writer, to whom she refers in one of her letters (dated 1853) as "a Mr Huxley, who was the centre of interest" at some "agreeable evening." Her books abound in tributes to Christian virtue, and one of her own favourite characters was Dinah Morris in _Adam Bede_. She undertook, about the beginning of 1844, the translation of Strauss's _Leben Jesu_. This work, published in 1846, was considered scholarly, but it met, in the nature of things, with no popular success. On the death of Mr Evans in 1849, she went abroad for some time, and we hear of no more literary ventures till 1851, when she accepted the assistant-editorship of the _Westminster Review_. For a while she had lodgings at the offices of that publication in the Strand, London. She wrote several notable papers, and became acquainted with many distinguished authors of that period--among them Herbert Spencer, Carlyle, Harriet Martineau, Francis Newman and George Henry Lewes. Her friendship with the last-named led to a closer relationship which she regarded as a marriage. Among the many criticisms passed upon this step (in view of the fact, among other considerations, that Lewes had a wife living at the time), no one has denied her courage in defying the law, or questioned the quality of her tact in a singularly false position. That she felt the deepest affection for Lewes is evident; that we owe the development of her genius to his influence and constant sympathy is all but certain. Yet it is also sure that what she gained from his intimate companionship was heavily paid for in the unceasing consciousness that most people thought her guilty of a grave mistake, and found her written words, with their endorsement of traditional morality, wholly at variance with the circumstances of her private life. Doubts of her suffering in this respect will be at once dismissed after a study of her journal and letters. Stilted and unnatural as these are to a tragic degree, one can read well enough between the lines, and also in the elaborate dedication of each manuscript to "my husband" (in terms of the strongest love), that self-repression, coupled with audacity, does not make for peace. Her sensitiveness to criticism was extreme; a flippant paragraph or an illiterate review with regard to her work actually affected her for days. The whole history of her union with Lewes is a complete illustration of the force of sheer will--in that case partly her own and not inconsiderably his--over a nature essentially unfitted for a bold stand against attacks. At first she and the man whom she had described "as a sort of miniature Mirabeau in appearance," went abroad to Weimar and Berlin, but they returned to England the same year and settled, after several moves, in lodgings at East Sheen.