opinion of him; it also shows how large was George Eliot's learning, and how well she could use it for the novelist's purposes. To show how a person capable of such work could be entangled in the ordinary affairs of life and lose sight of his youthful vision, or at least the power of realizing it, is the purpose developed in the career of Lydgate. There were "spots of commonness" in his nature. These-- lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in spite of noble intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary men of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons. The egotism of his nature, his incapacity for hard, severe economy and the exclusion of luxury and refined pleasure, proved his destruction. Along with this egotism went a too susceptible impressiveness in the presence of beautiful women of soft, delicate ways. He meant to do great things in science, but he could not endure the discipline, the sacrifice, the long years of waiting, by which the great result was to be attained. Even if he could have done this, he lost the power of doing it through the social environment of marriage. How a man's love for a woman may corrupt the heroic purposes of his life is hinted at in one of the paragraphs in which George Eliot describes Lydgate, and the vision which enamoured his young life until the woman turned all his gold into dross. We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious thought and renunciation of small desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average, and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness for perhaps their ardor for generous, unpaid toil cooled as imperceptibly as the ardor of other youthful loves, till one day their earlier self walked like a ghost in its old home and made the new furniture ghastly. Nothing in the world more subtle than the process of their gradual change! In the beginning they inhaled it unknowingly: you and I may have sent some of our breath toward infecting them when we uttered our conforming falsities or drew our silly conclusions; or perhaps it came with the vibration from a woman's glance. The pathetic and saddening tragedy of a man's failure to realize the possibilities of his own nature was never more clearly and minutely told than in the case of Lydgate. We see all the steps of his fall, we know all the reasons why it came, we comprehend fully what he might have been and done. The bitterness of his own failure made him call his wife a basil plant--"a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains." His hair never became white, but having won a large practice in his profession, he had his life heavily insured, and died at the age of fifty. He regarded his own life as a failure, though he was outwardly successful and "his skill was relied on by many paying patients." Against his will, by ways and causes he could not foresee, through the tenderness and ease of his own nature, the vision of his youth did not come true. Perhaps _Middlemarch_ is the most perfect example among George Eliot's novels of her purpose to show how we are guided, controlled and modified in our thought and action by the whole society of which the individual forms a single atom. Many characters appear in _Middlemarch_, drawn with wonderful skill and finish, each having some part to perform in the complicated, play of life, and each some subtle, scarce-understood influence on all. Tragedy and comedy, selfishness and renunciation, greed and charity, love and jealousy, mingle here as in life. Many of these characters, such as Caleb Garth, Farebrother, Mrs. Cadwallader and Mr. Brooke, are remarkable portraitures, original and well conceived; but they all have their place in the social structure, and serve a purpose in the moral issue to be worked out. It has been said of _Felix Holt_, and justly, that its characters are too typical, too much representative of a class, and too little personal in their natures and individual in their actions. Yet this method of treating character is consistent with the purpose of the novel, which is quite as much ethical as literary. Here we have imbruted and ignorant workingmen, laborers who would elevate their class, pious Dissenters, typical clergymen of the Church of England, old hereditary families with the smouldering evils which accumulate about them, ambitious and unscrupulous adventurers, and all the other phases of character likely to be found in such a town as Treby Magna. Each person stands for a class; and the aim of the novel is to indicate how the relative position of the classes represented may be changed with as little as possible of disorder and disruption. It should be borne in mind, however, that the aim of George Eliot is not exclusively ethical. _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ are not ethical or socialistic treatises, and the whole purpose does not run in these directions. She ever keeps in mind, however, the great fact that on the ethical basis of right and wrong rests all the tragedy and comedy of the world. Her ideas are made alive with genius, and her ethical purposes take color in the glow of a brilliant imagination. She never did violence to the rule which she stated in her essay on the poet Young. On its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches science; on its emotional side, art. Now the products of art are great in proportion as they result from that immediate prompting of innate power which we call genius, and not from labored obedience to a theory or rule; and the presence of genius, or innate prompting, is directly opposed to the perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is imperious, and excludes the reflection _why_ it should act. In the same way, in proportion as morality is emotional, _i.e._, has affinity with art, it will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic feeling and action, and not as the recognition of a rule. Love does not say, "I ought to love"--it loves. Pity does not say, "It is right to be pitiful"--it pities. Justice does not say, "I am bound to be just"--it feels justly. It is only where moral emotion is comparatively weak that the contemplation of a rule or theory habitually mingles with its action; and in accordance with this; we think experience, both in literature and life, has shown that the minds which are pre-eminently didactic--which insist on a "lesson," and despise everything that will not convey a moral, are deficient in sympathetic emotion. The moral and social problems of life seem to fire her creative powers, kindle her imagination, and give rein to her genius. While the thoughtful reader may find in _Felix Holt_ and _Middlemarch_ more that interests his speculative faculties than of what will satisfy his sentiments and imagination, yet he must keep in mind the fact that these are works depending largely for their effect on the mind to their poetic qualities. There is in them both a large and thoughtful contemplation of life, but with a constant reference to its passion, sentiment and ideal aims. If they are realistic it is not to the exclusion of spiritual elements; and the poetic, sentimental phases of human existence are never ignored. XVI. DANIEL DERONDA. The purpose of George Eliot's last novel is distinctly constructive. While there is much of criticism in its pages, and criticism of the severest kind, its aim is that of spiritual renewal and upbuilding. It unfolds her conception of social growth, and of the influence of tradition and the national idea, much more completely than any other of her works. Moreover, it is all aglow with moral enthusiasm and spiritual ardor. It indicates a greater spontaneity than any of her books after _The Mill on the Floss_, and gives ample evidence that it possessed and absorbed the author's mind with its purpose and spirit. It is written from a great depth of conviction and moral earnestness. That it is her greatest book, artistically considered, there is no reason for believing; that it has its serious limitations as a literary creation all the critics have said. Yet it remains also to be said, that for largeness of aim, wealth of sentiment, and purity of moral teaching, no other book of George Eliot's surpasses _Daniel Deronda_. Indeed, in its realization of the spiritual basis of life, and in its portrayal of the religious sentiment, as these are understood by positivism, this book surpasses every other, by whomsoever written. _Daniel Deronda_ is a romance, and hence differs in kind, conception, scope, circumstance and form from her other works. It is less a study of character than most of her other works, has more of adventure and action; and while it is no less realistic, yet it has higher ideal aims, and seeks to interpret what ought to be. At least three distinct purposes may be seen running through the book, which blend into and confirm each other: to show the all-powerful influence of heredity, that blood will assert itself as more effective than any conditions of social environment or education; to indicate that ideals, subjective feelings and sentiments form the reality and the substance of religion, and that tradition affords the true medium of its expression; and to contrast a form of social life based on individualism with one based on tradition. The aim of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is many-sided, and cannot be expressed in a few phrases. It is too vital with life, touches the emotions and sentiments too often, has an ideal motive too large, to be dismissed with a quickly spoken word of contempt. Professor Dowden, one of her best and most sympathetic critics, has said that it is "an homage to the emotions rather than to the intellect of man. Her feeling finds expression not only in occasional gnomic utterances in which sentiments are declared to be the best part of the world's wealth, and love is spoken of as deeper than reason, and the intellect is pronounced incapable of ascertaining the validity of claims which rest upon loving instincts of the heart, or else are baseless. The entire work possesses an impassioned aspect, an air of spiritual prescience, far more than the exactitude of science. The main forces which operate in it are sympathies, aspirations, ardors; and ideas chiefly as associated with these." The object aimed at is ideal and religious, much more than intellectual and scientific, to show how necessary is religion, how weak and imperfect is man when the ideal side of his nature is undeveloped. It makes clear the author's conviction concerning the importance of religion, that she prized its spiritual hopes, found satisfaction in its enthusiasms and aspirations. When Gwendolen was cast down in utter dejection, all of joy and delight the world had afforded her gone, and she felt the greatest need of something to comfort and sustain her in her distrust of self and the world, Deronda said to her, "The refuge you are needing from personal trouble is the higher, the religious life, which holds an enthusiasm for something more than our own appetites and vanities." The religion inculcated, to be sure, is not that of faith in a personal God and a personal immortality, but that which is based on the mystery of life and nature, impressed on the sensitive soul of man in fears, sorrows, hopes, aspirations, and built up into great ideals and institutions through tradition. _Daniel Deronda_ gives us the gospel of altruism, a new preaching of love to man. _Daniel Deronda_ proves as no other writing has ever done, what is the charm and the power of these ideas when dissociated from any spiritual hopes which extend beyond humanity. In order to give the most adequate expression to her ideas, and to show forth the power of the spiritual life as she conceived it, George Eliot made use of that race and religion which presents so remarkable an illustration of the influence of tradition and heredity. She saw in Judaism a striking confirmation of her theories, and a proof of what ideal interests can do to preserve a nation. To vindicate that race in the eyes of the world, to show what capacity there is in its national traditions, was also a part of her purpose. That this was her aim may be seen in what she said to a young Jew in whom she was much interested. I wrote about the Jews because I consider them a fine old race who have done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as I do for the Florentines. The same idea is to be seen very clearly in the last essay in the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. She regarded the great memories and traditions of this people as a priceless legacy which may and ought to draw all the scattered Israelites together and unite them again in a common national life. A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, if not in actual existence, yet existing in the past, in memory, as a departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to suffice for social energy. This was one of the favorite ideas of George Eliot, which she has again and again expressed. She was impressed with the conviction that such a national life is necessary to the world's growth and welfare, that the era of a common brotherhood, dissociated from national traditions and hopes, has not yet come. Hence her belief that Judaism ought to speak the voice of a united race, occupying the old home of this people, and sending forth its ideas as a national inheritance and inspiration. This belief inspires the concluding words of her essay, as well as the last chapters of the novel. There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew: not that he should shut out the utmost illumination which knowledge can throw on his national history, but that he should cherish the store of inheritance which that history has left him. Every Jew should be conscious that he is one of a multitude possessing common objects of piety in the immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of ancestors who have transmitted to them a physical and mental type strong enough, eminent enough in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar promise, to constitute a new beneficent individuality among the nations, and, by confuting the traditions of scorn, nobly avenge the wrongs done to their fathers. There is a sense which the worthy child of a nation that has brought forth industrious prophets, high and unique among the poets of the world, is bound by their visions. Is bound? Yes; for the effective bond of human action is feeling, and the worthy child of a people owning the triple name of Hebrew, Israelite and Jew, feels his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and the possible renovation of his national family. Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling and call his doctrine a philosophy? He will teach a blinding superstition--the superstition that a theory of human well-being can be constructed in disregard of the influences which have made us human. The purpose of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is not merely to vindicate Judaism. This race and its religion are used as the vehicles for larger ideas, as an illustration of the supreme importance to mankind of spiritual aims concentrated into the form of national traditions and aspirations. Her own studies, and personal intercourse with the Jews, helped to attract her to this race; but the main cause of her use of them in this novel is their remarkable history. Their moral and spiritual persistence, their wonderful devotedness to their own race and its aims, admirably adapted them to develop for her the ideas she wished to express. What nation could she have taken that would have so clearly illustrated her theory of national memories and traditions? In the forty-second chapter of _Daniel Deronda_ she has put into the month of Mordecai her own theories on this subject. He vindicates his right to call himself a _rational_ Jew, one who accepts what is reasonable and true. "It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that bind and consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea, consecrate it with kinship; the past becomes my parent, and the future stretches toward me the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of special kindred that makes the families of man rich in interchanged wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the cedar and the palm?" He declares that each nation has its own work to do in the world, in the uplifting and maintenance of some special idea which is necessary to the welfare and development of humanity. The place he assigns to Judaism is precisely that which made it dear to George Eliot, because it embodied her conception of religion and its social functions. "Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us." Again, he utters words which are simply an expression of George Eliot's own sentiments. "Where else is there a nation of whom it may be as truly said that their religion and law and moral life mingled as the stream of blood in the heart and made one growth--where else a people who kept and enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they were hunted with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman that, swimming to save his life, he held the roll of his writings between his teeth and saved them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our race? They struggled to keep their place among the nations like heroes--yea, when the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but when the plow and the harrow had passed over the last visible signs of their national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, 'The spirit is alive, let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because movable--so that it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The native spirit of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed, and draw out the compressed virtues of law and prophecy." Then Mordecai unfolds his theory of national unity and of a regenerated national life; and it is impossible to read his words attentively without accepting them as an expression of George Eliot's own personal convictions. As an embodiment of her conception of the functions of national life they are full of interest aside from their place in the novel. "In the multitudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality. Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West--which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, us of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pass, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superstition will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.... The effect of our separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people, whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that multitudes of the children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, 'We will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena? There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western freedom amidst the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the outraged Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Israel gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East which carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West. Difficulties? I know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement move in the great among our people, and the work will begin.... "What is needed is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in their veins as a power without understanding, like the morning exultation of herds; it is the inborn half of memory, moving as in a dream among writings on the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot divide into speech. Let the torch of visible community be lighted! Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, but who still have a national hearth, and a tribunal of national opinion. Will any say, 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinoza had not a faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's nakedness and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' Yet Baruch Spinoza confessed he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are dead? Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and Home, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dug from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver in millions of human frames.... "I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but the good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our religious life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of aught but wrong. The masters have said an offence against man is worse than an offence against God. But what wonder if there is hatred in the breasts of Jews who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what wonder, since there is hatred in the breasts of Christians? Our national life was a growing light. Let the central fire be kindled again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our race will learn to think of their sacred land not as a place for saintly beggary to await death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the old, purified, enriched by the experience our greatest sons have gathered from the life of the ages. How long is it?--only two centuries since a vessel earned over the ocean the beginning of the great North American nation. The people grew like meeting waters; they were various in habit and sect. There came a time, a century ago, when they needed a polity, and there were heroes of peace among them. What had they to form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected by the vision of a better? Let our wise and wealthy show themselves heroes. They have the memories of the East and West, and they have the full vision of a better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art and wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised between East and West--a covenant of reconciliation. Will any say the prophetic vision of your race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry; the angel of progress hag no message for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the paid workers to lay open--the waters are rushing by it as a forsaken field? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. The sons of Judah have to choose, that God may again choose them. The Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the planting of the national ensign. The Nile overflowed and rushed onward; the Egyptian could not choose the overflow, but he chose to work and make channels for the fructifying waters, and Egypt became the land of corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us be as if we were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage, claim the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there: it will be fulfilled." These words put into the mouth of Mordecai, indicate how thoroughly George Eliot entered into the spirit of Judaism. She read Hebrew with ease, and had delved extensively in Jewish literature, besides being familiar with the monumental works in German devoted to Jewish history and opinions. The religious customs, the home life, the peculiar social habits of the race, she carefully studied. The accuracy of her information has been pointed out by her Jewish critics, by whom the book has been praised with the utmost enthusiasm. One of these, Prof. David Kaufmann, of Buda-Pesth, in an excellent notice of _Daniel Deronda_, bears testimony to the author's learning and to the faithfulness of her Jewish portraitures. He says that, "led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish characters, and to recognize and give presentment to the influences which Jewish education is wont to exercise--to prove by types that Judaism is an intellectual and spiritual force, still misapprehended and readily overlooked, but not the less an effective power, for the future of which it is good assurance that it possesses in the body of its adherents a noble, susceptible and pliant material which only awaits its final casting to appear in a glorious form." He also says of the author's learning, that it is loving and exact, that her descriptions of Jewish life are always faithful and her characters true to nature. "Leader of the present so-called realistic school, our author keeps up in this work the reputation she has won of possessing the most minute knowledge of the subjects she handles, by the manner in which she has described the Jews--the great unknown of humanity. She has penetrated into their history and literature affectionately and thoroughly; and her knowledge in a field where ignorance is still venial if not expressly authorized, has astonished even experts. In her selection of almost always unfamiliar quotations, she shows a taste and a facility of reference really amazing. When shall we see a German writer exhibiting the courteous kindliness of George Eliot, who makes Deronda study Zunz's _Synagogale Poesie_, and places the monumental words which open his chapter entitled 'Leiden,' at the head of the passage in which she introduces us to Ezra Cohen's family, and at the club-meeting at which Mordecai gives utterance to his ideas concerning the future of Israel? She is familiar with the views of Jehuda-ha-Levi as with the dreams and longings of the cabalists, and as conversant with the splendid names of our Hispano--Arabian epoch as with the moral aphorisms of the Talmud and the subtle meaning contained in Jewish legends.... It is by the piety and tenderness with which she treats Jewish customs that the author shows how supreme her cultivation and refinement are; and the small number of mistakes which can be detected in her descriptions of Jewish life and ritual may put to blush even writers who belong to that race." Again this critic says of the visionary Mordecai, who has been pronounced a mere dreamer and untrue to nature, that he is an altogether probable character and portrayed with a true realistic touch." Mordecai is carved of the wood from which prophets are made, and so far as the supersensuous can be rendered intelligible, it may even be said that in studying him we are introduced into a studio or workshop of the prophetic mind. He