But it would have been impossible for even her deep love for mankind, her fine enjoyment of the good and beautiful, to have completed her life. These things satisfied her affections, but there was another quality we have mentioned as prominent in her life: it was her ambition. At twenty she wrote despondently: “I feel that my besetting sin is the one of all others most destroying, as it is the faithful parent of them all—ambition, a desire insatiable for the esteem of my fellow-creatures.” Whatever she did, was done with all her might. Her mother died early, and she became housekeeper. Her struggles with the knotty questions of housewifery kept her in a constant worry, but she would do things right—whether it be currant jelly or a German translation. The same perfection marked her novels. Her progress was soon marked; it recommended her to people of standing, and gradually she had a circle of friends—people of strong minds and much culture—about her. Eager to do something, a way opened to her in 1844, when she was twenty-five years old. It was to translate into English a work of the German philosopher, Strauss. She did it, and what was better, did it well. Five years later she writes: “The only ardent hope I have for my future life is to have given me some woman’s duty.” The ambition to excel is already bending to the stronger emotion of affection. For a long time she worked, eager and anxious, but nothing seemed to open. In 1851 she went to London as assistant editor of _Westminster Review_, and here most satisfactory opportunities for culture opened. She formed lasting friendships with Herbert Spenser, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, and indeed with all the people worth knowing, who filled London in the ’fifties. But her editing left no opportunity to do that special work to which she was looking, and which she did not understand. She wrote many reviews and essays. This writing was a sort of safety valve for her intellect, but it was not until September, 1856, that the new era began in her life. It was when she began to write fiction. The popular idea of fiction as stories which will do to kill time, but which for serious reading are quite useless, was not the idea of George Eliot. A nature so intensely serious, so anxious for noble work, could not content itself with trivial story telling; she did not aim at that, but at studies of life. As she finely writes to Mr. John Blackwood, who became her publisher: “My artistic bent is directed not all to the presentation of irreproachable character, but to the presentation of mixed human beings, in such a way as to call forth tolerant judgment, pity, and sympathy. And I can not step aside from what I _feel_ to be _true_ in character.” And again: “I should like to touch every heart among my readers with nothing but loving humor, with tenderness, with belief in goodness.” The story of her great success is familiar—her books are well known. In rapid succession she sent out