his friend, his sister’s friend, the blameless and the wise Madame Zulma Carraud. An idealist, anyhow, Balzac was at the beginning; an idealist he remained to the end. The ‘_amitiés d’épiderme_,’ as he excellently called them, attracted him but little. In my short book about him, in the ‘Great Writers’ Series, I tried to show that what he sought for and obtained was the intimacy of the heart. Gautier knew this. And one-sided indeed must be those people--whether the word of their choice is intended for blame or for praise--who, judging either by life or work, think that Balzac is properly described as ‘materialist’ or ‘realist,’ alone or chiefly. The Real, which is not always the hideous, he was strong enough to face; yet Romance was essential to him. It is time, now, that the sentimental and _soi-disant_ Romantic began to understand that in Balzac there were depths of feeling and of poetry to which they could never approach; and time also that those tiresome disciples of mere ugliness in literary theme and literary treatment, who account him their yet insufficient master, were informed, roundly, that whatever the lessons he may half-incidentally have taught them, nothing of Balzac’s greatness can ever fairly be claimed as supporting or justifying the narrow limitations of their sordid sect and creed. (_The Bookman_, March 1894.) GEORGE ELIOT The accounts of George Eliot’s earlier life, which are in general circulation, are in some respects imaginary. ‘George Eliot’--Mary Ann Evans--was not the daughter of a poor clergyman, nor was she ever ‘adopted’ by a wealthy one. She was the daughter of a land surveyor in the Midland Counties, and was brought up at her father’s home, her mother dying when Mary Ann Evans was still a child. Nor was she ever the ‘pupil’ of Mr. Herbert Spencer, nor a frequent writer in the _Westminster Review_. She made the acquaintance and the friendship of Mr. Spencer when she was a woman, and already the mistress of the abstruse subjects in which she then chiefly delighted. She was for a time joint-editor of the _Westminster_ with Dr. Chapman; but her writings in that Review were neither numerous nor generally important. After a residence of some years in Coventry--where she learned profoundly the features of the ‘Midlands,’ which she afterwards described--Mary Ann Evans came to London. At twenty-six years old she translated Strauss’s _Life of Jesus_, and seven years later, Feuerbach’s _Essence of Christianity_; but her efforts at creative writing were wisely delayed. Her apprenticeship to Literature and Philosophy was elaborate and laborious; her training was extensive and deep. It was not until 1858 that _Scenes of Clerical Life_ betrayed the presence of a new artist in Fiction--an artist of fresh gifts, but of undeveloped art.