is one of the most difficult as well as one of the most successful essays in psychological analysis ever attempted by an author; and in his wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy of commoner metal, and by giving the angelic likeness features which are familiar to us all." Another Jew has borne equally hearty testimony to the faithfulness with which George Eliot has described Jewish life and the spirit of the Jewish religion. "She has acquired," this writer says, "an extended and profound knowledge of the rites, aspirations, hopes, fears and desires of the Israelites of the day. She has read their books, inquired into their modes of thought, searched their traditions, accompanied them to the synagogue; nay, she has taken their very words from their lips, and, like Asmodeus, has unroofed their houses. To say that some slight errors have crept into _Daniel Deronda_ is to say that no human work is perfect; and these inaccuracies are singularly few and unimportant." [Footnote: James Picciotto, author of "sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1876.] Still another Jewish critic says that in her gallery of portraits she "gives in a marvellously full and accurate way all the many sides of the Jewish complex national character." He also says that Mordecai is a true successor of the prophets and moral leaders of the race, that the national spirit and temper are truly represented in him. [Footnote: Joseph Jacobs, in Macmillian's Magazine for 1877.] That the main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is not that of defending Judaism, must be apparent to every attentive reader. The Jewish race is made use of for purposes of illustration, as a notable example in proof of her theories. There is a deeper purpose conspicuous throughout the hook, which rests on her conceptions of the spiritual life as a development of tradition. This larger purpose also jests on her altruistic conception of the moral and spiritual life. As Professor Kaufmann has pointed out, the story falls into two widely separated portions, in one of which the Jewish element appears, in the other the English. Jewish life and its religious spirit are contrasted with English life and a common type of its religion. This is not a contrast, however, which is introduced for the purpose of disparaging Christianity or English social life, but with the object of comparing those whose life is anchored in the spiritual traditions of a great people, with those who find the centre of their life in egotism and an individualistic spirit. Grandcourt is a type of pure egotism; Gwendolen is a creature who lives for self and with no law outside of her own happiness. This is the spirit of the society in which they both move. On the other hand, Mordecai lives in his race, Deronda gives his life constantly away for others, and Mirah is unselfishness and simplicity itself. So distinctly is this contrast drawn, so clearly are these two phases of life brought over against each other, that the book seems to be divided in the middle, and to be two separate works joined by a slender thread. This artistic arrangement has been severely criticised, but its higher purpose is only understood when this comparison and antagonism is recognized. Then the true artistic arrangement vindicates itself, and the unity of the book becomes apparent. Deronda moves in both these worlds, and their influence on him is finely conceived. He finds no spiritual aim and motive for his life until he is led into the charmed circle of a traditional environment, and learns to live in and for his race. Living for self, the life of Gwendolen is blasted, her hopes crushed, and she finds no peace or promise except in the steadfast spiritual strength yielded her by Deronda. That such a contrasting of the two great phases of life was a part of George Eliot's purpose she has herself acknowledged. A comparison of the spiritual histories of Gwendolen and Deronda will show how earnest was this purpose of the author. Gwendolen is a type of those souls who have no spiritual anchorage in the religious life and traditions of their people. At the opening of chapter third we are told she had no home memories, that "this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been wanting in Gwendolen's life." At the end of the sixth chapter we are also told that she had no insight into spiritual realities, that the bonds of spiritual power and moral retribution had not been made apparent to her mind. Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers, both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as in any position which would lack the tribute of respect. She had no permanent consciousness of other fetters, or of more spiritual restraints, having always disliked whatever was presented to her under the name of religion, in the same way that some people dislike arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her, no alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it, had not occurred to her, any more than it had occurred to her to inquire into the conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she had had many opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been ready to admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state. What she unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad for others to be unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual dread, though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into connection with the religion taught her, or with any human relations. She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for example, she was walking without companionship and there came some rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting herself. The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her imagination at work in a way that made her tremble; but always when some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world, in which her will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to this world was no more identified for her with those uneasy impressions of awe than her uncle's surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With human ears and eyes about her, she had always hitherto recovered her confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire. Her difficulties all came out of this egoistic spirit, this want of spiritual anchorage and religious faith. Gradually her bitter experiences awakened in her a desire for a purer life, and the influence of Deronda worked powerfully in the same direction. She is to be regarded, however, as simply a representative of that social, moral and spiritual life bred in our century by the disintegrating forces everywhere at work. No moral ideal, no awe of the divine Nemesis, no spiritual sympathy with the larger life of the race, is to be found in her thought. The radicalism of the time, which neglects religious training, which scorns the life of the past, which lives for self and culture, is destroying all that is best in modern society. Gwendolen is one of the results of these processes, an example of that impoverished life which is so common, arising from religious rebellion and egotism. Another motive and spirit is represented in the character of Deronda. As a boy, his mind was full of ideal aspirations, he was chivalrous and eager to help and comfort others. He would take no mean advantages in his own behalf, he loved the comradeship of those whom he could help, he was always ready with his sympathy. He was early impassioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those heights. He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness. Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those which helped to form Gwendolen's character, yet a very different result was produced in him because of his _inherited_ tendencies of mind. After he had seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai,-- "It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited yearning--the effect of brooding, passionate thoughts in my ancestors-- thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather. Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and born blind--the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a multitude--some social captainship which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy." This inherited sense of a larger life made Deronda what he was, and developed in him qualities absent in Gwendolen. This inherited power made him a new Mazzini, a born leader of men, a new saviour of society, a personal magnet to attract and inspire other souls. A magnetic power of influence drew Gwendolen to him from the first time they met, he shamed her narrow life by his silent presence, and he quickened to life in her a desire for a purer and nobler existence. George Eliot probably meant to indicate in his character her conception of the true social reformation which is needed to-day, and how it is to be brought about. The basis on which it is to be built is the traditional and inherited life of the past, inspired with new energies and meanings by the gifted souls who have inherited a large and pure personality, and who are inspired by a quickened sense of what life ought to be. On the one side a life of altruism, on the other a life of egotism, teach that the liner social and moral qualities come out of an inheritance in the national ideals and conquests of a worthy people, while the coarser qualities come of the neglect of this source of spiritual power and sustenance. Two letters written to Professor David Kaufmann indicate that this was the purpose of the hook. At the same time, they show George Eliot's mind on other sides, and give added insights into her character. As an indication of her attitude towards Judaism, and her faith in the work she had done in Daniel Deronda, they are of great value. THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, May 31, '77. MY DEAR SIR,--Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper satisfaction, I may say a more heartfelt joy, than you have given me in your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_. [Footnote: George Eliot and Judaism: an Attempt to Appreciate Daniel Deronda. By Prof. David Kaufmann, of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Buda-Pesth.] I must tell you that it is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work, is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no discernment of good and evil. My husband reads any notices of me that come before him, and reports to me (or else refrains from reporting) the general character of the notice, or something in particular which strikes him as showing either an exceptional insight or an obtuseness that is gross enough to be amusing. Very rarely, when he has read a critique of me, he has handed it to me, saying, "_You_ must read this." And your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_ made one of these rare instances. Certainly, if I had been asked to choose _what_ should be written about my book and _who_ should write it, I should have sketched--well, not anything so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a Jew who showed not merely sympathy with the best aspirations of his race, but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating sensibility, the perfect response to the artist's intention, which must make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and not in compliance with current fashions. Such a response holds for an author not only what is best in "the life that now is," but the promise of "that which is to come." I mean that the usual approximative, narrow perception of what one has been intending and professedly feeling in one's work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff without roots to hike any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative prompting has foreshadowed, and will continue to satisfy, a need in other minds. Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that the effort has been needed,--yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hanger for certain signs of sympathetic discernment, which you only have given. I may mention as one instance your clear perception of the relation between the presentation of the Jewish element and those of English social life. I work under the pressure of small hurries; for we are just moving into the country for the summer, and all things are in a vagrant condition around me. But I wished not to defer answering your letter to an uncertain opportunity.... My husband has said more than once that he feels grateful to you. For he is more sensitive on my behalf than on his own. Hence he unites with me in the assurance of the high regard with which I remain Always yours faithfully, M.E. LEWES. This first letter was followed a few months later by a second. THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PAKE, Oct. 12, '77. MY DEAR SIR,--I trust it will not be otherwise than gratifying to you to know that your stirring article on _Daniel Deronda_ is now translated into English by a son of Prof. Ferrier, who was a philosophical writer of considerable mark. It will be issued in a handsomer form than that of the pamphlet, and will appear within this autumnal publishing season, Messrs. Blackwood having already advertised it. Whenever a copy is ready we shall have the pleasure of sending it to you. There is often something to be borne with in reading one's own writing in a translation, but I hope that in this case you will not be made to wince severely. In waiting to send you this news I seem to have deferred too long the expression of my warm thanks for your kindness in sending me the Hebrew translations of Leasing and the collection of Hebrew poems, a kindness which I felt myself rather presumptuous in asking for, since your time must be well filled with more important demands. Yet I must further beg you, when you have an opportunity, to assure Herr Bacher that I was most gratefully touched by the sympathetic verses with which he enriched the gift of his work. I see by your last letter to my husband that your Theological Seminary was to open on the 4th of this month, so that this too retrospective letter of mine will reach you in the midst of your new duties. I trust that this new institution will be a great good to professor and students, and that your position is of a kind that you contemplate as permanent. To teach the young personally has always seemed to me the most satisfactory supplement to teaching the world through books, and I have often wished that I had such a means of having fresh, living, spiritual children within sight. One can hardly turn one's thought toward Eastern Europe just now without a mingling of pain and dread; but we mass together distant scenes and events in an unreal way, and one would like to believe that the present troubles will not at any time press on you in Hungary with more external misfortune than on us in England. Mr. Lewes is happily occupied in his psychological studies. We both look, forward to the reception of the work you kindly promised us, and he begs me to offer you his best regards. Believe me, my dear sir, Yours with much esteem, M.E. LEWES. It was a part of George Eliot's purpose in _Daniel Deronda_ to criticise the social life of England in the spirit in which she had criticised it in _Middlemarch_, as being deficient in spiritual power, moral purpose and noble sentiment. If she made it clear in _Middlemarch_ that the individual is crippled and betrayed by society, it was her purpose to make it quite as clear in _Daniel Deronda_ how society may become the true inspirer of the individual. We may quarrel with her theory of the origin and nature of the spiritual life in man, but she has somewhat truly conceived its vast importance and shown the character of that influence it everywhere has over man's life. As types of spiritual lifts, and as individual conceptions of human character, the personages of this novel are drawn with marvellous skill. Mr. E.P. Whipple says that Daniel Deronda is "one of the noblest and most original characters among the heroes imagined by poets, dramatists and novelists." With equal or even greater justice can it be said that Gwendolen Harleth is one of the most powerful and grandly conceived of imaginary creations in all literature. In the characters, the situations, and the whole working out of this novel, George Eliot shows herself one of the great masters of literary creation. When the prejudices aroused by the Jewish element in it are allayed, and _Daniel Deronda_ is read as a work of literary genius, it will be found not to be the least interesting and important of George Eliot's books. It has the religious interest and inspiration of _Adam Bede_, the historic value of _Romola_, and the critical elements of _Middlemarch_; and these are wrought into a work of lofty insight and imagination, along with a high spiritual ardor and a supreme ethical purpose. In this novel, for the first time, as Professor Dowden says, her poetical genius found adequate expression, and in complete association with the non-poetical elements of her nature. XVII. THE SPANISH GYPSY AND OTHER POEMS. It was _The Spanish Gypsy_, published in 1868, which brought the name of George Eliot before the public as a poet. This work is a novel written in blank verse, with enough of the heroic and tragic in it to make the story worthy of its poetic form. The story is an excellent one, well conceived and worked out, and had it been given the prose form would have made a powerful and original novel. While it would doubtless have gained in definiteness of detail and clearness of purpose by being presented in the prose form, yet its condensation into a poem is a gain, and the whole setting of the story has been made of greater interest by this method of expression. The poetic form is as original as are the theories of life which the poem is designed to inculcate. In structure it combines, with a method quite its own, the descriptive and dramatic forms of poetry. In this it nearly approaches the method followed in her novels of combining description and dialogue in a unitary structure of great strength and perfection. The descriptive passages in her prose works are strong and impressive, lofty in tone, and yet lovingly faithful in detail. Her conversations are often highly dramatic and add greatly to the whole outcome of these novels. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ the surroundings of the story are first described in verse which, if not always perfectly poetic, is yet imaginatively thought out and executed in a manner befitting the subject. Suddenly, however, the narrative and descriptive form ceases and the dramatic begins. By means also of full "stage directions" to the dramatic portions of the poem, the story is wrought out quite as much in detail as it needs to be; and much is gained of advantage over the length of her novels by this concentration of scene and narrative. While the narrative portion of the poem is much less in extent than the dramatic, yet it has in it some of the main elements of the plot, and those without which the action could not be worked out. The dramatic element gives it a real and living power. The characters are strongly conceived, and nearly all of them are individualities of an original type and of an action thoroughly distinct and human. As a work of art, the most serious defect in _The Spanish Gypsy_ is its doctrinal tone. It is speculative in its purpose quite as much as poetical, and the speculation is so large an element as to intrude upon the poetry. Thought overtops imagination, the fervor and enthusiasm of the poet are more than matched by the ethical aims of the teacher. This ethical purpose of unfolding in a dramatic form the author's theories of life has filled the book, as it has her novels, with epigrams which are original, splendid and instructive. Into a few lines she condenses some piece of wisdom, and in words full of meaning and purpose. Into the mouth of Sephardo, a character distinctive and noteworthy, she puts some of her choicest wisdom. He says,-- Thought Has joys apart, even in blackest woe, And seizing some fine thread of verity Knows momentary godhead. Again he utters the same idea, but in more expressive words. Our growing thought Makes growing revelation. Don Silva is made to use this highly poetic imagery. Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken. Zarca, that truest and most original character in the poem, says of the great work he purposes to accomplish, To my inward vision Things are achieved when they are well begun. Again, he says,-- New thoughts are urgent as the growth of wings. Expressive and original as _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, yet it gives the impression of lacking in some poetic quality which is necessary to the highest results. Difficult as it may be to define precisely what it is that is wanting, nearly every reader will feel that something which makes poetry has been somehow left out. Is it imagination, or is it a flexible poetic expression, which is absent? While George Eliot has imagination enough to make a charming prose style, and to adorn her prose with great beauty and an impressive manner, yet its finer quality of subtle expression is not to be found in her poetry. Those original and striking shades of meaning which the poet employs by using words in unique relations, she does not often attain to. It is the thought, the ethical meaning, in her poetry as in her prose, which is often of more importance than the manner of expression; and she is too intent on what is said to give full heed always to how it is said. She has, however, employed that form of verse which is best suited to her style, and one which does not demand those lyrical or those imaginative qualities in which she is deficient. The blank verse is well adapted to her realism, though it does not always answer well to the more dramatic and tragical and impassioned portions of the story. As a study of an historic period, _The Spanish Gypsy_ is not so great a success as _Romola_; yet it more perfectly unfolds a unitary moral purpose, and the various types of character are more originally developed. The conflict of motives, the contrasted and opposed national interests, are distinctly brought out, but the aroma of the time and place are wanting. To describe a poetic and heroic era she is never content to do. Her method is totally different from that of Scott, who reflects the spirit and life of the time he depicts with almost absolute faithfulness. No gypsy was ever such a character as Zarca, no gypsy girl ever had the conscience of Fedalma. As in the case of _Romola_, so here, an historic period is used, not so much for artistic as for philosophic purposes, because it is well designed to present her ideas about heredity and tradition. _The Spanish Gypsy_ is essentially a romance, and contains much of those more poetic and ideal elements which distinguish _Daniel Deronda_ from her other novels. This romantic element, if it does not develop poetry of the highest quality, does bring out in its most perfect form all the finest characteristics of her style. While _The Spanish Gypsy_ affords many points of attack for the critic, yet it cannot be dismissed by saying it is not a great poem. Its strong qualities are too many to permit of its being disposed of in haste. With all its defects it is a noble piece of work, and genuinely adds to the author's expression of genius. It is one of those poems which win, not popularity, but the heartiest admiration of a choice and elect few who find life and highest inspiration in it, because giving strength to their thoughts and purpose to their moral convictions. As a study of some of the deeper problems of the ethical and social life of man, it is unsurpassed, and the teaching imparted by it is singularly well and impressively conveyed by the whole make of the poem. It is also remarkable for its large and impressive style, its rich command of words, and the lofty beauty of its diction. One of its most striking qualities, as Mr. Henry James, Jr., suggests, "is its extraordinary rhetorical energy and eloquence," and "its splendid generosity of diction." The same writer says of the character of Don Silva, that "nowhere has her marvellous power of expression, the mingled dignity and pliancy of her style, obtained a greater triumph." The critics have almost without exception dealt severely with the poem, but they have applied to it the canons of poetic art as interpreted by themselves. Genius creates its own laws, makes its own methods, reverses old decisions and triumphs against the whole brood of critics. The world accepts what is true and excellent, however defective in technical requirements. Imperfect meters, and poetic structures not orthodox, may disturb those who deal in criticism, but such limitations as these are not sufficient to fix the final acceptance of a poem. More than one of the greatest poems could not endure such tests. That _The Spanish Gypsy_ has vitality of purpose, enduring interest in treatment, and a lofty eloquence of diction, is doubtless enough to insure it an accepted place among the few greater poems in the language. Its profoundly thoughtful interpretation of some of the greater social problems mankind has to deal with, will necessarily give a permanent interest for the lovers of speculative poetry, while its genuine poetic merits will largely add to that interest, and add to it by its tragic power, its rich ethical wisdom, and its fine portrayal of character. No other book of George Eliot's is so filled and inspired by the spirit of her teachings as _The Spanish Gypsy_. Its inspiration and its interest lie mainly in the direction of its moral and spiritual inculcations. Verse did not stimulate her, but was a fetter; it clogged her highest powers. The rich eloquence of her prose, with its pathos and sentiment, its broad perspective and vigorous thought, was to her a continual stimulus and incentive. Her poems are more labored than her novels, and for this very reason they show the philosophy which gives them meaning more clearly. Their greater concentration and less varied