When she was twelve years old, being then, in the words of a neighbor, 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 neighborhood, was kept by two sisters, of whom the younger, Miss Rebecca Franklin, was a woman of unusual attainments and lady-like 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.... 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. MATHILDE BLIND: ‘George Eliot.’ (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1883. * * * * * [Sidenote: Evangelical influences at school--Miss Lewis.] 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. [Sidenote: The Miss Franklins.]