The peculiar fitness of Mr. Cross’s “Life of George Eliot”[B] for giving us a new friend, must be attributed to the really remarkable taste and skill of his editing. The work bears the mark of a reverential hand. It is an _In Memoriam_ whose only object has been to lay before the world a memory too strong and precious to be kept secret. But no such a biography could have been given the world had it not been for the peculiar nature of George Eliot herself. The material for this “Life” grew out of two strong elements in her character: the affectionate and persistent friendship which led her to reveal herself so fully to those she loved in her letters, and that constant introspection which made her journal often a mirror of her inner life. These materials make up the book, which is largely a study of her character, and, too, of her character as she understood it. She has verily written her own life. The interpretation remains for the readers. It would have been possible for Mr. Cross to have given much information about her character which he has withheld, her opinions and much of her conversation; but he has wisely given the world only what she herself chose to reveal to her friends. The story begins early. The first revelations in character are the strongest; the happiness and misery of the future life are revealed in the childhood traits. The earliest revelations which we find in George Eliot’s life are of affection and ambition; either, if strong enough to become a passion, drives its possessor along a thorny path until it is itself mastered, and where both exist in a nature, continual collision must occur between them. Before each is satisfied there must be a life struggle of the keenest sort. Such a struggle was presaged for Marian Evans very early. She herself tells how, when she was but four years of age, she played on the piano, of which she did not know a note, in order to impress the servant with a proper notion of her acquirements and generally distinguished position. As eager, too, she was for love as for recognition. In her reminiscences of her early life most vividly she portrays her earliest passion—one very common among affectionate girls—her love for her brother. “She used always to be at his heels, insisting on doing everything that he did.” When his first boyish craze took possession of him in shape of a pony, and she found it was separating them, she was nearly heart broken. Impressible, eager for work and ambitious for knowledge, she began life under an emotional pressure, which drove her into incessant distress lest those she loved should fail her, and which brought her devotion to her loved ones in constant collision with her ambition. At twenty-one, writing to a very intimate friend, she said: “I do not mean to be so sinful as to say that I have not friends most undeservedly kind and tender, and disposed to form a far too favorable estimate of me, but I mean I have no one who enters