elements also largely help to make apparent the teachings they contain. Her sympathy with the evolution philosophy of the day is conspicuous in _The Spanish Gypsy_. It is simply a dramatic interpretation of the higher phases of Darwinism. The doctrinal element does not intrude itself, however; it is not on the surface, it is well subordinated to the artistic elements of the poem. Even intelligent readers may not detect it, and the majority of those who read the poem without any preconceptions may not discover its philosophic bearings. Yet to the studious reader the philosophy must be the most conspicuous element which enters into the poem, and it gives character and meaning to the work far more fully than in the case of any of her novels. The aim of the poem is to show how hereditary race influences act as a tragic element in opposition to individual emotions and inclinations. The teaching of _Romola_ is much of it reproduced, at least that portion of it which inculcates renunciation and altruism. Its distinguishing features, however, more nearly resemble those of _Daniel Deronda_. The race element is introduced, and the effect of the past is shown as it forms character and gives direction to duties. One phase of its meaning has been very clearly described by Mr. R.H. Hutton, who says the poem teaches "how the inheritance of the definite streams of impulse and tradition stored up in what we call race, often puts a veto upon any attempt of spontaneous individual emotion or volitions to ignore or defy their Control, and to emancipate itself from the tyranny of their disputable and apparently cruel rule." "How the threads," he says again, "of hereditary capacity and hereditary sentiment control as with invisible chords the orbits of even the most powerful characters,--how the fracture of those threads, so far as can be accomplished by mere _will_, may have even a greater effect in wrecking character than moral degeneracy would itself produce,--how the man who trusts and uses the hereditary forces which natural descent has bestowed upon him, becomes a might and a centre in the world, while the man, intrinsically the nobler, who dissipates his strength by trying to swim against the stream of his past, is neutralized and paralyzed by the vain effort,--again, how a divided past, a past not really homogeneous, may weaken this kind of power, instead of strengthening it by the command of a larger experience--all this George Eliot's poem paints with tragical force." The main thought of _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, that the moral and spiritual in man is the result of social conditions which, if neglected, lead to the destruction of all that is best in human nature. In the description of Mine Host, in the opening pages of the poem, this evil result of a severing of life from tradition is described. He was educated in the Jewish faith, but was made a Christian at the age of ten. So he had to be converted with his sire, To doff the awe he learned as Ephriam, And suit his manners to a Christian name. The poet then delivers one of her doctrinal utterances, and one which is in this case the keynote of the whole poem. But infant awe, that unborn moving thing, Dies with what nourished it, can never rise From the dead womb and walk and seek new pasture. That awe which grows up in childhood, if destroyed later, brings anarchy into human life. All the characters of the poem exemplify this teaching, and each is but a product of his past, individual or social. Don Silva, Zarca, Fedalma, the Prior, Sephardo, illustrate this idea. The latter gives utterance to the thought of the poem, when Don Silva says to him that he has need of a friend who is not tied to sect or party, but who is capable of following his "naked manhood" into what is just and right, without regard to other considerations. My lord, I will be frank; there's no such thing As naked manhood. If the stars look down On any mortal of our shape, whose strength Is to judge all things without preference, He is a monster, not a faithful man. While my heart beats, it shall wear livery-- My people's livery, whose yellow badge Marks them for Christian scorn. I will not say Man is first man to me, then Jew or Gentile: That suits the rich _marranos_; but to me My father is first father and then man. So much for frankness' sake. But let that pass. 'Tis true at least, I am no Catholic But Salomo Sephardo, a born Jew, Willing to serve Don Silva. [Footnote: In a note George Eliot gives the following explanation of the word _marranos_: "The name given by the Spanish Jews to the multitudes of their race converted to Christianity at the end of the fourteenth century and beginning of the fifteenth. The lofty derivation from _Maran-atha_, the Lord cometh, seems hardly called for, seeing that _marrano_ is Spanish for _pig_. The 'old Christians' learned to use the word as a term of contempt for the 'new Christians,' or converted Jews and their descendants; but not too monotonously, for they often interchanged it with the fine old crusted opprobrium of the name _Jew_. Still, many Marranos held the highest secular and ecclesiastical prizes in Spain, and were respected accordingly."] In the conversation between Don Silva and this uncle, the Prior expresses in the strongest language his conviction that Fedalma will in time reveal her gypsy blood, and that any rejection on the part of Don Silva of the life assigned him by his birth will end in sorrow and misery. When Don Silva declares his intention of following his own inclinations the Prior answers,-- Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength Of fallen angels. Can you change your blood? You are a Christian, with the Christian awe In every vein. A Spanish noble, born To serve your people and your people's faith. Strong, are you? Turn your back upon the Cross-- Its shadow is before you. Leave your place: Quit the great ranks of knighthood: you will walk Forever with a tortured double self, A self that will be hungry while you feast, Will blush with shame while you are glorified, Will feel the ache and chill of desolation Even in the very bosom of your love. This eloquent expostulation against rejection of any of those ties and obligations imposed by birth and race is repeated again in the plea of Zarca to his daughter, when he urges that there is no life and joy for Fedalma apart from that race to which she belongs and those social conditions which gave her mind its characteristics. Will you adopt a soul without its thoughts, Or grasp a life apart from flesh and blood? Till then you cannot wed a Spanish Duke And not wed shame at mention of your race, And not wed hardness to their miseries-- Nay, wed not murder. Zarca and the Prior are each faithful to race, religion and social tradition. Each knows his duty, is content with the opportunities given him by social inheritance, is thoroughly in harmony with his own past. Both are consequently strong, resolute, successful. Zarca is a grand character, and though a hero in a nation of vagabonds, he wholly identifies himself with his people and accepts their destiny as his own. The Prior is a haughty Spanish Churchman, who has inherited all the traits of a noble family, and is proud of his priestly functions. In the case of Don Silva and Fedalma there is a conflict between love and race. The one is a Spanish nobleman, the other the daughter of a Zincala chief. Yet they love, and feel that no outward circumstances are sufficient to separate them. This verdict of their hearts is the verdict of mankind in all ages; but it is not the one arrived at by George Eliot in obedience to her philosophy. The reasons why these two should not wed grew entirely out of the social circumstances of the time. An English nobleman of to-day could marry such a woman as Fedalma without social or other loss. The capacities of soul are superior to conditions of race. Virtue and genius do not depend on social circumstances. Yet _The Spanish Gypsy_ has for its motive the attempt to prove that the life of tradition and inheritance is the one which provides all our moral and social and religious obligations. In conformity with this theory the conflict of the poem arises, because Don Silva is not in intellectual harmony with his own character. A thoughtful, fastidious, sensitive soul was his, not resolute and concentrated in purpose, He was no bigot, could not be content with any narrow aim, saw good on many sides. A man of high-wrought strain, fastidious In his acceptance, dreading all delight That speedy dies and turns to carrion: His senses much exacting, deep instilled With keen imagination's airy needs;-- Like strong-limbed monsters studded o'er with eyes, Their hunger checked by overwhelming vision, Or that fierce lion in symbolic dream Snatched from the ground by wings and new-endowed With a man's thought-propelled relenting heart. Silva was both the lion and the man; First hesitating shrank, then fiercely sprang, Or having sprung, turned pallid at his deed And loosed the prize, paying his blood for naught. A nature half-transformed, with qualities That oft betrayed each other, elements Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. Haughty and generous, grave and passionate; With tidal moments of devoutest awe, Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt; Deliberating ever, till the sting Of a recurrent ardor made him rush Right against reasons that himself had drilled And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed Too proudly special for obedience, Too subtly pondering for mastery: Born of a goddess with a mortal sire, Heir of flesh-fettered, weak divinity, Doom-gifted with long resonant consciousness And perilous heightening of the sentient soul. Too noble and generous to accept the narrow views of his uncle, Don Silva insisted on marrying Fedalma, because he loved her and because she was a pure and true woman. He had a poet's nature, was sensitive to all beauty, and his heart vibrated to all ideal excellence. His love became to him a thing apart, a sacred shrine; and Fedalma was made one with all joy and beauty. He thought all loveliness was lovelier, She crowning it; all goodness credible, Because of that great trust her goodness bred. His love gave a delicious content and melody to his day dreams. O, all comforters, All soothing things that bring mild ecstasy, Came with her coming, in her presence lived. Spring afternoons, when delicate shadows fall Pencilled upon the grass; high summer morns When white light rains upon the quiet sea And cornfields flush with ripeness; odors soft-- Dumb vagrant bliss that seems to seek a home And find it deep within 'mid stirrings vague Of far-off moments when our life was fresh; All sweetly tempered music, gentle change Of sound, form, color, as on wide lagoons At sunset when from black far-floating prows Comes a clear wafted song; all exquisite joy Of a subdued desire, like some strong stream Made placid in the fulness of a lake-- All came with her sweet presence, for she brought The love supreme which gathers to its realm All powers of loving. Subtle nature's hand Waked with a touch the far-linked harmonies In her own manifold work. Fedalma there, Fastidiousness became the prelude fine For full contentment; and young melancholy, Lost for its origin, seemed but the pain Of waiting for that perfect happiness. So strong was Don Silva's love, so ardent his passion for Fedalma, that he forsook all duties and social obligations and became a Zincala for her sake. Yet once awakened to the real consequences of his act, he killed Zarca and sought to regain by hard penances his lost knighthood. With Fedalma also love was an absorbing passion. The passionate devotion of a woman is in her words. No ills on earth, though you should count them up With grains to make a mountain, can outweigh For me his ill who is my supreme love. All sorrows else are but imagined flames, Making me shudder at an unfelt smart; But his imagined sorrow is a fire That scorches me. With great earnestness she says she will-- Never forsake that chief half of her soul Where lies her love. With what depth of love does she utter these words: I belong to him who loves me--whom I love-- Who chose me--whom I chose--to whom I pledged A woman's truth. And that is nature too, Issuing a fresher law than laws of birth. Though her love is deep and passionate and full of a woman's devotedness, the mark of race is set deep within her soul. The moment the claim of race is brought clearly before her as the claim of duty, as the claim of father and of kindred, she accepts it. Her love is not thrown hastily aside, for she loves deeply and truly, and it tears her heart in sunder to renounce it; but she is faithful to duty. Her love grows not less, loses none of its hold upon her heart. No other crown Is aught but thorns on my poor woman's brow. Hers is not a divided self, however; to see the way of duty with her, was to follow in it. Her father's invincible will, courage and patient purpose are her own by inheritance. Once realizing the claim of birth and race, she does not falter, love is resolutely put aside, all delight in culture and refinement becomes dross in her eyes. I will not count On aught but being faithful. I will take This yearning self of mine and strangle it. I will not be half-hearted: never yet Fedalma did aught with a wavering soul. Die, my young joy--die, all my hungry hopes! The milk you cry for from the breast of life Is thick with curses. O, all fatness here Snatches its meat from leanness--feeds on graves. I will seek nothing but to shun base joy. The saints were cowards who stood by to see Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain-- The grandest death, to die in vain--for love Greater than sways the forces of the world! That death shall be my bridegroom. I will wed The curse that blights my people. Father, come! The poem distinctly teaches that Fedalma was strong, because the ties of blood were strongly marked upon her mind and willingly accepted by her intellect and conscience; while Don Silva was weak, because he did not acknowledge those ties and accept their law. In the end, however, both declare that the inherited life is the only one which gives joy or duty, and that all individual aims and wishes are to be renounced. The closing scene of this great poem is full of sadness, and yet is strong with moral purpose. Don Silva and Fedalma meet for the last time, she on her way to Africa with her tribe to find a home for it there, he on his way to Rome, to seek the privilege of again using his knightly sword. Both are sad, both feel that life has lost all its joy, both believe it is a bitter destiny which divides them from the fulfilment of their love, and yet both are convinced that love must be forsworn for a higher duty. Their last conversation, opened by Don Silva, is full of power, and concentrates into its last words the total meaning of the poem. I bring no puling prayer, Fedalma--ask No balm of pardon that may soothe my soul For others' bleeding wounds: I am not come To say, "Forgive me:" you must not forgive, For you must see me ever as I am-- Your father's... FEDALMA. Speak it not! Calamity Comes like a deluge and o'erfloods our crimes, Till sin is hidden in woe. You--I--we two, Grasping we knew not what, that seemed delight, Opened the sluices of that deep. DON SILVA. We two?-- Fedalma, you were blameless, helpless. FEDALMA. No! It shall not be that you did aught alone. For when we loved I willed to reign in you, And I was jealous even of the day If it could gladden you apart from me. And so, it must be that I shared each deed Our love was root of. DON SILVA. Dear! you share the woe-- Nay, the worst part of vengeance fell on you. FEDALMA. Vengeance! She does but sweep us with her skirts. She takes large space, and lies a baleful light Revolving with long years--sees children's children, Blights them in their prime. Oh, if two lovers leane To breathe one air and spread a pestilence, They would but lie two livid victims dead Amid the city of the dying. We With our poor petty lives have strangled one That ages watch for vainly. DON SILVA. Deep despair Fills all your tones as with slow agony. Speak words that narrow anguish to some shape: Tell me what dread is close before you? FEDALMA. None. No dread, but clear assurance of the end. My father held within his mighty frame A people's life: great futures died with him Never to rise, until the time shall ripe Some other hero with the will to save The outcast Zincali. DON SILVA. And yet their shout-- I heard it--sounded as the plenteous rush Of full-fed sources, shaking their wild souls With power that promised sway. FEDALMA. Ah yes, that shout Came from full hearts: they meant obedience. But they are orphaned: their poor childish feet Are vagabond in spite of love, and stray Forgetful after little lures. For me-- I am but as the funeral urn that bears The ashes of a leader. DON SILVA. O great God! What am I but a miserable brand Lit by mysterious wrath? I lie cast down A blackened branch upon the desolate ground. Where once I kindled ruin. I shall drink No cup of purest water but will taste Bitter with thy lone hopelessness, Fedalma. FEDALMA. Nay, Silva, think of me as one who sees A light serene and strong on one sole path Which she will tread till death... He trusted me, and I will keep his trust: My life shall be its temple. I will plant His sacred hope within the sanctuary And die its priestess--though I die alone, A hoary woman on the altar-step, Cold 'mid cold ashes. That is my chief good. The deepest hunger of a faithful heart Is faithfulness. Wish me naught else. And you-- You too will live.... DON SILVA. I go to Rome, to seek The right to use my knightly sword again; The right to fill my place and live or die So that all Spaniards shall not curse my name. I sate one hour upon the barren rock And longed to kill myself; but then I said, I will not leave my name in infamy, I will not be perpetual rottenness Upon the Spaniard's air. If I must sink At last to hell, I will not take my stand Among the coward crew who could not bear The harm themselves had done, which others bore. My young life yet may fill some fatal breach, And I will take no pardon, not my own, Not God's--no pardon idly on my knees; But it shall come to me upon my feet And in the thick of action, and each deed That carried shame and wrong shall be the sting That drives me higher up the steep of honor In deeds of duteous service to that Spain Who nourished me on her expectant breast, The heir of highest gifts. I will not fling My earthly being down for carrion To fill the air with loathing: I will be The living prey of some fierce noble death That leaps upon me while I move. Aloud I said, "I will redeem my name," and then-- I know not if aloud: I felt the words Drinking up all my senses--"She still lives. I would not quit the dear familiar earth Where both of us behold the self-same sun, Where there can be no strangeness 'twixt our thoughts So deep as their communion." Resolute I rose and walked.--Fedalma, think of me As one who will regain the only life Where he is other than apostate--one Who seeks but to renew and keep the vows Of Spanish knight and noble. But the breach-- Outside those vows--the fatal second breach-- Lies a dark gulf where I have naught to cast, Not even expiation--poor pretence, Which changes naught but what survives the past, And raises not the dead. That deep dark gulf Divide us. FEDALMA. Yes, forever. We must walk Apart unto the end. Our marriage rite Is our resolve that we will each be true To high allegiance, higher than our love. Our dear young love--its breath was happiness! But it had grown upon a larger life Which tore its roots asunder. We rebelled-- The larger life subdued us. Yet we are wed; For we shall carry each the pressure deep Of the other's soul. I soon shall leave the shore. The winds to-night will bear me far away. My lord, farewell! What has been said of _The Spanish Gypsy_ applies very nearly as well to all her other poems. They are thoughtful, philosophic, realistic; they are sonorous in expression, stately in style, and of a diction eloquent and beautiful. On the whole, the volume containing the shorter poems is a poetical advance on _The Spanish Gypsy_, containing more genuine poetry, more lyrical fire, and a greater proportion of humor, sympathy and passion. They are carefully polished and refined; and yet that indefinable something which marks the truest poetry is wanting. They are saturated with her ideas, the flavor of her thought impregnates them all, with but two or three exceptions. Her artistic conceptions are more fully developed in some of these poems than in any of her novels, especially in "Armgart" and "The Legend of Jubal." The special thought of "Armgart" is, that no artistic success is of so much worth as a loving sympathy with others. The longing of Armgart was to be-- a happy spiritual star Such as old Dante saw, wrought in a rose Of light in Paradise, whose only self Was consciousness of glory wide-diffused, Music, life, power--I moving in the midst With a sublime necessity of good. Her ambition runs very high. May the day be near when men Think much to let my horses draw me home, And new lands welcome me upon their beach, Loving me for my fame. That is the truth Of what I wish, nay, yearn for. Shall I lie? Pretend to seek obscurity--to sing In hope of disregard? A vile pretence! And blasphemy besides. For what is fame But the benignant strength of One, transformed To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come As necessary breathing of such joy; And may they come to me! Armgart is beloved of the Graf, and he tries to persuade her to abandon her artistic career and become his wife. He says to her,-- A woman's rank Lies in the fulness of her womanhood: Therein alone she is loyal. Again he says to her,-- Pain had been saved, Nay, purer glory reached, had you been throned As woman only, holding all your art As attribute to that dear sovereignty-- Concentering your power in home delights Which penetrate and purify the world. Armgart will not listen; her whole heart is enlisted in music. She says to the Graf,-- I will live alone and pour my pain With passion into music, where it turns To what is best within my better self. A year later Armgart's throat has failed, and her career has ended in nothing. Then her servant and friend, Walpurga, who has devoted her life to Armgart, speaks that lesson George Eliot would convey in this little story, that a true life is a life of service. Walpurga chides Armgart's false ambition in these words: I but stand As a small symbol for the mighty sum Of claims unpaid to needy myriads; I think you never set your loss beside That mighty deficit. Is your work gone-- The prouder queenly work that paid itself And yet was overpaid with men's applause! Are you no longer chartered, privileged, But sunk to simple woman's penury, To ruthless Nature's chary average-- Where is the rebel's right for you alone? Noble rebellion lifts a common load; But what is he who flings his own load off And leaves his fellows toiling? Rebel's right? Say, rather, the deserter's. Armgart learns from her master, the old and noble Leo, that he had also been ambitious, that he had won only small success, and that he now lived for the sake of the good he could do to those about him. He says to her,-- We must bury our dead joys, And live above them with a living world. Then Armgart is brought to see that there is a noble privilege in living as her friend has lived, in making music a joy to others, and in doing what she can to make life better for humanity. There are two very distinct ideas running through the poem, that a life guided by altruism is better than--a merely artistic life, and that woman is to find in home and wedded joys that opportunity for the development of her soul, without which no artistic career can be complete. The words of the Graf speak George Eliot's own thought, that Armgart's life and her art would have been both more perfect and more noble had she held all her art as attribute to the dear sovereignty of affection. The same artistic conception pervades "The Legend of Jubal." That fame for which Jubal also yearns comes to him, he is taught, in the good which he leaves behind him for humanity to enjoy. He dies, and ceases to be as a personal being. At least this may be inferred from the concluding lines. Quitting mortality, a quenched sun-wave, The All-creating Presence for his grave. A _sun-wave_ while living, his being is now _quenched_. But he lives on in the life of the race, lives on in man's joy of music, in the deeper life which music awakens in all bosoms through all ages. He is told that he has no need of-- aught else for share Of mortal good, than in his soul to bear The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest Of the world's springtide in his conscious breast. His own loved Past says to him,-- This was thy lot, to feel, create, bestow, And that immeasurable life to know From which the fleshly self falls shrivelled, dead, A seed primeval that has forests bred. This poem views death as positivism conceives it, and gives a poetic interpretation of that subjective immortality, or that immortality in the race, in which George Eliot so heartily believed. No other artistic presentation of this theory has ever been made which equals that given in this poem, and in the one beginning, "O may I join the choir invisible." This latter poem is not only beautiful in itself, but it has made altruism attractive and lovely. Its tone of thought is elevated, its spirit lofty and noble, and its ideal pure and gracious. All that can be said to make altruism lovely and winning, to inspire men with its spirit and motive, is here said. The thought presented in these two poems is repeated in "The Death of Moses." Here we have Moses living forever in the human influence he created. He dwells not with you dead, but lives as Law. For her ideas about resignation we must turn to the pages of _The Mill on the Floss and Romola_, for those about heredity and the past to _The Spanish Gypsy_ and _Daniel Deronda_; but in these shorter poems she has completely unfolded the positivist conception, as