One of her chief beauties was in her large, finely shaped, feminine hands--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. MATHILDE BLIND: ‘George Eliot.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Her narrow views of fiction at this period.] 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. MARY ANN EVANS: _Letter to Miss Lewis_, 1839, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Opinions on music.] We have had an oratorio at Coventry lately, Braham, Phillips, Mrs. Knyvett, and Mr. 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 that 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. MARY ANN EVANS: _Letter to Miss Lewis_, 1838, in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: A significant reaction.] 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. J. W. CROSS: ‘George Eliot’s Life.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: Mr. Bray’s impressions in 1841.]