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.