she accepted it, of death and immortality. The degree to which she was moved and inspired by this belief in an immortality in humanity is seen in the greater ardor and poetic merit of these poems than any others she wrote. It is interesting to note that she introduces music into "The Legend of Jubal" and "Armgart". It was the art she most loved. She even said that if she could possess the power most satisfactory to her heart, it would be that of making music the instrument of the homage which the great performers secure. Yet she teaches in "Armgart" that there is a power higher than this, the power of affectionate service. Her books are full of the praise of music. She makes Maggie Tulliver express her own delight in it. "I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music." In _Adam Bede_ she becomes most poetic when extolling the power of exquisite music to work on the soul. To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life wherein memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one unspeakable vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy. In the "Minor Prophet" is to be found George Eliot's theory of progress. That poem also repeats her faith in common humanity, and gives new emphasis to her joy in the common toils and affections of men. In the "College Breakfast Party" and "Self and Life," her thoughts take a more truly philosophic form than in any of her other poems, but the first of these is the poorest piece of poetic work she gave to the public. Nothing new in the way of teaching appears in these or her other poems. George Eliot is the poet of positivism. What is beautiful, touching and inspiring in that conception of the world she has sung, and in as poetic a manner as that philosophy is ever likely to inspire. Her poetry is full of the thoughts and sentiments of the time. It reflects the mood of her generation. Prof. Sidney Colvin has truly said that "there is nothing in the literature of the day so rousing--to the mind of the day there is scarcely anything so rousing in all literature--as her writing is. What she writes is full of her time. It is full of observation, imagination, pathos, wit and humor, all of a high class in themselves; but what is more, all saturated with modern ideas poured into a language of which every word bites home with peculiar sharpness to the contemporary consciousness." This is true even more of her poetry than of her prose. That poetry lacks where the age lacks, in true poetic quality. The ideal, the breath of eternal spring, is not in it. XVIII. LATER ESSAYS. The later essays of George Eliot have the same characteristics as the earlier ones, and are mainly of interest because they furnish additional evidences of her philosophical, ethical and political opinions. While they indicate the profound thoughtfulness of her mind, her deep concern about the largest problems of human existence, and her rare ethical tone and purpose, they add little or nothing to her literary reputation. It is very plain that while George Eliot was not a poet in the largest, truest sense, she was still less an essayist in that genial, widely sympathetic sense which has adorned English literature with so many noble books of comment on the foibles and the virtues of man. Her manner is heavy, her thoughts philosophical, her purpose doctrinal: and the result is far from satisfactory to the lover of fine essay-writing. She needs the glow of her imagination, the depth of her emotions, to relieve and lighten the burden of her thoughts. But in her essays she is less wise, less racy and expressive, than in the didactic passages of her novels. She could best make her comment on the ways of life while describing a character or studying an action. These additions to her narrative and conversation are, to the thoughtful reader, among the best portions of her novels, for they give meaning to all the rest, and throw a flood of light on the hidden facts of life. She is never so great, so wise, so profoundly inspired by her theme, as in many of these passages. There is need, however, in her case, of the large surrounding life of her novels in order to draw out this wisdom and inspiration. Her essays lack in the fine sentiment and the fervid eloquence of the chorus-utterances in her novels. They give little evidence that she would have attained to great things had she followed the early purpose of her life. In view of what she has written in the shape of essays, no one can regret that she confined her chief efforts to her imaginative prose creations. Yet her essays have a special value on account of their subjects, and they will be read by many with a hearty appreciation, simply because they were George Eliot's. No one thoroughly interested in the work done by the great realistic novelist can afford to overlook her essays, even if they do not nearly touch the highest mark in their kind. After she began her career as a novelist George Eliot wrote about twenty essays, nearly all of which are included in her last book, _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. Previous to this, however, she had published in the first number of the _Fortnightly Review_, issued May 15, 1865, and edited by Lewes, an article on "The Influence of Rationalism," in review of Mr. W.H. Lecky's book on that subject. A year after the appearance of _Felix Holt_ she wrote out her views on the subject of political reform, in the shape of an "Address to Workingmen by Felix Holt," which appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ for January, 1868. These essays are significant, because of the light they afford concerning the author's views on religious and political subjects. The first is a piece of thorough reviewing, and shows what George Eliot might have done in that direction. She is a merciless critic, and yet one inclined to appreciate all that is best in an author. Her sympathies with positivism and with the "scientific method" in philosophy find expression in the pages of this essay. In it she gives a most expressive utterance to her ideas about the universality of law and the influence of tradition. Her point of view is so antagonistic to Mr, Lecky's that she does not do full justice to his work. His idealism is repugnant to her, and he does not give prominence enough to please her to those positivist influences in which she so strongly believed. Her dissatisfaction with his idealism appears in her very first words. There is a valuable class of books on great subjects which have something of the character and functions of good popular lecturing. They are not original, not subtle, not of close logical texture, not exquisite either in thought or style; but by virtue of these negatives they are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence. They have enough of organizing purpose in them to make their facts illustrative, and to leave a distinct result in the mind even when most of the facts are forgotten; and they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in their theory to win them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. The vagueness and vacillation are not devices of timidity; they are the honest result of the writer's own mental character, which adapts him to be the instructor and the favorite of "the general reader." For the most part, the general reader of the present day does not exactly know what distance he goes; he only knows that he does not go "too far." Of any remarkable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he likes to have it said "that his errors are to be deplored." leaving it not too certain what those errors are; he is fond of what may be called disembodied opinions, that float in vapory phrases above all systems of thought or action; he likes an undefined Christianity which opposes itself to nothing in particular, an undefined education of the people, an undefined amelioration of all things: in fact, he likes sound views--nothing extreme, but something between the excesses of the past and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader may be known in conversation by the cordiality with which he assents to indistinct, blurred statements. Say that black is black, he will shake his head and hardly think it; say that black is not so very black, he will reply, "Exactly." He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to get up at a public meeting and express his conviction that at times, and within certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be equal; but, on the other hand, he would urge that the spirit of geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry against any clearly defined opinion; not in the least based on a scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought--a spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one thing he is staunch for is the utmost liberty of private haziness. But precisely these characteristics of the general reader, rendering him incapable of assimilating ideas unless they are administered in a highly diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that there are clever, fair-minded men who will write books for him--men very much above him in knowledge and ability, but not too remote from him in their habits of thinking, and who can thus prepare for him infusions of history and science that will leave some solidifying deposit, and save him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skeleton. Among such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky's _History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe_ entitles him to a high place. He has prepared himself for its production by an unusual amount of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and quotations with much judgment; and he gives proof of those important moral qualifications, impartiality, seriousness and modesty. This praise is chiefly applicable to the long chapter on the history of Magic and Witchcraft, and to the two chapters on the antecedents and history of Persecution. A further evidence of her wide culture and reading, and of her large critical ability, may also be found in the first number of the _Fortnightly Review_, for which she wrote the first of the "notices of new books" which it published. This was a review of Mr. Owen Jones's _Grammar of Ornament_. The author was one of her friends, and the decorator of the rooms in which her Sunday receptions were held. She praised the book very highly. The first paragraph of this notice betrays her appreciation of the aesthetic movement in England, and her sympathy with its objects and spirit. The moral value of aesthetic influences is characteristically expressed. The influence of the environment, as she understood it, is here seen. The largeness of her faith in the moral efficiency of material causes is nowhere so strongly expressed by her as in the words which follow. The inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufelsdröckh, was disbanding hired armies, cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world. Has any one yet said what great things are being done by the men who are trying to banish ugliness from our streets and our homes, and to make both the outside and the inside of our dwellings worthy of a world where there are forests, and flower-tressed meadows, and the plumage of birds; where the insects carry lessons of color on their wings, and even the surface of a stagnant pool will show us the wonders of iridescence and the most delicate forms of leafage? They, too, are modifying opinions, for they are modifying men's moods and habits, which are the mothers of opinions, having quite as much to do with their formation as the responsible father--Reason. Think of certain hideous manufacturing towns where the piety is chiefly a belief in copious perdition, and the pleasure is chiefly gin. The dingy surface of wall pierced by the ugliest windows, the staring shop-fronts, paper-hangings, carpets, brass and gilt mouldings, and advertising placards, have an effect akin to that of malaria; it is easy to understand that with such surroundings there is more belief in cruelty than in beneficence, and that the best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external senses. For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our intellectual discernment; and--more than that--as it is probable that fine musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily organization, it is also probable that just coloring and lovely combinations of lines may be necessary to the complete well-being of our systems, apart from any conscious delight in them. A savage may indulge in discordant chuckles and shrieks and gutturals, and think that they please the gods, but it does not follow that his frame would not be favorably wrought upon by the vibrations of a grand church organ. One sees a person capable of choosing the worst style of wall-paper become suddenly afflicted by its ugliness under an attack of illness. And if an evil state of blood and lymph usually goes along with an evil state of mind, who shall say that the ugliness of our streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the vulgarity of our upholstery, have not something to do with those bad tempers which breed false conclusions? The address to workingmen which George Eliot put into the mouth of Felix Holt is a suggestive and valuable piece of political writing. Tradition is therein presented as a moral and political influence. The spiritual treasures mankind possesses she says are the products of tradition, and these must be preserved. This can be done only by keeping the old institutions and forms until they can be organically supplanted by others. All the various portions of society are mutually dependent, and the destruction of any one of them will be to the injury of all. This she says to workingmen as a reason why they should not antagonize the social orders above them, whose work is as important as their own. The organs of society are the various social classes of which it is composed, and society is to be improved by turning class interests into the functions by which Humanity is to be developed. The spiritual treasures of the past are only to be preserved by order and good government; hence all revolutionary methods are suicidal. Life is to be advanced by giving social influence into the hands of the wisest. True principles must regulate society, and these George Eliot would have rest on science and altruism. Such are some of the ideas of this remarkable essay, one of the most suggestive and instructive of all she wrote. The emphasis she laid on retribution, tradition, heredity and duties appears here in all its force. Perhaps nothing else she wrote so clearly brings out some of the characteristics of her mind. Her intense distrust of individualism does not permit her to say a single word of the _rights_ of the laboring classes. The right of rebellion and revolution is totally disregarded, rather it is not recognized that any rights whatever exist. The workingman is not to think of himself or his class, but of society and humanity; he is to become an altruistic worker for the common good. While this is fine in theory, yet history indicates that the aristocratic classes have yielded to the broader social spirit only when they have been compelled to do so. The concessions must come from above, not from beneath. George Eliot's political philosophy, if carried into actual life, would keep the proletariate where they are, and strengthen the social power of the aristocratic classes. These words may indicate the drift of the essay: But I come back to this: that, in our old society there are old institutions, and among them the various distinctions and inherited advantages of classes, which have shaped themselves along with all the wonderful slow-growing system of things made up of our laws, our commerce and our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, such as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, such as scientific thought and professional skill. Just as in that case I spoke of before, the irrigation of a country, which must absolutely have its water distributed or it will bear no crop; these are the old channels, the old banks and the old pumps, which must be used as they are until new and better have been prepared, or the structure of the old has been gradually altered. But it would be fool's work to batter down a pump only because a better might be made, when you have no machinery ready for a new one: it would be wicked work, if villages lost their crops by it. Now the only safe way by which society can be steadily improved and our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt to do away directly with the actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if everybody could have the same sort of work or lead the same sort of life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by turning of Class Interests into Class Functions or duties. What I mean is, that each class should be urged by the surrounding conditions to perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless conduct. In this way, the public judgment would sift out incapability and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions of those around them: and for one person to put on a cap and bells, or to go about dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast sum of money in having more finery than his neighbors, he must be pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. Now changes can only be good in proportion as they help to bring about this sort of result: in proportion as they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course of substitution class distinctions must inevitably change their character, and represent the varying Duties of men, not their varying Interests. But this end will not come by impatience. "Day will not break the sooner because we get up before the twilight." Still less will it come by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the franchise will greatly hasten that good end in proportion only as every one of us has the knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will make him well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nature of things in this world has been determined for us beforehand, and in such a way that no ship can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage, and reach the right port, unless it is well-manned: the nature of the winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails and the cordage, will not accommodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors. You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way and need not be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may be given to this society of ours, this living body in which our lives are bound up. After the Reform Bill of 1832, I was in an election riot, which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what public disorder must always be; and I have never forgotten that the riot was brought about chiefly by the agency of dishonest men who professed to be on the people's side. Now the danger hanging over change is great, just in proportion as it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large number of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low and brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their hands and may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look round us and say that he sees no signs of any such danger now, and that our national condition is running along like a clear broadening stream, safe not to get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful man; perhaps he does his own gardening, and seldom takes exercise far away from home. To us who have no gardens, and often walk abroad, it is plain that we can never get into a bit of a crowd but we must rub clothes with a set of roughs, who have the worst vices of the worst rich--who are gamblers, sots, libertines, knaves, or else mere sensual simpletons and victims. They are the ugly crop that has sprung up while the stewards have been sleeping; they are the multiplying brood begotten by parents who have been left without all teaching save that of a too-craving body, without all well-being save the fading delusions of drugged beer and gin. They are the hideous margin of society, at one edge drawing towards it the undesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening imperceptibly into the lowest criminal class. Here is one of the evils which cannot be got rid of quickly, and against which any of us who have got sense, decency and instruction have need to watch. That these degraded fellow-men could really get the mastery in a persistent disobedience to the laws and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not believe; but wretched calamities would come from the very beginning of such a struggle, and the continuance of it would be a civil war, in which the inspiration on both sides might soon cease to be even a false notion of good, and might become the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have all to see to it that we do not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in the breasts of our generation--that we do not help to poison the nation's blood, and make richer provision for bestiality to come. We know well enough that oppressors have sinned in this way--that oppression has notoriously made men mad; and we are determined to resist oppression. But let us, if possible, show that we can keep sane in our resistance, and shape our means more and more reasonably towards the least harmful, and therefore the speediest, attainment of our end. Let us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to be driven mad, but can keep that sober determination which alone gives mastery over the adaptation of means. And a first guarantee of this sanity will be to act as if we understood that the fundamental duty of a government is to preserve order, to enforce obedience of the laws. It has been held hitherto that a man can be depended on as a guardian of order only when he has much money and comfort to lose. But a better state of things would be, that men who had little money and not much comfort should still be guardians of order, because they had sense to see that disorder would do no good, and had a heart of justice, pity and fortitude to keep them from making more misery only because they felt some misery themselves. There are thousands of artisans who have already shown this fine spirit, and have endured much with patient heroism. If such a spirit spread and penetrated us all, we should soon become the masters of the country in the best sense and to the best ends. For, the public order being preserved, there can be no government in future that will not be determined by our insistence on our fair and practicable demands. It is only by disorder that our demands will be choked, that we shall find ourselves lost amongst a brutal rabble, with all the intelligence of the country opposed to us, and see government in the shape of guns that will sweep us down in the ignoble martyrdom of fools. The eighteen essays published as the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ purport to have been the work of a bachelor of singular habits and tastes, who had written a book which proved a failure, and who left this volume to appear posthumously. He had been in the habit of giving an account to himself of the characters he met with, and he begins his book by describing his own weaknesses. He classes himself as one of the blunderers he would portray, as having the faults and foibles he finds in others. Expressively the author says, "If the human race has a bad reputation, I perceive that I cannot escape being compromised." This may be taken as the sentiment of George Eliot herself; and it is she who really speaks in these words concerning the satirical criticisms of those she describes: If I laugh at you, O fellow-men! if I trace with curious interest your labyrinthine self-delusions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous adhesions, and smile at your helpless endeavors in a rashly chosen part, it is not that I feel myself aloof from you: the more intimately I seem to discern your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof that I share them. How otherwise could I get the discernment?