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162 refreshment and repose, afforded the opportunity of facing what lay before her, and of considering how she should make herself a new home, and how shape her new life. Accordingly, on her return to England she very soon entered on an arduous occupation. It was for Mr Chapman that she had translated Strauss, and another German freethinker's book, and he proposed to her that she should become assistant editor of the 'Westminster Review,' living in his house in the Strand as a boarder. This position, which she at once accepted, brought her directly into contact with many eminent personages. Emerson and Froude she had already met at the Brays': Mill, Carlyle, Miss Martineau, Browning, Mazzini, Dickens, she became acquainted with through the Review or its editor, together with many who were pushing to the front as "advanced thinkers," – and with most of these she had numerous points of sympathy. But it must be noted here, out of regard for the prepossessions of the many who fail to give to those known as strong-minded women the admiration which their virile qualities might seem to merit, that George Eliot was never in that sense a strong-minded woman, – that while possessed of immense intellectual force, capable of grappling with the highest problems and most arduous tasks, she was of a moral nature tender, sympathetic, impulsive, and womanly, possibly in some things even womanish, and liable to be convicted by the truly strong-minded of her sex of what they might think a thousand weaknesses.

Among those whose lasting friendship with her began at this time was Mr Herbert Spencer, and he it was that introduced her to the man who was henceforward to be the predominating influence of her life. George Henry Lewes, a year or two older than she, though by no means so well known to the world as he afterwards became, held already a good position in letters. He was editor of a weekly paper – the 'Leader'; he was known as a man of science by his 'History of Philosophy'; as a novelist by 'Ranthorpe' and 'Rose, Blanche, and Violet'; and he had contributed many essays to periodical literature. Uncommonly well read, even for an habitual student, he was a most agreeable companion, genial, easy, friendly in approach, ready to engage in give and take, on any subject, and sure to bear a clever, entertaining part in it. It is evident that from the first he and Miss Evans attracted each other, and we soon find her letters beginning to contain frequent notices of "Lewes," and Lewes's state of health. Probably a womanly compassion at first counted for something in the intimacy, for his domestic circumstances were unhappy, his married home having been spoiled and broken up two years before. On his side the admiration amounted to a kind of worship – he became, and ever continued to be, one of a sect of disciples who made belief in her wisdom and goodness a kind of religion. As the intimacy progressed, her reciprocation of his complete attachment grew so strong as to impel her to cast in her lot with his. A word of farewell to her three friends at Coventry, when setting off with him for a tour on the Continent, told of the beginning of her union with Lewes.

Thus, for the second time, she had taken a step in life which she knew must place her in an attitude of estrangement from, or antagonism with, many of her own circle of friends, and with whole sections