She had been persuaded to this step by Dr. Chapman, who was at that time editor of the _Westminster Review_, and who asked her to come and help him to conduct that publication. At this time she must have been one of the most captivating companions imaginable. She knew French, German and Italian, and had besides a good knowledge of Latin, Greek, Russian and Hebrew. She was a really good player of the piano, and had some proficiency on the organ; she had already mixed in some of the best society of London, for, in 1841, her father had moved to Foleshill, near Coventry, and here she quickly became intimate in the household of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Bray, where she met such people as Emerson, George Combe, Mr. Froude, and many other noted ones of the literary circles which the Brays delighted in drawing about them; her mind had been enlarged by the treasures of the Continent which she visited with her life-long friends, the Brays, in 1849, after the death of her father, remaining at Geneva after the Brays returned to England; she had all that homely love which comes with the successful administration of breakfast, dinner and supper, for her sisters and brothers had all married, and she lived alone with her father after his removal to Coventry in 1841, and kept his house for him from that time until his death, not only with great daughterly devotion but, it is said, with great success as a domestic manager; besides thus knowing the mysteries of good coffee and good bread she was widely versed in theology, philosophy and the movements of modern science: all of which equipment was permeated with a certain intensity which struck every one who came near her. With this endowment she came to London in 1851, as I have said, by Dr. Chapman's invitation, and took up her residence at Dr. Chapman's house. Here she immediately began to meet George H. Lewes, Carlyle, Mill and Herbert Spencer. Of her relations to Lewes it seems to me discussion is not now possible. It is known that Lewes' wife had once left him, that he had generously condoned the offense and received her again, and that in a year she again eloped; the laws of England make such a condonation preclude divorce; Lewes was thus prevented from legally marrying again by a technicality of the law which converted his own generosity into a penalty; under these circumstances George Eliot, moved surely by pure love, took up her residence with him, and according to universal account, not only was a faithful wife to him for twenty years until his death, but was a devoted mother to his children. That her failure to go through the form of marriage was not due to any contempt for that form, as has sometimes been absurdly alleged, is conclusively shown by the fact that when she married Mr. Cross, a year and a half after Lewes' death, the ceremony was performed according to the regular rites of the Church of England.