--for even what we are averse to, what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or shadowed itself within us as a possibility before we can think of exorcising it. No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. After the second essay Theophrastus disappears, and no further hint is given that it is he who is the reputed author. This slight fictitious machinery is too weak to carry the load put upon it. The reader soon feels that it is George Eliot who is talking, and the opinions put forth, the sentiments expressed, are recognized as her own. Indeed, it would have been better, so the reader may probably come to say to himself, if this attempted disguise had been entirely dispensed with. By the time he has reached the sixth essay, "Only Temper," the discerning reader, familiar with George Eliot's books, will be ready to affirm that this is no other than the author herself speaking very frankly and finely her own sentiments. In this essay the moral temper of her mind appears, and her strong inclination to subordinate the individual to the social requirements of life. These papers are modelled on those of the great essay-making period in English literature. Old-fashioned names are adopted, which have a greater or less significance in connection with the purpose of the essay. The man with the excitable temper is called Touchwood, while the man who slides into a deferential acceptance of opinions made for him is Mixtus. This method of the old essayists seems antiquated, cumbersome and unsuitable to the subjects discussed. The persons described lose their individuality by its use, and the reader forgets that they were meant to be creatures of flesh and blood. For the most part, they are mere abstractions, mere figures of straw, to be knocked over by the ingenious pen of the author. Some special fault or sin is given the name of a personality, but it is too much isolated from actual existence to produce the impression of a living thing. These essays much resemble occasional chapters in her novels, and might have been studies for a new work. They are studies simply, done with a fine skill and polish, but fragmentary. The large setting of her novels is needed to give them relief and proportion. They disappoint as they are, for the satire is too apparent, and we do not see these characters in action, where their follies would obtain for them a more living interest. They are studies of individual character, portraying types of social and literary weakness, such as may have come under George Eliot's observation. They are careful dissections of motives and conduct, and full of a minute analysis of the moral and intellectual nature of her characters. There is abundance of candid criticism, shrewd observation and compressed wisdom of statement. Occasionally she is at her very best; but she uses many long, cumbersome sentences, the satire is too harsh and the wisdom too unwieldy. Her sympathy, love, pathos and pity are not so apparent as in her novels; she takes less delight in these creations, and evidently created them for purposes of dissection. She is never so weak in her other writings as in these essays, so wanting in genius and large-heartedness. She scourges many of the intellectual follies of the time, the conceit of culture, the pride of literature, and the narrowness of politics; but in most of the essays this is all. The artistic conception of the book is too slight and fragmentary, and it gives the impression of being unfinished in execution and desultory in purpose. Yet there is in it much of fine feeling, pure sentiment, lively satire and apt wisdom. Sometimes the thought is labored; but there is a wealth of clear-cut conviction, strong thoughts and rich experience. There is force in the arguments, richness of ideas throughout, and a wonderful aptness of allusion and illustration. Her culture and learning are everywhere apparent in the fine perception of the most exact analogies and in the ease with which she brings science to the support of morals. Those of her admirers who come closest to her spirit, thoroughly appreciate her ideas, and delight in them, will read this book with satisfaction, and feel thankful that she wrote it. No one who would know the mind of George Eliot can afford to overlook it. When George Eliot writes on subjects involving a moral purpose or ideal, she is always wise and interesting. When, however, she attempts to satirize some weakness or laugh at some folly, she is not always successful. Rich as may be the satire and the wit of her novels, both are often heavy and dull in her essays. The greater number of essays in this volume are devoted to the analysis of special types of character, but a few are given to moral problems. These latter are of the more interest and value, and they present some new discussions of those problems with which George Eliot was so much fascinated. Her earnest faith in altruism, realism, tradition, natural retribution and the social value of morality, is as distinct here as in her novels or poems. In the essay on "False Testimonials" she gives a good realistic definition of imagination, which she says is "always based on a keen vision, a keen consciousness of what is, and carries the store of definite knowledge as material for the construction of its inward visions." She is no realist, however, in the sense of confining poetry merely to a photographic picture of outward nature. She accepts Dante as a genuine realist, for "he is at once the most precise and homely in his reproduction of actual objects, and the most soaringly at large in his imaginative combinations." She would have faithfulness to facts, but no limitation of vision; she would have the imagings exact and legitimate, but she would give our moral and intellectual insights no narrow bounds. Her realism is well defined when she criticises one of those persons who take mere fancy for imagination, to whom all facts are unworthy of recognition. In at least two of these essays, those on "Debasing the Moral Currency" and "The Modern Hep, Hep, Hep!" she has newly expressed herself concerning tradition. In the first she protests against the too-common custom of satirizing what is noble and venerable. Our need of faith in the higher things of life is very great, and that faith is to be established only through our regard for what has been given us by those who have gone before us. Whatever lowers our trust in the results of human efforts is corrupting, for it breaks down our faith in the true sources of human authority. "This is what I call debasing the moral currency," she says; "lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition so that it will command less and less of the spiritual products, the generous motives which sustain the charm and elevation of our social existence--the something besides bread by which man saves his soul alive." With her conception of tradition, as the legitimate source of the moral and spiritual life in man, and as the influence which builds up all which is truest and purest in our civilization, she can endure to see no contempt put upon its products. This essay, more perhaps than anything else she wrote, gives an insight into her conception of the higher life and her total lack of faith in any idealistic sources of human motive or inspiration. Contempt for the traditional, with her, implies contempt for the spiritual and moral. To destroy the traditional is revolutionary, dangerous and immoral. She cannot reject tradition in the name of higher wisdom, in the name of higher truth and authority. It gone, and all is gone; hence her fear of all iconoclastic and revolutionary methods. So she would keep whole and pure the national memories of every people. In the last essay of the book she says, "The preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national greatness, and their revival a sign of reviving nationality." It is "the divine gift of memory" as it expresses itself in the life and purposes of a people, "which inspires the moments with a past, a present and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the brutes." All which lowers the influence or the sacredness of this memory is debasing. The corrupting of this memory "is the impoverishment that threatens our posterity;" and this "new famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our human sentiments." That eager yearning of the nineteenth century for truth and reality, for something more than traditions and national memories, which displays itself in reforms and revolutions of every kind, had little of George Eliot's sympathy. Yet this spirit is stronger even than tradition, and creates for us a new world and a higher life. Throughout these essays it is the social side of morality which is praised and commended. What will increase the altruistic spirit, what will widen sympathy and helpfulness, is regarded as truly ethical in its import. Ideal aims are brought to the level of present needs and the possibilities of human nature as it now exists. Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that touches the mixed life of the earth. They are archangels with awful brow and flaming sword, summoning and encouraging us to do the right and the divinely heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their presence; but to learn what it is they summon us to do, we have to consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and our own appetites.... On the whole, and in the vast majority of instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries. A sour father may reform prisons, but considered in his sourness he does harm. In another essay, that entitled "Only Temper," the social side of morality is again presented. Especially does it appear in that on "Moral Swindlers." "Let us refuse to accept as moral," says George Eliot, "any political leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less immoral even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous impartiality." George Eliot is almost without exception sound and just in her moral judgments, but here her theories have made her overlook the true conditions of a moral life. Seeing that Morality and Morals under their _alias_ of Ethics are the subject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis a pressing matter of dispute--seeing that the most famous book ever written on Ethics, and forming a chief study in our colleges, allies ethical with political science, or that which treats of the constitution and prosperity of States, one might expect that educated men would find reason to avoid a perversion of language which lends itself' to no wider view of life than that of village gossips. Yet I find even respectable historians of our own and of foreign countries, after showing that a king was treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction gross breaches in the administration of justice, end by praising him for his pure moral character, by which one must suppose them to mean that he was not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin of the typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in chewing bang and fondling dancing-girls. And since we are sometimes told of such maleficent kings that they were religious, we arrive at the curious result that the most serious wide-reaching duties of man lie quite outside both Morality and Religion--the one of these consisting in not keeping mistresses (and perhaps not drinking too much), and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with God which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest conduct toward men. With such a classification as this, it is no wonder, considering the strong re-action of language on thought, that many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, are fain to seek for the grounds of social duty; and without entertaining any private intention of committing a perjury which would ruin an innocent man, or seeking gain by supplying bad preserved meats to our navy, feel themselves speculatively obliged to inquire why they should not do so, and are inclined to measure their intellectual subtlety by their dissatisfaction with all answers to this "Why?" It would be quite impossible for George Eliot to write an essay without some fresh thought or some new suggestion. To those who admire her genius and are in sympathy with her teachings this volume will have a special interest. Its few essays which touch upon moral or speculative subjects are of the utmost value as interpretations of her life and thought. All her essays, the later as the earlier, are mainly of interest as aids to an understanding of her philosophy. Nothing is worthless which helps us clearly to comprehend an original mind. XIX. THE ANALYTIC METHOD. George Eliot's literary method was that of Fielding and Thackeray, both of whom evidently influenced her manner. Their realism, and especially their method of comment and moral observation, she made her own. She had little sympathy with the romanticism of Scott or the idealism of Dickens. Her moral aims, her intense faith in altruism, kept her from making her art a mere process of photographing nature. Nature always had a moral meaning to her, a meaning in reference to man's happiness and health of soul; and that moral bearing of all human experiences gave dignity and purpose to her art. It was the method of Scott to present the romantic, picturesque and poetic side of life. He was not untrue to nature, but he cared more for beauty and sentiment than for fact. He sometimes perverted the historic incidents he made use of, but he caught the spirit of the time with which he was dealing with absolute fidelity. In this capacity for historic interpretation he surpassed George Eliot, who had not his instinctive insight into the past. Scott had no theory about the past, no philosophy of history was known to him; but above all novelists he had the power to see by the light of other days, and to make the dead times live again. Not George Eliot and not Thackeray was his rival in this historic insight and poetic power of interpretation; and his superior success was due not only to his peculiar genius but also to his romanticism. Scott failed where George Eliot succeeded, in giving an intellectual interpretation of life. With certain social and moral tendencies he was clearly at home. On its side of adventure and social impulse and craving for a wider life, as a single instance of his power, he was a true interpreter of the age of Elizabeth. Its deeper spirit, its intellectual movements, he did not, and could not, bring within the range of his story. It was here George Eliot was superior, as is abundantly shown in _Romola_. The thoughtful aspects of Florentine life she truthfully presented; but its more romantic elements it needed a Scott to make living and real. In _The Spanish Gypsy_ there is very little of genuine interpretation. Certain local features may be accurate, but the spirit of the time is not there; the characters are not such as that age and country developed. Scott, with all his romanticism, would have introduced _reality_ into such an historic picture. Within her own lines of power George Eliot is much greater than Scott, who could not have written _Adam Bede_ or _Middlemarch_, or brought out what is best in those works. Adventure was necessary to Scott; he could not have transfigured the plain and homely with beauty as George Eliot has done. Where she is at her best, as in the simple scenes of _Silas Marner_, there is a charm, pathos and sympathy in her work which must endear it to all hearts. That peculiar power Scott did not have; yet it would be most difficult to decide which is the truer to nature. Genuine art, it is true, has its foundation in the realities of human experience: but those realities are not always best interpreted by the methods of realism. In his own province Scott was truer to nature than George Eliot was in the same field, as may be seen at once by comparing _The Spanish Gypsy_ with _Ivanhoe_, or any of Scott's novels dealing with the mediaeval and feudal ages, he took the past into himself, caught its spirit, reflected it in its wholeness. In this he was a genuine realist, and all the more faithful to reality because he did not accept realism as a theory. In comparing George Eliot with Dickens, it must first of all be noted that each is the superior of the other in his own special province. Dickens has more imagination; he appeals to more universal sentiments, touches a wider circle of experiences, captivates his readers with a resistless interest and tenderness of spirit. His characters are unreal, mere caricatures often, mere puppets. Yet he had an imagination of marvellous power, so that his characters appeared to his own mind as if real, and he describes them as if they actually stood before him, making them intensely real to his readers. Many of his persons never lived, never could have lived; yet they are types or certain traits of character made living and brought out into a distinctive existence. What those traits of character are he makes all the more apparent by this method. Dickens had not a fine literary taste, he had no clear insight into some of the purer human sentiments, he was grossly untrue and false in many of his pictures. Yet all in all, with his many faults, it is to be said that his idealism, which was not of a high type, made him a true interpreter of life. If his characters are less faithfully drawn than George Eliot's, his insight into some of the sentiments and emotions was truer. His pictures may be false in some particulars, but he has given them the true spirit with which they should be animated. In thoughtful fidelity to the facts of life, George Eliot surpasses Scott or Dickens. Scott by his insight, Dickens by his imagination, were able to do what she could not; but they put little thought into their work. They did not think about what life meant; she did. They worked instinctively, she thoughtfully. Her characters are more often to be met with than theirs; and there is a freshness, a wholesomeness, about them theirs do not have. She is more simple and refined than Fielding, more elevated in tone of thought, there is a deeper and a richer purpose in her work. None of the cynicism and hardness of Thackeray appear in her pages. She is fresher, more genuine, more poetic than he, with more of humanity. In her essay on "The Natural History of German Life" she said of Dickens that he was "gifted with the utmost power of rendering the external traits of our town population." City life Dickens and Thackeray most truly photographed in all its features of snobbishness and selfishness. Its better side, its nobler sentiments, its humanity, they did not succeed in so well; not so well as George Eliot did, and simply because they did not so much sympathize with it. Country life they did not understand, and could not have sketched. Where George Eliot best succeeded they would have failed. Her real advance upon Dickens and Thackeray, however, lay in another direction. She says in the essay just quoted, speaking of Diekens's portraitures of town populations, that "if he could give us their psychological character--their conception of life and their emotions--with the same truth as their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest contribution art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies." In the two directions here indicated lay her superiority over other novelists,--her humanitarian sympathies and her psychologic insight. In reality, she did not contribute anything new to the realism of literary art. All which can be said for faithfulness to nature in art and poetry has been said by Ruskin, and George Eliot was early a reader of his books. Her predecessors, especially Thackeray, opened the way in the application of the realistic principles in its newer spirit. The enlargement of realism, however, was carried on to a much greater extent by the pre-Raphaelites in painting and poetry, and George Eliot was influenced by them as well. Their principle of loyal fidelity to the time and circumstances depicted was her own, at least in theory. It was in another direction her chief characteristic lay, that of describing "psychologic character." Here she was no imitator, but she made a way of her own, and developed a new method. The method of science she applied to literature. Science has adopted the method of analysis, of inductive inquiry, of search in all the facts of nature for the laws which underlie them. So magnificent have been the results obtained by this process in the study of the material world, that it has been applied with the hope of securing the same thorough investigation of the phenomena presented by history, ethics and religion. Even here the method has justified itself, and has in recent years opened up new and valuable results, giving to the world an enriched conception of the life of man. The speculative mind has been stimulated to fresh activity, and new philosophies, of vast and imposing proportions, have been the result. The studies of Charles Darwin, and the elaboration of the theory of evolution, have given a marvellous incentive to the new method, resulting in its wide-spread application to all the questions of nature and life. A method so productive in all directions must have its effect on literature. What claims the attention of all thinking men cannot long be kept out of poetry and art. In painting and in music it has been largely developed in the direction of a more intimate and sympathetic interpretation of nature and man. In literature the new method has been mainly brought into application hitherto in the form of photographic studies of human life. To describe what is, to make a true word-picture, has been the chief aim. With George Eliot began a wider use of the new method and its application in a more sympathetic spirit to the deeper problems of the mind and heart. She was not content to paint the surface of nature, to give photographic sketches of the outside of human life, but she wished to realize every subtle fact and every most secret impulse. An admirer of the Dutch school in painting, and of Jane Austen as a novelist, she was not content with their results and methods, wishing to interpret the spirit as well as the letter of nature and life. In literature, the new method as developed in recent years consists in an application of psychology to all the problems of man's nature. George Eliot's intimate association with the leaders of the scientific movement in England, naturally turned her mind into sympathy with their work, and made her desirous of doing in literature what they were doing in science. In the special department of physiological psychology, no one did more than George Henry Lewes, and her whole heart went out in genuine appreciation of his work. He studied the mind as a function of the brain, as being developed with the body, as the result of inherited conditions, as intimately dependent on its environment. Here was a new conception of man, which regarded him as the last product of nature, considered as an organic whole. This conception George Eliot everywhere applied in her studies of life and character. She studied man as the product of his environment, not as a being who exists above circumstances and material conditions. "In the eyes of the psychologist," says Mr. James Sully, "the works of George Eliot must always possess a high value by reason of their large scientific insight into character and life." This value consists, as he indicates, in the fact that she interprets the inner personality as it is understood by the scientific student of human nature. She describes those obscure moral tendencies, nascent forces, and undertones of feeling and thought, which enter so much into life. She lays much stress on the subconscious mental life, the domain of vague emotion and rapidly fugitive thought. The aim of the psychologic method is to interpret man from within, in his motives and impulses. It endeavors to show why he acts, and it unfolds the subtler elements of his character. This method George Eliot uses in connection with her evolutionary philosophy, and uses it for the purpose of showing that man is a product of hereditary conditions, that he has been shaped into his life of the emotions and sentiments by the influence of tradition. The psychologic method may be applied, however, without connection with the positive or evolutionary philosophy. The mind may be regarded as a distinct force and power, exercised within social and material limits, and capable of being studied in all its inner motives and impulses. Yet in her mental inquiries George Eliot did not regard man as an eternal soul in the process of development by divine methods, but as the inheritor of the past, moulded by every surrounding circumstance, and as the creature of the present. Instead of regarding man as _sub specie eternitatis_, she regarded him as an animal who has through feeling and social development come to know that he cannot exist beyond the present. This limitation of his nature affected her work throughout. The psychologic method in literature has also been that of Robert Browning, and he has been as faithful to it as any other. He, too, analyzes his characters, penetrates all the hidden causes of motive and deed, lays bare the soul. No other poet has surpassed him in power to unveil the inner workings of the mind, to discover all the influences affecting it or in revealing how motives are created and how motives lead up to deeds. In two important particulars Robert Browning differs from George Eliot. His characters speak for themselves, reveal the secrets of their own minds. He does not talk about them, does not criticise their words and conduct, does not stand off from them as a spectator. He differs from her also in his conception of man as a being who is here developing an eternal existence under the laws of an Infinite Spirit. He, too, believes in the natural, and believes that the highest law of the soul is, to be true to every pure impulse arising within us. To calculate, to philosophize, he holds to be always to man's injury, that nature when perfectly obeyed is the only guide. He studies man as affected by all the circumstances of his existence, and as wrought upon by the great social forces which have made him what he is. His analysis is as keen as George Eliot's; he makes the soul appear before us in all its reality. His is a more creative, a more dramatic method than hers; yet he is fully as subjective, as much an interpreter of the soul. Neither is content to record the deeds of men; both wish to know why men act. Browning has fittingly been called the poet of psychology. He is a dissecter, a prober, an analyzer in the full spirit of scientific research. He spares no pains to get at and to completely unfold the truth about man's nature, to show all the hidden causes of his action, all the secret motives of his life, using this method as thoroughly as George Eliot. It is interesting to note his attitude towards the great religious problems. His faith in God is intensely passionate and sublime in its conception. In words the most expressive in their meaning, and indicating a conviction the deepest, he reveals his faith. "He glows above With scarce an intervention, presses close And palpitatingly, His soul o'er ours." The lifting and inspiring power of faith in an Infinite Being he has sung with a poet's purity of vision. Along with this faith goes his belief that man is being glowly perfected for a higher and nobler existence. "To whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands! What, have fear of change from Thee, who art ever the same? Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands? There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound; What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven the perfect round. "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist; Not its likeness, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power Whose voice has gone forth, but, each survives for the melodist When eternity confirms the conceptions of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and by." He teaches that progress is the true mark and aim of man's being, a progress sure and glorious. "Progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be." Man yearns after more than he can gain here; that yearning is the mark of his higher nature and the means of progress. If he follows the better impulses of his nature, all experience will help to unfold his soul into higher attainments, and impulse will at last become, in clearer moments, revelation. "Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! But not quite so much that moments, Sure tho' seldom, are denied us, When the spirit's true endowments Stand out plainly from its false ones, And appraise it if pursuing Or the right way or the wrong way To its triumph or undoing. There are flashes struck from midnights, There are fireflames noondays kindle, Whereby piled-up honors perish. Whereby swol'n ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse Which for once had play unstifled Seems the sole work of a lifetime, That away the rest have trifled." More impersonal and dramatic than George Eliot, Browning introduces his doctrines less often. It is not easy to discover what are his theories as distinguished from those of his characters, for he makes no comments, and is faithful in developing the unity and integrity of his _dramatis personae_, whether in his monologues or dramas. Great as his other faults maybe, he surpasses George Eliot in his power to reveal character, but not in his power to make his characters stand out distinctly and unprejudiced from his own mind. His obscurity of expression and his involved style are serious defects in much of his work; and to most readers his thoroughly dramatic manner is puzzling. He gives but faint clue to the situation in his monologues, little explanation of the person, time or place. All is to be discovered from the obscurest allusions and hints. Defective as this method is in Browning's treatment, it is the true psychologic method, wherein motive and character are developed dramatically and without labored discussion. It is a more vital and constructive process than that followed by George Eliot, because nothing of the meaning and fulness of life is lost in the process of analysis. That Browning can never be read by more than a few, indicates how great are his faults; but in lyric passion, dramatic power and psychologic analysis he is one of the greatest poets of the century. The value and range of the new method are well illustrated in its use by two such thinkers and poets. The analytic method as applied by George Eliot regards man as a social being, studies him as a member of society. All that he is, and all the influences working upon him, are understood only as affected by his connection with the life of the race. This fact gives the most distinguishing characteristic to her literary methods. Her imitators may not, and nearly all of them do not, follow her into positivism; but they all study man as a social being. They deal with him as affected by heredity, education, and social characteristics. Even here it is not her theories, but her artistic methods, which are imitated. The novel is no longer regarded as a story to be told dramatically and with moving effect, but as a study of character, as an analysis of situations and motives. The advocates of the new method say that "in one manner or another the stories were all told long ago; and now we want merely to know what the novelist thinks about persons and situations." [Footnote: W.D. Howells in the Century for November, 1882.] This interpretation of the mission of the novelist well describes George Eliot's work, for she never hesitated to tell her reader what she thought about the situations and the persons of whom she wrote. The new method, as developed in sympathy with agnosticism, fails in literature just as science fails to be a complete interpretation of the universe. The process which answers in the material world does not answer in the spiritual. The instruments which tell the secrets of matter, close the avenues to the revelations of mind. The methods of experiment and demonstration which have brought the universe to man's knowledge, have not been sufficient to make the soul known to itself. Any literary methods imitating physical science must share in its limitations without its power over the materials with which it has to deal. Literature has hitherto been made helpful and delightful and acceptable because of its ideal elements. Belief in a spiritual world, belief in the imperative law of righteousness as a divine command, runs through all effective literature. However realistic the poets have been when they have reached their highest and best, they have believed that the soul, and what belongs to it, is the only _reality_. Divorced of this Element, literature is at once lowered in tone, a dry-rot seizes upon it and eats away its finest portions. If Goethe and Shakspere are realists in literary method, as some of their interpreters would claim, yet to them the spiritual is supreme, the soul is monarch. So it is with Homer, with Dante, with Scott, with Cervantes, with Victor Hugo, with every supremely artistic and creative mind. Great minds instinctively believe in the creative power of the mind, in its capacity for self-direction. An unbiassed mind gifted with genius sees over and through all obstacles, leaps to magnificent results, will not be restrained by the momentary conditions of the present. Education or social environment, however adverse, will not long hinder the poet from his work. He writes for the future, if the present will not accept him, confident that what his soul has to utter can be truly uttered only as his own individuality impels, and that if he is faithful to his genius the world will listen in due time. This power of personality lies at the basis of all genuine literature, teaching faith in the soul, faith in a providential ordering of the world, and overturning all agnostic theories about realism and environment. This instinctive faith in mind is the basis of all genuine idealism. The idealist is not the creator of an imaginary world, peopling it with shapes that never existed; but he is one who believes in ideas, and in mind as their creator and the vehicle of their expression. Contemporary with George Eliot was a group of men who believed in the mind as something other than the temporary product of an evolutionary process. With them she may be contrasted, her work may be measured by theirs. Carlyle, Tennyson, Browning and Buskin shared with her the radical ideas of the time. Not one of them has been fettered by narrow theories or cramped by old social doctrines. The broad, inquiring, scientific spirit of the time has been shared by them all. Buskin is a realist, Carlyle believed in the enduring realm of facts, and they have all accepted the spirit of naturalism which has ruled the century. The scientific, philosophic and social theories of the time have been their inspiration. Certain ideas about law, progress and social regeneration have affected them through and through. Yet as regards the one great characteristic of idealism, all have widely departed from George Eliot, for all regard mind as supreme, all believe in a spiritual realm environing man. This fact appears throughout their work. To them the spiritual is objective; they are the true realists. To George Eliot the spiritual is subjective, the result of our own feelings, to which it is limited. When the feelings are gone, all is gone. In the pages of these men there is consequently to be found a power and an inspiration not to be found in hers. Wonderful as is her skill as an artist, and in the analysis of character, yet we feel that we are walking over mocking graves whenever we reach her spiritual conception of the world. She deceives us with a shadow, offers us a name in place of what we crave for with every nobler instinct of the soul. Our own feelings are given us, mirrored in the feelings of others, in place of the reality we desire to possess. These men have linked their work with those spiritual convictions which have been the moral sustenance of the ages. They have gained in strength and effectiveness thereby. Tennyson has his many doubts, his teachings have been questioned; and yet he sings,-- "That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and passing all The skirts of self again, should fall, Remerging in the general soul,-- "Is faith as vague as all unsweet: Eternal form shall still divide The eternal soul from all beside; And I shall know him when we meet." His flight of song is more sustained for this faith. He is a truer poet, of stronger wing and loftier flight, because life has for him an infinite meaning, because he opens his mind to the impressions which come of man's spiritual existence. In the same way, Carlyle has a grander meaning running through his books, more of sublimity, a finer eloquence, because the spiritual is to him real. Doubter and scorner as he was, he could not but see that man's being reaches beyond the material world and interprets some higher realm. Vague as that faith was with him, it was a source of the most effective literary power and stimulus. He bursts forth, under its impulse, into impassioned passages of the noblest poetic beauty. "Perhaps my father, all that essentially was my father, is even now near me, with me. Both he and I are with God. Perhaps, if it so please God, we shall in some higher state of being meet one another, recognize one another. As it is written, we shall be forever with God. The possibility, nay (in some way) the certainty, of perennial existence daily grows plainer to me." Ruskin has made it plain how necessary is that tone of mind which is religious to the best work in art. His own faith has been earnest and strong in the reality of the spiritual. Realist as he is in art, he believes in the original and creative power of the mind, and his work has all taken on a higher spirit and a finer expression because of his religious convictions. Writing in _Modern Painters_ of man as made in the image of God, he answers the objection which is raised to the idea that all the revelation man has is contained in a being so imperfect. "No other book, nor fragment of book, than that, will you ever find,--nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. The flesh-bound volume is the only revelation that is, that was, or that can be. In that is the image of God painted; in that is the law of God written; in that is the promise of God revealed. Know thyself; for through thyself only thou canst know God. Through the glass, darkly; but except through the glass, in no wise. A tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the ground;--you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure and at your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for those dark waves must all the light of the risen Sun of Righteousness be bent down by faint refraction. Cleanse them, and calm them, as you love your life. Therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on subjection to the human soul. Man is the Sun of the world; more than the real sun. The fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth gauge or measure. Where he is, are the tropics; where he is not, the ice-world." Such words may not be scientific, but they convey real meaning. Their assertion that the world is to be tested and understood by man, not man by the world, is one worthy of attention. The conviction of this truth has a literary power and incentive not to be found in "the scientific method" or any of its corollaries. To this group of writers may be added Mrs. Browning, who, as a poet, did great and lasting work. Its value, in large measure, rests on its depth of spiritual conviction, and on its idealism in purpose and spirit. Her conception of love is finer and truer than George Eliot's, because she gave it an ideal as well as an altruistic meaning; because she thought it has an eternal as well as a social significance. As a poet she lost nothing of charm or of power or of inspiration because she could herself believe, with simple trust, what she has embodied in "A Child's Thought of God." "God is so good, He wears a fold Of heaven and earth across his face-- Like secrets kept, for love, untold. But still I feel that his embrace Slides down by thrills, through all things made, Through sight and sound of every place." That art is to be nothing more than a copying and interpretation of nature Mrs. Browning did not believe. In _Aurora Leigh_ she says,-- "Art's the witness of what is Beyond this show. If this world's show were all, Mere imitation would be all in art." The glow of genius burns up out of all her pages, and there is an aroma and a subtle power in them which comes alone of this conception of art. She could not rest content with the little round of man's experience, but found that all the universe is bound together and all its parts filled with a God-spirit. "No lily-muffled hum of a summer bee But finds some coupling with, the spinning stars; No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere; No chaffinch but implies the cherubim: ... Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God." That is a larger faith and a truer faith than appears anywhere in the pages of George Eliot, and it is one which impregnates most of the best literature the world posseses with light and life. It is a faith which gives hope and impulse where the other saddens and unnerves. There is wanting in George Eliot's books that freshness of spirit, that faith in the future, and that peaceful poise of soul which is to be found in the writings of Tennyson, Ruskin and Mrs. Browning. Even with all his constitutional cynicism and despair, the teachings of Carlyle are much more hopeful than hers. An air of fatigue and world-weariness is about all her work, even when it is most stimulating with its altruism. Though in theory not a pessimist, yet a sense of pain and sorrow grows out of the touch of each of her books. In this she missed one of the highest uses of literature, to quicken new hopes and to awaken nobler purposes. There is a tone of joy and exultation in the power life confers, an instinctive sense of might to conquer the world, in the best writing. To make men think, to move men to action, to confer finer feelings and motives, is the power of the true poet. When he does not accomplish this he has written to a lesser purpose. Literature aims either to please or to quicken the mind. It cannot please when it leaves the heart depressed and burdened with the failures and sadness of the world. If it is to please, it must make use of that goodness and joy which are in excess of evil and misery. It cannot quicken when it unnerves the mind and brings despair of moral purpose. If it is to inspire it must show that something great is to be done, and awaken the courage to do it. That life has its sad and painful elements is a terrible fact, and the novelist who would paint life as it is must recognize them. It is quite as true that the good and the hopeful are more than the sad and painful, that right is more powerful in human life than wrong. The novelist who would paint life with an exact and even-handed justice, must not make all his endings sorrowful, for very many in real life are not so. _The Mill on the Floss_ would have been a more powerful and effective book could Maggie have been made to conquer. It would have been quite as true to nature to have represented her as overcoming her defects, and as being purified through suffering. Is all suffering to conquer us, instead of our being able to conquer it, and gaining a more peaceful and a purer life through its aid? If Maggie is George Eliot in her youthful experiences, then the novel is untrue to fact in that Marian Evans conquered and Maggie failed. The same fault is to be found in _Middlemarch_, that Dorothea, great as she is, deserved a much better fate than that accorded to her. The elements of womanly greatness were in her character, and with all the barriers created by society she would have done better things had her creator been true to her capacities in unfolding her life-history. The effect of both these great novels is one of depression and disappointment. The reader always expects more as he goes on his way through these scenes, depicted with such genius, than is realized at the end. Disappointment is almost inevitable, for the promise is greater than the fulfilment. The like result is produced by those books which have the brightest closing scenes, as in _Adam Bede_ and _Daniel Deronda_, where the author's aim was evidently hopeful and constructive. _Silas Marner_ and _Felix Holt_ are the only exceptions to this pessimistic tone, and in which justice is done to the better side of life. In all her later books the ending is painful. In _The Mill on the Floss_, Maggie and Tom are drowned after Maggie had been led to a most bitter end of her love-affairs. In _Romola_ the heroine is left a widow, after her husband's treachery had brought him to a terrible death, and after Savonarola had suffered martyrdom. Dorothea marries into a life of ordinary drudgery, and Lydgate fails. Daniel Deronda and Gwendolen are separated from each other, and Deronda goes to the east in furtherance of a wild scheme of Jewish colonization. Fedalma loses her father by the treachery of her lover, and without hope conducts her tribe to Africa. Jubal dies dishonored, and Armgart loses her voice. Yet it is not merely that the conclusion does not lead to the expected result, but throughout there is a tone of doubt and failure. That George Eliot purposed to give life this tinge of sadness is not to be accepted as the true explanation of it. It is known that she did not have such a purpose, that she was surprised and disappointed that her books should produce such a result on her readers. The explanation is to be found in another direction. She was an agnostic; life had no wide horizon for her. The light of a genuinely ideal and spiritual conception of life was not hers. The world was bounded to her vision, rounded into the little capacity possessed by man. Where others would have cast a glow of hope and sunset brilliance, promise of a brighter day yet to dawn over the closing scenes of her novels, she could see nothing beyond but the feeble effect of an earthly transmitted good. In this regard her books afford a most interesting contrast to those of the two other great women who have adorned English literature with their genius. The lot of Mrs. Browning and Charlotte Brontë was much sadder and more depressing than that of George Eliot; more of darkness and pain affected their lives. A subtle tone of sadness runs through their books, but it is not burdensome and depressing as is the case of George Eliot. There is hope with it, and a buoyant faith in the good, which lies above and beyond all pain and sorrow. With neither of them was this faith conventional, a mere reflection of the religion taught them in childhood. It was a thoughtful result of a large experience, and of hard contact with many of the severest facts of human experience. That wide horizon of spiritual reality which shone for them on every hand, lights all their work with a brilliance which almost puts out of sight the pain and sorrow of the world. The reader of their books is made to believe that life is an endless good; he is cheered and made stronger for what life offers him. Agnosticism may have its great and heroic incentives, it may impel men to a nobler activity, but its literary effect, as a motive towards a more inspiring life, has not been satisfactory in the hands of George Eliot. Shakspere is not a teacher of philosophy or ethics, he has no doctrines to preach, no theories to advocate. What he believed, it would be difficult to ascertain from his writings; yet he is an effective teacher of morals, he stimulates into activity all that is best in man, life widens and deepens under the touch of his genius. So is it with Milton, Schiller, Moliere, Calderon, Montaigne and Wordsworth. So is it with George Eliot in all that concerns our duties, and even with our human sympathies. In the one direction of trust she is wanting, and her books are devoid of it. Shakspere makes us realize that God rules over the world; George Eliot leaves us with the feeling that we know nothing, and can hope for but little. That her theories really cast a shadow over the world, may be seen in all her dealings with love. Love is with her a human passion, deep, pure, blessed. It crowns some of her characters with joy and peace and strength; it is never impure and base in her pages. Yet it is human, it is a social force, it is to be made altruistic. It never gains that high poetic influence and charm which glorifies it in the writings of Mrs. Browning, Browning and Tennyson. Browning conceives of it as an eternal passion, as one with all that is divinest in man, as a medium of his spiritual development. In his pages it glows with moral promise, it inspires and regenerates. The poet should deal with love, not as a thing base and susceptible of abuse, but as an influence capable of the most beneficent results in the uplifting of man's nature. If it degrades, it also sweetens; and only that is love which makes life richer and more worthy. The true artist can afford to deal with that which pleases, not with that which saddens and disgusts. The real love is the pure love, not the depraved. The natural is the noble, not the debased life. George Eliot's originality of method has given rise to a new school in fiction. Her imitators, even when at their best, are not her equals, and they have degraded her methods oftentimes to paltry uses. They have tried to take photographs of life, supposing that art has for its aim to copy nature. They have failed to see, what she did see, though not so clearly as could have been desired, that art must do much more than imitate some scene or fact out of nature. It must give beauty, meaning and expression to what it copies. And it must do more than imitate: it must go beyond mere description, and introduce unity, purpose and thought into its work. True art has a soul as well as a body, says something to the mind as well as to the eye, appeals to the soul as well as to sense. Had George Eliot done nothing more than to describe common English life there would have been small excuse for her work. She did more, touched that life with genius, made it blossom into beauty, and gave to it deep moral meanings. The defects of her method are to be seen in the fact that her imitators cannot get above life's surface, and deal mainly with shallow or degraded natures. Her methods do not inspire great work, while her own genius redeemed the false ways into which she was led by her philosophic theories. Science can dissect the human body, but it can do little towards an explanation of the subtler meanings of life and mind. Its methods are analytical; it has reached no truly synthetic results in the regions where knowledge is most to be desired. Its effects on literature are destructive. Science destroys poetry, dries up the poetic sense, closes the doors of imagination. The attempt to make science co-operate with poetry is in itself the promise of failure. The limitations of George Eliot's work are the limitations of poetry subdued by science. Could she have rid herself of that burden, been impelled by a faith and an ideal purpose commensurate with her genius, the result would have been much greater. This limitation suggests the fact that literature is synthetic and constructive in its purpose and spirit. It is this fact which has made the classic literatures so powerful in their effect on modern Europe. They have given unity, spiritual purpose and ideal aims to the whole modern world. The freshness as of an eternal spring was in the literature of Greece, the naturalness of a healthy manhood. That literature is organic, it is one with life, it is refreshing as nature itself. That literature lives and flames with power because it is synthetic, buoyant, touched with an eternal spiritual beauty, great with promise of a growing earth. Its poets do not dissect, but build; they do not analyze, but create. And this is the literary need of the present time. There is need of more poetry, a more poetic interpretation of life, a richer imagination and a finer sense of beauty. The common is everywhere, but it is not necessarily great or beautiful or noble. It may have its elements of pathos and tragedy, its touches of beauty and its motives of heroism. It has in it also the promise of better things to be. That is the true poetry, the true fiction, which brings out this promise so that we know it, so that it moves us to better deeds and enchants us with music of purer living. The world is bad enough without dragging to the light all its evils and discords; let us rather know what promise it contains of the better. In one word, the real oppresses and enthralls; the ideal liberates, and brings us to ourselves. Genius redeems every fault. It must be taken for what it is, must not be criticised, is to be used to the highest ends. Only when genius unites itself to false methods and checks itself by false theories, has the critic a right to complain. Genius, obedient to its own laws, accepts every fact life presents, and lifts each one to be an instrument for the enlargement of man's life. When it deliberately strikes out all that is not human, however, from man's experience, denies the realty of that impression and that conviction which comes from other than material sources, it cripples and denies itself. XX. THE LIMITATIONS OF HER THOUGHT. It must be remembered that George Eliot does not use the novel merely for the purpose of inculcating certain doctrines, and that her genius for artistic creation is of a very high order. In dealing with her as a thinker and as a moral and religious teacher, she is to be regarded, first of all, as a poet and an artist. Her ethics are subordinate to her art; her religion is subsidiary to her genius. That she always deliberately set about the task of introducing her positivism into the substance