The "words of Dr. Haller," to which the above letter refers, were to the effect that one of Lewes's great advantages in scientific and philosophical research was his familiar acquaintance with the works of German and French writers, which enabled him to follow the contemporaneous movement of science throughout Europe, whereas many writers of learning and ability wasted their own and their readers' time in investigating questions already fully investigated elsewhere, and advancing theories which had been previously proved or disproved without their knowledge. Dr. Ludwig Haller, of Berlin, in writing to me about G.H. Lewes, then recently deceased, had said, if I remember rightly, that he had some intention of publishing a sketch of Lewes in some German periodical. I am not aware whether this intention was ever carried into effect. The attack to which the above letter alludes was a very bad one of sciatica. At length the baths of Baden in Switzerland cured me permanently, but after their--it is said ordinary and normal, but very perverse--fashion, having first made me incomparably worse. I suffered excruciatingly, consolingly (!) assured by the doctor that sciatica never kills--only makes you wish that it would! While I was at the worst my brother came to Baden to see me, and on leaving me after a couple of days, wrote to my wife the following letter, which I confiscated and keep as a memorial. After expressing his commiseration for me, he continues:-- "For you, I cannot tell you the admiration I have for you. Your affection and care and assiduity were to be expected. I knew you well enough to take them as a matter of course from you to him. But your mental and physical capacity, your power of sustaining him by your own cheerfulness, and supporting him by your own attention, are marvellous. When I consider all the circumstances I hardly know how to reconcile so much love with so much self-control." Every word true! And what he saw for a few hours in each of a couple of days, I saw every hour of the day and night for four terrible months! But all this is a parenthesis into which I have been led, I hope excusably, by Mrs. Lewes's mention of my illness. N.B.--I said at an early page of these recollections that I had never been confined to my bed by illness for a single day during more than sixty years. The above-mentioned illness leaves the statement still true. The sciatica was bad, but never kept me in bed. Indeed I was perhaps in less torment out of it. Here is the last letter of George Eliot's which reached us. It is written by Mrs. Lewes to my wife, from "The Priory, 30 December, 1879":-- * * * * *