of her novels is not to be supposed. This would be to imply a forgetfulness on her part of her own methods, and a prostration of art to purposes she would have scorned to adopt. This is evidently true, however, that certain features of the positive and the evolution philosophy had so thoroughly approved themselves to her mind as to cause them to be accepted as a completely satisfactory explanation of the world, so far as any explanation is possible. So heartily were they received, so fully did they become incorporated with the substance of her thinking, that she viewed all human experiences in their light. They had ceased to be theory and speculation with her. When she thought about the world, when she observed the acts of men, the positivist explanation was at once applied, and instinctively. That she did teach positivism is unfortunately true, so far as her literary touch and expression is concerned. That philosophy affects all her books with its subtly insinuating flavor, and it gives meaning and bias to most of them. They thus gain in definiteness of purpose, in moral vigor, in minutely faithful study of some phases of human experience, and in a massive impression of thoughtfulness which her work creates. At the same time, they undoubtedly lose in value as studies of life; in free range of expression for her genius, her poetry and her art; and in that spiritual vision which looks forward with keen gazing eyes of hope and confident inquiry. Her teaching, like most teaching, is a mingled good and evil. In more than one direction her ethical and religious influence was most wholesome and effective. She brought into clear light a few great facts, and made them the more conspicuous by the strong emphasis she gave them. This is, in the main, the method of all teaching and of all progress. Development seldom proceeds in a direct line, but rather, so far as man is concerned, by forcible emphasis laid on some great fact which has been previously neglected. The idealism of a previous age had shown the value of certain facts and tendencies in human nature, but it had exaggerated some faculties and capacities of man, as well as neglected others. In consequence, our own time swings to the other extreme, and cannot have too much of evolution and positivism. Idealism is in human nature, and will give itself expression. Positivism is also a result of our experience and of our study of the universe, both material and mental; it is a result of the desire for definite knowledge. As a re-action against the excesses of idealism it is a powerful leaven, and it brings into necessary prominence those facts which are neglected by the opposite philosophy. It takes account of facts, and scorns mysticism; and it thus appeals to a deep-seated bias of the time. George Eliot's books have an interest as an attempt at an interpretation of life from its more practical and realistic side, and not less as a re-action against the influences of very nearly all the great literary minds of the earlier half of the century in England. Under the lead of Coleridge and Wordsworth, and influenced by German thought and literature, a remarkable movement was then developed in English literature. The outcome of that movement has been surpassed only by that of the age of Shakspere. Freshness of thought, love of nature, profound humanitarian convictions, and spontaneity wedded to great largeness of ideas, characterize this period and its noble work. Such an age is almost invariably followed by an age of re-action, criticism, realism and analysis. An instinctive demand for a portrayal of the more positive side of life, and the influence of science, have developed a new literary school. For doctrine it teaches agnosticism, and in method it cares mainly for art and beauty of form. Towards the development of the new school George Eliot has been a leading influence, though her sympathies have not gone with all its tendencies and results. If Wordsworth exaggerated the importance of the intuitive and personal, George Eliot equally exaggerated the value of the historic and hereditary. It was desirable, however, that the relations of life to the past should be brought out more distinctly by a literary development of their relations to the present, and that the influence of social heredity should be seen as affecting life on all sides. Tradition is a large and persistent element in the better life of the race, while the past certainly has a powerful influence over the present. This fact was neglected by Wordsworth, and especially is it neglected by the intuitive philosophies. They ignore the lessons of the past, and assume that a new and perfect world is to be evolved from the depths of consciousness. That to think a better world is to create a better world, they seem to take for granted, while the fact is that the truer life is the result of a painful and long-continued struggle against adverse conditions. What has been, persists in remaining, and the past, with all its narrowness and prejudices, continues to influence men more powerfully than does clear thought or regard for the truth. Emotion and sentiment cling about what has become sacred with age. Channels for thought and activity having once been made, it is very difficult to abandon them for untried paths approved even by reason. The historic view is one of much importance, and is likely to be overlooked by the poets and novelists. It is also ignored by the radicals in morals and religion. Much which George Eliot says on this subject is of great value, and may be heeded with the utmost profit. Her words of wisdom, however, lose much of their value because they utterly ignore those spontaneous and supernatural elements of man's higher life which lift it quite out of the region of dependence on history. There is something to be said in behalf of George Eliot's attitude towards religion, which caused her to hold it in reverence, even when rejecting the objective validity of its dogmas. Yet much more is to be said for that other attitude, which is faithful to the law of reason, and believes that reason is competent to say some truer and larger word on a subject of such vital importance and such constant interest to man. That both reason and tradition are to be listened to reverently is true, but George Eliot so zealously espoused the cause of tradition as to give it an undue prominence. Her lesson was needed, however, and we may be all the better able to profit by it because she was so much an enthusiast in proclaiming its value. The even poise of perfect truth is no more to be had from her pages than from those of others. The emphasis she laid on feeling and sentiment was a needed one, as a counterpoise to the exaggerations of rationalism. Man does live in his feelings more than in his reason. He is a being of sentiment, a creature of impulse, his social life is one of the affections. In all the ranges of his moral, religious and social life he is guided mainly by his emotions and sentiments. It cannot be said, however, as George Eliot would have us say, that these are human born and have no higher meaning. They are the outgrowth of spiritual reality, as well as of human experience; they repeat the foregleams and foresights of a "far-off divine event, To which the whole creation moves." Life is enriched and flooded with light by the emotions, and feeling, true and tender and pure, is as much the symbol of humanity as reason itself. It was therefore well that some one should attempt to justify the emotional life against the aspersions of those who have done it grave injustice. It is true that man is not a being who wholly arrives at his method of life through reason, but feeling lends quite as important aid. He does not only think, but he has emotions as well; he not only weighs evidence, but he acts by impulse. He is continually led by the emotions, sentiments and impulses created for him by the life of ages past. Without emotion there could be no art, no poetry and no music. Without emotion there would be no religion and no spiritual life. Sentiment sweetens, beautifies and endears all that is human and natural. Emotion and the affections, however, seem to be shorn of their highest beauty and glory when they are restricted to a merely earthly origin and compass of power. It is altogether impossible to believe that their own impulse to look beyond the human is a delusion, and that they really have nothing to report that is valid from beyond the little round which man treads. To believe in the human beauty and glory of the feelings, and to rejoice in their power to unite us to our kind, need imply no forgetfulness of their demand for a wider expression and a higher communion. Her theory of the origin of feeling is not to be accepted. It means something more than an inheritance of ancestral experience. It is the result rather than the cause of reason, for reason has an influence she did not acknowledge, and an original capacity which she never saw. Her view of feeling was mainly theoretical, for she was led in her attitude towards the facts of life, not by sentiment, but by reason. Hers was a thoughtful rather than an impulsive mind, and given to logic more than to emotion. Her enthusiasm for altruism, her zeal for humanity, lends a delightful feature to her books. It gives a glow and a consecration to her work, and makes her as great a prophet as positivism is capable of creating. And it is no idle power she awakens in her positivist faith in man. She shames those who claim a broader and better faith. Zeal for man is no mean gospel, as she gives life and meaning to it in her books. To live for others, too many are not likely to do. She made altruism beautiful, she made it a consecration and a religion. Those who cannot accept her agnosticism and her positivism may learn much from her faith in man and from her enthusiasm for humanity. No faith is worth much which does not lead to a truer and a more helpful love of man. Any faith is good in so far as it makes us more humane and sympathetic. In this regard, the radicalism of George Eliot was a great advance on much of the free-thinking of our century. She desired to build, not to destroy. She was no iconoclast, no hater of what other men love and venerate. Her tendencies were all on the side of progress, good order and social growth. Her conception of the organic social life of the race is one of great value. It led her to believe in the possibility of a social organization in the future based on science, and better capable of meeting all the wants of mankind than the more personal and competitive methods have done. This belief in the organic unity of the race is not necessarily positivist in its character, for Hegel entertained it as fully as does Herbert Spencer. The larger social life will come, however, as individuals are moved to lead the way, and not alone as the result of a general evolutionary process. On its mental side, her social theory is to be regarded with grave suspicions, for it brings all minds to the same level. No mind of commanding influence is to be found in her books. No powerful intellect gives greatness to any of her plots. Her Felix Holt is not a man of original and positive thought. We accept, but do not enthusiastically admire him. Deronda is a noble character, but he in no sense represents the largest things of which a social leader is capable. He disappoints and is weak, and he has no power to create the highest kind of leadership. In other words, he is not a great man. The world's reformers have been of another temper and mettle. He is no Mazzini, no Luther. George Eliot's social theories loft no room for such men. They were superfluous in her social system. The man not to be explained by heredity and tradition had no place in her books; and no genius, no great man, can ever be explained by heredity and tradition alone. George Eliot evidently desired to destroy individualism as a social force. The individual, according to her teaching, is to renounce himself for the sake of the race. He is to live, not as a personal being, but as a member of the social organization; to develop his altruistic nature, not to perfect his personal character. The finer flavor of personality is brushed mercilessly away by this method. Reason needs to be justified in opposition to her excessive praise of feeling. Meanwhile, the capacity of man to live a life higher than that of his social state is to be asserted. He is indeed a member of humanity, but humanity does not absorb him to the cost of his personality. Life is strong in those ages in which the individual is able to assert his own personality, in opposition to what is imperfect and untrue in the life of his time. This failure to recognize the worth and capacity of the individual is a most serious defect in George Eliot's work, and mars it in many directions. A very competent critic has shown how serious is the limitation arising in this manner, and permeating her books with a false conception of life. "So far as George Eliot's life is concerned," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, "she was eager in her self-development, and as eager in her sympathies. But it was a different matter in the main drift of her work. She lowered the power of individualism. Nay, she did not believe in its having any self-caused or God-caused existence. Few have individualized their characters more than she did, and of these characters we have many distinct types. But she individualized them with, I may say, almost the set purpose of showing that their individualism was to be sacrificed to the general welfare of the race. The more her characters cling to their individuality the more they fail in reaching happiness or peace. If they are noble characters, they are finally obliged, through their very nobility, to surrender all their ideals, all their personal hopes, all the individual ends they hoped to develop; and they reach peace finally only through utter surrender of personality in humanity. The characters in her books who do not do this, who cling to their individuality and maintain it, succeed in life, for the most part, if they are strong; are broken to pieces if they are weak; but in all cases, save one, are not the noble but the ignoble characters. The whole of her books is a suppressed attack on individualism, and an exaltation of self-renunciation as the only force of progress, as the only ground of morality. I leave aside here, as apart from the moral side of the subject, the view that individual power or weakness of any kind is the consequence of the past, of race, of physical causes. What a man is found to do is not affected by that, in her view.... No one can deny that the morality is a lofty one, and, as far as it asserts self-renunciation, entirely useful; we have with all our hearts to thank George Eliot for that part of her work. But when sacrifice of self is made, in its last effort, equivalent to the sacrifice of individuality, the doctrine of self-renunciation is driven to a vicious extreme. It is not self-sacrifice which is then demanded, it is suicide ... Fully accepted, it would reduce the whole of the human race to hopelessness. That, indeed, is the last result. A sad and fatal hopelessness of life broods over all the nobler characters. All their early ideals are sacrificed, all their early joys depart, all the pictures they formed are blotted out. They gain peace through renunciation, after long failure; some happiness in yielding to the inevitable, and harmonizing life with it; and some blessedness in doing all they can for the progress of those who follow them, for the good of those that are with them. Their self is conquered, not through ennoblement of personality, but through annihilation of personality. And having surrendered their separate personality, they then attain the fitting end, silence forevermore. It is no wonder that no characters are so sad, that none steep the reader in such hopelessness of joy, as the noble characters of the later works of George Eliot. They want the mighty power, the enkindling hopes, the resurrection of life, the joy and rapture which deepens towards death and enables man to take up the ideals of youth again." If too severe in some directions, this criticism is substantially sound. It does not matter what theory of personality we adopt, in a philosophical sense, if that theory upholds personal confidence and force of will. If it does not do this, the whole result is evil. This lack of faith in personality saddened all the work done by George Eliot. In theory a believer in an ever-brightening future, and no pessimist, yet the outcome of her work is dark with despondency and grief. Life is sad, hard and ascetic in her treatment of it. An ascetic tone runs through all her work, the result of her theories of renunciation. The same sternness and cheerlessness is to be seen in the poetry and painting of the pre-Raphaelites. The joy, freshness and sunniness of Raphael is not to be found in their work. Life is painful, puritanic and depressing to them. Old age seems to be upon them, or the decadence of a people that has once been great. Human nature does not need that this strain be put upon it. Life is stronger when more assertive of itself. It has a right to assert itself in defiance of mere rules, and only when it does so is it true and great. The ascetic tone is one of the worst results of a scientific view of the world as applied to literature; for it is thoroughly false both in fact and in sentiment. The strong, hopeful, youthful look at life is the one which literature demands, and because it is the nearest the heart and spirit of life itself. The dead nation produces a dead literature. The age made doubtful by an excess of science produces a literature burdened with sadness and pain. Great and truthful as it may be, it lacks in power to conquer the world. It shows, not the power of Homer, but the power of Lucretius. Her altruism has its side of truth, but not all of the truth is in it. Any system of thought which sees nothing beyond man is not likely to find that which is most characteristic in man himself. He is to be fathomed, if fathomed at all, by some other line than that of his own experience. If he explains the universe, the universe is also necessary to explain him. Man apart from the supersensuous is as little to be understood as man apart from humanity. He belongs to a Universal Order quite as much as he belongs to the human order. Man may be explained by evolution, but evolution is not to be explained by anything in the nature of man. It requires some larger field of vision to take note of that elemental law. Not less true is it that mind does not come obediently under this method of explanation, that it demands account of how matter is transformed into thought. The law of thought needs to be solved after mind is evolved. There is occasion for surprise that a mind so acute and logical as George Eliot's did not perceive that the evolution philosophy has failed to settle any of the greater problems suggested by Kant. The studies of Darwin and Spencer have certainly made it impossible longer to accept Locke's theory of the origin of all knowledge in individual experience, but they have not in any degree explained the process of thought or the origin of ideas. The gulf between the physiological processes in the brain and thought has not been bridged even by a rope walk. The total disparity of mind and matter resists all efforts to reduce them to one. The utmost which the evolution philosophy has so far done, is to attempt to prove that mind is a function of matter or of the physiological process. This conclusion is as far as possible from being that of the unity of mind and matter. That man is very ignorant, and that this world ought to demand the greater share of his attention and energies, are propositions every reasonable person is ready to accept. Granted their truth, all that is necessarily true in agnosticism has been arrived at. It is a persistent refusal to see what lies behind outward facts which gives agnosticism all its practical justification. Art itself is a sufficient refutation of the assertion that we know nothing of what lies behind the apparent. That we know something of causes, every person who uses his own mind may be aware. At the same time, the rejection of the doctrine of rights argues obedience to a theory, rather than humble acceptance of the facts of history. That doctrine of rights, so scorned by George Eliot, has wrought most of the great and wholesome social changes of modern times. Her theory of duties can show no historic results whatever. To separate George Eliot's theories from her genius it seems impossible to do, but this it is necessary to do in order to give both their proper place. All praise, her work demands on its side where genius is active. It is as a thinker, as a theorizer, she is to be criticised and to be declared wanting. Her work was crippled by her philosophy, or if not crippled, then it was made less strong of limb and vigorous of body by that same philosophy. It is true of her as of Wordsworth, that she grew prosy because she tried to be philosophical. It is true of her as it is not true of him, that her work lacks in the breadth which a large view of the world gives. His was no provincial conception of nature or of man. Hers was so in a most emphatic sense. The philosophy she adopted is not and cannot become the philosophy of more than a small number of persons. In the nature of the case it is doomed to be the faith of a few students and cultured people. It can stir no common life, develop no historic movements, inaugurate no reforms, nor give to life a diviner meaning. Whether it be true or not,--and this need not here be asked,--this social and moral limitation of its power is enough to condemn it for the purposes of literature. In so far as George Eliot's work is artistic, poetic, moral and human, it is very great, and no word too strong can be said in its praise. It is not too excessive enthusiasm to call her, on the whole, the equal of any novelist. Her genius is commanding and elemental. She has originality, strength of purpose, and a profound insight into character. Yet her work is weakened by its attachment to a narrow theory of life. Her philosophy is transitory in its nature. It cannot hold its own, as developed by her, for any great length of time. It has the elements of its own destruction in itself. The curious may read her for her speculations; the many will read her for her realism, her humanity and her genius. In truth, then, it would have been better if her work had been inspired by great spiritual aims and convictions. XXI. BIBLIOGRAPHY. As an aid to those who may wish to carry further the preceding study of George Eliot, the following bibliography and lists of references have been compiled. In their preparation constant use has been made of _Poole's Index of Periodical Literature_, the bibliography contained in _The Manchester Literary Club Papers_ for 1881, and a list of references published in _The Literary World_ (Boston) for February 24, 1883. Numerous additions have been made to these bibliographies, while the references have been verified as far as possible. An occasional reference given in these lists has not been discoverable, as that of the Manchester Club to the _London Quarterly Review_ for January, 1874, for an article on "George Eliot and Comtism," and Poole's reference to the same article in the _London Quarterly_, 47:446. This will be found in the number for January 1877, volume ninety-four. 1. WRITINGS. 1846. _The Life of Jesus_, by Strauss. Translated from the fourth German edition, 3 vols. Chapman Brothers, London. 1852-3. Assistant editor of the Westminster Review. 1852. The Westminster Review for January contained her notice of Carlyle's Life of John Sterling. In the July number appeared her article on _The Lady Novelists_. 1854. _The Essence of Christianity_, by Feuerbach. Translated from the second German edition. John Chapman, London. The Westminster Review for October published her _Woman in France: Madame de Sablé_. She wrote, it is supposed, occasionally for The Leader newspaper, of which journal Lewes was the literary editor. None of her contributions have been identified. [Footnote: There is a nearly complete set of The Leader in the Boston Athenaeum Library.] 1855. Westminster Review, October, _Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming_. 1856. Westminster Review, January, _German Wit: Heinrich Heine_. July, _The Natural History of German Life_. October, _Silly Novels by Lady Novelists_. 1857. Westminster Review, January, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young_. In Blackwood's Magazine for January and February appeared _The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton_; in March, April, May and June, _Mr. Gilfil's Love Story_; from July to December, _Janet's Repentance_. In December these stories were published in two volumes under the title of _Scenes of Clerical Life_, by George Eliot. Edinburgh, Blackwood & Sons. Reprinted in Living Age from April to December, 1857. 1859. In February, _Adam Bede_ appeared in three volumes, Blackwoods. Blackwood's Magazine for July contained _The Lifted Veil_. 1860. In April, _The Mill on the Floss_ was published in three volumes, Blackwoods. 1861. _Silas Marner_ in March, one volume, Blackwoods. 1863. _Romola_ appeared in the Cornhill Magazine from July, 1862, to July, 1863, and was illustrated. It was published in three volumes in July; Smith, Elder & Co., London. 1864. The Cornhill Magazine for July contained _Brother Jacob_, with illustrations. 1865. The Fortnightly Review for May 15 contained _The Influence of Rationalism_, and a review of Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament. 1866. In June, _Felix Holt_ was issued in three volumes, Blackwoods. 1868. Blackwood's Magazine, January, contained an _Address to Workingmen, by Felix Holt_. In June, _The Spanish Gypsy_ was published by Blackwoods. 1869. Blackwood's Magazine for May printed _How Lisa Loved the King_. The Atlantic Monthly for August contained _Agatha_. 1870. In Macmillan's Magazine for May, _The Legend of Jubal_. 1871. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _Armgart_. Middlemarch was issued in twelve monthly numbers, beginning with December, by Blackwoods. 1874. _The Legend of Jubal and other Poems_ was published by Blackwoods. It contained: _The Legend of Jubal_, _Agatha_, _Armgart_, _How Lisa Loved the King_, _A Minor Prophet_, _Brother and Sister_, _Stradivarius_, _Two Lovers_, _Arion_, _O May I Join the Choir Invisible_. 1876. _Daniel Deronda_ was issued in eight monthly parts, beginning in February, by Blackwoods. 1878. Macmillan's Magazine for July, _A College Breakfast Party_. 1879. _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_ was published in June by Blackwoods. _The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems, Old and New_, was issued by Blackwoods, containing, in addition to those in the first edition, _A College Breakfast Party_, _Self and Life_, _Sweet Evenings Come and Go_, _Love_, _The Death of Moses_. In Blackwood's cabinet edition of George Eliot's complete works, _The Lifted Veil_ and _Brother Jacob_ are reprinted with _Silas Marner_. After the death of Lewes she edited his _Study of Psychology_ and his _Mind as a Function of the Organism_. 1881. The Pall Mall Gazette of January 6 contained her letter to Sara Hennell concerning the origin of _Adam Bede_. Three letters to Professor David Kaufmann appeared in the Athenaeum of November 26, 1881. The following articles also contain sayings of George Eliot's, or extracts from her letters: In the Contemporary Review, by "One who knew her," on the Moral Influence of George Eliot; C. Kegan Paul in Harper's Magazine; F.W.H. Myers in The Century; W.M.W. Call in the Westminster Review, and a nephew of William Blackwood in Blackwood's Magazine. 1882. In Harper's Magazine for March, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps published numerous extracts from George Eliot's letters under the title of _Last Words from George Eliot_. 1883. George Eliot, by Mathilde Blind,--London, W.H. Allen, and Boston, Roberts Brothers,--contains extracts from several letters. The Essays of George Eliot, collected by Nathan Sheppard,--New York, Funk & Wagnalls,--contains _Carlyle's Life of Sterling_, _Woman in France_, _Evangelical Teaching_, _German Wit_, _Natural History of German Life_, _Silly Novels by Lady Novelists_, _Worldliness and other-Worldliness_, _The Influence of Rationalism_, _The Grammar of Ornament_, _Felix Holt's Address to Workingmen_. The Complete Essays of George Eliot, Boston, Estes & Lauriat, 1883, in addition to the above, contains _The Lady Novelists, George Foster, the German Naturalist, Weimar and its Celebrities_. 2. SELECTIONS, TRANSLATIONS AND PORTRAITS. Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings in Prose and Verse, Selected by Alexander Main. Blackwoods, 1872. Wit and Wisdom of George Eliot. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1878; enlarged and with a biographical memoir prefixed, 1881. George Eliot Birthday Book. Blackwoods, 1878. George Eliot: Fragments et Pensées, extraits et traduits des ses Oeuvres, par Ch. Ritter. Genève, Georges, 1879. Character Readings from George Eliot, selected and arranged by Nathan Sheppard. New York, Harpers, 1882. The following translations have been published:-- _French_.--Adam Bede, by A. Durade; Mill on the Floss, by A. Durade; Silas Marner, by Durade; Romola, by Durade; Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, by E. Pasquet; Dorlcote Mill, by E.D. Forques in Revue des Deux Mondes, June 15, 1860; The Lifted Veil, in Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1880. _Dutch_.--Felix Holt, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1867, and by P. Bruyn, 1873; Middlemarch, by Merv. Van Westrheeve, 1873; Adam Bede, by P. Bruyn, 1870; Mill on the Floss, by P. Bruyn, 1870; Romola, by P. Bruyn, 1870, and by J.C. Van Deventer, 1864; Novelettes, by P. Bruyn, 1870. _German_.--Adam Bede, by J. Frese; Silas Marner, by J. Frese, 1861; Mill on the Floss, by J. Frese, 1861; Romola, by A.V. Metzsch, 1864; Middlemarch, by E. Lehmann, 1872-3; Daniel Deronda, by Strodtmann, 1876; Felix Holt (no translator's name given), 1867. Der Gelüftche Schleier, Bruder Jakob, by Lehmann. The portrait of George Eliot appearing as the frontispiece to this volume is from that published in The Century for November, 1881. Accompanying it was the following account of it and of other portraits:-- "We have the pleasure of presenting to our readers an authentic portrait of George Eliot, the only one by which it is likely that she will be known to posterity. We are indebted for this privilege, as we shall presently explain, to the kindness and courtesy of her husband, Mr. J.W. Cross, who has allowed us to be the first to usher this beautiful work of art to the world. In doing so, we believe it will interest readers of The Century Magazine to learn, for the first time, the exact truth regarding the portraits of George Eliot, and we have therefore obtained from the three artists to whom, at different times in her life, she sat, some particulars of those occasions. "Miss Evans passed the winter of 1849-50 at Geneva, in the house of M.F. d'Albert Durade, the well-known Swiss water-color painter, who is also the translator of the authorized French version of her works. At that time she had, however, written nothing original, and had attracted no general interest. While she stayed with M. Durade and his wife, the Swiss painter amused himself by making a small portrait of her in oils--a head and shoulders. This painting remains in the possession of M. Durade, who has not merely refused to sell it, but will not allow it to be photographed or reproduced in any form. He has, however, we understand, consented to make a replica of it for Mr. Cross. We have not seen this interesting work, but we hear that it is considered, by those who still remember the great writer as she looked in her thirtieth year, to be remarkably faithful. M. Durade recently exhibited this little picture for a few days at the Athénée in Geneva, but has refused to allow it to be brought to London. "Ten years after this, in 1859, as the distinguished portrait-painter, Mr. Samuel Laurence, was returning from America, he happened to meet with 'Adam Bede,' then just published. He was so delighted with the book that he was determined to know the author, and it was revealed to him that to do so he had but to renew his old acquaintance with Mr. George Henry Lewes, whom he had met years before at Leigh Hunt's. He made George Eliot's acquaintance, and was charmed with her, and before long he asked leave to make a study of her head. She assented without any affectation, and, in the early months of 1861, Mr. Lewes commissioned the painter to make a drawing of her. She gave him repeated sittings in his studio at 6 Wells Street, London, and Mr. Laurence looks back with great pleasure on the long conversations that those occasions gave him with his vivacious sitter. The drawing was taken front face, with the hair uncovered, worn in the fashion then prevalent, and it was made in chalks. While it was proceeding, Mr. Laurence asked her if he might exhibit it, when finished, at the Royal Academy, and she at once consented. But when the time for sending in drew near, the artist received a letter from Mr. Lewes absolutely withholding this consent, and a certain strain, of which this was the first symptom, began to embarrass the relations of the two gentlemen, until Mr. Lewes finally refused to take the drawing at all. But before the summer was out, Mr. Langford, the reader of Messrs. Blackwood of Edinburgh, who published George Eliot's works, called on Mr. Laurence, and asked if he would consent to make a copy of the drawing for the firm. The artist replied that he should be happy to sell them the original, and accordingly it passed from his studio, in June, 1861, into the back parlor of Mr. Blackwood's shop, where it now hangs. Like that of M. Durade, Mr. Laurence's portrait of George Eliot is not to be in any way reproduced. "The remaining portrait is that which we reproduce with this number. It is an elaborate chalk drawing, in black and white, with a slight touch of color in the eyes, and was executed in the latter part of 1868 and the early part of 1867, by Mr. Frederick W. Burton, at that time member of the Society of Painters in Watercolors, and now director of the National Gallery in London. George Eliot gave Mr. Burton many sittings in his studio at Kensington, and the picture was eventually exhibited in the Royal Academy, in 1867, as No. 735, 'The Author of "Adam Bede."' It passed into Mr. Lewes's possession, was retained at his death by George Eliot, and is now the property of Mr. J.W. Cross. In the spring of this year, Mr. Cross came to the conclusion that--as the shop windows were likely to become filled with spurious and hideous 'portraits' of George Eliot--it was necessary to overcome the dislike felt by the family of the great novelist to any publication of her features, to which in life she had been averse, and he thereupon determined to record in a monumental way what he felt to be the best existing likeness. Mr. Cross took the drawing over to M. Paul Rajon, who is acknowledged to be the prince of modern etchers, and in his retirement at Auvers-sur-Oise, the great French artist has produced the beautiful etching which we have been permitted to reproduce in engraving. For this permission, and for great courtesy and kindness under circumstances the peculiar nature of which it is not necessary here to specify, we have to tender our most sincere thanks to Mr. J.W. Cross and to Mr. Burton. "These are regarded by her friends to be the only important portraits of George Eliot which exist, but Mr. Cross possesses a very interesting black silhouette, cut with scissors, when she was sixteen. In this profile, the characteristics of the mature face are seen in the course of development. There is also a photograph, the only one ever taken, dating from about 1850, the eyes of which are said to be exceedingly fine. As an impression of later life, there should be mentioned a profile drawn in pencil by Mrs. Alma Tadema, in March, 1877. Of all the portraits here alluded to, the one we engrave is the only one at present destined for publication. It may be added that there exist one or two other profile sketches, which, however, are not approved by the friends of George Eliot." 3. BIOGRAPHICAL. Atlantic Monthly, 14:66, December, 1864, Kate Field on "English Authors in Florence." Louise M. Alcott in the Independent for Nov. 1,1866. The Galaxy, 7:801, June, 1869, Justin McCarthy on "George Eliot and George Lewes;" reprinted in "Modern Leaders," 1872 "Home Sketches in France and other Papers," by the late Mrs. Henry M. Field, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1875, p. 208, "The Author of Adam Bede in Her own Home." International Review, 10:447, 497, May and June, 1881, W. Fraser Rae. The Century. 23:55, with portrait, F.W.H. Myers, reprinted in Essays: Modern, London, 1883; 23:47, "The Portrait of George Eliot." The Nineteenth Century, 9:778, Edith Simcox. Blackwood's Magazine February, 1881. Harper's Magazine, May, 1881, C. Kegan Paul; reprinted in Biographical Sketches, London, 1883; March, 1882, E.S. Phelps. Westminster Review, 116:154, July, 1881, W.M.W. Call, "George Eliot: her Life and Writings." Le Livre, April 10, 1881, "Life in Geneva." London Daily Graphic, 23:27, January 8, 1851, "Reminiscences of George Eliot." Lippincott's Magazine, 31:510, May, 1883, J.A. Dickson, "An Afternoon at Ashbourne." Inquirer, January, 1881, Dr. Sadler's address. Pall Mall Gazette, December 30, 1880, "Early Life." London Daily News, December, 30, 1880, account of her funeral. Eclectic Magazine, March, 1881, account of her early life and of her funeral; April, A personal sketch. "George Eliot," Mathilde Blind, 1883, W.H. Allen, London. "Pen pictures of Modern Authors," Wm. Sheppard, 1882, G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York. The Congregationalist, May 28, 1879, Mrs. Annie Downs, "A Visit to George Eliot." The Christian Leader, October 27,1881, Mrs. M.E. Bruce. 4. GENERAL CRITICISMS. Quarterly Review, 108:469. Macmillan's Magazine, 14:272, J. Morley; same, Eclectic Magazine, 67:488; reprinted in "Critical Miscellanies," first series. Atlantic Monthly, 18:479, H. James. Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. North British Review, 45:141, 197. H.H. Lancaster; reprinted in "Essays and Reviews," Edinburgh, 1876. National Review, 11:191. Home and Foreign Review, 3:522, Richard Simpson. Fraser's Magazine, 103:263, February, 1881, T.E. Kebbel, "Village Life according to George Eliot;" same, Living Age, 148:608. National Quarterly, 1:455, E.L. Wentworth. Potter's American Monthly, 9:260, 334. British Quarterly Review, 45:141. Catholic World, 17:775, J. McCarthy, "Comparison between George Eliot and Fleurange." Canadian Monthly, 11:261, "Later Manner of George Eliot." Dublin Review, 88:371. Southern Review (new style), 13:205, Mrs. S.B. Herrick. R.H. Hutton, "Essays, Theological and Literary," 2d vol. 1871. Contemporary Review, 20:403; same, Living Age, 115:109, Eclectic Magazine, 79:562, Professor E. Dowden; reprinted in "Studies of Literature." Atlantic Monthly, 33:681, June, 1874, George P. Lathrop, "The Growth of the Novel." A.C. Swinburne, "A Note on Charlotte Brontë," 1877. International Review, 7:17, July, 1879, Francis Maguire, Jr. Cornhill Magazine, 43:152, Leslie Stephen, "Critical Study of George Eliot;" same, Living Age, 148:731, Eclectic Magazine, 96:443. Month, 42:272. Every Saturday, 10:186. North British Review, 33:165, "George Eliot and Hawthorne." Eclectic Magazine, 88:111, "George Eliot and George Sand." The Nation, 32:201, J. Bryce, "George Eliot and Carlyle;" 31:456, W.C. Brownell. London Quarterly, 57:154. Blackwood's Magazine, 129:255; same, Living Age, 148:664; Eclectic Magazine, 96:433. St. Paul's, 12:592, G.B. Smith. Living Age, 58:274; 148:318. Eclectic Magazine, 96:353. Southern Monthly, 14:65. Tinsley's Monthly, 3:565. Victoria, 31:56. The Century, 23:619, February, 1882, "George Eliot and Emerson." Library Magazine, 7:84, Nathan Sheppard, "George Eliot's Analysis of Motives;" reprinted as an introduction to George Eliot's Essays, Funk & Wagnalls, 1883. Macmillan's Magazine, 46:488, October, 1882, Annie Matheson, "George Eliot's Children;" same, Living Age, 155:211. The Critic, January, 1881, Edward Eggleston; reprinted in Essays from the Critic, 1881. Christian Union, February, 1881, Noah Porter. The Independent, February 17, 1881, Mrs. Lippincott, "Three Great Women." A History of English Prose Fiction from Sir Thomas Malory to George Eliot, Bayard Tuckerman, New York, 1882. The English Novel and the Principle of its Development, Sidney Lanier, New York, 1883. Modern Review, 2:399, April, 1881, George Sarson, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." Literary World (London), January, 1881, Peter Bayne Athenaeum, January 1, 1881:20. The Academy, 19:27, January 8, 1881. Temps, December 26, 1880, Edmond Scherer. Le Roman Naturaliste, Ferdinand Brunetère, 1883, has a chapter on "English Naturalism: a Study of George Eliot." �tudes sur la Littérature Contemporaine, E. Scherer, Paris, 1878. The Pen, 1880, Robert E. Francillon. East and West: 1:203, June, 1881. Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, 1881; Bibliography, Charles W. Sutton; "George Eliot as a Poet," George Milner; "George Eliot as a Novelist," John Mortimer; "George Eliot's Use of Dialect," William E.A. Axon. National Review, April, 1883, "New School of Fiction." Merry England, May, 1883, C. Kegan Paul, "The Rustic of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy." Blackwood's Magazine, April, 1883. Nineteenth Century, October, 1881, John Buskin on "Fiction: Fair and Foul." 5. DISCUSSIONS OF HER TEACHINGS. Penn Monthly, 10:579, "The Art of George Eliot." Dublin Review, 89:433, "Religion of George Eliot." Unitarian Review, 3:357, J.E. Carpenter, "Religious Influence of George Eliot." "The Ethics of George Eliot's Works," J.C. Brown, Wm. Blackwood & Sons, Edinburgh, 1879. Mind, 6:378, July. 1881, "George Eliot's Art," James Sully. The Spectator, 52:751, "George Eliot's Ideal Ethics;" same, Littell's Living Age, 142:123, July 12, 1879. Scribner's Magazine. 8:685, Wm. C. Wilkinson; reprinted in "A Free Lance in the Field of Life and Letters," 1874. Westminster Review, 117:65, January, 1882, "George Eliot as a Moral Teacher." Contemporary Review, 39:173, February, 1881, "Moral Influence of George Eliot;" same, Living Age, 148:501. Unitarian Review, 16:125, 216, August and September, 1881, John A. Bellows, "Religious Tendency of George Eliot's Writings." Atlantic Monthly, 51:243, February, 1883, M.L. Henry, "The Morality of Thackeray and George Eliot." The Independent, March 24, 1883, Stopford A. Brooke, "George Eliot and Thomas Carlyle." "The Religion of Our Literature," George MacCrie, London, 1875. "George Eliot and Judaism," David Kaufmann, Blackwoods, 1878. 6. SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE. Atlantic Monthly, 1:890. 7. ADAM BEDE. Blackwood's Magazine, 85:490, April, 1859. Dublin Review, 47:33, November, 1859. Edinburgh Review, 110:223, July, 1859. Westminster Review, 71:486, April, 1859. Athenaeum, February 26, 1859. Saturday Review, February 26, 1859:191 Atlantic Monthly, 4:521. Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. "Seth Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors," chiefly by Himself. London: Tallant & Co., 1859. "George Eliot in Derbyshire," London Society, 27:311, 439; 28:20, by Guy Roslyn (Joshua Hatton); reprinted in book form, London, 1876. 8. THE MILL ON THE FLOSS. Blackwood's Magazine, 87:611, May, 1860. Dublin University Review, 57:192. Macmillan's Magazine, 3:441. Westminster Review, 74:24, July, 1860. Christian Examiner, 69:145, L.G. Ware. 9. SILAS MARNER. Christian Examiner, 70:227, I.M. Luyster. Macmillan's Magazine, 4:305. Revue des Deux Mondes, September, 1861, C. Clarigny. 10. ROMOLA. Blackwood's Magazine, 116:72. Land We Love, 1:134. Westminster Review, 80:344, October, 1863. Christian Remembrancer, 52:445. Revue des Deux Mondes, December, 1863, E.D. Forques. 11. FELIX HOLT, THE RADICAL. Blackwood's Magazine, 100:94, July, 1866. Edinburgh Review, 124:435, October, 1866; same, Living Age, 91:432. North American Review, 103:557, July, 1866, A.G. Sedgwick. The Nation, 3:127, Henry James. Contemporary Review, 3:51. Eclectic Review, 124:34. Chambers's Journal, 43:508. Westminster Review, 86:200, July, 1866. 12. THE SPANISH GYPSY. Atlantic Monthly, 22:380, W.D. Howells. North American Review, 107:620, October, 1868, Henry James. The Nation, 7:13, July 2, 1868, Henry James. Edinburgh Review, 128:525. Westminster Review, 90:183, Macmillan's Magazine, 18:281, J. Morley; same, Eclectic Magazine, 71:1276. Blackwood's Magazine, 103:760. British Quarterly Review, 48:503, Fraser's Magazine, 78:468, J. Skelton. St. James's, 22:478. St. Paul's, 2:583. London Quarterly, 31:160. Southern Review (new Style), 4:383, W.H. Browne. Every Saturday, 6:1. 13. POEMS. Contemporary Review, 8:387, July 1868, Matthew Browne (W.B. Rands); same, Every Saturday, 6:79. Every Saturday, 16:667, G.A. Simcox. The Argosy, 2:437, November, 1866, Matthew Browne. Saturday Review, 37:75. Macmillan's Magazine, 22:1. North American Review, 119:484, Heary James. Atlantic Monthly, 34:102, July, 1874, W.D. Howells. Harper's Magazine, 49:887. Academy, 5:33, May 10, 1874, G.A. Simcox. Edinburgh Review, 128:523, October, 1868. Papers of the Manchester Literary Club, 1881, p. 108, George Milner. The Nation, 19:124. "Our Living Poets: an Essay in Criticism," H. Buxton Forman, London, 1871. 14. MIDDLEMARCH. Quarterly Review, 134:336, April, 1873. Edinburgh Review, 137:246, January, 1873. Fortnightly Review, 19:142, Sidney Colvin. Blackwood's Magazine, 112:727; same, Living Age, 116:131; Eclectic Magazine, 80:215. The Nation, 16:60, 76, January, 1873, A.V. Dicey. North American Review, 116:432, April, 1873, T.S. Perry. British Quarterly Review, 57:407, April, 1883. London Quarterly Review, 40:99, April, 1873. Canadian Monthly, 3:549. Old and New, 7:352, H.G. Spaulding. Southern Monthly, 12:373, W.H. Browne. Atlantic Monthly, 31:490, A.G. Sedgwick. Catholic World, 17:775, September, 1873. Die Gegen-wart, 1874, Freidrich Speilhagen. 15. DANIEL DERONDA. Atlantic Monthly, 38:084, Henry James, December, 1876. North American Review, 124:31, E.P. Whippie, January, 1877. Edinburgh Review, 144:442, October, 1876. Fortnightly Review, 26:601, November, 1876, Sidney Colvin. The Nation, 23:230, 245, October 12, 19, 1876, A.V. Dicey. British Quarterly Review, 64:472. Eclectic Magazine, 87:657. International Review, 4:68, R.R. Bowker. The Western, 3:603, O.G. Garrison. Potter's American Monthly, 8:75. Gentleman's Magazine (new style), 17:593, November, 1876, J. Picciotto; 17:411, R.E. Francillon. Canadian Monthly, 9:250, 343; 10:362. Victoria, 28:227, A.S. Richardson. Temple Bar, 49:542, "Deronda's Mother;" same, Living Age, 133:248; same, Eclectic Magazine, 88:751. Macmillan's Magazine, 36:101, J. Jacobs, "Mordecai: a Protest against the Critics, by a Jew;" same, Living Age, 134:112. Athenacum, 1876:160, 327, 461, 593, 762. Westminster Review, 106:280,574. Appleton's Journal (new style), 3:274, September, 1877, Wirt Sikes. Deutsche Rundachau, February 7, 1877. Contemporary Review, 29:348, February, 1877, Edward Dowden, reprinted in "Studies of Literature." 16. IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. Edinburgh Review, 150:557. Fortnightly Review, 32:144, G. Allen. Westminster Review, 112:185, July, 1879. The Nation, 28:422, June 19, 1879, G.E. Woodberry. Fraser's Magazine, 100:103. Canadian Monthly, 16.333. Unitarian Review, 12:292, R.W. Boodle. INDEX A. Actions, _Actors and Acting_ _Adam Bede_ _Adam Bede_, quoted "Address to Workingmen," quoted Agnosticism Altruism Analytic Method _Animal Life, Studies in_ "Amos Barton," quoted _Aristotle_ "Armgart," quoted Art Art, love of Asceticism Austen, Jane B. Blackwood, William _Blackwood's Magazine_ Blind, Mathilde quoted Brabant Dr. Bray Charles Brontë Charlotte Brookbank "Brother and Sister" "Brother Jacob" Browning, Robert Browning, Mrs. C. Call, W.M.W., quoted Carlyle Causes "Choir Invisible" Chapman, John Characteristics, personal Childhood, influences surrounding Child Life Christianity "College Breakfast Party" Colvin, Sidney Combe, George Comte Conscience Conversation _Cornhill Magazine_ Cosmopolitanism Cowper Criticism Culture Cumming, Dr. D. _Daniel Deronda_ _Daniel Deronda_ quoted Darwin Death Deeds Dialect Dickens, Charles Dowden, Prof., quoted Downs, Annie, quoted Dramatic power Duty E. Emerson Environment Essays "Evangelical Teaching" Evans, Christiana Evans, Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, Isaac Evans, Robert Evans, Mrs. Robert Evil Evolution Philosophy Experience F. Familiar, influence of the Feeling Feeling for others _Felix Holt_ _Felix Holt_, quoted Feuerbach Fichte Field, Kate, quoted Fielding, Henry Fields, Mrs., quoted Foleshill _Fortnightly Review_ G. Garth, Caleb "German life, natural history of" God Goethe _Goethe, Life of_ Griff House H. Harrison, Frederic Heine Hennell, Charles Hennell, Sara Heredity House Howells, W.D. Huge Humor Hutton, R.H., quoted I. Idealism Imagination Immortality Immortality, subjective Individuality "Influence of Rationalism" Inspiration Intuition J. James, Henry Jones, Owen "Janet's Repentance," quoted K. Kant Kaufmann, Prof. L. "Lady Novelists" Law _Leader_ newspaper _Legend of Jubal_ Letters, extracts from Lewes, George Henry born school days early studies in Germany _History of Philosophy_ _Spanish Drama_ _Ranthorpe_ writes for Reviews _Leader_ _Philosophy of the Sciences_ _Life of Goethe_, physiological studies _Fortnightly Review_ _Problems of Life and Mind_ characteristics death Lewes, influence on George Eliot Lewes, Marian Evans born parents early reading school in Nuneaton school In Coventry studying at home moves to Foleshill studies continued early religious views early scepticism troubles with her family finds friends the Brays the Hennells drawn towards positivism father dies goes to continent translates Strauss Feuerbach assistant editor of _Westminster Review_ _Review_ contributor marriage studies in Germany writes _Clerical Scenes_ adopts name of "George Eliot" again visits Germany _Adam Bede_ controversy about _Adam Bede_ novel-writing poems written house habits of study description of person receptions summers in country death of Lewes marriage to John Walter Cross death literary traits "Lifted Veil" Liggins, Joseph Lippincott, Mrs., quoted Literary Methods Literature defined Locke Love Lucretius M. Marriage Martineau, Harriet Matter Meliorism _Middlemarch_ _Middlemarch_, quoted Midland England Mill, J.S. _Mill on the Floss_, _Mill on the Floss_, quoted "Minor Prophet" Morality Mordecai Morley, John "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" Music, Love of Myers, F.W.H., quoted Mysticism N. Nemesis, Newdigate, Sir Roger Novel-writing P. Past, the Paul, Kegan, quoted Pessimism Philosophy, George Eliot's Philosophy, Lewes's _History of_ _Philosophy of the Sciences_ _Physiology of Common Life_ Plots Poetry Positivism Prayer Priory, The _Problems of Life and Mind_ Psychology R. _Ranthorpe_ Realism Reason Receptions Relativity, Moral Religion "Religion of Humanity" Renaissance Renunciation Resignation Retribution Romanticism _Romola_ _Romola_, quoted _Rose, Blanche and Violet_ Ruskin S. Sadler, Dr., quoted Sand, George Satire Savonarola _Scenes of Clerical Life_ Schelling Scientific illustration Scott _Seaside Studies_ "Self and Life" Sex in literature Shakspere Shelley _Silas Marner_ "Silly Novels" Simcox, Edith, quoted Society Social Organism Sorrow _Spanish Drama_ _Spanish Gypsy_ Speculation, Love of _Spectator_ Spencer, Herbert Spinoza Spiritual, the "Stradivarius" Strauss Sterling, John Sympathy Sully, James, quoted Supernatural Swinburne, quoted T. Tennyson Thackeray _Theophrastus Such_ _Theophrastus Such_, quoted Times Tradition W. _Waverley Novel_ _Westminster Review_ "Weimar and its Celebrities" Whipple, E.P., quoted Wieland "Woman in France" Woman, Literary Wordsworth Y. Young, Edward